Gareth's face was expressive.
"As bad as that?" laughed Carr. "You are fond of reading, of course?" He flung himself into a battered leather arm-chair, hands thrust deep into his pockets, legs stretched out towards the empty grate. He had never bothered much with the reader before now, and it struck him that this reserved man with the stern mouth and grey-flecked hair, might reward closer study. "You are fond of reading?"
"I—loathe—it."
The words were pushed out with such intense vehemence, that Carr was startled. "I didn't think it possible for an intelligent man to dislike books."
"Perhaps not. As a young man I loved them so much that the day I got my first job as a reader I walked through London with my head among the stars. But books were then magical mysterious things, that grew on trees, and dropped into my hands. I never gave a thought to the mechanism of producing them: authors, manuscripts, typists, publishers, readers, printers, binders, contracts, proofs—they were hard facts, and had nothing to do with just books. For the first time that evening I read with my brain instead of my heart ... and I've been reading with my brain ever since, till it's dog-tired. Good Lord, man! I can't enjoy a book; I have to be on the look-out for tautology and anachronisms and split infinitives. Books are my bread-and-butter; they nauseate me; it's all I can do not to send up one damning report after another. I read books all day, and carry home a pile with me to read at night. My imaginative chords have been thumped till they hang loose as a broken bell-rope. Books—I can't get outside them, their mechanism and jargon. The world is one vast book, clipped together in chapters. I'm surrounded by men like you, who never drop a pencil without turning it into an incident for their books." From a fierce abstraction, Gareth wheeled suddenly on his hearer. "Now, this very minute, you are thinking I would be an excellent tragic character for your next book: the reader who detests reading. Are you?"
Carr flushed a guilty crimson; he had just succeeded in placing Gareth in the third chapter of "The Gnome."
"Well—er—I think I'll go inside. I've got a new contributor to propose for the White 'un."
"What's that?"
Not to have heard of the "White Review" monthly journal whose issue the firm had been contemplating and discussing for weeks—well, for a week, ever since Ran Wyman, author of "Tom Tiddler's Ground" and spoilt enfant terrible at the office, had first mooted the notion? Carr explained, amazed at the other's ignorance.
"No, I've been told nothing about it. Oh, yes, I saw that some special scheme was in the air, but I'm used to that here. It sounds good enough; more destructive than beautiful, though."