Four Days' Wonder

by A. A. Milne

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And what,’ said Archibald sarcastically, ‘is this so-called Miss Fenton who now calls herself Nurse Benton doing here?’

  ‘You mean what is this so-called Nurse Benton who you thought called herself Miss Fenton doing here?’

  ‘What’s she doing here?’ shouted Archibald.

  ‘Steady, old boy. Not with a head-wound. Miss Benton particularly warned me——’

  ‘Who is she? What’s she doing here?’

  ‘But why shouldn’t she be here? You remember Molly Bassett, don’t you? The red-haired one who married John Benton from Five Ashes? Well, John Benton has a sister, and this sister——’

  ‘Oh!’

  ‘Exactly. And what happens?’ said Derek reproachfully. ‘You make advances to her.’

  Archibald was silent, thinking.

  ‘Don’t think too hard,’ said Derek anxiously, ‘because of what I said just now about head-wounds.’

  ‘I don’t care who she is,’ announced Archibald. ‘She said she was your sister.’

  ‘Not mine. Benton’s.’

  ‘Yours, damn you!’

  ‘I knew a man, an accountant by profession, who had a nasty head-accident in Piccadilly, and when he came round, and they asked him how it had happened, he said that his sister had pushed him off the rocking-horse. It seems that in these cases one’s memory often goes back to the last time one has fallen on one’s head, and naturally——’

  ‘Oh, damn you, shut up.’

  ‘Right. Take it easy, that’s the way. Do you mind if I smoke?’

  ‘I don’t care what you do.’

  ‘That’s right. Just lie there quietly, and don’t bother about me.’

  Archibald Fenton lay there quietly, but he was not taking it easy. He was thinking. Could he have got it muddled? The whole business had been so sudden, so surprising, so confusing that it was difficult to be certain of anything. And then with a nasty head-wound like this— and feeling rather sick——

  ‘Ah!’ said Archibald triumphantly. Now it had all come back to him.

  ‘What?’

  ‘That woman at the post office said she was your sister!’

  Derek shook his head.

  ‘I have no relations in the post office,’ he said simply. ‘I have’, he added, hoping to strike some chord of memory, ‘a brother in Bloomsbury. A novelist.’

  ‘You fool, I don’t mean she said she was your sister, I mean she said Miss Fenton was your sister.’

  ‘It is true’, admitted Derek, ‘that, if I had a sister, she would be Miss Fenton. Undoubtedly. But I haven’t. We haven’t. Don’t you remember how you used to say to me with tears in your eyes: “Oh, if only I had a little sister!” and I used to say: “But you’ve always got me, Hippo,” and you used to say——’

  ‘My God!’ said Archibald Fenton.

  ‘Well, not quite that, but something like it.’

  ‘I’ve had enough of this. I’m going.’ He took his legs off the sofa, and tried to stand up.

  ‘Steady,’ said his brother, hurrying to his help. ‘Just sit like that for a moment. That’s right.’

  ‘I say,’ said Archibald, a little frightened suddenly, ‘I say, how bad am I? I feel pretty rotten. Oughtn’t I to see a doctor?’

  ‘Honestly, if you go to bed as soon as you get home, and keep that bandage on till tomorrow, you’ll be all right. You can let your housekeeper have a look at it in the morning. Miss Benton has taken every precaution, I assure you.’

  ‘If she’d taken the elementary precaution of keeping her finger off the trigger——’

  ‘I thought I’d explained that. You see, you made advances to her——’

  ‘Ordinary people don’t get shot just because they ask a pretty girl who says she’s their sister to give them a kiss.’

  ‘Ah, but then you’re not an ordinary person, my dear Archie. But listen. That’s what I want to talk to you about. You don’t want to tell your housekeeper that you tried to assault a complete stranger, and got shot for it——’

  ‘I tell you I didn’t. I mean I didn’t try——’

  ‘And Miss Benton naturally doesn’t want to get into trouble for shooting you. So what about all of us agreeing that you had a nasty motor accident on the way here to see me, and —and so on?’ He made a circle in the air with his pipe to indicate the subsequent course of the story.

  ‘She ought to be prosecuted.’

  ‘Yes, but the Jury might think that you ought to have been shot.’

  Mr. Fenton considered. Nobody took a more broad-minded view of publicity than he, and he had often thought that to be mixed up in a murder which one hadn’t committed might be extremely good for trade, if one’s publishers handled the affair properly; but this was not so good. In a sense not dignified. And only Heaven knew what lies Derek and this girl would tell in the witness-box.

  ‘Oh, all right,’ he said.

  ‘Good. I’m sure you’re wise. And now, how about getting home? Shall I drive you? You’re a bit shaky still, I expect. It would hardly be safe——’

  ‘Oh—thanks,’ said Mr. Fenton grudgingly.

  ‘Come on, then. And I’ll bring your car over in the morning. Put your arm round my shoulder.’

  Lovingly the two brothers walked to the door, and out. Tenderly Derek helped the wounded man into the car.

  ‘All right? Good.’ He climbed in and started the engine. ‘Now then,’ he said, as he rocked into the mainroad, ‘we must think of an accident for you. What sort of accident would you like?’

  Chapter Fifteen

  Mixed Emotions in Kent

  I

  Jenny thought, going up to her room: How lovely to have Derek to leave everything to. I’m glad that horrid man isn’t dead. Of course there’s no reason why brothers should be alike, really. And then she remembered something which her fourth governess had told her, which was that every seven years you became a completely different person, all your skin and everything was different; so that, as Derek was at least ten years younger than his brother, it really meant that they had had quite different fathers and mothers, so that there was no danger that when Derek got older, he would get at all like Archibald Fenton, because in a kind of way they really belonged to different families. Besides, look at Nelson and Shakespeare and Joan of Arc, who can’t have been a bit like their relations, and look at Aunt Caroline and Aunt Jane, well you couldn’t have more unlike people than Aunt Caroline and Aunt Jane, and they were sisters—well, that really did show . . .

  She sat down on her bed, dropping her parcels around her; and then, remembering, but without any conscious effort of memory, Aunt Caroline’s disapproval of this as being in some way slovenly, and in any case bad for the bed, she took the papers over to the little table in the window, and sat down there. Should she read the papers first, or Nancy’s letter?

  Before she could decide, she found herself thinking again: Fatness. Of course, fatness is quite different from character. Fatness does go in families. And looking at Nelson and Here-ward the Wake and Garibaldi isn’t really any good, unless you know for certain that their brothers weren’t fat. And then she thought suddenly that of course all fatness can’t be descended, because somebody must have started it some time, and perhaps Archibald Fenton was the one who was starting it in the Fenton family. Which would be quite all right, because then it needn’t have anything to do with Derek at all . . .

  Absurdly happy now, she felt that no luxury of happiness must be missing. Little idiot so nearly to have forgotten! She flashed across to the bed and tore open the parcels. Oh, Derek! Then, holding Nancy’s letter in the left hand, and feeling absently for cherries with the right, she got into touch again with London . . .

  But at first she didn’t seem to be quite in touch. Who were the ‘two new exhibits’ who had joined the ‘menagerie’?
Who was Bertha Holloway? ‘Did you see her that time you came?’ Which time? Jenny wrinkled her forehead, and went on reading, but now a little doubtfully. What had happened to Nancy? ‘The Jenny the police are looking for is not her illegitimate daughter.’ Well, of course she wasn’t. How could Nancy possibly—— She took another cherry, and read again: ‘The Jenny the police are looking for.’ Then the police were looking for her. She thought: I’m glad to know that. I’m glad Nancy told me that. That’s really what I wanted to know. That and the clothes. She looked down the page and saw the word ‘georgette’. Ah! She read on very quickly, in case Nancy had minded about the clothes . . . Nancy hadn’t . . . She read very slowly . . .

  Now she understood. How clever of Nancy to have written like that. A thought leapt into her mind, and was followed in a flash by another, and the two thoughts, as it were, faced each other challengingly, and then turned their backs on each other and slunk away, refusing the combat.

  How lovely if Nancy and she——

  Derek and Nancy . . . and she.

  Jenny sighed and stood up, and went round the table so as to lean out of the window; and she leant out of the window, her chin in her hands, and thought: How everything changes. Where shall I be when autumn comes? I wish I could die now, while everything is so beautiful.

  I suppose he’ll never see that green georgette now. It’s funny how nothing is ever the same as anything else, but only better or worse. I wonder where I shall be in ten years’ time. I think dark people are prettier, really. Then she came away from the window, and suddenly a headline from one of the papers screamed at her ‘WHERE IS JENNY?’ Little idiot, she thought, why, I’d forgotten all about the papers. She snatched eagerly at one of them, and began to read . . .

  Oh, dear!

  Oh, Derek!

  Oh, how awful!

  Now she read Nancy’s letter again; and, reading it now, she could translate it into all that Nancy had not said. But Nancy’s letter was written on Tuesday evening. It was old news by now. She went back to the papers and read them slowly . . .

  ‘Renton Frers in shose.’ Now who could have known that? Because she’d always got her shoes at Winthrops, until the other day, when she had found herself looking in at Renton’s window and remembering what that girl at Norah’s had said. About being the best place for shoes. Of course they would know at home, but then, why send a letter-card——

  Silly! Why, of course it was Nancy, who had the shoes in her flat now. But why? Oh, I see, said Jenny, nodding to herself, it’s so as Uncle Hubert shouldn’t be anxious. How funny that Nancy and she should both think of that at the same time.

  No, not funny. Weren’t they Gloria and Acetylene, and didn’t they always think of things at the same time? Like that day when they were driving the French out of the Peninsula, and they both thought of sending a message by the other to Wellington, saying that the Portuguese weren’t feeling very well on the right, and could he reinforce them strongly . . .

  She used to leave a twig about, and Nancy used to leave her tammy. Or any sort of cap. A cherry-stalk would make a good twig. Jenny put another cherry in her mouth, and thought: I don’t believe we ever used cherry-stalks. I wonder why not. Nancy made a paper cap once . . . and we had that pistol-cap . . . and . . .

  Jenny stopped a cherry half-way to her mouth, and stared down at the table. On the outside of the Daily Mail somebody had drawn a cap— in just the way Nancy always used to draw a cap when she was signing a document secretly so that only Wellington knew. Could I have drawn it myself, wondered Jenny, without knowing? She looked at the table, shook the papers and looked beneath them, but there was no pencil there which she might have picked up unthinking. Then Derek must have drawn it.

  It was funny that Derek and Nancy should draw caps in exactly the same way. Perhaps they did a lot of things in exactly the same way. Perhaps they were sort of made for each other. I suppose, she thought, dark people are prettier, I mean really.

  She got up and looked at herself in the wardrobe glass.

  She thought: Of course my hair is awful like this. It isn’t fair. I mean (and she smiled at her reflection, because she was making a kind of joke) it isn’t fair anybody seeing me like this. I’m quite different really. Even the photographs in the papers look more like me—— She felt suddenly that she must look at all the photographs again, because she wasn’t so very hideous in some of them, and it was sort of helping her to escape if she looked at the photographs again, to make quite sure that she had disguised herself properly . . .

  Another cap! And in the same paper, and on the ‘Where is Jenny?’ page! It must mean something! Eagerly she rustled through the other pages . . . and there in the margin among the advertisements she found the message.

  MTASK2 2RTLEOTF6EELITHONS5BEYOROO

  45EULICD33LEITMO5QANW6EAACHWMFYAP

  Nancy! Nancy!

  Now how did one uncipher it? She hardly dared to begin. If she began and then couldn’t do it! If she tried to remember and found she had forgotten! She walked up and down the room saying to herself: ‘I can do it, I know I can do it. As soon as I begin to think, I know I shall remember it. There’s nothing to be afraid of, because I haven’t begun yet.’ But dared she begin? If she looked in her mind and found nothing there! Voices and the noise of a starting car came through the window. She peeped out. There they go, she thought. He’s alive, and Derek’s driving him home, so it’s all right. Now if only I can do this—— Oh, Nancy! Oh, darling! You remembered, so surely I can! I’m not thinking yet, I’m not trying to think. I’m just going to have one of those chocolates first . . . and I’ve got a clean handkerchief still, so I’ll just try the eau-de-Cologne . . . Lovely . . . Now where’s a pencil (I’m not thinking yet), I know I saw one —oh, there it is, and paper and everything. Now then. Now I’m going to begin to think. Oh, please let me do it. Now then . . .

  AM AT CASTLE HOTEL WITH MONEY FOR YOU ALICE PITMAN

  II

  Derek and Archibald had little to say to each other on the way to Ferries. Derek was wondering what was to be done about Jenny. Archibald was telling himself for the hundredth time that all relations were a curse.

  This business about brothers. All wrong. Look at the animals. Mother-love, yes. The tiger defending her cubs—charming. Love between the sexes, by all means. Two turtle-doves on a spring day, two—well, two anything on a spring day. Nobody could object to love between the sexes. It was natural . . . so long as one didn’t clutter it up with ecclesiastical tradition. But whoever heard of two rabbits from the same litter being expected to keep in touch with each other through all the exigences of a rabbit’s career, or two frogs assuming a friendliness which they did not feel, simply because they had been eggs in the same spawn. Ridiculous.

  ‘Let brotherly love continue.’ But why should it ever have begun? He hadn’t chosen Derek; he hadn’t wanted him. From their very first meeting Derek had had an offensive way of looking at him, and as soon as the kid had had any eyebrows to raise, it had started raising them. And now that one of them was a famous man and the other one wasn’t, what happened? Derek still went on raising ironical eyebrows . . .

  Cousins, brothers-in-law, aunts—— God, what a crowd. All trying to borrow money or asking him to use his influence. At least there was this to be said for Derek: he had never tried to borrow money . . .

  The thought flashed into Archibald’s mind and was hurried out again, that really the most offensive thing about Derek was that he had never tried to borrow money . . .

  ‘Here we are,’ said his brother suddenly, ‘actually turning into carriage-sweep, and still no story for your housekeeper. What do we say?’

  ‘I expect I shall think of something,’ said Archibald stiffly.

  ‘Well, but——’

  ‘I must really remind you, my dear Derek, that for twenty years I have been earning my living by making up stories, and I am quite c
apable of making up one for Mrs. Pridgeon now.’

  ‘You don’t want a collaborator?’

  ‘Frankly, no.’

  ‘Right. Well, what is the story?’

  ‘As I say, I expect I shall think of something.’

  ‘Just as you like, Hippo. But don’t look to me for corroborative detail on the spur of the moment, if you leave me in the dark like this.’

  ‘I don’t see——’

  ‘I haven’t your quickness of invention, and it makes all the difference to me to know beforehand whether we are talking about a bicycle accident or about something with a traction-engine in it. When Mrs. Pridgeon——’

  ‘There is really no need for you to see Mrs. Pridgeon.’

  ‘Not when you ring for drinks?’

  ‘Oh! . . . Do you want a drink?’

  ‘Obviously not now. No.’

  ‘You can have one if you like,’ said Archibald grudgingly.

  ‘No thanks, I’m a teetotaller.’

  ‘If you think I’m going back on what we agreed——’

  ‘That’s just the trouble, we haven’t agreed.’

  ‘We agreed to pretend that I had had an accident, and we agreed not to say anything about the deliberate attempt at murder——’

  ‘No, I don’t think we had better say anything about that.’

  ‘Well, I have given my word not to, and that’s really all that concerns you. There’s no need for you to hang about in order to see if I keep my word.’

  ‘Right. Then all I say to anybody is that you were driving over to see me, and had a bit of a smash, and that we tied you up, and helped you home?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘Good. Then I have a free hand as to how much I smash up your car?’

  ‘What’s that?’ said Archibald.

  ‘Quite rightly in the case of a head-wound, you are exerting your brain as little as possible. But you do see, don’t you, that if one has a bit of a smash when driving a car, both the driver and the car have the bit of a smash.’

  ‘Oh!’ said Archibald.