When Ghost Meets Ghost

by William De Morgan

This afternoon he was eloquent on foreign policy. Closing one eye to accentuate the shrewd vision of the other, and shaking his head continuously to express the steadiness and persistency of his convictions, he indicted Louis Napoleon as the bête noire of European politics. "Don't you let yourself be took in, Mr. Moses," he said, "by any of these here noospapers. They're a bad lot. This here Nicholas, he's a Rooshian—so him I say nothin' about. Nor yet these here Turkeys—them and their Constant Eye No Pulls!"—this with great scorn. "None of 'em no better, I lay, than Goard A'mighty see fit to make 'em, so it ain't, so as you might say, their own fault, not in a manner of speaking. But this Louis Sneapoleum, he's your sly customer. He's as bad as the whole lot, all boiled up together in a stoo! Don't you be took in by him, Mr. Moses. Calls hisself a Coodytar! I call him.... etcetera de rigueur, as some of old Billy's comparisons were unsavoury.

"Can't foller you all the way down the lane, Willy-um," said Uncle Mo, who could hardly be expected to identify Billy's variant of Coup d'Etat. "Ain't he our ally?"

"That's the p'int, Mr. Moses, the very p'int to not lose sight on, or where are we? He's got hisself made our ally for to get between him and the Rooshians. What he's a-drivin' at is to get us to fight his battles for him, and him to sit snug and accoomulate cucumbers like King Solomons."

Uncle Moses felt he ought to interpose on this revision of the Authorised Version of Scripture. "You haven't hit the word in the middle, mate," said he, and supplied it, correctly enough. "You can keep it in mind by thinking of them spiky beggars at the So-logical Gardens—porky pines—them as get their backs up when wexed and bristle."

"Well—corkupines, then! Have it your own way, old Mo! My back'd get up and bristle, if I was some of them! Only when it's womankind, the likes of us can't jedge, especially when French. All I can say is, him and them's got to settle it between 'em, and if they can stand his blooming moostarsh, why, it's no affair of mine." Which was so obviously true that old Billy need not have gone on muttering to himself to the same effect. One would have thought that the Tuileries had applied to him to accept an appointment as Censor Morum.

"What's old Billy grizzlin' on about?" said Mr. Jeffcoat, the host of The Sun, bringing in another go of the shrub, and a modest small pewter of mild for Uncle Mo, who was welcome at this hostelry even when, as sometimes happened, he drank nothing; so powerful was his moral influence on its status. In fact, the Sporting World, which drank freely, frequented its parlour merely to touch the hand of the great heavyweight of other days, however much he was faded and all his glories past. Then would Uncle Mo give a sketch of his celebrated scrap with Bob Brettle, which ended in neither coming to Time, simultaneously. Mo would complain of an absurd newspaper report of the fight, which said the Umpires stopped the fight. "No such a thing!" said Uncle Mo. "I stopped Bob and he stopped me, fair and square. And there we was, come to grass, and stopping there." Perhaps the old boy was dreaming back on something of this sort, rather than listening to boozy old Billy's reflections on Imperial Morality, that Mr. Jeffcoat should have repeated again:—"What's old Billy grizzling about? You pay for both, Mr. Moses? Fourpence halfpenny, thank you!"

"He's letting out at the Emperor of the French, is Billy. He'd do his dags for him, Billy would, if he could get at him. Wouldn't you, Billy? I say, Tim, whose voice was that I heard in the Bar just now, naming me by name?"

"Ah, I was just on telling you. He walks in and he says to me, when does Moses Wardle come in here, he says, and how long does he stop, mostly? And I says to him....

"What sort of a feller to look at?" said Uncle Mo, interrupting. "Old or young? Long? Short? Anything about him to go by?"

This called for consideration. "Not what you would call an average party. His gills was too much slewed to one side." This was illustrated by a finger hooking down the corner of the mouth. "Looked as if his best clothes was being took care of for him."