P. G. Wodehouse

“ McEachern had been trying not to say it. He did not wish to say it. If it could have been hinted at, he would have done it, but he was not good at hinting. A lifetime passed in surroundings where the subtlest hint is a drive in the ribs with a truncheon does not leave a man an adept at the art. He had to be blunt or silent.
“He’s the Earl of Dreever, my dear.”
He rushed on, desperately anxious to cover the nakedness of the statement in a comfortable garment of words.
“Why, you see, you’re young, Molly. It’s only natural you shouldn’t look on these things sensibly. You expect too much of a man. ”

“ He went to a side-table and mixed himself a whisky and soda, singing a brief extract from musical comedy as he did so. There could be no shadow of doubt that he was finding life good. For the past few days, and particularly that afternoon, he had been rather noticeably ill at ease. Jimmy had seen him hanging about the terrace at half-past five, and had thought that he looked like a mute at a funeral, but now, only a few hours later, he was beaming on the world and chirping like a bird. ”

“ As Jimmy sat smoking a last cigarette in his bedroom before going to bed that night Spike Mullins came in. Jimmy had been thinking things over. He was one of those men who are at their best in a losing game. Imminent disaster always had the effect of keying him up and putting an edge on his mind. The news he had heard that night had left him with undiminished determination, but conscious that a change of method would be needed. He must stake all on a single throw now. Young Lochinvar rather than Romeo must be his model. ”

“ For a man whose intentions towards the jewels and their owner were so innocent, and even benevolent, Jimmy was in a singularly compromising position. It would have been difficult, even under more favourable conditions, to have explained to Sir Thomas’s satisfaction his presence in the dressing-room. As things stood it was even harder, for his lordship’s last action before seeking cover had been to fling the necklace from him like a burning coal. ”

“ The luxury of riding in a taxi-cab kept Spike dumb for several miles. At One Hundred and Fiftieth Street Jimmy stopped the cab and paid the driver, who took the money with that magnificently aloof air which characterizes the taxi-chauffeur. A lesser man might have displayed some curiosity about the ill-matched pair. The chauffeur, having lit a cigarette, drove off without any display of interest whatsoever. It might have been part of his ordinary duties to drive gentlemen in evening clothes and shock-headed youths in parti-coloured sweaters about the city at three o’clock in the morning. ”

“ Lord Dreever might be hounded into proposing to Molly, but what earthly reason was there for supposing that Molly would accept him? He declined even for an instant to look upon Spennie’s title in the light of a lure. Molly was not the girl to marry for a title. He endeavoured to examine impartially his lordship’s other claims. He was a pleasant fellow, with—to judge on short acquaintanceship—an undeniably amiable disposition. That much must be conceded. But against this must be placed the equally undeniable fact that he was also, as he would have put it himself, a most frightful ass. ”

“ After a moment’s reflection the other grinned, howbeit faintly.
“That’s right,” said Jimmy. “We’ll go into society, Spike, hand in hand. You’ll be a terrific success in society. All you have to do is to look cheerful, brush your hair, and keep your hands off the spoons, for in the best circles they invariably count them after the departure of the last guest.” ”

“ There are few moments in a man’s day when his brain is more contemplative than during that brief space when he is lathering his face preparatory to shaving. Flying the brush, Jimmy reviewed the situation. He was perhaps a little too optimistic. Not unnaturally he was inclined to look upon his luck as a sort of special train which would convey him without effort to Paradise. Fate had behaved so exceedingly handsomely up till now. By a series of the most workmanlike miracles it had brought him to the point of being Molly’s fellow-guest at a country-house. ”

“ No power of will or muscle can save a man in such a case. Spike skidded. His feet flew from under him. There was a momentary flash of red hair, as of a passing meteor. The next moment he had fallen on his back with a thud which shook the house, and probably the rest of Manhattan Island as well. Even in that crisis the thought flashed across Jimmy’s mind that this was not Spike’s lucky night.
Upstairs the efforts of the canine choir had begun to resemble the “A che la morte” duet in Il Trovatore. Particularly good work was being done by the baritone dog. ”

“ Spike sat silent, with a long face. Jimmy slapped him on the shoulder.
“Cheer up,” he said. “How do you know that living honestly may not be splendid fun? Numbers of people do it, you know, and enjoy themselves tremendously. You must give it a trial, Spike.”
“Me, boss? What, me too?”
“Rather. You’re my link with——I don’t want to have you remembering that address in the second month of a ten-year spell at Dartmoor. I’m going to look after you, Spike, my son, like a lynx. We’ll go out together and see life. Buck up, Spike! Be cheerful! Grin!” ”

“ It was his light-haired lordship of Dreever.
“I say, by Jove! Why, we’re always meeting!”
A tramp on the bench close by stirred uneasily in his sleep as the gurgling laughter ripped the air.
“Been looking at the water?” inquired Lord Dreever. “I have. I often do. Don’t you think it sort of makes a chap feel—oh, you know. Sort of—I don’t know how to put it.”
“Mushy?” said Jimmy. ”

“ Can’t you see them jumping with joy as you slid in through the window and told the great news? ‘Fahzer’s killed a pleeceman!’ cry the tiny, eager voices. Sweets are served out all round in honour of the event. Golden haired little Jimmy Mullins, my godson, gets sixpence for having thrown a stone at a plain clothes detective that afternoon. All is joy and wholesome revelry. Take my word for it, Spike, there’s nothing like domesticity. ”

“ Jimmy withdrew his head, and sat down on the chair Mifflin had vacated. A moment later he rose and switched off the light. It was pleasanter to sit and think in the dark. His thoughts wandered off in many channels, but always came back to the girl on the Mauretania. It was absurd, of course. He didn’t wonder that Arthur Mifflin had treated the thing as a joke. Good old Arthur! Glad he had made a success. But was it a joke? Who was it said that the point of a joke was like the point of a needle—so small that it is apt to disappear entirely when directed straight at oneself? ”

“ Sir Thomas went to the dressing-table and unlocked a small drawer.
“Twenty, you said? Five—ten—fifteen—here you are, my boy.”
Lord Dreever muttered his thanks. Sir Thomas accepted the guttural acknowledgment with a friendly pat on the shoulder.
“I like a little touch like that,” he said.
His lordship looked startled.
“I wouldn’t have touched you,” he began, “if it hadn’t been——”
“A little touch like that letter-writing,” Sir Thomas went on. “It shows a warm heart. She is a warm-hearted girl, Spennie—a charming, warm-hearted girl! You’re uncommonly lucky, my boy.” ”

“ That his news might be a blow to McEachern did not cross his mind. He was a singularly modest youth, and though he realised vaguely that his title had a certain value in some people’s eyes, he could not understand anyone mourning over the loss of him as a son-in-law. Katie’s father, the old general, thought him a fool, and once, during an attack of gout, had said so.
Oblivious, therefore, to the storm raging a yard away from him, he smoked on with great contentment, till suddenly it struck him that, for a presumably devout lover, jilted that very night, he was displaying too little emotion. ”

“ And when, going to his room to get ready for dinner, he had nearly run into Spike Mullins in the corridor, his frame of mind had been that of a man to whom a sudden ray of light reveals the fact that he is on the brink of a black precipice. Jimmy and Spike had burgled his house together in New York; and here they were, together again, at Dreever Castle. To say that the thing struck McEachern as sinister is to put the matter badly. There was once a gentleman who remarked that he smelt a rat and saw it floating in the air. ”

“ This was Lord Dreever’s friend Hargate—the Hon. Louis Hargate. Lord Dreever made the two acquainted; but even as they shook hands Jimmy had an impression that he had seen the man before, but where or in what circumstances he could not remember. Hargate appeared to have no recollection of him, so he did not mention the matter. A man who has led a wandering life often sees faces which come back to him later on, absolutely detached from their context. He might merely have passed Lord Dreever’s friend in the street. ”

“ One is never at one’s best and sunniest when one has been forced by a ruthless uncle into abandoning the girl one loves and becoming engaged to another to whom one is indifferent. Something of a jaundiced tinge stains one’s outlook on life in such circumstances. Moreover, Lord Dreever was not by nature an introspective young man, but, examining his position as he walked along, he found himself wondering whether it was not a little unheroic. He came to the conclusion that perhaps it was.
Of course, Uncle Thomas could make it deucedly unpleasant for him if he kicked—that was the trouble. ”

“ Jimmy nodded.
“Funny thing,” said Lord Dreever. “In the daytime the water here looks all muddy and beastly. Damn depressing, I call it. But at night——” He paused. “I say,” he went on, after a moment, “did you see the girl I was with at the Savoy?”
“Yes,” said Jimmy.
“She’s a ripper,” said Lord Dreever devoutly.
On the Thames Embankment, in the small hours of a summer morning, there is no such thing as a stranger. The man you talk with is a friend, and if he will listen—as, by the etiquette of the place, he must—you may pour out your heart to him without restraint. It is expected of you. ”

“ The woman incapable of seeing through the machinations of two men of the mental calibre of Sir Thomas Blunt and Mr. McEachern has yet to be born. For some considerable time Molly had been alive to the well-meant plottings of that worthy pair, and had derived little pleasure from the fact. It may be that woman loves to be pursued, but she does not love to be pursued by a crowd. ”

“ In a world that contained Molly there was no room for other people. They were not in the picture. They did not exist.
To him, musing contentedly over the goodness of life, there entered, in the furtive manner habitual to that unreclaimed 139 buccaneer, Spike Mullins. It may have been that Jimmy read his own satisfaction and happiness into the faces of others, but it certainly seemed to him that there was a sort of restrained joyfulness about Spike’s demeanour. The Bowery boy’s shuffles on the carpet were almost a dance. ”

“ There raced into the room first a white bull-terrier, he of the soprano voice, and—a bad second—his fellow-artiste, the baritone, a massive bulldog, bearing a striking resemblance to the big man with the revolver.
And then, in theatrical parlance, the entire company “held the picture”. Up-stage, with his hand still on the door, stood the large householder; down-stage Jimmy. Centre, Spike and the bulldog, their noses, a couple of inches apart, inspected each other with mutual disfavour. ”

“ In the first place, Molly did not love him. And, he was bound to admit, there was no earthly reason why she ever should. A man in love is seldom vain about his personal attractions. Also, her father firmly believed him to be a master-burglar.
“Otherwise,” said Jimmy, scowling at his reflection in the glass, “everything’s splendid.”
He brushed his hair sadly.
There was a furtive rap at the door.
“Halloa?” said Jimmy. “Yes?”
The door opened slowly. A grin, surmounted by a mop of red hair, appeared round the edge of it.
“Halloa, Spike! Come in. What’s the matter?” ”

“ Shove he never so wisely, Sir Thomas could never make a Romeo out of Spennie Dreever.
It was while sitting in the billiard-room one night after dinner, watching his rival play a hundred up with the silent Hargate, that Jimmy came definitely to this conclusion. He had stopped to watch more because he wished to study his man at close range than because the game was anything out of the common as an exposition of billiards. As a matter of fact, it would have been hard to imagine a worse game. Lord Dreever, who was conceding twenty, was poor, and his opponent an obvious beginner. ”

“ Youse don’t want none of me now you’re married. How’s Miss Molly, boss?”
“Splendid, Spike, thanks. We’re going over to France by to-night’s boat.
“It’s been a queer business,” said Jimmy, after a pause—“a deuced queer business. Still, I’ve come very well out of it, at any rate. It seems to me that you’re the only one of us who doesn’t end happily, Spike. I’m married. McEachern’s butted into society so deep that it would take an excavating party with dynamite to get him out of it. Molly—well, Molly’s made a bad bargain, but I hope she won’t regret it. We’re all going some, except you. ”

“ Uncle Tom could cut off supplies to such a frightful extent, if there was trouble, that he would have to go on living at Dreever indefinitely, without so much as a fearful quid to call his own. Imagination boggled at the prospect. In the summer and autumn, when there was shooting, his lordship was not indisposed to stay at the home of his fathers. But all the year round! Better a broken heart inside the radius than a sound one in the country in the winter. ”