_Wherein Hereditary Greatness fails to Glitter Hidalgic_
In Mr. Sim Crittenden, the music-hall star, the adored comedian of
London’s masses, what remained of the old prize-fighting ostler of
Burford was severely disguised under the pose of the baritone god--the
maker of the horse-laugh of the multitude. But to the credit of the
tailor, be it said, it was impossible to cover all sign of the huge
shoulders, the great chest; and the gloves he wore only exaggerated the
weight of the hard-hitting hands.
Mr. Sim Crittenden, arrayed in an elaborately loud attempt to be
strikingly quiet in hue, and aspiring to the latest severity of mode,
to catch as it were the careful carelessness of the young blood at
the seaside, sat on a bench on Hampstead Heath beside the light and
befrilled figure of Miss Polly Whiffles, temporarily Ffolliott; she
drew patterns of embarrassment in the gravel whilst he held her in
earnest conversation.
“Now, look here, Polly,” said Sim Crittenden--“I’m a rough man.... I
know you are a lady and ought to marry a curate, and I’m no account,
and all that. But I think I can get it to you if you’ll be patient....
I’m on the music-halls, I’m makin’ eighty gold pieces every week. It’s
no good being modest about it, and I’m not--that’s God’s truth put
into the naked vernacular. It may sound vulgar, but it’s so.... Now,
ye know, I don’t know what to do with it--that’s the fact. I could buy
fancy rabbits or a talkin’ canary and all that--or I could chuck it
about on the turf at race-meetin’s--but unfortunately God did not make
me in the image of a jackass, and I’m not going against the works of
God. I’m modest.... I could start a girl and a brougham, but I’m tired
of prize-fighting.... Now, what I say is this: if I had your dainty
little person a-sittin’ at the end of my table every day, it might make
me look less of a blamey athlete and more of a man of fashion, see! Eh?”
The girl hesitated.
Mr. Sim Crittenden touched her arm anxiously:
“Besides, Whiffles isn’t much of a name; no woman could be called
Whiffles and remain virtuous.”
The girl smiled sadly:
“No, Sim--you don’t understand. I’ve sat as a model.”
“I’m not to be blamed for falling in love with a good figure, am I?”
said Mr. Sim Crittenden laconically.
She smiled away a tear:
“There’s the boy,” she said--“my Ponsonby has no father.”
Mr. Sim Crittenden pushed his hat back on his head:
“That’s all tommy nonsense,” said he. “If I ain’t strong enough to
be his father, good God, what’s the use of giving me eighty pounds
a week, eh?... What?... Born out o’ wedlock? Blame me, so was I....
Now, come--drop this nonsense; let me hug you well--though it is a
blamed nervous job with me always--you’re as delicate as a confounded
caramel--though I must say I like it when I get there--and----”
Now it so chanced that as the Honourable Rupert Greppel, strolling
hidalgic beside his nervous little aristocratic friend, Lord Monty
Askew, took a short cut down a dirty side-alley off Booksellers’
Row--Monty complaining the while that they should have allowed the
smells of so unusual a proceeding to come between them and their
nobility--Mr. Sim Crittenden came down the other end of the same
high-smelling by-way, his pretty Polly at his side, with intent to get
her some dinner at a restaurant he knew of, before the dusk grew to
darkness and he had to answer his call “to play the giddy goat for a
consideration” at one of those places called music-halls.
There were but few of its dirty inhabitants in the dirty street, when
Rupert Greppel took the wall of the pretty lady and her escort on the
narrow footway and put her out into the dirty gutter of the dirtier
street; but when Sim Crittenden, having dropped behind the girl,
following her to let the others pass the more easily, put himself
before the great man, and Rupert Greppel cried “Out of the way,
fellow!” and Sim Crittenden mocked him, the street began to fill.
It was a deadlock.
Mr. Sim Crittenden took off his hat:
“Sir,” said he--“I am in the illegitimate drama, wherein to bray like
an ass is the soul of comedy. I am a student of bad manners. Would you
mind doing it again?”
Rupert Greppel struck him with his cane.
Sim Crittenden hit him violently in the mouth, so that Rupert fell; and
as Rupert gathered himself and his dazed wits together, Sim Crittenden
took off his straw hat and his coat and handed them sadly to Polly,
and, expressing his muttered regret that he was making a beastly
scene and was to baptize his betrothal in claret, he squared his huge
shoulders for the fray.
Rupert Greppel arose and made an ugly rush at him, and after some
fencing, to allow of the crowd’s whimsical twitting of the big man,
Sim Crittenden gripped his lips tight and struck out, hitting the
hidalgic Rupert heavily on the jaw. Rupert answered the helm and sat
down--violently.
Sim Crittenden stooped over him:
“Look here, guv’nor,” said he, “this ain’t no match. It’s a comedy
scene for me, but it’s a nasty chunk of tragedy for you. You’d better
go home.”
Rupert Greppel slowly rose, his face was very pale, and, pulling
himself together, he went pell-mell, legs and arms, at the past-master
of the craft; and Sim Crittenden, seeing he was beyond argument,
punished him severely, then held him off with a couple of buffets in
the face, and struck him over the heart with a blow that would have
cracked a door.
Rupert’s heels clattered on the pavement, and he again sat down heavily.
“Take yer seats for Westminister Abbey,” said a wag; and there was
laughter.
Lord Montagu Askew now complained that Mr. Crittenden’s acts were
illegal and in bad taste.
Sim Crittenden walked up to the dandified figure of Monty Askew and
gave him a sounding slap on the side of the head that knocked his silk
hat into the gutter.
Monty went and picked up his hat amidst peals of laughter, and, holding
out one expostulant gloved hand, he wiped his bleeding nose on a fine
cambric handkerchief.
“You’re a most vulgar fellow,” he said--“a most vulgar fellow.”
The crowd cooed with merriment.
Crittenden went up to him and slapped his face with great strong hands.
Monty Askew sat down on a doorstep and wept bitterly:
“The injustice of it!” he sobbed--“the injustice of it!”
Thus Montagu Askew, blaming the high gods. Thus, as always, dragging
the innocent into his quarrels.
As Sim Crittenden walked into the lamp-lit dusk with Polly, he said,
punching the palm of his left with the great fist of the right:
“I’m so happy, Polly, old girl--I have been dying to hit something all
this afternoon.”