Young Men in Spats Page 13

  ‘I shall go for a brisk walk, Gascoigne.’

  ‘Very good, m’lord.’

  ‘You’re sure you saw nothing?’

  ‘Quite sure, m’lord.’

  ‘Not the late Adolphus Stiffham?’

  ‘No, m’lord.’

  The door closed behind old Wivelscombe, and Stiffy crawled out.

  ‘Good morning, Gascoigne.’

  ‘Good morning, sir.’

  ‘I expect I gave you a start, Gascoigne?’

  ‘I must confess to a momentary sensation of surprise, sir. I had supposed that you were in the United States of Northern America.’

  ‘It’s a long story,’ said Stiffy, ‘but the nub of it is that I must see Lady Geraldine immediately. Is she in her room?’

  ‘I cannot speak from first-hand observation, sir, but I am inclined to fancy that her ladyship has not yet descended. Would you desire me to announce you, sir?’

  ‘No, thanks. I’ll find my way up.’

  So up Stiffy buzzed, and presently he was sitting on Geraldine’s bed, gazing into her eyes and holding her little hand in his. The exact words of their conversation Stiffy did not reveal to me, but no doubt he opened with a brief explanation of his presence and then they spoke of those things which young lovers do speak about when they get together for a chat after long separation. At any rate, he tells me that they were more or less absorbed when the door handle rattled. He had just time to make a leap for a convenient cupboard as old Wivelscombe came in. There was a moment when the eyes of the two men met. And then Stiffy was in the cupboard among Geraldine’s summer frocks.

  Old Wivelscombe was gulping a bit.

  ‘Geraldine,’ he said, ‘you see before you a haunted man.’

  ‘Do I, Father?’

  ‘You certainly do. When I went down to breakfast, guess what? There beneath the table was the phantasm of that fat- . . . of that excellent young fellow, Adolphus Stiffham, whom I always liked though he may have drawn wrong conclusions from my surface manner,’ said old Wivelscombe, raising his voice slightly. ‘He was staring at me with just that same idiot . . . with precisely that same frank, winning expression on his face that I remember so well.’

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘I requested Gascoigne to check up my facts. So Gascoigne took a look. But the apparition was invisible to him.’

  ‘Was it?’

  ‘It was. I gather that it is also invisible to you. For I assure you, on the word of a Worcestershire Wivelscombe, that as I entered this room I distinctly observed the spectre nip into that cupboard over there.’

  ‘Nonsense.’

  ‘It isn’t nonsense.’

  ‘That cupboard there?’

  ‘That very cupboard.’

  ‘I’ll go and look.’

  ‘Take care it doesn’t bite you,’ said Lord Wivelscombe anxiously.

  The cupboard door opened, and Geraldine peeped in.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘There’s nothing there.’

  Old Wivelscombe unleashed another of those hollow groans of his.

  ‘Of course you wouldn’t see it. It’s meant for me. A nice thing this is going to be, trying to run an estate with a beastly great ghost popping in and out all the time. Concentration will become impossible.’

  Geraldine laid a soothing hand on his quivering shoulder.

  ‘I don’t think it is going to be as bad as that, Father. I think I see what has happened. In my opinion, this thing has been sent to you as a warning.’

  ‘A warning?’

  ‘Yes. I have read of such cases. It sometimes happens that the apparition of an entity . . . let us call him A. or B. . . .’

  ‘Whichever you prefer.’

  ‘The apparition of an entity, A. or B., will occasionally appear not after but before the entity has crossed the great divide. The object of this is to impress on the mind of the individual observing the phenomenon . . . shall we call him C. . . .?’

  ‘By all means.’

  ‘. . . to impress on the mind of the individual, C., that, unless steps are taken promptly through the proper channels, the entity will pass over. It is, as it were, a cautionary projection of a distant personality.’

  Lord Wivelscombe raised his head from his hands.

  ‘You mean, then, that you think that that blasted . . . that that delightful lad, Adolphus Stiffham, on whom I have always looked more as a son than anything, is still alive?’

  ‘For the moment, yes.’

  ‘Tell me,’ said Lord Wivelscombe, ‘how do we keep him that way?’

  Geraldine reflected.

  ‘I think the best plan is for me to cable him today to return at once, as you are now prepared to give your full consent to our marriage.’

  Lord Wivelscombe sat for a moment in thought.

  ‘You consider that the best plan?’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘What’s the next best?’

  ‘There is no other.’

  ‘You mean that, unless I want to be haunted for the rest of my life, I’ve got to have that – er – him for a son-in-law?’

  ‘I do.’

  Lord Wivelscombe looked once more at the cupboard. Then he spoke with what a close observer might have thought a slightly exaggerated heartiness.

  ‘Charmed!’ he said. ‘Delighted. Capital. Splendid. Only too pleased.’

  And that (concluded the Crumpet) is the inner history of the Stiffham-Spettisbury wedding which we have just seen solemnized at St George’s, Hanover Square. And you can understand now what I meant when I said that what a man needs in this world is not virtue, character, steadiness, and nobility of mind – or I should have done better myself– but luck. It was his faith in the Luck of the Stiffhams that led young Pongo Twistleton-Twistleton to take the short end from Oofy Prosser against all the ruling of the form-book, and I honour him for it and am delighted that he has cleaned up.

  7 NOBLESSE OBLIGE

  ON THE USUALLY unruffled brow of the Bean who had just entered the smoking-room of the Drones Club there was a furrow of perplexity. He crossed pensively to the settee in the corner and addressed the group of Eggs and Crumpets assembled there.

  ‘I say,’ he said, ‘in re Freddie Widgeon, do any of you chaps happen to know if he’s gone off his rocker?’

  An Egg asked what made him think so.

  ‘Well, he’s out in the bar, drinking Lizard’s Breaths . . .’

  ‘Nothing unbalanced about that.’

  ‘No, but his manner is strange. It so happens that at the seminary where he and I were educated they are getting up a fund for some new racquets courts, and when I tackled Freddie just now and said that he ought to chip in and rally round the dear old school, he replied that he was fed to the tonsils with dear old schools and never wished to hear anyone talk about dear old schools again.’

  ‘Rummy,’ agreed the Egg.

  ‘He then gave a hideous laugh and added that, if anybody was interested in his plans, he was going to join the Foreign Legion, that Cohort of the Damned in which broken men may toil and die and, dying, forget.’

  ‘Beau Widgeon?’ said the Egg, impressed. ‘What ho!’

  A Crumpet shook his head.

  ‘You won’t catch Freddie joining any Foreign Legion, once he gets on to the fact that it means missing his morning cup of tea. All the same, I can understand his feeling a bit upset at the moment, poor old blighter. Tragedy has come into his life. He’s just lost the only girl in the world.’

  ‘Well, he ought to be used to that by this time.’

  ‘Yes. But he also got touched for his only tenner in the world, and on top of that his uncle, old Blicester, has cut his allowance in half.’

  ‘Ah,’ said the Egg understandingly.

  ‘It was at Cannes that it all happened,’ proceeded the Crumpet. ‘Old Blicester had been ordered there by his doctor, and he offered to take Freddie along, paying all expenses. A glittering prospect, of course, for there are few juicier spots than the South of France during
the summer season: nevertheless, I warned the poor fish not to go. I told him no good could come of it, pointing out the unexampled opportunities he would have of making some sort of a bloomer and alienating the old boy, if cooped up with him at a foreign resort for a matter of six weeks. But he merely blushed prettily and said that, while nobody was more alive to that possibility than himself, he was jolly well going to go, because this girl was at Cannes.’

  ‘Who was this girl?’

  ‘I forget her name. Drusilla something. Never met her myself. He described her to me, and I received the impression of a sort of blend of Tallulah Bankhead and a policewoman. Fascinating exterior, I mean to say, but full of ideas at variance with the spirit of modern progress. Apparently she sprang from a long line of Bishops and Archdeacons and what not, and was strongly opposed to all forms of gambling, smoking, and cocktail-drinking. And Freddie had made an excellent first impression on her owing to the fact that he never gambled, never smoked, and looked on cocktails as the curse of the age.’

  ‘Freddie?’ said the Egg, startled.

  ‘That was what he had told her, and I consider it a justifiable stratagem. I mean to say, if you don’t kid the delicately nurtured along a bit in the initial stages, where are you?’

  ‘True,’ said the Egg.

  Well, that is how matters stood when Freddie arrived at Cannes, and as he sauntered along the Croisette on the fourth or fifth day of his visit I don’t suppose there was a happier bloke in all that gay throng. The sun was shining, the sea was blue, the girl had promised to have tea with him that afternoon at the Casino, and he knew he was looking absolutely his best. Always a natty dresser, today he had eclipsed himself. The glistening trousers, the spotless shirt, the form-fitting blue coat . . . all these combined to present an intoxicating picture. And this picture he had topped off with a superb tie which he had contrived to pinch overnight from his uncle’s effects. Gold and lavender in its general colour scheme, with a red stripe thrown in for good measure. Lots of fellows, he tells me, couldn’t have carried it off, but it made him look positively godlike.

  Well, when I tell you that he hadn’t been out on the Croisette ten minutes before a French bloke came up and offered him five hundred francs to judge a Peasant Mothers Baby Competition down by the harbour, where they were having some sort of local fete or jamboree in honour of a saint whose name has escaped me, you will admit that he must have looked pretty impressive. These knowledgeable Gauls don’t waste their money on tramps.

  Now, you might have thought that as old Blicester, the world’s greatest exponent of the one-way pocket, consistently refused to slip him so much as a franc for current expenses, Freddie would have jumped at this chance of making a bit. But it so happened that he had recently wired to a staunch pal in London for a tenner and had received intimation that the sum would be arriving by that afternoon’s post. He had no need, accordingly, for the gold the chap was dangling before his eyes. However, he was pleased by the compliment, and said he would most certainly look in, if he could, and lend the binge the prestige of his presence, and they parted on cordial terms.

  It was almost immediately after this that the bird in the shabby reach-me-downs accosted him.

  His watch having told him that the afternoon post would be in any minute now, Freddie, in his perambulations, had not moved very far from the Carlton, which was the hotel where he and his uncle and also the girl were stopping, and he was manœuvring up and down about opposite it when a voice at his elbow, speaking in that sort of surprised and joyful manner in which one addresses an old friend encountered in a foreign spot, said:

  ‘Why, hullo!’

  And, turning, he perceived the above-mentioned bird in the reach-me-downs as described. A tallish, thinnish chap.

  ‘Well, well, well!’ said the bird.

  Freddie goggled at him. As far as memory served, he didn’t know the blighter from Adam.

  ‘Hullo,’ he said, playing for time.

  ‘Fancy running into you,’ said the chap.

  ‘Ah,’ said Freddie.

  ‘It’s a long time since we met.’

  ‘Absolutely,’ said Freddie, the persp. beginning to start out a bit on the brow. Because if there’s one thing that makes a man feel a chump it is this business of meeting ancient cronies and not being able to put a name to them.

  ‘I don’t suppose you see any of the old crowd now?’ said the chap.

  ‘Not many,’ said Freddie.

  ‘They scatter.’

  ‘They do scatter.’

  ‘I came across Smith a few weeks ago.’

  ‘Oh, yes?’

  ‘T. T. Smith, I mean.’

  ‘Oh, T. T. Smith?’

  ‘Yes. Not J. B. I hear J. B.’s gone to the Malay States. T. T.’s in some sort of agency business. Rather prosperous.’

  ‘That’s good.’

  ‘You seem to be doing pretty well, yourself.’

  ‘Oh, fairly.’

  ‘Well, I’m not surprised,’ said the chap. ‘One always knew you would, even at school.’

  The word, Freddie tells me, was like a lifebelt. He grabbed at it. So this was a fellow he had known at school. That narrowed it down a lot. Surely now, he felt, the old brain would begin to function. Then he took another look at the chap, and the momentary exhilaration ebbed. He had not known him from Adam, and he still did not know him from Adam. The situation had thus become more awkward than ever, because the odds were that in the end this fellow was going to turn out to be someone he had shared a study with and ought to be falling on the neck of and swopping reminiscences of the time when old Boko Jervis brought the white rabbit into chapel and what not.

  ‘Yes,’ said the chap. ‘Even then one could tell that you were bound to go up and up. Gosh, how I used to admire you at the dear old school. You were my hero.’

  ‘What!’ yipped Freddie. He hadn’t the foggiest that he had been anyone’s hero at school. His career there hadn’t been so dashed distinguished as all that. He had scraped into the cricket team in his last year, true: but even so he couldn’t imagine any of his contemporaries looking up to him much.

  ‘You were,’ said the chap. ‘I thought you a marvel.’

  ‘No, really?’ said Freddie, suffused with coy blushes. ‘Well, well, well, fancy that. Have a cigarette?’

  ‘Thanks,’ said the chap. ‘But what I really want is a meal. I’m right on my uppers. We aren’t all like you, you see. While you’ve been going up and up, some of us have been going down and down. If I don’t get a meal today, I don’t know what I shall do.’

  Freddie tells me the thing came on him as a complete surprise. You might have supposed that a wary bird like him, who has been a member of this club since he came down from Oxford, would have known better, but he insists that he had absolutely no suspicion that a touch was in the air till it suddenly hit him like this. And his first impulse, he says, was to mumble something at the back of his throat and slide off.

  And he was just going to when a sudden surge of generous emotion swept over him. Could he let a fellow down who had not only been at school with him but who, when at school, had looked upon him as a hero? Imposs., felt Freddie. There had been six hundred and forty-seven chaps at the old school. Was he to hand the callous mitten to the only one of those six hundred and forty-seven who had admired him? Absolutely out of the q., was Freddie’s verdict. A mille was the dickens of a sum of money, of course – present rate of exchange a bit more than a tenner – but it would have to be found somehow. Noblesse oblige, he meant to say.

  And just when the fervour was at its height he recollected this cheque which was arriving by the afternoon post. In the stress of emotion it had quite slipped his mind.

  ‘By Jove!’ he said. ‘Yes, I can fix you up. Suppose we meet at the Casino a couple of hours from now.’

  ‘God bless you,’ said the chap.

  ‘Not at all,’ said Freddie.

  It was with mixed feelings that he went into the hotel to see if the p
ost had come. On the one hand, there was the solemn anguish of parting with a tenner which he had earmarked for quite a different end. On the other, there was the quiet chestiness induced by the realization that here he had been jogging along through the world, not thinking such a frightful lot of himself, and all the while in the background was this bloke treasuring his memory and saying to himself: ‘Ah, if we could all be like Freddie Widgeon!’ Cheap at a tenner, he told himself, the sensation of spiritual yeastiness which this reflection gave him.

  All the same, he wished the chap could have done with five, because there was a bookie in London to whom he had owed a fiver for some months now and recent correspondence had shown that this hell-hound was on the verge of becoming a bit unpleasant. Until this episode had occurred, he had fully intended to send the man thirty bob or so, to sweeten him. Now, of course, this was out of the question. The entire sum must go unbroken to this old school-fellow whose name he wished he could remember.

  Spivis? . . . Brent? . . . Jerningham? . . . Fosway? . . .

  No.

  Brewster? . . . Goggs? . . . Bootle? . . . Finsbury? . . .

  No.

  He gave it up and went to the desk. The letter was there, and in it the cheque. The very decent johnny behind the counter cashed it for him without a murmur, and he was just gathering up the loot when somebody behind him said ‘Ah!’

  Now, in the word ‘Ah!’ you might say that there is nothing really to fill a fellow with a nameless dread. Nevertheless, that is what this ‘Ah!’ filled Freddie with. For he had recognized the voice. It was none other than that of the bookie to whom he owed the fiver. That is the trouble about Cannes in August – it becomes very mixed. You get your Freddie Widgeons there – splendid chaps who were worshipped by their schoolmates – and you also get men like this bookie. All sorts, if you follow me, from the highest to the lowest.

  From the moment when he turned and gazed into the fellow’s steely eyes, Freddie tells me he hadn’t a hope. But he did his best.

  ‘Hullo, Mr McIntosh!’ he said. ‘You here? Well, well, well! Ha, ha!’

  ‘Yes,’ said the bookie.

  ‘I never thought I should run into you in these parts.’