CHAPTER I
Which shows Some of the Gods in their Machinery, with but a Shadowy Hint of the Printer’s Devil
Amidst the untidy litter of torn paper that strewed the bare plank floor there stood a large double writing-table, spread with proofs and manuscript and pamphlets; and, with his feet in the litter of the floor and his elbows in the litter of the table, sat a gaunt yellow-haired youth, solemnly writing.
Netherby Gomme peered at his work in the waning light of the departing November afternoon; and the deepening dusk that took possession of the shabby room, turning all things to the colour of shadows, strained his attention, drawing long lines about his mouth and pronouncing the pallor of his serious face—the grim mask of the humorist. The slips of paper that were set into the sleeve-ends of his well-brushed threadbare coat to save the soiling of his shirt-cuffs, and the long reach of yellow sock that showed his feet thrust a wrinkled span beyond the original intention of his much-knee’d trousers, marked the ordered untidiness of the literary habit.
Everything in the room—the overflowed waste-paper basket at his feet; the severe academic comfort of the polished wooden armchair that stood yawning augustly vacant opposite to him; the shut door at his right hand, with its curt announcement of “Editor” in stiff, forbidding letters; the low bookshelves about the room with their rows of books of reference, stacks of journals and literary scraps piled a-top of them; the walls with their irregular array of calendars, advertisements, notices, and printed and pictured odds and ends; the atmosphere of the scrap-gathering paste-pot and of clippings from the knowledge of the world; the sepulchral, monotonous clock that ticked its aggressive statement of the passage of time as though with a cough of admonition that, whatever journalism might be, life was short and art was long; the naked mantel beneath it, which held the shabby soul of the jerrybuilder turned to stone—for it is the hearth that is haunted by the spirit of the architect, and this one had been a vulgar fellow—the bare fireplace that did not even go through the feeble pretence of giving comfort, for it had no fender, no hearthrug, but gaped, bored and empty and black, upon the making of literature—everything marked the room to be one of those scanty workshops where opinions are made, the dingy editorial office of a struggling weekly review; and the extent of the dinginess showed it to be a very struggling affair indeed.
The young man blotted his writing, and flipped through some pages of manuscript:
“Oliver,” said he, without looking up, “a light, I think!... We have here lying before us a most caustic literary criticism; but the light is so far gone that we can scarce see the dogmatic gentleman’s own literary infelicities—nay, can scarce see even his most split infinitives.”
He spoke like a leading article, with a slight cockney accent.
In the gloom of a dark corner by the window, at a high desk that stood against the wall, where he sat perched on a tall office stool with his feet curled round its long legs, a small boy ceased reading, and, fumbling about in the breast-pocket of his short Eton jacket, lugged out a tin box, struck a match, and, leaning forward, set a flame to the gas-jet. The place leaped into light. The youngster flung the matchbox across the room, and went on with his reading. It fell at the feet of the yellow-haired youth.
“Ah, Noll,” said he, stooping over and searching for it amongst the torn fragments of paper, “like those of even greater genius, our aims are only too often lost in the sea of wasted endeavour.”