09 Not George Washington Read online

“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?”

  Chapter 7

  I MEET MR. THOMAS BLAKE (James Orlebar Cloyster’s narrative continued)

  Someone had told me that, the glory of Covent Garden Ball had departed. It may be so. Yet the floor, with its strange conglomeration of music-hall artists, callow university men, shady horse-dealers, and raucous military infants, had an atmosphere of more than meretricious gaiety. The close of an old year and the birth of a new one touch the toughest.

  The band was working away with a strident brassiness which filled the room with noise. The women’s dresses were a shriek of colour. The vulgarity of the scene was so immense as to be almost admirable. It was certainly interesting.

  Watching his opportunity, Julian presently drew me aside into the smoking-room.

  “Malim,” he said, “has paid you a great compliment.”

  “Really,” I said, rather surprised, for Julian’s acquaintance had done nothing more, to my knowledge, than give me a cigar and a whiskey-and-soda.

  “He’s introduced you to his wife.”

  “Very good of him, I’m sure.”

  “You don’t understand. You see Kit for what she is: a pretty, good-natured creature bred in the gutter. But Malim—well, he’s in the Foreign Office and is secretary to Sir George Grant.”

  “Then what in Heaven’s name,” I cried, “induced him to marry–-“

  “My dear Jimmy,” said Julian, adroitly avoiding the arm of an exuberant lady impersonating Winter, and making fair practice with her detachable icicles, “it was Kit or no one. Just consider Malim’s position, which was that of thousands of other men of his type. They are the cleverest men of their schools; they are the intellectual stars of their Varsities. I was at Oxford with Malim. He was a sort of tin god. Double-first and all that. Just like all the rest of them. They get what is looked upon as a splendid appointment under Government. They come to London, hire comfortable chambers or a flat, go off to their office in the morning, leave it in the evening, and are given a salary which increases by regular gradations from an initial two hundred a year. Say that a man begins this kind of work at twenty-four. What are his matrimonial prospects? His office work occupies his entire attention (the idea that Government clerks don’t work is a fiction preserved merely for the writers of burlesque) from the moment he wakes in the morning until dinner. His leisure extends, roughly speaking, from eight-thirty until twelve. The man whom I am discussing, and of whom Malim is a type, is, as I have already proved, intellectual. He has, therefore, ambitions. The more intellectual he is the more he loathes the stupid routine of his daily task. Thus his leisure is his most valuable possession. There are books he wants to read—those which he liked in the days previous to his slavery—and new ones which he sees published every day. There are plays he wants to see performed. And there are subjects on which he would like to write—would give his left hand to write, if the loss of that limb wouldn’t disqualify him for his post. Where is his social chance? It surely exists only in the utter abandonment of his personal projects. And to go out when one is tied to the clock is a poor sort of game. But suppose he does seek the society of what friends he can muster in London. Is he made much of, fussed over? Not a bit of it. Brainless subalterns, ridiculous midshipmen, have, in the eyes of the girl whom he has come to see, a reputation that he can never win. They’re in the Service; they’re so dashing; they’re so charmingly extravagant; they’re so tremendous in face of an emergency that their conversational limitations of “Yes” and “No” are hailed as brilliant flights of genius. Their inane anecdotes, their pointless observations are positively courted. It is they who retire to the conservatory with the divine Violet, whose face is like the Venus of Milo’s, whose hair (one hears) reaches to her knees, whose eyes are like blue saucers, and whose complexion is a pink poem. It is Jane, the stumpy, the flat-footed—Jane, who wears glasses and has all the virtues which are supposed to go with indigestion: big hands and an enormous waist—Jane, I repeat, who is told off to talk to a man like Malim. If, on the other hand, he and his fellows refuse to put on evening clothes and be bored to death of an evening, who can blame them? If they deliberately find enough satisfaction for their needs in the company of a circle of men friends and the casual pleasures of the town, selfishness is the last epithet with which their behaviour can be charged. Unselfishness has been their curse. No sane person would, of his own accord, become the automaton that a Government office requires. Pressure on the part of relations, of parents, has been brought to bear on them. The steady employment, the graduated income, the pension—that fatal pension—has been danced by their fathers and their mothers and their Uncle Johns before their eyes. Appeals have been made to them on filial, not to say religious, grounds. Threats would have availed nothing; but appeals—downright tearful appeals from mamma, husky, hand-gripping appeals from papa—that is what has made escape impossible. A huge act of unselfishness has been compelled; a lifetime of reactionary egotism is inevitable and legitimate. I was wrong when I said Malim was typical. He has to the good an ingenuity which assists naturally in the solution of the problem of self and circumstance. A year or two ago chance brought him in contact with Kit. They struck up a friendship. He became an habitué at the Fried Fish Shop in Tottenham Court Road. Whenever we questioned his taste he said that a physician recommended fish as a tonic for the brain. But it was not his brain that took Malim to the fried fish shop. It was his heart. He loved Kit, and presently he married her. One would have said this was an impossible step. Misery for Malim’s people, his friends, himself, and afterwards for Kit. But Nature has endowed both Malim and Kit with extraordinary commonsense. He kept to his flat; she kept to her job in the fried fish shop. Only, instead of living in, she was able to retire after her day’s work to a little house which he hired for her in the Hampstead Road. Her work, for which she is eminently fitted, keeps her out of mischief. His flat gives the impression to his family and the head of his department that he is still a bachelor. Thus, all goes well.”

  “I’ve often read in the police reports,” I said, “of persons who lead double lives, and I’m much interested in–-“

  Malim and Kit bore down upon us. We rose.

  “It’s the march past,” observed the former. “Come upstairs.”

  “Kiddie,” said Kit, “give me your arm.”

  At half-past four we were in Wellington Street. It was a fine, mild morning, and in the queer light of the false dawn we betook ourselves to the Old Hummums for breakfast. Other couples had done the same. The steps of the Hummums facing the market harboured already a waiting crowd. The doors were to be opened at five. We also found places on the stone steps. The market was alive with po
rters, who hailed our appearance with every profession of delight. Early hours would seem to lend a certain acidity to their badinage. By-and-by a more personal note crept into their facetious comments. Two guardsmen on the top step suddenly displayed, in return, a very creditable gift of repartee. Covent Garden market was delighted. It felt the stern joy which warriors feel with foemen worthy of their steel. It suspended its juggling feats with vegetable baskets, and devoted itself exclusively to the task of silencing our guns. Porters, costers, and the riff-raff of the streets crowded in a semicircle around us. Just then it was borne in on us how small our number was. A solid phalanx of the toughest customers in London faced us. Behind this semicircle a line of carts had been drawn up. Unseen enemies from behind this laager now began to amuse themselves by bombarding us with the product of the market garden. Tomatoes, cauliflowers, and potatoes came hurtling into our midst. I saw Julian consulting his watch. “Five minutes more,” he said. I had noticed some minutes back that the ardour of the attack seemed to centre round one man in particular—a short, very burly man in a costume that seemed somehow vaguely nautical. His face wore the expression of one cheerfully conscious of being well on the road to intoxication. He was the ringleader. It was he who threw the largest cabbage, the most passé tomato. I don’t suppose he had ever enjoyed himself so much in his life. He was standing now on a cart full of potatoes, and firing them in with tremendous force.

  Kit saw him too.

  “Why, there’s that blackguard Tom!” she cried.

  She had been told to sit down behind Malim for safety. Before anyone could stop her, or had guessed her intention, she had pushed her way through us and stepped out into the road.

  It was so unexpected that there was an involuntary lull in the proceedings.

  “Tom!”

  She pointed an accusing finger at the man, who gaped beerily.

  “Tom, who pinched farver’s best trousers, and popped them?”

  There was a roar of laughter. A moment before, and Tom had been the pet of the market, the energetic leader, the champion potato-slinger. Now he was a thing of derision. His friends took up the question. Keen anxiety was expressed on all sides as to the fate of father’s trousers. He was requested to be a man and speak up.

  The uproar died away as it was seen that Kit had not yet finished.

  “Cheese it, some of yer,” shouted a voice. “The lady wants to orsk him somefin’ else.”

  “Tom,” said Kit, “who was sent with tuppence to buy postage-stamps and spent it on beer?”

  The question was well received by the audience. Tom was beaten. A potato, vast and nobbly, fell from his palsied hand. He was speechless. Then he began to stammer.

  “Just you stop it, Tom,” shouted Kit triumphantly. “Just you stop it, d’you ‘ear, you stop it.”

  She turned towards us on the steps, and, taking us all into her confidence, added: “‘E’s a nice thing to ‘ave for a bruvver, anyway.”

  Then she rejoined Malim, amid peals of laughter from both armies. It was a Homeric incident.

  Only a half-hearted attempt was made to renew the attack. And when the door of the Hummums at last opened, Malim observed to Julian and me, as we squashed our way in, that if a man’s wife’s relations were always as opportune as Kit’s, the greatest objection to them would be removed.

  CHAPTER 8

  I MEET THE REV. JOHN HATTON (James Orlebar Cloyster’s narrative continued)

  I saw a great deal of Malim after that. He and Julian became my two chief mainstays when I felt in need of society. Malim was a man of delicate literary skill, a genuine lover of books, a severe critic of modern fiction. Our tastes were in the main identical, though it was always a blow to me that he could see nothing humorous in Mr. George Ade, whose Fables I knew nearly by heart. The more robust type of humour left him cold.

  In all other respects we agreed.

  There is a never-failing fascination in a man with a secret. It gave me a pleasant feeling of being behind the scenes, to watch Malim, sitting in his armchair, the essence of everything that was conventional and respectable, with Eton and Oxford written all over him, and to think that he was married all the while to an employee in a Tottenham Court Road fried-fish shop.

  Kit never appeared in the flat: but Malim went nearly every evening to the little villa. Sometimes he took Julian and myself, more often myself alone, Julian being ever disinclined to move far from his hammock. The more I saw of Kit the more thoroughly I realized how eminently fitted she was to be Malim’s wife. It was a union of opposites. Except for the type of fiction provided by “penny libraries of powerful stories.” Kit had probably not read more than half a dozen books in her life. Grimm’s fairy stories she recollected dimly, and she betrayed a surprising acquaintance with at least three of Ouida’s novels. I fancy that Malim appeared to her as a sort of combination of fairy prince and Ouida guardsman. He exhibited the Oxford manner at times rather noticeably. Kit loved it.

  Till I saw them together I had thought Kit’s accent and her incessant mangling of the King’s English would have jarred upon Malim. But I soon found that I was wrong. He did not appear to notice.

  I learned from Kit, in the course of my first visit to the villa, some further particulars respecting her brother Tom, the potato-thrower of Covent Garden Market. Mr. Thomas Blake, it seemed, was the proprietor and skipper of a barge. A pleasant enough fellow when sober, but too much given to what Kit described as “his drop.” He had apparently left home under something of a cloud, though whether this had anything to do with “father’s trousers” I never knew. Kit said she had not seen him for some years, though each had known the other’s address. It seemed that the Blake family were not great correspondents.

  “Have you ever met John Hatton?” asked Malim one night after dinner at his flat.

  “John Hatton?” I answered. “No. Who is he?”

  “A parson. A very good fellow. You ought to know him. He’s a man with a number of widely different interests. We were at Trinity together. He jumps from one thing to another, but he’s frightfully keen about whatever he does. Someone was saying that he was running a boys’ club in the thickest part of Lambeth.”

  “There might be copy in it,” I said.

  “Or ideas for advertisements for Julian,” said Malim. “Anyway, I’ll introduce you to him. Have you ever been in the Barrel?”

  “What’s the Barrel?”

  “The Barrel is a club. It gets the name from the fact that it’s the only club in England that allows, and indeed urges, its members to sit on a barrel. John Hatton is sometimes to be found there. Come round to it tomorrow night.”

  “All right,” I replied. “Where is it?”

  “A hundred and fifty-three, York Street, Covent Garden. First floor.”

  “Very well,” I said. “I’ll meet you there at twelve o’clock. I can’t come sooner because I’ve got a story to write.”

  Twelve had just struck when I walked up York Street looking for No.

  153.

  The house was brilliantly lighted on the first floor. The street door opened on to a staircase, and as I mounted it the sound of a piano and a singing voice reached me. At the top of the stairs I caught sight of a waiter loaded with glasses. I called to him.

  “Mr. Cloyster, sir? Yessir. I’ll find out whether Mr. Malim can see you, sir.”

  Malim came out to me. “Hatton’s not here,” he said, “but come in. There’s a smoking concert going on.”

  He took me into the room, the windows of which I had seen from the street.

  There was a burst of cheering as we entered the room. The song was finished, and there was a movement among the audience. “It’s the interval,” said Malim.

  Men surged out of the packed front room into the passage, and then into a sort of bar parlour. Malim and I also made our way there. “That’s the fetish of the club,” said Malim, pointing to a barrel standing on end; “and I’ll introduce you to the man who is sitting on it. He’s littl
e Michael, the musical critic. They once put on an operetta of his at the Court. It ran about two nights, but he reckons all the events of the world from the date of its production.”

  “Mr. Cloyster—Mr. Michael.”

  The musician hopped down from the barrel and shook hands. He was a dapper little person, and had a trick of punctuating every sentence with a snigger.

  “Cheer-o,” he said genially. “Is this your first visit?”

  I said it was.

  “Then sit on the barrel. We are the only club in London who can offer you the privilege.” Accordingly I sat on the barrel, and through a murmur of applause I could hear Michael telling someone that he’d first seen that barrel five years before his operetta came out at the Court.

  At that moment a venerable figure strode with dignity into the bar.

  “Maundrell,” said Malim to me. “The last of the old Bohemians. An old actor. Always wears the steeple hat and a long coat with skirts.”

  The survivor of the days of Kean uttered a bellow for whisky-and-water. “That barrel,” he said, “reminds me of Buckstone’s days at the Haymarket. After the performance we used to meet at the Café de l’Europe, a few yards from the theatre. Our secret society sat there.”

  “What was the society called, Mr. Maundrell?” asked a new member with unusual intrepidity.

  “Its name,” replied the white-headed actor simply, “I shall not divulge. It was not, however, altogether unconnected with the Pink Men of the Blue Mountains. We used to sit, we who were initiated, in a circle. We met to discuss the business of the society. Oh, we were the observed of all observers, I can assure you. Our society was extensive. It had its offshoots in foreign lands. Well, we at these meetings used to sit round a barrel—a great big barrel, which had a hole in the top. The barrel was not merely an ornament, for through the hole in the top we threw any scraps and odds and ends we did not want. Bits of tobacco, bread, marrow bones, the dregs of our glasses—anything and everything went into the barrel. And so it happened, as the barrel became fuller and fuller, strange animals made their appearance—animals of peculiar shape and form crawled out of the barrel and would attempt to escape across the floor. But we were on their tracks. We saw them. We headed them off with our sticks, and we chased them back again to the place where they had been born and bred. We poked them in, sir, with our sticks.”