CHAPTER IV

Annie had been upstairs three times that morning to see if Mr. Dean's shoes had been taken inside his room. But the door was still closed and the shoes on the mat outside. At last she gave away her secret hero.

"Mr. Dean's not up yet," she said reluctantly to Mrs. Perdie, as she came downstairs to the kitchen. "Shall I keep his breakfast 'ot?"

"What?--not down? Why it's half past ten! Have you cleared away yet?" cried Mrs. Perdie, emerging wet-handed from the scullery and a brisk encounter with saucepans. "We can't keep breakfast going into lunch time."

Annie halted, she did not expect an order that would deprive her favourite of his breakfast.

"You'd better take it up on a tray to his room," said Mrs. Perdie, relenting--"and I'll speak to him when he comes down." She disappeared again into the scullery where she thought long on the ways of young men and how cruelly the wicked city corrupted them. Lying in bed late had been the first sign of Mr. Perdie's breakdown. Once a man began to lie late, his backbone went, of that there was no question. She tolerated such a thing with de Courtrai and Wellington on the top floor. It was in keeping with their characters. Weedy young men in a fast profession might be expected to lie in bed in the morning, even at the cost of losing breakfast.

Strange to say, the one who suffered most, Annie, who carried up the breakfast, grumbled least. She tapped, gently at Mr. Dean's door, to absolve her conscience, but not to wake him, then she tiptoed in. He was fast asleep--though she could see very little of him, with his head buried in the pillow and the sheets hunched up round his shoulders. Cautiously she drew up the blind and flooded the room with light. Then she placed a small table at the side of the bed. Still he slept. For a few moments she stood in romantic contemplation of his tousled head, with its ravelled locks. How lovely he looked, with his boyish colour and his strong throat. His pyjama jacket, unbuttoned, gave a glimpse of a strong chest. Greatly daring, she leaned forward. Just once she would do it--she might never have the chance again--and oh, she had wanted to, so many times. Often she had longed he would just come and put his arms round her and kiss her fiercely--she wouldn't have minded if he had been cruel even. She stooped and very lightly kissed his hair, just where it fell in a mass to one side of his brow, and she felt her very heart would betray her. But he slept on, unconscious of all the love poured out over him. Softly Annie went out. She halted on the threshold with the tray in her hand, flushed and trembling with excitement.

"Lor--I'm daft!" she thought, and then walked loudly into the room and deposited the tray on the table with a bang.

"Here's breakfast, Mr. Dean. It's half past ten and missus says she can't keep it any longer!"

He was awake in an instant.

"Good heavens--I've overslept!"

"I should think y'ave, Mr. Dean--that's being up 'o nights at them dances."

John laughed.

"Captain Fisher's been asking for you, Mr. Dean, He's very excited at breakfast about something in the papers. He says you're a remarkable gentleman. He was so excited."

"But what about, Annie?" asked John stretching.

"I don't know that, sir, but he wants to see you--come in drunk last night 'e did, and was 'orribly rude to Miss Simpson, on the landing. Said he hated damn gramophones grinding hymn tunes over his head. He apologised this morning and now says he's been grossly insulted because Miss Simpson didn't say anything, but gave him a temperance tract. The missus had to speak to them both and the Captain gave notice."

"When does he go?" asked John, cracking his egg. The gossip of this caravanserai amused him.

"He never does go; he always gives notice when Mrs. Perdie says what she thinks," replied Annie. "'Ow could he go anywhere else when all know 'is little 'abbits? But I've got a lot to do. The tea orl right, Mr. Dean?" she said, moving to the door.

"Quite, Annie, thank you," he replied smiling at her. She closed the door on her hero with a resolute sniff.

Drinking his tea, with a head clearing, John became reflective. This would really not do. Half of the morning gone, and he was due at the office at twelve! Then his mind went back to the night before, and to Tilly. It had all been rather hectic. Now he thought of it, he had been a decided fool, sitting there until the early morn, just holding in his arms and kissing a girl whom he had not known six hours, and who called him "a dear kid." Why had he behaved like that? He was lonely perhaps--and he had amused himself, that was all. He didn't, couldn't love her, and certainly she had never for a moment thought of him in that way. Turning to pour out some more tea, his eyes fell on a framed photograph on his dressing table. Yes, he had been a bounder--he couldn't tell _her_, she wouldn't understand, for even he did not. And yet, if he met Tilly again--he dismissed the idea deliberately, but remembered in doing so that he _would_ meet her again. There was a dance at the Studio next Friday. No,--he must not go there again.

He slipped out of bed, and bath towel in hand, surveyed himself critically in the glass. Did he look a rake? Was dissipation stamping its marks upon him? But the vision in the mirror was that of youth, flawless in careless health and grace.

When he appeared in the hall downstairs, and Mrs. Perdie hurried forth to give a little motherly advice, he looked such a slim picture of radiant youth, his dark eyes shining, his face gleaming, with high spirits bubbling over, that she lost the opening words of her prepared overture, and worshipped for a moment, after which her chance was gone, for Captain Fisher emerged from the drawing-room, newspaper in hand. He flourished it in John's face.

"Egad, sir, it's great--I've not laughed so much for years--you've got the real touch--I always thought those Bohemians were mad."

He touched his forehead with the rolled-up copy of the _Daily Post_.

"May I look a moment?" asked John, a little bewildered. He opened the paper on the third page and saw his name in black type. The editor had put it to the description of the Artists Union meeting. John suppressed a shout of triumph. There was his name true enough, "John Dean," with three quarters of a column of close print following! Of course, the House of Commons was not sitting, so space was plentiful; still there was his name, for all the world to see!

The omnibus that carried him on its top that gay spring morning as it wound its way past the Victoria Station down Victoria Street, under the grey front of Westminster Abbey façade, on up lordly Whitehall, might have been the steeds of Apollo the sun-god, so radiantly rode youth through the world, all civilisation singing about him, organised for his delight. He remembered hearing an odd remark of Merritt's one night.

"The first time you hit a bull's eye with the Chief, he gives you credit for it--there's your name on the target--but you've to be a marksman for that to happen." And it had happened. For the first time he experienced confidence, he was now conscious of approval. Before, it had been like dropping his articles down a drain. They disappeared for ever.

Merritt said nothing to him at the office, but in the afternoon, as he sat writing a letter in the reporters' room, the door of Merritt's little office opened. There was a sound of laughter within, and John caught sight of Phipps, who had just returned from a conference at Vienna, on which he had been writing with customary brilliance. John had never spoken to their leading man, who was as dizzily remote from his humble inquest-police-court haunting orbit, as the Pleiades from the sun.

"Dean," called Merritt, putting his head round the doorway. John went in. "I want to introduce you to Burton Phipps," he said. Phipps rose and held out his hand to him. John could not see him clearly in the sensation of the moment. Why was he so ridiculously sensitive that his eyes watered, whenever something really wonderful happened? He gulped and heard Phipps praising and laughing about his article.

"Are you doing anything?" asked Phipps.

"No, sir."

"Come out and have tea with me then. Good-bye, Merritt."

"Good-bye--Phipps."

John followed as in a dream.

Outside they crossed the square, plunging into the five o'clock traffic vortex below Ludgate Circus, walked a short way and then turned into a narrow entry. Through a couple of swing doors they found a hall, whose walls were plastered with notices, and then a lounge with small tables. A few men nodded to Phipps, the diminutive waiter smiled as on an old friend when taking the order for tea.

Now for the first time John was able to look critically at his new friend. It was a face and head of arresting dignity, beauty almost. Of small build, he was a slim, compact man of about thirty-five with a boyish expression. He was pale, his eyes a steely grey, very intense, with points of light in the pupils, glowing and alive in contrast to the general pallor of the brow. His hair was short and slightly wavy, the nose arched and Roman. It was a chiselled face, that of a man of thought, into whose lines had passed the experience of emotion, suffering perhaps. It was, in a curious way, a face, ascetic and carven, that suggested sorrow, sprung from contemplation rather than life's trials. And the voice was in accordance with this impression, for it was deep, with notes of rich melancholy, the voice of a great preacher. To John, he seemed much as he would have expected to find one of the knights of the Round Table, a strong, handsome personality--yet human, and sensitive to the beauty of life as well as its ugliness. There was a quick nervousness in the shape and movement of the hands, the right fingers being stained with nicotine, for he was an incessant smoker of cigarettes. In his talk he had a sense of humour which seemed to belie the seriousness of his expression, but that may have been due to his subject, for John had got him to talk of his famous adventure at a Grand Duke's wedding when he had figured as a foreign statesman and given Fleet Street an "inside" story that kept it talking for twenty-four hours--a long time for Fleet Street to discuss any subject.

Then he told John something of his experiences as a war correspondent in the Balkan War.

"A bloody, horrible business. I can hardly forgive the folly of men, Dean. There are people here talking about our next war--with Germany. What insanity--and what wickedness! If only they had seen and not read about war. I don't think there's any war worth fighting."

"Not for honour?"

"Were they ever fought for that?" Phipps looked at him piercingly.

"I suppose not," assented John.

"And in future, there'll be no war worth winning," he said in his deep voice. "The price of the effort will out-value the prize. Well, if another war comes along, thank heaven I shall be too old for sending telegrams to the British Public about its picturesque bloodiness."

When they had parted John felt he had made a new friend. That was the marvel of London. You met the men who did things; you were at the hub of creation, their names and faces were familiar with the day. Steer, Ribble, Phipps--what would some men have given for his good fortune?

When he arrived back at the office, word came that the Chief wanted to see him. He went through to the Secretary's room.

"Oh--Mr. Walsh's just going--I'll ask if he'll see you."

He came back a moment later and ushered John in.

Walsh sat at his littered desk.

"Sit down, Dean. Do you know French?"

"A little, sir."

"Do you speak it?--can you be understood and understand?"

"I--I hope so sir."

Walsh smiled.

"And how much Danish?"

John looked surprised. "Danish, sir?"

The editor laughed and then got up, putting his hand on the youth's shoulder.

"Don't let that worry you--England was proud of possessing a Viking's daughter as queen, but few of us know a word of her language. On Friday, I want you to go to Copenhagen to an international telegraph conference. It will last a fortnight. Merritt will tell you what we want, and our man in Copenhagen will look after you. You will go to Harwich and cross to Esbjerg. The cashier will give you the necessary money. I hope you'll enjoy the trip. Good-bye."

He touched a bell, his secretary came in, John went out. Dizzily he walked back to his room. Travel! And he was a special correspondent! He could envision the italicised words, the magic words he had seen under Phipps' name. "_Our Special Correspondent._" To Merritt he stammered out the news, but the unimpressionable Merritt seemed to know all about it.

"Keep your mouth shut until you go--or others will be green with envy. They can't help it, poor fellows. Half of them are plodders, and you don't work for all you do--it's just in you, that's all. That's half the tragedy of life--to the plodders. You needn't come in to-morrow. I'll look up the boats and trains."

Outside, in the street, John stood for a moment, while the world went by him. A queer fellow Merritt. How he had humbled that triumph--"half the tragedy of life--to the plodders." Somehow it made his exultation seem childish and mean. They were such good fellows too, full of kindness, and a spirit of give and take, and he, the newest among them, the cub, was racing ahead. It must be bitter. They filed before him--merry little Bewley, daring and audacious, Lawton, the dreamer and writer of rejected verse, Russell, the ponderous, saving hard for a home and sentimental about children, Johnson, who longed to retire on a farm--name after name, each coupled with hopes and ambitions.

And now his chance had come. He must tell some one. He went back into the clerk's office and rang up Mrs. Graham. Yes, she was in and would be delighted if he would dine with her. At the Temple Station he booked for Sloane Square, his nearest point to her flat in Cheyne Walk.