He found pencil and paper—a wad of copy paper, and curled up in the window-seat.
Things were not right. Not yet. He was the victim of wild forces. They were tearing at him. It was no longer restlessness—it was a mighty passion. It was uncomfortable and thrilling. Queer that the impulse to write should come so overwhelmingly without giving him, so far, a hint as to what he was to write. Yet it was not vague. He had to do it. And at once. Find the right place and go straight at it. It would come out. It would have to come out.
7
Mr Boice came heavily into the Voice office and sank into his creaking chair by the front window.
Humphrey went swiftly, steadily through galley after galley of proof. Humphrey had the trained eye that can pick out an inverted u in a page of print at three feet. He smoked his cob pipe as he worked.
Mr Boice drew a few sheets of copy paper from a pigeonhole, took up a pencil in his stiff fingers, and gazed down over his whiskers.
It was a decade or more since the 'editor' of the Voice had done any actual work. Every day he dropped quiet suggestions, whispered a word of guidance to this or that lieutenant, and listened to assorted ideas and opinions. He was a power in the village, no doubt about that. But to compose and write out three columns of his own paper was hopelessly beyond him. It called for youth, or for the long habit of a country hack. The deep permanent grooves in his mind were channels for another sort of thinking.
For an hour he sat there. Gradually Humphrey became aware of him. It was odd anyway that he should be here. He seldom returned in the afternoon.
Finally he looked over at the younger man, and made sounds.
Humphrey raised his head; removed his pipe.