A Gentleman of Leisure, P. G. Wodehouse [speld decodable readers .TXT] 📗

to tell a soul; so Lady Julia doesn’t know a word about it to this day. And I don’t see why she ever should; though one of these days I’ve a good mind to tell Lord Dreever! Think what a hold he would have over them! They’d never be able to bully him again.”

“I shouldn’t,” said Jimmy, trying to keep a touch of coldness out of his voice. This championship of Lord Dreever, however sweet and admirable, was a little distressing.

She looked up quickly.

“You don’t think I really meant to, do you?”

“No, no,” said Jimmy hastily. “Of course not.”

“Well, I should think so!” said Molly indignantly. “After I promised not to tell a soul about it.”

Jimmy chuckled.

“It’s nothing,” he said, in answer to her look of inquiry.

“You laughed at something.”

“Well,” said Jimmy apologetically, “it’s only⁠—it’s nothing really⁠—only what I meant is, you have just told one soul a good deal about it, haven’t you?”

Molly turned pink. Then she smiled.

“I don’t know how I came to do it,” she declared. “It rushed out of its own accord. I suppose it is because I know I can trust you.”

Jimmy flushed with pleasure. He turned to her and half halted, but she continued to walk on.

“You can,” he said; “but how do you know you can?”

“Why,” she said⁠—she stopped for a moment, and then went on hurriedly, with a touch of embarrassment⁠—“why, how absurd! Of course I know. Can’t you read faces? I can. Look,” she said, pointing, “now you can see the castle. How do you like it?”

They had reached a point where the fields sloped sharply downward. A few hundred yards away, backed by woods, stood the grey mass of stone which proved such a killjoy of old to the Welsh sportsman during the peasant season. Even now it had a certain air of defiance. The setting sun lit up the waters of the lake. No figures were to be seen moving in the grounds. The place resembled a palace of sleep.

“Well!” said Molly.

“It’s wonderful!”

“Isn’t it? I’m so glad it strikes you like that. I always feel as if I had invented everything round here. It hurts me if people don’t appreciate it.”

They went down the hill.

“By the way,” said Jimmy, “are you acting in these theatricals they are getting up?”

“Yes. Are you the other man they were going to get? That’s why Lord Dreever went up to London, to see if he couldn’t find somebody. The man who was going to play one of the parts had to go back to London on business.”

“Poor brute!” said Jimmy. It seemed to him at that moment that there was only one place in the world where a man might be even reasonably happy. “What sort of part is it? Lord Dreever said I should be wanted to act. What do I do?”

“If you’re Lord Herbert, which is the part they wanted a man for, you talk to me most of the time.”

Jimmy decided that the piece had been well cast.

The dressing gong sounded just as they entered the hall. From a door on the left there emerged two men⁠—a big one and a little one⁠—in friendly conversation. The big man’s back struck Jimmy as familiar.

“Oh, father!” Molly called. And Jimmy knew where he had seen the back before.

“Sir Thomas,” said Molly, “this is Mr. Pitt.”

The little man gave Jimmy a rapid glance⁠—possibly with the object of detecting his more immediately obvious criminal points; then, as if satisfied as to his honesty, became genial.

“I am very glad to meet you, Mr. Pitt⁠—very glad,” he said. “We have been expecting you for some time.”

Jimmy explained that he had lost his way.

“Exactly. It was ridiculous that you should be compelled to walk⁠—perfectly ridiculous. It was gross carelessness of my nephew not to let us know that you were coming. My wife told him so in the car.”

“I bet she did,” said Jimmy to himself. “Really,” he said aloud, by way of lending a helping hand to a friend in trouble, “I preferred to walk. I have not been on a country road since I landed in England.” He turned to the big man and held out his hand. “I don’t suppose you remember me, Mr. McEachern. We met in New York.”

“You remember the night Mr. Pitt scared away our burglar, father?” said Molly.

Mr. McEachern was momentarily silent. On his native asphalt there are few situations capable of throwing the New York policeman off his balance. In that favoured clime savoir faire is represented by a shrewd blow of the fist, and a masterful stroke with the truncheon amounts to a satisfactory repartee. Thus shall you never take a policeman of Manhattan without his answer. In other surroundings Mr. McEachern would have known how to deal with the young man whom with such good reason he believed to be an expert criminal. But another plan of action was needed here. First and foremost of all the hints on etiquette which he had imbibed since he entered this more reposeful life came this maxim, “Never make a scene.” Scenes, he had gathered, were of all things what polite society most resolutely abhorred. The natural man in him must be bound in chains. The sturdy blow must give way to the honeyed word. A cold “Really!” was the most vigorous retort that the best circles would countenance.

It had cost Mr. McEachern some pains to learn this lesson, but he had done it.

He shook hands and gruffly acknowledged the acquaintanceship.

“Really, really!” chirped Sir Thomas amiably. “So you find yourself among old friends, Mr. Pitt.”

“Old friends,” echoed Jimmy, painfully conscious of the ex-policeman’s eyes, which were boring holes in him.

“Excellent, excellent! Let me take you to your room. It is just opposite my own. This way.”

They parted from Mr. McEachern on the first landing, but Jimmy could still feel those eyes. The policeman’s stare had been of the sort which turns corners, goes upstairs, and pierces walls.

XIII Spike’s Views

Nevertheless, it was in a very exalted frame of mind that he dressed for dinner.