My Man Jeeves
by
P. G. Wodehouse
Part 2 out of 4
private and all that."
"I shouldn't worry about that, old top. I bet Jeeves knows all about it
already. Don't you, Jeeves?"
"Yes, sir."
"Eh!" said Bicky, rattled.
"I am open to correction, sir, but is not your dilemma due to the fact
that you are at a loss to explain to his grace why you are in New York
instead of in Colorado?"
Bicky rocked like a jelly in a high wind.
"How the deuce do you know anything about it?"
"I chanced to meet his grace's butler before we left England. He
informed me that he happened to overhear his grace speaking to you on
the matter, sir, as he passed the library door."
Bicky gave a hollow sort of laugh.
"Well, as everybody seems to know all about it, there's no need to try
to keep it dark. The old boy turfed me out, Bertie, because he said I
was a brainless nincompoop. The idea was that he would give me a
remittance on condition that I dashed out to some blighted locality of
the name of Colorado and learned farming or ranching, or whatever they
call it, at some bally ranch or farm or whatever it's called. I didn't
fancy the idea a bit. I should have had to ride horses and pursue cows,
and so forth. I hate horses. They bite at you. I was all against the
scheme. At the same time, don't you know, I had to have that
remittance."
"I get you absolutely, dear boy."
"Well, when I got to New York it looked a decent sort of place to me,
so I thought it would be a pretty sound notion to stop here. So I
cabled to my uncle telling him that I had dropped into a good business
wheeze in the city and wanted to chuck the ranch idea. He wrote back
that it was all right, and here I've been ever since. He thinks I'm
doing well at something or other over here. I never dreamed, don't you
know, that he would ever come out here. What on earth am I to do?"
"Jeeves," I said, "what on earth is Mr. Bickersteth to do?"
"You see," said Bicky, "I had a wireless from him to say that he was
coming to stay with me--to save hotel bills, I suppose. I've always
given him the impression that I was living in pretty good style. I
can't have him to stay at my boarding-house."
"Thought of anything, Jeeves?" I said.
"To what extent, sir, if the question is not a delicate one, are you
prepared to assist Mr. Bickersteth?"
"I'll do anything I can for you, of course, Bicky, old man."
"Then, if I might make the suggestion, sir, you might lend Mr.
Bickersteth----"
"No, by Jove!" said Bicky firmly. "I never have touched you, Bertie,
and I'm not going to start now. I may be a chump, but it's my boast
that I don't owe a penny to a single soul--not counting tradesmen, of
course."
"I was about to suggest, sir, that you might lend Mr. Bickersteth this
flat. Mr. Bickersteth could give his grace the impression that he was
the owner of it. With your permission I could convey the notion that I
was in Mr. Bickersteth's employment, and not in yours. You would be
residing here temporarily as Mr. Bickersteth's guest. His grace would
occupy the second spare bedroom. I fancy that you would find this
answer satisfactorily, sir."
Bicky had stopped rocking himself and was staring at Jeeves in an awed
sort of way.
"I would advocate the dispatching of a wireless message to his grace
on board the vessel, notifying him of the change of address. Mr.
Bickersteth could meet his grace at the dock and proceed directly here.
Will that meet the situation, sir?"
"Absolutely."
"Thank you, sir."
Bicky followed him with his eye till the door closed.
"How does he do it, Bertie?" he said. "I'll tell you what I think it
is. I believe it's something to do with the shape of his head. Have you
ever noticed his head, Bertie, old man? It sort of sticks out at the
back!"
* * * * *
I hopped out of bed early next morning, so as to be among those present
when the old boy should arrive. I knew from experience that these ocean
liners fetch up at the dock at a deucedly ungodly hour. It wasn't much
after nine by the time I'd dressed and had my morning tea and was
leaning out of the window, watching the street for Bicky and his uncle.
It was one of those jolly, peaceful mornings that make a chappie wish
he'd got a soul or something, and I was just brooding on life in
general when I became aware of the dickens of a spate in progress down
below. A taxi had driven up, and an old boy in a top hat had got out
and was kicking up a frightful row about the fare. As far as I could
make out, he was trying to get the cab chappie to switch from New York
to London prices, and the cab chappie had apparently never heard of
London before, and didn't seem to think a lot of it now. The old boy
said that in London the trip would have set him back eightpence; and
the cabby said he should worry. I called to Jeeves.
"The duke has arrived, Jeeves."
"Yes, sir?"
"That'll be him at the door now."
Jeeves made a long arm and opened the front door, and the old boy
crawled in, looking licked to a splinter.
"How do you do, sir?" I said, bustling up and being the ray of
sunshine. "Your nephew went down to the dock to meet you, but you must
have missed him. My name's Wooster, don't you know. Great pal of
Bicky's, and all that sort of thing. I'm staying with him, you know.
Would you like a cup of tea? Jeeves, bring a cup of tea."
Old Chiswick had sunk into an arm-chair and was looking about the room.
"Does this luxurious flat belong to my nephew Francis?"
"Absolutely."
"It must be terribly expensive."
"Pretty well, of course. Everything costs a lot over here, you know."
He moaned. Jeeves filtered in with the tea. Old Chiswick took a stab at
it to restore his tissues, and nodded.
"A terrible country, Mr. Wooster! A terrible country! Nearly eight
shillings for a short cab-drive! Iniquitous!" He took another look
round the room. It seemed to fascinate him. "Have you any idea how
much my nephew pays for this flat, Mr. Wooster?"
"About two hundred dollars a month, I believe."
"What! Forty pounds a month!"
I began to see that, unless I made the thing a bit more plausible, the
scheme might turn out a frost. I could guess what the old boy was
thinking. He was trying to square all this prosperity with what he knew
of poor old Bicky. And one had to admit that it took a lot of squaring,
for dear old Bicky, though a stout fellow and absolutely unrivalled as
an imitator of bull-terriers and cats, was in many ways one of the most
pronounced fatheads that ever pulled on a suit of gent's underwear.
"I suppose it seems rummy to you," I said, "but the fact is New York
often bucks chappies up and makes them show a flash of speed that you
wouldn't have imagined them capable of. It sort of develops them.
Something in the air, don't you know. I imagine that Bicky in the past,
when you knew him, may have been something of a chump, but it's quite
different now. Devilish efficient sort of chappie, and looked on in
commercial circles as quite the nib!"
"I am amazed! What is the nature of my nephew's business, Mr. Wooster?"
"Oh, just business, don't you know. The same sort of thing Carnegie and
Rockefeller and all these coves do, you know." I slid for the door.
"Awfully sorry to leave you, but I've got to meet some of the lads
elsewhere."
Coming out of the lift I met Bicky bustling in from the street.
"Halloa, Bertie! I missed him. Has he turned up?
"He's upstairs now, having some tea."
"What does he think of it all?"
"He's absolutely rattled."
"Ripping! I'll be toddling up, then. Toodle-oo, Bertie, old man. See
you later."
"Pip-pip, Bicky, dear boy."
He trotted off, full of merriment and good cheer, and I went off to the
club to sit in the window and watch the traffic coming up one way and
going down the other.
It was latish in the evening when I looked in at the flat to dress for
dinner.
"Where's everybody, Jeeves?" I said, finding no little feet pattering
about the place. "Gone out?"
"His grace desired to see some of the sights of the city, sir. Mr.
Bickersteth is acting as his escort. I fancy their immediate objective
was Grant's Tomb."
"I suppose Mr. Bickersteth is a bit braced at the way things are
going--what?"
"Sir?"
"I say, I take it that Mr. Bickersteth is tolerably full of beans."
"Not altogether, sir."
"What's his trouble now?"
"The scheme which I took the liberty of suggesting to Mr. Bickersteth
and yourself has, unfortunately, not answered entirely satisfactorily,
sir."
"Surely the duke believes that Mr. Bickersteth is doing well in
business, and all that sort of thing?"
"Exactly, sir. With the result that he has decided to cancel Mr.
Bickersteth's monthly allowance, on the ground that, as Mr. Bickersteth
is doing so well on his own account, he no longer requires pecuniary
assistance."
"Great Scot, Jeeves! This is awful."
"Somewhat disturbing, sir."
"I never expected anything like this!"
"I confess I scarcely anticipated the contingency myself, sir."
"I suppose it bowled the poor blighter over absolutely?"
"Mr. Bickersteth appeared somewhat taken aback, sir."
My heart bled for Bicky.
"We must do something, Jeeves."
"Yes, sir."
"Can you think of anything?"
"Not at the moment, sir."
"There must be something we can do."
"It was a maxim of one of my former employers, sir--as I believe I
mentioned to you once before--the present Lord Bridgnorth, that there
is always a way. I remember his lordship using the expression on the
occasion--he was then a business gentleman and had not yet received his
title--when a patent hair-restorer which he chanced to be promoting
failed to attract the public. He put it on the market under another
name as a depilatory, and amassed a substantial fortune. I have
generally found his lordship's aphorism based on sound foundations. No
doubt we shall be able to discover some solution of Mr. Bickersteth's
difficulty, sir."
"Well, have a stab at it, Jeeves!"
"I will spare no pains, sir."
I went and dressed sadly. It will show you pretty well how pipped I was
when I tell you that I near as a toucher put on a white tie with a
dinner-jacket. I sallied out for a bit of food more to pass the time
than because I wanted it. It seemed brutal to be wading into the bill
of fare with poor old Bicky headed for the breadline.
When I got back old Chiswick had gone to bed, but Bicky was there,
hunched up in an arm-chair, brooding pretty tensely, with a cigarette
hanging out of the corner of his mouth and a more or less glassy stare
in his eyes. He had the aspect of one who had been soaked with what the
newspaper chappies call "some blunt instrument."
"This is a bit thick, old thing--what!" I said.
He picked up his glass and drained it feverishly, overlooking the fact
that it hadn't anything in it.
"I'm done, Bertie!" he said.
He had another go at the glass. It didn't seem to do him any good.
"If only this had happened a week later, Bertie! My next month's money
was due to roll in on Saturday. I could have worked a wheeze I've been
reading about in the magazine advertisements. It seems that you can
make a dashed amount of money if you can only collect a few dollars
and start a chicken-farm. Jolly sound scheme, Bertie! Say you buy a
hen--call it one hen for the sake of argument. It lays an egg every
day of the week. You sell the eggs seven for twenty-five cents. Keep
of hen costs nothing. Profit practically twenty-five cents on every
seven eggs. Or look at it another way: Suppose you have a dozen eggs.
Each of the hens has a dozen chickens. The chickens grow up and have
more chickens. Why, in no time you'd have the place covered knee-deep
in hens, all laying eggs, at twenty-five cents for every seven. You'd
make a fortune. Jolly life, too, keeping hens!" He had begun to get
quite worked up at the thought of it, but he slopped back in his chair
at this juncture with a good deal of gloom. "But, of course, it's no
good," he said, "because I haven't the cash."
"You've only to say the word, you know, Bicky, old top."
"Thanks awfully, Bertie, but I'm not going to sponge on you."
That's always the way in this world. The chappies you'd like to lend
money to won't let you, whereas the chappies you don't want to lend it
to will do everything except actually stand you on your head and lift
the specie out of your pockets. As a lad who has always rolled
tolerably free in the right stuff, I've had lots of experience of the
second class. Many's the time, back in London, I've hurried along
Piccadilly and felt the hot breath of the toucher on the back of my
neck and heard his sharp, excited yapping as he closed in on me. I've
simply spent my life scattering largesse to blighters I didn't care a
hang for; yet here was I now, dripping doubloons and pieces of eight
and longing to hand them over, and Bicky, poor fish, absolutely on his
uppers, not taking any at any price.
"Well, there's only one hope, then."
"What's that?"
"Jeeves."
"Sir?"
There was Jeeves, standing behind me, full of zeal. In this matter of
shimmering into rooms the chappie is rummy to a degree. You're sitting
in the old armchair, thinking of this and that, and then suddenly you
look up, and there he is. He moves from point to point with as little
uproar as a jelly fish. The thing startled poor old Bicky considerably.
He rose from his seat like a rocketing pheasant. I'm used to Jeeves
now, but often in the days when he first came to me I've bitten my
tongue freely on finding him unexpectedly in my midst.
"Did you call, sir?"
"Oh, there you are, Jeeves!"
"Precisely, sir."
"Jeeves, Mr. Bickersteth is still up the pole. Any ideas?"
"Why, yes, sir. Since we had our recent conversation I fancy I have
found what may prove a solution. I do not wish to appear to be taking a
liberty, sir, but I think that we have overlooked his grace's
potentialities as a source of revenue."
Bicky laughed, what I have sometimes seen described as a hollow,
mocking laugh, a sort of bitter cackle from the back of the throat,
rather like a gargle.
"I do not allude, sir," explained Jeeves, "to the possibility of
inducing his grace to part with money. I am taking the liberty of
regarding his grace in the light of an at present--if I may say
so--useless property, which is capable of being developed."
Bicky looked at me in a helpless kind of way. I'm bound to say I didn't
get it myself.
"Couldn't you make it a bit easier, Jeeves!"
"In a nutshell, sir, what I mean is this: His grace is, in a sense, a
prominent personage. The inhabitants of this country, as no doubt you
are aware, sir, are peculiarly addicted to shaking hands with prominent
personages. It occurred to me that Mr. Bickersteth or yourself might
know of persons who would be willing to pay a small fee--let us say two
dollars or three--for the privilege of an introduction, including
handshake, to his grace."
Bicky didn't seem to think much of it.
"Do you mean to say that anyone would be mug enough to part with solid
cash just to shake hands with my uncle?"
"I have an aunt, sir, who paid five shillings to a young fellow for
bringing a moving-picture actor to tea at her house one Sunday. It gave
her social standing among the neighbours."
Bicky wavered.
"If you think it could be done----"
"I feel convinced of it, sir."
"What do you think, Bertie?"
"I'm for it, old boy, absolutely. A very brainy wheeze."
"Thank you, sir. Will there be anything further? Good night, sir."
And he floated out, leaving us to discuss details.
Until we started this business of floating old Chiswick as a money-making
proposition I had never realized what a perfectly foul time those Stock
Exchange chappies must have when the public isn't biting freely. Nowadays
I read that bit they put in the financial reports about "The market
opened quietly" with a sympathetic eye, for, by Jove, it certainly opened
quietly for us! You'd hardly believe how difficult it was to interest
the public and make them take a flutter on the old boy. By the end of the
week the only name we had on our list was a delicatessen-store keeper
down in Bicky's part of the town, and as he wanted us to take it out in
sliced ham instead of cash that didn't help much. There was a gleam of
light when the brother of Bicky's pawnbroker offered ten dollars, money
down, for an introduction to old Chiswick, but the deal fell through,
owing to its turning out that the chap was an anarchist and intended to
kick the old boy instead of shaking hands with him. At that, it took me
the deuce of a time to persuade Bicky not to grab the cash and let things
take their course. He seemed to regard the pawnbroker's brother rather as
a sportsman and benefactor of his species than otherwise.
The whole thing, I'm inclined to think, would have been off if it
hadn't been for Jeeves. There is no doubt that Jeeves is in a class of
his own. In the matter of brain and resource I don't think I have ever
met a chappie so supremely like mother made. He trickled into my room
one morning with a good old cup of tea, and intimated that there was
something doing.
"Might I speak to you with regard to that matter of his grace, sir?"
"It's all off. We've decided to chuck it."
"Sir?"
"It won't work. We can't get anybody to come."
"I fancy I can arrange that aspect of the matter, sir."
"Do you mean to say you've managed to get anybody?"
"Yes, sir. Eighty-seven gentlemen from Birdsburg, sir."
I sat up in bed and spilt the tea.
"Birdsburg?"
"Birdsburg, Missouri, sir."
"How did you get them?"
"I happened last night, sir, as you had intimated that you would be
absent from home, to attend a theatrical performance, and entered into
conversation between the acts with the occupant of the adjoining seat.
I had observed that he was wearing a somewhat ornate decoration in his
buttonhole, sir--a large blue button with the words 'Boost for
Birdsburg' upon it in red letters, scarcely a judicious addition to a
gentleman's evening costume. To my surprise I noticed that the
auditorium was full of persons similarly decorated. I ventured to
inquire the explanation, and was informed that these gentlemen, forming
a party of eighty-seven, are a convention from a town of the name if
Birdsburg, in the State of Missouri. Their visit, I gathered, was
purely of a social and pleasurable nature, and my informant spoke at
some length of the entertainments arranged for their stay in the city.
It was when he related with a considerable amount of satisfaction and
pride, that a deputation of their number had been introduced to and had
shaken hands with a well-known prizefighter, that it occurred to me to
broach the subject of his grace. To make a long story short, sir, I
have arranged, subject to your approval, that the entire convention
shall be presented to his grace to-morrow afternoon."
I was amazed. This chappie was a Napoleon.
"Eighty-seven, Jeeves. At how much a head?"
"I was obliged to agree to a reduction for quantity, sir. The terms
finally arrived at were one hundred and fifty dollars for the party."
I thought a bit.
"Payable in advance?"
"No, sir. I endeavoured to obtain payment in advance, but was not
successful."
"Well, any way, when we get it I'll make it up to five hundred.
Bicky'll never know. Do you suspect Mr. Bickersteth would suspect
anything, Jeeves, if I made it up to five hundred?"
"I fancy not, sir. Mr. Bickersteth is an agreeable gentleman, but not
bright."
"All right, then. After breakfast run down to the bank and get me some
money."
"Yes, sir."
"You know, you're a bit of a marvel, Jeeves."
"Thank you, sir."
"Right-o!"
"Very good, sir."
When I took dear old Bicky aside in the course of the morning and told
him what had happened he nearly broke down. He tottered into the
sitting-room and buttonholed old Chiswick, who was reading the comic
section of the morning paper with a kind of grim resolution.
"Uncle," he said, "are you doing anything special to-morrow afternoon?
I mean to say, I've asked a few of my pals in to meet you, don't you
know."
The old boy cocked a speculative eye at him.
"There will be no reporters among them?"
"Reporters? Rather not! Why?"
"I refuse to be badgered by reporters. There were a number of adhesive
young men who endeavoured to elicit from me my views on America while
the boat was approaching the dock. I will not be subjected to this
persecution again."
"That'll be absolutely all right, uncle. There won't be a newspaper-man
in the place."
"In that case I shall be glad to make the acquaintance of your
friends."
"You'll shake hands with them and so forth?"
"I shall naturally order my behaviour according to the accepted rules
of civilized intercourse."
Bicky thanked him heartily and came off to lunch with me at the club,
where he babbled freely of hens, incubators, and other rotten things.
After mature consideration we had decided to unleash the Birdsburg
contingent on the old boy ten at a time. Jeeves brought his theatre pal
round to see us, and we arranged the whole thing with him. A very
decent chappie, but rather inclined to collar the conversation and turn
it in the direction of his home-town's new water-supply system. We
settled that, as an hour was about all he would be likely to stand,
each gang should consider itself entitled to seven minutes of the
duke's society by Jeeves's stop-watch, and that when their time was up
Jeeves should slide into the room and cough meaningly. Then we parted
with what I believe are called mutual expressions of goodwill, the
Birdsburg chappie extending a cordial invitation to us all to pop out
some day and take a look at the new water-supply system, for which we
thanked him.
Next day the deputation rolled in. The first shift consisted of the
cove we had met and nine others almost exactly like him in every
respect. They all looked deuced keen and businesslike, as if from youth
up they had been working in the office and catching the boss's eye and
what-not. They shook hands with the old boy with a good deal of
apparent satisfaction--all except one chappie, who seemed to be
brooding about something--and then they stood off and became chatty.
"What message have you for Birdsburg, Duke?" asked our pal.
The old boy seemed a bit rattled.
"I have never been to Birdsburg."
The chappie seemed pained.
"You should pay it a visit," he said. "The most rapidly-growing city in
the country. Boost for Birdsburg!"
"Boost for Birdsburg!" said the other chappies reverently.
The chappie who had been brooding suddenly gave tongue.
"Say!"
He was a stout sort of well-fed cove with one of those determined chins
and a cold eye.
The assemblage looked at him.
"As a matter of business," said the chappie--"mind you, I'm not
questioning anybody's good faith, but, as a matter of strict
business--I think this gentleman here ought to put himself on
record before witnesses as stating that he really is a duke."
"What do you mean, sir?" cried the old boy, getting purple.
"No offence, simply business. I'm not saying anything, mind you, but
there's one thing that seems kind of funny to me. This gentleman here
says his name's Mr. Bickersteth, as I understand it. Well, if you're
the Duke of Chiswick, why isn't he Lord Percy Something? I've read
English novels, and I know all about it."
"This is monstrous!"
"Now don't get hot under the collar. I'm only asking. I've a right to
know. You're going to take our money, so it's only fair that we should
see that we get our money's worth."
The water-supply cove chipped in:
"You're quite right, Simms. I overlooked that when making the
agreement. You see, gentlemen, as business men we've a right to
reasonable guarantees of good faith. We are paying Mr. Bickersteth here
a hundred and fifty dollars for this reception, and we naturally want
to know----"
Old Chiswick gave Bicky a searching look; then he turned to the
water-supply chappie. He was frightfully calm.
"I can assure you that I know nothing of this," he said, quite
politely. "I should be grateful if you would explain."
"Well, we arranged with Mr. Bickersteth that eighty-seven citizens
of Birdsburg should have the privilege of meeting and shaking hands
with you for a financial consideration mutually arranged, and what my
friend Simms here means--and I'm with him--is that we have only Mr.
Bickersteth's word for it--and he is a stranger to us--that you are
the Duke of Chiswick at all."
Old Chiswick gulped.
"Allow me to assure you, sir," he said, in a rummy kind of voice, "that
I am the Duke of Chiswick."
"Then that's all right," said the chappie heartily. "That was all we
wanted to know. Let the thing go on."
"I am sorry to say," said old Chiswick, "that it cannot go on. I am
feeling a little tired. I fear I must ask to be excused."
"But there are seventy-seven of the boys waiting round the corner at
this moment, Duke, to be introduced to you."
"I fear I must disappoint them."
"But in that case the deal would have to be off."
"That is a matter for you and my nephew to discuss."
The chappie seemed troubled.
"You really won't meet the rest of them?"
"No!"
"Well, then, I guess we'll be going."
They went out, and there was a pretty solid silence. Then old Chiswick
turned to Bicky:
"Well?"
Bicky didn't seem to have anything to say.
"Was it true what that man said?"
"Yes, uncle."
"What do you mean by playing this trick?"
Bicky seemed pretty well knocked out, so I put in a word.
"I think you'd better explain the whole thing, Bicky, old top."
Bicky's Adam's-apple jumped about a bit; then he started:
"You see, you had cut off my allowance, uncle, and I wanted a bit of
money to start a chicken farm. I mean to say it's an absolute cert if
you once get a bit of capital. You buy a hen, and it lays an egg every
day of the week, and you sell the eggs, say, seven for twenty-five
cents.
"Keep of hens cost nothing. Profit practically----"
"What is all this nonsense about hens? You led me to suppose you were a
substantial business man."
"Old Bicky rather exaggerated, sir," I said, helping the chappie out.
"The fact is, the poor old lad is absolutely dependent on that remittance
of yours, and when you cut it off, don't you know, he was pretty solidly
in the soup, and had to think of some way of closing in on a bit of the
ready pretty quick. That's why we thought of this handshaking scheme."
Old Chiswick foamed at the mouth.
"So you have lied to me! You have deliberately deceived me as to your
financial status!"
"Poor old Bicky didn't want to go to that ranch," I explained. "He
doesn't like cows and horses, but he rather thinks he would be hot
stuff among the hens. All he wants is a bit of capital. Don't you think
it would be rather a wheeze if you were to----"
"After what has happened? After this--this deceit and foolery? Not a
penny!"
"But----"
"Not a penny!"
There was a respectful cough in the background.
"If I might make a suggestion, sir?"
Jeeves was standing on the horizon, looking devilish brainy.
"Go ahead, Jeeves!" I said.
"I would merely suggest, sir, that if Mr. Bickersteth is in need of a
little ready money, and is at a loss to obtain it elsewhere, he might
secure the sum he requires by describing the occurrences of this
afternoon for the Sunday issue of one of the more spirited and
enterprising newspapers."
"By Jove!" I said.
"By George!" said Bicky.
"Great heavens!" said old Chiswick.
"Very good, sir," said Jeeves.
Bicky turned to old Chiswick with a gleaming eye.
"Jeeves is right. I'll do it! The _Chronicle_ would jump at it.
They eat that sort of stuff."
Old Chiswick gave a kind of moaning howl.
"I absolutely forbid you, Francis, to do this thing!"
"That's all very well," said Bicky, wonderfully braced, "but if I can't
get the money any other way----"
"Wait! Er--wait, my boy! You are so impetuous! We might arrange
something."
"I won't go to that bally ranch."
"No, no! No, no, my boy! I would not suggest it. I would not for a
moment suggest it. I--I think----"
He seemed to have a bit of a struggle with himself. "I--I think that,
on the whole, it would be best if you returned with me to England. I--I
might--in fact, I think I see my way to doing--to--I might be able to
utilize your services in some secretarial position."
"I shouldn't mind that."
"I should not be able to offer you a salary, but, as you know, in
English political life the unpaid secretary is a recognized figure----"
"The only figure I'll recognize," said Bicky firmly, "is five hundred
quid a year, paid quarterly,"
"My dear boy!"
"Absolutely!"
"But your recompense, my dear Francis, would consist in the unrivalled
opportunities you would have, as my secretary, to gain experience, to
accustom yourself to the intricacies of political life, to--in fact,
you would be in an exceedingly advantageous position."
"Five hundred a year!" said Bicky, rolling it round his tongue. "Why,
that would be nothing to what I could make if I started a chicken farm.
It stands to reason. Suppose you have a dozen hens. Each of the hens
has a dozen chickens. After a bit the chickens grow up and have a dozen
chickens each themselves, and then they all start laying eggs! There's
a fortune in it. You can get anything you like for eggs in America.
Chappies keep them on ice for years and years, and don't sell them till
they fetch about a dollar a whirl. You don't think I'm going to chuck a
future like this for anything under five hundred o' goblins a year--what?"
A look of anguish passed over old Chiswick's face, then he seemed to be
resigned to it. "Very well, my boy," he said.
"What-o!" said Bicky. "All right, then."
"Jeeves," I said. Bicky had taken the old boy off to dinner to
celebrate, and we were alone. "Jeeves, this has been one of your best
efforts."
"Thank you, sir."
"It beats me how you do it."
"Yes, sir."
"The only trouble is you haven't got much out of it--what!"
"I fancy Mr. Bickersteth intends--I judge from his remarks--to signify
his appreciation of anything I have been fortunate enough to do to
assist him, at some later date when he is in a more favourable position
to do so."
"It isn't enough, Jeeves!"
"Sir?"
It was a wrench, but I felt it was the only possible thing to be done.
"Bring my shaving things."
A gleam of hope shone in the chappie's eye, mixed with doubt.
"You mean, sir?"
"And shave off my moustache."
There was a moment's silence. I could see the fellow was deeply moved.
"Thank you very much indeed, sir," he said, in a low voice, and popped
off.
ABSENT TREATMENT
I want to tell you all about dear old Bobbie Cardew. It's a most
interesting story. I can't put in any literary style and all that; but
I don't have to, don't you know, because it goes on its Moral Lesson.
If you're a man you mustn't miss it, because it'll be a warning to you;
and if you're a woman you won't want to, because it's all about how a
girl made a man feel pretty well fed up with things.
If you're a recent acquaintance of Bobbie's, you'll probably be
surprised to hear that there was a time when he was more remarkable for
the weakness of his memory than anything else. Dozens of fellows, who
have only met Bobbie since the change took place, have been surprised
when I told them that. Yet it's true. Believe _me_.
In the days when I first knew him Bobbie Cardew was about the most
pronounced young rotter inside the four-mile radius. People have called
me a silly ass, but I was never in the same class with Bobbie. When it
came to being a silly ass, he was a plus-four man, while my handicap
was about six. Why, if I wanted him to dine with me, I used to post him
a letter at the beginning of the week, and then the day before send him
a telegram and a phone-call on the day itself, and--half an hour before
the time we'd fixed--a messenger in a taxi, whose business it was to
see that he got in and that the chauffeur had the address all correct.
By doing this I generally managed to get him, unless he had left town
before my messenger arrived.
The funny thing was that he wasn't altogether a fool in other ways.
Deep down in him there was a kind of stratum of sense. I had known him,
once or twice, show an almost human intelligence. But to reach that
stratum, mind you, you needed dynamite.
At least, that's what I thought. But there was another way which hadn't
occurred to me. Marriage, I mean. Marriage, the dynamite of the soul;
that was what hit Bobbie. He married. Have you ever seen a bull-pup
chasing a bee? The pup sees the bee. It looks good to him. But he still
doesn't know what's at the end of it till he gets there. It was like
that with Bobbie. He fell in love, got married--with a sort of whoop,
as if it were the greatest fun in the world--and then began to find out
things.
She wasn't the sort of girl you would have expected Bobbie to rave
about. And yet, I don't know. What I mean is, she worked for her
living; and to a fellow who has never done a hand's turn in his life
there's undoubtedly a sort of fascination, a kind of romance, about a
girl who works for her living.
Her name was Anthony. Mary Anthony. She was about five feet six; she
had a ton and a half of red-gold hair, grey eyes, and one of those
determined chins. She was a hospital nurse. When Bobbie smashed himself
up at polo, she was told off by the authorities to smooth his brow and
rally round with cooling unguents and all that; and the old boy hadn't
been up and about again for more than a week before they popped off to
the registrar's and fixed it up. Quite the romance.
Bobbie broke the news to me at the club one evening, and next day he
introduced me to her. I admired her. I've never worked myself--my
name's Pepper, by the way. Almost forgot to mention it. Reggie Pepper.
My uncle Edward was Pepper, Wells, and Co., the Colliery people. He
left me a sizable chunk of bullion--I say I've never worked myself, but
I admire any one who earns a living under difficulties, especially a
girl. And this girl had had a rather unusually tough time of it, being
an orphan and all that, and having had to do everything off her own bat
for years.
Mary and I got along together splendidly. We don't now, but we'll come
to that later. I'm speaking of the past. She seemed to think Bobbie the
greatest thing on earth, judging by the way she looked at him when she
thought I wasn't noticing. And Bobbie seemed to think the same about
her. So that I came to the conclusion that, if only dear old Bobbie
didn't forget to go to the wedding, they had a sporting chance of being
quite happy.
Well, let's brisk up a bit here, and jump a year. The story doesn't
really start till then.
They took a flat and settled down. I was in and out of the place quite
a good deal. I kept my eyes open, and everything seemed to me to be
running along as smoothly as you could want. If this was marriage, I
thought, I couldn't see why fellows were so frightened of it. There
were a lot of worse things that could happen to a man.
But we now come to the incident of the quiet Dinner, and it's just here
that love's young dream hits a snag, and things begin to occur.
I happened to meet Bobbie in Piccadilly, and he asked me to come back
to dinner at the flat. And, like a fool, instead of bolting and putting
myself under police protection, I went.
When we got to the flat, there was Mrs. Bobbie looking--well, I tell
you, it staggered me. Her gold hair was all piled up in waves and
crinkles and things, with a what-d'-you-call-it of diamonds in it. And
she was wearing the most perfectly ripping dress. I couldn't begin to
describe it. I can only say it was the limit. It struck me that if this
was how she was in the habit of looking every night when they were
dining quietly at home together, it was no wonder that Bobbie liked
domesticity.
"Here's old Reggie, dear," said Bobbie. "I've brought him home to have
a bit of dinner. I'll phone down to the kitchen and ask them to send it
up now--what?"
She stared at him as if she had never seen him before. Then she turned
scarlet. Then she turned as white as a sheet. Then she gave a little
laugh. It was most interesting to watch. Made me wish I was up a tree
about eight hundred miles away. Then she recovered herself.
"I am so glad you were able to come, Mr. Pepper," she said, smiling at
me.
And after that she was all right. At least, you would have said so. She
talked a lot at dinner, and chaffed Bobbie, and played us ragtime on
the piano afterwards, as if she hadn't a care in the world. Quite a jolly
little party it was--not. I'm no lynx-eyed sleuth, and all that sort of
thing, but I had seen her face at the beginning, and I knew that she was
working the whole time and working hard, to keep herself in hand, and
that she would have given that diamond what's-its-name in her hair and
everything else she possessed to have one good scream--just one. I've
sat through some pretty thick evenings in my time, but that one had the
rest beaten in a canter. At the very earliest moment I grabbed my hat and
got away.
Having seen what I did, I wasn't particularly surprised to meet Bobbie
at the club next day looking about as merry and bright as a lonely
gum-drop at an Eskimo tea-party.
He started in straightway. He seemed glad to have someone to talk to
about it.
"Do you know how long I've been married?" he said.
I didn't exactly.
"About a year, isn't it?"
"Not _about_ a year," he said sadly. "Exactly a year--yesterday!"
Then I understood. I saw light--a regular flash of light.
"Yesterday was----?"
"The anniversary of the wedding. I'd arranged to take Mary to the
Savoy, and on to Covent Garden. She particularly wanted to hear Caruso.
I had the ticket for the box in my pocket. Do you know, all through
dinner I had a kind of rummy idea that there was something I'd
forgotten, but I couldn't think what?"
"Till your wife mentioned it?"
He nodded----
"She--mentioned it," he said thoughtfully.
I didn't ask for details. Women with hair and chins like Mary's may be
angels most of the time, but, when they take off their wings for a bit,
they aren't half-hearted about it.
"To be absolutely frank, old top," said poor old Bobbie, in a broken
sort of way, "my stock's pretty low at home."
There didn't seem much to be done. I just lit a cigarette and sat
there. He didn't want to talk. Presently he went out. I stood at the
window of our upper smoking-room, which looks out on to Piccadilly, and
watched him. He walked slowly along for a few yards, stopped, then
walked on again, and finally turned into a jeweller's. Which was an
instance of what I meant when I said that deep down in him there was a
certain stratum of sense.
* * * * *
It was from now on that I began to be really interested in this problem
of Bobbie's married life. Of course, one's always mildly interested in
one's friends' marriages, hoping they'll turn out well and all that;
but this was different. The average man isn't like Bobbie, and the
average girl isn't like Mary. It was that old business of the immovable
mass and the irresistible force. There was Bobbie, ambling gently
through life, a dear old chap in a hundred ways, but undoubtedly a
chump of the first water.
And there was Mary, determined that he shouldn't be a chump. And
Nature, mind you, on Bobbie's side. When Nature makes a chump like
dear old Bobbie, she's proud of him, and doesn't want her handiwork
disturbed. She gives him a sort of natural armour to protect him
against outside interference. And that armour is shortness of memory.
Shortness of memory keeps a man a chump, when, but for it, he might
cease to be one. Take my case, for instance. I'm a chump. Well, if I
had remembered half the things people have tried to teach me during my
life, my size in hats would be about number nine. But I didn't. I
forgot them. And it was just the same with Bobbie.
For about a week, perhaps a bit more, the recollection of that quiet
little domestic evening bucked him up like a tonic. Elephants, I read
somewhere, are champions at the memory business, but they were fools to
Bobbie during that week. But, bless you, the shock wasn't nearly big
enough. It had dinted the armour, but it hadn't made a hole in it.
Pretty soon he was back at the old game.
It was pathetic, don't you know. The poor girl loved him, and she was
frightened. It was the thin edge of the wedge, you see, and she knew
it. A man who forgets what day he was married, when he's been married
one year, will forget, at about the end of the fourth, that he's
married at all. If she meant to get him in hand at all, she had got to
do it now, before he began to drift away.
I saw that clearly enough, and I tried to make Bobbie see it, when he
was by way of pouring out his troubles to me one afternoon. I can't
remember what it was that he had forgotten the day before, but it was
something she had asked him to bring home for her--it may have been a
book.
"It's such a little thing to make a fuss about," said Bobbie. "And she
knows that it's simply because I've got such an infernal memory about
everything. I can't remember anything. Never could."
He talked on for a while, and, just as he was going, he pulled out a
couple of sovereigns.
"Oh, by the way," he said.
"What's this for?" I asked, though I knew.
"I owe it you."
"How's that?" I said.
"Why, that bet on Tuesday. In the billiard-room. Murray and Brown were
playing a hundred up, and I gave you two to one that Brown would win,
and Murray beat him by twenty odd."
"So you do remember some things?" I said.
He got quite excited. Said that if I thought he was the sort of rotter
who forgot to pay when he lost a bet, it was pretty rotten of me after
knowing him all these years, and a lot more like that.
"Subside, laddie," I said.
Then I spoke to him like a father.
"What you've got to do, my old college chum," I said, "is to pull
yourself together, and jolly quick, too. As things are shaping, you're
due for a nasty knock before you know what's hit you. You've got to
make an effort. Don't say you can't. This two quid business shows that,
even if your memory is rocky, you can remember some things. What you've
got to do is to see that wedding anniversaries and so on are included
in the list. It may be a brainstrain, but you can't get out of it."
"I suppose you're right," said Bobbie. "But it beats me why she thinks
such a lot of these rotten little dates. What's it matter if I forgot
what day we were married on or what day she was born on or what day the
cat had the measles? She knows I love her just as much as if I were a
memorizing freak at the halls."
"That's not enough for a woman," I said. "They want to be shown. Bear
that in mind, and you're all right. Forget it, and there'll be
trouble."
He chewed the knob of his stick.
"Women are frightfully rummy," he said gloomily.
"You should have thought of that before you married one," I said.
* * * * *
I don't see that I could have done any more. I had put the whole thing
in a nutshell for him. You would have thought he'd have seen the point,
and that it would have made him brace up and get a hold on himself. But
no. Off he went again in the same old way. I gave up arguing with him.
I had a good deal of time on my hands, but not enough to amount to
anything when it was a question of reforming dear old Bobbie by argument.
If you see a man asking for trouble, and insisting on getting it, the
only thing to do is to stand by and wait till it comes to him. After
that you may get a chance. But till then there's nothing to be done.
But I thought a lot about him.
Bobbie didn't get into the soup all at once. Weeks went by, and months,
and still nothing happened. Now and then he'd come into the club with a
kind of cloud on his shining morning face, and I'd know that there had
been doings in the home; but it wasn't till well on in the spring that
he got the thunderbolt just where he had been asking for it--in the
thorax.
I was smoking a quiet cigarette one morning in the window looking out
over Piccadilly, and watching the buses and motors going up one way and
down the other--most interesting it is; I often do it--when in rushed
Bobbie, with his eyes bulging and his face the colour of an oyster,
waving a piece of paper in his hand.
"Reggie," he said. "Reggie, old top, she's gone!"
"Gone!" I said. "Who?"
"Mary, of course! Gone! Left me! Gone!"
"Where?" I said.
Silly question? Perhaps you're right. Anyhow, dear old Bobbie nearly
foamed at the mouth.
"Where? How should I know where? Here, read this."
He pushed the paper into my hand. It was a letter.
"Go on," said Bobbie. "Read it."
So I did. It certainly was quite a letter. There was not much of it,
but it was all to the point. This is what it said:
"MY DEAR BOBBIE,--I am going away. When you care enough about me
to remember to wish me many happy returns on my birthday, I will
come back. My address will be Box 341, _London Morning News_."
I read it twice, then I said, "Well, why don't you?"
"Why don't I what?"
"Why don't you wish her many happy returns? It doesn't seem much to
ask."
"But she says on her birthday."
"Well, when is her birthday?"
"Can't you understand?" said Bobbie. "I've forgotten."
"Forgotten!" I said.
"Yes," said Bobbie. "Forgotten."
"How do you mean, forgotten?" I said. "Forgotten whether it's the
twentieth or the twenty-first, or what? How near do you get to it?"
"I know it came somewhere between the first of January and the
thirty-first of December. That's how near I get to it."
"Think."
"Think? What's the use of saying 'Think'? Think I haven't thought? I've
been knocking sparks out of my brain ever since I opened that letter."
"And you can't remember?"
"No."
I rang the bell and ordered restoratives.
"Well, Bobbie," I said, "it's a pretty hard case to spring on an
untrained amateur like me. Suppose someone had come to Sherlock Holmes
and said, 'Mr. Holmes, here's a case for you. When is my wife's
birthday?' Wouldn't that have given Sherlock a jolt? However, I know
enough about the game to understand that a fellow can't shoot off his
deductive theories unless you start him with a clue, so rouse yourself
out of that pop-eyed trance and come across with two or three. For
instance, can't you remember the last time she had a birthday? What
sort of weather was it? That might fix the month."
Bobbie shook his head.
"It was just ordinary weather, as near as I can recollect."
"Warm?"
"Warmish."
"Or cold?"
"Well, fairly cold, perhaps. I can't remember."
I ordered two more of the same. They seemed indicated in the Young
Detective's Manual. "You're a great help, Bobbie," I said. "An
invaluable assistant. One of those indispensable adjuncts without
which no home is complete."
Bobbie seemed to be thinking.
"I've got it," he said suddenly. "Look here. I gave her a present on
her last birthday. All we have to do is to go to the shop, hunt up the
date when it was bought, and the thing's done."
"Absolutely. What did you give her?"
He sagged.
"I can't remember," he said.
Getting ideas is like golf. Some days you're right off, others it's
as easy as falling off a log. I don't suppose dear old Bobbie had ever
had two ideas in the same morning before in his life; but now he did
it without an effort. He just loosed another dry Martini into the
undergrowth, and before you could turn round it had flushed quite a
brain-wave.
Do you know those little books called _When were you Born_?
There's one for each month. They tell you your character, your talents,
your strong points, and your weak points at fourpence halfpenny a go.
Bobbie's idea was to buy the whole twelve, and go through them till we
found out which month hit off Mary's character. That would give us the
month, and narrow it down a whole lot.
A pretty hot idea for a non-thinker like dear old Bobbie. We sallied
out at once. He took half and I took half, and we settled down to work.
As I say, it sounded good. But when we came to go into the thing, we
saw that there was a flaw. There was plenty of information all right,
but there wasn't a single month that didn't have something that exactly
hit off Mary. For instance, in the December book it said, "December
people are apt to keep their own secrets. They are extensive travellers."
Well, Mary had certainly kept her secret, and she had travelled quite
extensively enough for Bobbie's needs. Then, October people were "born
with original ideas" and "loved moving." You couldn't have summed
up Mary's little jaunt more neatly. February people had "wonderful
memories"--Mary's speciality.
We took a bit of a rest, then had another go at the thing.
Bobbie was all for May, because the book said that women born in that
month were "inclined to be capricious, which is always a barrier to a
happy married life"; but I plumped for February, because February women
"are unusually determined to have their own way, are very earnest, and
expect a full return in their companion or mates." Which he owned was
about as like Mary as anything could be.
In the end he tore the books up, stamped on them, burnt them, and went
home.
It was wonderful what a change the next few days made in dear old
Bobbie. Have you ever seen that picture, "The Soul's Awakening"? It
represents a flapper of sorts gazing in a startled sort of way into the
middle distance with a look in her eyes that seems to say, "Surely that
is George's step I hear on the mat! Can this be love?" Well, Bobbie had
a soul's awakening too. I don't suppose he had ever troubled to think
in his life before--not really _think_. But now he was wearing his
brain to the bone. It was painful in a way, of course, to see a fellow
human being so thoroughly in the soup, but I felt strongly that it was
all for the best. I could see as plainly as possible that all these
brainstorms were improving Bobbie out of knowledge. When it was all
over he might possibly become a rotter again of a sort, but it would
only be a pale reflection of the rotter he had been. It bore out the
idea I had always had that what he needed was a real good jolt.
I saw a great deal of him these days. I was his best friend, and he
came to me for sympathy. I gave it him, too, with both hands, but I
never failed to hand him the Moral Lesson when I had him weak.
One day he came to me as I was sitting in the club, and I could see
that he had had an idea. He looked happier than he had done in weeks.
"Reggie," he said, "I'm on the trail. This time I'm convinced that I
shall pull it off. I've remembered something of vital importance."
"Yes?" I said.
"I remember distinctly," he said, "that on Mary's last birthday we went
together to the Coliseum. How does that hit you?"
"It's a fine bit of memorizing," I said; "but how does it help?"
"Why, they change the programme every week there."
"Ah!" I said. "Now you are talking."
"And the week we went one of the turns was Professor Some One's
Terpsichorean Cats. I recollect them distinctly. Now, are we narrowing
it down, or aren't we? Reggie, I'm going round to the Coliseum this
minute, and I'm going to dig the date of those Terpsichorean Cats out
of them, if I have to use a crowbar."
So that got him within six days; for the management treated us like
brothers; brought out the archives, and ran agile fingers over the
pages till they treed the cats in the middle of May.
"I told you it was May," said Bobbie. "Maybe you'll listen to me
another time."
"If you've any sense," I said, "there won't be another time."
And Bobbie said that there wouldn't.
Once you get your money on the run, it parts as if it enjoyed doing it.
I had just got off to sleep that night when my telephone-bell rang. It
was Bobbie, of course. He didn't apologize.
"Reggie," he said, "I've got it now for certain. It's just come to me.
We saw those Terpsichorean Cats at a matinee, old man."
"Yes?" I said.
"Well, don't you see that that brings it down to two days? It must have
been either Wednesday the seventh or Saturday the tenth."
"Yes," I said, "if they didn't have daily matinees at the Coliseum."
I heard him give a sort of howl.
"Bobbie," I said. My feet were freezing, but I was fond of him.
"Well?"
"I've remembered something too. It's this. The day you went to the
Coliseum I lunched with you both at the Ritz. You had forgotten to
bring any money with you, so you wrote a cheque."
"But I'm always writing cheques."
"You are. But this was for a tenner, and made out to the hotel. Hunt up
your cheque-book and see how many cheques for ten pounds payable to the
Ritz Hotel you wrote out between May the fifth and May the tenth."
He gave a kind of gulp.
"Reggie," he said, "you're a genius. I've always said so. I believe
you've got it. Hold the line."
Presently he came back again.
"Halloa!" he said.
"I'm here," I said.
"It was the eighth. Reggie, old man, I----"
"Topping," I said. "Good night."
It was working along into the small hours now, but I thought I might as
well make a night of it and finish the thing up, so I rang up an hotel
near the Strand.
"Put me through to Mrs. Cardew," I said.
"It's late," said the man at the other end.
"And getting later every minute," I said. "Buck along, laddie."
I waited patiently. I had missed my beauty-sleep, and my feet had
frozen hard, but I was past regrets.
"What is the matter?" said Mary's voice.
"My feet are cold," I said. "But I didn't call you up to tell you that
particularly. I've just been chatting with Bobbie, Mrs. Cardew."
"Oh! is that Mr. Pepper?"
"Yes. He's remembered it, Mrs. Cardew."
She gave a sort of scream. I've often thought how interesting it must
be to be one of those Exchange girls. The things they must hear, don't
you know. Bobbie's howl and gulp and Mrs. Bobbie's scream and all about
my feet and all that. Most interesting it must be.
"He's remembered it!" she gasped. "Did you tell him?"
"No."
Well, I hadn't.
"Mr. Pepper."
"Yes?"
"Was he--has he been--was he very worried?"
I chuckled. This was where I was billed to be the life and soul of the
party.
"Worried! He was about the most worried man between here and Edinburgh.
He has been worrying as if he was paid to do it by the nation. He has
started out to worry after breakfast, and----"
Oh, well, you can never tell with women. My idea was that we should
pass the rest of the night slapping each other on the back across the
wire, and telling each other what bally brainy conspirators we were,
don't you know, and all that. But I'd got just as far as this, when she
bit at me. Absolutely! I heard the snap. And then she said "Oh!" in
that choked kind of way. And when a woman says "Oh!" like that, it
means all the bad words she'd love to say if she only knew them.
And then she began.
"What brutes men are! What horrid brutes! How you could stand by and
see poor dear Bobbie worrying himself into a fever, when a word from
you would have put everything right, I can't----"
"But----"
"And you call yourself his friend! His friend!" (Metallic laugh, most
unpleasant.) "It shows how one can be deceived. I used to think you a
kind-hearted man."
"But, I say, when I suggested the thing, you thought it perfectly----"
"I thought it hateful, abominable."
"But you said it was absolutely top----"
"I said nothing of the kind. And if I did, I didn't mean it. I don't
wish to be unjust, Mr. Pepper, but I must say that to me there seems to
be something positively fiendish in a man who can go out of his way to
separate a husband from his wife, simply in order to amuse himself by
gloating over his agony----"
"But----!"
"When one single word would have----"
"But you made me promise not to----" I bleated.
"And if I did, do you suppose I didn't expect you to have the sense to
break your promise?"
I had finished. I had no further observations to make. I hung up the
receiver, and crawled into bed.
* * * * *
I still see Bobbie when he comes to the club, but I do not visit
the old homestead. He is friendly, but he stops short of issuing
invitations. I ran across Mary at the Academy last week, and her eyes
went through me like a couple of bullets through a pat of butter. And
as they came out the other side, and I limped off to piece myself
together again, there occurred to me the simple epitaph which, when I
am no more, I intend to have inscribed on my tombstone. It was this:
"He was a man who acted from the best motives. There is one born every
minute."
HELPING FREDDIE
I don't want to bore you, don't you know, and all that sort of rot, but
I must tell you about dear old Freddie Meadowes. I'm not a flier at
literary style, and all that, but I'll get some writer chappie to give
the thing a wash and brush up when I've finished, so that'll be all
right.
Dear old Freddie, don't you know, has been a dear old pal of mine for
years and years; so when I went into the club one morning and found him
sitting alone in a dark corner, staring glassily at nothing, and
generally looking like the last rose of summer, you can understand I
was quite disturbed about it. As a rule, the old rotter is the life and
soul of our set. Quite the little lump of fun, and all that sort of
thing.
Jimmy Pinkerton was with me at the time. Jimmy's a fellow who writes
plays--a deuced brainy sort of fellow--and between us we set to work to
question the poor pop-eyed chappie, until finally we got at what the
matter was.
As we might have guessed, it was a girl. He had had a quarrel with
Angela West, the girl he was engaged to, and she had broken off the
engagement. What the row had been about he didn't say, but apparently
she was pretty well fed up. She wouldn't let him come near her, refused
to talk on the phone, and sent back his letters unopened.
I was sorry for poor old Freddie. I knew what it felt like. I was once
in love myself with a girl called Elizabeth Shoolbred, and the fact
that she couldn't stand me at any price will be recorded in my
autobiography. I knew the thing for Freddie.
"Change of scene is what you want, old scout," I said. "Come with me to
Marvis Bay. I've taken a cottage there. Jimmy's coming down on the
twenty-fourth. We'll be a cosy party."
"He's absolutely right," said Jimmy. "Change of scene's the thing. I
knew a man. Girl refused him. Man went abroad. Two months later girl
wired him, 'Come back. Muriel.' Man started to write out a reply;
suddenly found that he couldn't remember girl's surname; so never
answered at all."
But Freddie wouldn't be comforted. He just went on looking as if he had
swallowed his last sixpence. However, I got him to promise to come to
Marvis Bay with me. He said he might as well be there as anywhere.
Do you know Marvis Bay? It's in Dorsetshire. It isn't what you'd call a
fiercely exciting spot, but it has its good points. You spend the day
there bathing and sitting on the sands, and in the evening you stroll
out on the shore with the gnats. At nine o'clock you rub ointment on
the wounds and go to bed.
It seemed to suit poor old Freddie. Once the moon was up and the breeze
sighing in the trees, you couldn't drag him from that beach with a
rope. He became quite a popular pet with the gnats. They'd hang round
waiting for him to come out, and would give perfectly good strollers
the miss-in-baulk just so as to be in good condition for him.
Yes, it was a peaceful sort of life, but by the end of the first week I
began to wish that Jimmy Pinkerton had arranged to come down earlier:
for as a companion Freddie, poor old chap, wasn't anything to write
home to mother about. When he wasn't chewing a pipe and scowling at the
carpet, he was sitting at the piano, playing "The Rosary" with one
finger. He couldn't play anything except "The Rosary," and he couldn't
play much of that. Somewhere round about the third bar a fuse would
blow out, and he'd have to start all over again.
He was playing it as usual one morning when I came in from bathing.
"Reggie," he said, in a hollow voice, looking up, "I've seen her."
"Seen her?" I said. "What, Miss West?"
"I was down at the post office, getting the letters, and we met in the
doorway. She cut me!"
He started "The Rosary" again, and side-slipped in the second bar.
"Reggie," he said, "you ought never to have brought me here. I must go
away."
"Go away?" I said. "Don't talk such rot. This is the best thing that
could have happened. This is where you come out strong."
"She cut me."
"Never mind. Be a sportsman. Have another dash at her."
"She looked clean through me!"
"Of course she did. But don't mind that. Put this thing in my hands.
I'll see you through. Now, what you want," I said, "is to place her
under some obligation to you. What you want is to get her timidly
thanking you. What you want----"
"But what's she going to thank me timidly for?"
I thought for a moment.
"Look out for a chance and save her from drowning," I said.
"I can't swim," said Freddie.
That was Freddie all over, don't you know. A dear old chap in a
thousand ways, but no help to a fellow, if you know what I mean.
He cranked up the piano once more and I sprinted for the open.
I strolled out on to the sands and began to think this thing over.
There was no doubt that the brain-work had got to be done by me. Dear
old Freddie had his strong qualities. He was top-hole at polo, and in
happier days I've heard him give an imitation of cats fighting in a
backyard that would have surprised you. But apart from that he wasn't a
man of enterprise.
Well, don't you know, I was rounding some rocks, with my brain whirring
like a dynamo, when I caught sight of a blue dress, and, by Jove, it
was the girl. I had never met her, but Freddie had sixteen photographs
of her sprinkled round his bedroom, and I knew I couldn't be mistaken.
She was sitting on the sand, helping a small, fat child build a castle.
On a chair close by was an elderly lady reading a novel. I heard the
girl call her "aunt." So, doing the Sherlock Holmes business, I deduced
that the fat child was her cousin. It struck me that if Freddie had
been there he would probably have tried to work up some sentiment about
the kid on the strength of it. Personally I couldn't manage it. I don't
think I ever saw a child who made me feel less sentimental. He was one
of those round, bulging kids.
After he had finished the castle he seemed to get bored with life, and
began to whimper. The girl took him off to where a fellow was selling
sweets at a stall. And I walked on.
Now, fellows, if you ask them, will tell you that I'm a chump. Well, I
don't mind. I admit it. I _am_ a chump. All the Peppers have been
chumps. But what I do say is that every now and then, when you'd least
expect it, I get a pretty hot brain-wave; and that's what happened now.
I doubt if the idea that came to me then would have occurred to a
single one of any dozen of the brainiest chappies you care to name.
It came to me on my return journey. I was walking back along the shore,
when I saw the fat kid meditatively smacking a jelly-fish with a spade.
The girl wasn't with him. In fact, there didn't seem to be any one in
sight. I was just going to pass on when I got the brain-wave. I thought
the whole thing out in a flash, don't you know. From what I had seen of
the two, the girl was evidently fond of this kid, and, anyhow, he was
her cousin, so what I said to myself was this: If I kidnap this young
heavy-weight for the moment, and if, when the girl has got frightfully
anxious about where he can have got to, dear old Freddie suddenly
appears leading the infant by the hand and telling a story to the
effect that he has found him wandering at large about the country and
practically saved his life, why, the girl's gratitude is bound to make
her chuck hostilities and be friends again. So I gathered in the kid
and made off with him. All the way home I pictured that scene of
reconciliation. I could see it so vividly, don't you know, that, by
George, it gave me quite a choky feeling in my throat.
Freddie, dear old chap, was rather slow at getting on to the fine
points of the idea. When I appeared, carrying the kid, and dumped him
down in our sitting-room, he didn't absolutely effervesce with joy, if
you know what I mean. The kid had started to bellow by this time, and
poor old Freddie seemed to find it rather trying.
"Stop it!" he said. "Do you think nobody's got any troubles except you?
What the deuce is all this, Reggie?"
The kid came back at him with a yell that made the window rattle. I
raced to the kitchen and fetched a jar of honey. It was the right
stuff. The kid stopped bellowing and began to smear his face with the
stuff.
"Well?" said Freddie, when silence had set in. I explained the idea.
After a while it began to strike him.
"You're not such a fool as you look, sometimes, Reggie," he said
handsomely. "I'm bound to say this seems pretty good."
And he disentangled the kid from the honey-jar and took him out, to
scour the beach for Angela.
I don't know when I've felt so happy. I was so fond of dear old Freddie
that to know that he was soon going to be his old bright self again
made me feel as if somebody had left me about a million pounds. I was
leaning back in a chair on the veranda, smoking peacefully, when down
the road I saw the old boy returning, and, by George, the kid was still
with him. And Freddie looked as if he hadn't a friend in the world.
"Hello!" I said. "Couldn't you find her?"
"Yes, I found her," he replied, with one of those bitter, hollow
laughs.
"Well, then----?"
Freddie sank into a chair and groaned.
"This isn't her cousin, you idiot!" he said.
"He's no relation at all. He's just a kid she happened to meet on the
beach. She had never seen him before in her life."
"What! Who is he, then?"
"I don't know. Oh, Lord, I've had a time! Thank goodness you'll
probably spend the next few years of your life in Dartmoor for
kidnapping. That's my only consolation. I'll come and jeer at you
through the bars."
"Tell me all, old boy," I said.
It took him a good long time to tell the story, for he broke off in the
middle of nearly every sentence to call me names, but I gathered
gradually what had happened. She had listened like an iceberg while he
told the story he had prepared, and then--well, she didn't actually
call him a liar, but she gave him to understand in a general sort of
way that if he and Dr. Cook ever happened to meet, and started swapping
stories, it would be about the biggest duel on record. And then he had
crawled away with the kid, licked to a splinter.
"And mind, this is your affair," he concluded. "I'm not mixed up in it
at all. If you want to escape your sentence, you'd better go and find
the kid's parents and return him before the police come for you."
* * * * *
By Jove, you know, till I started to tramp the place with this infernal
kid, I never had a notion it would have been so deuced difficult to
restore a child to its anxious parents. It's a mystery to me how
kidnappers ever get caught. I searched Marvis Bay like a bloodhound,
but nobody came forward to claim the infant. You'd have thought, from
the lack of interest in him, that he was stopping there all by himself
in a cottage of his own. It wasn't till, by an inspiration, I thought
to ask the sweet-stall man that I found out that his name was Medwin,
and that his parents lived at a place called Ocean Rest, in Beach Road.
I shot off there like an arrow and knocked at the door. Nobody
answered. I knocked again. I could hear movements inside, but nobody
came. I was just going to get to work on that knocker in such a way
that the idea would filter through into these people's heads that I
wasn't standing there just for the fun of the thing, when a voice from
somewhere above shouted, "Hi!"
I looked up and saw a round, pink face, with grey whiskers east and
west of it, staring down from an upper window."
"Hi!" it shouted again.
"What the deuce do you mean by 'Hi'?" I said.
"You can't come in," said the face. "Hello, is that Tootles?"
"My name is not Tootles, and I don't want to come in," I said. "Are you
Mr. Medwin? I've brought back your son."
"I see him. Peep-bo, Tootles! Dadda can see 'oo!"
The face disappeared with a jerk. I could hear voices. The face
reappeared.
"Hi!"
I churned the gravel madly.
"Do you live here?" said the face.
"I'm staying here for a few weeks."
"What's your name?"
"Pepper. But----"
"Pepper? Any relation to Edward Pepper, the colliery owner?"
"My uncle. But----"
"I used to know him well. Dear old Edward Pepper! I wish I was with him
now."
"I wish you were," I said.
He beamed down at me.
"This is most fortunate," he said. "We were wondering what we were to
do with Tootles. You see, we have the mumps here. My daughter Bootles
has just developed mumps. Tootles must not be exposed to the risk of
infection. We could not think what we were to do with him. It was most
fortunate your finding him. He strayed from his nurse. I would hesitate
to trust him to the care of a stranger, but you are different. Any
nephew of Edward Pepper's has my implicit confidence. You must take
Tootles to your house. It will be an ideal arrangement. I have written
to my brother in London to come and fetch him. He may be here in a few
days."
"May!"
"He is a busy man, of course; but he should certainly be here within a
week. Till then Tootles can stop with you. It is an excellent plan.
Very much obliged to you. Your wife will like Tootles."
"I haven't got a wife," I yelled; but the window had closed with a
bang, as if the man with the whiskers had found a germ trying to
escape, don't you know, and had headed it off just in time.
I breathed a deep breath and wiped my forehead.
The window flew up again.
"Hi!"
A package weighing about a ton hit me on the head and burst like a
bomb.
"Did you catch it?" said the face, reappearing. "Dear me, you missed
it! Never mind. You can get it at the grocer's. Ask for Bailey's
Granulated Breakfast Chips. Tootles takes them for breakfast with a
little milk. Be certain to get Bailey's."
My spirit was broken, if you know what I mean. I accepted the situation.
Taking Tootles by the hand, I walked slowly away. Napoleon's retreat
from Moscow was a picnic by the side of it.
As we turned up the road we met Freddie's Angela.
The sight of her had a marked effect on the kid Tootles. He pointed at
her and said, "Wah!"
The girl stopped and smiled. I loosed the kid, and he ran to her.
"Well, baby?" she said, bending down to him. "So father found you
again, did he? Your little son and I made friends on the beach this
morning," she said to me.
This was the limit. Coming on top of that interview with the whiskered
lunatic it so utterly unnerved me, don't you know, that she had nodded
good-bye and was half-way down the road before I caught up with my
breath enough to deny the charge of being the infant's father.
I hadn't expected dear old Freddie to sing with joy when he found out
what had happened, but I did think he might have shown a little more
manly fortitude. He leaped up, glared at the kid, and clutched his
head. He didn't speak for a long time, but, on the other hand, when he
began he did not leave off for a long time. He was quite emotional,
dear old boy. It beat me where he could have picked up such
expressions.
"Well," he said, when he had finished, "say something! Heavens! man,
why don't you say something?"
"You don't give me a chance, old top," I said soothingly.
"What are you going to do about it?"
"What can we do about it?"
"We can't spend our time acting as nurses to this--this exhibit."
He got up.
"I'm going back to London," he said.
"Freddie!" I cried. "Freddie, old man!" My voice shook. "Would you
desert a pal at a time like this?"
"I would. This is your business, and you've got to manage it."
"Freddie," I said, "you've got to stand by me. You must. Do you realize
that this child has to be undressed, and bathed, and dressed again? You
wouldn't leave me to do all that single-handed? Freddie, old scout, we
were at school together. Your mother likes me. You owe me a tenner."
He sat down again.
"Oh, well," he said resignedly.
"Besides, old top," I said, "I did it all for your sake, don't you
know?"
He looked at me in a curious way.
"Reggie," he said, in a strained voice, "one moment. I'll stand a good
deal, but I won't stand for being expected to be grateful."
Looking back at it, I see that what saved me from Colney Hatch in that
crisis was my bright idea of buying up most of the contents of the
local sweet-shop. By serving out sweets to the kid practically
incessantly we managed to get through the rest of that day pretty
satisfactorily. At eight o'clock he fell asleep in a chair, and, having
undressed him by unbuttoning every button in sight and, where there
were no buttons, pulling till something gave, we carried him up to bed.
Freddie stood looking at the pile of clothes on the floor and I knew
what he was thinking. To get the kid undressed had been simple--a mere
matter of muscle. But how were we to get him into his clothes again? I
stirred the pile with my foot. There was a long linen arrangement which
might have been anything. Also a strip of pink flannel which was like
nothing on earth. We looked at each other and smiled wanly.
But in the morning I remembered that there were children at the next
bungalow but one. We went there before breakfast and borrowed their
nurse. Women are wonderful, by George they are! She had that kid
dressed and looking fit for anything in about eight minutes. I showered
wealth on her, and she promised to come in morning and evening. I sat
down to breakfast almost cheerful again. It was the first bit of silver
lining there had been to the cloud up to date.
"And after all," I said, "there's lots to be said for having a
child about the house, if you know what I mean. Kind of cosy and
domestic--what!"
Just then the kid upset the milk over Freddie's trousers, and when he
had come back after changing his clothes he began to talk about what a
much-maligned man King Herod was. The more he saw of Tootles, he said,
the less he wondered at those impulsive views of his on infanticide.
Two days later Jimmy Pinkerton came down. Jimmy took one look at the
kid, who happened to be howling at the moment, and picked up his
portmanteau.
"For me," he said, "the hotel. I can't write dialogue with that sort of
thing going on. Whose work is this? Which of you adopted this little
treasure?"
I told him about Mr. Medwin and the mumps. Jimmy seemed interested.
"I might work this up for the stage," he said. "It wouldn't make a bad
situation for act two of a farce."
"Farce!" snarled poor old Freddie.
"Rather. Curtain of act one on hero, a well-meaning, half-baked sort of
idiot just like--that is to say, a well-meaning, half-baked sort of
idiot, kidnapping the child. Second act, his adventures with it. I'll
rough it out to-night. Come along and show me the hotel, Reggie."
As we went I told him the rest of the story--the Angela part. He laid
down his portmanteau and looked at me like an owl through his glasses.
"What!" he said. "Why, hang it, this is a play, ready-made. It's the
old 'Tiny Hand' business. Always safe stuff. Parted lovers. Lisping
child. Reconciliation over the little cradle. It's big. Child, centre.
Girl L.C.; Freddie, up stage, by the piano. Can Freddie play the
piano?"
"He can play a little of 'The Rosary' with one finger."
Jimmy shook his head.
"No; we shall have to cut out the soft music. But the rest's all right.
Look here." He squatted in the sand. "This stone is the girl. This bit
of seaweed's the child. This nutshell is Freddie. Dialogue leading up
to child's line. Child speaks like, 'Boofer lady, does 'oo love dadda?'
Business of outstretched hands. Hold picture for a moment. Freddie crosses
L., takes girl's hand. Business of swallowing lump in throat. Then big
speech. 'Ah, Marie,' or whatever her name is--Jane--Agnes--Angela? Very
well. 'Ah, Angela, has not this gone on too long? A little child rebukes
us! Angela!' And so on. Freddie must work up his own part. I'm just
giving you the general outline. And we must get a good line for the
child. 'Boofer lady, does 'oo love dadda?' isn't definite enough. We
want something more--ah! 'Kiss Freddie,' that's it. Short, crisp, and
has the punch."
"But, Jimmy, old top," I said, "the only objection is, don't you know,
that there's no way of getting the girl to the cottage. She cuts
Freddie. She wouldn't come within a mile of him."
Jimmy frowned.
"That's awkward," he said. "Well, we shall have to make it an exterior set
instead of an interior. We can easily corner her on the beach somewhere,
when we're ready. Meanwhile, we must get the kid letter-perfect. First
rehearsal for lines and business eleven sharp to-morrow."
Poor old Freddie was in such a gloomy state of mind that we decided not
to tell him the idea till we had finished coaching the kid. He wasn't
in the mood to have a thing like that hanging over him. So we
concentrated on Tootles. And pretty early in the proceedings we saw
that the only way to get Tootles worked up to the spirit of the thing
was to introduce sweets of some sort as a sub-motive, so to speak.
"The chief difficulty," said Jimmy Pinkerton at the end of the first
rehearsal, "is to establish a connection in the kid's mind between his
line and the sweets. Once he has grasped the basic fact that those two
words, clearly spoken, result automatically in acid-drops, we have got
a success."
I've often thought, don't you know, how interesting it must be to be
one of those animal-trainer Johnnies: to stimulate the dawning
intelligence, and that sort of thing. Well, this was every bit as
exciting. Some days success seemed to be staring us in the eye, and the
kid got the line out as if he'd been an old professional. And then he'd
go all to pieces again. And time was flying.
"We must hurry up, Jimmy," I said. "The kid's uncle may arrive any day
now and take him away."
"And we haven't an understudy," said Jimmy. "There's something in that.
We must work! My goodness, that kid's a bad study. I've known deaf-mutes
who would have learned the part quicker."
I will say this for the kid, though: he was a trier. Failure didn't
discourage him. Whenever there was any kind of sweet near he had a dash
at his line, and kept on saying something till he got what he was
after. His only fault was his uncertainty. Personally, I would have
been prepared to risk it, and start the performance at the first
opportunity, but Jimmy said no.
"We're not nearly ready," said Jimmy. "To-day, for instance, he said
'Kick Freddie.' That's not going to win any girl's heart. And she might
do it, too. No; we must postpone production awhile yet."
But, by George, we didn't. The curtain went up the very next afternoon.
It was nobody's fault--certainly not mine. It was just Fate. Freddie
had settled down at the piano, and I was leading the kid out of the
house to exercise it, when, just as we'd got out to the veranda, along
came the girl Angela on her way to the beach. The kid set up his usual
yell at the sight of her, and she stopped at the foot of the steps.
"Hello, baby!" she said. "Good morning," she said to me. "May I come
up?"
She didn't wait for an answer. She just came. She seemed to be that
sort of girl. She came up on the veranda and started fussing over the
kid. And six feet away, mind you, Freddie smiting the piano in the
sitting-room. It was a dash disturbing situation, don't you know. At
any minute Freddie might take it into his head to come out on to the
veranda, and we hadn't even begun to rehearse him in his part.
I tried to break up the scene.
"We were just going down to the beach," I said.
"Yes?" said the girl. She listened for a moment. "So you're having your
piano tuned?" she said. "My aunt has been trying to find a tuner for
ours. Do you mind if I go in and tell this man to come on to us when
he's finished here?"
"Er--not yet!" I said. "Not yet, if you don't mind. He can't bear to be
disturbed when he's working. It's the artistic temperament. I'll tell
him later."
"Very well," she said, getting up to go. "Ask him to call at Pine
Bungalow. West is the name. Oh, he seems to have stopped. I suppose he
will be out in a minute now. I'll wait."
"Don't you think--shouldn't we be going on to the beach?" I said.
She had started talking to the kid and didn't hear. She was feeling in
her pocket for something.
"The beach," I babbled.
"See what I've brought for you, baby," she said. And, by George, don't
you know, she held up in front of the kid's bulging eyes a chunk of
toffee about the size of the Automobile Club.
That finished it. We had just been having a long rehearsal, and the kid
was all worked up in his part. He got it right first time.
"Kiss Fweddie!" he shouted.
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