“Ho!” he said, disengaging himself from his coat. “Ho. There ain’t no free tea ternight, ain’t there? Bills stuck on them railings in errer, I suppose. Another bloomin’ errer. Seems to me I’m sick of errers. Wot I says is, ‘Come on, all of yer.’ I’m Tom Blake, I am. You can arst them down at Brentford. Kind old Tom Blake, wot wouldn’t hurt a fly; and I says, ‘Come on, all of yer,’ and I’ll knock yer insides through yer backbones.”
Sidney Price spoke again. His words were honeyed, but ineffectual.
“I’m honest old Tom, I am,” boomed Thomas Blake, “and I’m ready for the lot of yer: you and yer free tea and yer errers.”
At this point Alf Joblin detached himself from the hovering crowd and said to Price: “He must be cowed. I’ll knock sense into the drunken brute.”
“Well,” said Price, “he’s got to go; but you won’t hurt him, Alf, will you?”
“No,” said Alf, “I won’t hurt him. I’ll just make him look a fool. This is where science comes in.”
“I’m honest old Tom,” droned the boatman.
“If you will have it,” said Alf, with fine aposiopesis.
He squared up to him.
Now Alf Joblin, like the other pugilists of my class, habitually refrained from delivering any sort of attack until he was well assured that he had seen an orthodox opening. A large part of every round between Hatton’s boys was devoted to stealthy circular movements, signifying nothing. But Thomas Blake had not had the advantage of scientific tuition. He came banging in with a sweeping right. Alf stopped him with his left. Again Blake swung his right, and again he took Alf’s stopping blow without a blink. Then he went straight in, right and left in quick succession. The force of the right was broken by Alf’s guard, but the left got home on the mark; and Alf Joblin’s wind left him suddenly. He sat down on the floor.
To say that this tragedy in less than five seconds produced dismay among the onlookers would be incorrect. They were not dismayed. They were amused. They thought that Alf had laid himself open to chaff. Whether he had slipped or lost his head they did not know. But as for thinking that Alf with all his scientific knowledge was not more than a match for this ignorant, intoxicated boatman, such a reflection never entered their heads. What is more, each separate member of the audience was convinced that he individually was the proper person to illustrate the efficacy of style versus untutored savagery.
As soon, therefore, as Alf Joblin went writhing to the floor, and Thomas Blake’s voice was raised afresh in a universal challenge, Walter Greenway stepped briskly forward.
And as soon as Walter’s guard had been smashed down by a most unconventional attack, and Walter himself had been knocked senseless by a swing on the side of the jaw, Bill Shale leaped gaily forth to take his place.
And so it happened that, when I entered the building at nine, it was as though a devastating tornado had swept down every club boy, sparing only Sidney Price, who was preparing miserably to meet his fate.
To me, standing in the doorway, the situation was plain at the first glance. Only by a big effort could I prevent myself laughing outright. It was impossible to check a grin. Thomas Blake saw me.
“Hullo!” I said; “what’s all this?”
He stared at me.
“‘Ullo!” he said, “another of ‘em, is it? I’m honest old Tom Blake, I am, and wot I say is–-“
“Why honest, Mr. Blake?” I interrupted.
“Call me a liar, then!” said he. “Go on. You do it. Call it me, then, and let’s see.”
He began to shuffle towards me.
“Who pinched his father’s trousers, and popped them?” I inquired genially.
He stopped and blinked.
“Eh?” he said weakly.
“And who,” I continued, “when sent with twopence to buy postage-stamps, squandered it on beer?”
His jaw dropped, as it had dropped in Covent Garden. It must be very unpleasant to have one’s past continually rising up to confront one.
“Look ‘ere!” he said, a conciliatory note in his voice, “you and me’s pals, mister, ain’t we? Say we’re pals. Of course we are. You and me don’t want no fuss. Of course we don’t. Then look here: this is ‘ow it is. You come along with me and ‘ave a drop.”
It did not seem likely that my class would require any instruction in boxing that evening in addition to that which Mr. Blake had given them, so I went with him.
Over the moisture, as he facetiously described it, he grew friendliness itself. He did not ask after Kit, but gave his opinion of her gratuitously. According to him, she was unkind to her relations. “Crool ‘arsh,” he said. A girl, in fact, who made no allowances for a man, and was over-prone to Sauce and the Nasty Snack.
We parted the best of friends.
“Any time you’re on the Cut,” he said, gripping my hand with painful fervour, “you look out for Tom Blake, mister. Tom Blake of the Ashlade and Lechton. No ceremony. Jest drop in on me and the missis. Goo’ night.”
At the moment of writing Tom Blake is rapidly acquiring an assured position in the heart of the British poetry-loving public. This incident in his career should interest his numerous admirers. The world knows little of its greatest men.
CHAPTER 11
JULIAN’S IDEA (James Orlebar Cloyster’s narrative continued)
I had been relating, on the morning after the Blake affair, the stirring episode of the previous night to Julian. He agreed with me that it was curious that our potato-thrower of Covent Garden market should have crossed my path again. But I noticed that, though he listened intently enough, he lay flat on his back in his hammock, not looking at me, but blinking at the ceiling; and when I had finished he turned his face towards the wall—which was unusual, since I generally lunched on his breakfast, as I was doing then, to the accompaniment of quite a flow of languid abuse.
I was in particularly high spirits that morning, for I fancied that I had found a way out of my difficulty about Margaret. That subject being uppermost in my mind, I guessed at once what Julian’s trouble was.
“I think you’d like to know, Julian,” I said, “whether I’d written to Guernsey.”
“Well?”
“It’s all right,” I said.
“You’ve told her to come?”
“No; but I’m able to take my respite without wounding her. That’s as good as writing, isn’t it? We agreed on that.”
“Yes; that was the idea. If you could find a way of keeping her from knowing how well you were getting on with your writing, you were to take it. What’s your idea?”
“I’ve hit on a very simple way out of the difficulty,” I said. “It came to me only this morning. All I need do is to sign my stuff with a pseudonym.”
“You only thought of that this morning?”
“Yes. Why?”
“My dear chap, I thought of it as soon as you told me of the fix you were in.”
“You might have suggested it.”
Julian slid to the floor, drained the almost empty teapot, rescued the last kidney, and began his breakfast.
“I would have suggested it,” he said, “if the idea had been worth anything.”
“What! What’s wrong with it?”
“My dear man, it’s too risky. It’s not as though you kept to one form of literary work. You’re so confoundedly versatile. Let’s suppose you did sign your work with a nom de plume.”
“Say, George Chandos.”
“All right. George Chandos. Well, how long would it be, do you think, before paragraphs appeared, announcing to the public, not only of England but of the Channel Islands, that George Chandos was really Jimmy Cloyster?”
“What rot!” I said. “Why the deuce should they want to write paragraphs about me? I’m not a celebrity. You’re talking through your hat, Julian.”