He had just sucked it down and was signalling for another, when the door of the saloon bar opened and in came Pongo.
If Barmy had been less preoccupied with his own troubles he would have seen that Pongo was in poorish shape. His collar was torn, his hair dishevelled. There were streaks of chocolate down his face and half a jam sandwich attached to the back of his coat. And so moved was he at seeing Barmy that he started ticking him off before he had so much as ordered a gin and ginger.
‘A nice thing you let me in for!’ said Pongo. ‘A jolly job you shoved off on me!’
Barmy was feeling a little better after his ingurgitations, and he was able to speak.
‘What are you talking about?’
‘I am talking about School Treats,’ replied Pongo, with an intense bitterness. ‘I am talking about seas of children, all with sticky hands, who rubbed those hands on me. I am talking . . . Oh, it’s no good your gaping like a diseased fish, Fotheringay-Phipps. You know dashed well that you planned the whole thing. Your cunning fiend’s brain formulated the entire devilish scheme. You engineered the bally outrage for your own foul purposes, to queer me with Angelica. You thought that when a girl sees a man blind-folded and smacked with rolled-up newspapers by smelly children she can never feel the same to him again. Ha!’ said Pongo, at last ordering his gin and ginger.
Barmy was stunned, of course, by this violent attack, but he retained enough of the nice sense of propriety of the Fotheringay-Phippses to realize that this discussion could not be continued in public. Already the barmaid’s ears had begun to work loose at the roots as she pricked them up.
‘I don’t know what the dickens you’re talking about,’ he said, ‘but bring your drink up to my room and we’ll go into the matter there. We cannot bandy a woman’s name in a saloon bar.’
‘Who’s bandying a woman’s name?’
‘You are. You bandied it only half a second ago. If you don’t call what you said bandying, there are finer-minded men who do.’
So they went upstairs, and Barmy shut the door.
‘Now, then,’ he said. ‘What’s all this drivel?’
‘I’ve told you.’
‘Tell me again.’
‘I will.’
‘Right ho. One moment.’
Barmy went to the door and opened it sharply. There came the unmistakable sound of a barmaid falling downstairs. He closed the door again.
‘Now, then,’ he said.
Pongo drained his gin and ginger.
‘Of all the dirty tricks one man ever played on another,’ he began, ‘your sneaking out of that School Treat and letting me in for it is one which the verdict of history will undoubtedly rank the dirtiest. I can read you now like a book, Fotheringay-Phipps. Your motive is crystal-clear to me. You knew at what a disadvantage a man appears at a School Treat, and you saw to it that I and not you should be the poor mutt to get smeared with chocolate and sloshed with newspapers before the eyes of Angelica Briscoe. And I believed you when you handed me all that drip about yielding your claim and what not. My gosh!’
For an instant, as he heard these words, stupefaction rendered Barmy speechless. Then he found his tongue. His generous soul was seething with indignation at the thought of how his altruism, his great sacrifice, had been misinterpreted.
‘What absolute rot!’ he cried. ‘I never heard such bilge in my life. My motives in sending you to that School Treat instead of me were unmixedly chivalrous. I did it simply and solely to enable you to ingratiate yourself with the girl, not reflecting that it was out of the question that she should ever love a pop-eyed, pimply-faced poop like you.’
Pongo started.
‘Pop-eyed?’
‘Pop-eyed was what I said.’
‘Pimply-faced?’
‘Pimply-faced was the term I employed.’
‘Poop?’
‘Poop was the expression with which I concluded. If you want to know the real obstacle in the way of any wooing you may do now or in the years to come, Twistleton-Twistleton, it is this – that you entirely lack sex-appeal and look like nothing on earth. A girl of the sweet, sensitive nature of Angelica Briscoe does not have to see you smeared with chocolate to recoil from you with loathing. She does it automatically, and she does it on her head.’
‘Is that so?’
‘That is so.’
‘Oh? Well, let me inform you that in spite of what has happened, in spite of the fact that she has seen me at my worst, there is something within me that tells me that Angelica Briscoe loves me and will one day be mine.’
‘Mine, you mean. I can read the message in a girl’s shy, drooping eyes, Twistleton-Twistleton, and I am prepared to give you odds of eleven to four that before the year is out I shall be walking down the aisle with Angelica Fotheringay – Phipps on my arm. I will go further. Thirty-three to eight.’
‘What in?’
‘Tenners.’
‘Done.’
It was at this moment that the door opened.
‘Excuse me, gentlemen,’ said the barmaid.
The two rivals glared at the intruder. She was a well-nourished girl with a kind face. She was rubbing her left leg, which appeared to be paining her. The staircases are steep at the Goose and Grasshopper.
‘You’ll excuse me muscling in like this, gentlemen,’ said the barmaid, or words to that effect, ‘but I happened inadvertently to overhear your conversation, and I feel it my duty to put you straight on an important point of fact. Gentlemen, all bets are off. Miss Angelica Briscoe is already engaged to be married.’
You can readily conceive the effect of this announcement. Pongo biffed down into the only chair, and Barmy staggered against the wash-hand stand.
‘What!’ said Pongo.
‘What!’ said Barmy.
The barmaid turned to Barmy.
‘Yes, sir. To the gentleman you were talking to in my bar the afternoon you arrived.’
Her initial observation had made Barmy feel as if he had been punched in the wind by sixteen Mothers, but at this addendum he was able to pull himself together a bit.
‘Don’t be an ass, my dear old barmaid,’ he said. ‘That was Miss Briscoe’s brother.’
‘No, sir.’
‘But his name was Briscoe, and you told me he was at the Vicarage.’
‘Yes, sir. He spends a good deal of his time at the Vicarage, being the young lady’s second cousin, and engaged to her since last Christmas!’
Barmy eyed her sternly. He was deeply moved.
‘Why did you not inform me of this earlier, you chump of a barmaid? With your gift for listening at doors you must long since have become aware that this gentlemen here and myself were deeply enamoured of Miss Briscoe. And yet you kept these facts under your hat, causing us to waste our time and experience the utmost alarm and despondency. Do you realize, barmaid, that, had you spoken sooner, my friend here would not have been subjected to nameless indignities at the School Treat. . . .’
‘Yes, sir. It was the School Treat that Mr Briscoe was so bent on not having to go to, which he would have had to have done, Miss Angelica insisting. He had a terrible time there last year, poor gentleman. He was telling me about it. And that was why he asked me as a particular favour not to mention that he was engaged to Miss Briscoe, because he said that, if he played his cards properly and a little secrecy and silence were observed in the proper quarters, there was a mug staying at the inn that he thought he could get to go instead of him. It would have done you good, sir, to have seen the way his face lit up as he said it. He’s a very nice gentleman, Mr Briscoe, and we’re all very fond of him. Well, I mustn’t stay talking here, sir. I’ve got my bar to see to.’
She withdrew, and for some minutes there was silence in the room. It was Barmy who was the first to break it.
‘After all, we still have our Art,’ said Barmy.
He crossed the room and patted Pongo on the shoulder.
‘Of course, it’s a nasty knock, old man . . .’
&n
bsp; Pongo had raised his face from his hands and was fumbling for his cigarette-case. There was a look in his eyes as if he had just wakened from a dream.
‘Well, is it?’ he said. ‘You’ve got to look at these things from every angle. Is a girl who can deliberately allow a man to go through the horrors of a School Treat worth bothering about?’
Barmy started.
‘I never thought of that. Or a girl, for that matter, who could callously throw a fellow to the Village Mothers.’
‘Remind me some time to tell you about a game called “Is Mr Smith At Home?” where you put your head in a sack and the younger generation jab you with sticks.’
‘And don’t let me forget to tell you about that Mother in the puce mantle on the Bump the Bumps.’
‘There was a kid called Horace . . .’
‘There was a Mother in a Homburg hat . . .’
‘The fact is,’ said Pongo, ‘we have allowed ourselves to lose our sober judgment over a girl whose idea of a mate is a mere “Hey, you,” to be ordered hither and thither at her will, and who will unleash the juvenile population of her native village upon him without so much as a pang of pity – in a word, a parson’s daughter. If you want to know the secret of a happy and successful life, Barmy, old man, it is this: Keep away from parsons’ daughters.’
‘Right away,’ agreed Barmy. ‘How do you react to hiring a car and pushing off to the metropolis at once?’
‘I am all for it. And if we’re to give of our best on the evening of the eleventh prox. we ought to start rehearsing again immediately.’
‘We certainly ought.’
‘We haven’t any too much time, as it is.’
‘We certainly haven’t. I’ve got an aunt who complains of rheumatism.’
‘Well, who wouldn’t? My father can’t meet his creditors.’
‘Does he want to? My uncle Joe’s in very low water just now.’
‘Too bad. What’s he doing?’
‘Teaching swimming. Listen, Pongo,’ said Barmy, ‘I’ve been thinking. You take the green whiskers this year.’
‘No, no.’
‘Yes, really. I mean it. If I’ve said it to myself once, I’ve said it a hundred times – good old Pongo simply must have the green whiskers this year.’
‘Barmy!’
‘Pongo!’
They clasped hands. Tried in the furnace, their friendship had emerged strong and true. Cyril Fotheringay-Phipps and Reginald Twistleton-Twistleton were themselves again.
3 TROUBLE DOWN AT TUDSLEIGH
TWO EGGS AND a couple of Beans were having a leisurely spot in the smoking-room of the Drones Club, when a Crumpet came in and asked if anybody present wished to buy a practically new copy of Tennyson’s poems. His manner, as he spoke, suggested that he had little hope that business would result. Nor did it. The two Beans and one of the Eggs said No. The other Egg merely gave a short, sardonic laugh.
The Crumpet hastened to put himself right with the Company.
‘It isn’t mine. It belongs to Freddie Widgeon.’
The senior of the two Beans drew his breath in sharply, genuinely shocked.
‘You aren’t telling us Freddie Widgeon bought a Tennyson?’
The junior Bean said that this confirmed a suspicion which had long been stealing over him. Poor old Freddie was breaking up.
‘Not at all,’ said the Crumpet. ‘He had the most excellent motives. The whole thing was a strategic move, and in my opinion a jolly fine strategic move. He did it to boost his stock with the girl.’
‘What girl?’
‘April Carroway. She lived at a place called Tudsleigh down in Worcestershire. Freddie went there for the fishing, and the day he left London he happened to run into his uncle, Lord Blicester, and the latter, learning that he was to be in those parts, told him on no account to omit to look in at Tudsleigh Court and slap his old friend, Lady Carroway, on the back. So Freddie called there on the afternoon of his arrival, to get the thing over: and as he was passing through the garden on his way out he suddenly heard a girl’s voice proceeding from the interior of a summer-house. And so musical was it that he edged a bit closer and shot a glance through the window. And, as he did so, he reeled and came within a toucher of falling.’
From where he stood he could see the girl plainly, and she was, he tells me, the absolute ultimate word, the last bubbling cry. She could not have looked better to him if he had drawn up the specifications personally. He was stunned. He had had no idea that there was anything like this on the premises. There and then he abandoned his scheme of spending the next two weeks fishing: for day by day in every way, he realized, he must haunt Tudsleigh Court from now on like a resident spectre.
He had now recovered sufficiently for his senses to function once more, and he gathered that what the girl was doing was reading some species of poetry aloud to a small, grave female kid with green eyes and turned-up nose who sat at her side. And the idea came to him that it would be a pretty sound scheme if he could find out what this bilge was. For, of course, when it comes to wooing, it’s simply half the battle to get a line on the adored object’s favourite literature. Ascertain what it is and mug it up and decant an excerpt or two in her presence, and before you can say ‘What ho!’ she is looking on you as a kindred soul and is all over you.
And it was at this point that he had a nice little slice of luck. The girl suddenly stopped reading: and, placing the volume face-down on her lap, sat gazing dreamily nor’-nor’-east for a space, as I believe girls frequently do when they strike a particularly juicy bit half-way through a poem. And the next moment Freddie was hareing off to the local post-office to wire to London for a Collected Works of Alfred, Lord Tennyson. He was rather relieved, he tells me, because, girls being what they are, it might quite easily have been Shelley or even Browning.
Well, Freddie lost no time in putting into operation his scheme of becoming the leading pest at Tudsleigh Court. On the following afternoon he called there again, met Lady Carroway once more, and was introduced to this girl, April, and to the green-eyed kid, who, he learned, was her young sister Prudence. So far, so good. But just as he was starting to direct at April a respectfully volcanic look which would give her some rough kind of preliminary intimation that here came old Colonel Romeo in person, his hostess went on to say something which sounded like ‘Captain Bradbury,’ and he perceived with a nasty shock that he was not the only visitor. Seated in a chair with a cup of tea in one hand and half a muffin in the other was an extraordinarily large and beefy bird in tweeds.
‘Captain Bradbury, Mr Widgeon,’ said Lady Carroway. ‘Captain Bradbury is in the Indian Army. He is home on leave and has taken a house up the river.’
‘Oh?’ said Freddie, rather intimating by his manner that this was just the dirty sort of trick he would have imagined the other would have played.
‘Mr Widgeon is the nephew of my old friend, Lord Blicester.’
‘Ah?’ said Captain Bradbury, hiding with a ham-like hand a yawn that seemed to signify that Freddie’s foul antecedents were of little interest to him. It was plain that this was not going to be one of those sudden friendships. Captain Bradbury was obviously feeling that a world fit for heroes to live in should contain the irreducible minimum of Widgeons: while, as for Freddie, the last person he wanted hanging about the place at this highly critical point in his affairs was a richly tanned military man with deep-set eyes and a natty moustache.
However, he quickly rallied from his momentary agitation. Once that volume of Tennyson came, he felt, he would pretty soon put this bird where he belonged. A natty moustache is not everything. Nor is a rich tan. And the same may be said of deep-set eyes. What bungs a fellow over with a refined and poetical girl is Soul. And in the course of the next few days Freddie expected to have soul enough for six. He exerted himself, accordingly, to be the life of the party, and so successful were his efforts that, as they were leaving, Captain Bradbury drew him aside and gave him the sort of look he would have given
a Pathan discovered pinching the old regiment’s rifles out on the North-Western Frontier. And it was only now that Freddie really began to appreciate the other’s physique. He had had no notion that they were making the soldiery so large nowadays.
‘Tell me, Pridgeon . . .’
‘Widgeon,’ said Freddie, to keep the records straight.
‘Tell me, Widgeon, are you making a long stay in these parts?’
‘Oh, yes. Fairly longish.’
‘I shouldn’t.’
‘You wouldn’t?’
‘Not if I were you.’
‘But I like the scenery.’
‘If you got both eyes bunged up, you wouldn’t be able to see the scenery.’
‘Why should I get both eyes bunged up?’
‘You might.’
‘But why?’
‘I don’t know. You just might. These things happen. Well, good evening, Widgeon,’ said Captain Bradbury and hopped into his two-seater like a performing elephant alighting on an upturned barrel. And Freddie made his way to the Blue Lion in Tudsleigh village, where he had established his headquarters.
It would be idle to deny that this little chat gave Frederick Widgeon food for thought. He brooded on it over his steak and French fried that night, and was still brooding on it long after he had slid between the sheets and should have been in a restful sleep. And when morning brought its eggs and bacon and coffee he began to brood on it again.
He’s a pretty astute sort of chap, Freddie, and he had not failed to sense the threatening note in the Captain’s remarks. And he was somewhat dubious as to what to do for the best. You see, it was the first time anything of this sort had happened to him. I suppose, all in all, Freddie Widgeon has been in love at first sight with possibly twenty-seven girls in the course of his career: but hitherto everything had been what you might call plain sailing. I mean, he would flutter round for a few days and then the girl, incensed by some floater on his part or possibly merely unable to stand the sight of him any longer, would throw him out on his left ear, and that would be that. Everything pleasant and agreeable and orderly, as you might say. But this was different. Here he had come up against a new element, the jealous rival, and it was beginning to look not so good.