'Quite fairly greasy.'
‘I thought as much’ said the Crumpet. ‘I know the bird. He’s a fellow named Waterbury, a pianist by profession. He’s a sort of pensioner of Freddie’s. Freddie is always slipping him money – her a tanner, there a bob.’
The astonishment of the two Beans deepened.
‘But Freddie’s broke’ said the senior Bean.
‘True’ said the Crumpet. ‘He can ill spare these bobs and tanner, but that old noblesse oblige spirit of his has cropped up again. He feels that he must allow himself to be touched, because this greasy bird has a claim on him. He saved his life!’
The greasy bird saved Freddie’s life?’
‘No, Freddie saved the greasy bird’s life.’
‘Then Freddie ought to be touching the greasy bird.’
‘Not according to the code of the Widgeons.’ The Crumpet sighed. ‘Poor old Freddie – it’s a shame, this constant drain on his meagre resources, after all he’s been through.’
‘What’s he been through?” asked the junior Bean.
‘You would not be far out,’ replied the Crumpet gravely, ‘if you said that had been through the furnace.’
At the time when this story opens (said the Crumpet) Freddie was feeling a bit low. His hart had been broken, and this always pulls him down. He had loved Dahlia Prenderby with every fibre of his being, and she had handed him the horse’s laugh. He was, therefore, as you may suppose, in no mood for social gaiety: and when he got a note from his uncle, old Blicester, asking him to come to lunch at the Ritz, his first impulse was to refuse.
But as Lord Blicester was the source from which proceeded his quarterly allowance, he couldn’t do that, of course. The old boy’s invitations were commands. So he turned up at the eating-house and was sitting in the lobby, thinking long, sad thoughts of Dahlia Prenderby, when his host walked in.
‘Ah, Frederick,’ he said, having eased his topper and umbrella off on to a member of the staff. ‘Glad you were able to come. I want to have serious talk with you. I’ve been thinking a lot about you lately.’
‘Have you, uncle?’ said Freddie, touched.
‘Yes,; said old Blicester. ‘Wondering why you were such a blasted young blot on the escutcheon and trying to figure out some way of stopping you being the world's worst ass and pest. And I think I've found the solution. It would ease the situation very much, in my opinion, if you got married. Don't puff like that. What the devil are you puffing for?'
'I was sighing, uncle.'
'Well, don't. Good God! I thought you'd got asthma. Yes,' said Lord Blicester, 'I believe that if you were married and settled down, things might brighten considerably all round. I've known bigger ... well, no, scarcely that, perhaps.... I've known very nearly as big fools as you improve out of all recognition by marriage. And here is what I wanted to talk to you about. You will, no doubt, have been wondering why I am buying you a lunch in an infernally expensive place like this. I will tell you. My old friend, Lady Pinfold, is joining us in a few minutes with her daughter Dora. I have decided that she is the girl you shall marry. Excellent family, plenty of money of her own, and sense enough for two - which is just the right amount. So mind you make yourself attractive, if that is humanly possible, to Dora Pinfold.'
A weary, mirthless smile twisted Freddie's lips.
'All this -' he began.
'And let me give you a warning. She is not one of your fast modern girls, so bear in mind when conversing with her that you are not in the smoking-room of the Drones Club. Only carefully selected stories, and no limericks whatsoever.'
'All this -' began Freddie again.
'Don't drink anything at lunch. She is strict in her views about that. And, talking of lunch, when the waiter comes round with the menu, don't lose your head. Keep an eye on the prices in the right-hand column,'
'All this,' said Freddie at last, getting a word in, 'is very kind of you, uncle, and I appreciate it. Your intentions are good. But I cannot marry this girl.'
Old Blicester nodded intelligently.
'I see what you mean. You feel it would be a shabby trick to play on any nice girl. True. There is much in what you say. But somebody has got to suffer in this world. You can't make an omelette without breaking eggs. So never mind the ethics of the thing. You go ahead and fascinate her, or I'll... S'h. Here they come.'
He got up and started to stump forward to greet a stout, elderly woman who was navigating through the doorway, and Freddie, following, suddenly halted in his tracks and nearly took a toss. He was looking at the girl floating along in the wake of the stout woman. In a blinding flash of revelation he saw Dahlia Prenderby and all the other girls who had turned him down. Just boyish infatuations, he could see now. This was his soulmate. There was none like her, none. Freddie, as you know, always falls in love at first sight, and he had done so on this occasion, with a wallop.
His knees were wobbling under him as he went in to lunch and he was glad to be able to sit down and take the weight off them.
The girl seemed to like him. Girls always do like Freddie at first. It is when the gruelling test of having him in their hair for several weeks comes that they throw, in the towel. Over the fish and chips he and this Dora Pinfold fraternized like billy-o. True, it was mostly a case of her telling him about her dreams and ideals and him saying ‘Oh, ah' and 'Oh, absolutely,' but that did not alter the fact that the going was good.
So much so that with the cheese Freddie, while not actually pressing her hand, was leaning over towards her at an angle of forty-five and saying why shouldn't they lap up their coffee quick at the conclusion of the meal and go and see a picture or something. And she said she would have loved it, only she had to be in Notting Hill at a quarter to three.
Tm interested in a sort of Mission there,' she said.
'Great Scott!' said Freddie. 'Cocoa and good works, do you mean?'
'Yes. We are giving an entertainment this afternoon, to the mothers.'
Freddie nearly choked over his Camembert. A terrific idea had come to him.
If, he reflected, he was going to meet this girl again only at dinners and dances - the usual social round, I mean to say -all she would ever get to know about him was that he had a good appetite and india-rubber legs. Whereas, if he started frequenting Notting Hill in her company, he would be able to flash his deeper self on her. He could be suave, courteous, the preux chevalier, and shower her with those little attentions which make a girl sit up and say to herself: 'What ho!’
'I say,' he said, 'couldn't I come along?'
'Oh, it would bore you.'
'Not a bit. I could hover round and shove the old dears into their seats and so on. I'm good at that. I've been an usher at dozens of weddings.'
The girl reflected.
'I'll tell you what you can do, if you really want to help,' she said. 'We are a little short of talent. Can you sing?'
'Rather!'
'Then will you sing?' 'Absolutely.'
'That would be awfully kind of you. Any old song will do.'
‘I shall sing,' said Freddie, directing at her a glance which he rather thinks - though he is not sure - made her blush in modest confusion, 'a number entitled, "When the Silver of the Moonlight Meets the Lovelight in Your Eyes".'
So directly lunch was Over, off they popped, old Blicester beaming on Freddie and very nearly slapping him on the back - and no wonder, for his work had unquestionably been good -and as the clocks were striking three-thirty Freddie was up on the platform with the Vicar and a Union Jack behind him, the girl Dora at the piano at his side, and about two hundred Notting Hill mothers in front of him, letting it go like a Crosby.
He was a riot. Those mothers, he tells me, just sat back and ate it up. He did two songs, and they wanted a third. He did a third, and they wanted an encore. He did an encore, and they started whistling through their fingers till he came on and bowed. And when he came on and bowed, they insisted on a speech. And it was at this point, as he himself realizes no
w, that Freddie lost his cool judgement. He allowed himself to be carried away by the intoxication of the moment and went too far.
Briefly, what happened was that in a few cordial words he invited all those present to be his guests at a binge to be held in the Mission hall that day week.
'Mothers,' said Freddie, 'this is on me. I shall expect you to the last mother. And if any mothers here have mothers of their own, I hope they will bring them along. There will be no stint. Buns and cocoa will flow like water. I thank you one and all.'
And it was only when he got home, still blinking from the bright light which he had encountered in the girl Dora's eyes as they met his and still deafened by the rousing cheers which had greeted his remarks, that he remembered that all he had in the world was one pound, three shillings and fourpence.
Well, you can't entertain a multitude of mothers in slap-up style on one pound, three and fourpence, so it was obvious that he would be obliged to get into somebody's ribs for something substantial. And the only person he could think of who was good for the sum he required - twenty quid seemed to him about the figure - was old Blicester.
It would not be an easy touch. He realized that. The third Earl of Blicester was a man who, though well blessed with the world's goods, hated loosening up. Moths had nested in his pocket-book for years and raised large families. However, one of the fundamental facts of life is that you can't pick and choose when you want twenty quid - you have to go to the man who's got twenty quid. So he went round to tackle the old boy.
There was a bit of a lull when he got to the house. Some sort of by-election, it appeared, was pending down at Bottleton in the East End, and Lord Blicester had gone off there to take the chair at a meeting in the Conservative interest. So Freddie had to wait. But eventually he appeared, a bit hoarse from addressing the proletariat but in excellent fettle. He was very bucked at the way Freddie had shaped at the luncheon table.
'You surprised me, my boy,' he said. 'I am really beginning to think that if you continue as you have begun and are careful, when you propose, to do it in a dim light so that she can't get a good look at you, you may win that girl.'
'And you want me to win her, don't you, uncle?'
'I do, indeed.'
'Then will you give me twenty pounds?'
The sunlight died out of Lord Blicester's face.
'Twenty pounds? What do you want twenty pounds for?'
'It is vital that I acquire that sum,' said Freddie, And in a few words he explained that he had pledged himself to lush up the mothers of Notting Hill on buns and cocoa a week from that day, and that if he welshed and failed to come through the girl would never forgive him - and rightly.
Lord Blicester listened with growing gloom. He had set his heart on this union, but the overhead made him quiver. The thought of parting with twenty pounds was like a dagger in his bosom.
'It won't cost twenty pounds.’
'It will.'
'You can do it on much less than that.’
‘I don't see how. There must have been fully two hundred mothers present. They will bring friends and relations. Add gate-crashers, and I can't budget for less than four hundred. At a bob a nob.'
Lord Blicester pshawed. 'Preposterous!' he cried. 'A bob a nob, forsooth! Cocoa's not expensive.'
'But the buns. You are forgetting the buns.’
'Buns aren't expensive, either,'
'Well, how about hard-boiled eggs? Have you reflected, uncle, that there may be hard-boiled eggs?'
'Hard-boiled eggs? Good God, boy, what is this thing you're planning. A Babylonian orgy? There will be no question of hard-boiled eggs.'
'Well, all right. Then let us return to the buns. Allowing twelve per person ...'
'Don't be absurd. Twelve indeed! These are simple, Godfearing English mothers you are entertaining - not tape-worms. I'll give you ten pounds. Ten is ample.'
And nothing that Freddie could say would shake him. It was with a brace of fivers in his pocket that he left the other's presence, and every instinct in him told him that they would not be enough. Fifteen quid, in his opinion, was the irreducible minimum. He made his way to the club in pensive mood, his brain darting this way and that in the hope of scaring up some scheme for adding to his little capital. He was still brooding on a problem which seemed to grow each moment more hopeless of solution, when he entered the smoking-room and found a group of fellows there, gathered about a kid in knickerbockers. And not only were they gathered about this kid - they were practically fawning on him.
This surprised Freddie. He knew that a chap has to have something outstanding about him to be fawned upon at the Drones, and nothing in this child's appearance suggested that he was in any way exceptional. The only outstanding thing about him was his ears.
'What's all this?' he asked of Catsmeat Potter-Pirbright, who was hovering on the outskirts of the group.
.'It's Barmy Phipps's cousin Egbert from Harrow,' said Cats-meat. 'Most remarkable chap. You see that catapult he's showing those birds. Well, he puts a Brazil nut in it and whangs off at things and hits them every time. It's a great gift, and you might think it would make him conceited. But no, success has not spoiled him. He is still quite simple and unaffected. Would you like his autograph?'
Freddie frankly did not believe the story. The whole nature of a Brazil nut, it being nobbly and of a rummy semicircular shape, unfits it to act as a projectile. The thing, he felt, might be just barely credible, perhaps, of one who was receiving his education at Eton, but Catsmeat had specifically stated that this lad was at Harrow, and his reason revolted at the idea of a Harrovian being capable of such a feat.
'What rot,' he said.
'It isn't rot,' said Catsmeat Potter-Pirbright, stung. 'Only just now he picked off a passing errand-boy as clean as a whistle.’ 'Pure fluke.'
'Well, what'll you bet he can't do it again?'
A thrill ran through Freddie. He had found the way.
'A fiver!' he cried.
Well, of course, Catsmeat hadn't got a fiver, but he swiftly formed a syndicate to cover Freddie's money, and the stakes Were deposited with the chap behind the bar and a Brazil nut provided for the boy Egbert at the club's expense. And it was as he fitted nut to elastic that Catsmeat Potter-Pirbright said, 'Look.'
'Look,' said Catsmeat Potter-Pirbright. 'There's a taxi just drawing up with a stout buffer in it Will you make this stout buffer the test? Will you bet that Egbert here doesn't knock off his topper as he pays the cabby'''
'Certainly!’ -aid Freddie.
The cab stopped. The buffer alighted, his top hat gleaming in the sunshine. The child Egbert with incredible nonchalance drew his bead. The Brazil nut sang through the air. And the next moment Freddie was staggering back with his hands to his eyes, a broken man. For the hat, struck squarely abaft the binnacle, had leaped heavenwards and he was down five quid.
And the worst was yet to come. About a minute later he was informed that Lord Blicester had called to see him. He went to the small smoking-room and found his uncle standing on the hearth-rug. He was staring in a puzzled sort of way at a battered top hat which he held in his hand.
'Most extraordinary thing,' he said. 'As I was getting out of my cab just now, something suddenly came whizzing out of the void and knocked my hat off. I think it must have been a small meteor. I am going to write to The Times about it. But never mind that. What I came for was to get fifty shillings from you.'
Freddie had already tottered on discovering that it was old Blicester who had been the victim of the boy Egbert's uncanny skill. These words made him totter again. That his uncle should be touching him instead of him touching his uncle gave him a sort of goose-fleshy feeling as if he were rubbing velvet the wrong way.
'Fifty shillings?' he bleated.
'Two pounds ten,' said old Blicester, making it clear to the meanest intelligence. 'After you left me, I was dissatisfied with your figures, so I went and consulted my cook, a most capable woman, as to the market price of buns and
cocoa, and what she told me convinces me that you can do the whole thing comfortably on seven pounds ten. So I hurried here to recover the fifty shillings which I overpaid you. I can give you change.'
Five minutes later, Freddie was at a writing-table with pen and paper, trying to work out how he stood. Of his original capital, two pounds ten shillings remained. According to his uncle, who had it straight from the cook's mouth, buns and cocoa could be provided for four hundred at a little over four-pence a head. It seemed incredible, but he knew that his uncle's cook, a level-headed woman named Bessemer, was to be trusted implicitly on points of this kind. No doubt the explanation was that a considerable reduction was given for quantity. When you buy your buns by the ton, you get them cheaper.
Very well then. The deficit to be made up appeared still to ' be five pounds. And where he was to get it was more than he could say. He couldn't very well go back to old Blicester and ask for a further donation, giving as his reason the fact that he had lost a fiver betting that a kid with wind-jammer ears wouldn't knock his, old Blicester's, hat off with a Brazil nut.
Then what to do? It was all pretty complex, and I am not surprised that for the next two or three days Freddie was at a, loss.
During these days he continued to haunt Notting Hill. But though he was constantly in the society of the girl Dora, and though he was treated on all sides as the young Lord Bountiful, he could not bring himself to buck up and be fizzy. Wherever he went, the talk was all of this forthcoming beano of his, and it filled him with a haunting dread. Notting Hill was plainly planning to go for the buns and cocoa in a big way, and who - this was what he asked himself - who was going to foot the bill?
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