“You were never nearer being kissed,” he said to her ear, “in all your life.”
“Please, please,” she said reprovingly.
Erb went back to Page’s Walk checked and cooled by this reproof. The prospect that he had had momentarily in his mind of the small house close to Wandsworth Common, with a billiard table lawn at the back, at a time when he, perhaps, would be in the House, unique among all labour members by reason of having a wife who could be introduced with confidence, was dismissed with a caution.
“Letter for you, Erb, on the mantel,” cried Louisa from her room. “It’s just been sent over. Good-night!”
A portentous envelope, addressed to the Editor of “The Carman.” Erb sliced it with his penknife. The large letter paper was folded in three.
“Sir,
“We have been consulted by our client, Sir William Durmin, with reference to the libellous statement which appears in No. I of ‘The Carman.’
“Our client cannot allow such statements to be made, and our instructions are to issue a writ without further notice.
“If you wish to avoid personal service, please supply us by return of post with the name of your solicitor who will accept service on your behalf.
“Yours faithfully.”
“Now,” said Erb, “the band’s beginning to play.”
CHAPTER XIII
If publicity at any cost be a good thing for a new journal, then “The Carman” had no right whatever to complain. The men belonging to the Society felt exultant at references to the impending action. It seemed that they were defying Capital as Capital had never been defied before. They told each other, when they met at receiving offices and railway stations, that Capital was going to have a nasty show up. Erb looked forward to the struggle with eagerness, until he had a meeting with Spanswick, the writer of the paragraph; that amateur journalist admitted, at the end of a keen cross-examination, that he had, perhaps, erred in stating that he knew the statement as a fact of his own knowledge: he remembered now that it had been related to him by a chap of his acquaintance, who was either on the Great Eastern or the South Western, he would not swear which, and he confessed to the indignant Erb that he could no more place his hand on this man’s shoulders and produce him at the Law Courts “than the dead.” Erb told Spanswick exactly what he thought of him, and Spanswick, penitent, declared that it would be a warning for the future: he would not have had this happen for forty thousand pounds. If Erb required him to go into a witness-box he would guarantee to say on oath just whatever Erb wished him to say. This sporting offer being declined, Spanswick went with downcast head, and examined the lining of his cap, as though hopeful that some solution of the difficulty would be found there. Once clear of the place he gave on the wooden flags of a cellar in Grange Road a few steps of a dance, which seemed to intimate that his regret was but a cloak that could be discarded without much difficulty.
No easy thing to keep up an attitude of hopefulness before the men whilst searching uselessly for facts to justify the Spanswick paragraph; but this was a mere diversion compared with the trouble that came to him the following week. Louisa was at home again after a few days of work at the factory, and Erb, going one afternoon to Page’s Walk for some correspondence, encountered the doctor who had called for a minute to see her. The doctor was a breathless, energetic man, whose fees were so small that, added up, they only made a living wage by reason of the number of his patients.