"But why Harriet?—of all the hateful names!"
CHAPTER XXIV.
THE RESCUE.
"Style," said Mr. Joshua Benny, "has been defined as a gift of saying anything, of striking any note in the scale of human feelings, without impropriety. We cannot all have distinction, Mr. Parker—what I may call the je ne sais quoi"—
Mr. Joshua put this with a fine modesty, the distinction of his own style being proverbial—in Spendilove's Press Supply Bureau at any rate. He might have added with a wave of the hand, "You see to what it has advanced me!" for whereas the rest of Spendilove's literary men toiled in two gangs, one on either side of a long high-pitched desk, and wrote slashing leaders for the provincial press, Mr. Joshua exercised his lightness of touch upon 'picturesque middles' in a sort of loose-box partitioned off from the main office by screens of opaque glass. This den—he spoke of it as his 'scriptorium'—had a window looking out upon an elevated railway, along which the trains of the London, Chatham, and Dover line banged and rattled all day long. For Spendilove's (as it was called by its familiars) inhabited the second floor of a building close to the foot of Ludgate Hill. The noise no longer disturbed Mr. Joshua, except when an engine halted just outside to blow off steam.
Mr. Joshua leaned back in his writing-chair, tapped a galley proof with admonitory forefinger, and gazed over his spectacles upon Mr. Parker—a weedy youth with a complexion suggestive of uncooked pastry.
"We cannot all have distinction, Mr. Parker, nor can it be acquired by effort. Vigour we may cultivate, and clearness we must; it is essential. On a level with these I should place propriety. Propriety teaches us to regulate our speech by the occasion; to be incisive at times and at times urbane; to adapt the 'how' to the 'when,' as I might put it. I do not think—I really do not think—that Christmas Eve is a happily chosen moment for calling Mr. Disraeli 'a Jew adventurer.'"
"Mr. Makins, sir, who wrote yesterday's Liberal leader for the syndicate, wound up by saying the time had gone by for mincing our opinion of the front Opposition Bench. He warned me last night, when I took over his job, to pitch it strong. He had it on good authority that the constituencies have been a good deal shaken by Mr. Gladstone's Army Purchase coup, and some straight talk is needed to pull them together, in the eastern counties especially."
"You are young to the work, Mr. Parker. You may depend upon it—you may take it from me—that Spendilove's will not fail in straight talking, on either side of the question. But we must observe what our Gallic neighbours term les convenances. By the way, has Makins gone off for the holidays?"