What Walter chiefly remembered was the fact that the joke was Philip Quarles’s.
Burlap got up and began to look through the books. ‘Pity the poor reviewer!’ he said with a sigh.
The poor reviewer—wasn’t that the cue for his little speech about salary? Walter nerved himself, focussed his will. ‘I was wondering,’ he began.
But Burlap had almost simultaneously begun on his own account. ‘I’ll get Beatrice to come in,’ he said and pressed the bell-push three times. ‘Sorry. What were you saying?’
‘Nothing.’ The demand would have to be postponed. It couldn’t be made in public, particularly when the public was Beatrice. Damn Beatrice! he thought unjustly. What business had she to do subediting and Shorter Notices for nothing? Just because she had a private income and adored Burlap.
Walter had once complained to her, jokingly, of his miserable six pounds a week.
‘But the World’s worth making sacrifices for,’ she rapped out. ‘After all, one has a responsibility towards people; one ought to do something for them.’ Echoed in her clear rapping voice, Burlap’s Christian sentiments sounded, Walter thought, particularly odd. ‘The World does do something; one ought to help.’
The obvious retort was that his own private income was very small and that he wasn’t in love with Burlap. He didn’t make it, however, but suffered himself to be pecked. Damn her, all the same!
Beatrice entered, a neat, plumply well-made little figure, very erect and business-like. ‘Morning, Walter,’ she said, and every word she uttered was like a sharp little rap with an ivory mallet over the knuckles. She examined him with her bright, rather protuberant brown eyes. ‘You look tired,’ she went on. ‘Worn out, as though you’d been on the tiles last night.’ Peck after peck. ‘Were you?’
Walter blushed. ‘I slept badly,’ he mumbled and engrossed himself in a book.
They sorted out the volumes for the various reviewers. A little heap for the scientific expert, another for the accredited metaphysician, a whole mass for the fiction specialist. The largest pile was of Tripe. Tripe wasn’t reviewed, or only got a Shorter Notice.
‘Here’s a book about Polynesia for you, Walter,’ said Burlap generously. ‘And a new anthology of French verse. No, on second thoughts, I think I’ll do that.’ On second thoughts he generally did keep the most interesting books for himself.
‘The Life of St. Francis re-toldfor the Children by Bella Jukes. Theology or tripe?’ asked Beatrice.
‘Tripe,’ said Walter looking over her shoulder.
‘But I’d rather like an excuse to do a little article on St. Francis,’ said Burlap. In the intervals of editing, he was engaged on a full-length study of the Saint. ‘St. Francis and the Modern Psyche,’ it was to be called. He took the little book from Beatrice and let the pages flick past under his thumb. ‘Tripe-ish,’ he admitted. ‘But what an extraordinary man! Extraordinary!’ He began to hypnotize himself, to lash himself up into the Franciscan mood.
‘Extraordinary!’ Beatrice rapped out, her eyes fixed on Burlap.
Walter looked at her curiously. Her ideas and her pecking goose-billed manner seemed to belong to two different people, between whom the only perceptible link was Purlap. Was there any inward, organic connection?
‘What a devastating integrity!’ Burlap went on, selfintoxicated. He shook his head and, sighing, sobered himself sufficiently to proceed with the morning’s business.
When the opportunity came for Walter to talk (with what diffidence, what a squeamish reluctance!) about his salary, Burlap was wonderfully sympathetic.
‘I know, old man,’ he said, laying his hand on the other’s shoulder with a gesture that disturbingly reminded Walter of the time when, as a schoolboy, he had played Antonio in The Merchant of Venice and the detestable Porter Major, disguised as Bassanio, had been coached to register friendship. ‘I know what being hard up is.’ His little laugh gave it to be understood that he was a Franciscan specialist in poverty, but was too modest to insist upon the fact. ‘I know, old man.’ And he really almost believed that he wasn’t half owner and salaried editor of the World, that he hadn’t a penny invested, that he had been living on two pounds a week for years. ‘I wish we could afford to pay you three times as much as we do. You’re worth it, old man.’ He gave Walter’s shoulder a little pat.
Walter made a vague mumbling sound of deprecation. That little pat, he was thinking, was the signal for him to begin:
‘I am a tainted wether of the flock,
Meetest for slaughter.’
‘I wish for your sake,’ Burlap continued, ‘for mine too,’ he added, putting himself with a rueful little laugh in the same financial boat as Walter, ‘that the paper did make more money. If you wrote worse, it might.’ The compliment was graceful. Burlap emphasized it with another friendly pat and a smile. But the eyes expressed nothing. Meeting them for an instant, Walter had the strange impression that they were not looking at him at all, that they were not looking at anything. ‘The paper’s too good. It’s largely your fault. One cannot serve God and mammon.’
‘Of course not,’ Walter agreed; but he felt again that the big words had come too easily.
‘I wish one could.’ Burlap spoke like a jocular St. Francis pretending to make fun of his own principles.
Walter joined mirthlessly in the laughter. He was wishing that he had never mentioned the word ‘salary.’
‘I’ll go and talk to Mr. Chivers,’ said Burlap. Mr. Chivers was the business manager. Burlap made use of him, as the Roman statesman made use of oracles and augurs, to promote his own policy. His unpopular decisions could always be attributed to Mr. Chivers; and when he made a popular one, it was invariably made in the teeth of the business manager’s soulless tyranny. Mr. Chivers was a most convenient fiction. ‘I’ll go this morning.’
‘Don’t bother,’ said Walter.
‘If it’s humanly possible to scrape up anything more for you…’
‘No, please.’ Walter was positively begging not to be given more. ‘I know thd difficulties. Don’t think I want…’
‘But we’re sweating you, Walter, positively sweating you.’ The more Walter protested, the more generous Burlap became.’don’t think I’m not aware of it. I’ve been worrying about it for a long time.’
His magnanimity was infectious. Walter was determined not to take any more money, quite determined, even though he was sure the paper could afford to give it. ‘Really, Burlap,’ he almost begged, ‘I’d much rather you left things as they are.’ And then suddenly he thought of Marjorie. How unfairly he was treating her! Sacrificing her comfort to his. Because he found haggling distasteful, because he hated fighting on the one hand and accepting favours on the other, poor Marjorie would have to go without new clothes and a second maid.
But Burlap waved his objections aside. He insisted on being generous. ‘I’ll go and talk to Chivers at once. I think I can persuade him to let you have another twentyfive a year.’
Twentyfive. That was ten shillings a week. Nothing. Marjorie had said that he ought to stand out for at least another hundred. ‘Thank you,’ he said and despised himself for saying it.
‘It’s ridiculously little, I’m afraid. Quite ridiculously.’
That’s what I ought to have said, thought Walter.
‘One feels quite ashamed of offering it. But what can one do?’ ‘One’ could obviously do nothing, for the good reason that ‘one’ was impersonal and didn’t exist.
Walter mumbled something about being grateful. He felt humiliated and blamed Marjorie for it.
When Walter worked at the office, which was only three days a week, he sat with Beatrice. Burlap, in editorial isolation, sat alone. It was the day of Shorter Notices. Between them, on the table, stood the stacks of Tripe. They helped themselves. It was a Literary Feast—a feast of offal. Bad novels and worthless verses, imbecile systems of philosophy and platitudinous moralizings, insignificant biographies and boring books of travel, pietism so nauseating and children’s books so vulgar and so silly that to read them was to feel ashamed for the whole human race—the pile was high, and every week it grew higher. The ant-like industry of Beatrice, Walter’s quick discernment and facility were utterly inadequate to stem the rising flood. They settled down to their work ‘like vultures,’ said Walter, ‘in the Towers of Silence.’ What he wrote this morning was peculiarly pungent.
On paper Walter was all he failed to be in life. His reviews were epigrammatically ruthless. Poor earnest spinsters, when they read what he had written of their heartfelt poems about God and Passion and the Beauties of Nature, were cut to the quick by his brutal contempt. The big-game shooters who had so much enjoyed their African trip would wonder how the account of anything so interesting could be called tedious.
The young novelists who had modelled their styles and their epical conceptions on those of the best authors, who had daringly uncovered the secrets of their most intimate and sexual life, were hurt, were amazed, were indignant to learn that
