The Song of the Flea (12 page)

“Yes, you will, Pym. And first of all you must be calm. If you are not calm,” said Proudfoot, separating his words and lingering on them a little, pressing them home like so many impressions of a rubber stamp, “if
you
are
not
calm
I
shall refuse to
talk
to you.
I
shall tell
you
to go
away
and come
back
another
time
when you
are
calm.”

“I’m better now, Proudfoot. I can’t tell you how ashamed I am.”

“Forget that. Tell me, what’s on your mind? I shall
understand
. Talk; get it off your chest.”

Pym hesitated. He was confused. “I don’t quite know,” he said; “all of a sudden …
snap
—just like that—I felt I was going crazy. I don’t know what was the matter with me. It happened—just like that. I felt … I can’t describe it … that I was in danger, and people were after me. And I wanted to run away and hide. I didn’t want to go home because—it seems ridiculous—I was afraid to be alone; and I didn’t dare to go to a café or any such place because I was afraid to be with strangers. I knew I should do something silly. So I roamed about, and it got worse and worse, and then, just when I thought I really was going stark staring mad I thought of you. I came here in a taxi. Proudfoot, for God’s sake, what’s the matter with me? Am I really going crazy?”

“I said be calm, Pym. You are not crazy. Relax now, and get things straight and tidy in your muddled head. Think hard and think carefully … Now tell me one single thing of which you have reasonable cause to be afraid.”

Pym thought and shook his head.

Proudfoot went on: “You were afraid of going to prison, were you not?”

“Well, yes; but——”

“There was no likelihood of that, as I told you when I found bail for you. You were in a highly nervous state at the time, yet you will not have forgotten that I tried to reassure you then.”

“I’ll never forget all you’ve done for me, Proudfoot, as long as I live.”

“Never mind that. You did not believe me, on that occasion, when I assured you that there was not one chance in a thousand of your being found guilty of compounding the felony. You did
not
believe me, did you, Pym?”

“It wasn’t exactly that I didn’t believe you, Proudfoot; but was worked up—overwound—and
fed
up, fed up to the teeth.”

“You did not believe me. Yet events proved me right. Did they or did they not?”

“My God, yes, Proudfoot! I can’t tell you how grateful——”

“You will believe me in future, perhaps? You will have a little more confidence in me?”

“I have, Proudfoot—on my word of honour, I have confidence in you.”

“That is all I want to know. Now it is established that your fears were groundless even when there appeared to be some material basis for them. Is that so?”

“You’re absolutely right, Proudfoot.”

“And the other fears that sent you—
you
—running like a rabbit through the streets to cry on my shoulder at two o’clock in the morning: they were nothing at all. They were not even figments of your imagination, were they? They had no form, even in your imagination, had they?”

“No,” said Pym. “And I can’t tell you how——”

“So, Mr. John Pym,” said Proudfoot, counting the points on the fingers of his left hand, “knowing that there is nothing to fear, you are afraid. You admit that you are frightened literally by Nothing. It is not like you to be afraid—even of Something, I believe?”

“I suppose not.”

“So you were not yourself, eh?”

“It wasn’t like me, I admit. I’m terribly ashamed of myself.”

“Excuse me: you are not ashamed of
yourself:
you are ashamed because you were not yourself. You are ashamed of having lost your grip upon yourself. But, my dear fellow,” said Proudfoot, trying to bring back into his hoarse voice a little of the old magic, “my dear fellow, no man’s strength is illimitable. You said that you were fed up—fed up to the teeth. It must have been a very tremendous combination of forces indeed that could break
your
hold on yourself! Consider, my dear Pym—look at yourself. You are young, you are healthy, you are handsome, you are strong; you have a charming personality and—above all, above all, Pym—you have genius. You are going to be great, a great author. You have told me so, and I believe you. And mark my words, Pym, it is impossible to be what I have been without a knack of weighing and measuring men. Oh, you may look at me as I am now, and laugh at the dirty old bum in the stinking old room, wearing a ragged old overcoat for a dressing-gown—you
may
laugh, Pym, and probably
do
laugh at me when you are far enough round the corner not to hurt my feelings——”

“—I’d never dream——”

“—But there are three or four large volumes of newspaper cuttings over there in which you may find certain evidence of certain qualities, certain faculties, and certain powers of assessment with which God has endowed this same
out-at-elbows
laughing-stock of Fleet Street,” said Proudfoot. “And I can tell you that although I have fallen low, I still know how to measure and assess a man. And I know you, Pym, to be
potentially great
. Don’t shake your head at me—you know it yourself, and you know that you know it. Otherwise—if you had not the genius’s faith in himself—would you have suffered as you have suffered merely for the sake of writing a book?”

“I really have been trying to write a good book,” said Pym, pulling a loose horsehair out of the arm of the chair.

“Living on coffee and rolls in dirty coffee shops, sleeping in lousy lodging houses, washing your own shirt in a basin
overnight
and putting it on damp in the morning, re-rolling your own cigarette ends half a dozen times, never having a penny to bless yourself with—when you might quite easily be rich and
comfortable
?
It’s true that many second-rate artists have lived like that, but only because they were lazy and liked hard liquor and easy women. You are not like that. No, a man’s destiny is written on his face if you know how to read it.
I
know how to read men, and that, more than anything else, made me what I used to be when they called me The Mouthpiece. Oh, I know what you’re thinking! You’re thinking: here is a fine one to talk—this flabby failure in a dirty overcoat, wearing old shoes on his bare feet because he hasn’t got slippers, and unable to offer a friend anything better than a sip of cold water out of a jug! That’s what you’re thinking. Still, I tell you that I’m right! There was only one man whom I couldn’t read. That man was my downfall.”

Proudfoot paused, waiting for it. It came.

“Who was he?” asked Pym.

“Myself,” said Proudfoot, pointing to his four fat books of press cuttings, and watching Pym’s face.

It was a strange face, blunt-featured, compact and muscular; a well-constructed, useful-looking face, handsome in spite of the short blunt nose and the out-thrust jaw. Pym’s mouth was set, now, in an expression of unshakable resolution and his eyes were steady under his frowning brows. Now he looked as a boxer looks when he shuts his ears to the thunder of the crowd and climbs through the ropes. Yes, Proudfoot had seen Pym’s face tightening and hardening while he talked. Ten minutes ago it had been the tear-stained face of a lost child. Now it was the formidable face of an undefeated fighter. The big bony hands, which had been plucking nervously at the loose
horse-hair
on the arm of the ragged easy chair, had closed slowly into hard knuckly fists.

Proudfoot smiled. He was pleased. He liked this young man, whom he could pull together like a jointed doll at the end of a string. There Pym had sat, blubbering like a schoolboy and pleading with his wet eyes like a spaniel whose master has left him at home. And he, Proudfoot The Mouthpiece, with his magic mouth had whispered the Word and made a new man. Proudfoot the god had breathed a breath of life into this
tear-softened
clay. He had stretched out His Hand over the Chaos
that was Pym, and lo! the light was separated from the dark, the earth was separated from the waters, the sun and the moon and the planets had clicked into their pockets in the sky, the things that swam and the things that crawled and the things that walked were in their ordained places, and in the broken chair by the gas-fire sat Man! Proudfoot drew a deep breath, so deep that his bronchitic old chest sang like a kettle. He was still in his heaven; a little advanced in years, somewhat tarnished about the aureole, and a shade flyblown on the surface. But He was still strong to save men from the perils and dangers of the night, and be with them in the Valley of the Shadow; He was still the Rock of the Salvation of them that walk in darkness.

“I owe you more than I can ever repay, Proudfoot,” said Pym, firmly now but fervently; “I hate to think what I should have done without you.”

“It was nothing—nothing at all, Pym, my dear fellow,” said Proudfoot, coming to earth and appearing as a Son of Man. “I am flattered, my dear fellow, that a man like you should come for help to a man like me. Well, I suppose even an eagle or an albatross comes down to rest for a moment on a ruin or a rotten derelict. But you were saying that you were fed up, fed up to the teeth, Pym. Why? I’ve known you for two years or more, and nothing ever seemed to shake you. My poor friend, how you must have been suffering!”

The resolute mouth relaxed a hair’s breadth and some of the whiteness went out of the fighter’s knuckles. “It’s so difficult to explain. I don’t think I know how to explain. But I owe you an explanation of some sort, Proudfoot. I owe you ever so much more than just an explanation——”

“Have you got any money?”

“I’ve got nearly five pounds,” said Pym, taking the money out of his pocket; “please have it.”

“My dear fellow, I wouldn’t dream of it. Well, I might borrow thirty shillings. A loan, mind. You have already been far too kind. You insisted on my taking that five pounds as a fee—as if a fee were necessary! I’ll borrow thirty shillings, since you’re so insistent, and remember,” said Proudfoot, still watching Pym’s face, “remember that you are not indebted to
me for anything whatsoever.” He read dog-like gratitude in Pym’s lifted paw, and went on jovially: “I’ll tell you why I asked you whether you had any money. It’s getting on for five o’clock. Until you were so kind as to lend me thirty shillings I had no money. I was going to say that the public house in Covent Garden Market will be opening now, and that if you liked we could take a walk in that direction and you could—if it were perfectly convenient—buy me a drink. But you’re tired.”

“Indeed I’m not tired, Proudfoot, and I’d love to buy you a drink.”

“No, no; you must be exhausted after all you’ve been through … Oh, well, all right, since you insist, let it be as you say. And on the way you can tell me all about it.”

They went on tiptoe to the outer door. “Quietly, if you don’t mind,” said Proudfoot; “that’s right. Come along now.”

Pym laid an affectionate hand on the old man’s shoulder, Proudfoot smiled in the dark: the spaniel was grateful: it was being taken for a walk.

After a minute or two of thoughtful silence Pym said, striking himself on the thigh with a merciless hand (the slap and the jingle of small change in his trouser-pocket sent a stray cat bounding in terror across the street): “I must get my typewriter and go back to work, Proudfoot, by God I must! I haven’t much more to do. I’ve got to finish. I
can
get my typewriter, I suppose?”

“Oh, yes. It is necessary only for you to establish your right to it by application to the Police Commissioner, and you will get it back from the pawnbroker without any trouble at all, and it will cost you nothing.”

“Oh, by the way …” said Pym.

It was too dark for Proudfoot to see Pym’s face between the lamp-posts, but Proudfoot (like Busto) had ears trained to turn sound into pictures. Something in Pym’s voice informed him that the clenched hands had unclenched. “By the way, what?”

“I forgot to ask: what happens to Win—Miss Joyce?”

“It’s difficult to predict these things with any degree of certainty; but, to hazard a guess, I should say that she’d probably
get—taking all things into consideration—something like three months.”

“
What!
”

“Oh yes, she’ll get off lightly, in spite of the fact that one or two similar little affairs have been hushed up before. You see, although she has no previous convictions, no
actual
convictions, she’s not unknown to the police. But the old gentleman, her stepfather, has a lot of money. The argument will be: silly, thoughtless girl. Taking all in all … let me see. She has been in very bad company—a pimp, in point of fact, called American Henry or something of the sort. He has just served three years for burglary. You know what these people are: if he had been romantic enough to take the blame, he would have got it in the neck. He was not. He said, without hesitation, that he had got the typewriter from the young lady, who had given it to him to pawn. When
she
was questioned, she told another tale, and by that time you had already charged her with the theft of the typewriter. On the one hand we have … well, let us not bother about the one hand or the other hand. Yes, I should say something like three months.”

“Three months,” said Pym, shocked and fascinated, “three months in prison! What on earth will she do?”

“Oh, pretty much the same as they all do, I suppose. Keep regular hours, do a little work, keep out of mischief, stop smoking and drinking and fornicating, and have a little time for reflection on a hard, clean bed, without too much rich food. I will wager the thirty shillings I have just borrowed from you that she will be vastly improved physically by the time she comes out. Do you know what? They always are: it’s a fact. A little discipline does them good. I used to know a manufacturer of window frames who went to prison for twelve months for defrauding the Inland Revenue. When he stood in the dock he was as flabby and unsavoury a wreck as I am now. He was about the same age, too—somewhere around sixty. When I saw him rather less than a year later, he looked ten years younger. It is good for them, my dear fellow, good for them!”