When we reached the Parma I was very thirsty, but there were so many
people in the place that it was impossible to get near the bar. We
were jolted about by men who, having nothing else to say, shouted "Good
old Cambridge!" and "Now then, Oxford!" The pandemonium was deafening,
and Jack said to me that the whole thing wasn't good enough, and unless
you happened to feel like shoving into people and then pretending that
you were very sorry he was quite right.
A man standing on the steps at the top of the room began to make a
speech until somebody shoved him down, and his top-hat, having been
knocked off, was kicked about by everybody who could get near it. Men
whom I never remembered having seen before, shook me warmly by the hand
and treated me as if I was their greatest friend, but none of them
could get me anything to drink. This scene was subsequently described
as disgraceful, but it was really very dull, and after a few more
minutes spent in trying to make my voice heard in the noise, the lights
were turned out. The word "Johnnys" ran round the place, and there was
a big rush for the door leading into Piccadilly Circus. Fortunately I
got out at once, and I found myself marching clown Piccadilly in the
second row of a procession. Foster was next to me, though how he got
there I cannot conceive, and Ward and Dennison were in the front row.
We sang as we walked, and people cleared out of our way. I heard one
man who met us say "Poor fools!" and the fellow who was with him
answered "We did that kind of thing years ago, didn't we?" Outside The
St. John's we came to a dead stop, and the men in front of me began
arguing with an enormous man who stood at the entrance.
"No one else is to be admitted to-night," I heard the giant say.
"But it is not closing time," some one answered.
"These are my orders, gentlemen," he said, and it was really rather
nice of him to address us as he did.
Ward did not say a word, but tried quite amicably to get past the
giant. It was a kind of Goliath and David business anyhow, but
whatever chance Ward had of getting into the restaurant ended abruptly;
a bevy of policemen who seemed to drop out of the skies simply pounced
upon him, and if he had been guilty of some real crime he could not
have been treated more severely. It was my first experience of
policemen, and unless some one had very kindly caught hold of me, my
first impulse was to go for the men who had seized Ward.
"You had better keep quiet, or you will be taken to the station as
well," one policeman said to me, but I went on talking until some one I
did not know touched me on the arm.
"Was the man they collared a friend of yours?" he asked.
"Yes, and it is a most wretched swindle," I said.
"I don't think he did anything to speak of," Foster added.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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