The snow whirled in gay little spurts over the low skyline of the grey antique stone office buildings when McAlpine and Mr. Carver left the Canadian Club and came along St. James Street with the magnates who were returning to their offices. They walked arm in arm. They took turns guiding each other across the street. “Watch yourself now, Mr. Carver,” McAlpine would say when a taxi skidded by in the snow. And a few steps later Mr. Carver would say, “Look out now, Jim. You’re walking right into that drift.” In between these admonitions, offered with such friendly warmth, Mr. Carver told why his managing editor, J. C. Horton, opposed having McAlpine do the column.
“You understand, Jim, I can’t have a managing editor and not appear to give some weight to his opinion,” he said as they ducked their heads in the same motion against the wind.
“Of course not.” For the moment McAlpine could hardly conceal his anxiety, and Mr. Carver felt it. Then with sudden confidence, believing he could rely on Mr. Carver, he said, “After all, Mr. Horton ought to have some doubts about me. It’s your judgment I’m counting on, Mr. Carver.”
“Which is as it should be,” Mr. Carver agreed. He liked having McAlpine count on him. He was accustomed to having paternal sympathy for any employee who was in trouble. Many times in the past he had gone out to visit the wife of a reporter who was a drunkard or a gambler to assure her she could count on him. An alcoholic gambler’s home was never broken up. Mr. Carver would make an arrangement with the wife and the humiliated husband that would permit The Sun to advance her money and take over the management of the weekly salary until the debt was paid off. But his feeling for McAlpine was different, and he wanted to be certain he could rely on him.
“Don’t let what I say about J. C. trouble you too much, Jim,” he said.
“I’m not going to, Mr. Carver.”
“I can’t brush him aside. I have to reason with him.”
“I understand. What has he got against me?”
“Nothing whatever, Jim. You have to understand J. C. He’s a big blunt fellow. A big-nosed, hard-headed fellow. Well, he’s read your Atlantic Monthly article. It happens that J. C. thinks of himself as a publicist, a moulder of public opinion. Well, he sees you in that light too, Jim.”
“Ah, I see.”
“In a sense he’s an old-style, narrow-minded businessman,” Mr. Carver said, smiling indulgently.
“I think I should have a little talk with Mr. Horton.”
“That’s exactly what I don’t want you to do, Jim. I want you to keep away from the practical men who can’t see beyond their own noses. If you let Horton get you into his office, well, he’ll have you there every day, and he’ll have his hand in every column you write. Leave it to me,” Mr. Carver added. “I’ll try and push this thing through in my own way.”
Pink-faced from the wind and snow, they crossed the road to The Sun building. It was a four-storied grey stone building of nineteenth century architecture with a large brass name plate to the left of the entrance. For fifty years The Sun had been published here by the Carvers. The building wasn’t impressive; it didn’t look much like a modern newspaper plant, but The Sun was as influential as any newspaper in the country. In a French city like Montreal it couldn’t have a circulation as large as the French language journals, nor did it have as many readers as the Evening Mail, but it had better readers. Everybody who felt established in Montreal read The Sun. It was the only Montreal newspaper that had national influence and was widely quoted in the financial districts, the universities, and by newspapermen on other papers. It didn’t pay big salaries. It had only one page of comics. The international scene was its special field; it carried the New York Times correspondence. Newspapermen looking for more money in other cities liked to be able to say they had worked for Carver of The Sun, because no one could mention The Sun without thinking of Carver and his liberal editorials.
Mr. Carver wanted to show Jim the new presses, and so they wandered around talking to foremen and typesetters. In that idle half-hour Jim felt himself liking Mr. Carver. He liked him for the pride and pleasure in his eyes. And Mr. Carver, responding to that sympathetic quality, insisted that if he had to he could operate the presses himself, even run the typesetting machine himself.
“And get out on the street and sell the papers?” Jim said.
“That’s right, that’s right,” Mr. Carver beamed. His newspaper was his life. He wanted to be in the independent liberal tradition of the Manchester Guardian or the New York Times. The world was in a philosophical breakdown, he said, a morass of mass thinking; the great trick was to recognize the necessity of independence. He wondered how it was McAlpine could make him feel he had been waiting a long time to tell all this to someone. Yet he did not forget to turn and smile at a passing employee, calling him always by his first name.
When they entered the editorial offices and passed the row of reporters’ desks and the big round city desk, it was like a tour of inspection with Mr. Carver smiling at each desk man and reporter. “Good afternoon,” he said, and each one said, “Good afternoon, Mr. Carver,” or “Good day, sir. Still snowing, sir?”
Only one very fat young reporter with brown curly hair sitting at a desk by the window did not speak. Though Mr. Carver glanced at him hopefully he only scowled. McAlpine, thinking the scowl was for him, took it to mean that he and the reporter had met somewhere and the reporter disliked him.
“I should apologize, Jim,” Mr. Carver said when they were in his private office taking off their coats.
“Apologize? What for?”
“The way that fat young man, Walters, scowled at us. Surely it’s a bit annoying for a visitor to see an employee of mine behaving like that, but you see, Jim, it was directed at me.” He smiled, but his neck had reddened. He always blushed with his neck. “A ridiculous situation,” he said, sitting down and leaning back with his hands clasped behind his head. “I suppose I’ll have to do something about it. Did you know I went on a tomato diet?”
“You hadn’t mentioned it.”
“A damned good diet. Took off twenty-five pounds. Well,” he went on with an embarrassed air that was oddly attractive, “you can see that young Walters is sluggish and overweight. I recommended my tomato diet to him. He took off two pounds, then began to pull my leg. I’d pass him and ask about his weight, and he’d give me false reports. Well, I made a mistake. I mentioned it to Horton, and what did he do but make Walters get weighed every day in the shipping room? I suppose it made him a laughingstock, because his wife phoned and I had to put an end to Horton’s nonsense. Well, never mind Walters. I feel a certain responsibility about you being here in Montreal, Jim.”
“It’s my own choice.”
“But you’re having expenses while I’m pushing this thing through. What about an advance to cover them? What about a hundred and fifty? I’ll look after it myself.”
“No, it isn’t necessary.”
“Nonsense. It may be two weeks or so.”
“I can wait the two weeks.”
“You won’t hesitate to draw on me if you’re short?”
“It’s a promise,” Jim said, wondering if he was being stubbornly independent to prove he would never be like young Walters.
“Good,” Mr. Carver said. “Now don’t get the impression Horton doesn’t like some of your ideas. He agrees there’s a philosophy abroad destructive of all individual initiative. Take a depression. A real challenge to a man, and Horton—”
“I wasn’t writing only about a man and his job,” McAlpine interrupted.
“Of course not. There now. Do you see how you’d have to watch Horton?”
“The job is only one thing,” McAlpine said. “Mr. Horton seems to have missed the point. What I was trying to say in my article was that a man can make adventurous choices in his own life, particularly in his difficult relationships. It might be necessary for him to say to hell with the job.”
“H’m-m. Absolute independence, eh?”
“The trick would be never to knuckle under in the face of a difficult relationship. Do you see?”
“I think I do,” Mr. Carver said. He meditated; their eyes met; they measured each other, and McAlpine’s smile was just as inscrutable as Mr. Carver’s as he asked himself if it was Horton he had to watch or this shrewd man who was so friendly. Horton was indeed the managing editor, and it was necessary to have his approval, necessary to allay his doubts. But what if Mr. Carver knew how to use Horton to mask his own doubts? He could use him in this way every day in the office. Right now he’s weighing me, he thought, weighing me as he had Horton weigh young Walters. His reflective smile began to bother Mr. Carver, who coughed.
“The challenge of difficult relationships,” he repeated with a faint smile. “Why, yes. That’s right, Jim. Take young Walters now. He’s really challenging me every day with his sullen face, and I shy away from doing anything. H’m-m. You’d say weakness on my part, wouldn’t you?” He rubbed the side of his face. Then he picked up a pencil and made a note on a memo pad.
He’s only showing me I’m right about him, Jim thought. The little memo would go to Horton; the fat young man might get his dismissal notice that night. He would go out with it in his pocket, and if it were still snowing his footsteps would be lost, as Peggy’s had been lost last night. But why did he remember Peggy Sanderson now that he had caught a glimpse of an unfamiliar world of humiliating bondages? And why did he feel unhappy?
“Um-m, well—” Mr. Carver cleared his throat and chuckled. “If it keeps on snowing like this it will also be an interesting challenge to the city’s new snow ploughs.”
“The chances are it won’t be snowing by nightfall,” McAlpine said vaguely.
“It’s the first heavy fall,” Mr. Carver said. “Everything is freezing up hard.” And then he turned to McAlpine with a wistful expression. “Did you ever do any ice fishing, Jim?”
“Not since I was a boy. Why?”
“I used to like it. The hut on the ice! The stove! A good drink! How would you like to try it with me, Jim?”
“Any time you say.”
“We’d be there by ourselves. We could talk and take our time and take it easy.” He sounded lonely. “I’ll take you at your word, Jim.” He was silent a moment, then he said, “Well, I’ve told you what the situation is around here. I suggest you relax for a week. I suppose you’ll be seeing Catherine tonight?”
“I hope so.”
“I think you’re good for her, Jim.” And he put out his hand.
McAlpine walked out of the office and past the row of desks where the reporters sat at their typewriters, and as Walters looked up his eyes met McAlpine’s and he smiled politely. It was a natural, friendly smile, but McAlpine averted his own eyes. He felt ashamed. He fled with a brusque, angry stride.
He intended to go to the hotel and write some letters. When the taxi approached the St. Catherine and Drummond corner, he found himself dreading the loneliness of the hotel room where he might only worry over the relationship between Mr. Carver and a man named J. C. Horton. “Let me out at the corner here,” he called to the taxi driver. And there he was on the corner in the snow, looking along the street at the restaurant where Peggy Sanderson had said she might be at that hour.