by Unknown
‘Here you are,’ he said. ‘Here you are. Excellent. You are in good time. Comrades Wotherspoon and Prebble have already begun to speak. I shall commence now that you have come. This is the way. Over by these trees.’
They made their way towards a small clump of trees, near which a fair-sized crowd had already begun to collect. Evidently listening to the speakers was one of Clapham’s fashionable Sunday amusements. Mr Waller talked and gesticulated incessantly as he walked. Psmith’s demeanour was perhaps a shade patronizing, but he displayed interest. Mike proceeded to the meeting with the air of an about-to-be-washed dog. He was loathing the whole business with a heartiness worthy of a better cause. Somehow, he felt he was going to be made to look a fool before the afternoon was over. But he registered a vow that nothing should drag him on to the small platform which had been erected for the benefit of the speaker.
As they drew nearer, the voices of Comrades Wotherspoon and Prebble became more audible. They had been audible all the time, very much so, but now they grew in volume. Comrade Wotherspoon was a tall, thin man with side-whiskers and a high voice. He scattered his aitches as a fountain its sprays in a strong wind. He was very earnest. Comrade Prebble was earnest, too. Perhaps even more so than Comrade Wotherspoon. He was handicapped to some extent, however, by not having a palate. This gave to his profoundest thoughts a certain weirdness, as if they had been uttered in an unknown tongue. The crowd was thickest round his platform. The grown-up section plainly regarded him as a comedian, pure and simple, and roared with happy laughter when he urged them to march upon Park Lane and loot the same without mercy or scruple. The children were more doubtful. Several had broken down, and been led away in tears.
When Mr Waller got up to speak on platform number three, his audience consisted at first only of Psmith, Mike, and a fox-terrier. Gradually however, he attracted others. After wavering for a while, the crowd finally decided that he was worth hearing. He had a method of his own. Lacking the natural gifts which marked Comrade Prebble out as an entertainer, he made up for this by his activity. Where his colleagues stood comparatively still, Mr Waller behaved with the vivacity generally supposed to belong only to peas on shovels and cats on hot bricks. He crouched to denounce the House of Lords. He bounded from side to side while dissecting the methods of the plutocrats. During an impassioned onslaught on the monarchical system he stood on one leg and hopped. This was more the sort of thing the crowd had come to see. Comrade Wotherspoon found himself deserted, and even Comrade Prebble’s shortcomings in the way of palate were insufficient to keep his flock together. The entire strength of the audience gathered in front of the third platform.
Mike, separated from Psmith by the movement of the crowd, listened with a growing depression. That feeling which attacks a sensitive person sometimes at the theatre when somebody is making himself ridiculous on the stage—the illogical feeling that it is he and not the actor who is floundering—had come over him in a wave. He liked Mr Waller, and it made his gorge rise to see him exposing himself to the jeers of a crowd. The fact that Mr Waller himself did not know that they were jeers, but mistook them for applause, made it no better. Mike felt vaguely furious.
His indignation began to take a more personal shape when the speaker, branching off from the main subject of Socialism, began to touch on temperance. There was no particular reason why Mr Waller should have introduced the subject of temperance, except that he happened to be an enthusiast. He linked it on to his remarks on Socialism by attributing the lethargy of the masses to their fondness for alcohol; and the crowd, which had been inclined rather to pat itself on the back during the assaults on Rank and Property, finding itself assailed in its turn, resented it. They were there to listen to speakers telling them that they were the finest fellows on earth, not pointing out their little failings to them. The feeling of the meeting became hostile. The jeers grew more frequent and less good-tempered.
‘Comrade Waller means well,’ said a voice in Mike’s ear, ‘but if he shoots it at them like this much more there’ll be a bit of an imbroglio.’
‘Look here, Smith,’ said Mike quickly, ‘can’t we stop him? These chaps are getting fed up, and they look bargees enough to do anything. They’ll be going for him or something soon.’
‘How can we switch off the flow? I don’t see. The man is wound up. He means to get it off his chest if it snows. I feel we are by way of being in the soup once more, Comrade Jackson. We can only sit tight and look on.’
The crowd was becoming more threatening every minute. A group of young men of the loafer class who stood near Mike were especially fertile in comment. Psmith’s eyes were on the speaker; but Mike was watching this group closely. Suddenly he saw one of them, a thick-set youth wearing a cloth cap and no collar, stoop.
When he rose again there was a stone in his hand.
The sight acted on Mike like a spur. Vague rage against nobody in particular had been simmering in him for half an hour. Now it concentrated itself on the cloth-capped one.
Mr Waller paused momentarily before renewing his harangue. The man in the cloth cap raised his hand. There was a swirl in the crowd, and the first thing that Psmith saw as he turned was Mike seizing the would-be marksman round the neck and hurling him to the ground, after the manner of a forward at football tackling an opponent during a line-out from touch.
There is one thing which will always distract the attention of a crowd from any speaker, and that is a dispute between two of its units. Mr Waller’s views on temperance were forgotten in an instant. The audience surged round Mike and his opponent.
The latter had scrambled to his feet now, and was looking round for his assailant.
‘That’s ‘im, Bill!’ cried eager voices, indicating Mike.
”E’s the bloke wot ‘it yer, Bill,’ said others, more precise in detail.
Bill advanced on Mike in a sidelong, crab-like manner.
”Oo’re you, I should like to know?’ said Bill.
Mike, rightly holding that this was merely a rhetorical question and that Bill had no real thirst for information as to his family history, made no reply. Or, rather, the reply he made was not verbal. He waited till his questioner was within range, and then hit him in the eye. A reply far more satisfactory, if not to Bill himself, at any rate to the interested onlookers, than any flow of words.
A contented sigh went up from the crowd. Their Sunday afternoon was going to be spent just as they considered Sunday afternoons should be spent.
‘Give us your coat,’ said Psmith briskly, ‘and try and get it over quick. Don’t go in for any fancy sparring. Switch it on, all you know, from the start. I’ll keep a thoughtful eye open to see that none of his friends and relations join in.’
Outwardly Psmith was unruffled, but inwardly he was not feeling so composed. An ordinary turn-up before an impartial crowd which could be relied upon to preserve the etiquette of these matters was one thing. As regards the actual little dispute with the cloth-capped Bill, he felt that he could rely on Mike to handle it satisfactorily. But there was no knowing how long the crowd would be content to remain mere spectators. There was no doubt which way its sympathies lay. Bill, now stripped of his coat and sketching out in a hoarse voice a scenario of what he intended to do—knocking Mike down and stamping him into the mud was one of the milder feats he promised to perform for the entertainment of an indulgent audience—was plainly the popular favourite.
Psmith, though he did not show it, was more than a little apprehensive.
Mike, having more to occupy his mind in the immediate present, was not anxious concerning the future. He had the great advantage over Psmith of having lost his temper. Psmith could look on the situation as a whole, and count the risks and possibilities. Mike could only see Bill shuffling towards him with his head down and shoulders bunched.
‘Gow it, Bill!’ said someone.
‘Pliy up, the Arsenal!’ urged a voice on the outskirts of the crowd.
A chorus of encouragement from kind
friends in front: ‘Step up, Bill!’
And Bill stepped.
16. Further Developments
Bill (surname unknown) was not one of your ultra-scientific fighters. He did not favour the American crouch and the artistic feint. He had a style wholly his own. It seemed to have been modelled partly on a tortoise and partly on a windmill. His head he appeared to be trying to conceal between his shoulders, and he whirled his arms alternately in circular sweeps.
Mike, on the other hand, stood upright and hit straight, with the result that he hurt his knuckles very much on his opponent’s skull, without seeming to disturb the latter to any great extent. In the process he received one of the windmill swings on the left ear. The crowd, strong pro-Billites, raised a cheer.
This maddened Mike. He assumed the offensive. Bill, satisfied for the moment with his success, had stepped back, and was indulging in some fancy sparring, when Mike sprang upon him like a panther. They clinched, and Mike, who had got the under grip, hurled Bill forcibly against a stout man who looked like a publican. The two fell in a heap, Bill underneath.
At the same time Bill’s friends joined in.
The first intimation Mike had of this was a violent blow across the shoulders with a walking-stick. Even if he had been wearing his overcoat, the blow would have hurt. As he was in his jacket it hurt more than anything he had ever experienced in his life. He leapt up with a yell, but Psmith was there before him. Mike saw his assailant lift the stick again, and then collapse as the old Etonian’s right took him under the chin.
He darted to Psmith’s side.
‘This is no place for us,’ observed the latter sadly. ‘Shift ho, I think. Come on.’
They dashed simultaneously for the spot where the crowd was thinnest. The ring which had formed round Mike and Bill had broken up as the result of the intervention of Bill’s allies, and at the spot for which they ran only two men were standing. And these had apparently made up their minds that neutrality was the best policy, for they made no movement to stop them. Psmith and Mike charged through the gap, and raced for the road.
The suddenness of the move gave them just the start they needed. Mike looked over his shoulder. The crowd, to a man, seemed to be following. Bill, excavated from beneath the publican, led the field. Lying a good second came a band of three, and after them the rest in a bunch.
They reached the road in this order.
Some fifty yards down the road was a stationary tram. In the ordinary course of things it would probably have moved on long before Psmith and Mike could have got to it; but the conductor, a man with sporting blood in him, seeing what appeared to be the finish of some Marathon Race, refrained from giving the signal, and moved out into the road to observe events more clearly, at the same time calling to the driver, who joined him. Passengers on the roof stood up to get a good view. There was some cheering.
Psmith and Mike reached the tram ten yards to the good; and, if it had been ready to start then, all would have been well. But Bill and his friends had arrived while the driver and conductor were both out in the road.
The affair now began to resemble the doings of Horatius on the bridge. Psmith and Mike turned to bay on the platform at the foot of the tram steps. Bill, leading by three yards, sprang on to it, grabbed Mike, and fell with him on to the road. Psmith, descending with a dignity somewhat lessened by the fact that his hat was on the side of his head, was in time to engage the runners-up.
Psmith, as pugilist, lacked something of the calm majesty which characterized him in the more peaceful moments of life, but he was undoubtedly effective. Nature had given him an enormous reach and a lightness on his feet remarkable in one of his size; and at some time in his career he appeared to have learned how to use his hands. The first of the three runners, the walking-stick manipulator, had the misfortune to charge straight into the old Etonian’s left. It was a well-timed blow, and the force of it, added to the speed at which the victim was running, sent him on to the pavement, where he spun round and sat down. In the subsequent proceedings he took no part.
The other two attacked Psmith simultaneously, one on each side. In doing so, the one on the left tripped over Mike and Bill, who were still in the process of sorting themselves out, and fell, leaving Psmith free to attend to the other. He was a tall, weedy youth. His conspicuous features were a long nose and a light yellow waistcoat. Psmith hit him on the former with his left and on the latter with his right. The long youth emitted a gurgle, and collided with Bill, who had wrenched himself free from Mike and staggered to his feet. Bill, having received a second blow in the eye during the course of his interview on the road with Mike, was not feeling himself. Mistaking the other for an enemy, he proceeded to smite him in the parts about the jaw. He had just upset him, when a stern official voice observed, ”Ere, now, what’s all this?’
There is no more unfailing corrective to a scene of strife than the ‘What’s all this?’ of the London policeman. Bill abandoned his intention of stamping on the prostrate one, and the latter, sitting up, blinked and was silent.
‘What’s all this?’ asked the policeman again. Psmith, adjusting his hat at the correct angle again, undertook the explanations.
‘A distressing scene, officer,’ he said. ‘A case of that unbridled brawling which is, alas, but too common in our London streets. These two, possibly till now the closest friends, fall out over some point, probably of the most trivial nature, and what happens? They brawl. They—’
‘He ‘it me,’ said the long youth, dabbing at his face with a handkerchief and pointing an accusing finger at Psmith, who regarded him through his eyeglass with a look in which pity and censure were nicely blended.
Bill, meanwhile, circling round restlessly, in the apparent hope of getting past the Law and having another encounter with Mike, expressed himself in a stream of language which drew stern reproof from the shocked constable.
‘You ‘op it,’ concluded the man in blue. ‘That’s what you do. You ‘op it.’
‘I should,’ said Psmith kindly. ‘The officer is speaking in your best interests. A man of taste and discernment, he knows what is best. His advice is good, and should be followed.’
The constable seemed to notice Psmith for the first time. He turned and stared at him. Psmith’s praise had not had the effect of softening him. His look was one of suspicion.
‘And what might you have been up to?’ he inquired coldly. ‘This man says you hit him.’
Psmith waved the matter aside.
‘Purely in self-defence,’ he said, ‘purely in self-defence. What else could the man of spirit do? A mere tap to discourage an aggressive movement.’
The policeman stood silent, weighing matters in the balance, lie produced a notebook and sucked his pencil. Then he called the conductor of the tram as a witness.
‘A brainy and admirable step,’ said Psmith, approvingly. ‘This rugged, honest man, all unused to verbal subtleties, shall give us his plain account of what happened. After which, as I presume this tram—little as I know of the habits of trams—has got to go somewhere today, I would suggest that we all separated and moved on.’
He took two half-crowns from his pocket, and began to clink them meditatively together. A slight softening of the frigidity of the constable’s manner became noticeable. There was a milder beam in the eyes which gazed into Psmith’s.
Nor did the conductor seem altogether uninfluenced by the sight.
The conductor deposed that he had bin on the point of pushing on, seeing as how he’d hung abart long enough, when he see’d them two gents, the long ‘un with the heye-glass (Psmith bowed) and t’other ‘un, a-legging of it dahn the road towards him, with the other blokes pelting after ‘em. He added that, when they reached the trem, the two gents had got aboard, and was then set upon by the blokes. And after that, he concluded, well, there was a bit of a scrap, and that’s how it was.
‘Lucidly and excellently put,’ said Psmith. ‘That is just how it was. Comrade Jackson, I fancy we lea
ve the court without a stain on our characters. We win through. Er—constable, we have given you a great deal of trouble. Possibly—?’
‘Thank you, sir.’ There was a musical clinking. ‘Now then, all of you, you ‘op it. You’re all bin poking your noses in ‘ere long enough. Pop off. Get on with that tram, conductor.’ Psmith and Mike settled themselves in a seat on the roof. When the conductor came along, Psmith gave him half a crown, and asked after his wife and the little ones at home. The conductor thanked goodness that he was a bachelor, punched the tickets, and retired.
‘Subject for a historical picture,’ said Psmith. ‘Wounded leaving the field after the Battle of Clapham Common. How are your injuries, Comrade Jackson?’
‘My back’s hurting like blazes,’ said Mike. ‘And my ear’s all sore where that chap got me. Anything the matter with you?’
‘Physically,’ said Psmith, ‘no. Spiritually much. Do you realize, Comrade Jackson, the thing that has happened? I am riding in a tram. I, Psmith, have paid a penny for a ticket on a tram. If this should get about the clubs! I tell you, Comrade Jackson, no such crisis has ever occurred before in the course of my career.’
‘You can always get off, you know,’ said Mike.
‘He thinks of everything,’ said Psmith, admiringly. ‘You have touched the spot with an unerring finger. Let us descend. I observe in the distance a cab. That looks to me more the sort of thing we want. Let us go and parley with the driver.’
17. Sunday Supper
The cab took them back to the flat, at considerable expense, and Psmith requested Mike to make tea, a performance in which he himself was interested purely as a spectator. He had views on the subject of tea-making which he liked to expound from an armchair or sofa, but he never got further than this. Mike, his back throbbing dully from the blow he had received, and feeling more than a little sore all over, prepared the Etna, fetched the milk, and finally produced the finished article.