CHAPTER THREE
SAILORS DON’T CARE
SOME five hours after Willoughby Braddock’s departure from San Rafael, a young man came up Villiers Street, and turning into the Strand, began to stroll slowly eastward. The Strand, it being the hour when the theatres had begun to empty themselves, was a roaring torrent of humanity and vehicles; and he looked upon the bustling scene with the affectionate eye of one who finds the turmoil of London novel and attractive. He was a nice-looking young man, but what was most immediately noticeable about him was his extraordinary shabbiness. Both his shoes were split across the toe; his hands were in the pockets of a stained and weather-beaten pair of blue trousers; and he gazed about him from under the brim of a soft hat which could have been worn without exciting comment by any scarecrow.
So striking was his appearance that two exquisites, emerging from the Savoy Hotel and pausing on the pavement to wait for a vacant taxi, eyed him with pained disapproval as he approached, and then, starting, stared in amazement.
“Good Lord!” said the first exquisite.
“Good heavens!” said the second.
“S. P. Shotter! Used to be in the School House.”
“Captain of football my last year.”
“But, I say, it can’t be! Dressed like that, I mean.”
“It is.”
“Good heavens!”
“Good Lord!”
These two were men who had, in the matter of costume, a high standard. Themselves snappy and conscientious dressers, they judged their fellows hardly. Yet even an indulgent critic would have found it difficult not to shake his head over the spectacle presented by Sam Shotter as he walked the Strand that night.
The fact is it is not easy for a young man of adventurous and inquisitive disposition to remain dapper throughout a voyage on a tramp steamer. The Araminta, which had arrived at Millwall Dock that afternoon, had taken fourteen days to cross the Atlantic, and during those fourteen days Sam had entered rather fully into the many-sided life of the ship. He had spent much time in an oily engine room; he had helped the bos’n with a job of painting; he had accompanied the chief engineer on his rambles through the coal bunkers; and on more than one occasion had endeared himself to languid firemen by taking their shovels and doing a little amateur stoking. One cannot do these things and be foppish.
Nevertheless, it would have surprised him greatly had he known that his appearance was being adversely criticised, for he was in that happy frame of mind when men forget they have an appearance. He had dined well, having as his guest his old friend Hash Todhunter. He had seen a motion picture of squashy sex appeal. And now, having put Hash on an eastbound tram, he was filled with that pleasant sense of well-being and content which comes on those rare occasions when the world is just about right. So far from being abashed by the shabbiness of his exterior Sam found himself experiencing, as he strolled along the Strand, a gratifying illusion of having bought the place. He felt like the young squire returned from his travels and revisiting the old village.
Nor, though he was by nature a gregarious young man and fond of human society, did the fact that he was alone depress him. Much as he liked Hash Todhunter, he had not been sorry to part from him. Usually an entertaining companion, Hash had been a little tedious to-night, owing to a tendency to confine the conversation to the subject of a dog belonging to a publican friend of his which was running in a whippet race at Hackney Marshes next morning. Hash had, it seemed, betted his entire savings on this animal, and not content with this, had pestered Sam to lend him all his remaining cash to add to the investment. And though Sam had found no difficulty in remaining firm, it is always a bore to have to keep saying no.
The two exquisites looked at each other apprehensively.
“Shift ho, before he touches us, what?” said the first.
“Shift absolutely ho,” assented the second.
It was too late. The companion of their boyhood had come up, and after starting to pass had paused, peering at them from under that dreadful hat, which seemed to cut them like a knife, in the manner of one trying to identify half-remembered faces.
“Bates and Tresidder!” he exclaimed at length. “By Jove!”
“Hullo,” said the first exquisite.
“Hullo!” said the second.
“Well, well!” said Sam.
There followed one of those awkward silences which so often occur at these meetings of old schoolmates. The two exquisites were wondering dismally when the inevitable touch would come, and Sam had just recollected that these were two blighters whom, when in statu pupillari, he had particularly disliked. Nevertheless, etiquette demanded that a certain modicum of conversation be made.
“What have you been doing with yourselves?” asked Sam. “You look very festive.”
“Been dining,” said the first exquisite.
“Old Wrykynian dinner,” said the second.
“Oh, yes, of course. It always was at this time of year, wasn’t it? Lots of the lads there, I suppose?”
“Oh, yes.”
“Good dinner?”
“Goodish,” said the first exquisite.
“Not baddish,” said the second.
“Rotten speeches, though.”
“Awful!”
“Can’t think where they dig these blokes up.”
“No.”
“That man Braddock.”
“Frightful.”
“Don’t tell me the old Bradder actually made a speech!” said Sam, pleased. “Was he very bad?”
“Worst of the lot.”
“Absolutely!”
“That story about the Irishman.”
“Foul!”
“And all that rot about the dear old school.”
“Ghastly!”
“If you ask me,” said the first exquisite severely, “my opinion is that he was as tight as an owl.”
“Stewed to the eyebrows,” said the second.
“I watched him during dinner and he was mopping up the stuff like a vacuum cleaner.”
There was a silence.
“Well,” said the first exquisite uncomfortably, “we must be pushing on.”
“Dashing off,” said the second exquisite.
“Got to go to supper at the Angry Cheese.”
“The where?” asked Sam.
“Angry Cheese. New night-club in Panton Street. See you sometime, what?”
“Oh, yes,” said Sam.
Another silence was about to congeal, when a taxi crawled up and the two exquisites leaped joyously in.
“Awful, a fellow going right under like that,” said the first.
“Ghastly,” said the second.
“Lucky we got away.”
“Yes.”
“He was shaping for a touch,” said the first exquisite.
“Trembling on his lips,” said the second.
Sam walked on. Although the Messrs. Bates and Tresidder had never been favourites of his, they belonged to what Mr. Braddock would have called—and, indeed, had called no fewer than eleven times in his speech that night—the dear old school; and the meeting with them had left him pleasantly stimulated. The feeling of being a seigneur revisiting his estates after long absence grew as he threaded his way through the crowd. He eyed the passers-by in a jolly, Laughing Cavalier sort of way, wishing he knew them well enough to slap them on the back. And when he reached the corner of Wellington Street and came upon a disheveled vocalist singing mournfully in the gutter, he could not but feel it a personal affront that this sort of thing should be going on in his domain. He was conscious of a sensation of being individually responsible for this poor fellow’s reduced condition, and the situation seemed to him to call for largess.
On setting out that night Sam had divided his money into two portions. His baggage, together with his letter of credit, had preceded him across the ocean on the Mauretania; and as it might be a day or so before he could establish connection with it, he had prudently placed the bulk of his ready money in his note-case, earmarking it for the purchase of new clothes and other necessaries on the morrow so that he might be enabled to pay his first visit to Tilbury House in becoming state. The remainder, sufficient for the evening’s festivities, he had put in his trousers pockets.
It was into his right trousers pocket therefore that he now groped. His fingers closed on a half-crown. He promptly dropped it. He was feeling seigneurial, but not so seigneurial as that. Something more in the nature of a couple of coppers was what he was looking for, and it surprised him to find that except for the half-crown the pocket appeared to be empty. He explored the other pocket. That was empty too.
The explanation was, of course, that the life of pleasure comes high. You cannot go stuffing yourself and a voracious sea cook at restaurants, taking buses and Underground trains all over the place, and finally winding up at a cinema palace, without cutting into your capital. Sam was reluctantly forced to the conclusion that the half-crown was his only remaining spare coin. He was, accordingly, about to abandon the idea of largess and move on, when the vocalist, having worked his way through You’re the Sort of a Girl That Men Forget, began to sing that other popular ballad entitled Sailors Don’t Care. And it was no doubt the desire to refute the slur implied in these words on the great brotherhood of which he was an amateur member that decided Sam to be lavish.
The half-crown changed hands.
Sam resumed his walk. At a quarter past eleven at night there is little to amuse and interest the stroller east of Wellington Street, so he now crossed the road and turned westward. And he had not been walking more than a few paces when he found himself looking into the brightly lighted window of a small restaurant that appeared to specialise in shellfish. The slab beyond the glass was paved with the most insinuating oysters. Overcome with emotion, Sam stopped in his tracks.
There is something about the oyster, nestling in its shell, which in the hours that come when the theatres are closed and London is beginning to give itself up to nocturnal revelry stirs right-thinking men like a bugle. There swept over Sam a sudden gnawing desire for nourishment. Oysters with brown bread and a little stout were, he perceived, just what this delightful evening demanded by way of a fitting climax. He pulled out his note-case. Even if it meant an inferior suit next morning, one of those Treasury notes which lay there must be broken into here and now.
It seemed to Sam, looking back later at this moment, that at the very first touch the note-case had struck him as being remarkably thin. It appeared to have lost its old jolly plumpness, as if some wasting fever had struck it. Indeed, it gave the impression, when he opened it, of being absolutely empty.
It was not absolutely empty. It is true that none of the Treasury notes remained, but there was something inside—a dirty piece of paper on which were words written in pencil. He read them by the light that poured from the restaurant window:
“DEAR SAM,—You will doubtless be surprised, Sam, to learn that I have borowed your money. Dear Sam, I will send it back tomorow A.M. prompt. Nothing can beat that wipet, Sam, so I have borowed your money.
“Trusting this finds you in the pink,
“Yrs. Obedtly,
“C. TODHUNTER.”
Sam stood staring at this polished communication with sagging jaw. For an instant it had a certain obscurity, the word “wipet” puzzling him particularly.
Then, unlike the missing money, it all came back to him.
The rush of traffic was diminishing now, and the roar of a few minutes back had become a mere rumble. It was almost as if London, sympathising with his sorrow, had delicately hushed its giant voice. To such an extent, in fact, was its voice hushed that that of the Wellington Street vocalist was once more plainly audible, and there was in what he was singing a poignant truth which had not impressed itself upon Sam when he had first heard it.
“Sailors don’t care,” chanted the vocalist. “Sailors don’t care. It’s something to do with the salt in the blood. Sailors don’t care.”