When a Man's Single: A Tale of Literary Life

'Look here, Mister,' he said, flinging the copy upon the sub-editor's desk, 'I don't want that.'

The sub-editor was twisted into as little space as possible, tearing telegrams open and flinging the envelopes aside, much as a housewife shells peas. His name was Protheroe, and the busier he was the more he twisted himself. On Budget nights he was a knot. He did voluntarily so much extra work that Mr. Licquorish often thought he gave him too high wages; and on slack nights he smiled to himself, which showed that something pleased him. It was rather curious that this something should have been himself.

'But – but,' cried Protheroe, all in a flutter, 'it's town council meeting; it – it must be set, Mr. Penny.'

'Very well, Mister; then that special from Birmingham must be slaughtered.'

'No, no, Mr. Penny; why, that's a speech by Bright.'

Penny sneered at the sub-editor, and flung up his arms to imply that he washed his hands of the whole thing, as he had done every night for the last ten years, when there was pressure on his space. Protheroe had been there for half of that time, yet he still trembled before the autocrat of the office.

'There's enough copy on the board,' said Penny, 'to fill the paper. Any more specials coming in?'

He asked this fiercely, as if of opinion that the sub-editor arranged with leading statesmen nightly to flood the composing-room of the Mirror with speeches, and Protheroe replied abjectly, as if he had been caught doing it – 'Lord John Manners is speaking to-night at Nottingham.'

The foreman dashed his hand upon the desk.

'Go it, Mister, go it,' he cried; 'anything else? Tell me Gladstone's dead next.'

Sometimes about two o'clock in the morning Penny would get sociable, and the sub-editor was always glad to respond. On those occasions they talked with bated breath of the amount of copy that would come in should anything happen to Mr. Gladstone; and the sub-editor, if he was in a despondent mood, predicted that it would occur at midnight. Thinking of this had made him a Conservative.

'Nothing so bad as that,' he said, dwelling on the subject, to show the foreman that they might be worse off; 'but there's a column of local coming in, and a concert in the People's Hall, and – '

'And you expect me to set all that?' the foreman broke in. 'Why, the half of that local should have been set by seven o'clock, and here I've only got the beginning of the town council yet. It's ridiculous.'

Protheroe looked timidly towards the only reporter present, and then apologetically towards Penny for having looked at the reporter.

'The stuff must be behind,' growled Tomlinson, nicknamed Umbrage, 'as long as we're a man short.'

Umbrage was very short and stout, with a big moon face, and always wore his coat unbuttoned. In the streets, if he was walking fast and there was a breeze, his coat-tails seemed to be running after him. He squinted a little, from a habit he had of looking sideways at public meetings to see if the audience was gazing at him. He was 'Juvenal' in the Mirror on Friday mornings, and headed his column of local gossip which had that signature, 'Now step I forth to whip hypocrisy.'

'I wonder,' said the sub-editor, with an insinuating glance at the foreman, 'if the new man is expected to-night.'

Mr. Licquorish had told him that this was so an hour before, but the cunning bred of fear advised him to give Penny the opportunity of divulging the news.

That worthy smiled to himself, as any man has a right to do who has been told something in confidence by his employer.

'He's a Yorkshireman, I believe,' continued the crafty Protheroe.

'That's all you know,' said the foreman, first glancing back to see if Mr. Licquorish's door was shut. 'Mr. George Frederick has told me all about him; he's a Scotsman called Angus, that's never been out of his native county.'

'He's one of those compositors taken to literature, is he?' asked Umbrage, who by literature meant reporting, pausing in the middle of a sentence he was transcribing from his note-book. 'Just as I expected,' he added contemptuously.

'No,' said the foreman, thawing in the rays of such ignorance; 'Mr. George Frederick says he's never been on a newspaper before.'

'An outsider!' cried Umbrage, in the voice with which outsiders themselves would speak of reptiles. 'They are the ruin of the profession, they are.'

'He'll make you all sit up, Mister,' said Penny, with a chuckle. 'Mr. George Frederick has had his eye on him for a twelvemonth.'

'I don't suppose you know how Mr. George Frederick fell in with him?' said the sub-editor, basking in Penny's geniality.

'Mr. George Frederick told me everythink about him – everythink,' said the foreman proudly. 'It was a parson that recommended him.'

'A parson!' ejaculated Umbrage, in such a tone that if you had not caught the word you might have thought he was saying 'An outsider!' again.

'Yes, a parson whose sermon this Angus took down in shorthand, I fancy.'

'What was he doing taking down a sermon?'

'I suppose he was there to hear it.'

'And this is the kind of man who is taking to literature nowadays!' Umbrage cried.

'Oh, Mr. George Frederick has heard a great deal about him,' continued Penny maliciously, 'and expects him to do wonders. He's a self-made man.'

'Oh,' said Umbrage, who could find nothing to object to in that, having risen from comparative obscurity himself.

'Mr. George Frederick,' Penny went on, 'offered him a berth here before Billy Tagg was engaged, but he couldn't come.'

'I suppose,' said Juvenal, with the sarcasm that made him terrible on Fridays, 'the Times offered him something better, or was it the Spectator that wanted an editor?'

'No, it was family matters. His mother or his sister, or – let me see, it was his sister's child – was dependent on him, and could not be left. Something happened to her, though. She's dead, I think, so he's a free man now.'

'Yes, it was his sister's child, and she was found dead,' said the sub-editor, 'on a mountain-side, curiously enough, with George Frederick's letter in her hand offering Angus the appointment.'

Protheroe was foolish to admit that he knew this, for it was news to the foreman, but it tries a man severely to have to listen to news that he could tell better himself. One immediate result of the sub-editor's rashness was that Rob Angus sank several stages in Penny's estimation.

'I dare say he'll turn out a muff,' he said, and flung out of the room, with another intimation that the copy must be cut down.

The evening wore on. Protheroe had half a dozen things to do at once, and did them.

Telegraph boys were dropping the beginning of Lord John Manners's speech through a grating on to the sub-editorial desk long before he had reached the end of it at Nottingham.

The sub-editor had to revise this as it arrived in flimsy, and write a summary of it at the same time. His summary was set before all the speech had reached the office, which may seem strange. But when Penny cried aloud for summary, so that he might get that column off his hands, Protheroe made guesses at many things, and, risking, 'the right hon. gentleman concluded his speech, which was attentively listened to, with some further references to current topics,' flung Lord John to the boy, who rushed with him to Penny, from whose hand he was snatched by a compositor. Fifteen minutes afterwards Lord John concluded his speech at Nottingham.

About half-past nine Protheroe seized his hat and rushed home for supper. In the passage he nearly knocked himself over by running against the young man in the heavy top-coat. Umbrage went out to see if he could gather any information about a prize-fight. John Milton came in with a notice of a concert, which he stuck conspicuously on the chief reporter's file. When the chief reporter came in, he glanced through it and made a few alterations, changing 'Mr. Joseph Grimes sang out of tune,' for instance, to 'Mr. Grimes, the favourite vocalist, was in excellent voice.' The concert was not quite over yet, either; they seldom waited for the end of anything on the Mirror.

When Umbrage returned, Billy Kirker, the chief reporter, was denouncing John Milton for not being able to tell him how to spell 'deceive.'

'What is the use of you?' he asked indignantly, 'if you can't do a simple thing like that?'

'Say "cheat,"' suggested Umbrage.

So Kirker wrote 'cheat.' Though he was the chief of the Mirror's reporting department, he had only Umbrage and John Milton at present under him.

As Kirker sat in the reporters' room looking over his diary, with a cigarette in his mouth, he was an advertisement for the Mirror, and if he paid for his velvet coat out of his salary, the paper was in a healthy financial condition. He was tall, twenty-two years of age, and extremely slight. His manner was languid, though his language was sometimes forcible, but those who knew him did not think him mild. This evening his fingers looked bare without the diamond ring that sometimes adorned them. This ring, it was noticed, generally disappeared about the middle of the month, and his scarf-pin followed it by the twenty-first. With the beginning of the month they reappeared together. The literary staff was paid monthly.

Mr. Licquorish looked in at the door of the reporters' room to ask pleasantly if they would not like a fire. Had Protheroe been there he would have said 'No'; but Billy Kirker said 'Yes.' Mr. Licquorish had thought that Protheroe was there.