Young Men in Spats Page 6

  It was the sight of Tennyson’s poems that turned the scale. The volume had arrived early on the previous day, and already he had mugged up two-thirds of the ‘Lady of Shalott’. And the thought that, if he were to oil out now, all this frightful sweat would be so much dead loss, decided the issue. That afternoon he called once more at Tudsleigh Court, prepared to proceed with the matter along the lines originally laid out. And picture his astonishment and delight when he discovered that Captain Bradbury was not among those present.

  There are very few advantages about having a military man as a rival in your wooing, but one of these is that every now and then such a military man has to pop up to London to see the blokes at the War Office. This Captain Bradbury had done today, and it was amazing what a difference his absence made. A gay confidence seemed to fill Freddie as he sat there wolfing buttered toast. He had finished the ‘Lady of Shalott’ that morning and was stuffed to the tonsils with good material. It was only a question of time, he felt, before some chance remark would uncork him and give him the cue to do his stuff.

  And presently it came. Lady Carroway, withdrawing to write letters, paused at the door to ask April if she had any message for her Uncle Lancelot.

  ‘Give him my love,’ said April, ‘and say I hope he likes Bournemouth.’

  The door closed. Freddie coughed.

  ‘He’s moved then?’ he said.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘Just a spot of persiflage. Lancelot, you know. Tennyson, you know. You remember in the “Lady of Shalott” Lancelot was putting in most of his time at Camelot.’

  The girl stared at him, dropping a slice of bread-and-butter in her emotion.

  ‘You don’t mean to say you read Tennyson, Mr Widgeon?’

  ‘Me?’ said Freddie. ‘Tennyson? Read Tennyson? Me read Tennyson? Well, well, well! Bless my soul! Why, I know him by heart – some of him.’

  ‘So do I! “Break, break, break, on your cold grey stones, oh Sea . . .”’

  ‘Quite. Or take the “Lady of Shalott”.’

  ‘“I hold it truth with him who sings . . .”’

  ‘So do I, absolutely. And then, again, there’s the “Lady of Shalott”. Dashed extraordinary that you should like Tennyson, too.’

  ‘I think he’s wonderful.’

  ‘What a lad! That “Lady of Shalott”! Some spin on the ball there.’

  ‘It’s so absurd, the way people sneer at him nowadays.’

  ‘The silly bounders. Don’t know what’s good for them.’

  ‘He’s my favourite poet.’

  ‘Mine, too. Any bird who could write the “Lady of Shalott” gets the cigar or coconut, according to choice, as far as I’m concerned.’

  They gazed at one another emotionally.

  ‘Well, I’d never have thought it,’ said April.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I mean, you gave me the impression of being . . . well, rather the dancing, night-club sort of man.’

  ‘What! Me? Night clubs? Good gosh! Why, my idea of a happy evening is to curl up with Tennyson’s latest.’

  ‘Don’t you love “Locksley Hall”?’

  ‘Oh, rather. And the “Lady of Shalott”.’

  ‘And “Maud”?’

  ‘Aces,’ said Freddie. ‘And the “Lady of Shalott”.’

  ‘How fond you seem of the “Lady of Shalott”!’

  ‘Oh, I am.’

  ‘So am I, of course. The river here always reminds me so much of that poem.’

  ‘Why, of course it does!’ said Freddie. ‘I’ve been trying to think all the time why it seemed so dashed familiar. And, talking of the river, I suppose you wouldn’t care for a row up it tomorrow?’

  The girl looked doubtful.

  ‘Tomorrow?’

  ‘My idea was to hire a boat, sling in a bit of chicken and ham and a Tennyson . . .’

  ‘But I had promised to go to Birmingham tomorrow with Captain Bradbury to help him choose a fishing-rod. Still, I suppose, really, any other day would do for that, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘We could go later on.’

  ‘Positively,’ said Freddie. ‘A good deal later on. Much later on. In fact, the best plan would be to leave it quite open. One o’clock tomorrow, then, at the Town Bridge? Right. Fine. Splendid. Topping. I’ll be there with my hair in a braid.’

  All through the rest of the day Freddie was right in the pink. Walked on air, you might say. But towards nightfall, as he sat in the bar of the Blue Lion, sucking down a whisky and splash and working his way through ‘Locksley Hall’, a shadow fell athwart the table and, looking up, he perceived Captain Bradbury.

  ‘Good evening, Widgeon,’ said Captain Bradbury.

  There is only one word, Freddie tells me, to describe the gallant C.’s aspect at this juncture. It was sinister. His eyebrows had met across the top of his nose, his chin was sticking out from ten to fourteen inches, and he stood there flexing the muscles of his arms, making the while a low sound like the rumbling of an only partially extinct volcano. The impression Freddie received was that at any moment molten lava might issue from the man’s mouth, and he wasn’t absolutely sure that he liked the look of things.

  However, he tried to be as bright as possible.

  ‘Ah, Bradbury!’ he replied, with a lilting laugh.

  Captain Bradbury’s right eyebrow had now become so closely entangled with his left that there seemed no hope of ever extricating it without the aid of powerful machinery.

  ‘I understand that you called at Tudsleigh Court today.’

  ‘Oh, rather. We missed you, of course, but, nevertheless, a pleasant time was had by all.’

  ‘So I gathered. Miss Carroway tells me that you have invited her to picnic up the river with you tomorrow.’

  ‘That’s right. Up the river. The exact spot.’

  ‘You will, of course, send her a note informing her that you are unable to go, as you have been unexpectedly called back to London.’

  ‘But nobody’s called me back to London.’

  ‘Yes, they have. I have.’

  Freddie tried to draw himself up. A dashed difficult thing to do, of course, when you’re sitting down, and he didn’t make much of a job of it.

  ‘I fail to understand you, Bradbury.’

  ‘Let me make it clearer,’ said the Captain. ‘There is an excellent train in the mornings at twelve-fifteen. You will catch it tomorrow.’

  ‘Oh, yes?’

  ‘I shall call here at one o’clock. If I find that you have not gone, I shall . . . Did I ever happen to mention that I won the Heavyweight Boxing Championship of India last year?’

  Freddie swallowed a little thoughtfully.

  ‘You did?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Freddie pulled himself together.

  ‘The Amateur Championship?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘I used to go in quite a lot for amateur boxing,’ said Freddie with a little yawn. ‘But I got bored with it. Not enough competition. Too little excitement. So I took on pros. But I found them so extraordinarily brittle that I chucked the whole thing. That was when Bulldog Whacker had to go to hospital for two months after one of our bouts. I collect old china now.’

  Brave words, of course, but he watched his visitor depart with emotions that were not too fearfully bright. In fact, he tells me, he actually toyed for a moment with the thought that there might be a lot to be said for that twelve-fifteen train.

  It was but a passing weakness. The thought of April Carroway soon strengthened him once more. He had invited her to this picnic, and he intended to keep the tryst even if it meant having to run like a rabbit every time Captain Bradbury hove in sight. After all, he reflected, it was most improbable that a big heavy fellow like that would be able to catch him.

  His frame of mind, in short, was precisely that of the old Crusading Widgeons when they heard that the Paynim had been sighted in the offing.

  The next day, accordingly, foun
d Freddie seated in a hired row-boat at the landing-stage by the Town Bridge. It was a lovely summer morning with all the fixings, such as blue skies, silver wavelets, birds, bees, gentle breezes and what not. He had stowed the luncheon basket in the stern, and was whiling away the time of waiting by brushing up his ‘Lady of Shalott’, when a voice spoke from the steps. He looked up and perceived the kid Prudence gazing down at him with her grave, green eyes.

  ‘Oh, hullo,’ he said.

  ‘Hullo,’ said the child.

  Since his entry to Tudsleigh Court, Prudence Carroway had meant little or nothing in Freddie’s life. He had seen her around, of course, and had beamed at her in a benevolent sort of way, it being his invariable policy to beam benevolently at all relatives and connections of the adored object, but he had scarcely given her a thought. As always on these occasions, his whole attention had been earmarked for the adored one. So now his attitude was rather that of a bloke who wonders to what he is indebted for the honour of this visit.

  ‘Nice day,’ he said, tentatively.

  ‘Yes,’ said the kid. ‘I came to tell you that April can’t come.’

  The sun, which had been shining with exceptional brilliance, seemed to Freddie to slip out of sight like a diving duck.

  ‘You don’t mean that!’

  ‘Yes, I do.’

  ‘Can’t come?’

  ‘No. She told me to tell you she’s awfully sorry, but some friends of Mother’s have phoned that they are passing through and would like lunch, so she’s got to stay on and help cope with them.’

  ‘Oh, gosh!’

  ‘So she wants you to take me instead, and she’s going to try to come on afterwards. I told her we would lunch near Griggs’s Ferry.’

  Something of the inky blackness seemed to Freddie to pass from the sky. It was ajar, of course, but still, if the girl was going to join him later . . . And, as for having this kid along, well, even that had its bright side. He could see that it would be by no means a bad move to play the hearty host to the young blighter. Reports of the lavishness of his hospitality and the suavity of his demeanour would get round to April and might do him quite a bit of good. It is a recognized fact that a lover is never wasting his time when he lushes up the little sister.

  ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Hop in.’

  So the kid hopped, and they shoved off. There wasn’t anything much in the nature of intellectual conversation for the first ten minutes or so, because there was a fairish amount of traffic on the river at this point and the kid, who had established herself at the steering apparatus, seemed to have a rather sketchy notion of the procedure. As she explained to Freddie after they had gone about half-way through a passing barge, she always forgot which of the ropes it was that you pulled when you wanted to go to the right. However, the luck of the Widgeons saw them through and eventually they came, still afloat, to the unfrequented upper portions of the stream. Here in some mysterious way the rudder fell off, and after that it was all much easier. And it was at this point that the kid, having no longer anything to occupy herself with, reached out and picked up the book.

  ‘Hullo! Are you reading Tennyson?’

  ‘I was before we started, and I shall doubtless dip into him again later on. You will generally find me having a pop at the bard under advisement when I get a spare five minutes.’

  ‘You don’t mean to say you like him?’

  ‘Of course I do. Who doesn’t?’

  ‘I don’t. April’s been making me read him, and I think he’s soppy.’

  ‘He is not soppy at all. Dashed beautiful.’

  ‘But don’t you think his girls are awful blisters?’

  Apart from his old crony, the Lady of Shalott, Freddie had not yet made the acquaintance of any of the women in Tennyson’s poems, but he felt very strongly that if they were good enough for April Carroway they were good enough for a green-eyed child with freckles all over her nose, and he said as much, rather severely.

  ‘Tennyson’s heroines,’ said Freddie, ‘are jolly fine specimens of pure, sweet womanhood, so get that into your nut, you soulless kid. If you behaved like a Tennyson heroine, you would be doing well.’

  ‘Which of them?’

  ‘Any of them. Pick ’em where you like. You can’t go wrong. How much further to this Ferry place?’

  ‘It’s round the next bend.’

  It was naturally with something of a pang that Freddie tied the boat up at their destination. Not only was this Griggs’s Ferry a lovely spot, it was in addition completely deserted. There was a small house through the trees, but it showed no signs of occupancy. The only living thing for miles around appeared to be an elderly horse which was taking a snack on the river bank. In other words, if only April had been here and the kid hadn’t, they would have been alone together with no human eye to intrude upon their sacred solitude. They could have read Tennyson to each other till they were blue in the face, and not a squawk from a soul.

  A saddening thought, of course. Still, as the row had given him a nice appetite, he soon dismissed these wistful yearnings and started unpacking the luncheon basket. And at the end of about twenty minutes, during which period nothing had broken the stillness but the sound of champing jaws, he felt that it would not be amiss to chat with his little guest.

  ‘Had enough?’ he asked.

  ‘No,’ said the kid. ‘But there isn’t any more.’

  ‘You seem to tuck away your food all right.’

  ‘The girls at school used to call me Teresa the Tapeworm,’ said the kid with a touch of pride.

  It suddenly struck Freddie as a little odd that with July only half over this child should be at large. The summer holidays, as he remembered it, always used to start round about the first of August.

  ‘Why aren’t you at school now?’

  ‘I was bunked last month.’

  ‘Really?’ said Freddie, interested. ‘They gave you the push, did they? What for?’

  ‘Shooting pigs.’

  ‘Shooting pigs?’

  ‘With a bow and arrow. One pig, that is to say. Percival. He belonged to Miss Maitland, the headmistress. Do you ever pretend to be people in books?’

  ‘Never. And don’t stray from the point at issue. I want to get to the bottom of this thing about the pig.’

  ‘I’m not straying from the point at issue. I was playing William Tell.’

  ‘The old apple-knocker, you mean?’

  ‘The man who shot an apple off his son’s head. I tried to get one of the girls to put the apple on her head, but she wouldn’t, so I went down to the pigsty and put it on Percival’s. And the silly goop shook it off and started to eat it just as I was shooting, which spoiled my aim and I got him on the left ear. He was rather vexed about it. So was Miss Maitland. Especially as I was supposed to be in disgrace at the time, because I had set the dormitory on fire the night before.’

  Freddie blinked a bit.

  ‘You set the dormitory on fire?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Any special reason, or just a passing whim?’

  ‘I was playing Florence Nightingale.’

  ‘Florence Nightingale?’

  ‘The Lady with the Lamp. I dropped the lamp.’

  ‘Tell me,’ said Freddie. ‘This Miss Maitland of yours. What colour is her hair?’

  ‘Grey.’

  ‘I thought as much. And now, if you don’t mind, switch off the childish prattle for the nonce. I feel a restful sleep creeping over me.’

  ‘My Uncle Joe says that people who sleep after lunch have got fatty degeneration of the heart.’

  ‘Your Uncle Joe is an ass,’ said Freddie.

  How long it was before Freddie awoke, he could not have said. But when he did the first thing that impressed itself upon him was that the kid was no longer in sight, and this worried him a bit. I mean to say, a child who, on her own showing, plugged pigs with arrows and set fire to dormitories was not a child he was frightfully keen on having roaming about the countryside at a time
when he was supposed to be more or less in charge of her. He got up, feeling somewhat perturbed, and started walking about and bellowing her name.

  Rather a chump it made him feel, he tells me, because a fellow all by himself on the bank of a river shouting ‘Prudence! Prudence!’ is apt to give a false impression to any passer-by who may hear him. However, he didn’t have to bother about that long, for at this point, happening to glance at the river, he saw her body floating in it.

  ‘Oh, dash it!’ said Freddie.

  Well, I mean, you couldn’t say it was pleasant for him. It put him in what you might call an invidious position. Here he was, supposed to be looking after this kid, and when he got home April Carroway would ask him if he had had a jolly day and he would reply: ‘Topping, thanks, except that young Prudence went and got drowned, regretted by all except possibly Miss Maitland.’ It wouldn’t go well, and he could see it wouldn’t go well, so on the chance of a last-minute rescue he dived in. And he was considerably surprised, on arriving at what he had supposed to be a drowning child, to discover that it was merely the outer husk. In other words, what was floating there was not the kid in person but only her frock. And why a frock that had a kid in it should suddenly have become a kidless frock was a problem beyond him.

  Another problem, which presented itself as he sloshed ashore once more, was what the dickens he was going to do now. The sun had gone in and a nippy breeze was blowing, and it looked to him as if only a complete change of costume could save him from pneumonia. And as he stood there wondering where this change of costume was to come from he caught sight of that house through the trees.

  Now, in normal circs. Freddie would never dream of calling on a bird to whom he had never been introduced and touching him for a suit of clothes. He’s scrupulously rigid on points like that and has been known to go smokeless through an entire night at the theatre rather than ask a stranger for a match. But this was a special case. He didn’t hesitate. A quick burst across country, and he was at the front door, rapping the knocker and calling ‘I say!’ And when at the end of about three minutes nobody had appeared he came rather shrewdly to the conclusion that the place must be deserted.