Sinister Street Volume Ii Part 55

The four offensive youths in the alcove began to mock Dolly's tears, and Michael, who was already bitten with some of the primitive pugnacity of the underworld, rose to attack them.

"Sit down," Daisy commanded. "I wouldn't mess my hands, if I was you, with such a pack of filth. Sit down, you stupid boy. You'll get us all into trouble."

Michael managed by a great effort to resume his seat, but for a minute or two he saw the beerhall through a mist of rage.

Gradually Dolly's tears ceased to flow, and after another brandy she became merely more abusive of the faithless Dave. Her cheeks swollen with crying seemed flabbier than ever, and her long retreating chin expressed a lugubrious misanthropy.

"Rotten, I call it, don't you?" said the sympathetic Daisy, appealing to Michael.

He agreed with a profound nod.

"And she's been that good to him. You wouldn't believe."

Michael thought it was rather risky to embark upon an enumeration of Dolly's virtuous acts. He feared another relapse into noisy grief.

At this moment the subject of Daisy's eulogy rose from her seat and stared very dramatically at a corner of the main portion of the beerhall.

"My G.o.d!" she said, with ominous calm.

"What is it, duck?" asked Daisy, anxiously peering.

"My G.o.d!" Daisy repeated intensely. Then suddenly she poured forth a volley of obloquy, and with an hysterical scream caught up her gla.s.s evidently intending to hurl it in the direction of her abuse. Daisy seized one arm: Michael gripped the other, and together they pulled her back into her chair. She was still screaming loudly, and the noise of the beerhall, hitherto scattered and variable in pitch, concentrated in a low murmur of interest. Round about them in the alcove the neighbors began to listen: the girl who had been arguing so pa.s.sionately with the cold-eyed man stopped and stared; the partially drunk and bearded man collapsed into a gla.s.sy indifference, while his charmer no longer winked over her shoulder at the spectators of her wooing; the four offensive youths gaped like landed trout; even the blotchy-faced man ceased to look at his watch and confined himself to sucking steadily his teeth.

It seemed probable, Michael thought, that there was going to be rather a nasty row. Dolly would not listen to persuasion from him or her friend.

She was going to attack that Florrie; she was going to mark that Florrie for life with a gla.s.s; she was going to let her see if she could come it over Doll Wearne. It would take more than Florrie to do that; yes, more than half-a-dozen Florries, it would.

The manager of the Orange had been warned, and he was already edging his way slowly toward the table. The friends of Florrie were using their best efforts to remove her from the temptation to retaliate. Though she declared loudly that nothing would make her quit the Orange, and certainly that Dolly less than anybody, she did suffer herself to be coaxed away.

Dolly, when she found her rival had retreated, burst into tears again and was immediately surrounded by a crowd of inquisitive sympathizers, which made her utterly hysterical. Michael, without knowing quite how it had happened, found that he was involved in the fortunes and enmities and friendships of a complete society. He found himself explaining to several bystanders the wrong which Dolly had been compelled to endure at the hands of Hungarian Dave. It was extraordinary how suddenly this absurd intrigue of the underworld came to seem tremendously important.

He felt that all his sense of proportion was rapidly disappearing. In the middle of an excited justification of Dolly's tears he was aware that he and his surroundings and his att.i.tude were to himself incredible. He was positively in a nightmare, and a prey to the inconsequence of dreams. Or was all his life until this moment a dream, and was this reality? One fact alone presented itself clearly, which was the necessity to see the miserable Dolly safely through the rest of the evening. He felt very reliant upon Daisy, who was behaving with admirable composure, and when he asked her advice about the course of action, he agreed at once with her that Dolly must be persuaded into a cab and be allowed in Daisy's rooms in Guilford Street a freedom of rage and grief that was here, such was the propriety of the Orange, a very imprudent display of emotion.

"She'll be barred from coming down here," said Daisy. "Come on, let's get her home."

"Where's that Florrie?" screamed Dolly.

"She's gone home. So what's the use in your carrying on so mad? The manager's got his eye on us, Doll. Come on, Doll, let's get on home. I tell you the manager's looking at us. You are a silly girl."

"---- the manager," said Dolly obstinately. "Let him look."

"Why don't you come and see if you can find Florrie outside?" Daisy suggested.

Dolly was moved by this proposal, and presently she agreed to vacate the Orange, much to Michael's relief, for he was expecting every moment to see her attack the manager with the match-stand that was fretting her fingers. As it happened, Daisy's well-meant suggestion was very unlucky because Hungarian Dave, the cause of all the bother, was standing on the pavement close to the entrance.

Daisy whispered to Michael to get a cab quickly, because Hungarian Dave was close at hand. He looked at him curiously, this degraded individual in whose domestic affairs he was now so deeply involved. A very objectionable creature he was, too, with his greasy hair and large red mouth. His cap was pulled down over the eyes, and he may have wished not to be seen; but an instinct for his presence made Dolly turn round, and in a moment she was in the thick of the delight of telling him off for the benefit of a crowd increasing with every epithet she flung. It was useless now to attempt to get her away, and Michael and Daisy could only drag her back when she seemed inclined to attack him with finger-nails or hatpin.

"Get a cab," cried Daisy. "Never mind what she says. Get a cab, and we'll put the silly thing into it and drive off. The coppers will be here in a moment."

Michael managed to hail a hansom immediately, but when he turned back to the scene of the pavement the conditions of the dispute were entirely changed. Hungarian Dave, infuriated or frightened, had knocked Dolly down, and she was just staggering to her feet, when a policeman stepped into the circle.

"Come on, move along," he growled.

The bully had merged himself in the ring of onlookers, and Dolly, with a cry of fury, flung herself in his direction.

"Stop that, will you?" the policeman said savagely, seizing her by the arm.

"Go on, it's a dirty shame," cried Daisy. "Why don't you take the fellow as knocked her down?"

Michael by this time had forced his way through the crowd, rage beating upon his brain like a great scarlet hammer.

"You infernal a.s.s," he shouted to the constable. "Haven't you got the sense to see that this woman was attacked first? Where is the blackguard who did it?" he demanded of the stupid, the gross, the vilely curious press of onlookers. No one came forward to support him, and Hungarian Dave had slipped away.

"Move on, will you?" the policeman repeated.

"d.a.m.n you," cried Michael. "Will you let go of that woman's arm?"

The constable with a bovine density of purpose proceeded apparently to arrest the wretched Dolly, and Michael maddened by his idiocy felt that the only thing to do was to hit him as hard as he could. This he did.

The constable immediately blew his whistle. Other ma.s.ses of inane bulk loomed up, and Michael was barely able to control himself sufficiently not to resist all the way to Vine Street, as two of them marched him along, and four more followed with Daisy and Dolly. A spumy trail of nocturnal loiterers clung to their wake.

Next morning Michael appeared before the magistrate. He listened to the charge against him and nearly laughed aloud in court, because the whole business so much resembled the trial in Alice in Wonderland. It was not that the magistrate was quite so illogical as the King of Hearts; but he was so obviously bia.s.sed in favor of the veracity of a London policeman, that the inconsequence of the nightmare which had begun last night was unalterably preserved. Michael, aware of the circ.u.mstances which had led up to what was being made to appear as wantonly riotous behavior in Leicester Square, could not fail to be exasperated by the inability of the magistrate to understand his own straightforward story.

He began to sympathize with the lawless population. The law could only seem to them an unintelligent machine for crushing their freedom. If the conduct of this case were a specimen of administration, it was obvious that arrest must be synonymous with condemnation. The magistrate in the first place seemed dreadfully overcome by the sorrow of beholding a young man in Michael's position on the police-court.

"I cannot help wondering when I see a young man who has had every opportunity ..." the magistrate went on in a voice that worked on the stale air of the court like a rusty file.

"I'm not a defaulting bank clerk," Michael interrupted. "Is it impossible for you to understand----"

"Don't speak to me like that. Keep quiet. I've never been spoken to like that in all my experience as a magistrate. Keep quiet."

Michael sighed in compa.s.sion for his age and stupidity.

"Are there any previous convictions against Wearne and Palmer?" the magistrate inquired. He was told that the woman Palmer had not hitherto appeared, but that Wearne had been previously fined for disorderly conduct in Shaftesbury Avenue. "Ah!" said the magistrate. "Ah!" he repeated, looking over the rim of his gla.s.ses. "And the case against the male defendant? I will take the evidence of Constable C11254."

"Your worship, I was on duty yesterday evening at 12.25 in Leicester Square. Hearing a noise in the direction of the Caffy Dorringe and observing a crowd collect, I moved across the road to disperse it. The defendant Wearne was using obscene language to an unknown man; and wishing to get her to move on I took hold of her arm. The male defendant, also using very obscene language, attempted to rescue her and struck me on the chest. I blew my whistle...."

The ponderous constable with his thick red neck continued a sing-song narrative.

When Michael's turn came to refute some of the evidence against him, he merely shrugged his shoulders.

"It's really useless, you know, for me to say anything. If 'd.a.m.n you' is obscene, then I was obscene. If a girl is knocked down by a bully and on rising to her feet is instantly arrested by a dunderhead in a blue uniform, and if an onlooker punches this functionary, then I did a.s.sault the constable."

"This sort of insolence won't do," said the magistrate trembling with a curious rarefied pa.s.sion. "I have a very good mind to send you to prison without the option of a fine, but in consideration...."

Somehow or other it was made to appear a piece of extraordinary magnanimity on the part of the magistrate that Michael was only fined three guineas and costs.

"I wish to pay the fines of Miss Palmer and Miss Wearne," he announced.

Later in the morning Michael, with the two girls, emerged into the garish summer day. Not even yet was the illusion of a nightmare dissipated, for as he looked at his two companions, feathered, frilled and bedraggled, who were walking beside him, he could scarcely acknowledge even their probable reality here in the sun.

"I shan't drink hot whisky-and-lemon again in a hurry," vowed Daisy. "I knew it was going to bring me bad luck when I said it tasted so funny."