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After all his fussing it came out quite smoothly, and by mid-day he had everything prepared for the printers and was ready to think about his luncheon.
Considering that he prepared and ate it in strict privacy, Gloster Ridley’s lunch was a matter of extraordinary interest to a great many people in Salterton. There are some ways in which a man may be eccentric, and nobody will think anything of it; there are others in which eccentricity becomes almost a moral issue. Having no wife to return to at the middle of the day, the obvious thing was for him to eat at an hotel or a restaurant. But instead he preferred to prepare his own luncheon and eat it in his office. This oddity might have been overlooked if he had uncomfortably devoured a sandwich at his desk, and washed it down with milk; such a course might have won him a reputation as a keen newspaperman, unwilling to relax for an instant in his contemplation of the day’s horrors; it might have brought him those stigmata of the conscientious and ambitious executive, a couple of ulcers. But he was known to prepare and eat a hot dish, and follow it with some cheese or a bit of fruit, and make himself black coffee in a special percolator. It was even suspected that he sometimes took a glass of sherry with his meal.
These enormities might have been forgiven if he had made a joke of them, or had asked other men of business to come and share his repast. But he obstinately considered his lunch to be nobody’s business but his own. Consequently spiteful things were said of him, and it was hinted that he wore a blue apron with white frills while preparing his meal, and more than one Letter to the Editor had suggested that if he knew as much about politics, or economics, or world affairs or whatever it might be, as he did about cooking, The Bellman would be a better paper.
Cooking, however, was his hobby, and he saw no reason why he should not do as he pleased. He would probably have admitted—indeed, often did admit to his particular friend Mrs Fielding—that he was a bit of an old woman, and fussed about his food. He hated to eat in public, and he hated the kind of food which the restaurants of Salterton offered. In a modest way he was a gourmet. He cooked his own di
Perhaps the most irritating part of the whole business to those who disapproved of his custom was his extreme thi
He liked his lunch-time, because it gave him an opportunity to think. On this first of November he moved the little hot-plate out of his cupboard as usual, took two eggs and other necessaries from his brief case, and made himself an excellent omelette. He sat down at a small table near his window and ate it, looking down at the Salterton market, which was one of the last of the open-air markets in that part of Canada, and a very pretty sight.
He was thinking, of course, about Mr Shillito. When he saw his publisher that afternoon, he would explain that Mr Shillito must go, and he would ask Mr Warboys to help him to ease the blow. Execrable as Mr Shillito might be as a writer, and detestable as he might be about the office, he was an old man with somewhat more than his fair share of self-esteem, and Ridley could not bring himself to wound him. But, there must be no half-measures. Shillito must have an illuminated address, presented if possible by Mr Warboys himself. The whole staff must be assembled, and Mr Shillito must be allowed to make a speech. Perhaps the Mayor could be bamboozled into coming. And a picture of the affair must appear in The Bellman, with a caption which would make it clear that Mr Shillito was retiring of his own volition. It would all be done in the finest style. Why, if Mr Warboys were in a good mood, he might even suggest a little di
But why do I worry about him? he asked himself. Does he ever give a thought to my convenience? Doesn’t he use me shamelessly whenever he can? What was that incident only a week ago? Shillito had burst into his office with some dreadful freak in tow, a gri
Thus, rocking between anger against Mr Shillito and pity for him, Ridley ate his biscuits and cheese, drank his excellent coffee, put his dishes on Miss Green’s desk to be washed, and composed himself for his invariable twenty-minute after-lunch sleep in his armchair.
Miss Green coughed discreetly. “Professor Vambrace is waiting,” she said.
Ridley leaped from his chair. He hated being caught thus; he had an uneasy conviction that he was unsightly when asleep. And he had overslept by ten minutes. “Keep him till I ring,” he said.
When Miss Green had gone he combed his hair and rinsed his removable bridge in his tiny washroom. Sitting at his desk, he fussed with some papers, but he could not calm himself. He was disproportionately ashamed of having been found asleep. His nap, like his lunch, was no guilty secret, but he hated to be caught unprepared. How long had Miss Green watched him, perhaps listened to his snores, considered the dry and iridescent matter, like the sheen on a butterfly’s wing, which formed on his lower lip when he slept? To escape this uncomfortable train of thought he rang his bell, and Professor Vambrace stalked from the door to the space before his desk, and glared down upon him.