“I should enjoy a lake trip very much,” said Henry, beginning to feel that it was good to be there.
“Well, don't forget to hand in your address then, so that it gets on the list.”
Henry was damped. 24 Allée Petit Chat, Saint Gervais—it sounded rotten, and would sound worse still to the Genevan syndics, who knew just where it was and what, and were even now engaged in plans for pulling down and rebuilding all the old wharfside quarter. No; he could not hand in that address....
“I suppose you've got to crab the show, whatever it does, haven't you,” said the Daily Sale man presently. “Now I'm out to pat it on the back—this year. I like that better. It's dull being disagreeable all the time; so obvious, too.”
“My paper is obvious,” Henry owned gloomily. “Truth always is. You can't get round that.”
“Oh, well, come,” the other journalist couldn't stand that—“it's a bit thick for one of your lot to start talking about truth. The lies you tell daily—they have ours beat to a frazzle. Why, you couldn't give a straight account of a bus accident!”
“We could not. That is to say, we would not,” Henry admitted. “But we lie about points of fact because our principles are true. They're so true that everything has to be made to square with them. If you notice, our principles affect all our facts. Yours don't, quite all. You'd report the bus accident from pure love of sensation. We, in reporting it, would prove that it happened because buses aren't nationalised, or because the driver was underpaid, or the fares too high, or because coal has gone up more than wages, or something true of that sort. We waste nothing; we use all that happens. We're propagandists all the time, you're only propagandists part of the time; and commercialists the rest.”
“Oh, certainly no one would accuse you of being commercialists,” agreed the Sale man kindly. “Hallo, what's up?”
Henry had stiffened suddenly, and sat straight and rigid, like a dog who dislikes another dog. His companion followed his tense gaze, and saw a very neat, agreeable-looking and gentlemanly fellow, exquisitely cleaned, shaved, and what novelists call groomed (one supposes this to be a kind of rubbing-down process, to make the skin glossy), with gray spats, a malacca cane, and a refined gray suit with a faint stripe and creases like knife-blades. This gentleman was strolling by in company with the senior British delegate, who had what foreigners considered a curious and morbid fad for walking rather than driving, even for short distances.
“Which troubles you?” inquired the representative of the Daily Sale. “Our only Lord B., or that Secretariat fellow?”