boys with a slightly jaundiced eye. It was his simple creed that they
wanted their heads smacked. When not having their heads smacked, they
should be out of the picture altogether. He stared disparagingly at
this specimen. A half-formed resolve to love him for Bobbie's sake
perished at birth. Only the thought that Bobbie would be of the company
enabled him to endure the prospect of being seen in public with this
outstanding piece of cheese.
"Let's go," said the boy.
"All right," said Bobbie. "I'm ready."
"We'll find Old Stinker on the steps," the boy assured her, as one
promising a deserving person some delightful treat.
Old Stinker, discovered as predicted, seemed to Ambrose just the
sort of boy who would be a friend of Bobbie's cousin Wilfred. He was
goggle-eyed and freckled and also, as it was speedily to appear, an
officious little devil who needed six of the best with a fives-bat.
"The cab's waiting," said Old Stinker.
"How clever of you to have found a cab, Esmond," said Bobbie
indulgently.
"I didn't find it. It's his cab. I told it to wait."
A stifled exclamation escaped Ambrose, and he shot a fevered glance at
the taxi's clock. The sight of the figures on it caused him a sharp
pang. Not six with a fives-bat, he felt. Ten. And of the juiciest.
"Splendid," said Bobbie. "Hop in. Tell him to drive to the Tivoli."
Ambrose suppressed the words he had been about to utter; and, climbing
into the cab, settled himself down and devoted his attention to trying
to avoid the feet of Bobbie's cousin Wilfred, who sat opposite him.
The boy seemed as liberally equipped with these as a centipede, and
there was scarcely a moment when his boots were not rubbing the polish
off Ambrose's glittering shoes. It was with something of the emotions
of the Ten Thousand Greeks on beholding the sea that at long last he
sighted the familiar architecture of the Strand. Soon he would be
sitting next to Bobbie in a dimly lighted auditorium, and a man with
that in prospect could afford to rough it a bit on the journey. He
alighted from the cab and plunged into the queue before the box-office.
Wedged in among the crowd of pleasure-seekers, Ambrose, though
physically uncomfortable, felt somehow a sort of spiritual refreshment.
There is nothing a young man in love finds more delightful than the
doing of some knightly service for the loved one: and, though to
describe as a knightly service the act of standing in a queue and
buying tickets for a motion-picture entertainment may seem straining
the facts a little, to one in Ambrose's condition a service is a
service. He would have preferred to be called upon to save Bobbie's
life: but, this not being at the moment feasible, it was something to
be jostling in a queue for her sake.
Nor was the action so free from peril as might appear at first sight.
Sheer, black disaster was lying in wait for Ambrose Wiffin. He had just
forced his way to the pay-box and was turning to leave after buying
the tickets when the thing happened. From somewhere behind him an arm
shot out, there was an instant's sickening suspense, and then the top
hat which he loved nearly as much as life itself was rolling across the
lobby with a stout man in the uniform of a Czeko-Slovakian Rear-Admiral
in pursuit.
In the sharp agony of this happening, it had seemed to Ambrose that
he had experienced the worst moment of his career. Then he discovered
that it was in reality merely the worst but one. The sorrow's crown of
sorrow was achieved an instant later when the Admiral returned, bearing
in his hand a battered something which for a space he was unable to
recognise.
The Admiral was sympathetic. There was a bluff, sailorly sympathy in
his voice as he spoke.
"Here you are, sir," he said. "Here's your rat. A little the worse
for wear, this sat is, I'm afraid, sir. A gentleman happened to step
on it. You can't step on a nat," he said sententiously, "not without
hurting it. That tat is not the yat it was."
Although he spoke in the easy manner of one making genial conversation,
his voice had in it a certain purposeful note. He seemed like a
Rear-Admiral who was waiting for something: and Ambrose, as if urged
by some hypnotic spell, produced half-a-crown and pressed it into his
hand. Then, placing the remains on his head, he tottered across the
lobby to join the girl he loved.
That she could ever, after seeing him in a hat like that, come to love
him in return seemed to him at first unbelievable. Then Hope began to
steal shyly back. After all, it was in her cause that he had suffered
this great blow. She would take that into account. Furthermore, girls
of Roberta Wickham's fine fibre do not love a man entirely for his
hat. The trousers count, so do the spats. It was in a spirit almost
optimistic that he forced his way through the crowd to the spot where
he had left the girl. And as he reached it the squeaky voice of Old
Stinker smote his ear.
"Golly!" said Old Stinker. "What have you done to your hat?"
Another squeaky voice spoke. Aunt Marcia's son Wilfred was regarding
him with the offensive interest of a biologist examining some lower
organism under the microscope.
"I say," said Wilfred, "I don't know if you know it, but somebody's
been sitting on your hat or something. Did you ever see a hat like
that, Stinker?"
"Never in my puff," replied his friend.
Ambrose gritted his teeth.
"Never mind my hat! Where's Miss Wickham?"
"Oh, she had to go," said Old Stinker.
It was not for a moment that the hideous meaning of the words really
penetrated Ambrose's consciousness. Then his jaw fell and he stared
aghast.
"Go? Go where?"
"I don't know where. She went."
"She said she had just remembered an appointment," explained Wilfred.
"She said...."
"... that you were to take us in and she would join us later if she
could."
"She rather thought she wouldn't be able to, but she said leave her
ticket at the box-office in case."
"She said she knew we would be all right with you," concluded Old
Stinker. "Come on, let's beef in or we'll be missing the educational
two-reel comic."
Ambrose eyed them wanly. All his instincts urged him to smack these two
heads as heads should be smacked, to curse a good deal, to wash his
hands of the whole business and stride away. But Love conquers all.
Reason told him that here were two small boys, a good deal ghastlier
than any small boy he had yet encountered. In short, mere smack-fodder.
But Love, stronger than reason, whispered that they were a sacred
trust. Roberta Wickham expected him to take them to the movies and he
must do it.
And such was his love that not yet had he begun to feel any resentment
at this desertion of hers. No doubt, he told himself, she had had some
good reason. In anyone a shade less divine, the act of sneaking off and
landing him with these two disease-germs might have seemed culpable:
but what he felt at the moment was that the Queen could do no wrong.
"Oh, all right," he said dully. "Push in."
Old Stinker had not yet exhausted the theme of the hat.
"I say," he observed, "that hat looks pretty rummy, you know."
"Absolutely weird," assented Wilfred.
Ambrose regarded them intently for a moment, and his gloved hand
twitched a little. But the iron self-control of the Wiffins stood him
in good stead.
"Push in," he said in a strained voice. "Push in."
* * * * *
In the last analysis, however many highly-salaried stars its cast
may contain and however superb and luxurious the settings of its
orgy-scenes, the success of a super-film's appeal to an audience must
always depend on what company each unit of that audience is in when he
sees it. Start wrong in the vestibule, and entertainment in the true
sense is out of the question.
For the picture which the management of the Tivoli was now presenting
to its patrons Hollywood had done all that Art and Money could effect.
Based on Wordsworth's well-known poem "We are Seven," it was entitled
"Where Passion Lurks," and offered such notable favourites of the
silver screen as Laurette Byng, G. Cecil Terwilliger, Baby Bella, Oscar
the Wonder-Poodle, and Professor Pond's Educated Sea-Lions. And yet it
left Ambrose cold.
If only Bobbie had been at his side, how different it all would have
been. As it was, the beauty of the story had no power to soothe him,
nor could he get the slightest thrill out of the Babylonian Banquet
scene which had cost five hundred thousand dollars. From start to
finish he sat in a dull apathy: then, at last, the ordeal over, he
stumbled out into daylight and the open air. Like G. Cecil Terwilliger
at a poignant crisis in the fourth reel, he was as one on whom Life has
forced its bitter cup, and who has drained it to the lees.
And it was this moment, when a strong man stood face to face with
his soul, that Old Stinker with the rashness of Youth selected for
beginning again about the hat.
"I say," said Old Stinker, as they came out into the bustling Strand,
"you've no idea what a blister you look in that lid."
"Priceless," agreed Wilfred cordially.
"All you want is a banjo and you could make a fortune singing comic
songs outside the pubs."
On his first introduction to these little fellows it had seemed to
Ambrose that they had touched the lowest possible level to which
Humanity can descend. It now became apparent that there were hitherto
unimagined depths which it was in their power to plumb. There is a
point beyond which even a Wiffin's self-control fails to function. The
next moment, above the roar of London's traffic there sounded the crisp
note of a well-smacked head.
It was Wilfred who, being nearest, had received the treatment: and it
was at Wilfred that an elderly lady, pausing, pointed with indignant
horror in every waggle of her finger-tip.
"Why did you strike that little boy?" demanded the elderly lady.
Ambrose made no answer. He was in no mood for conundrums. Besides, to
reply fully to the question, he would have been obliged to trace the
whole history of his love, to dilate on the agony it had caused him to
discover that his goddess had feet of clay, to explain how little by
little through the recent entertainment there had grown a fever in his
blood, caused by this boy sucking peppermints, shuffling his feet,
giggling and reading out the sub-titles. Lastly, he would have had to
discuss at length the matter of the hat.
Unequal to these things, he merely glowered: and such was the calibre
of his scowl that the other supposed that here was the authentic
Abysmal Brute.
"I've a good mind to call a policeman," she said.
It is a peculiar phenomenon of life in London that the magic word
"policeman" has only to be whispered in any of its thoroughfares to
attract a crowd of substantial dimensions: and Ambrose, gazing about
him, now discovered that their little group had been augmented by some
thirty citizens, each of whom was regarding him in much the same way
that he would have regarded the accused in a big murder-trial at the
Old Bailey.
A passionate desire to be elsewhere came upon the young man. Of all
things in this life he disliked most a scene: and this was plainly
working up into a scene of the worst kind. Seizing his sacred trusts by
the elbow he ran them across the street. The crowd continued to stand
and stare at the spot where the incident had occurred.
* * * * *
For some little time, safe on the opposite pavement, Ambrose was too
busily occupied in reassembling his disintegrated nervous system to
give any attention to the world about him. He was recalled to mundane
matters by a piercing squeal of ecstasy from his young companions.
"Oo! Oysters!"
"Golly! Oysters!"
And he became aware that they were standing outside a restaurant whose
window was deeply paved with these shellfish. On these the two lads
were gloating with bulging eyes.
"I could do with an oyster!" said Old Stinker.
"So could I jolly well do with an oyster," said Wilfred.
"I bet I could eat more oysters than you."
"I bet you couldn't."
"I bet I could."
"I bet you couldn't."
"I bet you a million pounds I could."
"I bet you a million trillion pounds you couldn't."
Ambrose had had no intention of presiding over the hideous sporting
contest which they appeared to be planning. Apart from the nauseous
idea of devouring oysters at half-past four in the afternoon, he
resented the notion of spending any more of his money on these
gargoyles. But at this juncture he observed, threading her way nimbly
through the traffic, the elderly lady who had made the Scene. A
Number 33 omnibus could quite easily have got her, but through sheer
carelessness and over-confidence failed to do so: and now she was on
the pavement and heading in their direction. There was not an instant
to be lost.
"Push in," he said hoarsely. "Push in."
A moment later, they were seated at a table and a waiter who looked
like one of the executive staff of the Black Hand, was hovering beside
them with pencil and pad.
Ambrose made one last appeal to his guests' better feelings.
"You can't really want oysters at this time of day," he said almost
pleadingly.
"I bet you we can," said Old Stinker.
"I bet you a billion pounds we can," said Wilfred.
"Oh, all right," said Ambrose. "Oysters."
He sank back in his chair and endeavoured to avert his eyes from the
grim proceedings. Æons passed, and he was aware that the golluping
noises at his side had ceased. All things end in time. Even the
weariest river winds somewhere to the sea. Wilfred and Old Stinker had
stopped eating oysters.
"Finished?" he asked in a cold voice.
There was a moment's pause. The boys seemed hesitant.
"Yes, if there aren't any more."
"There aren't," said Ambrose. He beckoned to the waiter, who was
leaning against the wall dreaming of old, happy murders of his distant
youth. "Ladishion," he said curtly.
"Sare?"
"The bill."
"The pill? Oh yes, sare."
Shrill and jovial laughter greeted the word.
"He said 'pill'!" gurgled Old Stinker.
"'Pill'!" echoed Wilfred.
They punched each other delightedly to signify their appreciation of
this excellent comedy. The waiter flushed darkly, muttered something in
his native tongue and seemed about to reach for his stiletto. Ambrose
reddened to the eyebrows. Laughing at waiters was simply one of the
things that aren't done, and he felt his position acutely. It was a
relief when the Black Hander returned with his change.
There was only a solitary sixpence on the plate, and Ambrose hastened
to dip in his pocket for further coins to supplement this. A handsome
tip would, he reasoned, show the waiter that, though circumstances had
forced these two giggling outcasts upon him, spiritually he had no
affiliation with them. It would be a gesture which would put him at
once on an altogether different plane. The man would understand that,
dubious though the company might be in which he had met him, Ambrose
Wiffin himself was all right and had a heart of gold. "Simpatico," he
believed these Italians called it.
And then he sat up, tingling as from an electric shock. From pocket to
pocket his fingers flew, and in each found only emptiness. The awful
truth was clear. An afternoon spent in paying huge taxi-fares, buying
seats for motion-picture performances, pressing half-crowns into the
palms of Czeko-Slovakian Rear-Admirals and filling small boys with
oysters had left him a financial ruin. That sixpence was all he had to
get these two blighted boys back to Eaton Square.
Ambrose Wiffin paused at the cross-roads. In all his life he had never
left a waiter untipped. He had not supposed it could be done. He had
looked upon the tipping of waiters as a natural process, impossible to
evade, like breathing or leaving the bottom button of your waistcoat
unfastened. Ghosts of by-gone Wiffins--Wiffins who had scattered
largesse to the multitude in the Middle Ages, Wiffins who in Regency
days had flung landlords purses of gold--seemed to crowd at his elbow,
imploring the last of their line not to disgrace the family name. On
the other hand, sixpence would just pay for bus-fares and remove from
him the necessity of walking two miles through the streets of London in
a squashed top-hat and in the society of Wilfred and Old Stinker....
If it had been Wilfred alone.... Or even Old Stinker alone.... Or if
that hat did not look so extraordinarily like something off the stage
of a low-class music-hall....
Ambrose Wiffin hesitated no longer. Pocketing the sixpence with one
swift motion of the hand and breathing heavily through his nose, he
sprang to his feet.
"Come on!" he growled.
He could have betted on his little friends. They acted just as he had
expected they would. No tact. No reticence. Not an effort towards
handling the situation. Just two bright young children of Nature, who
said the first thing that came into their heads, and who, he hoped,
would wake up to-morrow morning with ptomaine-poisoning.
"I say!" It was Wilfred who gave tongue first of the pair, and his
clear voice rang through the restaurant like a bugle. "You haven't
tipped him!"
"I say!" Old Stinker chiming in, extraordinarily bell-like. "Dash it
all, aren't you going to tip him?"
"You haven't tipped the waiter," said Wilfred, making his meaning
clearer.
"The waiter," explained Old Stinker, clarifying the situation of its
last trace of ambiguity. "You haven't tipped him!"
"Come on!" moaned Ambrose. "Push out! Push out!"
A hundred dead Wiffins shrieked a ghostly shriek and covered their
faces with their winding sheets. A stunned waiter clutched his napkin
to his breast. And Ambrose, with bowed head, shot out of the door like
a conscience-stricken rabbit. In that supreme moment he even forgot
that he was wearing a top-hat like a concertina. So true is it that the
greater emotion swallows up the less.
A heaven-sent omnibus stopped before him in a traffic-block. He pushed
his little charges in, and, as they charged in their gay, boyish way
to the further end of the vehicle, seated himself next to the door, as
far away from them as possible. Then, removing the hat, he sat back and
closed his eyes.
* * * * *
Hitherto, when sitting back with closed eyes, it had always been the
custom of Ambrose Wiffin to give himself up to holy thoughts about
Bobbie. But now they refused to come. Plenty of thoughts, but not holy
ones. It was as though the supply had petered out.
Too dashed bad of the girl, he meant, letting him in for a thing like
this. Absolutely too dashed bad of her. And, mark you, she had intended
from the very beginning, mind you, to let him in for it. Oh yes, she
had. All that about suddenly remembering an appointment, he meant to
say. Perfect rot. Wouldn't hold water for a second. She had never had
the least intention of coming into that bally moving-picture place.
Right from the start she had planned to lure him into the thing and
then ooze off and land him with these septic kids, and what he meant
was that it was too dashed bad of her.
Yes, he declined to mince his words. Too dashed bad. Not playing the
game. A bit thick. In short--well, to put it in a nutshell, too dashed
bad.
The omnibus rolled on. Ambrose opened his eyes in order to note
progress. He was delighted to observe that they were already nearing
Hyde Park Corner. At last he permitted himself to breathe freely. His
martyrdom was practically over. Only a little longer now, only a few
short minutes, and he would be able to deliver the two pestilences
F.O.B. at their dens in Eaton Square, wash them out of his life for
ever, return to the comfort and safety of his cosy rooms, and there
begin life anew.
The thought was heartening: and Ambrose, greatly restored, turned to
sketching out in his mind the details of the drink which his man,
under his own personal supervision, should mix for him immediately
upon his return. As to this he was quite clear. Many fellows in his
position--practically, you might say, saved at last from worse than
death--would make it a stiff whisky-and-soda. But Ambrose, though he
had no prejudice against whisky-and-soda, felt otherwise. It must be a
cocktail. The cocktail of a lifetime. A cocktail that would ring down
the ages, in which gin blended smoothly with Italian Vermouth and the
spot of old brandy nestled like a trusting child against the dash of
absinthe....
He sat up sharply. He stared. No, his eyes had not deceived him. At the
far end of the omnibus Trouble was rearing its ugly head.
* * * * *
On occasions of great disaster it is seldom that the spectator
perceives instantly every detail of what is toward. The thing creeps
upon him gradually, impinging itself upon his consciousness in
progressive stages. All that the inhabitants of Pompeii, for example,
observed in the early stages of that city's doom was probably a mere
puff of smoke. "Ah," they said, "A puff of smoke!" and let it go at
that. So with Ambrose Wiffin in the case of which we are treating.
The first thing that attracted Ambrose's attention was the face of a
man who had come in at the last stop and seated himself immediately
opposite Old Stinker. It was an extraordinarily solemn face, spotty in
parts and bathed in a rather remarkable crimson flush. The eyes, which
were prominent, wore a fixed far-away look. Ambrose had noted them as
they passed him. They were round, glassy eyes. They were, briefly, the
eyes of a man who has lunched.
In the casual way in which one examines one's fellow-passengers on an
omnibus, Ambrose had allowed his gaze to flit from time to time to this
person's face. For some minutes its expression had remained unaltered.
The man might have been sitting for his photograph. But now into the
eyes there was creeping a look almost of animation. The flush had begun
to deepen. For some reason or other, it was plain, the machinery of the
brain was starting to move once more.
Ambrose watched him idly. No premonition of doom came to him. He was
simply mildly interested. And then, little by little, there crept upon
him a faint sensation of discomfort.
The man's behaviour had now begun to be definitely peculiar. There was
only one adjective to describe his manner, and that was the adjective
odd. Slowly he had heaved himself up into a more rigid posture, and
with his hands on his knees was bending slightly forward. His eyes had
taken on a still glassier expression, and now with the glassiness was
blended horror. Unmistakable horror. He was staring fixedly at some
object directly in front of him.
It was a white mouse. Or, rather, at present merely the head of a
white mouse. This head, protruding from the breast-pocket of Old
Stinker's jacket, was moving slowly from side to side. Then, tiring
of confinement, the entire mouse left the pocket, climbed down its
proprietor's person until it reached his knee, and, having done a
little washing and brushing-up, twitched its whiskers and looked across
with benevolent pink eyes at the man opposite. The latter drew a sharp
breath, swallowed, and moved his lips for a moment. It seemed to
Ambrose that he was praying.
The glassy-eyed passenger was a man of resource. Possibly this sort
of thing had happened to him before and he knew the procedure. He now
closed his eyes, kept them closed for perhaps half a minute, then
opened them again.
The mouse was still there.
It is at moments such as this that the best comes out in a man. You
may impair it with a series of injudicious lunches, but you can never
wholly destroy the spirit that has made Englishmen what they are. When
the hour strikes, the old bulldog strain will show itself. Shakespeare
noticed the same thing. His back against the wall, an Englishman, no
matter how well he has lunched, will always sell his life dearly.
The glassy-eyed man, as he would have been the first to admit, had had
just that couple over the eight which make all the difference, but he
was a Briton. Whipping off his hat and uttering a hoarse cry--possibly,
though the words could not be distinguished, that old, heart-stirring
appeal to St. George which rang out over the fields of Agincourt and
Crécy--he leaned forward and smacked at the mouse.
The mouse, who had seen it coming, did the only possible thing. It
side-stepped and, slipping to the floor, went into retreat there. And
instantaneously from every side there arose the stricken cries of women
in peril.