A GHOSTLY GATHERING
Norah Perkins is a peach, and I don’t care who knows it; but, all the
same, there’s no need to tell her every little detail of a man’s past
life. Not that I’ve been a Don What’s-his-name. Far from it. Costs a
bit too much, that game. You simply can’t do it on sixty quid a year,
paid monthly, and that’s all there is about it. Not but what I don’t
often think of going it a bit when things are slack at the office and
my pal in the New Business Department is out for lunch. It’s the
loneliness makes you think of going a regular plunger. More than once,
when Tommy Milner hasn’t been there to talk to, I tell you I’ve half a
mind to take out some girl or other to tea at the “Cabin.” I have,
straight.
Yet somehow when the assist. cash. comes round with the wicker tray on
the 1st, and gives you the envelope (“Mr. Price”) and you take out the
five sovereigns—well, somehow, there’s such a lot of other things which
you don’t want to buy but have just got to. Tommy Milner said the other
day, and I quite agree with him, “When I took my clean handkerchief out
last fortnight,” he said, “I couldn’t help totting up what a lot I
spend on trifles.” That’s it. There you’ve got it in a nutshell.
Washing, bootlaces, bus-tickets—trifles, in fact: that’s where the coin
goes. Only the other morning I bust my braces. I was late already, and
pinning them together all but lost me the 9:16, only it was a bit
behind time. It struck me then as I ran to the station that the average
person would never count braces an expense. Trifles—that’s what it is.
No; I may have smoked a cig. too much and been so chippy next day that
I had to go out and get a cup of tea at the A.B.C.; or I may now and
again have gone up West of an evening for a bit of a look round; but
beyond that I’ve never been really what you’d call vicious. Very likely
it’s been my friendship for Mr. Hatton that’s curbed me breaking out as
I’ve sometimes imagined myself doing when I’ve been alone in the New
Business Room. Though I must say, in common honesty to myself, that
there’s always been the fear of getting the sack from the “Moon.” The
“Moon” isn’t like some other insurance companies I could mention
which’ll take anyone. Your refs. must be A1, or you don’t stand an
earthly. Simply not an earthly. Besides, the “Moon” isn’t an Insurance
Company at all: it’s an _As_surance Company. Of course, now I’ve
chucked the “Moon” (“shot the moon,” as Tommy Milner, who’s the office
comic, put it) and taken to Literature I could do pretty well what I
liked, if it weren’t for Norah.
Which brings me back to what I was saying just now—that I’m not sure
whether I shall tell her the Past. I may and I may not. I’ll have to
think it over. Anyway, I’m going to write it down first and see how it
looks. If it’s all right it can go into my autobiography. If it isn’t,
then I shall lie low about it. That’s the posish.
It all started from my friendship with Mr. Hatton—the Rev. Mr. Hatton.
If it hadn’t have been for that man I should still be working out rates
of percentage for the “Moon” and listening to Tommy Milner’s so-called
witticisms. Of course, I’ve cut him now. A literary man, a man who
supplies the _Strawberry Leaf_ with two columns of Social Interludes at
a salary I’m not going to mention in case Norah gets to hear of it and
wants to lash out, a man whose Society novels are competed for by every
publisher in London and New York—well, can a man in that position be
expected to keep up with an impudent little ledger-lugger like Tommy
Milner? It can’t be done.
I first met the Reverend on the top of Box Hill one Saturday afternoon.
Bike had punctured, and the Reverend gave me the loan of his cyclists’
repairing outfit. We had our tea together. Watercress,
bread-and-butter, and two sorts of jam—one bob per head. He issued an
invite to his diggings in the Temple. Cocoa and cigs. of an evening.
Regular pally, him and me was. Then he got into the way of taking me
down to a Boys’ Club that he had started. Terrors they were, so to put
it. Fair out-and-out terrors. But they all thought a lot of the
Reverend, and so did I. Consequently it was all right. The next link in
the chain was a chap called Cloyster. James Orlebar Cloyster. The
Reverend brought him down to teach boxing. For my own part, I don’t
fancy anything in the way of brutality. The club, so I thought, had got
on very nicely with more intellectual pursuits: draughts, chess,
bagatelle, and what-not. But the Rev. wanted boxing, and boxing it had
to be. Not that it would have done for him or me to have mixed
ourselves up in it. He had his congregation to consider, and I am often
on duty at the downstairs counter before the very heart of the public.
A black eye or a missing tooth wouldn’t have done at all for either of
us, being, as we were, in a sense, officials. But Cloyster never seemed
to realise this. Not to put too fine a point upon it, Cloyster was not
my idea of a gentleman. He had no tact.
The next link was a confirmed dipsomaniac. A terrible phrase.
Unavoidable, though. A very evil man is Tom Blake. Yet out of evil
cometh good, and it was Tom Blake, who, indirectly, stopped the boxing
lessons. The club boys never wore the gloves after drunken Blake’s
visit.
I shall never—no, positively never forget that night in June when
matters came to a head in Shaftesbury Avenue. Oh, I say, it was a bit
hot—very warm.
Each successive phase is limned indelibly—that’s the sort of literary
style I’ve got, if wanted—on the tablets of my memory.
I’d been up West, and who should I run across in Oxford Street but my
old friend, Charlie Cookson. Very good company is Charlie Cookson. See
him at a shilling hop at the Holborn: he’s pretty much all there all
the time. Well-known follower—of course, purely as an amateur—of the
late Dan Leno, king of comedians; good penetrating voice; writes his
own in-between bits—you know what I mean: the funny observations on
mothers-in-law, motors, and marriage, marked “Spoken” in the
song-books. Fellows often tell him he’d make a mint of money in the
halls, and there’s a rumour flying round among us who knew him in the
“Moon” that he was seen coming out of a Bedford Street Variety Agency
the other day.
Well, I met Charlie at something after ten. Directly he spotted me he
was at his antics, standing stock still on the pavement in a crouching
attitude, and grasping his umbrella like a tomahawk. His humour’s
always high-class, but he’s the sort of fellow who doesn’t care a blow
what he does. Chronic in that respect, absolutely. The passers-by
couldn’t think what he was up to. “Whoop-whoop-whoop!” that’s what he
said. He did, straight. Only _yelled_ it. I thought it was going a bit
too far in a public place. So, to show him, I just said “Good evening,
Cookson; how are you this evening?” With all his entertaining ways he’s
sometimes slow at taking a hint. No tact, if you see what I mean.
In this case, for instance, he answered at the top of his voice: “Bolly
Golly, yah!” and pretended to scalp me with his umbrella. I immediately
ducked, and somehow knocked my bowler against his elbow. He caught it
as it was falling off my head. Then he said, “Indian brave give little
pale face chief his hat.” This was really too much, and I felt relieved
when a policeman told us to move on. Charlie said: “Come and have two
penn’orth of something.”
Well, we stayed chatting over our drinks (in fact, I was well into my
second lemon and dash) at the Stockwood Hotel until nearly eleven. At
five to, Charlie said good-bye, because he was living in, and I walked
out into the Charing Cross Road, meaning to turn down Shaftesbury
Avenue so as to get a breath of fresh air. Outside the Oxford there was
a bit of a crowd. I asked a man standing outside a tobacconist’s what
the trouble was. “Says he won’t go away without kissing the girl that
sang ‘Empire Boys,’” was the reply. “Bin shiftin’ it, ’e ’as, not
’arf!” Sure enough, from the midst of the crowd came:
Yew are ther boys of the Empire,
Steady an’ brave an’ trew.
Yew are the wuns
She calls ’er sons
An’ I luv yew.
I had gone, out of curiosity, to the outskirts of the crowd, and before
I knew what had happened I found myself close to the centre of it. A
large man in dirty corduroys stood with his back to me. His shape
seemed strangely familiar. Still singing, and swaying to horrible
angles all over the shop, he slowly pivoted round. In a moment I
recognised the bleary features of Tom Blake. At the same time he
recognised me. He stretched out a long arm and seized me by the
shoulder. “Oh,” he sobbed, “I thought I ’ad no friend in the wide world
except ’er; but now I’ve got yew it’s orlright. Yus, yus, it’s
orlright.” A murmur, almost a cheer it was, circulated among the crowd.
But a policeman stepped up to me.
“Now then,” said the policeman, “wot’s all this about?”
Yew are the wuns
She calls ’er sons—
shouted Blake.
“Ho, that’s yer little game, is it?” said the policeman. “Move on,
d’yer hear? Pop off.”
“I will,” said Blake. “I’ll never do it again. I promise faithful never
to do it again. I’ve found a fren’.”
“Do you know this covey?” asked the policeman.
“Deny it, if yer dare,” said Blake. “Jus’ you deny it, that’s orl, an’
I’ll tell the parson.”
“Slightly, constable,” I said. “I mean, I’ve seen him before.”
“Then you’d better take ’im off if you don’t want ’im locked up.”
“’Im want me locked up? We’re bosum fren’s, ain’t we, old dear?” said
Blake, linking his arm in mine and dragging me away with him. Behind
us, the policeman was shunting the spectators. Oh, it was excessively
displeasing to any man of culture, I can assure you.
How we got along Shaftesbury I don’t know. It’s a subject I do not care
to think about.
By leaning heavily on my shoulder and using me, so to speak, as
ballast, drunken Blake just managed to make progress, I cannot say
unostentatiously, but at any rate not so noticeably as to be taken into
custody.
I didn’t know, mind you, where we were going to, and I didn’t know when
we were going to stop.
In this frightful manner of progression we had actually gained sight of
Piccadilly Circus when all of a sudden a voice hissed in my ear:
“Sidney Price, I am disappointed in you.” Hissed, mind you. I tell you,
I jumped. Thought I’d bitten my tongue off at first.
If drunken Blake hadn’t been clutching me so tight you could have
knocked me down with a feather: bowled me over clean. It startled Blake
a goodish bit, too. All along the Avenue he’d been making just a quiet
sort of snivelling noise. Crikey, if he didn’t speak up quite perky.
“O, my fren’,” he says. “So drunk and yet so young.” Meaning me, if you
please.
It was too thick.
“You blighter,” I says. “You _blooming_ blighter. You talk to me like
that. Let go of my arm and see me knock you down.”
I must have been a bit excited, you see, to say that. Then I looked
round to see who the other individual was. You’ll hardly credit me when
I tell you it was the Reverend. But it was. Honest truth, it was the
Rev. John Hatton and no error. His face fairly frightened me. Simply
blazing: red: fair scarlet. He kept by the side of us and let me have
it all he could. “I thought you knew better, Price,” that’s what he
said. “I thought you knew better. Here are you, a friend of mine, a
member of the Club, a man I’ve trusted, going about the streets of
London in a bestial state of disgusting intoxication. That’s enough in
itself. But you’ve done worse than that. You’ve lured poor Blake into
intemperance. Yes, with all your advantages of education and
up-bringing, you deliberately set to work to put temptation in the way
of poor, weak, hard-working Blake. Drunkenness is Blake’s besetting
sin, and you——”
Blake had been silently wagging his head, as pleased as Punch at being
called hardworking. But here he shoved in his oar.
“’Ow dare yer!” he burst out. “I ain’t never tasted a drop o’ beer in
my natural. Born an’ bred teetotal, that’s wot I was, and don’t yew
forget it, neither.”
“Blake,” said the Reverend, “that’s not the truth.”
“Call me a drunkard, do yer?” replied Blake. “Go on. Say it again. Say
I’m a blarsted liar, won’t yer? Orlright, then I shall run away.”
And with that he wrenched himself away from me and set off towards the
Circus. He was trying to run, but his advance took the form of
semi-circular sweeps all over the pavement. He had circled off so
unexpectedly that he had gained some fifty yards before we realised
what was happening. “We must stop him,” said the Reverend.
“As I’m intoxicated,” I said, coldly (being a bit fed up with things),
“I should recommend you stopping him, Mr. Hatton.”
“I’ve done you an injustice,” said the Reverend.
“You have,” said I.
Blake was now nearing a policeman. “Stop him!” we both shouted,
starting to run forward.
The policeman brought Blake to a standstill.
“Friend of yours?” said the constable when we got up to him.
“Yes,” said the Reverend.
“You ought to look after him better,” said the constable.
“Well, really, I like that!” said the Reverend; but he caught my eye
and began laughing. “Our best plan,” he said, “is to get a four-wheeler
and go down to the Temple. There’s some supper there. What do you say?”
“I’m on,” I said, and to the Temple we accordingly journeyed.
Tom Blake was sleepy and immobile. We spread him without hindrance on a
sofa, where he snored peacefully whilst the Reverend brought eggs and a
slab of bacon out of a cupboard in the kitchen. He also brought a
frying-pan, and a bowl of fat.
“Is your cooking anything extra good?” he asked.
“No, Mr. Hatton,” I answered, rather stiff; “I’ve never cooked anything
in my life.” I may not be in a very high position in the “Moon,” but
I’ve never descended to menial’s work yet.
For about five minutes after that the Reverend was too busy to speak.
Then he said, without turning his head away from the hissing pan, “I
wish you’d do me a favour, Price.”
“Certainly,” I said.
“Look in the cupboard and see whether there are any knives, forks,
plates, and a loaf and a bit of butter, will you?”
I looked, and, sure enough, they were there.
“Yes, they’re all here,” I called to him.
“And is there a tray?”
“Yes, there’s a tray.”
“Now, it’s a funny thing that my laundress,” he shouted back, “can’t
bring in breakfast things for more than one on that particular tray.
She’s always complaining it’s too small, and says I ought to buy a
bigger one.”
“Nonsense,” I exclaimed, “she’s quite wrong about that. You watch what
I can carry in one load.” And I packed the tray with everything he had
mentioned.
“What price that?” I said, putting the whole boiling on the
sitting-room table.
The Reverend began to roar with laughter. “It’s ridiculous,” he
chuckled. “I shall tell her it’s ridiculous. She ought to be ashamed of
herself.”
Shortly after we had supper, previously having aroused Blake.
The drunken fellow seemed completely restored by his repose. He ate
more than his share of the eggs and bacon, and drank five cups of tea.
Then he stretched himself, lit a clay pipe, and offered us his tobacco
box, from which the Reverend filled his briar. I remained true to my
packet of “Queen of the Harem.” I shall think twice before chucking up
cig. smoking as long as “Queen of the Harem” don’t go above
tuppence-half-penny per ten.
We were sitting there smoking in front of the fire—it was a shade parky
for the time of year—and not talking a great deal, when the Reverend
said to Blake, “Things are looking up on the canal, aren’t they, Tom?”
“No,” said Blake; “things ain’t lookin’ up on the canal.”
“Got a little house property,” said the Reverend, “to spend when you
feel like it?”
“No,” said the other; “I ain’t got no ’ouse property to spend.”
“Ah.” said the Reverend, cheesing it, and sucking his pipe.
“Dessay yer think I’m free with the rhino?” said Blake after a while.
“I was only wondering,” said the Reverend.
Blake stared first at the Reverend and then at me.
“Ever remember a party of the name of Cloyster, Mr. James Orlebar
Cloyster?” he inquired.
“Yes,” we both said.
“’E’s a good man,” said Blake.
“Been giving you money?” asked the Reverend.
“’E’s put me into the way of earning it. It’s the sorfest job ever I
struck. ’E told me not to say nothin’, and I said as ’ow I wouldn’t.
But it ain’t fair to Mr. Cloyster, not keeping of it dark ain’t. Yew
don’t know what a noble ’eart that man’s got, an’ if you weren’t fren’
of ’is I couldn’t have told you. But as you are fren’s of ’is, as we’re
all fren’s of ’is, I’ll take it on myself to tell you wot that
noble-natured man is giving me money for. Blowed if ’e shall ’ide his
bloomin’ light under a blanky bushel any longer.” And then he explained
that for putting his name to a sheet or two of paper, and addressing a
few envelopes, he was getting more money than he knew what to do with.
“Mind you,” he said, “I play it fair. I only take wot he says I’m to
take. The rest goes to ’im. My old missus sees to all that part of it
’cos she’s quicker at figures nor wot I am.”
While he was speaking, I could hardly contain myself. The Reverend was
listening so carefully to every word that I kept myself from
interrupting; but when he’d got it off his chest, I clutched the
Reverend’s arm, and said, “What’s it mean?”
“Can’t say,” said he, knitting his brows.
“Is he straight?” I said, all on the jump.
“I hope so.”
“‘Hope so.’ You don’t think there’s a doubt of it?”
“I suppose not. But surely it’s very unselfish of you to be so
concerned over Blake’s business.”
“Blake’s business be jiggered,” I said. “It’s my business, too. I’m
doing for Mister James Orlebar Cloyster exactly what Blake’s doing. And
I’m making money. You don’t understand.”
“On the contrary, I’m just beginning to understand. You see, I’m doing
for Mr. James Orlebar Cloyster exactly the same service as you and
Blake. And I’m getting money from him, too.”