It was something wearily receptive, wearily cynical, something that said wearily: “I know, I know. But what’s the story? What’s the racket?”
And yet it was something that one liked, too, something corrupted but still good, something that had once blazed with hope and aspiration, something that said: “Sure. I used to think I had it in me, too, and I’d have given my life to write something good. Now I’m just a whore. I’d sell my best friend out to get a story. I’d betray your trust, your faith, your friendliness, twist everything you say around until any sincerity, sense, or honesty that might be in your words was made to sound like the maunderings of a buffoon or a clown—if I thought it would make a better story. I don’t give a damn for truth, for accuracy, for facts, for telling anything about you people here, your lives, your speech, the way you look, the way you really are, the special quality, tone, and weather of this moment—of this fire—except insofar as they will help to make a story. What I went to get is the special ‘angle’ on it. There has been grief and love and fear and ecstasy and pain and death to-night: a whole universe of living has been here enacted. But all of it doesn’t matter a damn to me if I can only pick up something that will make the customers sit up tomorrow and rub their eyes—if I can tell ‘em that in the excitement Miss Lena Ginster’s pet boa constrictor escaped from its cage and that the police and fire departments are still looking for it while Members of Fashionable Apartment House Dwell in Terror…So there I am, folks, with yellow fingers, weary eyeballs, a ginny breath, and what is left of last night’s hangover, and I wish to God I could get to that telephone to send this story in, so the boss would tell me to go home, and I could step round to Eddy’s place for a couple more highballs before I call it another day. But don’t be too hard on me. Sure, I’d sell you out, of course. No man’s name or any woman’s reputation is safe with me—if I can make a story out of it—but at bottom I’m not such a bad guy. I have violated the standards of decency again and again, but in my heart I’ve always wanted to be decent. I don’t tell the truth, but there’s a kind of bitter honesty in me for all that. I’m able to look myself in the face at times, and tell the truth about myself and see just what I am. And I hate sham and hypocrisy and pretence and fraud and crookedness, and if I could only be sure that tomorrow was going to be the last day of the world—oh, Christ!—what a paper we’d get out in the morning! And, too, I have a sense of humour, I love gaiety, food, drink, good talk, good companionship, the whole thrilling pageantry of life. So don’t be too severe on me. I’m really not as bad as some of the things I have to do.”
Such, indefinably yet plainly, were the markings of these men. It was as if the world which had so soiled them with its grimy touch had also left upon them some of its warm earthiness—the redeeming virtues of its rich experience, its wit and understanding, the homely fellowship of its pungent speech.
Two or three of them now went round among the people in the drug-store and began to interview them. The questions that they asked seemed ludicrously inappropriate. They approached some of the younger and prettier girls, found out if they lived in the building, and immediately asked, with naive eagerness, whether they were in the Social Register. Whenever any of the girls admitted that she was, the reporters would write down her name and the details of her parentage.
Meanwhile, one of the representatives of the Press, a rather seedy-looking gentleman with a bulbous red nose and infrequent teeth, had called his City Desk on the telephone and, sprawled in the booth with his hat pushed back on his head and his legs sticking out through the open door, was reporting his findings. George Webber was standing with a group of people at the back of the store, near the booth. He had noticed the reporter when he first came in, and had been fascinated by something in his seedy, hard-boiled look; and now, although George appeared to be listening to the casual chatter around him, he was really hanging with concentrated attention on every word the man was saying: