3

I went straight to Percy.  He was sitting at his writing table going through papers.  At his side was the black coffee that he always sipped through the evenings, simmering over a spirit lamp.  Percy will never go up to bed until the small hours; I suppose it is his newspaper training.  If he isn’t working, he will sit and read, or sometimes play patience, and always sip strong coffee, though his doctor has told him he should give it up.  But he is like me; he lives on his nervous energy, reckless of consequences.  He spends himself, and is spent, in the service of his great press.  It was fortunate for him, though I suppose I ought not to say it, that he married a woman who is also the slave of literature, though of a more imaginative branch of literature, and who can understand him.  But then that was inevitable; he could never have cared for a materialistic woman, or a merely domestic woman.  He demanded ideas in the woman to whom he gave himself.

I could hardly bear to tell him the dreadful news.  I knew how overcome he would be, because he was so fond of dear Oliver, who was one of his right hands, as well as a dear son-in-law.  And he had always loved Jane with a peculiar pride and affection, devoted father as he was to all his children, for he said she had the best brain of the lot.  And Oliver had been doing so well on the Daily Haste.  Percy had often said he was an editor after his own heart; he had so much flair.  When Percy said some one had flair, it was the highest praise he could give.  He always told me I had flair, and that was why he was so eager to put my stories in his papers.  I remember his remark when that dreadful man, Arthur Gideon, said in some review or other (I dislike his reviews, they are so conceited and cocksure, and show often such bad taste), ’Flair and genius are incompatible.’  Percy said simply, ‘Flair is genius.’  I thought it extraordinarily true.  But whether I have flair or not, I don’t know.  I don’t think I ever bother about what the public want, or what will sell.  I just write what comes natural to me; if people like it, so much the better; if they don’t, they must bear it!  But I will say that they usually do!  No, I don’t think I have flair; I think I have, instead, a message; or many messages.

But I had to break it to Percy.  I put my arms round him and told him, quite simply.  He was quite broken up by it.  But, of course, the first thing he had to do was to get on to the Haste and let them know.  He told them he would be up in the morning to make arrangements.

Then he sat and thought, and worked out plans in his head, in the concentrated, abstracted way he has, telephoning sometimes, writing notes sometimes, almost forgetting my presence.  I love to be at the centre of the brain of the Pinkerton press at the moments when it is working at top speed like this.  Cup after cup of strong black coffee he drank, hardly noticing it, till I remonstrated, and then he said absently, ’Very well, dear, very well,’ and drank more.  When I tried to persuade him to come up to bed, he said, ’No, no; I have things to think out.  I shall be late.  Leave me, my dear.  Go to bed yourself, you need rest.’  Then he turned from the newspaper owner to the father, and sighed heavily, and said, ‘Poor little Janie.  Poor dear little Babs.  Well, well, well.’