I WAS pacing the Euston platform late one winter’s night, waiting for the
last train to Watford, when I noticed a man cursing an automatic machine.
Twice he shook his fist at it. I expected every moment to see him strike
it. Naturally curious, I drew near softly. I wanted to catch what he
was saying. However, he heard my approaching footsteps, and turned on
me. “Are you the man,” said he, “who was here just now?”
“Just where?” I replied. I had been pacing up and down the platform for
about five minutes.
“Why here, where we are standing,” he snapped out. “Where do you think
‘here’ is—over there?” He seemed irritable.
“I may have passed this spot in the course of my peregrinations, if that
is what you mean,” I replied. I spoke with studied politeness; my idea
was to rebuke his rudeness.
“I mean,” he answered, “are you the man that spoke to me, just a minute
ago?”
“I am not that man,” I said; “good-night.”
“Are you sure?” he persisted.
“One is not likely to forget talking to you,” I retorted.
His tone had been most offensive. “I beg your pardon,” he replied
grudgingly. “I thought you looked like the man who spoke to me a minute
or so ago.”
I felt mollified; he was the only other man on the platform, and I had a
quarter of an hour to wait. “No, it certainly wasn’t me,” I returned
genially, but ungrammatically. “Why, did you want him?”
“Yes, I did,” he answered. “I put a penny in the slot here,” he
continued, feeling apparently the need of unburdening himself: “wanted a
box of matches. I couldn’t get anything put, and I was shaking the
machine, and swearing at it, as one does, when there came along a man,
about your size, and—you’re _sure_ it wasn’t you?”
“Positive,” I again ungrammatically replied; “I would tell you if it had
been. What did he do?”
“Well, he saw what had happened, or guessed it. He said, ‘They are
troublesome things, those machines; they want understanding.’ I said,
‘They want taking up and flinging into the sea, that’s what they want!’
I was feeling mad because I hadn’t a match about me, and I use a lot. He
said, ‘They stick sometimes; the thing to do is to put another penny in;
the weight of the first penny is not always sufficient. The second penny
loosens the drawer and tumbles out itself; so that you get your purchase
together with your first penny back again. I have often succeeded that
way.’ Well, it seemed a silly explanation, but he talked as if he had
been weaned by an automatic machine, and I was sawney enough to listen to
him. I dropped in what I thought was another penny. I have just
discovered it was a two-shilling piece. The fool was right to a certain
extent; I have got something out. I have got this.”
He held it towards me; I looked at it. It was a packet of Everton
toffee.
“Two and a penny,” he remarked, bitterly. “I’ll sell it for a third of
what it cost me.”
“You have put your money into the wrong machine,” I suggested.
“Well, I know that!” he answered, a little crossly, as it seemed to me—he
was not a nice man: had there been any one else to talk to I should have
left him. “It isn’t losing the money I mind so much; it’s getting this
damn thing, that annoys me. If I could find that idiot Id ram it down
his throat.”
We walked to the end of the platform, side by side, in silence.
“There are people like that,” he broke out, as we turned, “people who
will go about, giving advice. I’ll be getting six months over one of
them, I’m always afraid. I remember a pony I had once.” (I judged the
man to be a small farmer; he talked in a wurzelly tone. I don’t know if
you understand what I mean, but an atmosphere of wurzels was the thing
that somehow he suggested.) “It was a thoroughbred Welsh pony, as sound
a little beast as ever stepped. I’d had him out to grass all the winter,
and one day in the early spring I thought I’d take him for a run. I had
to go to Amersham on business. I put him into the cart, and drove him
across; it is just ten miles from my place. He was a bit uppish, and had
lathered himself pretty freely by the time we reached the town.
“A man was at the door of the hotel. He says, ‘That’s a good pony of
yours.’
“‘Pretty middling,’ I says.
“‘It doesn’t do to over-drive ’em, when they’re young,’ he says.
“I says, ‘He’s done ten miles, and I’ve done most of the pulling. I
reckon I’m a jolly sight more exhausted than he is.
“I went inside and did my business, and when I came out the man was still
there. ‘Going back up the hill?’ he says to me.
“Somehow, I didn’t cotton to him from the beginning. ‘Well, I’ve got to
get the other side of it,’ I says, ‘and unless you know any patent way of
getting over a hill without going up it, I reckon I am.’
“He says, ‘You take my advice: give him a pint of old ale before you
start.’
“‘Old ale,’ I says; ‘why he’s a teetotaler.’
“‘Never you mind that,’ he answers; ‘you give him a pint of old ale. I
know these ponies; he’s a good ’un, but he ain’t set. A pint of old ale,
and he’ll take you up that hill like a cable tramway, and not hurt
himself.’
“I don’t know what it is about this class of man. One asks oneself
afterwards why one didn’t knock his hat over his eyes and run his head
into the nearest horse-trough. But at the time one listens to them. I
got a pint of old ale in a hand-bowl, and brought it out. About
half-a-dozen chaps were standing round, and of course there was a good
deal of chaff.
“‘You’re starting him on the downward course, Jim,’ says one of them.
‘He’ll take to gambling, rob a bank, and murder his mother. That’s
always the result of a glass of ale, ’cording to the tracts.’
“‘He won’t drink it like that,’ says another; ‘it’s as flat as ditch
water. Put a head on it for him.’
“‘Ain’t you got a cigar for him?’ says a third.
“‘A cup of coffee and a round of buttered toast would do him a sight more
good, a cold day like this,’ says a fourth.
“I’d half a mind then to throw the stuff away, or drink it myself; it
seemed a piece of bally nonsense, giving good ale to a four-year-old
pony; but the moment the beggar smelt the bowl he reached out his head,
and lapped it up as though he’d been a Christian; and I jumped into the
cart and started off, amid cheers. We got up the hill pretty steady.
Then the liquor began to work into his head. I’ve taken home a drunken
man more than once and there’s pleasanter jobs than that. I’ve seen a
drunken woman, and they’re worse. But a drunken Welsh pony I never want
to have anything more to do with so long as I live. Having four legs he
managed to hold himself up; but as to guiding himself, he couldn’t; and
as for letting me do it, he wouldn’t. First we were one side of the
road, and then we were the other. When we were not either side, we were
crossways in the middle. I heard a bicycle bell behind me, but I dared
not turn my head. All I could do was to shout to the fellow to keep
where he was.
“‘I want to pass you,’ he sang out, so soon as he was near enough.
“‘Well, you can’t do it,’ I called back.
“‘Why can’t I?’ he answered. ‘How much of the road do _you_ want?’
“‘All of it and a bit over,’ I answered him, ‘for this job, and nothing
in the way.’
“He followed me for half-a-mile, abusing me; and every time he thought he
saw a chance he tried to pass me. But the pony was always a bit too
smart for him. You might have thought the brute was doing it on purpose.
“‘You’re not fit to be driving,’ he shouted. He was quite right; I
wasn’t. I was feeling just about dead beat.
“‘What do you think you are?’ he continued, ‘the charge of the Light
Brigade?’ (He was a common sort of fellow.) ‘Who sent _you_ home with
the washing?’
“Well, he was making me wild by this time. ‘What’s the good of talking
to me?’ I shouted back. ‘Come and blackguard the pony if you want to
blackguard anybody. I’ve got all I can do without the help of that alarm
clock of yours. Go away, you’re only making him worse.’
“‘What’s the matter with the pony?’ he called out.
“‘Can’t you see?’ I answered. ‘He’s drunk.’
“Well, of course it sounded foolish; the truth often does.
“‘One of you’s drunk,’ he retorted; ‘for two pins I’d come and haul you
out of the cart.’
“I wish to goodness he had; I’d have given something to be out of that
cart. But he didn’t have the chance. At that moment the pony gave a
sudden swerve; and I take it he must have been a bit too close. I heard
a yell and a curse, and at the same instant I was splashed from head to
foot with ditch water. Then the brute bolted. A man was coming along,
asleep on the top of a cart-load of windsor chairs. It’s disgraceful the
way those wagoners go to sleep; I wonder there are not more accidents. I
don’t think he ever knew what had happened to him. I couldn’t look round
to see what became of him; I only saw him start. Half-way down the hill
a policeman holla’d to me to stop. I heard him shouting out something
about furious driving. Half-a-mile this side of Chesham we came upon a
girls’ school walking two and two—a ‘crocodile’ they call it, I think. I
bet you those girls are still talking about it. It must have taken the
old woman a good hour to collect them together again.
“It was market-day in Chesham; and I guess there has not been a busier
market-day in Chesham before or since. We went through the town at about
thirty miles an hour. I’ve never seen Chesham so lively—it’s a sleepy
hole as a rule. A mile outside the town I sighted the High Wycombe
coach. I didn’t feel I minded much; I had got to that pass when it
didn’t seem to matter to me what happened; I only felt curious. A dozen
yards off the coach the pony stopped dead; that jerked me off the seat to
the bottom of the cart. I couldn’t get up, because the seat was on top
of me. I could see nothing but the sky, and occasionally the head of the
pony, when he stood upon his hind legs. But I could hear what the driver
of the coach said, and I judged he was having trouble also.
“‘Take that damn circus out of the road,’ he shouted. If he’d had any
sense he’d have seen how helpless I was. I could hear his cattle
plunging about; they are like that, horses—if they see one fool, then
they all want to be fools.
“‘Take it home, and tie it up to its organ,’ shouted the guard.
“Then an old woman went into hysterics, and began laughing like an hyena.
That started the pony off again, and, as far as I could calculate by
watching the clouds, we did about another four miles at the gallop. Then
he thought he’d try to jump a gate, and finding, I suppose, that the cart
hampered him, he started kicking it to pieces. I’d never have thought a
cart could have been separated into so many pieces, if I hadn’t seen it
done. When he had got rid of everything but half a wheel and the
splashboard he bolted again. I remained behind with the other ruins, and
glad I was to get a little rest. He came back later in the afternoon,
and I was pleased to sell him the next week for a five-pound-note: it
cost me about another ten to repair myself.
“To this day I am chaffed about that pony, and the local temperance
society made a lecture out of me. That’s what comes of following
advice.”
I sympathized with him. I have suffered from advice myself. I have a
friend, a City man, whom I meet occasionally. One of his most ardent
passions in life is to make my fortune. He button-holes me in
Threadneedle Street. “The very man I wanted to see,” he says; “I’m going
to let you in for a good thing. We are getting up a little syndicate.”
He is for ever “getting up” a little syndicate, and for every hundred
pounds you put into it you take a thousand out. Had I gone into all his
little syndicates, I could have been worth at the present moment, I
reckon, two million five hundred thousand pounds. But I have not gone
into all his little syndicates. I went into one, years ago, when I was
younger. I am still in it; my friend is confident that my holding, later
on, will yield me thousands. Being, however, hard-up for ready money, I
am willing to part with my share to any deserving person at a genuine
reduction, upon a cash basis. Another friend of mine knows another man
who is “in the know” as regards racing matters. I suppose most people
possess a friend of this type. He is generally very popular just before
a race, and extremely unpopular immediately afterwards. A third
benefactor of mine is an enthusiast upon the subject of diet. One day he
brought me something in a packet, and pressed it into my hand with the
air of a man who is relieving you of all your troubles.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Open it and see,” he answered, in the tone of a pantomime fairy.