HAVE a rather singular story here," said the editor-in-chief as he lay back in his chair and picked his teeth with a new quill.
"Yes?" said the sub-editor absently. He was uncommonly busy just then, for it was already the sixteenth of the month, and only things in type interested him in the least.
"It is singular," said the editor, this time half to himself; "there's a touch of genius in it, and yet the end is not done right. It wants a touch, just a touch, and then I think it would do."
He turned over the typewritten copy, and finally slung it across to the sub.
"Read it when you get time, Jevons, and say if you don't think it a bit out of the way."
And Jevons jammed the script into a pigeon-hole
"I think I'll clear out now," said the editor, rolling a cigarette slowly.
"For the Lord's sake do," cried the sub to himself, "and then I may get done."
And as Whittaker Ellis rubbed his hat on his sleeve, preparatory to departure, he muttered again, "Yes, it is damned singular. Damned singular is what it is.
He shook his head and sauntered into the Strand. Getting into a Piccadilly 'bus he disappeared into club-land. But Jevons, whom he had left, pulled out the script and read part of it. Every now and again the sub-editor burst into a shout of laughter, which made the big bare room ring. Yet he went on slaving like a lunatic, even as he grinned.
"Not at all singular, but damned funny," said Jevons. "By the Lord, but it is funny."
When he put his hat on he mimicked Whittaker Ellis, and stalked out of the room.
"Yes, it is damned funny, damned funny is what it is," he said in Ellis's very voice
And instead of eating he went, like a worn-out fool, and took the bitter edge off his appetite with an abnormal amount of whisky. But the liquor smoothed an odd little tremor out of his face and his hands, and made him go easier and feel less keenly.
His club was a tavern in the Shaftesbury Avenue, haunted by a peculiar set of rank failures. They were the quality of literary diamond that gets put to cutting and polishing instead of being itself polished and set; and many of them had a diseased opinion of their own powers. But some were sombre, abject, down-trodden, and half-crown-seeking men of letters. Once and again was found there a real man of genius gone to hell, and among them such a one looked like a wrecked and sunken ship, full of beautiful dead human thoughts. But mostly they were mere decadents decayed, and Henry Jevons was the man among them yet. For he had steady employment still, and his vices left him squeezable of odd silver. He would praise produced sonnets, and kindly lament that he was but sub-editor. They swore he ought to be editor—nay, better, sought by editors—and they told newcomers loud enough for Jevons to hear that he was a man of rare and neglected talents.
"Sometimes he is enormous," said one. "But I fear he drinks too much to write now or even to talk as he can talk."
For some of them praised him truthfully and without the incentive of possible whisky.
He was in no form this night to be brilliant; but he was oddly and unusually good tempered. He laughed easily.
"What luck, Jevons?" said the Poet of the establishment, whose hair and trousers were ragged. "What luck have you had to make you so jolly?"
"Nothing much, Gray," answered Jevons; "but it's funny when you feel that way. And I just feel funny. Singular—damned singular, ain't it!"
And there was such an odd look in his quick, unnaturally bright eye that the Poet felt uncomfortable, and retreated a pace. If he had been leading up to a drink or sixpence he had no chance to renew his attack, for Cator, who was Jevons's chief friend there, came in and monopolised him.
"How goes it?" said Cator.
"So so," he said, shrugging his shoulders.
"And is there any chance of a better thing yet? How's Ellis go on?"
Jevons looked down and drew odd figures and mystic Mason signs on the bar counter as he puffed hard at his pipe.
"A beast as usual, and out of beasts comes beastliness," he said; "he has little devilish ways of annoying me, and he looks at me insultingly, and often when I am turned round he laughs. I don't say anything about his being selfish. He knows he gets more work out of me than he would out of a fresh-run German whose English was still Ollendorf; and yet he keeps me on the same pay. No; I say nothing of that; but he's a devil, and makes faces and jeers in a polite, gentlemanly way till he fills me with fury.