NEW YEAR’S EVE
_(James Orlebar Cloyster’s narrative continued)_
The morning of New Year’s Eve was a memorable one for me. My first
novel was accepted. Not an ambitious volume. It was rather short, and
the plot was not obtrusive. The sporting gentlemen who accepted it,
however—Messrs. Prodder and Way—seemed pleased with it; though, when I
suggested a sum in cash in advance of royalties, they displayed a most
embarrassing coyness—and also, as events turned out, good sense.
I carried the good news to Julian, whom I found, as usual, asleep in
his hammock. I had fallen into the habit of calling on him after my
_Orb_ work. He was generally sleepy when I arrived, at half-past
eleven, and while we talked I used to make his breakfast act as a sort
of early lunch for myself. He said that the people of the house had
begun by trying to make the arrival of his breakfast coincide with the
completion of his toilet; that this had proved so irksome that they had
struck; and that finally it had been agreed on both sides that the meal
should be put in his room at eleven o’clock, whether he was dressed or
not. He said that he often saw his breakfast come in, and would
drowsily determine to consume it hot. But he had never had the energy
to do so. Once, indeed, he had mistaken the time, and had confidently
expected that the morning of a hot breakfast had come at last. He was
dressed by nine, and had sat for two hours gloating over the prospect
of steaming coffee and frizzling bacon. On that particular morning,
however, there had been some domestic tragedy—the firing of a chimney
or the illness of a cook—and at eleven o’clock, not breakfast, but an
apology for its absence had been brought to him. This embittered
Julian. He gave up the unequal contest, and he has frequently confessed
to me that cold breakfast is an acquired, yet not unpleasant, taste.
He woke up when I came in, and, after hearing my news and
congratulating me, began to open the letters that lay on the table at
his side.
One of the envelopes had Skeffington’s trade mark stamped upon it, and
contained a bank-note and a sheet closely type-written on both sides.
“Half a second, Jimmy,” said he, and began to read.
I poured myself out a cup of cold coffee, and, avoiding the bacon and
eggs, which lay embalmed in frozen grease, began to lunch off bread and
marmalade.
“I’ll do it,” he burst out when he had finished. “It’s a sweat—a
fearful sweat, but——
“Skeffington’s have written urging me to undertake a rather original
advertising scheme. They’re very pressing, and they’ve enclosed a
tenner in advance. They want me to do them a tragedy in four acts. I
sent them the scenario last week. I sketched out a skeleton plot in
which the hero is addicted to a strictly moderate use of Skeffington’s
Sloe Gin. His wife adopts every conceivable measure to wean him from
this harmless, even praiseworthy indulgence. At the end of the second
act she thinks she has cured him. He has promised to gratify what he
regards as merely a capricious whim on her part. ‘I will give—yes, I
will give it up, darling!’ ‘George! George!’ She falls on his neck.
Over her shoulder he winks at the audience, who realise that there is
more to come. Curtain. In Act 3 the husband is seen sitting alone in
his study. His wife has gone to a party. The man searches in a cupboard
for something to read. Instead of a novel, however, he lights on a
bottle of Skeffington’s Sloe Gin. Instantly the old overwhelming
craving returns. He hesitates. What does it matter? She will never
know. He gulps down glass after glass. He sinks into an intoxicated
stupor. His wife enters. Curtain again. Act 4. The draught of nectar
tasted in the former act after a period of enforced abstinence has
produced a deadly reaction. The husband, who previously improved his
health, his temper, and his intellect by a strictly moderate use of
Skeffington’s Sloe Gin, has now become a ghastly dipsomaniac. His wife,
realising too late the awful effect of her idiotic antagonism to
Skeffington’s, experiences the keenest pangs of despair. She drinks
laudanum, and the tragedy is complete.”
“Fine,” I said, finishing the coffee.
“In a deferential postscript,” said Julian, “Skeffington’s suggest an
alternative ending, that the wife should drink, not laudanum, but Sloe
Gin, and grow, under its benign influence, resigned to the fate she has
brought on her husband and herself. Resignation gives way to hope. She
devotes her life to the care of the inebriate man, and, by way of
pathetic retribution, she lives precisely long enough to nurse him back
to sanity. Which finale do you prefer?”
“Yours!” I said.
“Thank you,” said Julian, considerably gratified. “So do I. It’s
terser, more dramatic, and altogether a better advertisement.
Skeffington’s make jolly good sloe gin, but they can’t arouse pity and
terror. Yes, I’ll do it; but first let me spend the tenner.”
“I’m taking a holiday, too, today,” I said. “How can we amuse
ourselves?”
Julian had opened the last of his letters. He held up two cards.
“Tickets for Covent Garden Ball tonight,” he said. “Why not come? It’s
sure to be a good one.”
“I should like to,” I said. “Thanks.”
Julian dropped from his hammock, and began to get his bath ready.
We arranged to dine early at the Maison Suisse in Rupert Street—_table
d’hôte_ one franc, plus twopence for mad’moiselle—and go on to the
gallery of a first night. I was to dress for Covent Garden at Julian’s
after the theatre, because white waistcoats and the franc _table
d’hôte_ didn’t go well together.
When I dined out, I usually went to the Maison Suisse. I shall never
have the chance of going again, even if, as a married man, I were
allowed to do so, for it has been pulled down to make room for the
Hicks Theatre in Shaftesbury Avenue. When I did not dine there, I
attended a quaint survival of last century’s coffee-houses in
Glasshouse Street: Tall, pew-like boxes, wooden tables without
table-cloths, panelled walls; an excellent menu of chops, steaks, fried
eggs, sausages, and other British products. Once the resort of bucks
and Macaronis, Ford’s coffee-house I found frequented by a strange
assortment of individuals, some of whom resembled bookmakers’ touts,
others clerks of an inexplicably rustic type. Who these people really
were I never discovered.
“I generally have supper at Pepolo’s,” said Julian, as we left the
theatre, “before a Covent Garden Ball. Shall we go on there?”
There are two entrances to Pepolo’s restaurant, one leading to the
ground floor, the other to the brasserie in the basement. I liked to
spend an hour or so there occasionally, smoking and watching the crowd.
Every sixth visit on an average I would happen upon somebody
interesting among the ordinary throng of medical students and
third-rate clerks—watery-eyed old fellows who remembered Cremorne, a
mahogany derelict who had spent his youth on the sea when liners were
sailing-ships, and the apprentices, terrorised by bullying mates and
the rollers of the Bay, lay howling in the scuppers and prayed to be
thrown overboard. He told me of one voyage on which the Malay cook went
mad, and, escaping into the ratlines, shot down a dozen of the crew
before he himself was sniped.
The supper tables are separated from the brasserie by a line of stucco
arches, and as it was now a quarter to twelve the place was full. At a
first glance it seemed that there were no empty supper tables.
Presently, however, we saw one, laid for four, at which only one man
was sitting.
“Hullo!” said Julian, “there’s Malim. Let’s go and see if we can push
into his table. Well, Malim, how are you? Do you know Cloyster?”
Mr. Malim had a lofty expression. I should have put him down as a
scholarly recluse. His first words upset this view somewhat.
“Coming to Covent Garden?” he said, genially. “I am. So is Kit. She’ll
be down soon.”
“Good,” said Julian; “may Jimmy and I have supper at your table?”
“Do,” said Malim. “Plenty of room. We’d better order our food and not
wait for her.”
We took our places, and looked round us. The hum of conversation was
persistent. It rose above the clatter of the supper tables and the
sudden bursts of laughter.
It was now five minutes to twelve. All at once those nearest the door
sprang to their feet. A girl in scarlet and black had come in.
“Ah, there’s Kit at last,” said Malim.
“They’re cheering her,” said Julian.
As he spoke, the tentative murmur of a cheer was caught up by everyone.
Men leaped upon chairs and tables.
“Hullo, hullo, hullo!” said Kit, reaching us. “Kiddie, when they do
that it makes me feel shy.”
She was laughing like a child. She leaned across the table, put her
arms round Malim’s neck, and kissed him. She glanced at us.
Malim smiled quietly, but said nothing.
She kissed Julian, and she kissed me.
“Now we’re all friends,” she said, sitting down.
“Better know each other’s names,” said Malim. “Kit, this is Mr.
Cloyster. Mr. Cloyster, may I introduce you to my wife?”