The Night Club

Dick Little read the page with astonishment.

"By heavens! what a score," he shouted. "And the writs?"

"All withdrawn, and the Barabbas Club has regathered and is dining me at the Ritz tonight. God knows who'll pay the bill. I must be off to dress."

And that evening Dick Little thought more of the sensibilities of publishers and the brains of authors than the ailments of his patients.

"Fancy publishers bein' as bad as that," remarked Bindle reflectively, as he took a long pull at his tankard. "They seem to beat foremen."

"Publishers," said Dare, "are pompous asses. If they were business men – if they were only men-of-letters, I would embrace them."

"P'raps that's why they ain't," suggested Bindle.

Dare joined in the laugh against himself.

"I have known some publishers," remarked Angell Herald with characteristic literalness, "who have been most excellent advertisers. I fear Mr. Dare is rather prejudiced."

"Shut up, Herald," broke in Dick Little, "you're thinking 'shop.'"

"P'raps they've got 'various' veins2 in their legs, or else their missusses 'ave got religion," suggested Bindle. "It ain't fair to judge no man till you seen 'is missus, an' a doctor's seen 'is legs – beggin' your pardon, miss," this to Sallie.

CHAPTER VI

I FAIL THE NIGHT CLUB

One evening I failed the Club badly. During the previous week there had not been a moment in which to complete the half-written story intended for that particular Sunday. I had done my best; but I arrived at Chelsea with the knowledge that I had let them all down.

When I had made my confession, Bindle turned to me with grave reproach in his eyes.

"I'm surprised at you, sir," he said, "I been lookin' forward all the week to this evenin', an' now you tell us you ain't got nothink. Wot we goin' to do?"

My unpopularity was sufficiently obvious to penetrate the thickest of skins.

"What about bridge?" ventured Tom Little. But Bindle was opposed to every suggestion made. It was clear that he was greatly disappointed, and he seemed to find solace nowhere, not even in his tankard of ale.

"You done the dirty on us to-night, sir," he said during a pause in the fusillade of personalities and rather feeble suggestions as to how thee evening should be spent. "Sort o' thing a foreman 'ud do."

It was Jocelyn Dare who came to the rescue. "What," he asked, "can you expect of a publisher? He has sufficient manners to impress a half-dipped author, and not enough morals to pay him what is his due."

"My dear Dare," it was Windover who spoke, "are you not inverting the values? Our friend Bindle here, for instance, might reasonably conceive that you place morals on a higher plane than manners. Bindle is young and unsophisticated, you must remember he has arrived at an impressionable age."

Bindle grinned. He scented a battle between Windover and Dare, both brilliant and amusing talkers.

"I'm a Victorian," replied Dare, accepting the challenge with alacrity, "a member of the middle-classes, the acknowledged backbone of the English nation."

"Yes, and like all other respectable backbones should be covered up," retorted Windover.

"Alas!" murmured Dare, gazing at the ceiling. "Once youth was content with Arcadia, now it demands a Burlington Arcadia."

That was characteristic of Dare. An epigram to him justified the most flagrant irrelevancy. Then turning to Windover he added, "But I interrupted you. Let us have your views on morals and manners, or should I say manners and morals?"

"Yes do, sir," broke in Bindle eagerly, "My missus once said I 'adn't no more morals than Pottyfer's wife, I dunno the lady, but p'raps you can 'elp me."

"The association of morals and manners is merely a verbal coincidence," began Windover. "As a matter of fact they exist best apart. Morals are geographical, the result of climate and environment. The morals of Streatham, for instance, are not the morals of Stamboul, although the manners of the one place will pass fairly well in the other. Manners are like English gold, current in all countries: morals, on the other hand, are like French pennies, they must not be circulated in any but the country of their origin."

"Yes; but is this the age of manners or of morals?" asked Dare. "That's what we want to get at."

"Of neither, I regret to say," responded Windover. "We have too many morals at home, and too few manners abroad."

"Excuse me, sir," broke in Bindle, "but wot do you exactly mean by morals an' manners?"

"You are right, Bindle, you invariably are," replied Windover. "Definition should always precede disquisition." He proceeded to light a cigarette, obviously with a view to gaining time. "Observing this rule," he continued, "I will define morals as originally an ethical conception of man's duty towards his neighbour's wife: they are now in use merely as a standard by which we measure failure." Windover paused and gazed meditatively at the end of his cigarette.

"And manners?" I queried.

"Oh! manners," he replied lightly, "are a thin gauze with which we have clothed primæval man and primitive woman."

"But why," enquired Sallie, leaning forward eagerly, "why should the primitive and primæval require covering?"

It was Dare who answered Sallie's question. "Mark Twain said, 'Be good; but you'll be lonely,'" he observed. "Man probably found it impossible to be good, being gregarious by instinct. He saw that Nature was always endeavouring to get him involved in difficulties with morals, and like the detective of romance, determined to adopt a disguise. He therefore invented manners."

"I will not venture to question Dare's brilliant hypothesis," continued Windover. "With the aid of good manners a man may do anything, and a woman quite a lot of things otherwise denied her. It is manners not morals that make a society. Manners will open for you all doors; but morals only the gates of heaven."

"As a eugenist I am with you, Windover," said Dare; "because both manners and eugenics are the study of good breeding."

"Excuse me, sir," broke in Bindle, "but do yer think yer could use a few words wot I've 'eard before? I'd sort o' feel more at 'ome like."

There was a laugh at Windover's expense, and a promise from him to Bindle to correct his phraseology.

"Morals," continued Windover, "are merely the currency of deferred payment – you will reap in another world."

"That's wot Mrs. B. says," broke in Bindle; "but wot if she gets disappointed? It 'ud be like goin' dry all the week to 'ave a big lush up on Sunday, an' then findin' the pubs closed."

"Excellent! Bindle," said Windover, "you prove conclusively that the future is for the proletariat."

"Fancy me a-provin' all that," said Bindle with unaccustomed dryness.

"Morality," continued Windover with a smile, "is merely post-dated self-indulgence. There is a tendency to expect too much from the other world. Think of the tragedy of the elderly spinster who apparently regulated her life upon a misreading of a devotional work. She denied herself all the joys of this world in anticipation of the great immorality to come."

"That's jest like Mrs. B.," remarked Bindle, "Outside a tin o' salmon, an' maybe an egg for 'er tea, there ain't much wot 'olds 'er among what she calls the joys o' mammon."

"Mrs. Bindle," said Windover, picking out another cigarette from the box and tapping it meditatively, "is in all probability intense. Most moral people are intense. They either have missions or help to support them. They wear ugly and sombre clothing adorned with crewel-work stoles. They frequently subsist entirely upon vegetables and cereals, they live in garden-cities and praise God for it – "

"I, too, praise God that they should live there," broke in Dare.

"Exactly, my dear Dare, probably the only approval that providence ever receives from you is of a negative order."

"You forget the heroes and heroines of morals, Windover," said Dare gently. "Penelope, Lucrece, Clarissa Harlowe, Sir Galahad."

"Manners, too, have had as doughty champions," was the reply, "for instance, the Good Samaritan, Lord Chesterfield, and the wedding guest in The Ancient Mariner. Manners are social and public, whilst morals are national and private. All attractive people have good manners, whereas – well there were the Queen of Sheba, Byron and Dr. Crippen."

Bindle looked from Windover to Dare, hopelessly bewildered. He refrained from interrupting, however.

"Our morals affect so few," continued Windover, "whereas our manners react upon the whole fabric of society. A man may be a most notorious evil-liver, and yet pass among his fellows without inconveniencing them; on the other hand, if he be a noisy eater he will render himself obnoxious to hundreds. Manners are for the rose-bed of life, morals for the deathbed of repentance."

"All this is very pretty verbal pyrotechnics," said Dare with a smile; "but you forget that the greatness of England is due to her moral fibre. I grant you that morality is very ugly, and its exponents dour of look and rough of speech, still it is the foundation of the country's greatness."

"There you are wrong," was Windover's retort, "it is not her morality that has made for this country's greatness, but her moral standard, coupled with the determination of her far-seeing people not to allow it to interfere with their individual pleasures. They decided that theirs should be a standard by which to measure failure. The result of this has been to earn for us in Europe the reputation of being a dour and godly people, who regard the flesh and the devil through a stained-glass window. They forget that to preserve the purity of his home life, the Englishman invented the continental excursion."

"But what about puritan America?" broke in Dare. "If we are smug, they are superlative in their smugness."

"You forget, Dare," said Windover reproachfully, "that they have their 'unwritten law,' said to be the only really popular law in the country, with which to punish moral lapses. To explain the punishment, they created 'brain storm'; but it cannot compare with our incomparable moral standard. It is England's greatest inheritance."

Windover paused to light the cigarette with which he had been toying. It was obvious that he was enjoying himself. Bindle seized the moment in which to break in upon the duologue.

"I don't rightly understand all the things wot you been sayin', you bein' rather given to usin' fancy words; but it reminds me o' Charlie Dunn."

Bindle paused. He has a strong sense of the dramatic.

"J.B.," said Dare, "we demand the story of Charlie Dunn."

'Well, sir, 'im an' 'is missus couldn't 'it it off no 'ow, so Charlie thought it might make matters better if they took a lodger. 'E thought it might save 'em jawin' each other so much. One day Charlie's missus nips off wi' the lodger, and poor ole Charlie goes round a-vowin' 'is life was ruined, an' sayin' wot 'e'd do to Mr. Lodger when 'e caught 'im.

"'But,' ses I, 'you ought to be glad, Charlie.'

"'So I am,' says 'e in a whisper like; 'but if I let on, it wouldn't be respectable, see? Come an' 'ave a drink.'"

"There you are," said Windover, "the poison of appearances has penetrated to the working-classes. To the blind all things are pure."

I reminded Windover that Colonel Charters said that he would not give one fig for virtue, but he would cheerfully give £10,000 for a good character.

I could see that Bindle had been waiting to join more actively in the discussion, and my remark gave him his opportunity.

"A character," he remarked oracularly, "depends on 'oos givin' it. I s'pose I taken an' lost more jobs than any other cove in my line, yet I never 'ad a character in my life, good or bad.

"Now, if you was to ask 'Earty, 'e'd say I ain't got no manners; an' Mrs. B. 'ud say I ain't got no morals, an' why?" Bindle looked round the room with a grin of challenge on his face. "'Cause I says wot I thinks to 'Earty, an' 'e don't like it, an' I talks about babies before young gals, an' Mrs. Bindle thinks it ain't decent.

"As I ain't got neither manners or morals, I ought to be able to judge like between 'em. Now look at 'Earty, 'e's as moral as a swan, though 'e ain't as pretty, an' why?"

Again Bindle looked round the circle.

"'Cause 'e's afraid!" Having made this statement Bindle proceeded to light his pipe. This concluded in silence, he continued:

"'E's afraid o' bein' disgraced in this world and roasted in the next. You should see the way 'e looks at them young women in the choir. If 'Earty was an 'Un on the loose, well – " Bindle buried his face in his tankard.

"'Is Lordship 'as been sayin' a lot o' clever things to-night; but 'e don't believe a word of 'em."

Windover screwed his glass into his eye and gazed at Bindle with interest.

"'E loves to 'ear 'imself talk, same as me."

Windover joined the laugh at his own expense.

"'E talks with 'is tongue, not from 'is 'eart, same as 'Earty forgives. A man ain't goin' to feel better 'cause 'e's always doin' wot other people ses 'e ought to do, while 'e wants to do somethink else. If a man's got a rotten 'eart, a silver tongue ain't goin' to 'elp 'im to get to 'eaven."

Bindle was unusually serious that night, and it was evident that he, at least, was speaking from his heart.

After a pause he continued, "My mate, Bill Peters, got an allotment to grow vegetables, at least such vegetables as the slugs didn't want. Bill turns up in the evenin's, arter 'is job was done, wi' spade an' 'oe an' rake. But every time 'e got to work on 'is allotment, a goat came for 'im from a back yard near by. Bill ain't a coward, and there used to be a rare ole fight; but the goat was as wily as a foreman, an' Bill always got the worst of it. 'E'd wait till Bill wasn't lookin', and then 'e'd charge from be'ind, an' it sort o' got on Bill's nerves.

"At last Bill 'eard that 'is allotment was where the goat fed, an', bein' a sport, 'e said it wasn't fair to turn Billy out, so 'e give up the allotment and 'is missus 'll 'ave to buy 'er vegetables same as before." Bindle paused to let the moral of his tale soak in.

"But what has that to do with morals and manners, J.B.?" asked Dick Little, determined that Bindle should expound his little allegory.

"For Bill read England and for goat read niggers," said one of Tims' men.

"You got it, sir," said Bindle approvingly. "As I told 'Earty last week, it ain't convincin' when yer starts squirtin' lead with a machine-gun a-tellin' the poor devils wot stops the bullets that there's a dove a-comin'. Them niggers get a sort of idea that maybe the dove's missed the train."

"Talkin' of goats – " began Angell Herald.

"We wasn't talkin' o' goats," remarked Bindle quietly, "we was talkin' o' Gawd."

Whereat Angell Herald at first looked nonplussed and finally laughed!

CHAPTER VII

A SURPRISE BEHIND THE VEIL

Windover, or to give him his full name, the Hon. Anthony Charles (afterwards Lord) Windover, apart from possessing a charming personality, has a delightfully epigrammatic turn of speech. It was he who said that a man begins life with ideals about his mother; but ends it with convictions about his wife. On that occasion Bindle had left his seat and, solemnly walking over to Windover, had shaken him warmly by the hand, returning to his chair again without a word.

It was Windover, too, who had once striven to justify celibacy for men by saying that a benedict lived in a fool's paradise; a bachelor in some other fool's paradise.

Windover's meeting with Bindle was most dramatic. Immediately on entering the room with Carruthers, Windover's eye caught sight of Bindle seated at his small table, the customary large tankard of ale before him, blowing clouds of smoke from his short pipe. Windover had stopped dead and, screwing his glass into the corner of his left eye, a habit of his, gazed fixedly at him who later became our chairman. We were all feeling a little embarrassed, all save Bindle, who returned the gaze with a grin of unconcern. It was he who broke the tension by remarking to Windover.

"You don't 'appen to 'ave a nut about yer, do you sir?"

Windover had laughed and the two shook hands heartily, Windover perhaps a little ashamed of having shown such obvious surprise. As a rule his face is a mask.

"I'm awfully sorry, I was trying to remember where we had met," he said rather lamely.

"'Ush, sir, 'ush!" said Bindle looking round him apprehensively, then in a loud whisper, "It was in Brixton, sir. You was pinched 'alf an 'our after me."

From that time Bindle and Windover became the best of friends.

When, on the death of his elder brother, killed in a bombing-raid, Windover had succeeded to the title, we were all at a loss how to express our sympathy. He is not a man with whom it is easy to condole. He and his brother had been almost inseparables, and both had joined the army immediately on the outbreak of war.

On the Sunday following the tragedy, Windover turned up as usual. He greeted us in his customary manner, and no one liked to say anything about his loss. Bindle, however, seems to possess a genius for solving difficult problems. As he shook hands with Windover he said, "I won't call yer m'lord jest yet, sir, it'll only sort o' remind yer."

I saw Bindle wince at the grip Windover gave him. Later in the evening Windover remarked to Carruthers, "J.B. always makes me feel exotic," and we knew he was referring to Bindle's way of expressing sympathy at his bereavement.

Curiously enough, to the end of the chapter Bindle continued to address Windover as "sir", possibly as a protest against Angell Herald's inveterate "my lordliness."

Windover's story was just Windover and nobody else, and it is printed just as he narrated it, with injunctions "not to add or omit, lengthen or shorten a single garment." I have not done so.

How long I had been dead I could not conjecture. I remembered buying a newspaper of the old man who stands at the corner of Piccadilly Place. I recollected that it was my intention to justify, to the smallest possible extent compatible with my instinctive sense of delicacy, the letter of patient optimism that I had received that morning from my tailor. That was all. There had been no death-bed scene, with its pathos of farewells, no Rogers moaning piteously about his future, as he invariably did when my health showed the least deviation from the normal. Yet here was I dead – dead as Free Silver.

In a dingy apartment of four garishly papered walls, upon a straight-backed, black oak settle, I sat gazing into my top hat. That I was dressed for calling did not seem to cause me any very great surprise, nor was I conscious of any tremor, or feeling of diffidence as to my fate. It seemed much as if I were waiting to see my solicitor upon some unimportant matter of business. I knew that I was there to be interrogated as to my past life. I was vaguely conscious that awkward questions would be asked, and that the utmost tact and diplomacy would be required to answer or evade them.

I was speculating as to the probable cause of my death, weighing the claims of a taxi, the end of the world and a bomb, when the door opposite to me opened and a tall angular woman appeared. Given a dusty crape bonnet, she would have passed admirably for a Bayswater caretaker. I was taken aback: in my mind post-mortem interrogation had always been associated with the male sex.

Marvelling that this unattractive Vestal should be an attribute to Eternity, I rose and bowed. My imagination had always pictured the women of the Hereafter as draped in long, white, clinging garments, and possessed of beautiful fluffy wings and a gaze of ineffable love and wonder. The thought of the surprise in store for the sentimental ballad-writers induced a chuckle!

With a gesture of her lean hand, the Vestal motioned me from the room. At the extreme end of a gloomy corridor along which we passed, there appeared a grained door bearing in letters of white the words: —

MRS. GRUNDYPRIVATE

My interest immediately became stimulated. Here was an entirely unlooked-for development.

"Shall we go in?" I enquired, rather out of a spirit of bravado than anything else.

The Vestal rebuked me with an expressionless stare. Presently the door opened with a startling suddenness and later closed behind us of its own accord.

The second room seemed strangely familiar. On the mantel-piece was a large gilt clock in a glass case, flanked on either side by an enormous pink lustre with its abominable crystal drops. The furniture was either ponderous or "what-notty", and every possible thing was covered, as if to be undraped were indelicate. On the chairs were antimacassars, table-cloths hid the shameless polish of the wood, the pattern of the Brussels carpet was modified in its flamboyancy by innumerable mats. The walls were a mass of pictures, and in front of the only window were lace curtains of a tint known technically as "ecru." There were two collections of impossible wax fruits covered by oval glasses, a square case of incredibly active-looking stuffed birds, and a bewildering mass of photographs in frames. Here and there on tables were a few select volumes, ostentatiously laid open with silk hand-painted bookmarks threading through their virgin pages. I identified "The Lady of the Lake," Smiles, "Self Help," "Holy Living and Holy Dying," the works of Martin Tupper, and the inevitable family bible.

At a large round-table opposite to the door sat a presence – a woman in form, in clothing, in everything but sex. It was quizzing Disapproval in black silk, with a gold chain round its neck from which hung a large cameo locket. Its grey hair, very thin on top, was stowed away in a net with appalling precision. It had three chins, and grey eyes, behind which lurked neither soul nor emotion. It was the personification of the triumph of virtue untempted.

I bowed. The eyes regarded me impassively, then turned to the massive volume before them. It was bound in embossed black leather with gilt edges and a heavy gilt clasp. I was incredulous that the Sins of Society could be all contained in one book; but decided that it was made possible by the use of the word "ditto." Society is never original in anything, least of all its sinning.

In the hope of attracting to myself the attention hitherto considered my due, I began to fidget. Presently, and without looking up, Mrs. Grundy, as I judged her to be, demanded in a smooth, colourless voice: —

"Your name?"

"Anthony Charles Windover," I responded glibly.

"Age?"

I coughed deprecatingly.

"Age?" It was as if I heard the uninflected accents of Destiny.

"Is it absolutely necessary?" I queried.

"Absolutely!"

"Forty-three. Of course in confidence," I added hastily.

"There is no confidence in Eternity."

"Then you, too, are a sceptic?" I ventured. She merely stared at me fixedly, then proceeded to turn over the leaves of the tome in front of her. Soon she found what appeared to be the correct page. After fully a minute's deliberate contemplation of the entry, she looked up suddenly and regarded me with a solemn gravity that struck me as grotesque.

"Not a very bad case, let's hope," I put in cheerfully. "There have been – "

"Silence!"

I started as if shot, and looking round discovered beside me the impassive visage of the ill-favoured Vestal of the ante-room.

"I wish you wouldn't bawl in my ear like that," I snapped. "It's most unpleasant."

"Anthony Charles Windover," it was Mrs. Grundy who spoke in a voice that was deep-throated and disapproving, "age forty-three." She looked up again with her cold and malevolent stare; "yours is a grave record; we will deal with it in detail."

"Surely, Madam," I protested, "it is not necessary to go over everything. I am so hopeless at accounts."

"First there was the case of Cecily Somers," she proceeded unmoved.

"A mere boy and girl affair. Cecily was young, and – well, it didn't last long."

"Then there was the case of Laura Merton," continued the arch-inquisitor.

"Poor Laura," I murmured. "I never could resist red hair, and hers was – poor Laura!"

"There were circumstances of a very grave nature."

"You mean the curate? He was a bloodless creature; besides it all ended happily."

"You intervened between an affianced man and wife," continued Mrs. Grundy.