Algy

“ I have got a letter from Algy,—strange boy,—but as I always foresaw, with great stuff in him, very remarkable abilities. See what he has done,—struck out a perfect line of his own in life; just the sort of thing genius alone can do. ”

“ And Argyle pinched Aaron's arm fast, then went unsteadily up the steps to his hotel door.
The next day at Algy's there was a crowd Algy had a very pleasant flat indeed, kept more scrupulously neat and finicking than ever any woman's flat was kept. So today, with its bowls of flowers and its pictures and books and old furniture, and Algy, very nicely dressed, fluttering and blinking and making really a charming host, it was all very delightful to the little mob of visitors. They were a curious lot, it is true: everybody rather exceptional. ”

“ It was in these terms that Algy was wont to allude to that respectable spinster, Miss Elizabeth Grimshaw.
Rhoda knew that Algy wished and expected her to smile when he said that; and she tried to please him, but the smile would not come. Her lip quivered, and tears began to gather in her eyes again. She would have sobbed outright if she had tried to speak. The more she thought the sadder and more frightened she grew. Ridicule was painful, but that was not the worst. Her father! Mrs. Errington! She lay awake half the night, terrifying herself with imaginations of their wrath. ”

“ In the Pill Box it was Algy who decided that the safest way to fix their rope was to pass it round a section of the wall, by way of two embrasures, tying it on the outside; though the actual work was left to Orace, as a man with some nautical experience. A change had come over Algy, sobering down his bubbling vapidness and turning him into a sensible man. It had been done by the bullet which had so nearly smashed him out of the adventure altogether—the fool had been stung by a hard fact, and it had brought out into the open the character which for years he had taken such pains to conceal. ”

“ Jack seemed slender in black evening clothes, but he was a splendid athlete, and his body was hard as nails. Thus, when the soft pulpy form of Mrs. Alexander struck him back to back, it was not Jack who grunted and fell over.
Algy, being a “fragile darling,” and never prepared for emergencies, was lifted from his feet when Mrs. Alexander began to slip and gyrate, while endeavoring to balance in an upright position. The grip the lady maintained upon the only tangible thing at hand made Algy hop-skip-and-jump about like a Jack-on-a-stick. ”

“ Algy felt himself to be a very generous fellow for continuing to "stand up for old Diamond," as he phrased it.
"Well, ma'am, plenty of great men have been poor scholars. Dean Swift was a sizar."
"And Dean Swift died in a madhouse! So you see, Algy!"
Mrs. Errington plumed herself a good deal upon this retort, and returned to the attack upon Mr. Diamond with fresh vigour; being one of those persons whose mode of warfare is elephantine, and who, never content with merely killing their enemy, must ponderously stamp and mash every semblance of humanity out of him.
Algernon did not like all this. ”

“ There was so much crisp command in her tone that he fell in beside them obediently.
“But, dear old peach,” he protested weakly. “There’s no comic old war on, don’t you know! Is it a joke? I’ll buy it. Never say Algy isn’t a sportsman, old darling.”
“There’s nothing very funny about it,” she said, and something deadly about her obvious seriousness made him hold his peace for the rest of the journey.
In the Pill Box, she sat down at once to the food Orace provided, though Algy excused himself. ”

“ The party that evening consisted all of men: Francis and Angus, and a writer, James Argyle, and little Algy Constable, and tiny Louis Mee, and deaf Walter Rosen. They all snapped and rattled at one another, and were rather spiteful but rather amusing. Francis and Angus had to leave early. They had another appointment. And James Argyle got quite tipsy, and said to Aaron:
"But, my boy, don't let yourself be led astray by the talk of such people as Algy. Beware of them, my boy, if you've a soul to save. If you've a soul to save!" ”

“ Algy wagged his head. "Not me. You woke him up yourself, my son, by tootling on your little tin trumpet. He heard it through his dreams, shot up with a 'Good Lord, what's that?' popped his head out of the window and saw the brave cavalcade reeling out along the sky-line like a comic movie. He drank in the busy scene, then turned to me and said——"
Albert Edward interrupted. "I know exactly what he said. He said, 'Algy, me boy, that's the spirit. Vive le sport! How it reminds us of our young days in the Peninsular! ”

“ Until then I had never had a backward thought or regret or worry about Lord Algy. I was [Pg 384] only glad to have had the experience, that was all. But after I had told you of my life and parentage, you bent down and kissed my hand. And from that moment doubts began to trouble me. You had started the awakening of my soul. And as love grew and grew, so the blackness of the shadow increased. I knew that if I deceived you I should only draw unhappiness and never respect myself. Where love is there can be no deceit—and so at last even before I went to Valfreyne I put all thoughts of you from me. ”

“ Even the period of hobbledehoydom, fatal to beauty, to grace, almost to civilised humanity in most schoolboys, Algernon passed through triumphantly. He had a great sense of humour, and fastidious pampered habits of mind and body, which enabled him to look down with more or less disdain—a good-humoured disdain, always, Algy was never bitter—upon the obstreperous youth at the Whitford Grammar School. ”

“ Filthorpe of Bristol is not to be condoled with on the occasion?"
Mr. Diamond's firmly closed lips remain immovable.
Minnie looks at him wistfully, and then says suddenly, "Do you know I like Algy very much! There is something so bright and winning and gay about him! I have known him so long—ever since he came here as a small child in a frock. And papa knew his father, Dr. Errington. He was a very clever man, a brilliant talker, and greatly sought after in society. Algy inherits all that. And he has—what they say his father had not—a temper that is almost perfect, thoroughly sound and sweet. ”

“ He got a cheer from the boys as he went through the gate, for he was the idol of all. The seven days passed, but on the eighth no Algy appeared.
"'Private Algy de Verepot absent, sir,' was the report on the morning parade. It startled everybody. It was the talk of the garrison, and caused grief among the ladies in town. Had he been killed! Had he deserted! What had happened! These were the topics of the day. Algy's disappearance caused more commotion than the coronation of a king. ”

“ A day or two later, when Lord Caterham had rallied a good deal, and was able to listen to Annie as she read to him, and while she was so engaged, and he was looking at her with the concentrated earnestness she remarked so frequently in his gaze of late,--Algy Barford was announced. Algy had been constantly at the house to inquire for Lord Caterham; but to-day Stephens had felt sure his master would be able and glad to see Algy. Every body liked that genial soul, and servants in particular--a wonderful test of popularity and its desert. ”

“ She rallied her partner, not letting him forget that he had the honour of being her partner; while she appeared envious of Algernon's skill, and talked to both and got them upon common topics, and laughed, and was like a fair English flower of womanhood; nothing deadly.
“There, Algy; you have beaten us. I don't think I'll have Lord Suckling for my partner any more,” she said, putting up her wand, and pouting. ”

“ And then a "certain liveliness" set in at the official residence of the Permanent Irremovable Assistant Under-Secretary.
"You silly little goosey!" said Algy; "don't you see that it's not as a man who admires her but as a novelist who's studying her that I talk to Pearl Preston? She's my next heroine. A heroine like that is a sine quâ non in a novel of the Modernist school." ”

“ Lord Algy was passionately devoted, and it was wiser early in life to know the nature of men. Thus she argued to herself, being totally unaware that her point of view was altogether affected because her heart and her senses pleaded hard, being touched for the first time in her twenty-two years. ”

“ The girl also was not unwilling to let Algy have his own way; in the grimness of her purpose she was as incapable of sparing anyone else as she was of sparing herself.
“But we ought to get Carn,” she said.
“I went to look for the sleuth just before I started back,” Algy answered. “He hasn’t returned. We’ll have to do without him.”
The hope of legal reinforcements seemed to be receding, thought Patricia, as they set off towards the Pill Box. ”

“ In the miasma of dark suspicion which lay over most of the population of Baycombe, it was a relief to find a man who was too foolish to be dangerous and simple enough to be loyal. She had always suspected that Algy cherished a fluffy and sentimental affection for her—he would call at the Manor on romantically moonlit nights and try to make her stroll in the garden with him, and, on these occasions, unless she exerted herself to keep up an uninterrupted flow of idle impersonal chatter, he was wont to become inarticulate and calf-eyed. ”

“ Mrs. Alexander received the first genuine shock in many moons, and she acted like the old-time Maggie whom Mr. Alexander remembered with regret. “My goodness, Ebeneezer!” cried she, forgetting the expensive cane in her fear for Algy’s life, and using it to hold down for him to hold to. “Jump in and save him quick!”
“That ain’t the ocean, Maggie,” retorted her husband. “A little warm water won’t hurt his head.”
“Oh, you cruel man. Won’t some one save the boy?” pleaded she.
“Jack!” shouted Mr. Dalken, “swim up and give him help to climb up on the steps.” ”

“ Wiring into it with any mystery story as a textbook, it at once appeared that Lapping was too far above suspicion to escape it, Algy was too frankly brainless to be anything but the possessor of the Great Brain, Agatha Girton was quite certain to turn out to be a man masquerading as a woman, and Shaw and Smith kept too much in the background to avoid the limelight. ”

“ Better trim your wick, old man, if it's not too late—"
"We were talking of souls, not wicks, Argyle," said Algy.
"Same thing. Upon my soul it all amounts to the same thing. Where's the soul in a man that hasn't got a bedfellow—eh?—answer me that! Can't be done you know. Might as well ask a virgin chicken to lay you an egg." ”

“ Algy is eating nothing, and is drinking every thing that is offered to him. His face is not much redder than Musgrave's, and he is glancing across the table at Mrs. Huntley, with the haggard anger of his eyes. Of this, however, she seems innocently unaware. She is leaning back in her chair; so is Roger. They are talking low and quickly, and looking smilingly at each other. When does his face ever light up into such alert animation when he is talking to me? There can be no doubt of it! Why blink a thing because it is unpleasant? ”

“ Sir Roger will most likely be drowned on his voyage out. Bobby will almost certainly be sent to Hong-Kong, and, as a natural consequence, die of a putrid fever. Algy has just entered the army; there can be no two opinions as to our going to war immediately with either Russia or America. Algy will probably be among the first to fall, and will die, grasping his colors, and shouting "Victory!" or "Westminster Abbey!" ”

“ Algy still looked as fierce as one of his heathen idols.
"You t'ink velly smart," he said, still concealing his feelings. "Lats!" and with that he went out to chop some wood.
"Batten me into the pantry!" said Napoleon. "I'll bet old Algy'd board the outlaw himself, fer you, Van, squall and all."
"That horse ain't human," Gettysburg exploded anew. "Van, you can't ride no such Fourth-of-July procession!"
"Shut up!" murmured Van, with a gesture towards the room where Beth and her maid were dining. He added aloud: "The chances are we'll find he's a cheap Sunday-school picnic. ”

“ What's a soul, to them—?"
"What is it to you, is perhaps the more pertinent question," said Algy, flapping his eyelids like some crazy owl. "It is you who specialise in the matter of soul, and we who are in need of enlightenment—"
"Yes, very true, you are! You are in need of enlightenment. A set of benighted wise virgins. Ha-ha-ha! That's good, that—benighted wise virgins! What—" Argyle put his red face near to Aaron's, and made a moue, narrowing his eyes quizzically as he peered up from under his level grey eyebrows. ”

“ Think how we've always called on Algy?"
"I suppose," said Maud to this reflectively, as she stood at the washstand rinsing her hands of their paint stains, "we're all fools to some other intelligence. Algy's seemed slower than the rest of us. And now I want to read you a note from Mr. Welling showing where he puts me. As I just said, meaning [222] myself as well as Algy, we're all fools to some other intelligence. Of course, Mr. Welling is older and has had college and has been about, but still it's trying. ”

“ I wonder what you will do, Algy, to deserve fortune?"
"Do you think fortune favours the deserving? They paint her as a woman!" cries Master Algernon, with a saucy grimace.
"Algy, I like you. We are old chums. Have you considered this step? Have you any reasonable prospect of making your way, if you refuse the Bristol man's proposition."
Minnie seldom speaks so earnestly as she is speaking now; still seldomer volunteers any inquiry into other people's affairs. Algernon is sensible of the distinction, and flattered by it. He forthwith proceeds to lay his hopes and plans before her ”