Читать книгу The Laslett Affair - Edward Harold Begbie - Страница 9

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It took Jodrell a considerable time to get his coat and hat from the cloak-room, and when he did eventually extricate himself from the theatre he was separated from his friends.

He found the outer world, which was foggy and cold and damp, almost as tumultuous as the smaller, duskier, and stuffier world of the theatre. As far as eye could see in that lamp-lighted scene there was a complete stoppage of wheeled traffic and a continuous movement of pedestrians in a strange swaying movement, as of water tilted from side to side in a basin. Whistles were blowing in all directions. Shouts, laughter, and singing filled the air. Every now and then the lights shone on the figure of a young man who elevated himself above the mob on the top of a taxi-cab, and stood lurching there till he fell forward and disappeared. Policemen could be seen thrusting their way through the dense pack, while men and women on the tops of buses stood up and surveyed the scene below them, some with consternation and some with cynical amusement.

Jodrell took his bearings, and decided to make his way with the crowd—from which it seemed impossible to disentangle himself—as far as Piccadilly, and then slip into Jermyn Street, and so down to his home in St. James’s Square—a most delectable haven in that horrible heaving sea of riot and tomfoolery. He kept repeating to himself the words of Pepys, “And so to bed,” as he quietly moved westward with the mob, hating the hubbub, disliking intensely the smell of this enormous multitude pressing into him, and longing for fresh air, solitude, and peace.

In the greater brightness of Piccadilly Circus, where the fog had a whiter aspect, he found to his relief that the forces of order were getting hold of the situation. Motor-cars filled with frightened people, and omnibuses packed with excited spectators, were at least on the move; while the stern order of the police, “Pass along, please,” was succeeding up to a point in clearing the pavements of congestion. But there was evidently still some central excitement in the Circus, holding things up, for people were risking their lives among buses and cars by running frantically from that direction, while every now and then Jodrell heard a loud scream from that point, and caught sight of something flung into the air, either a garment or a missile.

He was looking to this crowded centre, wondering what particular madness was going on there, when suddenly, over the heads of the crowd and between vehicles stationary in a block, he caught sight of Stephen Laslett, an extraordinarily clear vignette of Stephen himself, surrounded by a blur of swaying undergraduates mixed up, infernally mixed up, with a body of police. It was only a momentary glimpse, but it had a tremendous effect on Jodrell. The look of Stephen’s face frightened him. The boy was evidently mad drunk, and lost to all sense of reason, and yet in a condition of excitement so great that he was capable of using his keen brain to do dangerous things. He was arguing with men who were pushing him, and fierce argument in his condition might easily become a blow. Jodrell said to himself, “I must get hold of him,” and, using as little brute force as possible, edged his way through the crowd to the roadway.

He was nearly caught between two motor-buses, and escaping from that peril received a nasty bump on the leg from a car on the other side, the chauffeur of which grinned quietly as he saw Jodrell crumple up. Hugh thought of his match for England, and limped forward to a strip of pavement in the centre of the Circus, crowded with people. From this point, balancing himself with difficulty on the kerb, he could see Stephen quite clearly, an alarming picture seen vividly between vehicles brought to a standstill and the heads of people in front of him. He pressed his way into the crowd on the refuge, angering two well-dressed, middle-aged men, but maintaining his position. He was considering whether he could risk a further dive through the traffic, loathing the job in hand and cursing this disgraceful rag with all his heart, when one of the two men in front of him said to the other, “Damned young fools! I hope they’ll spend the night in Vine Street.”

Jodrell turned to him, and said, “Who are you calling damned young fools?”

The man looked at Jodrell’s stern face, quailed a little, and said nothing.

“Weren’t you young yourself, once upon a time?” asked Jodrell, and pushed his way between the two men, and passed behind a motor-car, and forced himself forward into the swaying mob in the centre of the roadway.

He set his gaze on the mad-drunk Stephen and battled forward. As he shoved on into the roaring and seething pack, Stephen, who was still some distance off, was grabbed by a policeman and shot suddenly forward. A moment afterwards Jodrell heard himself addressed by name, and turning round saw Big Jack Butcher smiling at his side.

“Bit of a scrum, what?” asked Butcher.

“You’re my man,” said Jodrell. “Quick; follow me!”

“What is it?”

Jodrell put his lips as near as possible to Butcher’s ear, so that no one should hear him, and told Butcher that the police had got a friend of his, and that this friend had to be rescued—a man with a future.

Butcher laughed quietly, and said, “Point him out, old man. The bobbies have got more than one.”

They pressed forward together, shouldering people right and left. Whistles were blowing furiously. Traffic was completely blocked. Shouts, screams, and yells mingled with the sounds of smashing glass and the metallic bangs of sticks on the bonnets of motor-buses. Students of all kinds were attempting to get into motor-cars, or were standing on the steps of others, or were riding on the bonnets of taxis and buses. Beyond them was the pack to which Jodrell and Butcher pressed forward, a pack of lunatic young men engaged in painting London red—most of them with no top coats over their evening clothes, and with shining silk hats pressed over their ears. This central pack was surrounding and attempting to argue with a body of exasperated police who had captured three of its ringleaders.

Jodrell pointed Stephen out, and Butcher said to him, “Get behind me, and when bobby goes down, you catch hold of young Bacchus and run him out of danger before bobby gets up again.”

Butcher lowered his head and went through the tipsy young men as a tank goes through whins. Jodrell walked almost at ease behind those broad shoulders, his eyes set upon Stephen, who was struggling in a policeman’s grasp. Arrived behind that policeman Butcher, pretending that he could not help himself, and angrily shouting out, “Don’t push, confound you!” affected to stumble, fell forward, and suddenly down went the policeman.

Stephen would have fallen too, for the policeman did not easily let go his grip, but Jodrell was over Butcher’s body in a moment, and seized Stephen round the waist, and bore him straight forward, sending people flying to right and to left of him, receiving more than one nasty blow in his progress.

For a few moments the drunken Stephen believed himself to be still in the custody of police, and struggled, shouted, argued, endeavouring all the while to wrench himself free. When at length he discovered his mistake, although he ceased to bawl and to struggle, he complicated matters for Jodrell by attempting to plant his feet firmly on the ground, while he shouted hoarsely, in a voice that cracked comically, “Here’s the hero of the day! Good old Jodder! Three cheers for Jodder!”

Fortunately few people heard him, and those near enough to catch the name either disbelieved him or did not understand what he meant. Annoyed that no cheers were raised, and stupefied by the entire lack of enthusiasm on the part of the crowd, he turned to Jodrell and exclaimed, “What’s the matter with the world? Is it mad, or is it drunk? Damn it, why aren’t they carrying you shoulder high?”

Jodrell silently and relentlessly pressed him forward, his eyes straining for the easiest way to safety. People made way for him as well as they were able, and he heard voices on all sides of him exclaiming, “How horrible!” “How shocking!” or “That’s right; take him home!”

He shot Stephen between two vehicles, and began to press him swiftly forward in the roadway, between the traffic attempting to go north and the traffic attempting to go south. Stephen went headlong for some considerable way, but as they were approaching Lower Regent Street he suddenly realised what Jodrell was doing, and caught hold of the brass rail of a bus and shouted out, “I’m not going home!” and hung there, arguing and furious, his hat on the back of his head, his white tie hanging loose, the front of his shirt gaping open, and blood trickling down his cheek.

The conductor of the bus looked at him for a moment, and then raising his ticket-punch brought it down on Stephen’s fingers.

Once again Jodrell was able to go forward, Stephen yelling and shouting, “I want that devil’s number. He’s smashed my hand. I’ll smash his nose for him. Let me go, Jodder! What the hell are you doing?”

It was easier in Piccadilly, and after a few difficult and sickening minutes Jodrell was bearing the protesting Stephen down a foggy passage into Jermyn Street. Here he got hold of a taxi-cab at the corner of York Street, pushed Stephen inside, and gave his order to the driver, jumping in without having released his hold.

For half an hour the cabman drove them through the quietest and darkest streets of London, where fog hung thick and no shop-signs were to be seen; and during that half-hour Jodrell talked soothingly to Stephen, who was spent to the point of exhaustion.

“You mean to say that I’m not to go to Murray’s?” Stephen asked plaintively, tragically; “an awful lot of pretty girls at Murray’s, best dancers in London, I assure you. By God, Hugh old man, I had the time of my life with the ladies of the chorus behind the scenes. I scattered my calling cards among them. I’m going to send flowers for the whole lot of them to-morrow. Oh, lovely girls! There’s only one religion—Woman—Woman! No more philosophy for me. I’ve graduated man of the world. Eat, drink, and be merry, for to-morrow—ah, to-morrow we ourselves may be with yesterday’s seven thousand years. For some we loved, the loveliest and the best——”

After more of this, and a little argument, Jodrell was able to explain his plans to Stephen. Stephen, who was neither to be trusted in the streets nor presentable enough to return to his hotel, was to sleep in Jodrell’s home. Jodrell would take him straight upstairs and put him to bed, before any one in the house knew of his presence. Early in the morning he would send to the hotel and get Stephen a change of clothes.

“As long as I can have a drink and a cigarette,” replied the conquered Stephen, “I don’t care what you do with me. It’s an awful thought, Jodder, and explains a good deal of difficult history to me, but just now I’d sell my country for a whisky and soda.”