Uneasy Money, P. G. Wodehouse [little bear else holmelund minarik txt] 📗

even a dinner invitation without subsequent doubts and remorse. The consequence was that in the days that followed the Riegelheimer episode, what Lord Wetherby would have called the lamp of love burned rather low in Mr. Pickering, as if the acetylene were running out. He still admired Claire intensely and experienced disturbing emotions when he beheld her perfect tonneau and wonderful headlights; but he regarded her with a cautious fear. Although he sometimes dreamed sentimentally of marriage in the abstract, of actual marriage, of marriage with a flesh and blood individual, of marriage that involved clergymen and Voices that Breathe O’er Eden and giggling bridesmaids and cake, Dudley Pickering was afraid with a terror that woke him sweating in the night. His shyness shrank from the ceremony, his caution jibbed at the mysteries of married life. So his attitude toward Claire, the only girl who had succeeded in bewitching him into the opening words of an actual proposal, was a little less cordial and affectionate than if she had been a rival automobile manufacturer.

Matters were in this state when Lady Wetherby, who having danced classical dances for three months without a break required a rest, shifted her camp to the house which she had rented for the summer at Brookport, Long Island, taking with her Algie, her husband, the monkey Eustace, and Claire and Mr. Pickering, her guests. The house was a large one, capable of receiving a big party, but she did not wish to entertain on an ambitious scale. The only other guest she proposed to put up was Roscoe Sherriff, her press agent, who was to come down as soon as he could get away from his metropolitan duties.

It was a pleasant and romantic place, the estate which Lady Wetherby had rented. Standing on a hill the house looked down through green trees on the gleaming waters of the bay. Smooth lawns and shady walks it had, and rustic seats beneath spreading cedars. Yet for all its effect on Dudley Pickering it might have been a gas works. He roamed the smooth lawns with Claire, and sat with her on the rustic benches and talked guardedly of lubricating oil. There were moments when Claire was almost impelled to forfeit whatever chance she might have had of becoming mistress or thirty million dollars and a nourishing business for the satisfaction of administering just one wholehearted slap on his round and thinly covered head.

And then Roscoe Sherriff came down, and Dudley Pickering, who for days had been using all his resolution to struggle against the siren, suddenly found that there was no siren to struggle against. No sooner had the press agent appeared than Claire deserted him shamelessly and absolutely. She walked with Roscoe Sherriff. Mr. Pickering experienced the discomfiting emotions of the man who pushes violently against an abruptly yielding door, or treads heavily on the top stair where there is no top stair. He was shaken, and the clamlike stolidity which he had assumed as protection gave way.

He hated Roscoe Sherriff. It was unreasonable of him, seeing that the other had rescued him from the company of Claire; but it was one of the incongruities which make human nature the diverting thing it is, that a stout, middle-aged man, who does not wish to marry a beautiful girl himself, may seethe with jealous fury at the spectacle of this same beautiful girl reveling in the society of a young, slim man with hypnotic eyes and a cooing voice. Roscoe Sherriff had these advantages. A press agent has to have them in order to get free advertising past suspicious editors. Circumstances had molded Roscoe Sherriff into the livest press agent in New York, but Nature had intended him for the baritone hero of a musical comedy, one of those debonair young fellows who curvet down to the footlights in beautifully fitting trousers when the guests cry: “Why, here comes Jack himself! Hurrah!” At Lady Wetherby’s country house he was what is technically known as the life and the soul of the party, and Dudley Pickering hated him bitterly.

Night had descended upon Brookport. Eustace, the monkey, was in his little bed; Lord Wetherby in the smoking-room. It was Sunday, the day of rest. Dinner was over, and the remainder of the party were gathered in the drawing room, with the exception of Mr. Pickering, who was smoking a cigar on the porch. A full moon turned Long Island into a fairyland.

Gloom had settled upon Dudley Pickering and he smoked sadly. All rather stout automobile manufacturers are sad when there is a full moon. It makes them feel lonely. It stirs their hearts to thoughts of love. Marriage loses its terrors for them, and they think wistfully of hooking some fair woman up the back and buying her hats. Such was the mood of Mr. Pickering, when through the dimness of the porch there appeared a white shape, moving softly toward them.

“Is that you, Mr. Pickering?”

Claire dropped into the seat beside him. From the drawing room came the soft tinkle of a piano. The sound blended harmoniously with the quiet peace of the night. Mr. Pickering let his cigar go out and clutched the sides of his chair.

“Oi’ll⁠—er⁠—sing thee saw-ongs ov Arrabee,
Und⁠—ah ta-ales of farrr Cash-mee-eere,
Wi-ild tales to che-eat thee ovasigh
Und charrrrm thee to-oo a tear-er.”

Claire gave a little sigh.

“What a beautiful voice Mr. Sherriff has!”

Dudley Pickering made no reply. He thought Roscoe Sherriff had a beastly voice. He resented Roscoe Sherriff’s voice. He objected to Roscoe Sherriff’s polluting this fair night with his cacophony.

“Don’t you think so, Mr. Pickering?”

“Uh-huh.”

“That doesn’t sound very enthusiastic. Mr. Pickering, I want you to tell me something. Have I done anything to offend you?”

Mr. Pickering started violently.

“Eh?”

“I have seen so little of you these last few days. A little while ago we were always together, having such interesting talks. But lately it has seemed to me that you have been avoiding me.”

A feeling of helplessness swept over Mr. Pickering. He was vaguely conscious of a sense of being treated unjustly, of there being