Page:Walpole - Fortitude.djvu/235

 “If you could tell me your business, perhaps—”

Peter began to be infuriated with this young man with the hatchet face.

“I want to know if there's any place for me on this paper. If I can—”

“Oh!” The voice was very cold indeed and the iron barrier seemed to multiply itself over and over again all round the room.

“I'm afraid in that case you had better write to the Editor and make an appointment. No, I'm afraid there is no one ”

Peter melted away. The faces on the chairs were all very glad. The stone building echoed with some voice that called some one a long way away. Peter was in the street. He stood outside the great offices of The Morning World and looked across the valley at the great dome that squatted above the moving threads of living figures. He was absurdly upset by this unfortunate interview. What could he have expected? Of what use was it that he should fling his insignificance against that kind of wall? Moreover he must try many times before his chance would be given him. It was absurd that he should mind that rebuff. But the hatchet-faced young man pursued him. He seemed to see now as he looked up and down the street, a hostility in the faces of those that passed him. Moreover he saw, here and there figures, wretched figures, moving in and out of the crowd, bending into the gutter for something that had been dropped—lean, haggard faces, burning eyes he began to see them as a chain that wound, up and down, amongst the people and the carriages along the street.

He pulled himself together—If he was feeling these things at the very beginning of his battle why then defeat was certain. He was ashamed and, looking at his paper, chose the offices of The Mascot, a very popular society journal that brightened the world with its cheerful good tempered smile, every Friday morning. Here the room in which he found himself was small and cosy, it had a bright pink wall-paper, and behind a little shining table a shining young woman beamed upon him. The shining young woman was, however, very busy at her typewriter and Peter was examined by a tiny office boy who seemed to be made entirely