Two days afterwards Dick asked his father if he had talked to Mary about Angus yet.
'No, Richard,' the old man admitted feebly, 'I have not. The fact is that she is looking so proud and stately just now, that I feel nervous about broaching the subject.'
'That is exactly how I feel,' said Dick, 'but Nell told me to-day that, despite her hauteur before us, Mary is wearing her heart away.'
The colonel's fingers beat restlessly on the mantelpiece.
'I'm afraid she does care for Angus,' he said.
'As much as he cares for her, I believe,' replied Dick. 'Just think,' he added bitterly, 'that these two people love each other for the best that is in them, one of the rarest things in life, and are nevertheless to be kept apart. Look here.'
Dick drew aside his blind, and pointed to a light cast on the opposite wall from a higher window.
'That is Angus's light,' he said. 'On such a night as this, when he is not wanted at the Wire, you will see that light blazing into the morning. Watch that moving shadow; it is the reflection of his arm as he sits there writing, writing, writing with nothing to write for, and only despair to face him when he stops. Is it not too bad?'
'They will forget each other in time,' said the colonel. 'Let Dowton have another chance. He is to be at the Lodge.'
'But if they don't forget each other; if Dowton fails again, and Mary continues to eat her heart in silence, what then?'
'We shall see.'
'Look here, father. I cannot play this pitiful part before Angus for ever. Let us make a bargain. Dowton gets a second chance; if he does not succeed, it is Angus's turn. Do you promise me so much?'
'I cannot say,' replied the colonel thoughtfully. 'It may come to that.'
Rob was as late in retiring to rest that night as Dick had predicted, but he wrote less than usual. He had something to think of as he paced his room, for, unlike her father and brother, he knew that when Mary was a romantic schoolgirl she had dressed the sham baronet, as a child may dress her doll, in the virtues of a hero. He shuddered to think of her humiliation should she ever hear the true story of Josephs—as she never did. Yet many a lady of high degree has given her heart to a baronet who was better fitted to be a barber.
Chapter XVII.
Rob Pulls Himself Together
In a London fog the street-lamps are up and about, running maliciously at pedestrians. He is in love or writing a book who is struck by one without remonstrating. One night that autumn a fog crept through London a month before it was due, and Rob met a lamp-post the following afternoon on his way home from the Wire office. He passed on without a word, though he was not writing a book. Something had happened that day, and, but for Mary Abinger, Rob would have been wishing that his mother could see him now.
The editor of the Wire had called him into a private room, in which many a young gentleman, who only wanted a chance to put the world to rights, has quaked, hat in hand, before now. It is the dusty sanctum from which Mr. Rowbotham wearily distributes glory or consternation, sometimes with niggardly hand, and occasionally like an African explorer scattering largess among the natives. Mr. Rowbotham might be even a greater editor than he is if he was sure that it is quite the proper thing for so distinguished a man as himself to believe in anything, and some people think that his politics are to explain away to-day the position he took up yesterday. He seldom writes himself, and, while directing the line to be adopted by his staff, he smokes a cigar which he likes to probe with their pens. He is pale and thin, and has roving eyes, got from always being on the alert against aspirants.
All the chairs in the editorial room, except Mr. Rowbotham's own, had been converted, like the mantelpiece, into temporary bookcases. Rob tumbled the books off one (your Inquiry into the State of Ireland was among them, gentle reader) much as a coal-heaver topples his load into a cellar, or like a housewife emptying her apron.
'You suit me very well, Angus,' the editor said. 'You have no lurking desire to write a book, have you?'
'No,' Rob answered; 'since I joined the Press that ambition seems to have gone from me.'
'Quite so,' said Mr. Rowbotham, his tone implying that Rob now left the court without a stain upon his character. The editor's cigar went out, and he made a spill of a page from Sonnets of the Woods, which had just come in for review.
'As you know,' the editor continued, 'I have been looking about me for a leader-writer for the last year. You have a way of keeping your head that I like, and your style is not so villainously bad. Are you prepared to join us?'
'I should think so,' said Rob.
'Very well. You will start with £800 a year. Ricketts, as you may have heard, has half as much again as that, but he has been with us some time.'
'All right,' said Rob calmly, though his chest was swelling. He used to receive an order for a sack of shavings in the same tone.
'You expected this, I dare say?' asked the editor.
'Scarcely,' said Rob. 'I thought you would offer the appointment to Marriott; he is a much cleverer man than I am.'
'Yes,' assented Mr. Rowbotham, more readily than Rob thought necessary. 'I have had Marriott in my eye for some time, but I rather think Marriott is a genius, and so he would not do for us.'
'You never had that suspicion of me?' asked Rob, a little blankly.
'Never,' said the editor frankly. 'I saw from the first that you were a man to be trusted. Moderate Radicalism is our policy, and not even Ricketts can advocate moderation so vehemently as you do. You fight for it with a flail. By the way, you are Scotch, I think?'
'Yes,' said Rob.
'I only asked,' the editor explained, 'because of the shall and the will difficulty. Have you got over that yet?'
'No,' Rob said sadly, 'and never will.'
'I shall warn the proof-readers to be on the alert,' Mr. Rowbotham said, laughing, though Rob did not see what at. 'Dine with me at the Garrick on Wednesday week, will you?'
Rob nodded, and was retiring, when the editor called after him—
'You are not a married man, Angus?'
'No,' said Rob, with a sickly smile.
'Ah, you should marry,' recommended Mr. Rowbotham, who is a bachelor. 'You would be worth another two hundred a year to us then. I wish I could find the time to do it myself.'
Rob left the office a made man, but looking as if it all had happened some time ago. There were men shivering in Fleet Street as he passed down it who had come to London on the same day as himself, every one with a tragic story to tell now, and some already seeking the double death that is called drowning care. Shadows of university graduates passed him in the fog who would have been glad to carry his bag. That night a sandwich-board man, who had once had a thousand a year, crept into the Thames. Yet Rob bored his way home, feeling that it was all in vain.
He stopped at Abinger's door to tell him what had happened, but the chambers were locked. More like a man who had lost £800 a year than one who had just been offered it, he mounted to his own rooms, hardly noticing that the door was now ajar. The blackness of night was in the sitting-room, and a smell of burning leather.
'Another pair of slippers gone,' said a voice from the fireplace. It was Dick, and if he had not jumped out of one of the slippers he would have been on fire himself. Long experience had told him the exact moment to jump.
'I tried your door,' Rob said. 'I have news for you.'
'Well,'