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

seabirds. The water was swirling at their feet, and they drew back to the shelter of the cliffs. There they stood in silence, watching.

“Mary,” said Wilton in a low voice, “tell me one thing.”

“Yes, Jack?”

“Have you forgiven me?”

“Forgiven you! How can you ask at a moment like this? I love you with all my heart and soul.”

He kissed her, and a strange look of peace came over his face.

“I am happy.”

“I, too.”

A fleck of foam touched her face, and she shivered.

“It was worth it,” he said quietly. “If all misunderstandings are cleared away and nothing can come between us again, it is a small price to pay⁠—unpleasant as it will be when it comes.”

“Perhaps⁠—perhaps it will not be very unpleasant. They say that drowning is an easy death.”

“I didn’t mean drowning, dearest. I meant a cold in the head.”

“A cold in the head!”

He nodded gravely.

“I don’t see how it can be avoided. You know how chilly it gets these late summer nights. It will be a long time before we can get away.”

She laughed a shrill, unnatural laugh.

“You are talking like this to keep my courage up. You know in your heart that there is no hope for us. Nothing can save us now. The water will come creeping⁠—creeping⁠—”

“Let it creep! It can’t get past that rock there.”

“What do you mean?”

“It can’t. The tide doesn’t come up any farther. I know, because I was caught here last week.”

For a moment she looked at him without speaking. Then she uttered a cry in which relief, surprise, and indignation were so nicely blended that it would have been impossible to say which predominated.

He was eyeing the approaching waters with an indulgent smile.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” she cried.

“I did tell you.”

“You know what I mean. Why did you let me go on thinking we were in danger, when⁠—”

“We were in danger. We shall probably get pneumonia.”

“Isch!”

“There! You’re sneezing already.”

“I am not sneezing. That was an exclamation of disgust.”

“It sounded like a sneeze. It must have been, for you’ve every reason to sneeze, but why you should utter exclamations of disgust I cannot imagine.”

“I’m disgusted with you⁠—with your meanness. You deliberately tricked me into saying⁠—”

“Saying⁠—”

She was silent.

“What you said was that you loved me with all your heart and soul. You can’t get away from that, and it’s good enough for me.”

“Well, it’s not true any longer.”

“Yes, it is,” said Wilton, comfortably; “bless it.”

“It is not. I’m going right away now, and I shall never speak to you again.”

She moved away from him, and prepared to sit down.

“There’s a jellyfish just where you’re going to sit,” said Wilton.

“I don’t care.”

“It will. I speak from experience, as one on whom you have sat so often.”

“I’m not amused.”

“Have patience. I can be funnier than that.”

“Please don’t talk to me.”

“Very well.”

She seated herself with her back to him. Dignity demanded reprisals, so he seated himself with his back to her; and the futile ocean raged towards them, and the wind grew chillier every minute.

Time passed. Darkness fell. The little bay became a black cavern, dotted here and there with white, where the breeze whipped the surface of the water.

Wilton sighed. It was lonely sitting there all by himself. How much jollier it would have been if⁠—

A hand touched his shoulder, and a voice spoke⁠—meekly.

“Jack, dear, it⁠—it’s awfully cold. Don’t you think if we were to⁠—snuggle up⁠—”

He reached out and folded her in an embrace which would have aroused the professional enthusiasm of Hackenschmidt and drawn guttural congratulations from Zbysco. She creaked, but did not crack, beneath the strain.

“That’s much nicer,” she said, softly. “Jack, I don’t think the tide’s started even to think of going down yet.”

“I hope not,” said Wilton.

The Man with Two Left Feet

Students of the folklore of the United States of America are no doubt familiar with the quaint old story of Clarence MacFadden. Clarence MacFadden, it seems, was “wishful to dance, but his feet wasn’t gaited that way. So he sought a professor and asked him his price, and said he was willing to pay. The professor” (the legend goes on) “looked down with alarm at his feet and marked their enormous expanse; and he tacked on a five to his regular price for teaching MacFadden to dance.”

I have often been struck by the close similarity between the case of Clarence and that of Henry Wallace Mills. One difference alone presents itself. It would seem to have been mere vanity and ambition that stimulated the former; whereas the motive force which drove Henry Mills to defy Nature and attempt dancing was the purer one of love. He did it to please his wife. Had he never gone to Ye Bonnie Briar-Bush Farm, that popular holiday resort, and there met Minnie Hill, he would doubtless have continued to spend in peaceful reading the hours not given over to work at the New York bank at which he was employed as paying-cashier. For Henry was a voracious reader. His idea of a pleasant evening was to get back to his little flat, take off his coat, put on his slippers, light a pipe, and go on from the point where he had left off the night before in his perusal of the Bis⁠–⁠Cal volume of the Encyclopaedia Britannica⁠—making notes as he read in a stout notebook. He read the Bis⁠–⁠Cal volume because, after many days, he had finished the A⁠–⁠And, And⁠–⁠Aus, and the Aus⁠–⁠Bis. There was something admirable⁠—and yet a little horrible⁠—about Henry’s method of study. He went after Learning with the cold and dispassionate relentlessness of a stoat pursuing a rabbit. The ordinary man who is paying instalments on the Encyclopaedia Britannica is apt to get overexcited and to skip impatiently to Volume XXVIII (Vet⁠–⁠Zym) to see how it all comes out in the end. Not so Henry. His was not a frivolous mind. He intended to read the Encyclopaedia through, and he was not going to spoil his pleasure by peeping ahead.

It would