Girl or boy; a satire and a diversion

Chapter I The Boot

M R. DAVID CRUMP stood over his suit-case and regarded it meditatively. “ Hair-brushes, comb, tooth-brush, tooth¬ paste,” he chanted, and paused.

“ Ah, my hair oil! Mustn’t forget my hair oil!”

He darted into the bathroom and a moment later emerged with a greasy-looking bottle, which he wrapped up in the folds of a news¬ paper. He interred the bundle in the suit¬ case—somewhere within the soft, protective regions of his pyjama suit—and resumed his chant.

“ Slippers, collars, socks; shaving-brush, shaving-soap, razor-strop, razor. Ah!”

The razor still lay on the bed, which had lately served as a dumping ground for the contents of his bag. The razor was of the old cut-throat type, and Mr. Crump slowly withdrew it from its black cardboard case and fingered its edge.

“ One never knows,” he murmured, address¬ ing his own reflection in the wardrobe mirror; and not for the first time in his life examined his features, as revealed in the glass, with considerable hostility.

“ You’ve a rotten sort of face,” he growled. “Only a solution of ferro-concrete would master that head of hair: a shaggy-looking brute you are; and your chin’s black and your cheeks are blue and your eyes are like pim¬ ples; and your teeth, although they do hap¬ pen to be your own, are nothing to be proud of. A libel on the human species, that’s what you are!”

Mr. Crump, having concluded this inven¬ tory of his charms, savagely adjusted his black tie, which invariably refused to make a sedate circuit of the white butterfly collar. This operation brought his fingers into some prom¬ inence in the mirror, and these too he re¬ garded with undiminished spleen. Mr. Crump, certainly, was only forty-something years of age—he refused to deal in units in this par¬ ticular computation — but several million cigarettes, consumed through several decades, must have gone to the formation of that deep coppery stain which now covered his fingers. He delivered himself of an oath, went out on to the landing, and leaned over the steep and narrow descent of the staircase. The ban¬ isters creaked beneath his weight.

“Mildred!” he shouted; and when no answer was forthcoming, in more suppliant tones—“ Millie, my dear!”

“ Yes, David?”

The voice that came from the living-room downstairs was dangerously even; it was easy 10 to deduce from it where resided the controlling spirit of Mr. Crump’s suburban dwelling.

“ Millie, I want you to get rid of this con¬ founded wardrobe of yours. I won’t have the thing in the bedroom any longer. It’s the curse-”

Mr. Crump’s malediction faded away. The crisp odour of bacon began to sizzle round his nostrils; it acted like a charm. The man almost smiled.

“But why, David? I must have somewhere to put my things, and I must be able to see myself.”

“ Then I’ll lend you my shaving mirror,” said Mr. Crump. “ This wardrobe affair always gets in the way of my face.”

And he laughed, foolishly, recklessly, and returned to the bedroom, confronted the mir¬ ror, and shook his fist at his own reflection. From his waistcoat pocket he took out a crum¬ pled piece of paper. “ Office Memorandum ” was printed on the top of it; underneath appeared the following message, in neat type¬ script: “ Mr. Crump will please report to Mr. Denning at 10.30 to-morrow morning, without fail.”

“ Good enough,” murmured Mr. Crump. “ Marching orders!” He rolled the piece of paper into a microscopic ball and shied it through the window at the municipal lamp-post which nightly illumined his suburban retreat. He snapped down the lid of his suit¬ case, swept it off the ground, and made for the door. On the threshold he paused. The offending mirror still balefully reflected his features, and his figure also. No vestige of a crease remained in Mr. Crump’s short little trousers, and Mrs. Crump had long since re¬ linquished her youthful attempts to revive it.

“ God speed!” remarked Mr. Crump, re¬ gaining something of his former facetiousness; and descended to the breakfast-table.

“ You never told me that you were going away,” remarked his wife. She was already seated at the table. Not much of her frock was visible beneath her green apron, which was the epitome of her working existence. The Crump menage did not enjoy the services of a domestic, and Mrs. Crump’s life resolved itself into two endless duties: she had to keep the house clean and her husband well fed. Shopping was her only pastime; and at this she was an expert. Every tradesman in the Old Kent Road knew Mrs. Crump; and if he did not know her as a customer he knew of her by repute: the fact that Mrs. Crump did not choose to patronise his shop was in itself a reflection on the conduct of his busi¬ ness. Most mornings of the week Mrs. Crump was to be seen emerging stealthily from her 12 front door with a capacious string bag con¬ cealed about her person, ready for the fray. The true light of battle shone in her eyes when she caught her first glimpse of an L.C.C. tramcar ploughing its way through the swarming humanity along this road of her shopping dreams. Mr. Crump, of course, in the way of city conversation, never mentioned the Old Kent Road. One might have passed an eter¬ nity with Mr. Crump and never realised that his excellent physical constitution had been built up on chops and fish and bread and gro¬ ceries which had been frugally purchased in these noisome precincts. No, in the estima¬ tion of the world wherein he moved and had his being, Mr. Crump lived at Blackheath. When at night he returned home he never¬ theless took up his residence at Greenwich: though he might reasonably have claimed that he was at least half-way up the hill that led to the polite purlieus of the Heath.

“ You never told me that you were going away,” repeated his wife. “ Didn’t I hear you packing your bag?”

“ You’re quite right,” murmured Mr. Crump, separating with great finesse the rind from his bacon. “ I didn’t say anything about it last night because I didn’t want to worry you. Fact of the matter is, I’ve got to go abroad. Paris, my dear!”

“ Paris!”

The word hardly emerged from his wife’s lips; she seemed afraid to let it fall outright because it might break like a bubble in the air. It was the bombshell of her life.

“ You are going to Paris alone? But why, David?”

“ Business,” said Mr. Crump, determinedly munching his bread and bacon. “ I’ve got to see some newspaper men over there. Firm’s got an important new client, you see. I shall be all right. Don’t you worry.”

His wife’s eyes were looking through the white-curtained window at the grey houses opposite her own; but she was trying to see far beyond them; trying to glimpse some picture-postcard memory of this fantastic city.

“ Are you sure you’ll be all right, David?” she asked, with mournful emphasis. After all, her husband and her home were her only hobbies in life, and they were part and parcel of each other. For twenty years she had maintained undisputed control over both of them. Their holidays away from home had been but drops in this ocean of time; and never for a night had she lost sight of her husband, her dear, stodgy, stocky, little man! She trusted him, of course; it never occurred to her not to trust him. So far as she was able she had to realise in him her ideal of 14 motherhood; for no child of his had ever been born to her. And now this sudden flight. Her scheme of things went awry; a sense of loneliness overcame her.

“ But why, David, have they selected you of all people?”

Mr. Crump gave an hilarious laugh; one might have thought that this valiant man had suddenly achieved the summit of his earthly fortunes.

“ 4 Millie, my dear,” he whispered, “ I’ve still another surprise for you. I’ve had a rise. Anything may happen. If this trip of mine comes out trumps I’m for it and you’re for it.”

“ For what, David?” She refused to be swept off her feet; these ecstasies were dis¬ concerting.

“ We’re for the Heath, my girl! I’ve got my eye on the house already. Stands in its own grounds, you know. And we’ll have a car, and a maid, and a theatre in town every week; and I shan’t care how much stuff you buy for the garden; and I’ll never see you in an apron again!”

Mr. Crump paused; the light went out of his face; he stared at the lamp-post outside the window.

“ My God!” he cried, “ I’ll do something or die!” And to hide his confusion bent over his wife and whispered in her ear, “ Yes,

Millie, I’ll bring it off, or die!” and kissed her, and rushed out of the room. He saw a figure flit past the glass-panelled front door as he picked up his bag and rammed his hat on his head.

“ I shall miss it this morning,” he shouted, not daring to put his head inside the room again. He knew instinctively that she was leaning over the table with her hands to her eyes. “ I’ll wire you my address as soon as I get there. Be back in a week. Don’t you worry. I shall be—all right.”

But Mr. Crump was already on the other side of the iron railings which served to en¬ hance the humble ugliness of his obscure resi¬ dence. He rushed down the hill leading to the station with his coat-tails flapping in a wind which his own violence created. At the bot¬ tom of the hill he halted dead, and then slowly resumed his progress. There was no need for extreme punctuality this particular morning.

At the station bookstall Mr. Crump laid down his penny for his customary morning paper. The boy who handed it to him had no time for the minute examination of his customers; but he could have sworn that a suspicion of a tear lingered in the right eye of the egregious Crump.

Chapter II

F OR nearly twenty years past Mr. Crump, in normal circumstances, had never arrived at Cannon Street Station later than 8.40 a.m. At that hour the appearance of the station was as familiar to him as his own face; he knew it like a book. Not less familiar were the faces of his fellow-travellers. A few of the men, usually in times of political crises or particularly bad weather, had ventured to get into conversation with him; but he did not encourage such intercourse. This journey to town occupied precisely eighteen minutes, and they were the most precious moments of his existence; they realised his ideal of earthly peace. For eighteen minutes he could sit with his paper and smoke his pipe in the sure con¬ viction that only a visitation from heaven or an accident on the line could disturb his serenity. The women who travelled on his train were a changeable crowd. Now and again a really pretty girl would put in a regu¬ lar appearance, and he would almost uncon¬ sciously develop a habit of keeping a look-out for her. It is unnecessary to state that Mr. Crump’s intentions were of the purest; in fact, he had no intentions whatsoever. Responsive to the daily wisdom of his desk calendar, he regarded all such phenomena as being gleams of sunshine across a leaden sky. Nor was sun¬ set ever unduly delayed. These pretty girls, Mr. Crump invariably had occasion to note, never preserved for long the regularity of their morning visits to town; and he not unnatur¬ ally assumed that they had succumbed to the temptations of the greatest of all human lot¬ teries. For this definition of marriage Mr. Crump was again indebted to his desk cal¬ endar, the proprietors of which, it will be observed, had curious notions of the sort of thing calculated to put a business man in a happy frame of mind in the early morning.

But to-day Mr. Crump hardly recognised Cannon Street for the same station. He arrived an hour later than usual, and when he stepped down on to the platform he walked in a different world. The great flux of woman¬ kind had ceased; it was a world of staid and prosperous business men, leisurely and ele¬ gantly proceeding to their polite avocations; the gaunt commercial spectre seemed sud¬ denly to have disappeared from the face of the earth. No anxious, scurrying multitudes of wage-earners thronged the ticket-barriers, and Mr. Crump was able to present his third-class season with a nonchalance which was in itself an exquisite experience.

“ Lord,” murmured Mr. Crump, “ I wish I could come up on this train every morning, 18

Luxury, that’s what it is. I could put up with a great deal if-”

He broke off, and seemed to shrivel up, body and soul.

“ I was forgetting,” he murmured as he looked up at the great face of the station clock, reluctant to resign the strange fascination of the hour. His black hair was long and untidy at the back of his neck and formed a fringe round the white butterfly collar; the coat he was carrying over his arm trailed on the ground; and with his other hand he uncomfort¬ ably grasped his bag, his gloves, and his crum¬ pled morning paper. A pathetic little man, this Mr. Crump, even in a workaday world.

“ I was forgetting,” he murmured a second time, still watching the minute-hand of the clock climb jerkily towards the hour. “ There’ll be no train to catch to-morrow.”

He left the station with a brisk step, after depositing his bag in the cloak-room. A few minutes later he boarded an omnibus bound for Fleet Street. He found a seat on the top, from which eminence he surveyed the hurry¬ ing mortals on the pavements beneath him.

“ Midgets, all of you,” growled Mr. Crump. “Poor mites on the face of the earth! I was one of you yesterday; but to-day I’m inde¬ pendent! At no one’s beck and call!” and hugged himself at the thought of his week’s freedom, and tried hard to recollect the sum total of his liquid assets. The ’bus skirted St. Paul’s, and his eyes roamed its massive lines and contours with the air of the con¬ noisseur; for the first time in his life, perhaps, Mr. Crump really looked at St. Paul’s and appreciated something of its magnificence.

“ Put that old fool Denning up against that” murmured Mr. Crump to himself, “ and what is he? Nothing, nothing at all; less than a worm! Let him give me the sack! ”

But the long pause in the traffic block at Ludgate Hill gave Mr. Crump an unwelcome opportunity for much sober reflection. What would the glory of St. Paul’s avail him when the rates and the rent fell due? The sight of the noble edifice might be excellent for the soul; but it would neither feed nor clothe him, nor provide his wife’s weekly housekeeping money. That monthly cheque had been regu¬ larly forthcoming for so many years that he found it difficult to realise that it would forth¬ with cease; and Mr. Crump’s new-born courage withered at the thought. One must have money to live: a fact the significance of which, however obvious, he had never before grasped. By the time he reached the offices of the Morning Star his spirits were below zero. He was afraid to look anyone in the face; the commissionaire, always something 20 of a personage, now carried a flaming sword in Mr. Crump’s febrile imagination. Mr. Crump was an outcast, an intruder.

“ Late of the Morning Star,” thought Mr. Crump as he stepped into the lift and again came face to face with his own reflection. “ And a back number,” he added with a scowl, which was faithfully recorded in the mirror. “ Curse you!” was Mr. Crump’s final saluta¬ tion as he walked out into the corridor on the third floor. From sheer force of habit he turned towards his own room and only halted on its threshold. He had resolved never to enter it again. The night before he had cleared out his personal belongings and left what papers concerned him for filing: if he had to go he preferred to go quickly; he was prepared to state at the coming interview that he was ready to walk out of the building without further ado; the briefer his leavetaking the less painful it would be. And yet he could hardly resist peeping inside the door; he remembered the room so well. It was little more than a cubby hole; nevertheless it had belonged to him for several years past, although he had never really mastered the silent ignition of the antiquated gas fire. Even the unfading ink-stains on the deal table were clearly mapped out in his mind; and, of course, there was his desk calendar. Actually it was his own property, but he had not had the heart to bring it away with him. Day after day, year in and year out, he had turned over a leaf at the end of his day’s work, entered up the morrow’s work, and memorised the quota¬ tion printed beneath the date. Last night he had carefully refrained from performing this piece of ritual; for once in a way he had de¬ vised his own motto for the day—“ No work, no quotation”—but he found it singularly un¬ satisfying. His consuming curiosity overcame him; he had to look, for the very last time, at that unfailing friend and counsellor. Mr. Crump groaned in spirit, and opened the door.

It was still there, snugly adjacent to his hieroglyphic sheet of red blotting-paper. He pounced on it, saw the diagonal line he had drawn across the previous day’s entries—the line he had drawn solemnly, thoughtfully— and turned over the page, and read out aloud:

“Bold knaves thrive, without one grain of sense,

But good men starve for want of impudence."

“ That’s as true as I’m a good man,” com¬ mented Mr. Crump, and recited the lines a second time. He did not hear a knock at the door.

“ Mr. Denning’s waiting for you, sir,” announced the messenger-boy, and Mr. Crump straightway turned on his heel, viciously slammed the door, and followed the boy down the corridor.

“ Bold knaves thrive,” he muttered as he went along; “ bold knaves thrive. I ought to have known as much. I’ve only to look round this place!”

But it was an entirely subdued Mr. Crump who, a moment later, confronted the resplen¬ dent Denning. Mr. Reginald Denning was the advertisement director of the Morning Star; his was the directing genius which secured for the Morning Star an advertise¬ ment revenue which ran into seven figures per annum. He affected a bow which any im¬ pecunious tragedian would have thankfully ac¬ cepted ; the wide black ribbon which dangled from his eyeglasses made an elegant plaything for his immaculate hands; his morning coat and vest were of an impeccable distinction; and doubtless as much might have been said for his trousers, which, for the moment, were screened from view by an enormous expanse of plate glass and mahogany. Any visitor would have assumed that the handsome ma¬ hogany table had no other purpose in life but to carry this expanse of glass. Not even the monumental inkstand and the luxurious blot¬ ting-pad could secure the admiration they merited in this glittering wilderness of space. But it must not be assumed that Mr. Reginald

Denning was merely a figure-head in the tentacular advertisement-extracting organisa¬ tion which he controlled. He did not work on paper; he hated the sight of paper; he had no use for the written word; this clumsy means of approach he left to second-rate brethren. Mr. Reginald Denning passed his business life talking and telephoning. He talked over lunch, and conducted conversa¬ tions over the telephone during the brief pas¬ sages of time which preceded and followed it. He would have scorned to work seven hours a day: three more than sufficed a man of his calibre. His battery of telephones were put out of action at three-thirty prompt, by which time his cohort of canvassers were in receipt of their instructions for the next day’s work, the success of which he had already assured. Such was the potentate who shot an almost affectionate glance at the little man who stood hesitant at the door.

“ Come and sit down, Crump,” he said melodiously.

For one mad moment Mr. Crump almost believed that he might have misread the signs and portents he had observed throughout the past year: this benevolent personality could never assume the role of executioner; but the hope died with the thought, and Denning’s next remark buried it,

“ I’m sorry, old man.”

Mr. Crump put his hand to his throat and wrenched at his collar; he wanted air; the blow had laid him low. He knew perfectly well that no man whose banking account did not run into thousands of pounds could ever hope to be addressed as “ old man ” by his opulent chief. He, Crump, had already become a creature of such insignificance in the general scheme of things that Denning had not troubled to observe one of the cardinal rules of his life: one’s terminology is of little conse¬ quence in discourse with the dead. Denning removed his eyeglasses and dangled them in front of his nose.

“ Yes, I’m sorry, Crump,” he went on, “ that we shan’t see you about here much longer-”

“ Not after this morning,” interposed Mr. Crump with a grimness of expression which surprised himself. Denning hastily resumed his eyeglasses, and then imperturbably con¬ tinued his observations.

“ You have to understand that the world is changing every day and that some of us ”— he looked vaguely round the room—“ find it difficult to keep up with the times. For instance, appearance counts for so much in these progressive days; and frankly, Mr. Crump, I think you have been a little lax in your observation of this self-evident fact.”

By a severe exercise of his power of selfcontrol Denning contrived to keep his eyes off Mr. Crump’s collar and tie. For years past that collar and tie—though Crump never knew it—had haunted the great Denning; it was the one blot on the perfection of his or¬ ganisation that had baffled him. Those occa¬ sions when he had chanced to travel in the lift with Mr. Crump had been moments of exqui¬ site agony. There was nothing intrinsically wrong with the collar, nor the tie; but in conjunction, on Mr. Crump’s short thick neck, they were devastatingly sloven and the out¬ ward and visible sign of the man’s incompe¬ tence. Denning heard himself speaking.

“ The representatives of a great organ of public opinion, such as we all know the Morn¬ ing Star to be, must of necessity regard them¬ selves as ambassadors of the paper, and carry in themselves something of the prestige and the dignity-”

“I prefer to leave at once” interrupted Mr. Crump, and got up, secretly gratified that he dared to rise to this height of irreverence. Denning rose also, and walked to the other side of the table. There was a pathos in the contrast the two men presented, and neither, perhaps, was altogether unconscious of it. For the first time in their lives they looked at each 26 other, as man to man. In Mr. Crump’s tiny eyes there gleamed a new defiance; he stood his ground until Denning, almost abashed, turned away. To a man who thrived on success this pitiful spectacle of failure was disconcert¬ ing; and Denning always hated to be reminded that only a stroke of luck had enabled him to get out of the rut. But he had no compunc¬ tion concerning Crump. Besides, where was the man’s wife? For instance, those absurdly short little trousers. Need they be so baggy at the knees? He looked down at his own, beautifully creased and rolling perfectly over his patent shoes, and sighed.

“ Very well,” he said. “ I am prepared to give way to your wishes in the matter. You will be glad to know that the Directors have already decided to mark their appreciation of your past services in a highly generous fashion. If you care to wait in my secretary’s room I can perhaps arrange the matter before you leave the building.” He held out his hand. “ Good-bye—and good luck to you. I don’t expect we shall meet again.”

“ No, sir. Thank you.”

Mr. Crump had spent his last ounce of courage; he had crumpled up with that shak¬ ing of hands; when Denning released his grip he felt that he had been left to drown. . . . Somehow or other he managed to get into the street again. He walked into the first tea-shop he saw, and ordered a cup of tea. He felt better after it, and took out of his pocket the envelope which had been handed to him by Denning’s secretary. It contained a cheque for two hundred and fifty pounds.

Chapter III

M R. CRUMP spent the rest of the morn¬ ing tramping the streets of London. It was his first experience of that feeling of independence which, earlier on in the morn¬ ing, he had contemplated with a considerable amount of self-satisfaction. The people with whom he mingled on the pavements all had jobs to do, errands to perform; his only occu¬ pation was that of wasting time, the most dif¬ ficult of all occupations. He was poignantly reminded of one of the quotations in his desk calendar: something to the effect that time hangs heavy on the sluggard’s hands . . . which recollection served to fortify his faith in that diverse compilation. Certainly the cheque for two hundred and fifty pounds which he car¬ ried in his breast pocket was something to be grateful for: the firm had come down rather handsomely, and every few hundred yards his hand went up to his pocket-book; but there was in that touch no healing for the misery he bore in his soul. In the tea-shop where he consumed two sausages and mashed potatoes he watched despondently, and enviously, the men and the girls who hurried through their lunches with one eye on the clock. He would thankfully have resigned his cheque for the privilege of being due at the office at two o’clock. He wished to heaven he had gone to a first-rate restaurant for lunch, where a change of atmosphere might have helped him to fight against that feeling of depression which was slowly driving him to thoughts of suicide. He was trying to recollect another quotation which had in it something about gilded halls of splendour, when the voice of his waitress interrupted his meditations.

“ Did you have any veg.?” she asked, with a lick at her pencil.

“ No,” groaned Mr. Crump. “ I had sau¬ sages and mashed potatoes, and a pastry.”

“ Sausages and mash,” interpreted the girl, “ and a gahto.”

Mr. Crump examined his bill. It totalled one shilling and sixpence ha’penny. He looked up and found his features reflected in what was left of a mirror after a firm of beefcube manufacturers had finished scrawling over it the name of their product.

“ You’re a still bigger fool this morning,” growled Mr. Crump reflectively. “ You’ve a cheque for two hundred and fifty pounds in your pocket, and you put up with this sort of thing. Bah!”

It is impossible to state whether this out¬ burst merely relieved Mr. Crump’s feelings or whether indeed it brought enlightenment. Certainly he took up his station in the queue 30 at the cash desk with an air of resolution which served to indicate that some new purpose had come into his life. His next half-hour was crowded with incident. He hailed a taxi-cab with less consideration than he had sometimes given in the matter of a penny ’bus ride; he called at his bank, where he paid in his cheque, drew out twenty pounds, and made certain inquiries regarding his War Saving Certifi¬ cates. He emerged into the street with such a jaunty air that the waiting taxi-driver was emboldened to ask him whether he had had a good day. This piece of familiarity annoyed Mr. Crump; but within the dim seclusion of the cab he tugged at his collar and ran his fingers down a purely imaginary crease in his trousers, and sighed philosophically.

“ What else could you expect, in these?” he sniffed. Some minutes later, when he descended the steps of Cannon Street Station with a porter at his heels, he noted with con¬ siderable satisfaction the taxi-driver’s uncon¬ cealed surprise. Not many men would have disdained to carry a suit-case of such small dimensions.

“ Take me,” grimly directed Mr. Crump, “ take me to the best hotel outside Victoria Station. Quick about it, please.”

Again within the luxurious privacy of the cab Mr. Crump took communion with his soul.

“ You’re getting on,” he murmured. “ But —quo vadis?” And immediately fell to wondering whether or no he had got this quite right. For once in a way he had strayed beyond the self-prescribed limits of his desk calendar.

At the hotel he wisely resigned his body to the care and the direction of the staff; not until he found himself alone in the room allotted to him did he reassume a corporeal existence. He sat on the edge of the bed and looked around him.