Читать книгу Adventures in Journalism онлайн

16 страница из 84

“My dear,” said the centenarian parson, “this gentleman has come all the way from London to sing at our concert to-night.”

I explained to her gently that it was not so, but she was also deaf, and could only hear her husband when she used her ear trumpet.

“How very kind of you to come all this way!” she said graciously.

Presently another old gentleman appeared on the scene and I was presented to him as the young gentleman who had come down from London to sing at the concert.

“Pardon me,” I said; “it’s all a mistake. I’m a newspaper reporter.”

But the second old gentleman ignored my explanation. He had only caught the word “concert.”

“Delighted to meet you!” he said. “We are all looking forward to your singing to-night!”

I slunk out of the house later, and drove back fifteen miles to the station. On the way I passed an old horse cab conveying a young man in the opposite direction. I felt certain that he actually was the young gentleman who was going to sing at the concert that night.

On another occasion I had the unfortunate experience of being taken for Mr. Winston Churchill. It was his luck and not mine, because it was at a time when a great number of Irishmen were lusting for his blood. I am no more like Mr. Churchill than I am like Lloyd George, except that we are both clean shaven and both happened to be driving in a blue car. It was on a day when there was trouble in Belfast (that city of peace!) and the Orangemen had sworn to prevent Churchill from speaking to the Catholic community on the Celtic Football Ground. They lined up for him thousands strong outside the railway station where he was due to arrive, and their pockets were loaded with “kidney” stones, and iron nuts from the shipyards. Churchill is a brave man, and faced them with such pluck that they did not attempt to injure him at that moment of his arrival, though afterwards they attacked his car in Royal Avenue and would have overturned it but for a charge of mounted police. He made his speech to the Catholic Irish and slipped out of Belfast by a different station. The mobs of Orangemen were awaiting his return in a blue car to a hotel in Royal Avenue, and it was my car, and my clean-shaven face under a bowler hat which went back to that hotel and caused a slight mistake among them. I was suddenly aware of ten thousand men yelling at me fiercely and threatening to tear me limb from limb. The police made a rush, and I and my companion escaped with only torn collars and the loss of dignity after a wild scrimmage on the steps of the hotel. For hours the mob waited outside for Mr. Winston Churchill to depart, and I did not venture forth until the news of his going spread among them.