Chapter VI The Doctor Keeps His Word
The whole fight did not last two minutes. It was short, sharp, and, to sport-loving members of the crowd, very sweet. Certain pugilistic souls among the visitors to the Exhibition went home that night and dreamt about it. Many of the women, it is true, shuddered, and clutched convulsively at the arms of their male companions as Jim’s mighty hits went home and the policemen, by turn, bit the dust of the promenading ground, but quite a number watched the combat with bright, marvelling eyes, and lips parted half in admiration and half in horror.
For Jim looked very handsome and terrible in his fighting wrath. One old gentleman who had come from his club dinner in evening dress to listen to the band, returned to St James’s Street chuckling with delight. Numbers of times he repeated to himself, “A bonny lad—a bonny lad!” and actually, instead of going home and to bed at a respectable hour, as an old gentleman of his years and gouty tendencies should have done, fought the battle over again at great length for the benefit of some other old club fogies, and finally had to be helped into a cab—at 2 A.M.—still chuckling with wicked joy.
It was, of course, a tremendous output of nervous energy—accentuated by the spirits he had imbibed—on Jim’s part. It was a supreme effort, and died out suddenly. That smash over the hip—a policeman’s favourite aiming-point—from the truncheon numbed him strangely, and when he fell, his capture was an easy matter. There was no more fight left in him when they led him off—he would have gone with entire docility, indeed, without a hand being laid on him.
Arrived at the police-station, he was conducted into the charge-room and placed in the narrow little dock facing the inspector’s desk. The inspector, a quiet-looking man, glanced up in a casual fashion and then proceeded with the writing on which he was employed when they entered. This done, he inquired what the charge was, and, on being informed of its nature in the curt, unadorned phraseology of the man in blue, entered the particulars on a charge-sheet that lay before him, and finally allowed Koko to bail his friend out for £2.
Those who had witnessed the conflict would have been astonished by the inspector’s imperturbable, cool tone, as he asked his brief questions. It was regarded as a matter-of-course case—youthful “medical “—too much to drink—dispute with waiter—resisted police. All very ordinary—very matter-of-course—nothing out of the way. The inspector even said “Good-night, sir,” as Jim left the charge-room with Koko; previously the inspector had gazed at the ceiling as Jim presented a sovereign to his two custodians, who also bade him a “Good-night, sir,” in a manner which showed that they bore him not the slightest ill-will on account of the hard usage they had received at his hands.
On the following day, Jim and Koko attended at the police-court and hung about in a fusty corridor for two hours before the name “Mortimer” was sharply called, and Jim, frock-coated, neatly gloved, and with a new hat in his hand, walked into the dock. Then the sergeant who had taken part in the fracas told his tale in the same unadorned manner of speech that his subordinate had used on the previous night.
“Anything to say?” inquired the magistrate, glancing at Jim.
“Nothing, your worship,” replied Jim, who had been previously warned by Koko that “the less said the better” was a golden maxim to adopt on an occasion like the present.
The magistrate, who for two hours had been hearing the usual sordid charges—most of them associated with petty thefts and drunkenness—had been somewhat interested by the sergeant’s account of what Jim had done. Now, as he looked at Jim’s tall, lithe form, and fair, open countenance, and noted Jim’s gentlemanly bearing, he decided to give the young fellow a seasonable word of advice.
“I am sorry to see you here, Mortimer,” he said, “because a man of your position, by acting as you have done, not only sets a bad example, but runs the risk of imperilling the success of his future career. You have rendered yourself liable to a term of imprisonment, and you know well that if I were to inflict such a punishment on you the fact would act as a serious obstacle to you hereafter, as you would not be allowed to fill any responsible medical post were it known that you had been in prison. It appears from the evidence that you were the worse for drink at the time you resisted the police. I need hardly remind you of the view the public take of a medical man who gives way to such habits. It means, in the long run, utter ruin to him. As I said before, I should be acting within my rights by sending you to prison, but as I understand that after you had been taken into custody you gave the police no further trouble, I shall only inflict a fine upon you. You will pay forty shillings—and take care I don’t see you here again.”
Jim bowed. “I am greatly obliged to your worship,” he said. Then, at a sign from a policeman stationed near by, he quitted the dock, and, having paid his fine, joined Koko in the corridor.
They lose no time in London police-courts. Hardly had Jim left the dock than the name of “Hodgkins” was uttered by the magistrate’s clerk, repeated by the sergeant, bawled down the corridor by the constable at the door, and echoed by other policemen lounging in the outer precincts of the court.
“Hodgkins!”
“Hodgkins!”
“HODGKINS!”
As Jim joined Koko, a blear-eyed, decrepit old dame brushed past him at a rapid hobble. She had to answer a summons for assaulting a neighbour by striking her over the head with a fire-shovel. This, in fact, was “Hodgkins.”
As Jim glanced at the old creature he realised that this quarrelsome, ill-favoured hag and he were companions in distress—united by a law-breaking bond! He, inflamed by whisky, had fought six policemen; she, supping cheap gin, had burst into a senile frenzy and set upon some other hag with her claw-like nails and the weapon that came first to hand. The same law applied to both of them—she, a rag-picker, and he, the heir to a bountiful fortune and many smiling acres in Eastfolkshire.
“Pah!” he exclaimed, as he hastened to reach cleaner air, “let’s get out of this! Thank goodness that’s over!”
“No harm done,” said Koko, cheerily. “I know the two men in the reporters’ box, and they both promised not to write a word about you.”
“By George! that’s jolly of them!” exclaimed the Long ’Un. “My grand-guv’nor won’t get to hear of it after all, then.”
“It would have made a tasty little par,” said Koko, with a pressman’s instinctive knowledge of what newspapers like.
“It would,” said Jim. “I can imagine how it would have read.”
“But they won’t write a word. They’re good sorts,” said Koko.
And so the Long ’Un made his way back to Matt’s, lighter, it is true, of purse, but very much lighter of heart as well, than when he set out to the police-court that morning.
News of Jim’s display of pugilistic prowess had preceded him to the hospital—for one of the students had been an eye-witness of the battle—and he was saluted by the unruly crew there with acclamation. But Jim still had the taste of the police-court air in his mouth, and did not feel at all heroic. But for Koko’s intervention his name would have been in a good many papers on the following day, and perhaps a briefer notice of “Hodgkins” and her misuse of domestic implements would have followed the account of the young doctor’s “disorderly conduct.”
That day he went home early, and tried to do some reading. He ended up, however, by going to a theatre with Koko. On the next evening he really did do some reading, and this studious fit lasted for quite a week.
“The Long ’Un,” said the red-haired student at Matt’s, “is turning over a new leaf. I will buy him a prize.”
When Jim, on reaching the hospital next day, entered the students’ common-room, he found a neat package, addressed to himself, occupying a prominent position on the mantelpiece. On opening the package he found that it consisted of a nice little one-and-sixpenny book, of the kind published by religious societies, entitled “Jim’s Repentance: The Story of a Bad Boy Who Saw the Evils of His Ways.”
The red-haired youth took the precaution of putting the table between himself and the Long ’Un ere he said: “Had to go through a catalogue before I found a suitable prize for you, Jim. Girl in the shop helped me.”
Jim flung it at his head.
“Naughty, angry Jim!” said the red-haired student, reprovingly, as he dodged the book. “I shall take your prize away from you now.”
Presently Jim found himself at the piano, and a little later out in the quad with the red-haired one and half-a-dozen others, “wondering what to do.”
Eventually they solved the problem by going to a music-hall and joining vociferously in the choruses—it was one of those music-halls where the audience does join in the choruses—and the end of it was that Jim got home sometime between one and two in the morning, feeling uncommonly merry and not at all repentant.
But that was Jim’s last night round the town with the Matt’s lot. Even while he was chirruping choruses, an epistle was winging its way towards him by express train. He got that missive at breakfast time, and Koko, who called in just then, found him looking thoughtful.
“Read that,” he said to Koko. And Koko read as follows:—
“Pangora,” Threeways,
Sept. 20th.
MY DEAR JAMES,—You may possibly remember that in the course of the conversation I held with you over the telephone on the day of your departure for town, I expressed myself quite plainly with regard to your future conduct. My attention has to-day been drawn to a paragraph in the local Liberal journal—I am, as you know, a Conservative in politics—to the effect that a medical man named James Mortimer, who gave his address as St Matthew’s Hospital, behaved in a disgraceful fashion at the Exhibition one night earlier in the month, and was eventually fined forty shillings and severely reprimanded by the magistrate. As I happen to know that you are the only Mortimer at St Matthew’s, and as I am aware of your liking for drunken brawls, I can only conclude that you disregarded my injunctions at the first opportunity that presented itself. I am obliged, therefore, to keep my part of the compact by informing you that my doors are henceforth closed to you, and that you need never look to me for another penny.
I am,
Your affectionate grandfather,
JOHN MORTIMER.