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And one day, sitting alone in his office, a clerk brought him a morning paper with one column marked in a big blue-pencilled oval. It was only about a boy and a girl who had run away and married because they happened to be in love, although their parents had prepared other plans for their separate disposal.
I don't know, sir," continued Easleby, laying the blue-pencilled newspaper on the lessee's desk, "if you've read in the papers any account of the affair which is here called the Scarnham Mystery!" Mr. Leopold Castlemayne glanced at the columns to which Easleby pointed, rubbed his chin, and nodded. "Yes yes!" he said. "I have just seen the papers.
With the most cheerful complacency the military authorities blue-pencilled their despatches to their governments. When the diplomats learned of this, with their code cables they sent open cables stating that their confidential despatches were being censored and delayed. They still were delayed.
Neergard pored all day over the blue-pencilled column, and went home, stunned; the social sheet which is taken below stairs and read above was full of it, as was the daily press and the mouths of people interested, uninterested, and disinterested, legitimately or otherwise, until people began to tire of telling each other exactly how it happened that Gerald Erroll ran away with Gladys Orchil.
Case of a strange disappearance bank manager isn't it?" "It's more than that, sir," replied Easleby. "It's a case of all sorts of things. Now you're wondering, Mr. Castlemayne, why we come to you? I'll explain. You'll see there, sir, the name blue-pencilled Gabriel Chestermarke. Mr. Gabriel Chestermarke is a banker at Scarnham. You don't happen to know him, Mr. Castlemayne?"
I even had a hint here and there as to the geology of the group, but ruthlessly blue-pencilled out such bits of useful information, and while it may not be at all utilitarian, rejoice that I have been privileged to see these islands in a state of nature, before the engineer has honeycombed the virgin forest with iron rails; before the great heart of the hills is torn open for the gold, or coal, or iron to be found there; before the primitive plough, buffalo, and half-dressed native give way to the latest type of steam or electric apparatus for farming; before the picturesque girls pounding rice in wooden mortars step aside for noisy mills; before the electric light frightens away the tropic stars, and dims the lantern hanging from the gable of every nipa shack; before banking houses do away with the cocoanut into which thrifty natives drop their money, coin by coin, through a slit in the top; before the sunlit stillness of these coast towns is marred by the jar and grind of factory machinery; before the child country is grown too old and too worldly-wise.
Easleby bought a copy of this issue as soon as he and Starmidge returned to town, and carefully blue-pencilled the cross-headed columns and the staring capitals above them.
And here are belvederes, perched on the verge of the hill, wherefrom the whole fair city, and the whole smooth bay speckled with fishing-sails no bigger than pin-heads, and the far, faint, high promontories reaching into the sea, are all visible in one delicious view blue-pencilled in a beauty of ghostly haze indescribable. Why should the trees be so lovely in Japan?
Sun and sky, and earth and rain; they alone may know know the secrets of these fairy-folk who, from their slyly-opened petals, watch us at our hurrying business of life... We, mere humans, can never know. With us it must suffice to sweeten our hearts with the memory of fragrant flowers." She was proud of that opening paragraph. But Ed Martin blue-pencilled it. "Short of space this week," he said.
One cablegram of three hundred words, sent by an American correspondent, after it had been blue-pencilled by the Greek censors in Salonika and Athens, and by the four allied censors, arrived at his London office consisting entirely of "ands" and "thes." So, if not from their censors, at least from the correspondents, the Allies were protected.
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