Government office requires. Pressure on the part of relations, of parents, has been brought to bear on them. The steady employment, the graduated income, the pension—that fatal pension—has been danced by their fathers and their mothers and their Uncle Johns before their eyes. Appeals have been made to them on filial, not to say religious, grounds. Threats would have availed nothing; but appeals—downright tearful appeals from mamma, husky, hand-gripping appeals from papa—that is what has made escape impossible. A huge act of unselfishness has been compelled; a lifetime of reactionary egotism is inevitable and legitimate. I was wrong when I said Malim was typical. He has to the good an ingenuity which assists naturally in the solution of the problem of self and circumstance. A year or two ago chance brought him in contact with Kit. They struck up a friendship. He became an habitue at the Fried Fish Shop in Tottenham Court Road. Whenever we questioned his taste he said that a physician recommended fish as a tonic for the brain. But it was not his brain that took Malim to the fried fish shop. It was his heart. He loved Kit, and presently he married her. One would have said this was an impossible step. Misery for Malim’s people, his friends, himself, and afterwards for Kit. But Nature has endowed both Malim and Kit with extraordinary commonsense. He kept to his flat; she kept to her job in the fried fish shop. Only, instead of living in, she was able to retire after her day’s work to a little house which he hired for her in the Hampstead Road. Her work, for which she is eminently fitted, keeps her out of mischief. His flat gives the impression to his family and the head of his department that he is still a bachelor. Thus, all goes well.”
“I’ve often read in the police reports,” I said, “of persons who lead double lives, and I’m much interested in–-“
Malim and Kit bore down upon us. We rose.
“It’s the march past,” observed the former. “Come upstairs.”
“Kiddie,” said Kit, “give me your arm.”
At half-past four we were in Wellington Street. It was a fine, mild morning, and in the queer light of the false dawn we betook ourselves to the Old Hummums for breakfast. Other couples had done the same. The steps of the Hummums facing the market harboured already a waiting crowd. The doors were to be opened at five. We also found places on the stone steps. The market was alive with porters, who hailed our appearance with every profession of delight. Early hours would seem to lend a certain acidity to their badinage. By-and-by a more personal note crept into their facetious comments. Two guardsmen on the top step suddenly displayed, in return, a very creditable gift of repartee. Covent Garden market was delighted. It felt the stern joy which warriors feel with foemen worthy of their steel. It suspended its juggling feats with vegetable baskets, and devoted itself exclusively to the task of silencing our guns. Porters, costers, and the riff-raff of the streets crowded in a semicircle around us. Just then it was borne in on us how small our number was. A solid phalanx of the toughest customers in London faced us. Behind this semicircle a line of carts had been drawn up. Unseen enemies from behind this laager now began to amuse themselves by bombarding us with the product of the market garden. Tomatoes, cauliflowers, and potatoes came hurtling into our midst. I saw Julian consulting his watch. “Five minutes more,” he said. I had noticed some minutes back that the ardour of the attack seemed to centre round one man in particular—a short, very burly man in a costume that seemed somehow vaguely nautical. His face wore the expression of one cheerfully conscious of being well on the road to intoxication. He was the ringleader. It was he who threw the largest cabbage, the most
Kit saw him too.
“Why, there’s that blackguard Tom!” she cried.
She had been told to sit down behind Malim for safety. Before anyone could stop her, or had guessed her intention, she had pushed her way through us and stepped out into the road.
It was so unexpected that there was an involuntary lull in the proceedings.
“Tom!”
She pointed an accusing finger at the man, who gaped beerily.
“Tom, who pinched farver’s best trousers, and popped them?”
There was a roar of laughter. A moment before, and Tom had been the pet of the market, the energetic leader, the champion potato-slinger. Now he was a thing of derision. His friends took up the question. Keen anxiety was expressed on all sides as to the fate of father’s trousers. He was requested to be a man and speak up.
The uproar died away as it was seen that Kit had not yet finished.
“Cheese it, some of yer,” shouted a voice. “The lady wants to orsk him somefin’ else.”
“Tom,” said Kit, “who was sent with tuppence to buy postage-stamps and spent it on beer?”
The question was well received by the audience. Tom was beaten. A potato, vast and nobbly, fell from his palsied hand. He was speechless. Then he began to stammer.
“Just you stop it, Tom,” shouted Kit triumphantly. “Just you stop it, d’you ‘ear, you stop it.”
She turned towards us on the steps, and, taking us all into her confidence, added: “‘E’s a nice thing to ‘ave for a bruvver, anyway.”
Then she rejoined Malim, amid peals of laughter from both armies. It was a Homeric incident.
Only a half-hearted attempt was made to renew the attack. And when the door of the Hummums at last opened, Malim observed to Julian and me, as we squashed our way in, that if a man’s wife’s relations were always as opportune as Kit’s, the greatest objection to them would be removed.
CHAPTER 8
I MEET THE REV. JOHN HATTON
I saw a great deal of Malim after that. He and Julian became my two chief mainstays when I felt in need of society. Malim was a man of delicate literary skill, a genuine lover of books, a severe critic of modern fiction. Our tastes were in the main identical, though it was always a blow to me that he could see nothing humorous in Mr. George Ade, whose Fables I knew nearly by heart. The more robust type of humour left him cold.
In all other respects we agreed.
There is a never-failing fascination in a man with a secret. It gave me a pleasant feeling of being behind the scenes, to watch Malim, sitting in his armchair, the essence of everything that was conventional and respectable, with Eton and Oxford written all over him, and to think that he was married all the while to an employee in a Tottenham Court Road fried-fish shop.
