Humphrey found himself left alone with the excitement eddying all round him. He was able to survey the scene with an air of detached interest. It reminded him of his school-days: all these men were young of heart, with the generous impulses of boys; they had the spirit of eternal youth--the one reward which men of their temperament are able to wrest from life.
He saw Willoughby, with his black hair in a disordered tangle over his eyes, joining in the war-song of the Young Members.
As he looked at all these men, chattering, laughing, grouped together here and there where some one was telling an entertaining story, he saw the smiling aspect of Fleet Street, the siren, luring the adventurous stranger to her, with laughter and opulent promise. To-morrow they would all begin their nervous work again, struggling to secure a firm foothold in the niches of the Street, when a false move, a mistake, would bring disaster with it; but they thought nothing of to-morrow; they lived in a life of to-days....
He saw Tommy Pride come into the Club. Two years had left their mark on Tommy's face. New reporters had appeared in the Street, and somehow Tommy found himself marking time, while the army of younger men pressed forward and passed him. He could not complain; he felt that if he asserted himself, Rivers or Neckinger would tell him bluntly that they were cutting down the staff--the dreadful, unanswerable excuse for dismissal. He knew that his mind was less supple than it was years ago; the stress and the bitterness of competition was sterner now than in those days when they posted assignments overnight. So, too, his pen went more slowly, finding each day increasing the difficulty of grappling with new methods. Tommy Pride had lived in To-day, and now To-morrow was upon him.
"Stopping for the declaration of the poll, Pride?" asked Humphrey.
"Not me," said Tommy, picking a bundle of letters from his pigeon-hole. "I've had a late turn to-night and the missis will be sitting up."
Tommy shrugged his shoulders wearily. "Oh--a whisky and soda," he said. "What a row these fellows are making." Willoughby attacked him with a voting paper, and Humphrey noticed how Pride's hand--the hand that had written millions of words--trembled as he made crosses against the names. It was as if each finger were attached to thin wires; it reminded Humphrey of those toy tortoises from Japan, that danced and shook in a little glass case. And he thought: "Will my hand be like that one day?"