"We must make a stand against this," he continued. "That's for water to
the 29th September. You've no right to pay it in June."
I replied to the effect that water-rates had to be paid, and that it
seemed to me immaterial whether they were paid in June or September.
"That's not it," he answered, "it's the principle of the thing. Why
should you pay for water you have never had? What right have they to
bully you into paying what you don't owe?"
He was a fluent talker, and I was ass enough to listen to him. By the
end of half an hour he had persuaded me that the question was bound up
with the inalienable rights of man, and that if I paid that fourteen and
tenpence in June instead of in September, I should be unworthy of the
privileges my forefathers had fought and died to bestow upon me.
He told me the company had not a leg to stand upon, and at his
instigation I sat down and wrote an insulting letter to the chairman.
The secretary replied that, having regard to the attitude I had taken up,
it would be incumbent upon themselves to treat it as a test case, and
presumed that my solicitors would accept service on my behalf.
When I showed him this letter he was delighted.
"You leave it to me," he said, pocketing the correspondence, "and we'll
teach them a lesson."
I left it to him. My only excuse is that at the time I was immersed in
the writing of what in those days was termed a comedy-drama. The little
sense I possessed must, I suppose, have been absorbed by the play.
The magistrate's decision somewhat damped my ardour, but only inflamed
his zeal. Magistrates, he said, were muddle-headed old fogies. This was
a matter for a judge.
The judge was a kindly old gentleman, and said that bearing in mind the
unsatisfactory wording of the sub-clause, he did not think he could allow
the company their costs, so that, all told, I got off for something under
fifty pounds, inclusive of the original fourteen and tenpence.
Afterwards our friendship waned, but living as we did in the same
outlying suburb, I was bound to see a good deal of him; and to hear more.
At parties of all kinds he was particularly prominent, and on such
occasions, being in his most good-natured mood, was most to be dreaded.
No human being worked harder for the enjoyment of others, or produced
more universal wretchedness.
One Christmas afternoon, calling upon a friend, I found some fourteen or
fifteen elderly ladies and gentlemen trotting solemnly round a row of
chairs in the centre of the drawing-room while Poppleton played the
piano. Every now and then Poppleton would suddenly cease, and everyone
would drop wearily into the nearest chair, evidently glad of a rest; all
but one, who would thereupon creep quietly away, followed by the envying
looks of those left behind. I stood by the door watching the weird
scene. Presently an escaped player came towards me, and I enquired of
him what the ceremony was supposed to signify.
"Don't ask me," he answered grumpily. "Some of Poppleton's damned
tomfoolery." Then he added savagely, "We've got to play forfeits after
this."
The servant was still waiting a favourable opportunity to announce me. I
gave her a shilling not to, and got away unperceived.
After a satisfactory dinner, he would suggest an impromptu dance, and
want you to roll up mats, or help him move the piano to the other end of
the room.
He knew enough round games to have started a small purgatory of his own.
Just as you were in the middle of an interesting discussion, or a
delightful _tete-a-tete_ with a pretty woman, he would swoop down upon
you with: "Come along, we're going to play literary consequences," and
dragging you to the table, and putting a piece of paper and a pencil
before you, would tell you to write a description of your favourite
heroine in fiction, and would see that you did it.
He never spared himself. It was always he who would volunteer to escort
the old ladies to the station, and who would never leave them until he
had seen them safely into the wrong train. He it was who would play
"wild beasts" with the children, and frighten them into fits that would
last all night.
So far as intention went, he was the kindest man alive. He never visited
poor sick persons without taking with him in his pocket some little
delicacy calculated to disagree with them and make them worse. He
arranged yachting excursions for bad sailors, entirely at his own
expense, and seemed to regard their subsequent agonies as ingratitude.
He loved to manage a wedding. Once he planned matters so that the bride
arrived at the altar three-quarters of an hour before the groom, which
led to unpleasantness upon a day that should have been filled only with
joy, and once he forgot the clergyman. But he was always ready to admit
when he made a mistake.
At funerals, also, he was to the fore, pointing out to the grief-stricken
relatives how much better it was for all concerned that the corpse was
dead, and expressing a pious hope that they would soon join it.
The chiefest delight of his life, however, was to be mixed up in other
people's domestic quarrels. No domestic quarrel for miles round was
complete without him. He generally came in as mediator, and finished as
leading witness for the appellant.
As a journalist or politician his wonderful grasp of other people's
business would have won for him esteem. The error he made was working it
out in practice.