Chapter 18 - Page 2

jibbing fit.

Evans was grimly conscious that I was moderately ignorant of technical
details; he kept them well before my eyes all day long.

At odd moments I tried to read Callan's article. It was impossible. It
opened with a description of the squalor of the Greenlander's life, and
contained tawdry passages of local colour.

I knew what was coming. This was the view of the Greenlanders of
pre-Merschian Greenland, elaborated, after the manner of Callan--the
Special Commissioner--so as to bring out the glory and virtue of the
work of regeneration. Then in a gush of superlatives the work itself
would be described. I knew quite well what was coming, and was
temperamentally unable to read more than the first ten lines.

Everything was going wrong. The printers developed one of their sudden
crazes for asking idiotic questions. Their messengers came to Evans,
Evans sent them round the pitch-pine screen to me. "Mr. Jackson wants to
know----"

The fourth of the messengers that I had despatched to Soane returned
with the news that Soane would arrive at half-past nine. I sent out in
search of the strongest coffee that the city afforded. Soane arrived. He
had been ill, he said, very ill. He desired to be fortified with
champagne. I produced the coffee.

Soane was the son of an Irish peer. He had magnificent features--a
little blurred nowadays--and a remainder of the grand manner. His nose
was a marvel of classic workmanship, but the floods of time had reddened
and speckled it--not offensively, but ironically; his hair was turning
grey, his eyes were bloodshot, his heavy moustache rather ragged. He
inspired one with the respect that one feels for a man who has lived and
does not care a curse. He had a weird intermittent genius that made it
worth Fox's while to put up with his lapses and his brutal snubs.

I produced the coffee and pointed to the sofa of the night before.

"Damn it," he said, "I'm ill, I tell you; I want ..."

"Exactly!" I cut in. "You want a rest, old fellow. Here's Cal's article.
We want something special about it. If you don't feel up to it I'll send
round to Jenkins."

"Damn Jenkins," he said; "I'm up to it."

"You understand," I said, "you're to write strictly on Callan's lines.
Don't insert any information from extraneous sources. And make it as
slashing as you like--on those lines."

He grunted in acquiescence. I left him lying on the sofa, drinking the
coffee. I had tenderly arranged the lights for him as Fox had arranged
them the night before. As I went out to get my dinner I was comfortably
aware of him, holding the slips close to his muddled eyes and