In this frightful manner of progression we had actually gained sight of Piccadilly Circus when all of a sudden a voice hissed in my ear: “Sidney Price, I am disappointed in you.” Hissed, mind you. I tell you, I jumped. Thought I’d bitten my tongue off at first.
If drunken Blake hadn’t been clutching me so tight you could have knocked me down with a feather: bowled me over clean. It startled Blake a goodish bit, too. All along the Avenue he’d been making just a quiet sort of snivelling noise. Crikey, if he didn’t speak up quite perky. “O, my fren’,” he says. “So drunk and yet so young.” Meaning me, if you please.
It was too thick.
“You blighter,” I says. “You blooming blighter. You talk to me like that. Let go of my arm and see me knock you down.”
I must have been a bit excited, you see, to say that. Then I looked round to see who the other individual was. You’ll hardly credit me when I tell you it was the Reverend. But it was. Honest truth, it was the Rev. John Hatton and no error. His face fairly frightened me. Simply blazing: red: fair scarlet. He kept by the side of us and let me have it all he could. “I thought you knew better, Price,” that’s what he said. “I thought you knew better. Here are you, a friend of mine, a member of the Club, a man I’ve trusted, going about the streets of London in a bestial state of disgusting intoxication. That’s enough in itself. But you’ve done worse than that. You’ve lured poor Blake into intemperance. Yes, with all your advantages of education and up-bringing, you deliberately set to work to put temptation in the way of poor, weak, hard-working Blake. Drunkenness is Blake’s besetting sin, and you——”
Blake had been silently wagging his head, as pleased as Punch at being called hardworking. But here he shoved in his oar.
“’Ow dare yer!” he burst out. “I ain’t never tasted a drop o’ beer in my natural. Born an’ bred teetotal, that’s wot I was, and don’t yew forget it, neither.”
“Blake,” said the Reverend, “that’s not the truth.”
“Call me a drunkard, do yer?” replied Blake. “Go on. Say it again. Say I’m a blarsted liar, won’t yer? Orlright, then I shall run away.”
And with that he wrenched himself away from me and set off towards the Circus. He was trying to run, but his advance took the form of semi-circular sweeps all over the pavement. He had circled off so unexpectedly that he had gained some fifty yards before we realised what was happening. “We must stop him,” said the Reverend.