The editor looked much relieved, and, moreover, made no pretence of concealing his feelings.
“I have thought of that,” he said. “Of course, we will take you on the editorial staff.”
“Now … ?”
The elder man raised his head, and the kindly gray eyes searched his companion’s face.
“Ah!” he said slowly. “That is your game. Have you lost your nerve?”
“No.”
“Then you contemplate some great change in your plan of life.”
“Hardly,” returned Trist, with some deliberation; “but I want to be prepared for such an emergency.”
“I am very sorry to hear it.”
“Why?”
“Because you are too young yet. And … and, my boy, I don’t want to lose the best war-correspondent that ever crossed a saddle.”
The object of this honest flattery shrugged his shoulders.
“There are plenty more coming on.”
The great man shook his head.
“Do you mean to tell me,” he asked, “that you are going to turn your back upon a splendid career, and take up journalism? Why, my dear fellow, even at my age I would willingly change my chair for your saddle, and men say that I am at the top of the journalistic tree. Come, be candid; why are you giving up active service?”
“Because I am wanted at home, and because I must find some means of making a steady income.”
“Will you take my advice?” asked the elder man humbly.
They were like two friendly gladiators, these immovable journalists, each conscious of the strength that lay behind the gentle manner of the other, both anxious to avoid measuring steel.
Trist laughed good-humouredly.
“I will not promise.”
“No; that would be asking too much from a man who has made his own way with his own hands. My advice is: do nothing until the necessity arises. At the first rumour of war we will talk this over again. In the meantime, let us wait on events. You will write your leaders as usual, and I suppose you are busy with something in book form?”
“If,” answered Trist, “there is war in Turkey, I will go, because I told you that I would, but that will be my last campaign.”
The editor looked at him with kindly scrutiny; then he scratched his chin.
“Why?” he asked deliberately, and with a consciousness of exceeding the bounds of polite noninterference.
“I cannot tell you—yet.”
There was a slight pause, during which neither moved, and the stillness in that little room which lay in the very heart of restless London was remarkable.
The editor looked very grave. There were no papers on his desk requiring immediate attention, but he held his pencil within his strong fingers ready, as it were, to add his notes to any news that might come before him. The responsibility of a great journalist is only second to that of a Prime Minister in a country like England, where the voice of the people is heard and obeyed. Had this man turned his attention to politics, he would perhaps have attained the Premiership; but he was a journalist, and from that small silent room his fiats went forth to the ready ears of half a nation. Few men read more than one newspaper, and we have not yet got over the weakness of attaching undue importance to words that are set in type; consequently the influence of an important journal over the mind of the nation to which it dictates is practically incalculable.
“You know,” said this modern Jove at length, “as well as I do that there will be war as soon as the winter is over.”
In completion of his remark he nodded his vast head sideways, vaguely indicating the East.
“Yes,” was the meek answer; “that is so—a war which will begin in a one-sided way, and last longer than we quite expect; but I will go.”
“I fancy,” remarked the editor after some reflection, “that Russia will make a very common mistake, and underrate, or perhaps despise, her adversary.”
Trist nodded his head.
“They are sure to do that,” he said; “but I suppose they will win in the end.”
“And you will be on the losing side again.”
“Yes; I shall be on the losing side again.”
Both men relapsed into profound meditation. Trist’s meek eyes were fixed on the soft Turkey carpet—the only suggestion of ease or luxury about the room. The editor glanced from time to time at his companion’s strong face, and occupied himself with making small indentations in his blotting-pad with the point of a blacklead pencil.
“Trist,” he said at length, “I cannot do without you in this war.”
“The war has not come yet. Many things may happen before the spring; but I will not play you false. You need never fear that.”
Then he rose and buttoned his thick coat; for, like all great travellers, he wrapped himself up heavily in England. It is only very young and quite inexperienced men who gather satisfaction from the bravado of wearing no topcoat in winter.
“Goodbye,” he said; “I must go up to the publishers.”
“Goodbye,” replied the editor heartily; “look in whenever you are passing. I hope to see you one night soon at the Homeless Club; they are going to give you a dinner, I believe.”
“Yes; I heard something of it. It is very good of them, but embarrassing, and not strictly necessary.”
Trist passed out of the small room into a long passage, and thence into what was technically called the shop—a large apartment, across which stretched a heavily-built deal counter, and of which the atmosphere was warm with the intellectual odour of printing-ink.
The doorkeeper, who persisted, in face of contradiction, in his conviction that Mr. Trist was a soldier, drew himself stiffly up and saluted as he held open the swing-door. It was one of those cold blustering days which come in early November. A dry biting southeast wind howled round every corner, and disfigured most physiognomies with patches of red, more especially in the nasal
