‘I say,’ he said, ‘don’t think I’m raising any objections or anything of that sort, because I’m not. I am heart and soul in this scheme of giving me a mille. But it’s an awful lot, isn’t it? I don’t mind telling you that what I had been sketching out as more or less the sum that was going to change hands was something in the nature of fifty francs.’
Freddie was a bit surprised too. He couldn’t make this out.
‘But you said you had to have a mille.’
‘And a meal is just what I’m going to have,’ replied the chap, enthusiastically. ‘I haven’t had a bite to eat since breakfast.’
Freddie was stunned. He isn’t what you would call a quick thinker, but he was beginning to see that there had been a confusion of ideas.
‘Do you mean to tell me,’ he cried, ‘that when you said a mille what you meant was a meal?’
‘I don’t suppose anyone ever meant a meal more,’ said the chap. He stood awhile in thought. ‘Hors d’œuvres, I think, to start with,’ he went on, passing his tongue meditatively over his lips. ‘Then perhaps a touch of clear soup, followed by some fish of the country and a good steak minute with fried potatoes and a salad. Cheese, of course, and the usual etceteras, and then coffee, liqueur, and a cigar to wind up with. Yes, you may certainly take it as official that I intend to have a meal. Ah, yes, and I was forgetting. A bot. of some nice, dry wine to wash things down. Yes, yes, yes, to be sure. You see this stomach?’ he said, patting it. ‘Here stands a stomach that is scheduled in about a quarter of an hour to get the surprise of its young life.’
Freddie saw it all now, and the irony of the situation seemed to hit him like a bit of lead-piping on the base of the skull. Just because of this footling business of having words in one language which meant something quite different in another language – a thing which could so easily have been prevented by the responsible heads of the French and English nations getting together across a round table and coming to some sensible arrangement – here he was deeper in the soup than he had ever been in the whole course of his career.
He tells me he chafed, and I don’t blame him. Anybody would have chafed in the circs. For about half a minute he had half a mind to leap at the chap and wrench the mille out of him and substitute for it the fifty francs which he had been anticipating.
Then the old noblesse oblige spirit awoke once more. He might be in the soup, he might be a financial wreck, he might be faced with a tête-à-tête with his uncle, Lord Blicester, in the course of which the testy old man would in all probability endeavour to bite a piece out of the fleshy part of his leg, but at least he had done the fine, square thing. He had not let down a fellow who had admired him at school.
The chap had begun to speak again. At first, all he said was a brief word or two revising that passage in his previous address which had dealt with steak minute. A steak minute, he told Freddie, had among its obvious merits one fault – to wit, that it was not as filling as it might be. A more prudent move, he considered, and he called on Freddie to endorse this view, would be a couple of chump chops. Then he turned from that subject.
‘Well, it was certainly a bit of luck running into you, Postlethwaite,’ he said.
Freddie was a trifle stymied.
‘Postlethwaite?’ he said. ‘How do you mean, Postlethwaite?’
The chap seemed surprised.
‘How do you mean, how do I mean Postlethwaite?’
‘I mean, why Postlethwaite? How has this Postlethwaite stuff crept in?’
‘But, Postlethwaite, your name’s Postlethwaite.’
‘My name’s Widgeon.’
‘Widgeon?’
‘Widgeon.’
‘Not Postlethwaite?’
‘Certainly not.’
The chap uttered an indulgent laugh.
‘Ha, ha. Still the same old jovial, merry, kidding Postlethwaite, I see.’
‘I’m not the same old jovial, merry, kidding Postlethwaite,’ said Freddie, with heat. ‘I never was the jovial, merry, kidding Postlethwaite.’
The chap stared.
‘You aren’t the Postlethwaite I used to admire so much at dear old Bingleton?’
‘I’ve never been near dear old Bingleton in my life.’
‘But you’re wearing an Old Bingletonian tie.’
Freddie reeled.
‘Is this beastly thing an Old Bingletonian tie? It’s one I sneaked from my uncle.’
The chap laughed heartily.
‘Well, of all the absurd mix-ups! You look like Postlethwaite and you’re wearing an O.B. tie. Naturally, I thought you were Postlethwaite. And all the time we were thinking of a couple of other fellows! Well, well, well! However, it’s all worked out for the best, what? Goodbye,’ he added hastily, and was round the corner like a streak.
Freddie looked after him dully. He was totting up in his mind the final returns. On the debit side, he had lost Drusilla whatever-her-name-was. He had alienated his uncle, old Blicester. He was down a tenner. And, scaliest thought of all, he hadn’t been anybody’s hero at school. On the credit side, he had fifty francs.
At the Palm Beach Casino at Cannes you can get five Martini cocktails for fifty francs. Freddie went and had them.
Then, wiping his lips with the napkin provided by the management, he strode from the bar to face the hopeless dawn.
8 UNCLE FRED FLITS BY
IN ORDER THAT they might enjoy their afternoon luncheon coffee in peace, the Crumpet had taken the guest whom he was entertaining at the Drones Club to the smaller and less frequented of the two smoking-rooms. In the other, he explained, though the conversation always touched an exceptionally high level of brilliance, there was apt to be a good deal of sugar thrown about.
The guest said he understood.
‘Young blood, eh?’
‘That’s right. Young blood.’
‘And animal spirits.’
‘And animal, as you say, spirits,’ agreed the Crumpet. ‘We get a fairish amount of those here.’
‘The complaint, however, is not, I observe, universal.’
‘Eh?’
The other drew his host’s attention to the doorway, where a young man in form-fitting tweeds had just appeared. The aspect of this young man was haggard. His eyes glared wildly and he sucked at an empty cigarette-holder. If he had a mind, there was something on it. When the Crumpet called to him to come and join the party, he merely shook his head in a distraught sort of way and disappeared, looking like a character out of a Greek tragedy pursued by the Fates.
The Crumpet sighed. ‘Poor old Pongo!’
‘Pongo?’
‘That was Pongo Twistleton. He’s all broken up about his Uncle Fred.’
‘Dead?’
‘No such luck. Coming up to London again tomorrow. Pongo had a wire this morning.’
‘And that upsets him?’
‘Naturally. After what happened last time.’
‘What was that?’
‘Ah!’ said the Crumpet.
‘What happened last time?’
‘You may well ask.’
‘I do ask.’
‘Ah!’ said the Crumpet.
Poor old Pongo (said the Crumpet) has often discussed his Uncle Fred with me, and if there weren’t tears in his eyes when he did so, I don’t know a tear in the eye when I see one. In round numbers the Earl of Ickenham, of Ickenham Hall, Ickenham, Hants, he lives in the country most of the year, but from time to time has a nasty way of slipping his collar and getting loose and descending upon Pongo at his flat in the Albany. And every time he does so, the unhappy young blighter is subjected to some soul-testing experience. Because the trouble with this uncle is that, though sixty if a day, he becomes on arriving in the metropolis as young as he feels – which is, apparently, a youngish twenty-two. I don’t know if you happen to know what the word ‘excesses’ means, but those are what Pongo’s Uncle Fred from the country, when in London, invariably commits.
It wouldn’t so much matter, mind you, if
he would confine his activities to the club premises. We’re pretty broad-minded here, and if you stop short of smashing the piano, there isn’t much that you can do at the Drones that will cause the raised eyebrow and the sharp intake of breath. The snag is that he will insist on lugging Pongo out in the open and there, right in the public eye, proceeding to step high, wide and plentiful.
So when, on the occasion to which I allude, he stood pink and genial on Pongo’s hearth-rug, bulging with Pongo’s lunch and wreathed in the smoke of one of Pongo’s cigars, and said: ‘And now, my boy, for a pleasant and instructive afternoon,’ you will readily understand why the unfortunate young clam gazed at him as he would have gazed at two-penn’orth of dynamite, had he discovered it lighting up in his presence.
‘A what?’ he said, giving at the knees and paling beneath the tan a bit.
‘A pleasant and instructive afternoon,’ repeated Lord Ickenham, rolling the words round his tongue. ‘I propose that you place yourself in my hands and leave the programme entirely to me.’
Now, owing to Pongo’s circumstances being such as to necessitate his getting into the aged relative’s ribs at intervals and shaking him down for an occasional much-needed tenner or what not, he isn’t in a position to use the iron hand with the old buster. But at these words he displayed a manly firmness.
‘You aren’t going to get me to the dog races again.’
‘No, no.’
‘You remember what happened last June.’
‘Quite,’ said Lord Ickenham, ‘quite. Though I still think that a wiser magistrate would have been content with a mere reprimand.’
‘And I won’t—’
‘Certainly not. Nothing of that kind at all. What I propose to do this afternoon is to take you to visit the home of your ancestors.’
Pongo did not get this.
‘I thought Ickenham was the home of my ancestors.’
‘It is one of the homes of your ancestors. They also resided rather nearer the heart of things, at a place called Mitching Hill.’
‘Down in the suburbs, do you mean?’
‘The neighbourhood is now suburban, true. It is many years since the meadows where I sported as a child were sold and cut up into building lots. But when I was a boy Mitching Hill was open country. It was a vast, rolling estate belonging to your great-uncle, Marmaduke, a man with whiskers of a nature which you with your pure mind would scarcely credit, and I have long felt a sentimental urge to see what the hell the old place looks like now. Perfectly foul, I expect. Still, I think we should make the pious pilgrimage.’
Pongo absolutely-ed heartily. He was all for the scheme. A great weight seemed to have rolled off his mind. The way he looked at it was that even an uncle within a short jump of the loony bin couldn’t very well get into much trouble in a suburb. I mean, you know what suburbs are. They don’t, as it were, offer the scope. One follows his reasoning, of course.
‘Fine!’ he said. ‘Splendid! Topping!’
‘Then put on your hat and rompers, my boy,’ said Lord Ickenham, ‘and let us be off. I fancy one gets there by omnibuses and things.’
Well, Pongo hadn’t expected much in the way of mental uplift from the sight of Mitching Hill, and he didn’t get it. Alighting from the bus, he tells me, you found yourself in the middle of rows and rows of semi-detached villas, all looking exactly alike, and you went on and you came to more semi-detached villas, and those all looked exactly alike, too. Nevertheless, he did not repine. It was one of those early spring days which suddenly change to mid-winter and he had come out without his overcoat, and it looked like rain and he hadn’t an umbrella, but despite this his mood was one of sober ecstasy. The hours were passing and his uncle had not yet made a goat of himself. At the Dog Races the other had been in the hands of the constabulary in the first ten minutes.
It began to seem to Pongo that with any luck he might be able to keep the old blister pottering harmlessly about here till nightfall, when he could shoot a bit of dinner into him and put him to bed. And as Lord Ickenham had specifically stated that his wife, Pongo’s Aunt Jane, had expressed her intention of scalping him with a blunt knife if he wasn’t back at the Hall by lunchtime on the morrow, it really looked as if he might get through this visit without perpetrating a single major outrage on the public weal. It is rather interesting to note that as he thought this Pongo smiled, because it was the last time he smiled that day.
All this while, I should mention, Lord Ickenham had been stopping at intervals like a pointing dog and saying that it must have been just about here that he plugged the gardener in the trousers seat with his bow and arrow and that over there he had been sick after his first cigar, and he now paused in front of a villa which for some unknown reason called itself The Cedars. His face was tender and wistful.
‘On this very spot, if I am not mistaken,’ he said, heaving a bit of a sigh, ‘on this very spot, fifty years ago come Lammas Eve, I . . . Oh, blast it!’
The concluding remark had been caused by the fact that the rain, which had held off until now, suddenly began to buzz down like a shower-bath. With no further words, they leaped into the porch of the villa and there took shelter, exchanging glances with a grey parrot which hung in a cage in the window.
Not that you could really call it shelter. They were protected from above all right, but the moisture was now falling with a sort of swivel action, whipping in through the sides of the porch and tickling them up properly. And it was just after Pongo had turned up his collar and was huddling against the door that the door gave way. From the fact that a female of general-servant aspect was standing there he gathered that his uncle must have rung the bell.
This female wore a long mackintosh, and Lord Ickenham beamed upon her with a fairish spot of suavity.
‘Good afternoon,’ he said.
The female said good afternoon.
‘The Cedars?’
The female said yes, it was The Cedars.
‘Are the old folks at home?’
The female said there was nobody at home.
‘Ah? Well, never mind. I have come,’ said Lord Ickenham, edging in, ‘to clip the parrot’s claws. My assistant, Mr Walkinshaw, who applies the anaesthetic,’ he added, indicating Pongo with a gesture.
‘Are you from the bird shop?’
‘A very happy guess.’
‘Nobody told me you were coming.’
‘They keep things from you, do they?’ said Lord Ickenham, sympathetically. ‘Too bad.’
Continuing to edge, he had got into the parlour by now, Pongo following in a sort of dream and the female following Pongo.
‘Well, I suppose it’s all right,’ she said. ‘I was just going out. It’s my afternoon.’
‘Go out,’ said Lord Ickenham cordially. ‘By all means go out. We will leave everything in order.’
And presently the female, though still a bit on the dubious side, pushed off, and Lord Ickenham lit the gas-fire and drew a chair up.
‘So here we are, my boy,’ he said. ‘A little tact, a little address, and here we are, snug and cosy and not catching our deaths of cold. You’ll never go far wrong if you leave things to me.’
‘But, dash it, we can’t stop here,’ said Pongo.
Lord Ickenham raised his eyebrows.
‘Not stop here? Are you suggesting that we go out into that rain? My dear lad, you are not aware of the grave issues involved. This morning, as I was leaving home, I had a rather painful disagreement with your aunt. She said the weather was treacherous and wished me to take my woolly muffler. I replied that the weather was not treacherous and that I would be dashed if I took my woolly muffler. Eventually, by the exercise of an iron will, I had my way, and I ask you, my dear boy, to envisage what will happen if I return with a cold in the head. I shall sink to the level of a fifth-class power. Next time I came to London, it would be with a liver pad and a respirator. No! I shall remain here, toasting my toes at this really excellent fire. I had no idea that a gas-fire radiated such warmt
h. I feel all in a glow.’
So did Pongo. His brow was wet with honest sweat. He is reading for the Bar, and while he would be the first to admit that he hasn’t yet got a complete toe-hold on the Law of Great Britain he had a sort of notion that oiling into a perfect stranger’s semi-detached villa on the pretext of pruning the parrot was a tort or misdemeanour, if not actual barratry or soccage in fief or something like that. And apart from the legal aspect of the matter there was the embarrassment of the thing. Nobody is more of a whale on correctness and not doing what’s not done than Pongo, and the situation in which he now found himself caused him to chew the lower lip and, as I say, perspire a goodish deal.
‘But suppose the blighter who owns this ghastly house comes back?’ he asked. ‘Talking of envisaging things, try that one over on your pianola.’
And, sure enough, as he spoke, the front door bell rang.
‘There!’ said Pongo.
‘Don’t say “There!” my boy,’ said Lord Ickenham reprovingly. ‘It’s the sort of thing your aunt says. I see no reason for alarm. Obviously this is some casual caller. A ratepayer would have used his latchkey. Glance cautiously out of the window and see if you can see anybody.’
‘It’s a pink chap,’ said Pongo, having done so.
‘How pink?’
‘Pretty pink.’
‘Well, there you are, then. I told you so. It can’t be the big chief. The sort of fellows who own houses like this are pale and sallow, owing to working in offices all day. Go and see what he wants.’
‘You go and see what he wants.’
‘We’ll both go and see what he wants,’ said Lord Ickenham.
So they went and opened the front door, and there, as Pongo had said, was a pink chap. A small young pink chap, a bit moist about the shoulder-blades.
‘Pardon me,’ said this pink chap, ‘is Mr Roddis in?’
‘No,’ said Pongo.
‘Yes,’ said Lord Ickenham. ‘Don’t be silly, Douglas – of course I’m in. I am Mr Roddis,’ he said to the pink chap. ‘This, such as he is, is my son Douglas. And you?’
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