Young Men in Spats Page 18

  No, come what might, he could not forgo this trip. He put it to Meadowes when he entered, explaining all the circumstances, and Meadowes felt the same.

  ‘There must always be martyrs to the Cause, Comrade Mulliner,’ said Meadowes.

  ‘Yes, I suppose there must, when you come right down to it,’ agreed Archibald moodily. ‘Though I’d a dashed sight rather it was a couple of other fellows. All right, then, I’ll go. And if that’s a drink you’ve got there, my dear old Third Internationalist, pour it out. There are moments when a chap needs a stiff one.’

  ‘Say when, Comrade Mulliner.’

  ‘Not all the soda, Comrade Meadowes,’ said Archibald.

  My nephew Archibald, like all the Mulliners, is of an honest and candid disposition, incapable of subterfuge, and there is no doubt that if you had asked him his opinion of Bottleton East as he paced its streets that night he would have confessed frankly that he was just a bit disappointed in the place. Too bright, would have been his verdict, too bally jovial. Arriving in the expectation of finding a sort of grey inferno, he appeared to have been plunged into a perfect maelstrom of gaiety.

  On every side, merry matrons sat calling each other names on doorsteps. Cheery cats fought among the garbage-pails. From the busy public-houses came the sound of mouth-organ and song. While, as for the children, who were present in enormous quantities, so far from crying for bread, as he had been led to expect, they were playing hop-scotch all over the pavements. The whole atmosphere, in a word, was, he tells me, more like that of Guest Night at the National Liberal Club than anything he had ever encountered.

  But a Mulliner is not easily discouraged. Archibald had come to Bottleton East to relieve the sufferings of the tortured Masses, and he intended to do so if it took all night. Surely, he felt, somewhere among these teeming, pleasure-seeking children there must be one who could do with a bit of bread. And presently it seemed to him that he had found such a one. He had turned down a side-street, and there, coming towards him, kicking a tin can in a preoccupied manner, was a small boy who looked just about in the right vein for a slice or two. His face was grave, his manner sombre and introspective. If he was not actually crying for the stuff at the moment, it was simply, Archibald felt, because he was taking time off.

  To seize this child by the hand and drag him to the nearest confectioner and baker was with Archibald Mulliner the work of a moment. He pulled out his note-case and was soon in possession of a fine quartern loaf. He thrust it into the child’s hands.

  ‘Bread,’ he said, cordially.

  The child recoiled. The look of pain on his face had deepened.

  ‘It’s all right,’ Archibald assured him. ‘Nothing to pay. This is on me. A free gift. One loaf, with comps. of A. Mulliner.’

  Gently patting the stripling’s head, he turned away, modestly anxious to be spared any tearful gratitude, and he had hardly gone a couple of steps when something solid struck him a violent blow on the nape of the neck. For an instant, he thought of thunderbolts, falling roofs, and explosions which kill ten. Then, looking down, he perceived the quartern loaf rolling away along the gutter.

  The fact was, the child had been a little vexed. At first, when Archibald had started steering him towards the shop, he had supposed my nephew unbalanced. Then, observing that among the objects for sale at the emporium were chocolate bars, jujubes, and all-day suckers, he had brightened a little. Still dubious as to his companion’s sanity, he had told himself that an all-day sucker tastes just as good, even if it proceeds from a dotty donor. And then, just as hope had begun to rise high, this man had fobbed him off with a loaf of bread.

  Little wonder that he had chafed. His mood was bitter. And when moods are bitter in Bottleton East direct action follows automatically.

  Well, Archibald did what he could. Stooping and picking up the loaf, he darted after the child with bared teeth and flaming eyes. It was his intention to overtake him and fill him up with bread, regardless of his struggles and protests. The thing seemed to him a straight issue. This child needed bread, and he was jolly well going to get it – even if it meant holding him with one hand and shoving the stuff down his throat with the other. In all the history of social work in London’s East End there can seldom have been an instance of one of the philanthropic rich being more firmly bent on doing good and giving of his abundance.

  His efforts, however, were fruitless. Life in Bottleton East tends to make the young citizen nippy on his feet. Archibald cut out quite a nice pace, but a knowledge of the terrain stood the little fellow in good stead. Presently he had vanished into the night from which he had come, and Archibald, for the weather was sultry and the going had been fast, was left standing – all other emotions swept away in an imperious desire for a cool drink.

  There is something about the atmosphere of the tap-room of a public-house that never fails to act like magic on ruffled feelings. The rich smell of mixed liquors, the gay clamour of carefree men arguing about the weather, the Government, the Royal Family, greyhound racing, the tax on beer, pugilism, religion, and the price of bananas – these things are medicine to the bruised soul. Standing in the doorway of the Goose and Gherkin, Archibald became immediately conscious of a restored benevolence.

  He had been wrong, he saw, to allow the unpleasant personality of a single child to colour his views on the Masses. Probably that blighted kid had been in no sense representative of the Masses. If one did but know, he told himself, the little beast was very likely thoroughly unpopular in the neighbourhood, if not actually cut by the Bottleton East equivalent of the County. Judging the martyred proletariat by that child was like coming to Mayfair and forming your opinion of the West End of London after meeting somebody like Clarence (‘Pot of Poison’) Greaseley.

  No, the Masses were all right. Once more his heart bled for them, and it seemed to him that the least he could do was to stand them drinks all round. With this humane object in view, he advanced to the counter and, with recollections of old Western films in his mind, addressed the shirt-sleeved man behind it.

  ‘Set ’em up!’ he said.

  ‘What’s that?’ asked the shirt-sleeved man.

  ‘Set ’em up. Ask these gentlemen to name their poison.’

  ‘I don’t follow you at all,’ said the shirt-sleeved man.

  ‘Dash it,’ said Archibald, a little nettled, ‘it’s quite simple, isn’t it? I want these martyred chaps to join me in a spot. Serve out noggins to the multitude and chalk it up to me.’

  ‘Ah!’ said the shirt-sleeved man. ‘Now I see. Now I understand.’

  The information, rapidly flashed about the room, that a human drinking-fountain was in their midst, had the usual effect on the gathering. Their already marked geniality became intensified, and Archibald, as the founder of the feast, was soon the centre of a loving group. They all seemed to look to him for guidance on the various topics of discussion, and with each minute his favourable opinion of the Masses grew. A young man who, when among his peers, generally experienced a certain difficulty in obtaining an audience for his views – his fellow-members of the Drones Club being too prone, whenever he opened his mouth, to urge him to put a sock in it – he found this novel deference enchanting. In the Masses, it seemed to him, he had found his spiritual mates.

  Madame Récamier or any other of the hostesses of the old-time salon would have recognized and understood his emotions. They knew how agreeable it is to be the focal point of a brilliant gathering. His first half-hour in the tap-room of the Goose and Gherkin was, I should imagine, the happiest of my nephew Archibald’s life.

  They seemed so anxious to make it plain to him, these honest fellows, that in him they recognized not only the life and soul of the party but the Master Mind. Draining and refilling their glasses at his expense, they hung on his words and made him the unquestioned arbiter of their little disputes. Scarcely had he reassured one as to the chances of the rain holding off, when he was informing another that the Government, though fat-headed, on th
e whole meant well. He told a man in a cloth cap how to address a Duchess at an informal lunch. He put a man with a broken nose right on the subject of the Apostolic Claims of the Church of Abyssinia.

  Each dictum that he uttered was received with murmurs of assent and approval, while at intervals some hearty soul would have his glass recharged and the expense debited to Archibald’s account in order that he might drink Archibald’s health. I have heard my nephew describe the scene again and again, and each time he described it I could see more clearly how closely the whole affair must have approximated to a love-feast.

  But the pleasantest of functions must come to an end, and it seemed to Archibald that the time had come to be pushing along. Much as he liked these tortured bimbos, there were other tortured bimbos in Bottleton East and it was only fair that he should give those, too, a little happiness. So, having ordered a final round, he asked for his account and, thrusting a hand into his pocket, brought it out empty. His note-case was not there. Presumably, when paying for the loaf of bread, he must have left it on the counter of the baker’s shop, and the baker, one of those strong, silent men who give the Englishman his reputation for reticence the world over, had not thought it worth while to call his attention to the lapse.

  As a psychologist, I found it interesting when Archibald told me that his immediate reaction to this discovery was not dismay. So uplifted was he by the atmosphere of adulation in which he had been basking for the past half-hour that all he felt for the moment was a sort of humorous self-reproach. The laugh, he recognized, was on him. He would have to be prepared, he foresaw, to become the butt of a certain amount of good-natured chaff. With a deprecatory titter he informed the shirt-sleeved man of the position of affairs, and he was just about to add his name and address, in order to facilitate the forwarding of the bill by post, when there broke out something which in its general aspect, he felt dimly, closely paralleled that social revolution of which Meadowes had often spoken so feelingly. And through a sort of mist he saw the shirt-sleeved man vaulting over the counter, moistening the palms of his hands in a purposeful manner.

  One can see the situation through the eyes of this shirt-sleeved man. From boyhood up, his views on bilking had been hard and bigoted. Even a mere snitched half-pint had been, in the past, enough to rouse his worst passions. And here before him he saw a man who had bilked on a scale so stupendous, so – as one might say – epic, that history had been made that night in Bottleton East.

  Archibald’s assertion that the shirt-sleeved man had six arms I discount as due to his not unnatural perturbation at the moment. He bases it on the fact that someone – he assumes it to have been the shirt-sleeved man – seized him by the collar, the right arm, the left arm, the right leg, the left leg, and the seat of the trousers simultaneously. However, be that as it may, my nephew passed the next few moments of his career being shaken like some patent medicine until he could feel his contents frothing within him. Then, just as he had begun to realise that, if this continued, he must reluctantly come unstuck, something seemed to give and he was shooting through the night air – to hit the pavement, bounce, hit it again, bounce for the second time, ricochet along the polished surface for a considerable distance, and eventually come to a halt in the gutter with his head resting against what in its prime must have been part of a good-sized fish. A halibut, Archibald thinks, or a cod.

  He did not remain there long. In relating to you these little family reminiscences of mine, I have often been struck by a curious thing. I refer to the manner in which a Mulliner, when the crisis arrives, always proves himself a Mulliner – a man, that is to say, of sagacity, resource and initiative. It would be paltering with the truth to say that my nephew Archibald was one of the most quick-witted of the clan, but even he, on observing the shirt-sleeved man heading in his direction, followed by an incensed mob of his recent guests, knew enough to jump to his feet and disappear into the darkness like a hare. Panic lent him wings. There was a moment or two when he heard footsteps clattering in his rear, and once a hard-boiled egg missed him by a hair’s-breadth, but eventually he won to a clear lead, and presently was at leisure to halt and give himself up to his meditations.

  These, as you may readily imagine, were not of the kindliest. Sir Stafford Cripps would not have liked them. Stalin, could he have been aware of them, would have pursed his lips. For they were definitely hostile to the Masses. All his pitying love for the martyred proletariat had vanished. He has specifically informed me since that in those black moments he wished the martyred proletariat would choke. And the same went for the tortured Masses. He tells me that when he reflected how he had, to all intents and purposes, spurned Aurelia’s love and broken her gentle heart just for the sake of doing a bit of good to these tortured bounders he could have laid his head against a lamppost and wept.

  At length, rested and refreshed by his halt, he resumed his progress. He desired above all else to find a way out of this ghastly locality, to return to the civilized amenities of Mayfair, W.1., where men are men and where, if one of those men finds himself short of cash in a place of refreshment, he can simply call for a pencil and sign the bill. Imagine, he meant to say, Ferraro at the Berkeley taking a fellow by the seat of the trousers and playing quoits with him along Piccadilly.

  Yes, as I say, my nephew Archibald yearned for Mayfair as the hart pants for cooling streams when heated in the chase. But the problem was: How to get there. He had steeled himself to the prospect of having to walk. All he wanted to know was in what direction to walk. He asked a policeman the way to Piccadilly Circus, but you cannot ask a question like that in Bottleton East without exciting unpleasant suspicions. The policeman merely gave Archibald a narrow look and told him to pass along. Upon which, Archibald passed along and the episode concluded.

  It was possibly some twenty minutes after this that he became conscious of a great hunger.

  It had been his intention, on setting out for Bottleton East, to take his evening meal there. He had not supposed that the place would run to anything luxurious, but he rather enjoyed the prospect of roughing it as a sort of graceful gesture towards the Masses. And, after all, he was no hog. A little clear soup, with possibly a touch of smoked salmon or a bit of melon in front of it, followed by – say – truite bleue and the wing of a chicken and some sort of soufflé would do him nicely. And he had been about to look around him for a suitable restaurant when the affair of the anti-bread child had distracted his thoughts. And after that there had been all the salon stuff and then the race for life. The consequence was that he was now extremely peckish.

  And it was at this moment that he found himself outside one of the myriad public-houses of the locality, staring through an open window into a room with two oilcloth-covered tables in it. At one there sat a dishevelled man, asleep with his head on his arms. The other was unoccupied, except for a knife and fork which gave promise of rich entertainment.

  For a while he stood, staring wolfishly. As he had no money, the situation seemed an impasse. But, as I said before, the crisis always brings out the Mulliner in a member of my family. Suddenly, like a flash, there shot into Archibald’s mind the recollection that round his neck, carefully adjusted so that it should lie exactly over his heart, he always wore a miniature of Aurelia Cammarleigh in a neat little platinum case.

  He hesitated. His spiritual side told him that it would be sacrilege to hand over the outer covering of that sweet girl’s miniature in exchange for a meal. But his material self wanted steak and beer, and had him charging through the doorway like a mustang before the hesitation had lasted ten seconds.

  Half an hour later, Archibald Mulliner was pushing back his plate and uttering a deep sigh.

  It was a sigh of repletion, not of regret. And yet in it there was, perhaps, something of regret as well – for, his hunger now satisfied, kindlier feelings had once more begun to burgeon within him, and he was feeling a little remorseful that he should have allowed himself to think such hard thoughts about the Masses.


  After all, reasoned Archibald, sipping his beer and glowing with the broad-minded charity of repletion, you had to admit that at the time of all that unpleasantness there had been something to be said for the view-point of the Masses. He meant to say, a nasty jar it must have been for those poor old proletarians, after having been martyred like the dickens since they were slips of boys, to suck down what they had been led to suppose were free drinks and then suddenly to realize that, owing to the donor having no money, they were in ghastly danger of having to pay for them themselves.

  And the shirt-sleeved man. Yes, he could follow the shirt-sleeved man’s thought-processes. Perfect stranger comes in and starts strewing drinks all over the place . . . Can’t pay for them . . . What to do? What to do?. . . Yes, attitude of shirt-sleeved man quite intelligible. Whole episode, Archibald considered, well calculated to cause a spot of alarm and despondency.

  In fact, he had reached at this juncture such a pitch of sweetness and light that, had he been able at that moment to transport himself to his cosy rooms in Cork Street, W.1., it is highly probable that he would still be the same lover of the Masses who had set out that night with such benevolence for Bottleton East.

  But more was to happen to my nephew Archibald in Bottleton East that night, and that which happened ruined the Masses’ chances of winning his esteem finally.

  I have mentioned, I think, that at the other table in this eating-room there was seated – or, rather, reclining – a dishevelled man who slept. He now awoke with a start and, hoisting himself up, blinked beerily at Archibald. He had been doing himself well that night, and the process known as sleeping it off was not yet quite completed. It was, therefore, a rather fishy and inflamed eye that now rested on my nephew. And as the dishevelled man was one of those people who are always a little cross on waking, there was in this eye nothing of the genial, the kindly, or the beaming. He looked at Archibald as if he disliked him, and it is extremely probable that he did. For one thing, Archibald was wearing a collar – slightly soiled after the experiences through which he had passed, but nevertheless a collar – and a sturdy distaste for collars was part of this awakened sleeper’s spiritual make-up.