It was all done in a moment, and almost before Ernest knew what
had happened he was out in the street again, with tears filling his
eyes, and joy his heart, for here at last was bread, bread, bread,
for Edie and the baby! He ran without stopping all the way back
to Holloway, rushed headlong into the house and fell into Edie's
arms, calling out wildly, 'He's taken it! He's taken it!' Edie
kissed him half-a-dozen times over, and answered bravely, 'I knew
he would, Ernest. It was such a splendid article.' And yet thousands
of readers of the 'Morning Intelligence' next day skimmed lightly
over the leader on organ-boys in their ordinary casual fashion,
without even thinking what hopes and fears and doubts and terrors
had gone to the making of that very commonplace bit of newspaper
rhetoric. For if the truth must be told, Edie's first admiring
criticism was perfectly correct, and Ernest Le Breton's leader was
just for all the world exactly the same as anybody else's.
Meanwhile, Arthur Berkeley had stayed behind as requested in Mr.
Lancaster's study, and waited to hear what Mr. Lancaster had to say
to him. The editor looked up at him wearily from his chair, passed
his bread hand slowly across his bewildered forehead, and then said
the one word, 'Poor?'
'Nothing on earth to do,' Berkeley answered.
'He might make a journalist, perhaps,' the editor said, sleepily.
'This social's up to the average. At any rate, I'll do my very best
for him. But he can't live upon socials. We have too many social
men already. What can he do? That's the question. It won't do to
say he can write pretty nearly as well about anything that turns
up as any other man in England can do. I can get a hundred young
fellows in the Temple to do that, any day. The real question's this:
is there anything he can write about a great deal better than all
the other men in all England put together?'
'Yes, there is,' Berkeley answered with commendable promptitude,
undismayed by Mr. Lancaster's excessive requirements. 'He knows
more about communists, socialists, and political exiles generally,
than anybody else in the whole of London.'
'Good,' the editor answered, brightening up, and speaking for
a moment a little less languidly. 'That's good. There's this man
Schurz, now, the German agitator. He's going to be tried soon for
a seditious libel it seems, and he'll be sent to prison, naturally.
Now, does your friend know anything at all of this fellow?'
'He knows him personally and intimately,' Berkeley replied,
delighted to find that the card which had proved so bad a one at
Pilbury Regis was turning up trumps in the more Bohemian neighbourhood
of the Temple and Fleet Street. 'He can give you any information
you want about Schurz or any of the rest of those people. He
has associated with them all familiarly for the last six or seven
years.'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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