“Many people stop to look at the posters here and elsewhere, but there is not one of them to whom it means what it does to me. To you and them it is only a picture badly designed, clumsily cut, and worse colored. To me it is the story of my life’s ruin. Perhaps you’ll wonder what I’m driving at. If you care to listen for a few moments I can tell you.” He glanced at the open doorway of one of the old city churches near at hand. “Come in here,” he said; “it’s quiet and shady, and when there’s no one about they sometimes let me go in there for a rest. You may like to hear what I have to tell, and I shall be glad to get these infernal boards off my shoulders for a few moments.”
Thoroughly interested already in spite of myself—perhaps more by the man’s manner than anything else—I followed him. Entering the porch, he took the boards off his shoulders and placed them against the wall, and taking his seat on the bench just inside the doorway, drew a pocket handkerchief from his pocket and mopped his forehead with it.
“To begin with,” he said, after a moment’s silence, “let me tell you that my name is Edward Morton. Perhaps you will not believe me if I say that I was once upon a time—what of all things in the world do you think—a dramatic critic! Yes, it’s true. What is more, a dramatic criticism was the beginning and end of my downfall; and this is how it happened. It was about ten years ago, and soon after I started my journalistic career in the provinces, that I took a situation on one of our great daily papers—The Blunderer, to wit. This I had succeeded in obtaining through the influence of a friend at court, and, for a youngster just entering the profession, it was looked upon as an immense piece of good fortune. However that may be, up to town I came, and not being quite a fool, turned my chances to such good account that I was soon spoken of on all sides as ‘a promising young man.’ I might have gone on in this way, and ultimately attained to a bald head and a sub-editorship at fifty or so, but for doing two exceedingly foolish things. I made the acquaintance of Charlie Dashwood, and I fell desperately in love with a pretty actress, and one who was quite as clever and good as she was pretty—Lizzie Rayburn—you remember her? This Charlie Dashwood was a journalist like myself—a wild, harum-scarum fellow of the speculative sort—you’ve met his prototype, I daresay; always going off at a tangent, or breaking out in a fresh place when least expected; full of extravagant ideas about the undiscovered possibilities of the press; always vaporing about the reforms he intended to originate, if ever he should edit a paper of his own. I, at that time, admiring and looking up to Charlie, not only as the best of good fellows, which he really was, but as the very prince of journalists and an original genius, which, only too late, I have discovered he was not, firmly believed in and held to him in spite of the ridicule and chaff of older and wiser heads.
“At last, one day Charlie came to me at the office in a perfect frenzy of excitement with the news that he had just taken the management of a new weekly paper called The Bullseye, which would make its appearance the following week, and which had, as usual, been started to fill the not particularly noticed void. ‘We’re all full up with the exception of the dramatics, and Teddy my boy, you’re the very man! I know you have ideas of your own about the way that sort of thing should be done, and here’s the opportunity. Between us, we’ll make the paper the biggest “go” in London.’
“What Dashwood said was true. I had long possessed secret yearnings that way, which I had at times confided to Charlie. For a moment considerations of prudence came to my aid, and I ventured the mild suggestion of a doubt as to whether I was quite fitted for that line of work.
“‘Nonsense, my boy!’ said Charlie; ‘I know your proper capacity. You’re sure to make a hit.’ It was a curious fact that Charlie possessed the most remarkable intuitive faculty for discovering everybody’s proper capabilities except his own.
“‘Besides,’ he added, ‘think of Lizzie!’
“That settled it. Without further ado I closed with the offer, and a fortnight later saw me installed as dramatic critic of The Bullseye, with the title of that publication inscribed on my cards underneath that of The Blunderer. The plan of operation I proceeded to act upon was this: I had long had a wholesome contempt for that class of dramatic critics forever hanging round stage doors and hotel bars, and drinking with managers and actors, so I resolved to set an example in the opposite direction by keeping religiously aloof from all association with the profession—with one exception. This was Lizzie, who insisted on receiving her little paragraph of two or three lines regularly every week, and with whom I spent each Sunday afternoon and evening at her father’s place in Twickenham, whither he had retired to spend the rest of his days, free from the smoke of Aldgate and the cares of the grocery business. There had once been some talk of a Mr. Loydall, a huge, beetle-browed, hoarse-voiced tragedian, who played heavy lead to Lizzie’s juveniles at the Olympian, but he soon found out that he had no chance with me, and after one or two tussles retired from the battle, leaving me to walk over the course at my leisure.
“As you will guess, matters were pretty well settled between Lizzie and me, and we obtained old Rayburn’s consent to our marriage whenever the Blunderer’s management should recognize my merits sufficiently to advance my salary, and enable me to take Lizzie away from the stage. The Bullseye, contrary to everybody’s expectations—everybody, that is, outside the office—showed signs of becoming a pronounced success. My dramatic criticisms was soon one of the leading features of the journal. I had always had a notion that the withering, sarcastic style of writing was best suited to me, and this was the line I took, with such effect, that at times it became difficult to find out whether I had been praising or ‘slating’ a piece or an actor. Some people were unkind enough to say that they would prefer the latter process to the former. Needless to say that, as the power and influence of the paper increased, I soon became an object of hatred and dread to the whole profession. This only tickled my vanity the more, and I would strut along Fleet Street and the Strand of a morning meeting the scowls of passing ‘pros.’ with a stare of supercilious indifference.
“One night, entering my club at the usual hour, just before starting for the Lorne Theatre, where a new piece, entitled ‘For Life or Death,’ was to be produced that evening, I found a telegram lying for me in the rack. It was from Lizzie’s mother, telling me that Lizzie had been seized with a dangerous illness that very morning, and begging that I would proceed to the house at once. For a moment I was in a serious dilemma. At all hazards I must see Lizzie that night, yet it was imperative that I should attend the first night show at the Lorne, having for that special occasion undertaken The Blunderer’s notice in place of the regular man, who was absent through indisposition.