Hot Water Page 4

  'De Blissac and I saw a good deal of one another when he was in New York a couple of years ago,' said Packy, with that slight touch of the apologetic which your well-trained fiancé employs on these occasions.

  'We hotted it up,' said the Vicomte, quite unnecessarily adding explanatory footnotes. 'We made whoopee. We painted that old town pink.'

  His eyes, which had widened a little at the sight of so much beauty at so short a range, now left Beatrice. It was plainly Packy, the old friend, in whom he was really interested.

  'So you got home all right, my Packy?'

  He chuckled amusedly and turned to Beatrice, all smiles, as one imparting delightful news.

  'When last I see this old farceur it is in New York, and he is jumping out of the window of a speakeasy with two policemen after him. Great fun. Great good fun. Do you remember, my Packy, that night when...'

  'Are you off somewhere, Veek?' asked Packy hastily.

  'Oh, yes. But do you remember... ?'

  'Where?'

  'I go to St Rocque. I catch the train at a quarter past four to Southampton.'

  Packy sighed a sigh of relief.

  'Well, do you? It's a debatable point. I don't know if you have happened to notice that it is now four-fourteen.'

  'Zut!' exclaimed the Vicomte, and vanished like an eel into mud.

  Beatrice was the first to break a silence during which the warm summer day seemed to cool off several degrees.

  'You do know the most awful people.'

  'Oh, the Veek's all right.'

  'From what I have heard of him I don't agree with you.'

  A porter opened the gates, and they passed through. They arrived at an empty first-class compartment, and Packy took up his stand at the door to repel intruders.

  He had fallen into a meditative silence. He had just discovered, and was shocked to discover, that this meeting with the Vicomte de Blissac had affected him with a well-defined spasm of what the ancient Greeks called pothos, a sudden, deplorable nostalgia for that regrettable past of which the other had formed a part.

  He fought it down. It was revolting, he told himself, that the fiancé of a wonderful girl like Beatrice should not be utterly contented with his lot. True, he and the Veek had had some pretty good times together in the old days, but how far, far happier he was now, a reformed character under the personal supervision of the most beautiful girl in England.

  By way of helping to stifle the quite improper wistfulness which the sight of his old friend had aroused in him, he reached for her hand and pressed it.

  'It would be so good for you,' said Beatrice, and Packy became aware that his reverie had caused him to miss her latest remarks.

  'I'm sorry' he said. 'I was thinking of something. What was that?'

  'I was just saying that I wished you would try to make friends with somebody worth while, like Mr Eggleston. He is the sort of man I would like you to know.'

  'I must give him a buzz some time.'

  He turned aside to stare sourly at a grocer named With-erspoon who was showing a disposition to invade the compartment. And so forbidding was his eye that the latter quailed and passed on, taking with him Mrs Witherspoon and their four children, Percy, Bertram, Alice and Daisy.

  '... at a quarter to five,' said Beatrice.

  Once more Packy found that he had missed something.

  'What's that?'

  'Mr Eggleston wants you to meet him at a quarter to five in the lobby of the Northumberland Hotel. He is giving you tea.'

  'What!'

  And I want you to cultivate him. He is a most interesting man, and he will do you a lot of good.'

  A cloud had come over Packy's cheerful face.

  'Have I really got to go and swill tea with this side-whiskered bird?'

  'Don't call him a side-whiskered bird. Yes, you have. And the more you can be with him, the better. A friend like that will keep you from getting into mischief

  Packy started.

  'Mischief? Me!'

  'You know perfectly well that, left to yourself, you would get into hot water of some kind the moment my back was turned.'

  'I wouldn't dream...'

  'Have you forgotten what happened when I went off to Norfolk two months ago?'

  'But I explained that – explained it fully. I got mixed up in a birthday party....'

  'Yes, and I don't want you to get mixed up in any more. They were very upset about that at home. You know how particular Father and Mother are.'

  Packy nodded penitently. Modern laxness, he was aware, had not touched the Earl of Stableford and his countess.

  Aunt Gwendolyn said you were a flippertygibbet.'

  A what?'

  A flippertygibbet.'

  Packy drew himself up a little haughtily. Comment and criticism from his affianced he was prepared to accept. But when it came to her moth-eaten relations shooting off their heads...

  'That's all right what that old cat-fancier and cheater-at-solitaire says,' he replied with a dignity which became him well. 'Here's a little message which you can pass on to her from me. You can tell her... No, on second thoughts, perhaps better not. Just give her my love and say I hope it chokes her.'

  He suspended his remarks in order to foil the attempt of an assistant cashier named Bodkin to muscle into the compartment together with his wife Miriam, his sister Louise, his caged parrot Polly, and what had the appearance of being the full strength of some juvenile school or college. There was, he assured them quite falsely, plenty of room further down the train, and the success of his arguments seemed to exercise upon Beatrice a softening effect. When she resumed the conversation, it was on a gentler note.

  'I do hope you won't get slack while I'm away. I want you to keep on going to concerts and picture galleries.'

  Packy quivered devoutly.

  'Let 'em try to keep me out! That's all I say. Just let 'em try it.'

  They are doing you so much good.'

  'You bet they are. I can feel the old soul swelling like a poisoned pup.'

  'Yascha Pryzsky is giving a recital at Queen's Hall to-morrow.'

  'Atta Yascha!'

  'And there's that new play at the Gate Theatre they say is so wonderful. What I feel is that if you were going about with a man like Blair Eggleston...'

  Packy patted her hand fondly.

  'I won't let him out of my sight. If you want me to sop up tea with him this afternoon, I will sop it up till my eyeballs squeak. And day by day in every way I will haunt him more and more. He shall dress of a morning and find me lurking in his left shoe .... Hullo, you're off.'

  The train had given itself a shake and was now beginning to slide along the platform. Packy trotted beside it. Beatrice continued to lean out of the window.

  'Well, mind you do see plenty of Mr Eggleston.'

  'I bet it'll seem plenty.'

  'Don't miss Pryzsky.'

  'I won't.'

  'And see that play at the Gate.'

  'I will.'

  The train gathered speed. Packy removed his hat and waved it lovingly.

  'And go and get your hair cut,' screamed Beatrice. 'You look like a chrysanthemum.'

  The train bore her out of sight.

  2

  Packy stood on the platform, running an appraising hand over the back of his head. Yes, he saw what she meant. Slightly on the matted side, perhaps. Undoubtedly a suggestion of Absalom, the son of Saul. They had got the 4.21 off on the dot, so there would be ample time for him to look in at the barbershop of the Hotel Northumberland before meeting the pill, Eggleston. He hailed a cab, feeling something of the valiant glow which comes to a knight who has been given a behest by his ladye and sees his way clear to the fulfilment of it.

  The barber-shop of the Hotel Northumberland, which is situated in the basement of that well-known caravanserai, is as a rule a busy, bustling place, gay with the click of scissors and all the latest news about the weather. To Packy's surprise, it contained, when he entered it some minutes later, not on
ly no customers but, oddly enough, no barbers either. A strange quiet enfolded the room, and the scent of bay-rum hung eerily over its emptiness.

  But he was not in the frame of mind to devote much attention to the matter. He relished rather than marvelled at this solitude. Sitting down to wait, he gave himself up to long, loving thoughts of Beatrice.

  A quarter of an hour later, he awoke to discover that the place was still entirely free from barbers.

  For these apparently inexplicable mysteries there is always a solution. We cannot here go into the rights and wrongs of the case, though it was one fraught with great interest: we must content ourselves with stating that for some little while past disaffection had been rearing its ugly head among the hair-dressing staff of the Hotel Northumberland, with the result that at precisely four o'clock that afternoon a lightning strike had been called and the rebels had downed scissors.

  Unaware of this, Packy continued to sit perplexed. And he had just decided to give the thing up and take his custom elsewhere, when the telephone rang at his elbow.

  To ignore a ringing telephone is one of the few feats of which humanity has so far proved incapable. Packy took up the receiver, and instantaneously a loud and irascible voice with an American intonation nearly broke his ear-drum.

  'Hello! Hello! HELL-O! Say, how many more times have I got to call up before I get a little service? Come on! Come on! If this is the way you run your hotels on this side, God help England! Do you think I've nothing better to do than sit here trying to get a blasted barber-shop on the wire? Come on! Come on! Come on!'

  'Are you there?' enquired Packy mildly.

  The Voice seemed to resent the question.

  'Are you there, darn it! That's the point. I've been ringing for the last half-hour. What's the matter with you all? Deaf or something? This is Senator Opal speaking, from Suite 400. I want a man up here at once. Senator Ambrose Opal. Suite 400. Send a man here immediately. I want my hair cut.'

  It was on the tip of Packy's tongue to inform the other that by one of those coincidences which so often occur in life he himself was in precisely the same situation. But even as he opened his mouth to reveal this bond which linked them he became aware of a disturbing emotion.

  He diagnosed it immediately. It was the Old Adam stirring within him once more.

  In his unregenerate days, in that graceless past before Beatrice's beneficent influence had come to give his soul its Daily Dozen, such an opportunity for making a fool of himself would have enchanted him. With a good deal of dismay, he found that it was enchanting him now. Indeed, it was making his mouth water. Only the thought of Beatrice...

  'Come on! Come on!'

  And yet, would Beatrice wish him to reject an experience which could scarcely fail to enrich his outlook on life?

  'Come on! Come on! Come on!'

  Suddenly Packy's conscience was at rest. He wondered what he had been hesitating for. Beatrice, he saw now, would be the first to applaud the bringing of aid and comfort to a distressed Senator. To go and hack at this old buster's thatch would be to perform a kindly and altruistic act, very much the same sort of thing for which Sir Philip Sidney and the Boy Scouts are so highly thought of. He rather doubted if even Beatrice's aunt Gwendolyn could find anything in it to view with concern.

  And there was another thing. This obviously must be the famous Senator Opal, the great Dry legislator, the man who had only just failed to put over the Opal Law, which was to have been about six times as severe as the Volstead Act. If he shrank from the proposed tryst, he would probably never get another chance of meeting this celebrity. And Beatrice was always saying how much she wanted him to meet the best people.

  For Beatrice's sake, then, he must certainly see the thing through.

  'I will be right up, sir,' he said respectfully.

  3

  Packy Franklyn was not an unreasonable young man. He knew that you cannot have everything just so in this world. Nevertheless, as he entered Suite 400, he could have wished that its occupant had been a shade less formidable. His first sight of Senator Ambrose Opal made him feel as if he had taken on the lion-barbering concession at a Zoo.

  The sponsor of the Opal Law was a man of medium height and rather more than medium girth. He had the massive forehead which seems to go with seats in the American Senate. Above this forehead was a fine jungle of snow-white hair, below it a pair of jet-black eyebrows, and beneath these two piercing and penetrating eyes which even now were none too friendly.

  'Come on, come on,' he said. It seemed to be his favourite expression.

  He seated himself in a convenient chair, and Packy, having swathed him in a sheet, brought to bear what he could remember of the technique of the profession.

  'Rather thin on top, sir.'

  'No, it's not.'

  'Scalp a little dry, sir.'

  'No, it isn't.'

  'Ever try a hot-oil shampoo, sir?'

  'No. And I'm not going to.'

  'Beautiful day, sir.'

  'What?'

  'The day, sir. Beautiful.'

  'What of it?'

  Rightly or wrongly, Packy received the impression that small talk was not desired. He addressed himself silently to his task, and for a few minutes only the snipping of scissors disturbed the calm of the apartment. At the end of that period the whole atmosphere of the place was suddenly brightened and improved out of all knowledge by the entrance of a girl. She came right in without knocking and sat down on the table.

  Although betrothed to Lady Beatrice Bracken, Packy Frank-lyn had not wholly given up the good old custom of looking squarely at pretty girls. He looked squarely at this one, and found her charming. She had a nice round face that suggested possibilities in the way of dimples and nice black hair and a nice little figure and nice dark eyes. And when she spoke her voice was nice, too, giving her a full hand.

  'Hullo, Father.'

  'Hullo.'

  'Having your hair cut?'

  'Yes.'

  Packy could put two and two together. The first portion of this dialogue had told him that here were a father and daughter, the second that there existed between them a healthy spirit of confidence and frankness. No concealments. No evasions. He liked it.

  Not, he felt, that it mattered much whether he liked it or not. Except for a fleeting and uninterested glance, the girl had taken no notice of him whatever, and it was plain that she regarded him as mere background. That is one of the drawbacks to being a barber. Nobody ever takes any notice of you. In whatever exchange of thoughts might be about to take place, his own share, Packy foresaw, would be negligible. Just a be-scissored robot, that was what he was. It pained him a little.

  The girl's behaviour proved this surmise correct. She ignored his presence completely. Swinging her nice little legs, she began to speak freely of her own affairs, and at the end of a few minutes he knew as much about them as she did.

  Jane, to begin with, was her name. That, at least, was what the Senator called her, and he seemed a man you could rely on. Her name was Jane, and she had been shopping earlier in the afternoon and had found some lovely handkerchiefs, not at all expensive, at a place in Regent Street. She thought the weather great and admired the London policemen. She would have liked to remain longer in London, but that, Packy gathered, was impossible because she and her father were leaving on the morrow for France.

  The Senator said he hoped the crossing would not be rough, and Jane said, 'Oh, no.'

  'Why won't it?'

  'Oh, it won't.'

  'Never rough at this time of year, sir,' said Packy.

  'Shut up,' said the Senator.

  'Yes, sir,' said Packy.

  His remark had had the effect of drawing the girl's attention to him, and she was looking at him with a puzzled expression on her face. Then the Senator went on speaking. It seemed that the prospective hardships of the journey were still weighing on his mind.

  'What do these Gedges want to live in a place like that for? I hate sea trips o
n small boats.'

  'What I want to know,' said Jane, 'is why we are going to stay with the Gedges at all.'

  'Never mind.'

  'Mr Gedge isn't such a great friend of yours, is he?'

  'Gedge!' Senator Opal uttered a sharp, barking sound. 'I've no use for Gedge. A fellow who says he had a five on the ninth, and I saw him with my own eyes take four niblick shots in the gulley.'

  He paused, brooding coldly over some past unpleasantness which seemed still to rankle. Packy found himself warming to this Gedge, whoever he might be. A man who could attempt to chisel Senator Opal in a golf game must have striking qualities of enterprise and determination.

  'Well, do you like Mrs Gedge?'

  'No, I don't. She's a pest. Do you know what she's always after me to do? Use my pull to get that pop-eyed husband of hers made American Ambassador to France! A fellow who's a cross between a half-witted fish and a pneumonia germ. Well, I don't think I shall have much more trouble about that. I wrote her a letter the day before yesterday, telling her in so many words that I didn't think a man who couldn't count his shots at golf was a fit and proper representative for my country in the capital of a great and friendly power. You let a fellow like Gedge loose in Paris as an ambassador, and first thing you know he'd be giving America a black eye by being deported for cheating the French President at backgammon.'

  'Well, after that, isn't it going to be rather awkward, staying with the Gedges?'

  'We are going to stay with them, so don't talk any more about it.'

  This flat pronouncement seemed to depress the girl Jane. She bit her lower lip in manifest heaviness of spirit. Packy would have liked – in a perfectly nice way of course – to take her little hand in his and press it and tell her to cheer up.

  'It's about time,' said the Senator stoutly, 'that someone taught that Gedge woman that money can't do everything.'

  Jane burst into a sudden flood of eloquence. It was as if the word had touched a spring.