"Why don't you help us, Miss Carr?" Humphrey said, with a laugh. "We're in the Blind Alley too."
VIII
The weeks passed into August, and Humphrey took eagerly all the work that was given to him by Rivers. He became a mental ostrich, assimilating all sorts of knowledge. One day, perhaps, he would have to describe a cat show at the Crystal Palace, the next he might be attending a technical exhibition at the Agricultural Hall and Olympia, and have his head stuffed with facts and figures of this and that industry. He was acquiring knowledge all day long, but it was only superficial; there was no time to go deeply into any subject, and indeed, his one object was to unburden his mind of all the superfluous things he learnt during the day. If reporters were to keep a book of cuttings of everything they wrote—and they know the value of their work sufficiently not to do that—they would be amazed, looking back over ten years (those cuttings would fill several mighty volumes), at the vast range of subjects they touched upon, at the inside knowledge they had of the little—and even big—things of life; of the great men with whom they had come into contact, perhaps for a few minutes, perhaps for a day; of the men they had even helped to make great by the magic of publicity—they would be astounded at the broadness of their lives, at the things they had forgotten long ago, and perhaps they would pity themselves, looking over their cuttings, for the splendid futility of it all.
You remember Kipling's poem of "The Files," bound volumes of past years; which are repositories of all lost endeavours and dead enthusiasm. Heaven help us when we can write and achieve no more, and the only work of our youth and manhood lies buried, forgotten, in the faded yellow sheets of the files.
But Humphrey Quain at this period, just like every other young man, whether he be a haberdasher or a reporter, did not contemplate the remote future. He was young, and his brain was clear and fresh, and he wrote everything with a pulsing eagerness, as though it were his final appeal to posterity. He found his style improving, as he read, and his understanding broadened. He wrote in the crisp style that suited The Day; he had what they call the "human touch"—that was a phrase which Ferrol was very fond of using. Rivers began to entrust him with better things to do: now and again he was sent out of London on country assignments. That was a delightful business, to escape for a day or so from the office routine, and be more or less independent in some far-away town or village. You were given money for expenses, and told to go to Cornwall, where something extraordinary was about to happen, or some one had a grievance, or else there was some one to interview, and you packed a handbag, and went in a cab to Paddington, and had lunch on the train, and stopped at the best hotel, and generally tried to pretend that you were holiday making. But, more often than not, the idea of a holiday fell away when you got to the place, and you had to bustle and bother and worry to get what you wanted. Then you had to write your message, and that meant generally being late for dinner, or perhaps it was the kind of story that kept you hanging about and made it necessary to telephone news late at night.
But going out of town held a wonderful charm for Humphrey—it gave him a sense of responsibility. It made him feel that the office trusted him; somehow or other he felt more important on these country jobs, as if he bore the burden of The Day on his own shoulders.
There was the charm, too, of writing the story in the first person, instead of adopting the impersonal attitude that was the rule with London work; and the charm of fixing the little telegraph pass to the message, which franked it at press rates to The Day without pre-payment. Sometimes there were other men on the same story, and they forgathered after work, and as all journalists do, talked shop, because they cannot talk of anything without it touches the fringe of their work. The men he met were, for the most part, thoroughly experienced and capable, they were tremendously enthusiastic, though they tried to appear blasé, because it was considered the correct thing among themselves. They never discussed each other's work, nor told of what they had written. Even when they met in the morning, though they had all read their colleagues' messages in the papers, and compared them with their own, they kept aloof from all reference to the merits or demerits of these messages. But it used to rejoice Humphrey's heart to see, sometimes, how older men who were inclined to patronize him as a beginner and a junior the night before, treated him as one of themselves in the morning at the breakfast-table. And he nearly burst with pride when he first saw his messages headed: "From The Day Special Correspondent." Even though he were no further afield than Manchester or Birmingham, it seemed to place him in the gallant band of great ones just as if he were a Steevens, a Billy Russell, or an Archibald Forbes.