succeeded in not thinking about Colonel Abinger. Nothing is hopeless if we want it very much.
Rob calculated that if he remained on the Mirror for another dozen years or so, and Mr. Licquorish continued to think that it would not be cheaper to do without him, he might reach a salary of £200 per annum. As that was not sufficient, he made up his mind to leave Silchester.
There was only one place to go to. Rob thought of London until he felt that it was the guardian from whom he would have to ask Mary Abinger; he pictured her there during the season, until London, which he had never seen, began to assume a homely aspect. It was the place in which he was to win or lose his battle. To whom is London much more? It is the clergyman's name for his church, the lawyer's for his office, the politician's for St. Stephen's, the cabman's for his stand.
There was not a man on the Press in Silchester who did not hunger for Fleet Street, but they were all afraid to beard it. They knew it as a rabbit-warren; as the closest street in a city where the bootblack has his sycophants, and you have to battle for exclusive right to sweep a crossing. The fight forward had been grimmer to Rob, however, than to his fellows, and he had never been quite beaten. He was alone in the world, and poverty was like an old friend. There was only one journalist in London whom he knew even by name, and he wrote to him for advice. This was Mr. John Rorrison, a son of the minister whose assistance had brought Rob to Silchester. Rorrison was understood to be practically editing a great London newspaper, which is what is understood of a great many journalists until you make inquiries, but he wrote back to Rob asking him why he wanted to die before his time. You collectors who want an editor's autograph may rely upon having it by return of post if you write threatening to come to London with the hope that he will do something for you. Rorrison's answer discomfited Rob for five minutes, and then, going out, he caught a glimpse of Mary Abinger in the Merediths' carriage. He tore up the letter, and saw that London was worth risking.
One forenoon Rob set out for the office to tell Mr. Licquorish of his determination. He knew that the entire staff would think him demented, but he could not see that he was acting rashly. He had worked it all out in his mind, and even tranquilly faced possible starvation. Rob was congratulating himself on not having given way to impulse when he reached the railway station.
His way from his lodgings to the office led past the station, and as he had done scores of times before, he went inside. To Rob all the romance of Silchester was concentrated there; nothing stirred him so much as a panting engine; the shunting of carriages, the bustle of passengers, the porters rattling to and fro with luggage, the trains twisting serpent-like into the station and stealing out in a glory to be gone, sent the blood to his head. On Saturday nights, when he was free, any one calling at the station would have been sure to find him on the platform from which the train starts for London. His heart had sunk every time it went off without him.
Rob woke up from a dream of Fleet Street to see the porters slamming the doors of the London train. He saw the guard's hand upraised, and heard the carriages rattle as the restive engine took them unawares. Then came the warning whistle, and the train moved off. For a second of time Rob felt that he had lost London, and he started forward. Some one near him shouted, and then he came upon the train all at once, a door opened, and he shot in. When he came to himself, Silchester was a cloud climbing to the sky behind him, and he was on his way to London.
Rob's first feeling was that the other people in the carriage must know what he had done. He was relieved to find that his companions were only an old gentleman who spoke fiercely to his newspaper because it was reluctant to turn inside out, a little girl who had got in at Silchester and consumed thirteen halfpenny buns before she was five miles distant from it, and a young woman, evidently a nurse, with a baby in her arms. The baby was noisy for a time, but Rob gave it a look that kept it silent for the rest of the journey. He told himself that he would get out at the first station, but when the train stopped at it he sat on. He twisted himself into a corner to count his money covertly, and found that it came to four pounds odd. He also took the Christmas card from his pocket, but replaced it hastily, feeling that the old gentleman and the little girl were looking at him. A feeling of elation grew upon him as he saw that whatever might happen afterwards he must be in London shortly, and his mind ran on the letters he would write to Mr. Licquorish and his landlady. In lieu of his ticket he handed over twelve shillings to the guard, under whose eyes he did not feel comfortable, and he calculated that he owed his landlady over two pounds. He would send it to her and ask her to forward his things to London. Mr. Licquorish, however, might threaten him with the law if he did not return. But then the Mirror owed Rob several pounds at that moment, and if he did not claim it in person it would remain in Mr. Licquorish's pockets. There was no saying how far that consideration would affect the editor. Rob saw a charge of dishonesty rise up and confront him, and he drew back from it. A moment afterwards he looked it in the face, and it receded. He took his pipe from his pocket.
'This is not a smoking carriage,' gasped the little girl, so promptly that it almost seemed as if she had been waiting her opportunity ever since the train started. Rob looked at her. She seemed about eight, but her eye was merciless. He thrust his pipe back into its case, feeling cowed at last.
The nurse, who had been looking at Rob and blushing when she caught his eye, got out with her charge at a side station, and he helped her rather awkwardly to alight. 'Don't mention it,' he said, in answer to her thanks.
'Not a word; I'm not that kind,' she replied, so eagerly that he started back in alarm, to find the little girl looking suspiciously at him.
As Rob stepped out of the train at King's Cross he realised sharply that he was alone in the world. He did not know where to go now, and his heart sank for a time as he paced the platform irresolutely, feeling that it was his last link to Silchester. He turned into the booking-office to consult a time-table, and noticed against the wall a railway map of London. For a long time he stood looking at it, and as he traced the river, the streets familiar to him by name, the districts and buildings which were household words to him, he felt that he must live in London somehow. He discovered Fleet Street in the map, and studied the best way of getting to it from King's Cross. Then grasping his stick firmly, he took possession of London as calmly as he could.
Rob never found any difficulty afterwards in picking out the shabby eating-house in which he had his first meal in London. Gray's Inn Road remained to him always its most romantic street because he went down it first. He walked into the roar of London in Holborn, and never forgot the alley into which he retreated to discover if he had suddenly become deaf. He wondered when the crowd would pass. Years afterwards he turned into Fetter Lane, and suddenly there came back to his mind the thoughts that had held him as he went down it the day he arrived in London.
A certain awe came upon Rob as he went down Fleet Street on the one side and up it on the other. He could not resist looking into the faces of the persons who passed him, and wondering if they edited the Times. The lean man who was in such a hurry that wherever he had to go he would soon be there, might be a man of letters whom Rob knew by heart, but perhaps he was only a broken journalist with his eye on half a crown. The mild-looking man whom Rob smiled at because, when he was half way across the street, he lost his head and was chased out of sight by half a dozen hansom cabs, was a war correspondent who had been so long in Africa that the perils of a London crossing unmanned him. The youth who was on his way home with a pork chop in his pocket edited a society journal. Rob did not recognise a distinguished poet in a little stout man who was looking pensively at a barrowful of walnuts, and he was mistaken in thinking that the bearded gentleman who held his head so high must be somebody in particular. Rob observed a pale young man gazing wistfully at him, and wondered if he was a thief or a sub-editor. He was merely an aspirant who had come to London that morning to make his fortune, and he took Rob for a leader-writer at the least. The offices, however, and even the public buildings, the shops, the narrowness of the streets, all disappointed Rob. The houses seemed squeezed together for economy of space, like a closed concertina. Nothing quite fulfilled his expectations but the big letter holes in the district postal offices.
