I FAIL THE NIGHT CLUB
One evening I failed the Club badly. During the previous week there had not been a moment in which to complete the half-written story intended for that particular Sunday. I had done my best; but I arrived at Chelsea with the knowledge that I had let them all down.
When I had made my confession, Bindle turned to me with grave reproach in his eyes.
"I'm surprised at you, sir," he said, "I been lookin' forward all the week to this evenin', an' now you tell us you ain't got nothink. Wot we goin' to do?"
My unpopularity was sufficiently obvious to penetrate the thickest of skins.
"What about bridge?" ventured Tom Little. But Bindle was opposed to every suggestion made. It was clear that he was greatly disappointed, and he seemed to find solace nowhere, not even in his tankard of ale.
"You done the dirty on us to-night, sir," he said during a pause in the fusillade of personalities and rather feeble suggestions as to how thee evening should be spent. "Sort o' thing a foreman 'ud do."
It was Jocelyn Dare who came to the rescue. "What," he asked, "can you expect of a publisher? He has sufficient manners to impress a half-dipped author, and not enough morals to pay him what is his due."
"My dear Dare," it was Windover who spoke, "are you not inverting the values? Our friend Bindle here, for instance, might reasonably conceive that you place morals on a higher plane than manners. Bindle is young and unsophisticated, you must remember he has arrived at an impressionable age."
Bindle grinned. He scented a battle between Windover and Dare, both brilliant and amusing talkers.