第54章

ON THE INADVISABILITY OF FOLLOWING ADVICE

I was pacing the Euston platform late one winter's night, waiting for the last train to Watford, when I noticed a man cursing an automatic machine.Twice he shook his fist at it.I expected every moment to see him strike it.Naturally curious, I drew near softly.

I wanted to catch what he was saying.However, he heard my approaching footsteps, and turned on me."Are you the man," said he, "who was here just now?""Just where?" I replied.I had been pacing up and down the platform for about five minutes.

"Why here, where we are standing," he snapped out."Where do you think 'here' is--over there?" He seemed irritable.

"I may have passed this spot in the course of my peregrinations, if that is what you mean," I replied.I spoke with studied politeness;my idea was to rebuke his rudeness.

"I mean," he answered, "are you the man that spoke to me, just a minute ago?""I am not that man," I said; "good-night.""Are you sure?" he persisted.

"One is not likely to forget talking to you," I retorted.

His tone had been most offensive."I beg your pardon," he replied grudgingly."I thought you looked like the man who spoke to me a minute or so ago."I felt mollified; he was the only other man on the platform, and Ihad a quarter of an hour to wait."No, it certainly wasn't me," Ireturned genially, but ungrammatically."Why, did you want him?""Yes, I did," he answered."I put a penny in the slot here," he continued, feeling apparently the need of unburdening himself:

"wanted a box of matches.I couldn't get anything put, and I was shaking the machine, and swearing at it, as one does, when there came along a man, about your size, and--you're SURE it wasn't you?""Positive," I again ungrammatically replied; "I would tell you if it had been.What did he do?""Well, he saw what had happened, or guessed it.He said, 'They are troublesome things, those machines; they want understanding.' Isaid, 'They want taking up and flinging into the sea, that's what they want!' I was feeling mad because I hadn't a match about me, and I use a lot.He said, 'They stick sometimes; the thing to do is to put another penny in; the weight of the first penny is not always sufficient.The second penny loosens the drawer and tumbles out itself; so that you get your purchase together with your first penny back again.I have often succeeded that way.' Well, it seemed a silly explanation, but he talked as if he had been weaned by an automatic machine, and I was sawney enough to listen to him.Idropped in what I thought was another penny.I have just discovered it was a two-shilling piece.The fool was right to a certain extent; I have got something out.I have got this."He held it towards me; I looked at it.It was a packet of Everton toffee.

"Two and a penny," he remarked, bitterly."I'll sell it for a third of what it cost me.""You have put your money into the wrong machine," I suggested.

"Well, I know that!" he answered, a little crossly, as it seemed to me--he was not a nice man: had there been any one else to talk to Ishould have left him."It isn't losing the money I mind so much;it's getting this damn thing, that annoys me.If I could find that idiot Id ram it down his throat."We walked to the end of the platform, side by side, in silence.

"There are people like that," he broke out, as we turned, "people who will go about, giving advice.I'll be getting six months over one of them, I'm always afraid.I remember a pony I had once." (Ijudged the man to be a small farmer; he talked in a wurzelly tone.

I don't know if you understand what I mean, but an atmosphere of wurzels was the thing that somehow he suggested.) "It was a thoroughbred Welsh pony, as sound a little beast as ever stepped.

I'd had him out to grass all the winter, and one day in the early spring I thought I'd take him for a run.I had to go to Amersham on business.I put him into the cart, and drove him across; it is just ten miles from my place.He was a bit uppish, and had lathered himself pretty freely by the time we reached the town.

"A man was at the door of the hotel.He says, 'That's a good pony of yours.'

"'Pretty middling,' I says.

"'It doesn't do to over-drive 'em, when they're young,' he says.

"I says, 'He's done ten miles, and I've done most of the pulling.Ireckon I'm a jolly sight more exhausted than he is.

"I went inside and did my business, and when I came out the man was still there.'Going back up the hill?' he says to me.

"Somehow, I didn't cotton to him from the beginning.'Well, I've got to get the other side of it,' I says, 'and unless you know any patent way of getting over a hill without going up it, I reckon Iam.'

"He says, 'You take my advice: give him a pint of old ale before you start.'

"'Old ale,' I says; 'why he's a teetotaler.'

"'Never you mind that,' he answers; 'you give him a pint of old ale.

I know these ponies; he's a good 'un, but he ain't set.A pint of old ale, and he'll take you up that hill like a cable tramway, and not hurt himself.'

"I don't know what it is about this class of man.One asks oneself afterwards why one didn't knock his hat over his eyes and run his head into the nearest horse-trough.But at the time one listens to them.I got a pint of old ale in a hand-bowl, and brought it out.

About half-a-dozen chaps were standing round, and of course there was a good deal of chaff.

"'You're starting him on the downward course, Jim,' says one of them.'He'll take to gambling, rob a bank, and murder his mother.

That's always the result of a glass of ale, 'cording to the tracts.'

"'He won't drink it like that,' says another; 'it's as flat as ditch water.Put a head on it for him.'

"'Ain't you got a cigar for him?' says a third.

"'A cup of coffee and a round of buttered toast would do him a sight more good, a cold day like this,' says a fourth.

"I'd half a mind then to throw the stuff away, or drink it myself;it seemed a piece of bally nonsense, giving good ale to a four-year-old pony; but the moment the beggar smelt the bowl he reached out his head, and lapped it up as though he'd been a Christian; and I jumped into the cart and started off, amid cheers.