Without warning he switched on the electric lamp that stood upon the desk, causing her to draw back with a start.
“All right,” he said. “Go ahead. You shall have your tub, and a weekly audience of a million readers for as long as you can keep them interested. Up with anything you like, and down with everything you don’t. Be careful not to land me in a libel suit. Call the whole Bench of Bishops hypocrites, and all the ground landlords thieves, if you will: but don’t mention names. And don’t get me into trouble with the police. Beyond that, I shan’t interfere with you.”
She was about to speak.
“One stipulation,” he went on, “that every article is headed with your photograph.”
He read the sudden dismay in her eyes.
“How else do you think you are going to attract their attention?” he asked her. “By your eloquence! Hundreds of men and women as eloquent as you could ever be are shouting to them every day. Who takes any notice of them? Why should they listen any the more to you – another cranky highbrow: some old maid, most likely, with a bony throat and a beaky nose. If Woman is going to come into the fight she will have to use her own weapons. If she is prepared to do that she’ll make things hum with a vengeance. She’s the biggest force going, if she only knew it.”
He had risen and was pacing the room.
“The advertiser has found that out, and is showing the way.” He snatched at an illustrated magazine, fresh from the press, that had been placed upon his desk, and opened it at the first page. “Johnson’s Blacking,” he read out, “advertised by a dainty little minx, showing her ankles. Who’s going to stop for a moment to read about somebody’s blacking? If a saucy little minx isn’t there to trip him up with her ankles!”
He turned another page. “Do you suffer from gout? Classical lady preparing to take a bath and very nearly ready. The old Johnny in the train stops to look at her. Reads the advertisement because she seems to want him to. Rubber heels. Save your boot leather! Lady in evening dress – jolly pretty shoulders – waves them in front of your eyes. Otherwise you’d never think of them.”
He fluttered the pages. Then flung the thing across to her.
“Look at it,” he said. “Fountain pens – Corn plasters – Charitable appeals – Motor cars – Soaps – Grand pianos. It’s the girl in tights and spangles outside the show that brings them trooping in.”
“Let them see you,” he continued. “You say you want soldiers. Throw off your veil and call for them. Your namesake of France! Do you think if she had contented herself with writing stirring appeals that Orleans would have fallen? She put on a becoming suit of armour and got upon a horse where everyone could see her. Chivalry isn’t dead. You modern women are ashamed of yourselves – ashamed of your sex. You don’t give it a chance. Revive it. Stir the young men’s blood. Their souls will follow.”
He reseated himself and leant across towards her.
“I’m not talking business,” he said. “This thing’s not going to mean much to me one way or the other. I want you to win. Farm labourers bringing up families on twelve and six a week. Shirt hands working half into the night for three farthings an hour. Stinking dens for men to live in. Degraded women. Half fed children. It’s damnable. Tell them it’s got to stop. That the Eternal Feminine has stepped out of the poster and commands it.”
A dapper young man opened the door and put his head into the room.
“Railway smash in Yorkshire,” he announced.
Carleton sat up. “Much of a one?” he asked.
The dapper gentleman shrugged his shoulders. “Three killed, eight injured, so far,” he answered.
Carleton’s interest appeared to collapse.
“Stop press column?” asked the dapper gentleman.
“Yes, I suppose so,” replied Carleton. “Unless something better turns up.”
The dapper young gentleman disappeared. Joan had risen.
“May I talk it over with a friend?” she asked. “Myself, I’m inclined to accept.”
“You will, if you’re in earnest,” he answered. “I’ll give you twenty-four hours. Look in to-morrow afternoon, and see Finch. It will be for the Sunday Post– the Inset. We use surfaced paper for that and can do you justice. Finch will arrange about the photograph.” He held out his hand. “Shall be seeing you again,” he said.
It was but a stone’s throw to the office of the Evening Gazette. She caught Greyson just as he was leaving and put the thing before him. His sister was with him.
He did not answer at first. He was walking to and fro; and, catching his foot in the waste paper basket, he kicked it savagely out of his way, so that the contents were scattered over the room.
“Yes, he’s right,” he said. “It was the Virgin above the altar that popularized Christianity. Her face has always been woman’s fortune. If she’s going to become a fighter, it will have to be her weapon.”
He had used almost the same words that Carleton had used.
“I so want them to listen to me,” she said. “After all, it’s only like having a very loud voice.”
He looked at her and smiled. “Yes,” he said, “it’s a voice men will listen to.”
Mary Greyson was standing by the fire. She had not spoken hitherto.
“You won’t give up ‘Clorinda’?” she asked.
Joan had intended to do so, but something in Mary’s voice caused her, against her will, to change her mind.
“Of course not,” she answered. “I shall run them both. It will be like writing Jekyll and Hyde.”
“What will you sign yourself?” he asked.
“My own name, I think,” she said. “Joan Allway.”
Miss Greyson suggested her coming home to dinner with them; but Joan found an excuse. She wanted to be alone.
CHAPTER V
The twilight was fading as she left the office. She turned northward, choosing a broad, ill-lighted road. It did not matter which way she took. She wanted to think; or, rather, to dream.
It would all fall out as she had intended. She would commence by becoming a power in journalism. She was reconciled now to the photograph idea – was even keen on it herself. She would be taken full face so that she would be looking straight into the eyes of her readers as she talked to them. It would compel her to be herself; just a hopeful, loving woman: a little better educated than the majority, having had greater opportunity: a little further seeing, maybe, having had more leisure for thought: but otherwise, no whit superior to any other young, eager woman of the people. This absurd journalistic pose of omniscience, of infallibility – this non-existent garment of supreme wisdom that, like the King’s clothes in the fairy story, was donned to hide his nakedness by every strutting nonentity of Fleet Street! She would have no use for it. It should be a friend, a comrade, a fellow-servant of the great Master, taking counsel with them, asking their help. Government by the people for the people! It must be made real. These silent, thoughtful-looking workers, hurrying homewards through the darkening streets; these patient, shrewd-planning housewives casting their shadows on the drawn-down blinds: it was they who should be shaping the world, not the journalists