Faraday reflected with his chin resting on his hand.
“Why have you asked me?” he demanded suddenly—with the accent strongly on the “me.”
“I know so few people,” William explained humbly. “I mean, of course, people who could give me any ideas. … I thought you wouldn’t mind—at least I hoped you wouldn’t. … I know it’s unusual—but if you could help me in any way? … With suggestions, you know.”
Again Faraday reflected with his chin resting on his hand.
“I could put you,” he said at last, “in touch with people who might help you. I should be very pleased to do so. … Of course, I should like to know more of you first—what your views are—”
“Of course,” William agreed vaguely, puzzled partly by the words and partly by the enigmatic manner.
“If you’ve nothing else to do,” Faraday continued, “perhaps you’ll come round to my rooms tonight for a talk? Say at half-past eight. We could discuss things more comfortably there.”
William, still puzzled by the hint of mystery in his manner, murmured that he also should be very pleased, and Faraday gave him the address—returning forthwith to his ledger in sign that he considered the incident closed for the present. He had a distinctly authoritative way with him, and William, who would gladly have continued the subject, had perforce to be content with wondering what the night’s discussion and exchange of “views” would bring forth; an evening spent away from home was so rare an event in his life that the prospect of his visit to Faraday’s rooms afforded him food for an afternoon’s busy speculation. His own domicile being in the region of Camberwell, he did not return to it after office hours but whiled away the time by dinner at an Oxford Street Lyons—secretly glorying in the length of his bill and contrasting his power of spending what he liked with the old days of doled-out allowance. He rang down a sovereign at the pay-desk, gathered up his change and strolled out of the building with an air—and at half-past eight precisely found himself outside Faraday’s lodgings in a mournful side-street in Bloomsbury. A shabby maidservant ushered him upstairs to a shabby, paper-strewn room where Faraday, pipe in mouth, rose to greet him.
They were not long in finding out that the invitation had been given and accepted under a misapprehension on both sides. Faraday, as soon as he had settled his guest in a chair, came straight to the point with “Now tell me—how long have you been interested in social questions?”
“In social questions?” William repeated blankly. “I’m afraid I don’t—What sort of questions do you mean?”
It was Faraday’s turn to be taken aback, and, though he did not say it, his eyes looked. “Then what the devil—?” William’s fell before them nervously, and he shifted in his chair like a child detected in a blunder.
“I’m afraid I don’t—” he said again—and halted.
“Then you didn’t know,” his companion queried, “that I am ‘Vindex’ of The Torch?”
“I’m afraid not,” muttered William, who had heard neither of one nor the other.
“Vindex” of The Torch sighed inwardly. He was young, ambitious, fiercely in earnest and ever on the lookout for his Chance; and, the wish being father to the thought, he had momentarily mistaken William for an embodiment of his Chance and dreamed dreams since the morning—dreams of a comrade like-minded and willing to be led, whose newly-inherited riches might be used to endow a periodical that should preach a purer and more violent rebellion even than The Torch itself. With the aid of William’s three pounds a week—magnified many times over in the eyes of his eager mind—he had seen himself casting the hated insurance behind him and devoting himself heart and pen to the regeneration of the State and Race by means of the Class War. And lo!—as a couple more searching questions revealed to him—in place of a patron and comrade was a nervous little nincompoop, bewildered at finding himself for the first time out of leading-strings, to whom a hundred and fifty a year was wealth untold and who had never so much as heard of the Class War! For a moment he was more than half inclined to be angry with the nervous little nincompoop whose blundering, egoistic attempt at confidence had induced him to believe that the secret of his identity had been penetrated by an ardent sympathizer. (It was an open secret in “advanced” circles, though carefully guarded in the office.) Then, more justly, he softened, recognizing that the blunder was his own, the mistake of his own making—and, pitying William’s dropped jaw and open confusion, poured him out a whisky and endeavoured to set him at his ease.
That evening in the company of Faraday and his first whisky was the turning-point in the career of William Tully. Any man stronger than himself could at that juncture in his life have turned him to right or left; a push in the wrong direction would have made of him an idler and a wastrel, and fate was in a kindly mood when she placed him mentally and morally in charge of “Vindex” of The Torch. She might, as her reckless way is, have handed over his little soul to some flamboyant rogue or expert in small vices; instead, she laid it in the keeping of a man who was clean-living, charged with unselfish enthusiasm and never consciously dishonest. The product of a Board School Scholarship and a fiercely energetic process of self-education (prompted in part by the desire to excel those he despised) Faraday, when William made his acquaintance, was beginning to realize some of his cherished ambitions, beginning, in certain Labour and Socialist circles, to be treated as a man of mark. His pen was fluent as well as sarcastic, and if his numerous contributions to the “rebel” press had been paid for at ordinary rates he
