THE weeks had hurried rapidly, more rapidly than usual, for they were
pressed with business. The trial at the Central Criminal Court was over,
after a hearing that struck Erb as being surprisingly brief, in view of
the importance of the case; immediately on the conclusion of the
evidence, and the speeches of counsel, the Recorder, from his
scarlet-cushioned seat, where he had a robed Alderman and a knee-breeched
Under Sheriff for company, had fined him, courteously and pleasantly, the
sum of fifty pounds, or in default two months' imprisonment. The
shortness of the trial rendered an organised demonstration of little
value in that the men arrived outside the Old Bailey some three hours
after the case had been disposed of. Now there is nothing more galling
to the Londoner than to be disappointed in his anticipations of a show,
and it had required all Erb's tact and more than his usual amiability to
appease them.
Erb had expressed a desire to go to prison to purge the offence (a short
purgatory in jail was no bad prelude to political life), but the men
would not hear of this: they could not manage without him, he was
indispensable, they must have someone to look after the society, there
was none to take his place, and he had given up this idea with less of
reluctance because a disquieting tone had come into the letters of
Rosalind from Worthing. But, determined to do something heroic, he
insisted that his household goods in Page's Walk should be sold up, and a
scene thus contrived that should attract public attention. Wherefore
there was an auction room in New Kent Road, to which all the furniture
(with the single exception of the bedding) had been removed "For
Convenience of Sale," and here were as many of the railway carmen of
London as could spare themselves conveniently from their duties, and here
also were a few alert-eyed youths with note books and sharpened pencils
eager to record some incident so amusing that not even a sub-editor's
pencil should venture to delete. A fusty smell of cocoanut wrappings in
the long room, bran new furniture gave an odour of polish, retained and
preserved because there was no ventilation except that afforded by the
entrance from the street; a good-tempered auctioneer at the end of the
room, high up and leaning on a rostrum, with a flaring, whistling, naked
gas jet that compelled attention, because every now and then it exhibited
a humorous desire to singe the top of the auctioneer's shining silk hat.
Erb stood by the wall, rather proud of being in the position of a martyr,
his men formed a body-guard around him. Close up by the auctioneer stood
half a dozen decrepit old men, the _habitues_ of the place, ready to
snatch up a bargain, to become the intermediaries between buyers and
auctioneer, to knock out a sale, or, in short, to do anything and
everything except serious labour.
"We have here," said the auctioneer, leaning over his high desk and
pointing with his hammer, "a very fine lot--show No. 13, George, and
don't be all day about it--a very fine lot, consisting of a pianoforte.
Music hath charms, gentlemen, as you know, to soothe the savage breast,
and it's always a good investment from that point of view alone. George,
jest run over the keys to show these gentlemen what a first-class
musician you are." The attendant, first rubbing the palm of his hand on
his green baize apron, stroked the keys from first note to last.
"There!" cried the auctioneer, "there's execution for you! Many a man's
been 'anged for less. Now then, what shall we say for this magnificent
instrument? Don't all speak at once. Did you say twenty pounds,
mister?" This to one of the regulars at the side.
"Not being a blank fool," replied the musty old gentleman, "I did not say
twen'y pounds."
"Well! won't anyone say twenty pounds jest for a start? Come now.
You've all learnt some language or other."
"Four and six," said one of the carmen chaffingly.
"No, no!" said the auctioneer rather coldly. "I enjoy a joke as well as
anyone, but 'pon my word--"
"Five bob!"
"I'm very good tempered," went on the auctioneer, getting red in the
face, "and I can stand as much as most men. But--"
"Five and six!"
"Well," with resignation, "have your own way about it. Five and six is
offered; five and six in two places; six shillings. I thank you, sir!
Who'll say 'alf a sov', eh? Seven shillings! Very well then. But do
let's go on a shilling at a time; I can't take sixpenny advances. You
know the old story of the girl--"
Erb, looking round with a determined smile on his features, saw Spanswick
entering from the pavement; with him a gentleman whose eyes were watery
and whose gait was uncertain. Spanswick gave a casual nod to the clump
of men, and beckoned to Erb in such an authoritative way that Erb crossed
the room when the pianoforte--poor Louisa's pianoforte, that she would
allow no one to play--had been knocked down for twenty-five shillings.
The auctioneer ordered his man to show the horsehair sofa and chairs.
"My friend Doubleday," said Spanswick, introducing his companion. Mr.
Doubleday removed his silk hat with care, for the brims seemed rather
weak, and in a husky voice declared himself honoured. "One of the
cleverest men in South London," whispered Spanswick to Erb, "only he
won't recognise the fact. Educated, too!"
"This is a noble action of yours, sir," said Mr. Doubleday, trying to
clear his voice. "Reflects the highest credit on what I may venture to
term the manhood of South London." Spanswick looked at Erb proudly, as
though to say, "He can talk, can't he?" "The newspapers will ring with
your praises, sir. Capital will sneak away, abashed and ashamed in the
presence of such a brilliant example of self-sacrifice and whole-hearted
devotion. I suppose you haven't got such a thing as a pipe full of
tobacco about you? I've come out without my pouch."
"Always comes out without his pouch," remarked Spanswick admiringly.
"No, no!" said Mr. Doubleday, refusing with something of haughtiness
Erb's further offer. "I have a match, thank you. I have no desire to be
indebted for anything," he drew hard at his pipe, "for anything which I
myself possess."
"Independent old beggar, ain't he?" whispered Spanswick.
"My friend here gives me to understand--and I have no doubt that his
information is per-fectly correct--that you have adopted this attitude
because a female relative--a sister, if I mistake not--"
"A sister," admitted Erb.
"Has suffered grievously. Assuming that to be the case, I can only say
that I am proud to grasp your hand, sir, and that I desire your
acquaintance."
"It ain't many that he'd say that to," whispered Spanswick.
"I want all the friends I've got just now," said Erb.
"The lines of Longfellow," said Mr. Doubleday condescendingly, "spring
readily to one's mind." The hammer of the auctioneer went down with a
startling crack; something that he said made the group of men laugh, and
Erb was called by them to hear it. "We can make our lives sublime, and
um-tee, umpty, umpty, umpty--footsteps on the sands of time," quoted Mr.
Doubleday.
"I must hop off," said Spanswick. "Hasn't he got a marvellous memory?"
"You'll take your friend with you?" said Erb.
"No," said Spanswick, rather awkwardly, "I'll leave him. Fancy he's got
something to say to you."
When the sale was over, it occurred to Erb that he had not eaten that
day, and as the men had to hurry off to their duties, he would have been
left alone but for Mr. Doubleday's presence. Erb was glad to leave the
gas-scented auction rooms, and would have been content with no other
company but his own; he had been acting in a hot, tempestuous way of
late, and he was anxious, now that this business was over, to review it
all calmly. Anxious, also, think of Louisa, and-- But Mr. Doubleday
stuck to him, and when Erb entered the Enterprise Dining Rooms, in New
Kent Road, Doubleday followed him to the pew, and sat down opposite. Erb
gave his order to the girl, who rested the palms of her red hands on the
table; when she turned to the other, Doubleday said, assuming the manner
of a complaisant guest, that he would have the same.
"Fate," he said, hanging the deplorable silk hat on a wooden peg, "Fate
has thrown us together, sir, in a most remarkable way."
"Thought it was Spanswick," said Erb.
"Most inscrutable, the workings of Providence. Stagger even me at
times."
"You don't mean that?" said Erb.
"Positive truth!" declared Mr. Doubleday. "Now this meeting with you,
for instance. If it had been planned it couldn't have happened more
fortunately. Because I have information to give you of the very highest
possible value. It means, my dear sir, an absolute epoch-making event in
your life, and-- Ah! roast beef and Yorkshire pudding! Reminds me of my
young days. I recollect when I was a bit of a boy--"
Mr. Doubleday, with heavy jest and leaden-footed reminiscence, took the
duty of conversation upon himself, evidently feeling that he was a
bright, diverting companion, one who just for his exceptional powers as a
_raconteur_ well deserved to be asked out to dine. His stories were so
long, and the telling of them so complicated, that Erb was able to allow
his mind to concentrate itself on his own affairs. He had taken a
definite, a desperate step; the reaction was setting in, and he began to
wonder whether he had been precisely right. Something to feel that
whatever he did, right or wrong, he had the solid, obstinate, unreasoning
support of the men; one could, of course, count upon this; the greater
the misfortune he encountered, the more faithful and obedient would they
become. There could be no doubt about that. Besides, they had no one
else to guide them. He was, as they had admitted, the one, the necessary
man. Any signs of rebellion in the past he had always been able to quell
with very little trouble; as a last resource, there was always the threat
of resignation. So _that_ was satisfactory enough. Less grateful to
remember that the revenge he had tried to take on the Neckinger Road firm
had done his sister's health no good whatever. He would run down to
Worthing soon to see her and to cheer her.
"Joking apart," said Mr. Doubleday, snapping his finger and thumb to
secure the attention of the waitress, "let's come to business. (Cabinet
pudding, my dear! I daresay my genial host will take the same.) You
must understand, please, that what I am about to submit to you is, as we
say in the law, entirely without prejudice."
"Are you a lawyer?"
"I used to be in a secondhand bookseller's. Now, I suppose I'm right in
assuming that you could, if necessary, place your hands on a certain sum
of money?"
"I could."
"About how much shall we say?" asked Mr. Doubleday engagingly.
Erb counted the money in his pocket.
"Twelve shillings and ninepence."
"I appreciate the humour of that remark," said Mr. Doubleday in his husky
voice, "but I want to talk business. I'm a plain, straightforward man,
and what I want to know is simply this. Is there a five-pound note
flying about?"
"If there was," said Erb, "I should catch it."
"There's the benefit money," said the other, looking at himself curiously
in the hollow of a spoon, "the benefit money to borrow from, and Yes,
yes! I know what you are going to say and I quite agree with you. I
think you're most decidedly in the right. Far be it from me to suggest
for a single moment--"
"I'm getting tired of you," interrupted Erb suddenly. "I wish you'd take
your hook and go away. Your face worries me, and your talk makes my head
ache."
"Then it's time I came to close quarters. Listen to me!" Mr. Doubleday
leaned his elbows on the table, and, bending forward, shielded his mouth
with his hand that words might not go astray. "This is the situation. A
man, a young man, takes up a certain high-minded attitude in regard to a
certain firm; gets hauled up for libel; gets fined. His society comes to
his rescue. Newspapers have paragraphs applauding him. So far, so good!
Fine thing to show up, as far as he can, dangerous trades. But he
forgets or he pretends to forget, doesn't matter which--that not so long
ago he, this same young man, went all over the country, making speeches
in favour of a syndicate that called itself something or other--"
"I don't ask your permission before I open my mouth," cried Erb heatedly.
"True, my lad, true! You can go further than that. You can say that you
didn't do so without being adequately bribed to do it."
"Bribed!" Erb rose at the table and clenched his fist.
"Keep cool!" said Mr. Doubleday, making a military tent of his two hands.
"There's no extra charge for sitting down."
"Let me know what you mean by saying that I've been bribed."
"I should have thought that you would have known the meaning of the term
by this time. B-r-i-b-e is a word meaning the sum accepted for doing
work that you had no business to do. We can easily verify it." He
snapped his fingers. "Got a dictionary, my dear?"
"To eat?" asked the waitress.
"A dictionary," he repeated with impatience.
"We've got an old London directory."
"Never mind about the exact definition of the word," said Erb steadily.
"Tell me at once what you mean by your accusation."
"Have you ever in all your life seen a cheque for twenty pounds?"
"Yes!"
"Made payable to yourself?"
"Yes!"
"And signed by--"
"Yes, yes, go on."
"Nothing more to say," remarked Mr. Doubleday. "There's an end of the
matter. Only it's rather a pretty circumstance altogether, don't you
think? This self-sacrificing chap who has allowed himself to be sold up
publicly as a protest against harmful trades, is the same man who earlier
in the year was speaking throughout the length and breadth of the land in
support of trade infinitely more harmful than the one carried on in
Neckinger Road. _And_," here Mr. Doubleday took down his elderly silk
hat and made elaborate pretence of smoothing the nap, "getting uncommonly
well paid for it, too. Pretty situation, isn't it?"
"There's a very good answer to the charge you bring against me," said
Erb, trying to keep his temper, "but there's no earthly reason why I
should give it. I'm not responsible to you; I _am_ responsible to my
society."
"Ah," cried Mr. Doubleday, putting his hat on jauntily, "glad you
recognise that."
"I _do_ recognise it."
"And having recognised it, you see that it would be very much to your
interest that the unfortunate transaction should be kept dark."
"Not at all!"
"In which case," here he stood up ready to go, and slapped his foot with
his bamboo cane, "in which case you'd better come, my lad, to this
place"--he placed a worn and travelled card with two addresses ruled out
and a third written in, "before six o'clock to-night. Before six
o'clock, mind. A minute past will be too late. And--er--bring that
five-pound note along with you."
He walked jauntily up the aisle of the dining rooms to the street door;
when the waitress flew after him, he whispered a few words and pointed
back at Erb with his cane.
"Is that right?" demanded the waitress breathlessly of Erb, "is that
right that you pay?"
"Looks like it!" replied Erb moodily.
The threat did good in one way in that it aroused all his fighting
instincts and that it diverted his mind from Worthing. Going down
Walworth Road to look at Rosalind's house, he rehearsed the expected
scene, striking the palm of one hand with the fist the other, and scoring
with great neatness over Spanswick and other opponents. Women at the
stalls stopped in their loud declaration of the admirable character of
their goods, to watch the excited young man as he went by, and remarked
to each other that he was evidently in love; an excuse that in their eyes
justified any and every sign of eccentric behaviour. On the way back
(after walking up and down near the garden of monumental statuary and
glancing shyly each time at her window), he met the Professor, and for
the sheer pleasure of talking of her engaged him in conversation. The
Professor deplored the fact that after you had given the best years of
your life to the education of an only child, she should go off to the
seaside for a holiday without so much as thinking for a moment of taking
you with her, and asked Erb whether he had half a crown about him in
exchange for two separate shillings and a sixpence. On Erb producing
this coin the Professor found, with many expressions of deep regret, that
he had left the smaller pieces in a waistcoat at home.
"But I shan't forget, my dear chap," said the Professor, raising his hand
for a stage clasp. "I am one of those who never permit a kindness to
escape from their memory. But I hate to be badgered. That ungrateful
young scamp Railton, for instance."
"Ah!"
"What have I not done, or rather what have I not promised to do, for
him."
"Daresay! But--"
"Engaged at one time to my accomplished daughter."
"But what about him?"
"I am not romancing," said the other impressively. "I am simply giving
you the downright, honest, blunt, straightforward truth when I tell you
that he wrote this morning asking me for two pounds on the plea that he
had become married at the beginning of the week to a publican's daughter
at Oldham."
"Did you send it?" asked Erb, with great cheerfulness.
"I wrote and I told him that if, as he said, he had in the past lent me
sums amounting in the aggregate to this total, why I could only say that
the fact had escaped my memory. I would, however, take an opportunity of
looking through my memoranda in order to see whether I had made any
record of such transactions. Could I say anything fairer?"
"And he's actually married?"
"There is a piece of what is termed wedding cake at home, awaiting my
daughter's return."
"Will it--will it upset her do you think?" asked Erb nervously.
"I shall warn her not to eat it," said the Professor.
Erb did an extraordinary thing. Delighted by the news which the
Professor had brought he set out upon a walk down through Camberwell into
Surrey, a walk that he determined should last until he was tired out, a
walk that had some vague advantage of going in the direction of Worthing.
He was not used to heroic physical exercise, but on this unique occasion
there seemed nothing else to do that would have been appropriate, and he
mingled with the evening tide of people receding from London, beating it
easily, and finally arriving beyond Dulwich, and well out into the
country, where the rare gas lamps were being lighted and a mist came like
a decorous veil and protected the face of the roadway modestly. Easier
to think here than in the hurry and turmoil and clatter of town. After
all, what did public life matter, what did the cause of labour or
anything else matter so long as one was personally happy? That had ever
been the aim of wise men; in future it should be his. There could always
come the superadded amusement of playing with lesser minds, directing
them and making them perform, exercising control in the manner of the
unseen director of a Punch and Judy show. Erb argued this in a quiet
road, with gesture and excitement; a sparrow hopped along for some
distance with him in a companionable way, twittering approval, and
hinting that if there should be such a thing in the corner of a pocket as
a few bread crumbs--
It was late when Erb returned by train from Croydon to South Bermondsey
station, and in the nearly empty rooms of Page's Walk he found Payne
awaiting him. Payne, with something more than his usual gravity of
countenance, seated on the one remaining chair and smoking an empty pipe
in a desolate, absent-minded way.
"Well," said Payne lugubriously, "you've done for yourself now."
"That so," remarked Erb. "What's the latest?"
"One of the worst crisisises," said Payne solemnly, and taking some
gloomy enjoyment in making the word as long and as important as possible,
"that ever you encountered in all your puff."
"I'm ready for it," said Erb.
"They've sacked you," said Payne.
"Is that all?"
"They've shown you the door. They've helped you downstairs with their
foot. They've kicked you out, old man."
"This a joke?" asked Erb.
"Never made a joke in me life," declared Payne, "and well you know it."
Erb went over to the window and rested on the window sill.
"Spanswick?" he asked briefly.
"Him," answered Payne, "and no other."
"And they settled it all without hearing my account of the case?"
"Old chum! there didn't seem to be no room for any other account. He'd
got chapter and verse for everything he said. All about a twenty pound
cheque, all about--"
"And it never occurred to this--this flock of sheep," shouted Erb
excitedly, "that I destroyed that cheque and never cashed it?"
"I don't think they understand much about cheques," said Payne. "The
fact that you took it was what impressed them."
Neither spoke for a few minutes.
"Who's going to take my place?"
"Friend of Spanswick's."
"Name Doubleday?"
"Name of Doubleday," said Payne affirmatively. "Clever sort of sweat, so
far as I could judge. What are you going to do about it, old man? Going
to organise, I trust. Open-air meeting, say."
"Did any of the others stick up for my side?"
"Only me!"
A pause again.
"Well, you're going to do something?"
"You've got another guess," said Erb.