09 Not George Washington

by Unknown

  The “Moon’s” timing system is great, too. Great in its simplicity. The regulation says you’ve got to be in the office by ten o’clock. Suppose you arrive with ten minutes to spare. You go into the outer office (there’s only one entrance—the big one in Threadneedle Street) and find on the right-hand side of the circular counter a ledger. The ledger is open: there is blotting-paper and a quill pen beside it. Everyone’s name is written in alphabetical order on the one side of the ledger and on the other side there is a blank page ruled down the middle with a red line. Having made your appearance at ten to ten, you put your initials in a line with your name on the page opposite and to the left of the division. If, on the other hand, you’ve missed your train, and don’t turn up till ten minutes past ten, you’ve got to initial your name on the other side of the red line. In the space on the right of the line, a thick black dash has been drawn by Leach, the cashier. He does this on the last stroke of ten. It makes the page look neat, he says. Which is quite right and proper. I see his point of view entirely. The ledger must look decent in an office like the “Moon.” Tommy Milner agrees with me. He says that not only does it look better, but it prevents unfortunate mistakes on the part of those who come in late. They might forget and initial the wrong side.

  After ten the book goes into Mr. Leach’s private partition, and you’ve got to go in there to sign.

  It was there when I came into the office on the morning after we’d been to talk business with Mr. Cloyster. It had been there about an hour and a half.

  “Lost your bonus, Price, my boy,” said genial Mr. Leach. And the General Manager, Mr. Fennell, who had stepped out of his own room close by, heard him say it.

  “I do not imagine that Mr. Price is greatly perturbed on that account. He will, no doubt, shortly be forsaking us for literature. What Commerce loses, Art gains,” said the G.M.

  He may have meant to be funny, or he may not. Some of those standing near took him one way, others the other. Some gravely bowed their heads, others burst into guffaws. The G.M. often puzzled his staff in that way. All were anxious to do the right thing by him, but he made it so difficult to tell what the right thing was.

  But, as I went down the basement stairs to change my coat in the clerks’ locker-room, I understood from the G.M.’s words how humiliating my position was.

  I had always been a booky sort of person. At home it had been a standing joke that, when a boy, I would sooner spend a penny on Tit-Bits than liquorice. And it was true. Not that I disliked liquorice. I liked Tit-Bits better, though. So the thing had gone on. I advanced from Deadwood Dick to Hall Caine and Guy Boothby; and since I had joined the “Moon” I had actually gone a buster and bought Omar Khayyam in the Golden Treasury series. Added to which, I had recently composed a little lyric for a singer at the “Moon’s” annual smoking concert. The lines were topical and were descriptive of our Complete Compensation Policy. Tommy Milner was the vocalist. He sang my composition to a hymn tune. The refrain went:

  Come and buy a C.C.Pee-ee! If you want immunitee-ee From the accidents which come Please plank down your premium. Life is diff’rent, you’ll agree Repeat When you’ve got a C.C.P.

  The Throne Room of the Holborn fairly rocked with applause.

  Well, it was shortly afterwards that I had received a visit from Mr. Cloyster—the visit which ended in my agreeing to sign whatever manuscripts he sent me, and forward him all cheques for a consideration of ten per cent. Softest job ever a man had. Easy money. Kudos—I had almost too much of it. Which takes me back to the G.M.’s remark about my leaving the office. Since he’s bought that big house at Regent’s Park he’s done a lot of entertaining at the restaurants. His name’s always cropping up in the “Here and There” column, and naturally he’s a subscriber to the Strawberry Leaf. The G.M. has everything of the best and plenty of it. (You don’t see the G.M. with memo. forms tucked round his cuffs: he wears a clean shirt every morning of his life. All tip-top people have their little eccentricities.) And the Strawberry Leaf, the smartest, goeyest, personalest weekly, is never missing from his drawing-room what-not. Every week it’s there, regular as clockwork. That’s what started my literary reputation among the fellows at the “Moon.” Mr. Cloyster was contributing a series of short dialogues to the Strawberry Leaf—called, “In Town.” These, on publication, bore my own signature. As a matter of fact, I happened to see the G.M. showing the first of the series to Mr. Leach in his private room. I’ve kept it by me, and I don’t wonder the news created a bit of a furore. This was it:–-

  IN TOWN BY SIDNEY PRICE

  No. I.—THE SECRECY OF THE BALLET

  (You are standing under the shelter of the Criterion’s awning. It is 12.30 of a summer’s morning. It is pouring in torrents. A quick and sudden rain storm. It won’t last long, and it doesn’t mean any harm. But what’s sport to it is death to you. You were touring the Circus in a new hat. Brand new. Couldn’t spot your tame cabby. Hadn’t a token. Spied the Cri’s awning. Dashed at it. But it leaks. Not so much as the sky though. Just enough, however, to do your hat no good. You mention this to Friendly Creature with umbrella, and hint that you would like to share that weapon.)

  FRIENDLY CREATURE. Can’t give you all, boysie. Mine’s new, too.

  YOU. (in your charming way). Well, of course. You wouldn’t be a woman if you hadn’t a new hat.

  FRIENDLY CREATURE. Do women always have new hats?

  YOU. (edging under the umbrella). Women have new hats. New women have hats.

  FRIENDLY CREATURE. Don’t call me a woman, ducky; I’m a lady.

  YOU. I must be careful. If I don’t flatter you, you’ll take your umbrella away.

  FRIENDLY CREATURE (changing subject). There’s Matilda.

  YOU. Where?

  FRIENDLY CREATURE. Coming towards us in that landaulette.

  YOU. Looks fit, doesn’t she?

  FRIENDLY CREATURE. Her! She’s a blooming rotter.

  YOU. Not so loud. She’ll hear you.

  FRIENDLY CREATURE (raising her voice). Good job. I want her to. Stumer!

  YOU. S-s-s-sh! What are you saying? Matilda’s a duchess now.

  FRIENDLY CREATURE. I know.

  YOU. But you mustn’t say “Stumer” to a duchess unless–-

  FRIENDLY CREATURE. Well?

  YOU. Unless you’re a duchess yourself?

  FRIENDLY CREATURE. I am. At least I was. Only I chucked it.

  YOU. But you said you were a lady.

  FRIENDLY CREATURE. So I am. An extra lady—front row, second O.P.

  YOU. How rude of me. Of course you were a duchess. I know you perfectly. Gorell Barnes said–-

  FRIENDLY CREATURE. Drop it. What’s the good of the secrecy of the ballet if people are going to remember every single thing about you?

  (At this point the rain stops. By an adroit flanking movement you get away without having to buy her a lunch.)

  Everyone congratulated me. “Always knew he had it in him,” “Found his vocation,” “A distinctly clever head,” “Reaping in the shekels”—that was the worst part. The “Moon,” to a man, was bent on finding out “how much Sidney Price makes out of his bits in the papers.” Some dropped hints—the G.M., Leach, and the men at the counter. Others, like Tommy Milner, asked slap out. You may be sure I didn’t tell them a fixed sum. But it was hopeless to say I was getting the small sum which my ten per cent. commission worked out at. On the other hand, I dared not pretend I was being paid at the usual rates. I should have gone broke in twenty-four hours. You have no idea how constantly I was given the opportunity of lending five shillings to important members of the “Moon” staff. It struck me then—and I have found out for certain since—that there is a popular anxiety to borrow from a man who earns money by writing. The earnings of a successful writer are, to the common intelligence, something he ought not really to have. And anyone, in default of abstracting his income, may fall back upon taking up his time.

  It did, no doubt, appear that I was coining the ready. Besides
the Strawberry Leaf, Features, and The Key of the Street were printing my signed contributions in weekly series. The Mayfair, too, had announced on its placards, “A Story in Dialogue, by Sidney Price.”

  This, then, was my position on the morning when I was late at the “Moon” and lost my bonus.

  Whilst I went up in the lift to the New Business Room, and whilst I was entering the names and addresses of inquirers in the Proposal Book, I was trying to gather courage to meet what was in store.

  For the future held this: that my name would disappear from the papers as suddenly as it had arrived there. People would want to know why I had given up writing. “Written himself out,” “No staying power,” “As short-lived as a Barnum monstrosity”: these would be the remarks which would herald ridicule and possibly pity.

  And I should be in just the same beastly fix at the “Hollyhocks” as I was at the “Moon.” What would my people say? What would Norah say?

  There was another reason, too, why a stoppage of the ten per cent. cheques would be a whack in the eye. You see, I had been doing myself well on them—uncommonly well. I had ordered, as a present to my parents, new furniture for the drawing-room. I had pressed my father to have a small greenhouse put up at my expense. He had always wanted one, but had never been able to run to it. And I had taken Norah about a good deal. Our weekly visit to a matinée (upper circle and ices), followed by tea at the Cabin or Lyons’ Popular, had become an institution. We had gone occasionally to a ball at the Town Hall.

  What would Norah say when all this ended abruptly without any explanation?

  There was no getting away from it. Sidney Price was in the soup.

  Chapter 20

  NORAH WINS HOME (Sidney Price’s narrative continued)

  My signed work had run out. For two weeks nothing had been printed over my signature. So far no comment had been raised. But it was only a question of days. But then one afternoon it all came right. It was like this.

  I was sitting eating my lunch at Eliza’s in Birchin Lane. Twenty minutes was the official allowance for the meal, and I took my twenty minutes at two o’clock. The St. Stephen’s Gazette was lying near me. I picked it up. Anything to distract my thoughts from the trouble to come. That was how I felt. Reading mechanically the front page, I saw a poem, and started violently. This was the poem:—

  A CRY

  Hands at the tiller to steer: A star in the murky sky: Water and waste of mere: Whither and why?

  Sting of absorbent night: Journey of weal or woe: And overhead the light: We go—we go?

  Darkness a mortal’s part, Mortals of whom we are: Come to a mortal’s heart, Immortal star.

  Thos. Blake. June 6th.

  “Rummy, very rummy,” I exclaimed. The poem was dated yesterday. Had Mr. Cloyster, then, continued to work his system with Thomas Blake to the exclusion of the Reverend and myself?

  Still worrying over the thing, I turned over the pages of the paper until I chanced to see the following paragraph:

  LITERARY GOSSIP

  Few will be surprised to learn that the Rev. John Hatton intends to publish another novel in the immediate future. Mr. Hatton’s first book, When It Was Lurid, created little less than a furore. The work on which he is now engaged, which will bear the title of The Browns of Brixton, is a tender sketch of English domesticity. This new vein of Mr. Hatton’s will, doubtless, be distinguished by the naturalness of dialogue and sanity of characterisation of his first novel. Messrs. Prodder and Way are to publish it in the autumn.

  “He’s running the Reverend again, is he?” said I to myself. “And I’m the only one left out. It’s a bit thick.”

  That night I wrote to Blake and to the Reverend asking whether they had been taken on afresh, and if so, couldn’t I get a look in, as things were pretty serious.

  The Reverend’s reply arrived first:

  THE TEMPLE, June 7th.

  Dear Price,—

  As you have seen, I am hard at work at my new novel. The leisure of a novelist is so scanty that I know you’ll forgive my writing only a line. I am in no way associated with James Orlebar Cloyster, nor do I wish to be. Rather I would forget his very existence.

  You are aware of the interests which I have at heart: social reform, the education of the submerged, the physical needs of the young—there is no necessity for me to enumerate my ideals further. To get quick returns from philanthropy, to put remedial organisation into speedy working order wants capital. Cloyster’s system was one way of obtaining some of it, but when that failed I had to look out for another. I’m glad I helped in the system, for it made me realise how large an income a novelist can obtain. I’m glad it failed because its failure suggested that I should try to get for myself those vast sums which I had been getting for the selfish purse of an already wealthy man. Unconsciously, he has played into my hands. I read his books before I signed them, and I find that I have thoroughly absorbed those tricks of his, of style and construction, which opened the public’s coffers to him. The Browns of Brixton will eclipse anything that Cloyster has previously done, for this reason, that it will out-Cloyster Cloyster. It is Cloyster with improvements.

  In thus abducting his novel-reading public I shall feel no compunction. His serious verse and his society dialogues bring him in so much that he cannot be in danger of financial embarrassment.

  Yours sincerely, John Hatton.

  Now this letter set my brain buzzing like the engine of a stationary Vanguard. I, too, had been in the habit of reading Mr. Cloyster’s dialogues before I signed and sent them off. I had often thought to myself, also, that they couldn’t take much writing, that it was all a knack; and the more I read of them the more transparent the knack appeared to me to be. Just for a lark, I sat down that very evening and had a go at one. Taking the Park for my scene, I made two or three theatrical celebrities whose names I had seen in the newspapers talk about a horse race. At least, one talked about a horse race, and the others thought she was gassing about a new musical comedy, the name of the play being the same as the name of the horse, “The Oriental Belle.” A very amusing muddle, with lots of doubles entendres, and heaps of adverbial explanation in small print. Such as:

  Miss Adeline Genée (with the faint, incipient blush which Mrs. Adair uses to test her Rouge Imperial).

  That sort of thing.

  I had it typed, and I said, “Price, my boy, there’s more Mr. Cloyster in this than ever Mr. Cloyster could have put into it.” And the editor of the Strawberry Leaf printed it next issue as a matter of course. I say, “as a matter of course” with intention, because the fellows at the “Moon” took it as a matter of course, too. You see, when it first appeared, I left the copy about the desk in the New Business Room, hoping Tommy Milner or some of them would rush up and congratulate me. But they didn’t. They simply said, “Don’t litter the place up, old man. Keep your papers, if you must bring ‘em here, in your locker downstairs.” One of them did say, I fancy, something about its “not being quite up to my usual.” They didn’t know it was my maiden effort at original composition, and I couldn’t tell them. It was galling, you’ll admit.

  However, I quickly forgot my own troubles in wondering what Mr. Cloyster was doing. No editor, I foresaw, would accept his society stuff as long as mine was in the market. They wouldn’t pay for Cloyster whilst they were offered the refusal of super-Cloyster. Wasn’t likely. You must understand I wasn’t over-easy in my conscience about the affair. I had, in a manner of speaking, pinched Mr. Cloyster’s job. But then, I argued to myself, he was earning quite as much as was good for any one man by his serious verse.

  And at that very minute our slavey, little Ethelbertina, knocked at my bedroom door and gave me a postcard. It was addressed to me in thick, straggly writing, and was so covered with thumb-marks that a Bertillon expert would have gone straight off his nut at the sight of it. “My usbend,” began the postcard, “as received yourn. E as no truk wif the other man E is a pots imself an e can do a job of potry as orfen as e ‘
as a mine to your obegent servent Ada Blake. P.S. me an is ole ant do is writin up for im.”

  So then I saw how that “Cry” thing in the St. Stephen’s had come there.

  You heard me give my opinion about telling Norah my past life. Well, you’ll agree with me now that there’s practically nothing to tell her.

  There is, of course, little Miss Richards, the waitress in the smoking-room of the Piccadilly Cabin. Her, I mean, with the fuzzy golden hair done low. You’ve often exchanged “Good evening” with her, I’m sure. Her hair’s done low: she used to make rather a point of telling me that. Why, I don’t know, especially as it was always tidy and well off her shoulders.

  And then there was the haughty lady who sold programmes in the Haymarket Amphitheatre—but she’s got the sack, so Cookson informs me.

  Therefore, as I shall tell Norah plainly that I disapprove of the Cabin, the past can hatch no egg of discord in the shape of the Cast-Off Glove.

  The only thing that I can think of as needing suppression is the part I played in Mr. Cloyster’s system.

  There’s no doubt that the Reverend, Blake and I have, between us, put a fairly considerable spoke in Mr. Cloyster’s literary wheel. But what am I to do? To begin with, it’s no use my telling Norah about the affair, because it would do her no good, and might tend possibly to lessen her valuation of my capabilities. At present, my dialogues dazzle her; and once your fiancée is dazzled the basis of matrimonial happiness is assured. Again, looking at it from Mr. Cloyster’s point of view, what good would it be to him if I were to stop writing? Both the editor and the public have realised by now that his work is only second-rate. He can never hope to get a tenth of his original prices, even if his work is accepted, which it won’t be; for directly I leave his market clear, someone else will collar it slap off.

  Besides, I’ve no right to stop my dialogues. My duty to Norah is greater than my duty to Mr. Cloyster. Unless I continue to be paid by literature I shall not be able to marry Norah until three years next quarter. The “Moon” has passed a rule about it, and an official who marries on an income not larger than eighty pounds per annum is liable to dismissal without notice.