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

For Mr. McEachern was playing a big game. Other eminent buccaneers in his walk of life had been content to be rich men in a community where moderate means were the rule. But about Mr. McEachern there was a touch of the Napoleonic. He meant to get back into society⁠—the society of England. Other people have noted the fact⁠—which had impressed itself very firmly on the policeman’s mind⁠—that between England and the United States there are 3,000 miles of deep water. In the United States he would be a retired police captain; in England an American gentleman of large and independent means with a beautiful daughter.

That was the ruling impulse in his life⁠—his daughter Molly. Though, if he had been a bachelor, he would certainly not have been satisfied to pursue a humble career aloof from graft; on the other hand, if it had not been for Molly he would not have felt, as he gathered in his dishonest wealth, that he was conducting a sort of Holy War. Ever since his wife had died, in his detective-sergeant days, leaving him with a year-old daughter, his ambitions had been inseparably connected with Molly.

All his thoughts were on the future. This New York life was only a preparation for the splendours to come. He spent not a dollar unnecessarily. When Molly was home from school they lived together simply and quietly in the small house which Molly’s taste made so comfortable. The neighbours, knowing his profession and seeing the modest scale on which he lived, told each other that here, at any rate, was a policeman whose hands were clean of graft. They did not know of the stream that poured week by week and year by year into his bank, to be diverted at intervals into the most profitable channels. Until the time should come for the great change, economy was his motto. The expenses of his home were kept within the bounds of his official salary. All extras went to swell his savings.

He closed his book with a contented sigh and lit another cigar. Cigars were his only personal luxury. He drank nothing, ate the simplest food, and made a suit of clothes last for quite an unusual length of time; but no passion for economy could make him deny himself smoke.

He sat on, thinking. It was very late, but he did not feel ready for bed. A great moment had arrived in his affairs. For days Wall Street had been undergoing one of its periodical fits of jumpiness. There had been rumours and counter-rumours, until finally from the confusion there had soared up like a rocket the one particular stock in which he was most largely interested. He had unloaded that morning, and the result had left him slightly dizzy. The main point to which his mind clung was that the time had come at last. He could make the great change now at any moment that suited him.

He was blowing clouds of smoke and gloating over this fact when the door opened, admitting a bull terrier, a bulldog, and in the wake of the procession a girl in a kimono and red slippers.

IV Molly

“Why, Molly,” said the policeman, “what are you doing out of bed? I thought you were asleep.”

He placed a huge arm round her and drew her onto his lap. As she sat there his great bulk made her seem smaller than she really was. With her hair down, and her little red slippers dangling half a yard from the floor, she seemed a child. McEachern, looking at her, found it hard to realise that nineteen years had passed since the moment when the doctor’s raised eyebrows had reproved him for his monosyllabic reception of the news that the baby was a girl.

“Do you know what the time is?” he said. “Two o’clock.”

“Much too late for you to be sitting here smoking,” said Molly severely. “How many cigars do you smoke a day? Suppose you had married someone who wouldn’t let you smoke!”

“Never stop your husband smoking, my dear. That’s a bit of advice for you when you’re married.”

“I’m never going to marry. I’m going to stop at home and darn your socks.”

“I wish you could,” he said, drawing her closer to him. “But one of these days you’re going to marry a prince. And now run back to bed. It’s much too late⁠—”

“It’s no good, father dear. I couldn’t get to sleep. I’ve been trying hard for hours. I’ve counted sheep till I nearly screamed. It’s Rastus’s fault; he snores so.”

Mr. McEachern regarded the erring bulldog sternly.

“Why do you have the brutes in your room?”

“Why, to keep the boogaboos from getting me of course. Aren’t you afraid of the boogaboos getting you? But you’re so big, you wouldn’t mind. You’d just hit them. And they’re not brutes⁠—are you, darlings? You’re angels, and you nearly burst yourselves with joy because auntie had come back from England, didn’t you? Father, did they miss me when I was gone? Did they pine away?”

“They got like skeletons. We all did.”

“You?”

“I should say so.”

“Then why did you send me away?”

“I wanted you to see the country. Did you like it?”

“I hated being away from you.”

“But you liked the country?”

“I loved it.”

McEachern drew a breath of relief. The only possible obstacle to the great change did not exist.

“How would you like to go back to England, Molly?”

“To England. When I’ve just come home?”

“If I went, too?”

Molly twisted round so that she could see his face better.

“There’s something the matter with you, father. You’re trying to say something, and I want to know what it is. Tell me quick, or I’ll make Rastus bite you!”

“It won’t take long, dear. I’ve been lucky in some investments while you were away, and I’m going to leave the Force, and take you over to England and find a prince for you to marry⁠—if you think you would like it.”

“Father! It’ll be perfectly splendid!”

She kissed him.

“What are you looking so thoughtful about,