Chapter 20 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."