"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 n.o.bbly, 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 _(James Orlebar Cloyster's narrative continued)_

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.

Kit never appeared in the flat: but Malim went nearly every evening to the little villa. Sometimes he took Julian and myself, more often myself alone, Julian being ever disinclined to move far from his hammock. The more I saw of Kit the more thoroughly I realized how eminently fitted she was to be Malim's wife. It was a union of opposites. Except for the type of fiction provided by "penny libraries of powerful stories." Kit had probably not read more than half a dozen books in her life. Grimm's fairy stories she recollected dimly, and she betrayed a surprising acquaintance with at least three of Ouida's novels. I fancy that Malim appeared to her as a sort of combination of fairy prince and Ouida guardsman. He exhibited the Oxford manner at times rather noticeably. Kit loved it.

Till I saw them together I had thought Kit's accent and her incessant mangling of the King's English would have jarred upon Malim. But I soon found that I was wrong. He did not appear to notice.

I learned from Kit, in the course of my first visit to the villa, some further particulars respecting her brother Tom, the potato-thrower of Covent Garden Market. Mr. Thomas Blake, it seemed, was the proprietor and skipper of a barge. A pleasant enough fellow when sober, but too much given to what Kit described as "his drop." He had apparently left home under something of a cloud, though whether this had anything to do with "father's trousers" I never knew. Kit said she had not seen him for some years, though each had known the other's address. It seemed that the Blake family were not great correspondents.

"Have you ever met John Hatton?" asked Malim one night after dinner at his flat.

"John Hatton?" I answered. "No. Who is he?"

"A parson. A very good fellow. You ought to know him. He's a man with a number of widely different interests. We were at Trinity together. He jumps from one thing to another, but he's frightfully keen about whatever he does. Someone was saying that he was running a boys' club in the thickest part of Lambeth."

"There might be copy in it," I said.

"Or ideas for advertis.e.m.e.nts for Julian," said Malim. "Anyway, I'll introduce you to him. Have you ever been in the Barrel?"

"What's the Barrel?"

"The Barrel is a club. It gets the name from the fact that it's the only club in England that allows, and indeed urges, its members to sit on a barrel. John Hatton is sometimes to be found there. Come round to it tomorrow night."

"All right," I replied. "Where is it?"

"A hundred and fifty-three, York Street, Covent Garden. First floor."

"Very well," I said. "I'll meet you there at twelve o'clock. I can't come sooner because I've got a story to write."

Twelve had just struck when I walked up York Street looking for No.

153.

The house was brilliantly lighted on the first floor. The street door opened on to a staircase, and as I mounted it the sound of a piano and a singing voice reached me. At the top of the stairs I caught sight of a waiter loaded with gla.s.ses. I called to him.

"Mr. Cloyster, sir? Yessir. I'll find out whether Mr. Malim can see you, sir."

Malim came out to me. "Hatton's not here," he said, "but come in.

There's a smoking concert going on."

He took me into the room, the windows of which I had seen from the street.

There was a burst of cheering as we entered the room. The song was finished, and there was a movement among the audience. "It's the interval," said Malim.

Men surged out of the packed front room into the pa.s.sage, and then into a sort of bar parlour. Malim and I also made our way there. "That's the fetish of the club," said Malim, pointing to a barrel standing on end; "and I'll introduce you to the man who is sitting on it. He's little Michael, the musical critic. They once put on an operetta of his at the Court. It ran about two nights, but he reckons all the events of the world from the date of its production."

"Mr. Cloyster--Mr. Michael."

The musician hopped down from the barrel and shook hands. He was a dapper little person, and had a trick of punctuating every sentence with a sn.i.g.g.e.r.

"Cheer-o," he said genially. "Is this your first visit?"

I said it was.

"Then sit on the barrel. We are the only club in London who can offer you the privilege." Accordingly I sat on the barrel, and through a murmur of applause I could hear Michael telling someone that he'd first seen that barrel five years before his operetta came out at the Court.

At that moment a venerable figure strode with dignity into the bar.

"Maundrell," said Malim to me. "The last of the old Bohemians. An old actor. Always wears the steeple hat and a long coat with skirts."

The survivor of the days of Kean uttered a bellow for whisky-and-water.

"That barrel," he said, "reminds me of Buckstone's days at the Haymarket. After the performance we used to meet at the Cafe de l'Europe, a few yards from the theatre. Our secret society sat there."

"What was the society called, Mr. Maundrell?" asked a new member with unusual intrepidity.

"Its name," replied the white-headed actor simply, "I shall not divulge. It was not, however, altogether unconnected with the Pink Men of the Blue Mountains. We used to sit, we who were initiated, in a circle. We met to discuss the business of the society. Oh, we were the observed of all observers, I can a.s.sure you. Our society was extensive.

It had its offshoots in foreign lands. Well, we at these meetings used to sit round a barrel--a great big barrel, which had a hole in the top.

The barrel was not merely an ornament, for through the hole in the top we threw any sc.r.a.ps and odds and ends we did not want. Bits of tobacco, bread, marrow bones, the dregs of our gla.s.ses--anything and everything went into the barrel. And so it happened, as the barrel became fuller and fuller, strange animals made their appearance--animals of peculiar shape and form crawled out of the barrel and would attempt to escape across the floor. But we were on their tracks. We saw them. We headed them off with our sticks, and we chased them back again to the place where they had been born and bred. We poked them in, sir, with our sticks."

Mr. Maundrell emitted a placid chuckle at this reminiscence.

"A good many members of this club," whispered Malim to me, "would have gone back into that barrel."

A bell sounded. "That's for the second part to begin," said Malim.