She was silent again.
"What are you so serious for, all of a sudden?" he said, looking round.
Cynthia bent over him quickly with a caress, and sprang up.
"It was you who wanted the t's crossed for once!" she said tremulously. "There, now I must go and knock at the nursery door and ask if I'm allowed to go in!"
The man of acute perceptions wondered what she meant, and in what way he had shown himself dull at comprehending so transparent a girl.
It was in October, when less than twenty pounds remained to them, that something at last turned up. Turquand had learnt that an assistant-editor was required on The World and his Wife, a weekly journal recently started for the benefit of the English and Americans in Paris. The Editor was familiarly known as "Billy" Beaufort, and the proprietor was a sporting baronet who had reduced his income from fourteen thousand per annum to eight by financing, and providing with the diamonds, which were the brightest feature of her performance, a lady who fancied that she was an actress. Beaufort had been the one dramatic critic who did not imply that she was painful, and it was Beaufort who had latterly assured the Baronet that The World and his Wife would realise a fortune. He had gone about London for thirteen years assuring people that various enterprises would realise a fortune—that was his business—but the Baronet was one of the few persons who had believed him. Then Billy Beaufort took his watch, and his scarf-pin, and his sleeve-links away from Attenborough's—when in funds he could always pawn himself for a considerable amount—and turned up again resplendent at the club, whose secretary had been writing him sharp letters on the subject of his subscription. The only alloy to his complacence, though it did not dimmish it to any appreciable degree, was that he was scarcely more qualified to edit a paper than was a landsman to navigate a ship. He described himself as a journalist, and the description was probably as accurate as any other he could have furnished of a definite order; but he was a journalist whose attainments were limited to puffing a prospectus and serving up a réchauffé from Truth. Never attached to a paper for longer than two or three months, he was, during that period, usually attached to a woman too. He drove in hansoms every day of the year; always appeared to have bought his hat half an hour ago; affected a big picotee as a buttonhole, and lived—nobody knew how. While he was ridiculed in Fleet Street as a Pressman, he was treated with deference there on account of his reputed smartness in the City, and—while the City laughed at his business pretensions—there he was respected for his supposed abilities in Fleet Street. So he beamed out of the hansoms perkily, and drove from one atmosphere of esteem to another, waving a gloved hand, on the way, to clever men who envied him.
In days gone by he had tasted a spell of actual prosperity. By what coup he had made the money, and how he had lost it, are details, but he had now developed the fatal symptom of dwelling lovingly on that epoch when he had been so lucky, and so courted, and so rich. There is hope for the man who boasts of what he means to do; there is hope for the boaster who lies about what he is doing; but the man whose weakness is to boast of what he once did is doomed—he is a man who will succeed no more. If the sporting Baronet had grasped this fact, The World and his Wife would never have been started, and Billy Beaufort would not have been looking for an assistant-editor to do all the work.
Kent obtained the post. The man with whom Beaufort had parted was a thoroughly experienced journalist, who had put his chief in the way of things, but had subsequently called him an ass, and what Billy sought now was a zealous young fellow who would have no excuse for giving himself airs. Beaufort believed in Turquand's opinion, and had always thought him a fool for being so shabby, knowing him to have ten times the brain-power that he himself possessed, and Turquand had blown Humphrey's trumpet sturdily. He did more than merely recommend him; he declared—with a recollection of the nurse and baby—that Kent was the man to get, but that he was afraid it would not be worth his while to accept less than seven pounds a week. When the matter was settled, Humphrey sought his friend again, and, wringing his hand, exclaimed:
"You're a pal; but—but, I say! What are an assistant-editor's duties?"
Exhilaration and misgiving were mixed in equal parts in his breast.