The Death of the Lion | Page 2

people at home. It was as if
Mr. Deedy had published reports without his young men's having, as
Pinhorn would have said, really been there. I was unregenerate, as I
have hinted, and couldn't be concerned to straighten out the journalistic
morals of my chief, feeling them indeed to be an abyss over the edge of
which it was better not to peer. Really to be there this time moreover
was a vision that made the idea of writing something subtle about Neil
Paraday only the more inspiring. I would be as considerate as even Mr.
Deedy could have wished, and yet I should be as present as only Mr.
Pinhorn could conceive. My allusion to the sequestered manner in

which Mr. Paraday lived--it had formed part of my explanation, though
I knew of it only by hearsay--was, I could divine, very much what had
made Mr. Pinhorn nibble. It struck him as inconsistent with the success
of his paper that any one should be so sequestered as that. And then
wasn't an immediate exposure of everything just what the public
wanted? Mr. Pinhorn effectually called me to order by reminding me of
the promptness with which I had met Miss Braby at Liverpool on her
return from her fiasco in the States. Hadn't we published, while its
freshness and flavour were unimpaired, Miss Braby's own version of
that great international episode? I felt somewhat uneasy at this lumping
of the actress and the author, and I confess that after having enlisted Mr.
Pinhorn's sympathies I procrastinated a little. I had succeeded better
than I wished, and I had, as it happened, work nearer at hand. A few
days later I called on Lord Crouchley and carried off in triumph the
most unintelligible statement that had yet appeared of his lordship's
reasons for his change of front. I thus set in motion in the daily papers
columns of virtuous verbiage. The following week I ran down to
Brighton for a chat, as Mr. Pinhorn called it, with Mrs. Bounder, who
gave me, on the subject of her divorce, many curious particulars that
had not been articulated in court. If ever an article flowed from the
primal fount it was that article on Mrs. Bounder. By this time, however,
I became aware that Neil Paraday's new book was on the point of
appearing and that its approach had been the ground of my original
appeal to Mr. Pinhorn, who was now annoyed with me for having lost
so many days. He bundled me off-- we would at least not lose another.
I've always thought his sudden alertness a remarkable example of the
journalistic instinct. Nothing had occurred, since I first spoke to him, to
create a visible urgency, and no enlightenment could possibly have
reached him. It was a pure case of profession flair--he had smelt the
coming glory as an animal smells its distant prey.

CHAPTER II.

I may as well say at once that this little record pretends in no degree to
be a picture either of my introduction to Mr. Paraday or of certain

proximate steps and stages. The scheme of my narrative allows no
space for these things, and in any case a prohibitory sentiment would
hang about my recollection of so rare an hour. These meagre notes are
essentially private, so that if they see the light the insidious forces that,
as my story itself shows, make at present for publicity will simply have
overmastered my precautions. The curtain fell lately enough on the
lamentable drama. My memory of the day I alighted at Mr. Paraday's
door is a fresh memory of kindness, hospitality, compassion, and of the
wonderful illuminating talk in which the welcome was conveyed. Some
voice of the air had taught me the right moment, the moment of his life
at which an act of unexpected young allegiance might most come home
to him. He had recently recovered from a long, grave illness. I had gone
to the neighbouring inn for the night, but I spent the evening in his
company, and he insisted the next day on my sleeping under his roof. I
hadn't an indefinite leave: Mr. Pinhorn supposed us to put our victims
through on the gallop. It was later, in the office, that the rude motions
of the jig were set to music. I fortified myself, however, as my training
had taught me to do, by the conviction that nothing could be more
advantageous for my article than to be written in the very atmosphere. I
said nothing to Mr. Paraday about it, but in the morning, after my
remove from the inn, while he was occupied in his study, as he had
notified me he should need to be, I committed to paper the main heads
of my