Short Fiction, P. G. Wodehouse [books for 20 year olds .txt] 📗

“How do you mean?”

“Well, old lad, you happen to be married to someone else.”

A look of childlike enthusiasm came over his face.

“Reggie, I want to tell you how splendid Hilda is. Lots of other women might object to my still cherishing Amelia’s memory, but Hilda has been so nice about it from the beginning. She understands so thoroughly.”

I hadn’t much breath left after that, but I used what I had to say: “She doesn’t object?”

“Not a bit,” said Harold. “It makes everything so pleasant.”

When I had recovered a bit, I said, “What do you mean by everything?”

“Well,” he said, “for instance, I come up here every evening at seven and⁠—er⁠—think for a few minutes.”

“A few minutes?!”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, a few minutes isn’t long.”

“But I always have my cocktail at a quarter past.”

“You could postpone it.”

“And Ponsonby likes us to start dinner at seven-thirty.”

“What on earth has Ponsonby to do with it?”

“Well, he likes to get off by nine, you know. I think he goes off and plays bowls at the madhouse. You see, Reggie, old man, we have to study Ponsonby a little. He’s always on the verge of giving notice⁠—in fact, it was only by coaxing him on one or two occasions that we got him to stay on⁠—and he’s such a treasure that I don’t know what we should do if we lost him. But, if you think that I ought to stay longer⁠—?”

“Certainly I do. You ought to do a thing like this properly, or not at all.”

He sighed.

“It’s a frightful risk, but in future we’ll dine at eight.”

It seemed to me that there was a suspicion of a cloud on Ponsonby’s shining morning face, when the news was broken to him that for the future he couldn’t unleash himself on the local bowling talent as early as usual, but he made no kick, and the new order of things began.

My next offensive movement I attribute to a flash of absolute genius. I was glancing through a photograph album in the drawing-room before lunch, when I came upon a face which I vaguely remembered. It was one of those wide, flabby faces, with bulging eyes, and something about it struck me as familiar. I consulted Harold, who came in at that moment.

“That?” said Harold. “That’s Percy.” He gave a slight shudder. “Amelia’s brother, you know. An awful fellow. I haven’t seen him for years.”

Then I placed Percy. I had met him once or twice in the old days, and I had a brainwave. Percy was everything that poor old Harold disliked most. He was hearty at breakfast, a confirmed backslapper, and a man who prodded you in the chest when he spoke to you.

“You haven’t seen him for years!” I said in a shocked voice.

“Thank heaven!” said Harold devoutly.

I put down the photograph album, and looked at him in a deuced serious way. “Then it’s high time you asked him to come here.”

Harold blanched. “Reggie, old man, you don’t know what you are saying. You can’t remember Percy. I wish you wouldn’t say these things, even in fun.”

“I’m not saying it in fun. Of course, it’s none of my business, but you have paid me the compliment of confiding in me about Amelia, and I feel justified in speaking. All I can say is that, if you cherish her memory as you say you do, you show it in a very strange way. How you can square your neglect of Percy with your alleged devotion to Amelia’s memory, beats me. It seems to me that you have no choice. You must either drop the whole thing and admit that your love for her is dead, or else you must stop this infernal treatment of her favorite brother. You can’t have it both ways.”

He looked at me like a hunted stag. “But, Reggie, old man! Percy! He asks riddles at breakfast.”

“I don’t care.”

“Hilda can’t stand him.”

“It doesn’t matter. You must invite him. It’s not a case of what you like or don’t like. It’s your duty.”

He struggled with his feelings for a bit. “Very well,” he said in a crushed sort of voice.

At dinner that night he said to Hilda: “I’m going to ask Amelia’s brother down to spend a few days. It is so long since we have seen him.”

Hilda didn’t answer at once. She looked at him in rather a curious sort of way, I thought. “Very well, dear,” she said.

I was deuced sorry for the poor girl, but I felt like a surgeon. She would be glad later on, for I was convinced that in a very short while poor old Harold must crack under the strain, especially after I had put across the coup which I was meditating for the very next evening.

It was quite simple. Simple, that is to say, in its working, but a devilish brainy thing for a chappie to have thought out. If Ann had really meant what she had said at lunch that day, and was prepared to stick to her bargain and marry me as soon as I showed a burst of intelligence, she was mine.

What it came to was that, if dear old Harold enjoyed meditating in front of Amelia’s portrait, he was jolly well going to have all the meditating he wanted, and a bit over, for my simple scheme was to lurk outside till he had gone into the little room on the top floor, and then, with the aid of one of those jolly little wedges which you use to keep windows from rattling, see to it that the old boy remained there till they sent out search parties.

There wasn’t a flaw in my reasoning. When Harold didn’t roll in at the sound of the dinner gong, Hilda would take it for granted that he was doing an extra bit of meditating that night, and her pride would stop her sending out a hurry call for him. As for Harold, when he found that all was not well with