The waste-paper basket to the left of the table had overflowed, and the floor around was strewn with cut newspapers and crumpled sheets of ma.n.u.script. On the walls hung two large maps, one showing the railways of England and the other the Midland counties. Above the fireplace a printer's calendar was nailed. Three soiled and battered haircloth chairs completed the furniture of the room when we have added a damaged arm-chair, cushioned with a pile of old papers. This was the editor's chair. Its intrinsic value was probably half-a-crown, but to the regular readers of the _Guardian_ it must have seemed as priceless as the gold stool of Ashanti, for they were accustomed to read two columns every week headed "From the Editor's Chair."

The short, thick-set person, with the slightly bald head and distinctly red nose above a heavy black moustache, which trailed its way down each side of a clean-shaven chin and drooped over into s.p.a.ce, was the editor himself. With a briar pipe, burnt at one side, stuck in his mouth, and puffing vigorously, he sat there in his shirt sleeves, and his pen flew swiftly over the sheets of paper that lay before him.

When Mr. Charles and his son entered, the editor laid down his pipe and pen, and rising from his chair, said in the most affable way:

"Ah, I am pleased to meet you, Mr. Charles; and this is your son Henry, of whose ability I have already heard."

Shaking hands with each, he pointed them to seats and resumed his own.

"So Henry is ambitious of embarking on a journalistic career," he remarked, as he lifted his pipe again; adding, "I hope you don't mind my smoking. I find a weed a great incentive to thought."

Mr. Springthorpe always spoke like a leading article, and it was noticed by those who knew him best that on the occasions when his nose was particularly ruddy and his utterance somewhat thick, his flow of language and the stateliness of his words were even more marked than when one could not detect the odour of the tap-room in his vicinity.

"Yes, 'Enry is anxious to get on a noospaper," Mr. Charles replied. "And Mr. Trevor Smith has written this letter about him for you to read."

The editor reached out and took the letter with a great show of interest, reading it carefully, as though it were a doc.u.ment of much importance, while Henry sat fumbling with his hat, conscious that he had again arrived at a critical moment in his career.

"This is very nattering indeed, Mr. Charles," said the editor at length, "and I attach great weight to the opinion of Mr. Trevor Smith, who is an able and promising member of my staff."

"Then you think that 'Enry might suit you?"

"I have little doubt that he would prove a worthy addition to the ranks of journalism, and if I had any urgent need of a new member on my reportorial staff, I should willingly offer him an engagement. But, as I think I explained to you in my letter, I have not at present any pressing need for literary a.s.sistance."

Henry's face clouded as he listened, but brightened the next instant, when Mr. Springthorpe continued:

"It would, however, be a pity not to hold out the hand of encouragement to so bright a young man as your son, and I should be delighted to have the privilege of initiating him into the mysteries of newspaper work if you are prepared to pay a premium, and to let him serve the first six months without salary."

"There need be no difficulty about that," said Mr. Charles, "and I am prepared to pay you now a reasonable sum for any trouble you will take with him. How much would you expect?"

"Well, it all depends. I have had pupils who have paid as much as a hundred pounds." Edward John sighed, and Henry felt a tightening at the throat. "Fifty is what I usually expect." The visitors breathed more freely. "But I feel that in Henry we have a young man of peculiar apt.i.tude, who would soon make himself a useful colleague of my other a.s.sistants; and that being so, I should be content with half the amount."

"That's a bargain, then," said Mr. Charles, entirely relieved, as he took out his cheque-book and filled up a cheque in favour of Mr. Martin Springthorpe for twenty-five pounds. "Of course, I s'pose you give 'im a salary after the first six months," he added, when he handed the cheque to the editor.

"I shall be only too happy to adequately remunerate his services when the period of probation is terminated," Mr. Springthorpe a.s.sured him, placing the precious paper carefully in his pocket-book.

"And when would you like me to begin, sir?" asked Henry, who had scarcely opened his mouth since entering the room, the editor's shrewd eye for character, together with Mr. Trevor Smith's valuable testimonial, being all that Mr. Springthorpe had whereby to arrive at his flattering estimate of the young man's brightness and peculiar apt.i.tude for journalism.

"Let me see, now--this is the 18th of July. Suppose we say that you commence your duties here on Monday, the 25th. How would that suit you?"

"That would fit in nicely, 'Enry, my lad, wouldn't it?" said Mr.

Charles.

"Yes, sir," said the new reporter to the chief, who had been bought with a price. "I could start on that day, as there is nothing to keep me at Stratford."

"Do you know anything of shorthand?" the editor asked, as an afterthought.

"A little, sir; and I am studying it every night just now."

"That's right, my boy, wire in at your shorthand; a reporter is of little use without that accomplishment. To one of your ability it will be easy to acquire. I picked it up myself in a fortnight, and even now, although I seldom use it, I could still take my turn at a verbatim with the best of them."

The great business completed, Mr. Charles and his son set out to look for lodgings for Henry, being recommended to the mother of one of the other reporters, who let apartments.

On the way back to Stratford, after having settled this little matter, Edward John waxed as enthusiastic as his son in picturing the possibilities which he had thus opened up for Henry. "Tis money makes the mare to go, my lad," he said. "Five-and-twenty pounds is a goodish bit out o' my savings, but I've always said you'd 'ave your chance, no matter what it cost me."

"I hope that I'll be able to prove the money hasn't been wasted, dad."

"I'm sure o' that, 'Enry--if you only wire in at your work and show the editor the stuff that's in you. Just fancy what old Miffin and the others will say when they 'ear that 'Enry Chawles is a reporter on the _Guardian_!"

"I mean to study very hard, get up my shorthand, and to write as much as ever I can when I join the staff. But of course I shan't stay in Wheelton all my life. There's better papers than the _Guardian_, you know."

"That's the true spirit, lad; always look ahead. If I hadn't been looking ahead all these years, where would the twenty-five pounds ha'

come from, and the money that's to keep you for the next six months?"

"I'm sure I don't know what could have been done without it. I don't think opportunities are as plentiful as we are told."

Henry had learned a little since that day he rode to Stratford with the carrier.

"Didn't think much of the office, though. Did you, 'Enry?"

"No," he admitted somewhat unwillingly, "it wasn't so fine as I had expected; but perhaps it is as good as they need."

"And n.o.body needs anythink better than that," which summed up in a sentence Edward John's philosophy of life and the secret of his financial soundness.

The few days remaining to Henry in Stratford went past all too slowly, despite the jubilation of Mr. Trevor Smith at the success of his promising _protege_, and Henry's application to the study of shorthand, with which most of his time at the book-shop had been occupied of late.

Mr. Griggs and Pemble he left without a pang, the former still concerned about his poultry, and the latter still cultivating his moustache; but he was sorry to say good-bye to Mrs. Filbert and the irrepressible Trevor, who would have made the success of his proposal an excuse to borrow a fourth half-crown, were it not that the memory of the unpaid three had better not be reawakened when Henry was going away.

His journey to Wheelton found him with hopes scarcely so high as those he had cherished on his way to Stratford some three months before, but he was at least fortified with some measure of that common sense which only rises in the mind as the illusions of youth begin to sink.

It was not thought necessary for him to revisit Hampton Bagot before removing to Wheelton--his face was still turned away from home. Thus far he had been marking time merely; but now he was on the march in earnest.

CHAPTER VII

AMONG NEW FRIENDS

SAt.u.r.dAY, the 23rd of July, will always remain a red-letter day in the history of Henry Charles. Even at this distance of time he could doubtless recall every feature of the day as the train that carried him steamed into the station. The languorous atmosphere of a hot summer afternoon, the steady drizzle of warm rain, the flood of water around a gutter-grating in Main Street, caused by a collection of straw and rotten leaves--even that will always appear when a vision of the day arises before his memory. The station platform had been freshly strewn with sawdust on account of the weather, and the pungent smell of that is not forgotten. Thus it is that the commonest features of our surroundings, noted under exceptional circ.u.mstances, are automatically registered for ever by our senses.

Edgar Winton, the reporter at whose home Henry was to lodge, had undertaken to meet his new colleague at the station, and pilot him to the house. But by some mischance he was not there, and the young adventurer stood for a moment lonely and disappointed, while the train in which he had travelled continued on its journey.

His belongings, however, were not embarra.s.sing, and for all his fragile looks Henry was still robust as any country lad. Nor did his sense of dignity come between him and the shouldering of his load up the steep and shabby main street of the town, and along sundry shabbier by-streets to the semi-genteel district of Woodland Road, where at No. 29 was the home of the Wintons.

Mrs. Winton seemed to be as amiable a landlady as good Mrs. Filbert, and more refined. Henry felt at once that so far as home-life was concerned his lines had fallen again in pleasant places. He had now risen to the dignity of a separate room, small indeed, and almost crowded with the single iron bedstead, the tiny dressing-table and chair, which, together with a few faded chromographs on the walls, made up its entire furnishing. It was on the second storey of the house, which had only two flats, and looked across a kitchen-garden to the back of a row of still smaller houses. By way of wardrobe accommodation, the back of the door was generously studded with hooks for hanging clothes. For the privilege of sleeping here Edward John had agreed to pay on behalf of his son the weekly sum of four shillings, and Mrs. Winton was to cook such food as Henry required, charging only the market prices.

As it was late afternoon when Henry had reached his lodging, and Edgar was expected home for tea at five o'clock, Mrs. Winton's new guest, after a somewhat perfunctory toilet, descended to the parlour to await the coming of his fellow-worker. A copy of the _Guardian_ for that week lay on the easy chair in which the landlady asked Henry to rest himself, and he was presently reading with close attention the weighty observations of his future chief, who spoke "From the Editor's Chair"

like any pope _ex cathedra_.