The Clean Heart

by A. S. M. Hutchinson

"Well, what does it matter whom he is?" Mr. Wriford would cry. "I don't mind people thinking things in the paper are rotten, if I've passed them and thought them good. But I'm damned if I let things go in that I know are rotten, just because they're written by some big man. I don't mind my own judgment being blamed. But I'm not going to hear criticism of anything in my paper and know that I made the same criticism myself but let it go. Satisfy yourself! That's the only rule to go by."

Therefore on this press-night as on every press-night—but somehow with worse effect this night than any—behold Mr. Wriford satisfying himself, and in the process whirling along towards the state that finds him sick and dizzy and trembling when at last the paper has gone to press and once more he has pulled through. Behold him shrinking lower in his chair as the night proceeds, smoking cigarettes in the way of six or seven puffs at each, then giddiness, and then hurling it from him with an exclamation, and then the craving for another if another line is to be written, and then the same process again; stopping in his work in the midst of a sentence, in the midst of a word, to examine a page sent down from the composing-room; twisting himself over it to satisfy himself with it; rushing up-stairs with it to where, amid heat and atmosphere that are vile and intolerable to him, the linotype machines are rattling with din that is maddening to him, to satisfy himself that the page has not been rushed to the foundry without his emendations; there, a hundred times, sharp argument that is infuriating to him with head-printer and machine-manager who battle with time and are always behind time because advertisements and blocks are late, and now, as they say, he must needs come and pull a page to pieces; down to his room again, and more and worse interruptions that a thousand times he tells himself he is a fool not to leave in other hands and yet will attend to to satisfy himself; time wasted with superior members of his staff who come to write the final leaders on the last of the night's news and who are affected by no thought of need for haste but must wait and gossip till this comes from Reuter's or that from The Intelligence's own correspondent; time wasted over the line they think should be taken and the line to which Mr. Wriford, to satisfy himself, must induce them. Sometimes, thus occupied with one of these men, Mr. Wriford—a part of his mind striving to concentrate on the article he was himself in the midst of writing, part concentrating on the page that lay before him waiting to be examined, part on the jump in expectation of a frantic printer's boy rushing in for the page at any moment, and the whole striving to force itself from these distractions and fix on the subject under discussion—sometimes in these tumults Mr. Wriford would have the impulse to let the man go and write what he would and be damned to him, or the page go as it stood and be damned to it, or his own article be cancelled and something—anything to fill—take its place. But that would not be satisfying himself, and that would be present relief at the cost of future dissatisfaction, and somehow Mr. Wriford would make the necessary separate efforts—somehow pull through.

II

Somehow pull through! In the midst of the worst nights, Mr. Wriford would strive to steady himself by looking at the clock and assuring himself that in three hours—two hours—one hour—by some miracle the tangle would straighten itself, and he would have pulled through and the paper be gone to press, as he had pulled through and the paper been got away before. So it would be to-night—but to-night! "If I dropped dead," said Mr. Wriford to himself, standing in his room on return from a rush up-stairs to the composing-room, and striving to remember in which of his tasks he had been interrupted, "if I dropped dead here where I am and left it all unfinished, we should get to press just the same somehow. Well, let me, for God's sake, fix on that and go leisurely and steadily as if it didn't matter. I shall go mad else; I shall go mad." But in a moment he was caught up in the storm again and satisfying himself—and somehow pulling through. At shortly before midnight he was rushing up-stairs with the last page of his own article, and remaining then in the composing-room that sickened him and dazed him, himself to make up the last two forms—correcting proofs on wet paper that would not show the corrections and maddened him; turning aside to cut down articles to fit columns; turning aside to scribble new titles or to shout them to the compositors who stood waiting to set them; turning aside to use tact with the publisher's assistant who was up in distraction to know what time they were ever likely to get the machines going; turning aside to send a messenger to ask if that last block was ever coming; calculating all the time against the clock to the last fraction of a second how much longer he could delay—forever turning aside, forever calculating; deciding at last that the late block must not be waited for; peering in the galley racks to decide what should fill the space that had been left for it; selecting an article and cutting it to fit; at highest effort of concentration scanning the pages that at last were in proof—then to the printer: "All right; let her go!" Pulled through! And the heavy mallets flattening down the type no more than echoes of the smashing pulses in his brain....

Pulled through! dizzily down-stairs. Pulled through! and too sick, too spent, too nerveless, to exchange words with those of his staff who had been up-stairs with him and were come down, thanking heaven it was over. Pulled through! and too spent, too finished, to clear up the litter of his room as he had intended—capable only of dropping into his chair and then, realising his state, of calling upon himself in actual whispers: "Wriford! Wriford! Wriford!" but no responding energy.

III

He began to think of going home and began to think of the task of taking down his coat from behind the door and of the task of getting into it. He began to think of the paper that had just gone to press and began in his mind to go slowly through it from the first page, enumerating the title of each article and of each picture. Somewhere after half-a-dozen pages he would lose the thread and find himself miles away, occupied with some other matter; then he would start again.

It was towards one o'clock when he realised that if he did not move, he would miss a good train at Waterloo and have a long wait before the next. He decided against the effort of taking down and getting into his coat. He took up his hat and stick and left the building by the trade entrance at the back, meeting no one. He followed his usual habit of walking to Waterloo along the Embankment, and it was nothing new to him—for a press-night—that occasionally he found he could not keep a straight course on the pavement. Too many cigarettes, he thought. He crossed to the river side, and when he was a little way from Waterloo Bridge, a more violent swerve of his unsteady legs scraped him roughly against the wall. He had no control then, even over his limbs! and at that realisation he stopped and laid his hands on the wall and looked across the river and cried to himself that frequent cry of these days: "Wriford! Wriford! Wriford!"

The wall was rough to his hands, and that produced the thought of how soft his hands were—how contemptibly soft he was all over and all through. "Wriford! Wriford! Wriford!" cried Mr. Wriford to himself and had a great surge through all his pulses that seemed—as frequently in these days but now more violently, more completely than ever before—to wash him asunder from himself, so that he was two persons: one within his body that was the Wriford he knew and hated, the other that was himself, his own, real self, and that cried to his vile, his hateful body: "Wriford! Wriford! Wriford!"

Intolerable—past enduring! Mr. Wriford jumped upwards, suspending his weight on his arms on the wall, and by the action was dispossessed of other thought than sudden recollection of exercises on the horizontal bar at school; seemed to be in the gymnasium, and saw the faces of forgotten school-fellows who were in his gym set waiting their turn. Then the Embankment again and realisation. Should he drop back to the pavement? "Wriford! Wriford! Wriford!" He mastered that vile, damned, craven body and threw up his right leg and scrambled and pitched himself forward; was conscious of striking his thigh violently against the wall, and at the pain and as he fell, thought: "Ha, that's one for you, damn you! I've got you this time! Got you!" And then was in the river, and then instinctively swimming, and then "Drown, damn you! Drown!" cried Mr. Wriford and stopped the action of his arms, and went down swallowing and struggling, and came up struggling and choking, and instinctively struck out again.