THE SECOND GHOST
_(James Orlebar Cloyster’s narrative continued)_
The reasons which had led me to select Sidney Price as the sponsor of
my Society dialogues will be immediately apparent to those who have
read them. They were just the sort of things you would expect an
insurance clerk to write. The humour was thin, the satire as cheap as
the papers in which they appeared, and the vulgarity in exactly the
right quantity for a public that ate it by the pound and asked for
more. Every thing pointed to Sidney Price as the man.
It was my intention to allow each of my three ghosts to imagine that he
was alone in the business; so I did not get Price’s address from
Hatton, who might have wondered why I wanted it, and had suspicions. I
applied to the doorkeeper at Carnation Hall; and on the following
evening I rang the front-door bell of The Hollyhocks, Belmont Park
Road, Brixton.
Whilst I was waiting on the step, I was able to get a view through the
slats of the Venetian blind of the front ground-floor sitting-room. I
could scarcely restrain a cry of pure aesthetic delight at what I saw
within. Price was sitting on a horse-hair sofa with an arm round the
waist of a rather good-looking girl. Her eyes were fixed on his. It was
Edwin and Angelina in real life.
Up till then I had suffered much discomfort from the illustrated record
of their adventures in the comic papers. “Is there really,” I had often
asked myself, “a body of men so gifted that they can construct the
impossible details of the lives of nonexistent types purely from
imagination? If such creative genius as theirs is unrecognized and
ignored, what hope of recognition is there for one’s own work?” The
thought had frequently saddened me; but here at last they were—Edwin
and Angelina in the flesh!
I took the gallant Sidney for a fifteen-minute stroll up and down the
length of the Belmont Park Road. Poor Angelina! He came, as he
expressed it, “like a bird.” Give him a sec. to slip on a pair of
boots, he said, and he would be with me in two ticks.
He was so busy getting his hat and stick from the stand in the passage
that he quite forgot to tell the lady that he was going out, and, as we
left, I saw her with the tail of my eye sitting stolidly on the sofa,
still wearing patiently the expression of her comic-paper portraits.
The task of explaining was easier than it had been with Hatton.
“Sorry to drag you out, Price,” I said, as we went down the steps.
“Don’t mention it, Mr. Cloyster,” he said. “Norah won’t mind a bit of a
sit by herself. Looked in to have a chat, or is there anything I can
do?”
“It’s like this,” I said. “You know I write a good deal?”
“Yes.”
“Well, it has occurred to me that, if I go on turning out quantities of
stuff under my own name, there’s a danger of the public getting tired
of me.”
He nodded.
“Now, I’m with you there, mind you,” he said. “‘Can’t have too much of
a good thing,’ some chaps say. I say, ‘Yes, you can.’ Stands to reason
a chap can’t go on writing and writing without making a bloomer every
now and then. What he wants is to take his time over it. Look at all
the real swells—’Erbert Spencer, Marie Corelli, and what not—you don’t
find them pushing it out every day of the year. They wait a bit and
have a look round, and then they start again when they’re ready. Stands
to reason that’s the only way.”
“Quite right,” I said; “but the difficulty, if you live by writing, is
that you must turn out a good deal, or you don’t make enough to live
on. I’ve got to go on getting stuff published, but I don’t want people
to be always seeing my name about.”
“You mean, adopt a _nom de ploom_?”
“That’s the sort of idea; but I’m going to vary it a little.”
And I explained my plan.
“But why me?” he asked, when he had understood the scheme. “What made
you think of me?”
“The fact is, my dear fellow,” I said, “this writing is a game where
personality counts to an enormous extent. The man who signs my Society
dialogues will probably come into personal contact with the editors of
the papers in which they appear. He will be asked to call at their
offices. So you see I must have a man who looks as if he had written
the stuff.”
“I see,” he said complacently. “Dressy sort of chap. Chap who looks as
if he knew a thing or two.”
“Yes. I couldn’t get Alf Joblin, for instance.”
We laughed together at the notion.
“Poor old Alf!” said Sidney Price.
“Now you probably know a good deal about Society?”
“Rath_er_” said Sidney. “They’re a hot lot. My _word_! Saw _The Walls
of Jericho_ three times. Gives it ’em pretty straight, that does.
_Visits of Elizabeth_, too. Chase me! Used to think some of us chaps in
the ‘Moon’ were a bit O.T., but we aren’t in it—not in the same street.
Chaps, I mean, who’d call a girl behind the bar by her Christian name
as soon as look at you. One chap I knew used to give the girl at the
cash-desk of the ‘Mecca’ he went to bottles of scent. Bottles of
it—regular! ‘Here you are, Tottie,’ he used to say, ‘here’s another
little donation from yours truly.’ Kissed her once. Slap in front of
everybody. Saw him do it. But, bless you, they’d think nothing of that
in the Smart Set. Ever read ‘God’s Good Man’? There’s a book! My stars!
Lets you see what goes on. Scorchers they are.”
“That’s just what my dialogues point out. I can count on you, then?”
He said I could. He was an intelligent young man, and he gave me to
understand that all would be well. He would carry the job through on
the strict Q.T. He closely willingly with my offer of ten per cent,
thus affording a striking contrast to the grasping Hatton. He assured
me he had found literary chaps not half bad. Had occasionally had an
idea of writing a bit himself.
We parted on good terms, and I was pleased to think that I was placing
my “Dialogues of Mayfair” and my “London and Country House Tales” in
really competent and appreciative hands.