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

but commercial speculation never was in my line. I’m afraid you must count me out of this.”

“What! You’re going to tell⁠—”

“No,” said Jimmy, “I’m not. I’m not a vigilance committee. I won’t tell a soul.”

“Why, then⁠—” began Hargate, relieved.

“Unless, of course,” Jimmy went on, “you play billiards again while you’re here.”

“But, damn it, man! if I don’t, what’s the good? Look here, what am I to do if they ask me to play?”

“Give your wrist as an excuse.”

“My wrist?”

“Yes. You sprained it tomorrow after breakfast. It was bad luck. I wonder how you came to do it? You didn’t sprain it much, but just enough to stop you playing billiards.”

Hargate reflected.

“Understand?” said Jimmy.

“Oh, very well,” said Hargate sullenly. “But,” he burst out, “if I ever get a chance to get even with you⁠—”

“You won’t,” said Jimmy. “Dismiss the rosy dream. Get even! You don’t know me! There’s not a flaw in my armour. I’m a sort of modern edition of the Stainless Knight. Tennyson drew Galahad from me. I move through life with almost a sickening absence of sin. But hush! We are observed⁠—at least, we shall be in another minute⁠—somebody is coming down the passage. You do understand, don’t you? Sprained wrist is the watchword.”

The handle turned. It was Lord Dreever, back again from his interview.

“Halloa, Dreever!” said Jimmy. “We’ve missed you. Hargate has been doing his best to amuse me with acrobatic tricks. But you’re too reckless, Hargate, old man. Mark my words, one of these days you’ll be spraining your wrist. You should be more careful. What, going? Good night. Pleasant fellow, Hargate,” he added, as the footsteps retreated down the passage. “Well, my lad, what’s the matter with you? You look depressed.”

Lord Dreever flung himself onto the lounge and groaned hollowly.

“Damn! Damn!! Damn!!!” he observed.

His glassy eye met Jimmy’s and wandered away again.

“What on earth’s the matter?” demanded Jimmy. “You go out of here carolling like a songbird, and you come back moaning like a lost soul. What’s happened?”

“Give me a brandy and soda, Pitt, old man, there’s a good chap. I’m in a fearful hole.”

“Why? What’s the matter?”

“I’m engaged,” groaned his lordship.

“Engaged? I wish you’d explain. What on earth’s wrong with you! Don’t you want to be engaged? What’s your⁠—”

He broke off as a sudden, awful suspicion dawned upon him. “Who is she?” he cried.

He gripped the stricken peer’s shoulder and shook it savagely. Unfortunately he selected the precise moment when the latter was in the act of calming his quivering nerve centres with a gulp of brandy and soda, and for a space of some two minutes it seemed as if the engagement would be broken off by the premature extinction of the Dreever line. A long and painful fit of coughing, however, ended with his lordship still alive and on the road to recovery.

He eyed Jimmy reproachfully, but Jimmy was in no mood for apologies.

“Who is she?” he kept demanding. “What’s her name?”

“Might have killed me,” grumbled the convalescent.

“Who is she?”

“What? Why, Miss McEachern.”

Jimmy had known what the answer would be; but it was scarcely less of a shock for that reason.

“Miss McEachern?” he echoed.

Lord Dreever nodded a sombre nod.

“You’re engaged to her?”

Another sombre nod.

“I don’t believe it,” said Jimmy.

“I wish I didn’t,” said his lordship wistfully, ignoring the slight rudeness of the remark. “But worse luck, it’s true.”

For the first time since the disclosure of the name Jimmy’s attention was directed to the remarkable demeanour of his successful rival.

“You don’t seem over-pleased,” he said.

“Pleased! Have a fiver each way on ‘pleased’! No, I’m not exactly leaping with joy.”

“Then what the devil is it all about? What do you mean? What’s the idea? If you don’t want to marry Miss McEachern, why did you propose to her?”

Lord Dreever closed his eyes.

“Dear old boy, don’t. It’s my uncle.”

“Your uncle?”

“Didn’t I explain it all to you?⁠—about him wanting me to marry? You know⁠—I told you the whole thing.”

Jimmy stared at him in silence.

“Do you mean to say⁠—” he said slowly.

He stopped. It was a profanation to put the thing into words.

“What, old man?”

Jimmy gulped.

“Do you mean to say you want to marry Miss McEachern simply because she has money?” he said.

It was not the first time that he had heard of a case of a British peer marrying for such a reason, but it was the first time that the thing had filled him with horror. In some circumstances things come home more forcibly to us.

“It’s not me, old man,” murmured his lordship⁠—“it’s my uncle.”

“Your uncle? Good heavens!” Jimmy clenched his hands despairingly. “Do you mean to say that you let your uncle order you about in a thing like this? Do you mean to say you’re such a⁠—such a⁠—such a gelatine-backboned worm⁠—”

“Old man, I say!” protested his lordship, wounded.

“I’d call you a wretched knock-kneed skunk, only I don’t want to be fulsome. I hate flattering a man to his face.”

Lord Dreever, deeply pained, half rose from his seat.

“Don’t get up,” urged Jimmy smoothly; “I couldn’t trust myself.”

His lordship subsided hastily. He was feeling alarmed. He had never seen this side of Jimmy’s character. At first he had been merely aggrieved and disappointed. He had expected sympathy. Now the matter had become more serious. Jimmy was pacing the room like a young and hungry tiger. At present, it was true, there was a billiard table between them; but his lordship felt that he could have done with good, stout bars. He nestled in his seat with the earnest concentration of a limpet on a rock. It would be deuced bad form, of course, for Jimmy to assault his host, but could Jimmy be trusted to remember the niceties of etiquette?

“Why the deuce she accepted you I can’t think,” said Jimmy, half to himself, stopping suddenly and glaring across the table.

Lord Dreever felt relieved. This was not polite, perhaps, but at least it was not violent.

“That’s what beats me, too, old man,” he said. “Between you and me, it’s a jolly rum business. This afternoon⁠—”

“What about