Delphi Complete Works of Jerome K. Jerome (Illustrated) (Series Four) (114 page)

“It’s not that,” explained Mrs. Postwhistle. “If a Saturday morning ‘appened to come round as ‘e didn’t pay up without me asking, I should know I’d made a mistake — that it must be Friday. If I don’t ‘appen to be in at ‘alf-past ten, ‘e puts it in an envelope and leaves it on the table.”

“Wonder if his mother has got any more like him?” mused Mr. Clodd. “Could do with a few about this neighbourhood. What is it you want to say about him, then? Merely to brag about him?”

“I wanted to ask you,” continued Mrs. Postwhistle, “‘ow I could get rid of ‘im. It was rather a curious agreement.”

“Why do you want to get rid of him? Too noisy?”

“Noisy! Why, the cat makes more noise about the ‘ouse than ‘e does. ‘E’d make ‘is fortune as a burglar.”

“Come home late?”

“Never known ‘im out after the shutters are up.”

“Gives you too much trouble then?”

“I can’t say that of ‘im. Never know whether ‘e’s in the ‘ouse or isn’t, without going upstairs and knocking at the door.”

“Here, you tell it your own way,” suggested the bewildered Clodd. “If it was anyone else but you, I should say you didn’t know your own business.”

“‘E gets on my nerves,” said Mrs. Postwhistle. “You ain’t in a ‘urry for five minutes?”

Mr. Clodd was always in a hurry. “But I can forget it talking to you,” added the gallant Mr. Clodd.

Mrs. Postwhistle led the way into the little parlour.

“Just the name of it,” consented Mr. Clodd. “Cheerfulness combined with temperance; that’s the ideal.”

“I’ll tell you what ‘appened only last night,” commenced Mrs. Postwhistle, seating herself the opposite side of the loo-table. “A letter came for ‘im by the seven o’clock post. I’d seen ‘im go out two hours before, and though I’d been sitting in the shop the whole blessed time, I never saw or ‘eard ‘im pass through. E’s like that. It’s like ‘aving a ghost for a lodger. I opened ‘is door without knocking and went in. If you’ll believe me, ‘e was clinging with ‘is arms and legs to the top of the bedstead — it’s one of those old-fashioned, four-post things—’is ‘ead touching the ceiling. ‘E ‘adn’t got too much clothes on, and was cracking nuts with ‘is teeth and eating ‘em. ‘E threw a ‘andful of shells at me, and making the most awful faces at me, started off gibbering softly to himself.”

“All play, I suppose? No real vice?” commented the interested Mr. Clodd.

“It will go on for a week, that will,” continued Mrs. Postwhistle—”’e fancying ‘imself a monkey. Last week he was a tortoise, and was crawling about on his stomach with a tea-tray tied on to ‘is back. ‘E’s as sensible as most men, if that’s saying much, the moment ‘e’s outside the front door; but in the ‘ouse — well, I suppose the fact is that ‘e’s a lunatic.”

“Don’t seem no hiding anything from you,” Mrs. Postwhistle remarked Mr. Clodd in tones of admiration. “Does he ever get violent?”

“Don’t know what ‘e would be like if ‘e ‘appened to fancy ‘imself something really dangerous,” answered Mrs. Postwhistle. “I am a bit nervous of this new monkey game, I don’t mind confessing to you — the things that they do according to the picture-books. Up to now, except for imagining ‘imself a mole, and taking all his meals underneath the carpet, it’s been mostly birds and cats and ‘armless sort o’ things I ‘aven’t seemed to mind so much.”

“How did you get hold of him?” demanded Mr. Clodd. “Have much trouble in finding him, or did somebody come and tell you about him?”

“Old Gladman, of Chancery Lane, the law stationer, brought ‘im ‘ere one evening about two months ago — said ‘e was a sort of distant relative of ‘is, a bit soft in the ‘ead, but perfectly ‘armless — wanted to put ‘im with someone who wouldn’t impose on ‘im. Well, what between ‘aving been empty for over five weeks, the poor old gaby ‘imself looking as gentle as a lamb, and the figure being reasonable, I rather jumped at the idea; and old Gladman, explaining as ‘ow ‘e wanted the thing settled and done with, got me to sign a letter.”

“Kept a copy of it?” asked the business-like Clodd.

“No. But I can remember what it was. Gladman ‘ad it all ready. So long as the money was paid punctual and ‘e didn’t make no disturbance and didn’t fall sick, I was to go on boarding and lodging ‘im for seventeen-and-sixpence a week. It didn’t strike me as anything to be objected to at the time; but ‘e payin’ regular, as I’ve explained to you, and be’aving, so far as disturbance is concerned, more like a Christian martyr than a man, well, it looks to me as if I’d got to live and die with ‘im.”

“Give him rope, and possibly he’ll have a week at being a howling hyæna, or a laughing jackass, or something of that sort that will lead to a disturbance,” thought Mr. Clodd, “in which case, of course, you would have your remedy.”

“Yes,” thought Mrs. Postwhistle, “and possibly also ‘e may take it into what ‘e calls is ‘ead to be a tiger or a bull, and then perhaps before ‘e’s through with it I’ll be beyond the reach of remedies.”

“Leave it to me,” said Mr. Clodd, rising and searching for his hat. “I know old Gladman; I’ll have a talk with him.”

“You might get a look at that letter if you can,” suggested Mrs. Postwhistle, “and tell me what you think about it. I don’t want to spend the rest of my days in a lunatic asylum of my own if I can ‘elp it.”

“You leave it to me,” was Mr. Clodd’s parting assurance.

The July moon had thrown a silver veil over the grimness of Rolls Court when, five hours later, Mr. Clodd’s nailed boots echoed again upon its uneven pavement; but Mr. Clodd had no eye for moon or stars or such-like; always he had things more important to think of.

“Seen the old ‘umbug?” asked Mrs. Postwhistle, who was partial to the air, leading the way into the parlour.

“First and foremost commenced,” Mr. Clodd, as he laid aside his hat, “it is quite understood that you really do want to get rid of him? What’s that?” demanded Mr. Clodd, a heavy thud upon the floor above having caused him to start out of his chair.

“‘E came in an hour after you’d gone,” explained Mrs. Postwhistle, “bringing with him a curtain pole as ‘e’d picked up for a shilling in Clare Market. ‘E’s rested one end upon the mantelpiece and tied the other to the back of the easy-chair—’is idea is to twine ‘imself round it and go to sleep upon it. Yes, you’ve got it quite right without a single blunder. I do want to get rid of ‘im.”

“Then,” said Mr. Clodd, reseating himself, “it can be done.”

“Thank God for that!” was Mrs. Postwhistle’s pious ejaculation.

“It is just as I thought,” continued Mr. Clodd. “The old innocent — he’s Gladman’s brother-in-law, by the way — has got a small annuity. I couldn’t get the actual figure, but I guess it’s about sufficient to pay for his keep and leave old Gladman, who is running him, a very decent profit. They don’t want to send him to an asylum. They can’t say he’s a pauper, and to put him into a private establishment would swallow up, most likely, the whole of his income. On the other hand, they don’t want the bother of looking after him themselves. I talked pretty straight to the old man — let him see I understood the business; and — well, to cut a long story short, I’m willing to take on the job, provided you really want to have done with it, and Gladman is willing in that case to let you off your contract.”

Mrs. Postwhistle went to the cupboard to get Mr. Clodd a drink. Another thud upon the floor above — one suggestive of exceptional velocity — arrived at the precise moment when Mrs. Postwhistle, the tumbler level with her eye, was in the act of measuring.

“I call this making a disturbance,” said Mrs. Postwhistle, regarding the broken fragments.

“It’s only for another night,” comforted her Mr. Clodd. “I’ll take him away some time to-morrow. Meanwhile, if I were you, I should spread a mattress underneath that perch of his before I went to bed. I should like him handed over to me in reasonable repair.”

“It will deaden the sound a bit, any’ow,” agreed Mrs. Postwhistle.

“Success to temperance,” drank Mr. Clodd, and rose to go.

“I take it you’ve fixed things up all right for yourself,” said Mrs. Postwhistle; “and nobody can blame you if you ‘ave. ‘Eaven bless you, is what I say.”

“We shall get on together,” prophesied Mr. Clodd. “I’m fond of animals.”

Early the next morning a four-wheeled cab drew up at the entrance to Rolls Court, and in it and upon it went away Clodd and Clodd’s Lunatic (as afterwards he came to be known), together with all the belongings of Clodd’s Lunatic, the curtain-pole included; and there appeared again behind the fanlight of the little grocer’s shop the intimation: “Lodgings for a Single Man,” which caught the eye a few days later of a weird-looking, lanky, rawboned laddie, whose language Mrs. Postwhistle found difficulty for a time in comprehending; and that is why one sometimes meets to-day worshippers of Kail Yard literature wandering disconsolately about St. Dunstan-in-the-West, seeking Rolls Court, discomforted because it is no more. But that is the history of the “Wee Laddie,” and this of the beginnings of William Clodd, now Sir William Clodd, Bart., M.P., proprietor of a quarter of a hundred newspapers, magazines, and journals: “Truthful Billy” we called him then.

No one can say of Clodd that he did not deserve whatever profit his unlicensed lunatic asylum may have brought him. A kindly man was William Clodd when indulgence in sentiment did not interfere with business.

“There’s no harm in him,” asserted Mr. Clodd, talking the matter over with one Mr. Peter Hope, journalist, of Gough Square. “He’s just a bit dotty, same as you or I might get with nothing to do and all day long to do it in. Kid’s play, that’s all it is. The best plan, I find, is to treat it as a game and take a hand in it. Last week he wanted to be a lion. I could see that was going to be awkward, he roaring for raw meat and thinking to prowl about the house at night. Well, I didn’t nag him — that’s no good. I just got a gun and shot him. He’s a duck now, and I’m trying to keep him one: sits for an hour beside his bath on three china eggs I’ve bought him. Wish some of the sane ones were as little trouble.”

The summer came again. Clodd and his Lunatic, a mild-looking little old gentleman of somewhat clerical cut, one often met with arm-in-arm, bustling about the streets and courts that were the scene of Clodd’s rent-collecting labours. Their evident attachment to one another was curiously displayed; Clodd, the young and red-haired, treating his white-haired, withered companion with fatherly indulgence; the other glancing up from time to time into Clodd’s face with a winning expression of infantile affection.

“We are getting much better,” explained Clodd, the pair meeting Peter Hope one day at the corner of Newcastle Street. “The more we are out in the open air, and the more we have to do and think about, the better for us — eh?”

The mild-looking little old gentleman hanging on Clodd’s arm smiled and nodded.

“Between ourselves,” added Mr. Clodd, sinking his voice, “we are not half as foolish as folks think we are.”

Peter Hope went his way down the Strand.

“Clodd’s a good sort — a good sort,” said Peter Hope, who, having in his time lived much alone, had fallen into the habit of speaking his thoughts aloud; “but he’s not the man to waste his time. I wonder.”

With the winter Clodd’s Lunatic fell ill.

Clodd bustled round to Chancery Lane.

“To tell you the truth,” confessed Mr. Gladman, “we never thought he would live so long as he has.”

“There’s the annuity you’ve got to think of,” said Clodd, whom his admirers of to-day (and they are many, for he must be a millionaire by this time) are fond of alluding to as “that frank, outspoken Englishman.” “Wouldn’t it be worth your while to try what taking him away from the fogs might do for him?”

Old Gladman seemed inclined to consider the question, but Mrs. Gladman, a brisk, cheerful little woman, had made up her mind.

“We’ve had what there is to have,” said Mrs. Gladman. “He’s seventy-three. What’s the sense of risking good money? Be content.”

No one could say — no one ever did say — that Clodd, under the circumstances, did not do his best. Perhaps, after all, nothing could have helped. The little old gentleman, at Clodd’s suggestion, played at being a dormouse and lay very still. If he grew restless, thereby bringing on his cough, Clodd, as a terrible black cat, was watching to pounce upon him. Only by keeping very quiet and artfully pretending to be asleep could he hope to escape the ruthless Clodd.

Doctor William Smith (né Wilhelm Schmidt) shrugged his fat shoulders. “We can do noding. Dese fogs of ours: id is de one ting dat enables the foreigner to crow over us. Keep him quiet. De dormouse — id is a goot idea.”

That evening William Clodd mounted to the second floor of 16, Gough Square, where dwelt his friend, Peter Hope, and knocked briskly at the door.

“Come in,” said a decided voice, which was not Peter Hope’s.

Mr. William Clodd’s ambition was, and always had been, to be the owner or part-owner of a paper. To-day, as I have said, he owns a quarter of a hundred, and is in negotiation, so rumour goes, for seven more. But twenty years ago “Clodd and Co., Limited,” was but in embryo. And Peter Hope, journalist, had likewise and for many a long year cherished the ambition to be, before he died, the owner or part-owner of a paper. Peter Hope to-day owns nothing, except perhaps the knowledge, if such things be permitted, that whenever and wherever his name is mentioned, kind thoughts arise unbidden — that someone of the party will surely say: “Dear old Peter! What a good fellow he was!” Which also may be in its way a valuable possession: who knows? But twenty years ago Peter’s horizon was limited by Fleet Street.

Peter Hope was forty-seven, so he said, a dreamer and a scholar. William Clodd was three-and-twenty, a born hustler, very wide awake. Meeting one day by accident upon an omnibus, when Clodd lent Peter, who had come out without his purse, threepence to pay his fare with; drifting into acquaintanceship, each had come to acquire a liking and respect for the other. The dreamer thought with wonder of Clodd’s shrewd practicability; the cute young man of business was lost in admiration of what seemed to him his old friend’s marvellous learning. Both had arrived at the conclusion that a weekly journal with Peter Hope as editor, and William Clodd as manager, would be bound to be successful.