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

Jimmy sighed softly.

“I used to stand and smoke against the railing opposite the barber’s shop, and she used to walk round the deck.”

“And you used to stare at her?”

“I would look in her direction sometimes,” corrected Jimmy, with dignity.

“Don’t quibble! You stared at her. You behaved like a common rubberneck, and you know it. I am no prude, James, but I feel compelled to say that I consider your conduct that of a libertine. Used she to walk alone?”

“Generally.”

“And now you love her, eh? You went on board that ship happy, careless, heart-free. You came off it grave and saddened. Thenceforth for you the world could contain but one woman, and her you had lost.”

He groaned in a hollow and bereaved manner, and took a sip from his glass to buoy him up.

Jimmy moved restlessly on the sofa.

“Do you believe in love at first sight?” he asked fatuously. He was in the mood when a man says things the memory of which makes him wake up hot all over for nights to come.

“I don’t see what first sight’s got to do with it,” said Mifflin. “According to your own statement, you stood and glared at the girl for five days without stopping for a moment. I can quite imagine that you might glare yourself into love with anyone by the end of that time.”

“I can’t see myself settling down,” said Jimmy thoughtfully. “And until you feel that you want to settle down, I suppose you can’t be really in love.”

“I was saying practically that about you at the club just before you came in. My somewhat neat expression was that you were one of the gipsies of the world.”

“By George, you’re quite right!”

“I always am.”

“I suppose it’s having nothing to do. When I was on the News I was never like this.”

“You weren’t on the News long enough to get tired of it.”

“I feel now I can’t stay in a place more than a week. It’s having this money that does it, I suppose.”

“New York,” said Mifflin, “is full of obliging persons who will be delighted to relieve you of the incubus. Well, James, I shall leave you. I feel more like bed now. By the way, I suppose you lost sight of this girl when you landed?”

“Yes.”

“Well, there aren’t so many girls in the United States. Only twenty million. Or is it forty million? Something small. All you’ve got to do is to search about a bit. Good night.”

“Good night.”

Mr. Mifflin clattered down the stairs. A minute later the sound of his name being called loudly from the street brought Jimmy to the window. Mifflin was standing on the pavement below, looking up.

“Jimmy?”

“What’s the matter now?”

“I forgot to ask. Was she a blonde?”

“What?”

“Was she a blonde?” yelled Mifflin.

“No,” snapped Jimmy.

“Dark, eh?” bawled Mifflin, making night hideous.

“Yes,” said Jimmy, shutting the window.

“Jimmy! I say, Jimmy!”

The window went up again.

“Well?”

“I prefer blondes myself.”

“Go to bed!”

“Very well. Good night.”

“Good night.”

Jimmy withdrew his head, and sat down on the chair Mifflin had vacated. A moment later he rose and switched off the light. It was pleasanter to sit and think in the dark. His thoughts wandered off in many channels, but always came back to the girl on the Mauretania. It was absurd, of course. He didn’t wonder that Arthur Mifflin had treated the thing as a joke. Good old Arthur! Glad he had made a success. But was it a joke? Who was it said that the point of a joke was like the point of a needle⁠—so small that it is apt to disappear entirely when directed straight at oneself? If anybody else had told him such a limping romance he would have laughed himself. Only when you are the centre of a romance, however limping, you see it from a different angle. Of course, told baldly, it was absurd. He could see that. But something right at the back of his mind told him that it was not altogether absurd. And yet⁠—Love didn’t come like that⁠—in a flash. You might just as well expect a house to spring into being in a moment. Or a ship. Or an automobile. Or a table. Or a⁠⸺ He sat up with a jerk. In another instant he would have been asleep.

He thought of bed, but bed seemed a long way off⁠—the deuce of a way. Acres of carpet to be crawled over, and then the dickens of a climb at the end of it. Besides undressing. Nuisance⁠—undressing. That was a nice dress that girl had worn on the fourth day out. Tailor-made. He liked tailor-mades. He liked all her dresses. He liked her. Had she liked him? So hard to tell if you don’t get a chance of speaking. She was dark. Arthur liked blondes. Arthur was a fool! Good old Arthur! Glad he had made a success! Now he could marry if he liked. If he wasn’t so restless. If he didn’t feel that he couldn’t stop more than a day in any place. But would the girl have him? If they had never spoken it made it so hard to⁠—

At this point he fell asleep.

At the time when Jimmy slept in his chair, previous to being aroused from his slumbers by the invasion of Spike, a certain Mr. John McEachern, Captain of Police, was seated in the parlour of his uptown villa, reading. He was a man built on a large scale. Everything about him was large⁠—his hands, his feet, his shoulders, his chest, and particularly his jaw⁠—which even in his moments of calm was aggressive, and which stood out, when anything happened to ruffle him, like the ram of a battleship. In his patrolman days, which had been passed mainly on the East Side, this jaw of his had acquired a reputation from Park Row to Fourteenth Street. No gang fight, however absorbing, could retain the undivided attention of the young blood of the Bowery when Mr. McEachern’s jaw hove in sight, with