His First Interview

by W. Pett Ridge

 

His First Interview.

W. Pett Ridge in Illustrated London News.

MR. WILFRED GENT-GRACE (it is well to have a two-barrelled name nowadays, despite a late politician's gibe, because if you don't bring the public down with the first, they may fall to the second), Mr. Gent-Grace found it impossible to deny that the notices of his book were coming in unsatisfactorily. He had complained to the Press-Cutting Agency, and the Agency had replied, with some reason, that it could not cut out notices that did not exist. The author, sitting in his underground chambers in King's Bench Walk, told a portrait of the Lord Chief Justice with some sternness that this might satisfy some people, but it did not satisfy him. A tap at the door.

“Come in!” he said moodily.

“Lady to see you, sir,” said the clerk. “This is her card.” The clerk coughed. “Said she'd come to interview you, sir.”

“Is she old or young!” enquired Mr. Gent-Grace with sudden anxiety. He glanced around the room, and threw his pipe in the coal-scuttle.

“Not what I call young, sir.”

“Show her in, Polden, and do some work at the table over there. Perhaps you might get us some tea.”

He snatched at a book on social problems, and took up a thoughtful attitude, with his chin supported with one hand. A very large lady sailed into the room with an important swish of skirts.

“Oh, how do you do?” she said with great geniality. “So good of you to give me five minutes. I've just joined the staff of a new paper—or, rather, I haven't exactly joined, you know, but I'm an occasional——”

“Won't you sit down?”

“Thank you so much,” said the lady interviewer. “I will sit down. But pray don't trouble to have tea made for me.”

“I was just going to have some.”

“I'm simply dying for a cup,” she said cheerfully. “It's puerile of me, I know, but I must say I do like tea. You know I do a good deal of brain work, and unless I eat and drink just what I want, I'm so afraid of my constitution giving way.

“For my part, I——”

“My husband was just the reverse, now,” she went on with great relish. “If he had about every other hour a steak and a small bottle of Burgundy, and a cigar, he was quite happy. That was,” she explained, “before he died, of course. He was a very humorous man, and he often used to say to me, 'You have the mind, I have the appetite.'” She gave a high, loud laugh. “I shall never forget it,” she said, “he used to say it so often. 'You have the mind,' he would say, 'I have'——”

“Sugar?”

“Three lumps, please. I'm a dreadful puerile person in regard to sugar.” She sipped at her tea.

“I suppose,” said Mr. Gent-Grace importantly, “you want some details or data, or general information concerning my life and my mode of—er—work?”

“I do all my writing at night,” she said inconsequently. “If you were to ask me to sit down now over there where your clerk is and write a clever story I simply couldn't do it. I'm the most puerile——”

“Personally, I——”

“But after ten o'clock in the evening I can scribble away like mad. I simply go on, without thinking. I daresay you saw an account I did of a fancy-dress dance held at a private house in West Kensington?”

“Afraid,” said Mr. Gent-Grace, “that I missed that. You see I am so busily engaged in my own work.”

“That's where I can't help thinking you make a mistake,” said the large lady coldly. “Unless you read the journals, I'm afraid you'll find yourself behind the times.”

“I should have thought now,” he said with an effort at brightness, “that to get behind the Times was reading a journal.”

“I beg pardon?”

The gifted author explained his remark carefully, hoping that it would be written down, but she declared herself unable to see what he meant. Giving it up, she took another cup of tea.

“I suppose,” he began, a little abashed by this failure, “I suppose I was always more or less fond of politics. As a youth I was a member of a debating society and— Hadn't you better put this down?”

She touched her forehead mysteriously.

“I carry it all here,” she said. “When I was a girl my memory was something too puerile for words. Nowadays I can remember almost anything, and even if one doesn't remember,” she smiled amiably, “one can always make up something.”

“I should like,” he said hesitatingly, “to look over the proofs, if you didn't mind.”

I don't think that's at all necessary,” she said with much decision. “I hope you don't mean to accuse me of not knowing my own business. Because, if so——”

“My dear Madam,” he said with great anxiety. “You misapprehend me. I'm quite sure that the interview is safe in your hands.”

The clock struck and she rose in a series of jerks.

“I must be moving,” she said cheerfully. “I'm going on to one or two places. There's just one thing I want to ask you. I thought you were so much older than you are.”

“I'm not,” said Mr. Gent-Grace.

“I want to know”—here she took a new pocket-book from her bag—“I want to know when you propose to retire?”

“Well,” he said awkwardly, “you see I've not been at the game very long. I hope to go on for some time yet.”

“Oh!” she said in disappointed tones. “That's a pity. But you can't expect to go on playing cricket for ever, surely?”

“I never have played cricket.”

“Pardon me,” she said coldly, “are you not Mr. W. G. Grace, the champion cricketer?”

“No!” snapped the author.

“But are you sure? I found the address in the Directory and I think you must be——”

“I tell you I'm not,” he half shouted. “I'm no relation to him, and I've never seen him. You can't argue a man into being a champion cricketer. Polden, show the lady out.”

The large lady shook her head as she went out of the first door and sighed. “So very like a man,” she said pityingly, “not to apologize for wasting my time.”