Grey Town

by Gerald R. Baldwin

"Are you looking for libel actions?" asked "Trafalgar," innocently.

"Not looking for them, but quite prepared for them in a just cause. Did you read my speech last night?"

"I have not found time," stammered the sporting editor, while Desmond O'Connor sat listening with a broad smile on his face.

"Oblige me by reading it. It represents my policy, and the policy of this paper. We call a spade a spade on 'The Mercury.' Just read that speech, and then sit down and write about Caprice. You can mention the running of Bailiff in the Hurdles at the same time. If the stewards won't do their duty, 'The Mercury' will point it out to them."

In this manner was Gerard introduced to the policy of Denis Quirk and his paper. He was, however, a smart man, quite capable of grasping a situation when it was demonstrated to him. In a few weeks' time the clever division began to read the accounts of their acts of brigandage with fear and trembling; obsequious stewards became more alert, and less timid in dealing with glaring acts of fraud, while threats were openly indulged in, and actions for libel suggested. But Denis Quirk and his paper went on their prescribed course, regardless of threats, and awaiting libel actions that failed to come.

There was no lack of excitement in Grey Town in those days. Men did not go about wearily, and sigh because there was nothing in the papers. There were times of stress and battle in the town when Denis Quirk and "The Mercury" fought with sloth, indifference, and vested interests; times when he was rarely at home with the old people, because he had many and important things to do, to say, and to write about in the town.

But Gerard dropped quietly into a position of family friend and confidential adviser at "Layton." He was introduced by Denis Quirk, and, being a man of comparative leisure, it became his habit to spend a part of his leisure at the house, and to accompany Mrs. Quirk and Kathleen O'Connor when they went out to find amusement. To this Denis Quirk readily assented, for he was more at ease among the men and women who worked than among those who played. Desmond O'Connor, too, was shouldering the burden of stern responsibility, and someone had to look after Mrs. Quirk and Kathleen. Who could better do this than Gerard, a harmless and pleasant man in Denis Quirk's eyes?

This was the first male friendship of Kathleen O'Connor. Here was a man who told her the history of his lifetime, not discursively, but in fragments dropped here and there. There is pleasure, entertainment, and pathos in every man's life, no matter who he may be. Gerard had lived more adventurously than many others. He was a man who could make love charmingly, one who had been liberally educated. There were many pleasing reminiscences, many sad incidents in his past, and he had a happy method of speaking of such events.

This is the manner in which love sometimes comes to man and woman, not, as it is often pictured, as a sudden passion, but slowly and in stages. Gerard loved easily and lightly; he had already had his grand passions, and the current of his life ran none the less pleasantly because of them. To make love to a pretty girl was nothing to him, merely another passing incident. But a man was an event to Kathleen O'Connor, an admirer something hitherto unknown. She had laughed and flirted with boyish admirers, as girls do; but such events are mere ripples on the surface of passion. The love and admiration of a man are to such things a vast upheaval of the depths of the ocean.

There was at this time one person who cordially disliked Gerard, probably the only one in Grey Town. This was Molly Healy, and she had great difficulty to find a reason for her antipathy to the sporting editor of "The Mercury." After her first meeting with Gerard, she expressed her sentiments to Kathleen O'Connor unreservedly, as was her way.