CHAPTER VI
WHICH INTRODUCES AN EDITOR
Wheelton, an industrial town of some importance, lies less than an hour's journey by rail from Stratford. It is not exactly a home of learning, nor has it given any distinguished men to literature or science, but it boasts four weekly newspapers and a small daily sheet, which would appear to be more than the inhabitants require in the shape of local reading matter, for, with one exception, the newspapers of the town have a hard struggle for existence.
At the time when Henry Charles and his father made their first journey thither the journalistic conditions were not quite so straitened, as the evening paper and one of the weeklies had not come to increase competition; but even then the Guardian was the least successful of the three.
The office of Mr. Springthorpe's journal was situated up a flight of narrow stairs, the shop on the street front having been let to a pork-butcher for the sake of the rent. On the first floor were the editor's room, the reporters' room, and another small apartment that served as the general office, and contained a staff of one weedy young man with downy side-whiskers, and a perky little office boy.
Up a further crazy stair the composing-room was reached, and here five men and several boys put into type what was sent from the rooms below. The printing was done in premises on the ground floor behind the pork-butcher's, extended by the addition of a rather rickety wooden outbuilding. By no means an establishment to impress a visitor with the importance of the journal here produced, or to give a beginner any exaggerated idea of the dignity of journalism. Still, the massive gilt letters proclaiming The Guardian above the pork-butcher's had the power to make Henry's blood tingle when first he saw them.
Up the stair he followed his father, with much fluttering of the heart, but reassured by the confident and cheerful look on the face of Edward John, who went about the business as outwardly calm as if he were buying a fresh stock of stationery.
The office-boy showed the visitors into a room to the left of the counter, on the door of which the pregnant word Editor, printed in bold letters on a slip of paper, had been pasted but recently, judging by its cleanness, as contrasted with the soiled appearance of everything else.
The editor's room was plainly furnished, not to say shabbily, despite the fact that it figured frequently in the Guardian gossip columns under the attractive title of "The Sanctum." In the middle of the floor stood a large writing-table, from which the leather covering had peeled off, exposing the wood beneath like a plane tree with its bark half-shed. On the table lay, in picturesque confusion, bundles of galley-slips, clippings from newspapers, sheets of "copy" paper, all partially secured in their positions by small slabs of lead as paper-weights.
The waste-paper basket to the left of the table had overflowed, and the floor around was strewn with cut newspapers and crumpled sheets of manuscript. On the walls hung two large maps, one showing the railways of England and the other the Midland counties. Above the fireplace a printer's calendar was nailed. Three soiled and battered haircloth chairs completed the furniture of the room when we have added a damaged arm-chair, cushioned with a pile of old papers. This was the editor's chair. Its intrinsic value was probably half-a-crown, but to the regular readers of the Guardian it must have seemed as priceless as the gold stool of Ashanti, for they were accustomed to read two columns every week headed "From the Editor's Chair."
The short, thick-set person, with the slightly bald head and distinctly red nose above a heavy black moustache, which trailed its way down each side of a clean-shaven chin and drooped over into space, was the editor himself. With a briar pipe, burnt at one side, stuck in his mouth, and puffing vigorously, he sat there in his shirt sleeves, and his pen flew swiftly over the sheets of paper that lay before him.
When Mr. Charles and his son entered, the editor laid down his pipe and pen, and rising from his chair, said in the most affable way:
"Ah, I am pleased to meet you, Mr. Charles; and this is your son Henry, of whose ability I have already heard."
Shaking hands with each, he pointed them to seats and resumed his own.
"So Henry is ambitious of embarking on a journalistic career," he remarked, as he lifted his pipe again; adding, "I hope you don't mind my smoking. I find a weed a great incentive to thought."
Mr. Springthorpe always spoke like a leading article, and it was noticed by those who knew him best that on the occasions when his nose was particularly ruddy and his utterance somewhat thick, his flow of language and the stateliness of his words were even more marked than when one could not detect the odour of the tap-room in his vicinity.
"Yes, 'Enry is anxious to get on a noospaper," Mr. Charles replied. "And Mr. Trevor Smith has written this letter about him for you to read."
The editor reached out and took the letter with a great show of interest, reading it carefully, as though it were a document of much importance, while Henry sat fumbling with his hat, conscious that he had again arrived at a critical moment in his career.
"This is very nattering indeed, Mr. Charles," said the editor at length, "and I attach great weight to the opinion of Mr. Trevor Smith, who is an able and promising member of my staff."
"Then you think that 'Enry might suit you?"
"I have little doubt that he would prove a worthy addition to the ranks of journalism, and if I had any urgent need of a new member on my reportorial staff, I should willingly offer him an engagement. But, as I think I explained to you in my letter, I have not at present any pressing need for literary assistance."
Henry's face clouded as he listened, but brightened the next instant, when Mr. Springthorpe continued:
"It would, however, be a pity not to hold out the hand of encouragement to so bright a young man as your son, and I should be delighted to have the privilege of initiating him into the mysteries of newspaper work if you are prepared to pay a premium, and to let him serve the first six months without salary."
"There need be no difficulty about that," said Mr. Charles, "and I am prepared to pay you now a reasonable sum for any trouble you will take with him. How much would you expect?"
"Well, it all depends. I have had pupils who have paid as much as a hundred pounds." Edward John sighed, and Henry felt a tightening at the throat. "Fifty is what I usually expect." The visitors breathed more freely. "But I feel that in Henry we have a young man of peculiar aptitude, who would soon make himself a useful colleague of my other assistants; and that being so, I should be content with half the amount."
"That's a bargain, then," said Mr. Charles, entirely relieved, as he took out his cheque-book and filled up a cheque in favour of Mr. Martin Springthorpe for twenty-five pounds. "Of course, I s'pose you give 'im a salary after the first six months," he added, when he handed the cheque to the editor.
"I shall be only too happy to adequately remunerate his services when the period of probation is terminated," Mr. Springthorpe assured him, placing the precious paper carefully in his pocket-book.
"And when would you like me to begin, sir?" asked Henry, who had scarcely opened his mouth since entering the room, the editor's shrewd eye for character, together with Mr. Trevor Smith's valuable testimonial, being all that Mr. Springthorpe had whereby to arrive at his flattering estimate of the young man's brightness and peculiar aptitude for journalism.
"Let me see, now—this is the 18th of July. Suppose we say that you commence your duties here on Monday, the 25th. How would that suit you?"
"That would fit in nicely, 'Enry, my lad, wouldn't it?" said Mr. Charles.
"Yes, sir," said the new reporter to the chief, who had been bought with a price. "I could start on that day, as there is nothing to keep me at Stratford."
"Do you know anything of shorthand?" the editor asked, as an afterthought.
"A little, sir; and I am studying it every night just now."
"That's right, my boy, wire in at your shorthand; a reporter is of little use without that accomplishment. To one of your ability it will be easy to acquire. I picked it up myself in a fortnight, and even now, although I seldom use it, I could still take my turn at a verbatim with the best of them."
The great business completed, Mr. Charles and his son set out to look for lodgings for Henry, being recommended to the mother of one of the other reporters, who let apartments.
On the way back to Stratford, after having settled this little matter, Edward John waxed as enthusiastic as his son in picturing the possibilities which he had thus opened up for Henry. "Tis money makes the mare to go, my lad," he said. "Five-and-twenty pounds is a goodish bit out o' my savings, but I've always said you'd 'ave your chance, no matter what it cost me."
"I hope that I'll be able to prove the money hasn't been wasted, dad."
"I'm sure o' that, 'Enry—if you only wire in at your work and show the editor the stuff that's in you. Just fancy what old Miffin and the others will say when they 'ear that 'Enry Chawles is a reporter on the Guardian!"
"I mean to study very hard, get up my shorthand, and to write as much as ever I can when I join the staff. But of course I shan't stay in Wheelton all my life. There's better papers than the Guardian, you know."
"That's the true spirit, lad; always look ahead. If I hadn't been looking ahead all these years, where would the twenty-five pounds ha' come from, and the money that's to keep you for the next six months?"
"I'm sure I don't know what could have been done without it. I don't think opportunities are as plentiful as we are told."
Henry had learned a little since that day he rode to Stratford with the carrier.
"Didn't think much of the office, though. Did you, 'Enry?"
"No," he admitted somewhat unwillingly, "it wasn't so fine as I had expected; but perhaps it is as good as they need."
"And nobody needs anythink better than that," which summed up in a sentence Edward John's philosophy of life and the secret of his financial soundness.
The few days remaining to Henry in Stratford went past all too slowly, despite the jubilation of Mr. Trevor Smith at the success of his promising protégé, and Henry's application to the study of shorthand, with which most of his time at the book-shop had been occupied of late. Mr. Griggs and Pemble he left without a pang, the former still concerned about his poultry, and the latter still cultivating his moustache; but he was sorry to say good-bye to Mrs. Filbert and the irrepressible Trevor, who would have made the success of his proposal an excuse to borrow a fourth half-crown, were it not that the memory of the unpaid three had better not be reawakened when Henry was going away.
His journey to Wheelton found him with hopes scarcely so high as those he had cherished on his way to Stratford some three months before, but he was at least fortified with some measure of that common sense which only rises in the mind as the illusions of youth begin to sink.
It was not thought necessary for him to revisit Hampton Bagot before removing to Wheelton—his face was still turned away from home. Thus far he had been marking time merely; but now he was on the march in earnest.