I met him on the stairs and he displayed the sponge proudly.
“Only fifteen and six! Dirt cheap, isn’t it? It would be unpardonable extravagance to let a chance like that slip, wouldn’t it? And I wanted a bath sponge; the one I’ve got isn’t nearly big enough. Come up to my place. We’ll put it in water. Just you watch how it swells!”
You may say bluntly that he was a fool. Of course he was. But it is the fools and the failures who win our hearts.
We went up to his rooms. He put the sponge to swell and sat down to the piano and forgot all about it. I should like to hear Jimmy play music-hall songs again; nothing was ever so charming. He knew them all. He used to sing the refrains in a thin, shrill voice, accompanying in his own wonderful way. Everything he touched became classic.
A week after he bought the sponge Harrowsmith—he was the young doctor—ordered him out of London. Fortunately I made a haul about that time, so we went together to Farthings Farm, as I’ll tell you later on.
Farthings Farm was the last nail in Jimmy’s coffin. He never spent a more miserable month. He would be morose, half asleep all day. But at dusk, just when the theaters would be opening and the racket in the Strand at its flow, he’d be restless. All the sweet smells and sounds of the farm were a poor enough substitute. The country finished him. He was a pure Cockney. There is no half way with the Cockney; either he loves the country passionately, or he hates it and chafes at it until it kills him. Saints and criminals are made by the country; it depends on how you take it. We hadn’t been back ten days before he broke a blood vessel and kept his bed. What was to be done with him? He never bothered. He believed in taking things easy. He had a favorite axiom about never putting up your umbrella until it rained—and ended by not having an umbrella at all! He just drifted. He was dying. He hadn’t a penny in the world; he was up to his eyes in small debts.
“Pack him off to the hospital,” advised Arnold rather brutally. “Poor devil! A fellow who earns a fiver and lives on it until it’s gone. I’ve no sympathy with that sort of thing. The hospital’s the place for him. I’ll pay the cab fare.”
However, the rest of us decided to club together and keep him going, first telling Arnold that he did the invalid an injustice; Jimmy had never earned a five-pound note, in a lump sum, in his life. Harrowsmith had told us privately that his case was quite hopeless. We could pull along somehow. Nutting, the steward, would wait a little longer for his rent; when Jimmy was gone the piano alone would pay that. One or other of us could look in; Mrs. Morey must be got back. The only difficulty was with Jimmy himself—he was so deuced proud.
A woman came to the rescue. Queenie La Belle was a regular brick. She bought up all his songs. Who but a woman would have thought of that? She’d come in, all sham diamonds and jolly voice, and sit down by his bed and tell him how well his songs were going at the halls. She said she was singing them at three nightly. She assured him that she was always encored. She begged him to take an extra ten pounds—the original price had been in shillings.
“You see, I’ve made that girl,” Jimmy would say when she had gone. “I knew those songs would just fit her. She wants more. Give me a bit of paper and pencil, old chap. I’ll dot down another. Why does Harrowsmith keep me tied by the leg like this? I mean to get up next week and toddle down to the halls and hear my songs encored. They give Queenie a middle turn now. They used to put her on at the end, to sing the audience out. I’m a made man. It’s just as well, with all the expenses of this illness. Are you going up Tottenham Court Road to-day? If so, look in and pay the fellow that sixpence owing on the sponge. I’ve never used it. Harrowsmith knocked me off my cold tub. You can’t mistake the shop. It’s nearly opposite Maple’s. I forget the name.”