A Man of Means Page 5

  It was as if a bomb had suddenly exploded in the room. A dreadful silence fell upon his hearers. For the moment no one spoke. R. P. de Parys woke with a start out of a beautiful dream of prawn curry and Bromham Rhodes forgot that he had not tasted food for nearly two hours. Miss Verepoint was the first to break the silence.

  “Do you mean to say,” she gasped, “that you didn’t insure the place?”

  Roland shook his head. The particular form in which Miss Verepoint had put the question entitled him, he felt, to make this answer.

  “Why didn’t you?” Miss Verepoint’s tone was almost menacing.

  “Because it did not appear to me to be necessary.”

  Nor was it necessary, said Roland to his conscience. Mr. Montague had done all the insuring that was necessary—and a bit over.

  Miss Verepoint fought with her growing indignation, and lost. “What about the salaries of the people who have been rehearsing all this time?” she demanded.

  “I’m sorry that they should be out of an engagement, but it is scarcely my fault. However, I propose to give each of them a month’s salary. I can manage that, I think.”

  Miss Verepoint rose. “And what about me? What about me, that’s what I want to know. Where do I get off? If you think I’m going to marry you without your getting a theater and putting up this revue you’re jolly well mistaken.”

  Roland made a gesture which was intended to convey regret and resignation. He even contrived to sigh.

  “Very well, then,” said Miss Verepoint, rightly interpreting this behavior as his final pronouncement on the situation. “Then everything’s jolly well off.”

  She swept out of the room, the two authors following in her wake like porpoises behind a liner. Roland went to his bureau, unlocked it and took out a bundle of documents. He let his fingers stray lovingly among the fire insurance policies which energetic Mr. Montague had been at such pains to secure from so many companies.

  “And so,” he said softly to himself, “am I.”

  THE EPISODE OF THE LIVE WEEKLY

  Fourth of a Series of Six Stories [First published in Pictorial Review, August 1916]

  It was with a start that Roland Bleke realized that the girl at the other end of the bench was crying. For the last few minutes, as far as his preoccupation allowed him to notice them at all, he had been attributing the subdued sniffs to a summer cold, having just recovered from one himself.

  He was embarrassed. He blamed the fate that had led him to this particular bench, but he wished to give himself up to quiet deliberation on the question of what on earth he was to do with two hundred and fifty thousand pounds, to which figure his fortune had now risen.

  The sniffs continued. Roland’s discomfort increased. Chivalry had always been his weakness. In the old days, on a hundred and forty pounds a year, he had had few opportunities of indulging himself in this direction; but now it seemed to him sometimes that the whole world was crying out for assistance.

  Should he speak to her? He wanted to; but only a few days ago his eyes had been caught by the placard of a weekly paper bearing the title of ‘Squibs,’ on which in large letters was the legend “Men Who Speak to Girls,” and he had gathered that the accompanying article was a denunciation rather than a eulogy of these individuals. On the other hand, she was obviously in distress.

  Another sniff decided him.

  “I say, you know,” he said.

  The girl looked at him. She was small, and at the present moment had that air of the floweret surprized while shrinking, which adds a good thirty-three per cent. to a girl’s attractions. Her nose, he noted, was delicately tip-tilted. A certain pallor added to her beauty. Roland’s heart executed the opening steps of a buck-and-wing dance.

  “Pardon me,” he went on, “but you appear to be in trouble. Is there anything I can do for you?”

  She looked at him again—a keen look which seemed to get into Roland’s soul and walk about it with a searchlight. Then, as if satisfied by the inspection, she spoke.

  “No, I don’t think there is,” she said. “Unless you happen to be the proprietor of a weekly paper with a Woman’s Page, and need an editress for it.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Well, that’s all any one could do for me—give me back my work or give me something else of the same sort.”

  “Oh, have you lost your job?”

  “I have. So would you mind going away, because I want to go on crying, and I do it better alone. You won’t mind my turning you out, I hope, but I was here first, and there are heaps of other benches.”

  “No, but wait a minute. I want to hear about this. I might be able—what I mean is—think of something. Tell me all about it.”

  There is no doubt that the possession of two hundred and fifty thousand pounds tones down a diffident man’s diffidence. Roland began to feel almost masterful.

  “Why should I?”

  “Why shouldn’t you?”

  “There’s something in that,” said the girl reflectively. “After all, you might know somebody. Well, as you want to know, I have just been discharged from a paper called ‘Squibs.’ I used to edit the Woman’s Page.”

  “By Jove, did you write that article on ‘Men Who Speak–-‘?”

  The hard manner in which she had wrapped herself as in a garment vanished instantly. Her eyes softened. She even blushed. Just a becoming pink, you know!

  “You don’t mean to say you read it? I didn’t think that any one ever really read ‘Squibs.’”

  “Read it!” cried Roland, recklessly abandoning truth. “I should jolly well think so. I know it by heart. Do you mean to say that, after an article like that, they actually sacked you? Threw you out as a failure?”

  “Oh, they didn’t send me away for incompetence. It was simply because they couldn’t afford to keep me on. Mr. Petheram was very nice about it.”

  “Who’s Mr. Petheram?”

  “Mr. Petheram’s everything. He calls himself the editor, but he’s really everything except office-boy, and I expect he’ll be that next week. When I started with the paper, there was quite a large staff. But it got whittled down by degrees till there was only Mr. Petheram and myself. It was like the crew of the ‘Nancy Bell.’ They got eaten one by one, till I was the only one left. And now I’ve gone. Mr. Petheram is doing the whole paper now.”

  “How is it that he can’t get anything better to do?” Roland said.

  “He has done lots of better things. He used to be at Carmelite House, but they thought he was too old.”

  Roland felt relieved. He conjured up a picture of a white-haired elder with a fatherly manner.

  “Oh, he’s old, is he?”

  “Twenty-four.”

  There was a brief silence. Something in the girl’s expression stung Roland. She wore a rapt look, as if she were dreaming of the absent Petheram, confound him. He would show her that Petheram was not the only man worth looking rapt about.

  He rose.

  “Would you mind giving me your address?” he said.

  “Why?”

  “In order,” said Roland carefully, “that I may offer you your former employment on ‘Squibs.’ I am going to buy it.”

  After all, your man of dash and enterprise, your Napoleon, does have his moments. Without looking at her, he perceived that he had bowled her over completely. Something told him that she was staring at him, open-mouthed. Meanwhile, a voice within him was muttering anxiously, “I wonder how much this is going to cost.”

  “You’re going to buy ‘Squibs!’”

  Her voice had fallen away to an awestruck whisper.

  “I am.”

  She gulped.

  “Well, I think you’re wonderful.”

  So did Roland.

  “Where will a letter find you?” he asked.

  My name is March. Bessie March. I’m living at twenty-seven Guildford Street.”

  “Twenty-seven. Thank you. Good morning. I will communicate with you in due course.�
�

  He raised his hat and walked away. He had only gone a few steps, when there was a patter of feet behind him. He turned.

  “I—I just wanted to thank you,” she said.

  “Not at all,” said Roland. “Not at all.”

  He went on his way, tingling with just triumph. Petheram? Who was Petheram? Who, in the name of goodness, was Petheram? He had put Petheram in his proper place, he rather fancied. Petheram, forsooth. Laughable.

  A copy of the current number of ‘Squibs,’ purchased at a book-stall, informed him, after a minute search to find the editorial page, that the offices of the paper were in Fetter Lane. It was evidence of his exalted state of mind that he proceeded thither in a cab.

  Fetter Lane is one of those streets in which rooms that have only just escaped being cupboards by a few feet achieve the dignity of offices. There might have been space to swing a cat in the editorial sanctum of ‘Squibs,’ but it would have been a near thing. As for the outer office, in which a vacant-faced lad of fifteen received Roland and instructed him to wait while he took his card in to Mr. Petheram, it was a mere box. Roland was afraid to expand his chest for fear of bruising it.

  The boy returned to say that Mr. Petheram would see him.

  Mr. Petheram was a young man with a mop of hair, and an air of almost painful restraint. He was in his shirt-sleeves, and the table before him was heaped high with papers. Opposite him, evidently in the act of taking his leave was a comfortable-looking man of middle age with a red face and a short beard. He left as Roland entered and Roland was surprized to see Mr. Petheram spring to his feet, shake his fist at the closing door, and kick the wall with a vehemence which brought down several inches of discolored plaster.

  “Take a seat,” he said, when he had finished this performance. “What can I do for you?”

  Roland had always imagined that editors in their private offices were less easily approached and, when approached, more brusk. The fact was that Mr. Petheram, whose optimism nothing could quench, had mistaken him for a prospective advertiser.

  “I want to buy the paper,” said Roland. He was aware that this was an abrupt way of approaching the subject, but, after all, he did want to buy the paper, so why not say so?

  Mr. Petheram fizzed in his chair. He glowed with excitement.

  “Do you mean to tell me there’s a single book-stall in London which has sold out? Great Scott, perhaps they’ve all sold out! How many did you try?”

  “I mean buy the whole paper. Become proprietor, you know.”

  Roland felt that he was blushing, and hated himself for it. He ought to be carrying this thing through with an air. Mr. Petheram looked at him blankly.

  “Why?” he asked.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” said Roland. He felt the interview was going all wrong. It lacked a stateliness which this kind of interview should have had.

  “Honestly?” said Mr. Petheram. “You aren’t pulling my leg?”

  Roland nodded. Mr. Petheram appeared to struggle with his conscience, and finally to be worsted by it, for his next remarks were limpidly honest.

  “Don’t you be an ass,” he said. “You don’t know what you’re letting yourself in for. Did you see that blighter who went out just now? Do you know who he is? That’s the fellow we’ve got to pay five pounds a week to for life.”

  “Why?”

  “We can’t get rid of him. When the paper started, the proprietors—not the present ones—thought it would give the thing a boom if they had a football competition with a first prize of a fiver a week for life. Well, that’s the man who won it. He’s been handed down as a legacy from proprietor to proprietor, till now we’ve got him. Ages ago they tried to get him to compromise for a lump sum down, but he wouldn’t. Said he would only spend it, and preferred to get it by the week. Well, by the time we’ve paid that vampire, there isn’t much left out of our profits. That’s why we are at the present moment a little understaffed.”

  A frown clouded Mr. Petheram’s brow. Roland wondered if he was thinking of Bessie March.

  “I know all about that,” he said.

  “And you still want to buy the thing?”

  “Yes.”

  “But what on earth for? Mind you, I ought not to be crabbing my own paper like this, but you seem a good chap, and I don’t want to see you landed. Why are you doing it?”

  “Oh, just for fun.”

  “Ah, now you’re talking. If you can afford expensive amusements, go ahead.”

  He put his feet on the table, and lit a short pipe. His gloomy views on the subject of ‘Squibs’ gave way to a wave of optimism.

  “You know,” he said, “there’s really a lot of life in the old rag yet. If it were properly run. What has hampered us has been lack of capital. We haven’t been able to advertise. I’m bursting with ideas for booming the paper, only naturally you can’t do it for nothing. As for editing, what I don’t know about editing—but perhaps you had got somebody else in your mind?”

  “No, no,” said Roland, who would not have known an editor from an office-boy. The thought of interviewing prospective editors appalled him.

  “Very well, then,” resumed Mr. Petheram, reassured, kicking over a heap of papers to give more room for his feet. “Take it that I continue as editor. We can discuss terms later. Under the present regime I have been doing all the work in exchange for a happy home. I suppose you won’t want to spoil the ship for a ha’porth of tar? In other words, you would sooner have a happy, well-fed editor running about the place than a broken-down wreck who might swoon from starvation?”

  “But one moment,” said Roland. “Are you sure that the present proprietors will want to sell?”

  “Want to sell,” cried Mr. Petheram enthusiastically. “Why, if they know you want to buy, you’ve as much chance of getting away from them without the paper as—as—well, I can’t think of anything that has such a poor chance of anything. If you aren’t quick on your feet, they’ll cry on your shoulder. Come along, and we’ll round them up now.”

  He struggled into his coat, and gave his hair an impatient brush with a note-book.

  “There’s just one other thing,” said Roland. “I have been a regular reader of ‘Squibs’ for some time, and I particularly admire the way in which the Woman’s Page–-“

  “You mean you want to reengage the editress? Rather. You couldn’t do better. I was going to suggest it myself. Now, come along quick before you change your mind or wake up.”

  Within a very few days of becoming sole proprietor of ‘Squibs,’ Roland began to feel much as a man might who, a novice at the art of steering cars, should find himself at the wheel of a runaway motor. Young Mr. Petheram had spoken nothing less than the truth when he had said that he was full of ideas for booming the paper. The infusion of capital into the business acted on him like a powerful stimulant. He exuded ideas at every pore.

  Roland’s first notion had been to engage a staff of contributors. He was under the impression that contributors were the life-blood of a weekly journal. Mr. Petheram corrected this view. He consented to the purchase of a lurid serial story, but that was the last concession he made. Nobody could accuse Mr. Petheram of lack of energy. He was willing, even anxious, to write the whole paper himself, with the exception of the Woman’s Page, now brightly conducted once more by Miss March. What he wanted Roland to concentrate himself upon was the supplying of capital for ingenious advertising schemes.

  “How would it be,” he asked one morning—he always began his remarks with, “How would it be?”—”if we paid a man to walk down Piccadilly in white skin-tights with the word ‘Squibs’ painted in red letters across his chest?”

  Roland thought it would certainly not be.

  “Good sound advertising stunt,” urged Mr. Petheram. “You don’t like it? All right. You’re the boss. Well, how would it be to have a squad of men dressed as Zulus with white shields bearing the legend ‘Squibs?’ See what I mean? Have them sprinting along the Strand shouting, ‘Wah! Wah! Wah
! Buy it! Buy it!’ It would make people talk.”

  Roland emerged from these interviews with his skin crawling with modest apprehension. His was a retiring nature, and the thought of Zulus sprinting down the Strand shouting “Wah! Wah! Wah! Buy it! Buy it!” with reference to his personal property appalled him.

  He was beginning now heartily to regret having bought the paper, as he generally regretted every definite step which he took. The glow of romance which had sustained him during the preliminary negotiations had faded entirely. A girl has to be possessed of unusual charm to continue to captivate B, when she makes it plain daily that her heart is the exclusive property of A; and Roland had long since ceased to cherish any delusion that Bessie March was ever likely to feel anything but a mild liking for him. Young Mr. Petheram had obviously staked out an indisputable claim. Her attitude toward him was that of an affectionate devotee toward a high priest. One morning, entering the office unexpectedly, Roland found her kissing the top of Mr. Petheram’s head; and from that moment his interest in the fortunes of ‘Squibs’ sank to zero. It amazed him that he could ever have been idiot enough to have allowed himself to be entangled in this insane venture for the sake of an insignificant-looking bit of a girl with a snub-nose and a poor complexion.

  What particularly galled him was the fact that he was throwing away good cash for nothing. It was true that his capital was more than equal to the, on the whole, modest demands of the paper, but that did not alter the fact that he was wasting money. Mr. Petheram always talked buoyantly about turning the corner, but the corner always seemed just as far off.

  The old idea of flight, to which he invariably had recourse in any crisis, came upon Roland with irresistible force. He packed a bag, and went to Paris. There, in the discomforts of life in a foreign country, he contrived for a month to forget his white elephant.

  He returned by the evening train which deposits the traveler in London in time for dinner.

  Strangely enough, nothing was farther from Roland’s mind than his bright weekly paper, as he sat down to dine in a crowded grill-room near Piccadilly Circus. Four weeks of acute torment in a city where nobody seemed to understand the simplest English sentence had driven ‘Squibs’ completely from his mind for the time being.