Part 29 (1/2)
”I think she could,” answered Joan, ”if she would pull herself together.
It's her lack of will-power that's the trouble.”
Madge did not reply immediately. She was watching the rooks settling down for the night in the elm trees just beyond the window. There seemed to be much need of coming and going, of much cawing.
”I met her pretty often during those months that Helen Lavery was running her round,” she said at length. ”It always seemed to me to have a touch of the heroic, that absurd effort she was making to 'qualify' herself, so that she might be of use to him. I can see her doing something quite big, if she thought it would help him.”
The cawing of the rooks grew fainter. One by one they folded their wings.
Neither spoke for a while. Later on, they talked about the coming election. If the Party got back, Phillips would go to the Board of Trade. It would afford him a better platform for the introduction of his land scheme.
”What do you gather is the general opinion?” Joan asked. ”That he will succeed?”
”The general opinion seems to be that his star is in the ascendant,”
Madge answered with a smile; ”that all things are working together for his good. It's rather a useful atmosphere to have about one, that. It breeds friends.h.i.+p and support!”
Joan looked at her watch. She had an article to finish. Madge stood on tiptoe and kissed her.
”Don't think me unsympathetic,” she said. ”No one will rejoice more than I shall if G.o.d sees fit to call you to good work. But I can't help letting fall my little tear of fellows.h.i.+p with the weeping.”
”And mind your p's and q's,” she added. ”You're in a difficult position.
And not all the eyes watching you are friendly.”
Joan bore the germ of worry in her breast as she crossed the Gray's Inn Garden. It was a hard law, that of the world: knowing only winners and losers. Of course, the woman was to be pitied. No one could feel more sorry for her than Joan herself. But what had Madge exactly meant by those words: that she could ”see her doing something really big,” if she thought it would help him? There was no doubt about her affection for him. It was almost dog-like. And the child, also! There must be something quite exceptional about him to have won the devotion of two such opposite beings. Especially Hilda. It would be hard to imagine any lengths to which Hilda's blind idolatry would not lead her.
She ran down twice to Folkestone during the following week. Her visits made her mind easier. Mrs. Phillips seemed so placid, so contented.
There was no suggestion of suffering, either mental or physical.
She dined with the Greysons the Sunday after, and mooted the question of the coming fight with Carleton. Greyson thought Phillips would find plenty of journalistic backing. The concentration of the Press into the hands of a few conscienceless schemers was threatening to reduce the journalist to a mere hireling, and the better-cla.s.s men were becoming seriously alarmed. He found in his desk the report of a speech made by a well-known leader writer at a recent dinner of the Press Club. The man had risen to respond to the toast of his own health and had taken the opportunity to unpack his heart.
”I am paid a thousand a year,” so Greyson read to them, ”for keeping my own opinions out of my paper. Some of you, perhaps, earn more, and others less; but you're getting it for writing what you're told. If I were to be so foolish as to express my honest opinion, I'd be on the street, the next morning, looking for another job.”
”The business of the journalist,” the man had continued, ”is to destroy the truth, to lie, to pervert, to vilify, to fawn at the feet of Mammon, to sell his soul for his daily bread. We are the tools and va.s.sals of rich men behind the scenes. We are the jumping-jacks. They pull the strings and we dance. Our talents, our possibilities, our lives are the property of other men.”
”We tried to pretend it was only one of Jack's little jokes,” explained Greyson as he folded up the cutting; ”but it wouldn't work. It was too near the truth.”
”I don't see what you are going to do,” commented Mary. ”So long as men are not afraid to sell their souls, there will always be a Devil's market for them.”
Greyson did not so much mind there being a Devil's market, provided he could be a.s.sured of an honest market alongside, so that a man could take his choice. What he feared was the Devil's steady encroachment, that could only end by the closing of the independent market altogether. His remedy was the introduction of the American trust law, forbidding any one man being interested in more than a limited number of journals.
”But what's the difference,” demanded Joan, ”between a man owning one paper with a circulation of, say, six millions; or owning six with a circulation of a million apiece? By concentrating all his energies on one, a man with Carleton's organizing genius might easily establish a single journal that would cover the whole field.”
”Just all the difference,” answered Greyson, ”between Pooh Bah as Chancellor of the Exchequer, or Lord High Admiral, or Chief Executioner, whichever he preferred to be, and Pooh Bah as all the Officers of State rolled into one. Pooh Bah may be a very able statesman, ent.i.tled to exert his legitimate influence. But, after all, his opinion is only the opinion of one old gentleman, with possible prejudices and preconceived convictions. The Mikado--or the people, according to locality--would like to hear the views of others of his ministers. He finds that the Lord Chancellor and the Lord Chief Justice and the Groom of the Bedchamber and the Attorney-General--the whole entire Cabinet, in short, are unanimously of the same opinion as Pooh Bah. He doesn't know it's only Pooh Bah speaking from different corners of the stage. The consensus of opinion convinces him. One statesman, however eminent, might err in judgment. But half a score of statesmen, all of one mind!
One must accept their verdict.”
Mary smiled. ”But why shouldn't the good newspaper proprietor hurry up and become a multi-proprietor?” she suggested. ”Why don't you persuade Lord Sutcliffe to buy up three or four papers, before they're all gone?”
”Because I don't want the Devil to get hold of him,” answered Greyson.
”You've got to face this unalterable law,” he continued. ”That power derived from worldly sources can only be employed for worldly purposes.