Sketches in Lavender, Blue and Green Part 12

"That's a dear two pen'oth," chimed in a common-looking man on the seat behind.

"Oh, that's impossible, dear," returned the other, "because I owed you sixpence to begin with."

"But I did," persisted the first lady.

"You gave me a shilling," said the conductor, who had returned, pointing an accusing forefinger at the elder of the ladies.

The elder lady nodded.

"And I gave you sixpence and two pennies, didn't I?"

The lady admitted it.

"An' I give 'er"--he pointed towards the younger lady--"fourpence, didn't I?"

"Which I gave you, you know, dear," remarked the younger lady.

"Blow me if it ain't _me_ as 'as been cheated out of the fourpence,"

cried the conductor.

"But," said the florid gentleman, "the other lady gave you sixpence."

"Which I give to 'er," replied the conductor, again pointing the finger of accusation at the elder lady. "You can search my bag if yer like. I ain't got a bloomin' sixpence on me."

By this time everybody had forgotten what they had done, and contradicted themselves and one another. The florid man took it upon himself to put everybody right, with the result that before Piccadilly Circus was reached three pa.s.sengers had threatened to report the conductor for unbecoming language. The conductor had called a policeman and had taken the names and addresses of the two ladies, intending to sue them for the fourpence (which they wanted to pay, but which the florid man would not allow them to do); the younger lady had become convinced that the elder lady had meant to cheat her, and the elder lady was in tears.

The florid gentleman and myself continued to Charing Cross Station. At the booking office window it transpired that we were bound for the same suburb, and we journeyed down together. He talked about the fourpence all the way.

At my gate we shook hands, and he was good enough to express delight at the discovery that we were near neighbours. What attracted him to myself I failed to understand, for he had bored me considerably, and I had, to the best of my ability, snubbed him. Subsequently I learned that it was a peculiarity of his to be charmed with anyone who did not openly insult him.

Three days afterwards he burst into my study unannounced--he appeared to regard himself as my bosom friend--and asked me to forgive him for not having called sooner, which I did.

"I met the postman as I was coming along," he said, handing me a blue envelope, "and he gave me this, for you."

I saw it was an application for the water-rate.

"We must make a stand against this," he continued. "That's for water to the 29th September. You've no right to pay it in June."

I replied to the effect that water-rates had to be paid, and that it seemed to me immaterial whether they were paid in June or September.

"That's not it," he answered, "it's the principle of the thing. Why should you pay for water you have never had? What right have they to bully you into paying what you don't owe?"

He was a fluent talker, and I was a.s.s enough to listen to him. By the end of half an hour he had persuaded me that the question was bound up with the inalienable rights of man, and that if I paid that fourteen and tenpence in June instead of in September, I should be unworthy of the privileges my forefathers had fought and died to bestow upon me.

He told me the company had not a leg to stand upon, and at his instigation I sat down and wrote an insulting letter to the chairman.

The secretary replied that, having regard to the att.i.tude I had taken up, it would be inc.u.mbent upon themselves to treat it as a test case, and presumed that my solicitors would accept service on my behalf.

When I showed him this letter he was delighted.

"You leave it to me," he said, pocketing the correspondence, "and we'll teach them a lesson."

I left it to him. My only excuse is that at the time I was immersed in the writing of what in those days was termed a comedy-drama. The little sense I possessed must, I suppose, have been absorbed by the play.

The magistrate's decision somewhat damped my ardour, but only inflamed his zeal. Magistrates, he said, were muddle-headed old fogies. This was a matter for a judge.

The judge was a kindly old gentleman, and said that bearing in mind the unsatisfactory wording of the sub-clause, he did not think he could allow the company their costs, so that, all told, I got off for something under fifty pounds, inclusive of the original fourteen and tenpence.

Afterwards our friendship waned, but living as we did in the same outlying suburb, I was bound to see a good deal of him; and to hear more.

At parties of all kinds he was particularly prominent, and on such occasions, being in his most good-natured mood, was most to be dreaded.

No human being worked harder for the enjoyment of others, or produced more universal wretchedness.

One Christmas afternoon, calling upon a friend, I found some fourteen or fifteen elderly ladies and gentlemen trotting solemnly round a row of chairs in the centre of the drawing-room while Poppleton played the piano. Every now and then Poppleton would suddenly cease, and everyone would drop wearily into the nearest chair, evidently glad of a rest; all but one, who would thereupon creep quietly away, followed by the envying looks of those left behind. I stood by the door watching the weird scene. Presently an escaped player came towards me, and I enquired of him what the ceremony was supposed to signify.

"Don't ask me," he answered grumpily. "Some of Poppleton's d.a.m.ned tomfoolery." Then he added savagely, "We've got to play forfeits after this."

The servant was still waiting a favourable opportunity to announce me. I gave her a shilling not to, and got away unperceived.

After a satisfactory dinner, he would suggest an impromptu dance, and want you to roll up mats, or help him move the piano to the other end of the room.

He knew enough round games to have started a small purgatory of his own.

Just as you were in the middle of an interesting discussion, or a delightful _tete-a-tete_ with a pretty woman, he would swoop down upon you with: "Come along, we're going to play literary consequences," and dragging you to the table, and putting a piece of paper and a pencil before you, would tell you to write a description of your favourite heroine in fiction, and would see that you did it.

He never spared himself. It was always he who would volunteer to escort the old ladies to the station, and who would never leave them until he had seen them safely into the wrong train. He it was who would play "wild beasts" with the children, and frighten them into fits that would last all night.

So far as intention went, he was the kindest man alive. He never visited poor sick persons without taking with him in his pocket some little delicacy calculated to disagree with them and make them worse. He arranged yachting excursions for bad sailors, entirely at his own expense, and seemed to regard their subsequent agonies as ingrat.i.tude.

He loved to manage a wedding. Once he planned matters so that the bride arrived at the altar three-quarters of an hour before the groom, which led to unpleasantness upon a day that should have been filled only with joy, and once he forgot the clergyman. But he was always ready to admit when he made a mistake.

At funerals, also, he was to the fore, pointing out to the grief-stricken relatives how much better it was for all concerned that the corpse was dead, and expressing a pious hope that they would soon join it.

The chiefest delight of his life, however, was to be mixed up in other people's domestic quarrels. No domestic quarrel for miles round was complete without him. He generally came in as mediator, and finished as leading witness for the appellant.

As a journalist or politician his wonderful grasp of other people's business would have won for him esteem. The error he made was working it out in practice.

THE MAN WHO LIVED FOR OTHERS

The first time we met, to speak, he was sitting with his back against a pollard willow, smoking a clay pipe. He smoked it very slowly, but very conscientiously. After each whiff he removed the pipe from his mouth and fanned away the smoke with his cap.

"Feeling bad?" I asked from behind a tree, at the same time making ready for a run, big boys' answers to small boys' impertinences being usually of the nature of things best avoided.

To my surprise and relief--for at second glance I perceived I had under- estimated the length of his legs--he appeared to regard the question as a natural and proper one, replying with unaffected candour, "Not yet."

My desire became to comfort him--a sentiment I think he understood and was grateful for. Advancing into the open, I sat down over against him, and watched him for a while in silence. Presently he said:--