Books: The Little Nugget
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P.G. Wodehouse >> The Little Nugget
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He had not. Mrs Drassilis expected a great deal more of him, the
non-receipt of which had spoiled her temper, her looks, and the
peace of mind of all who had anything much to do with her.
It used to irritate me when I overheard people, as I occasionally
have done, speak of Cynthia as hard. I never found her so myself,
though heaven knows she had enough to make her so, to me she was
always a sympathetic, charming friend.
Ours was a friendship almost untouched by sex. Our minds fitted so
smoothly into one another that I had no inclination to fall in
love. I knew her too well. I had no discoveries to make about her.
Her honest, simple soul had always been open to me to read. There
was none of that curiosity, that sense of something beyond that
makes for love. We had reached a point of comradeship beyond which
neither of us desired to pass.
Yet at the Fletchers' ball I asked Cynthia to marry me, and she
consented.
* * * * *
Looking back, I can see that, though the determining cause was Mr
Tankerville Gifford, it was Audrey who was responsible. She had
made me human, capable of sympathy, and it was sympathy,
primarily, that led me to say what I said that night.
But the immediate cause was certainly young Mr Gifford.
I arrived at Marlow Square, where I was to pick up Cynthia and her
mother, a little late, and found Mrs Drassilis, florid and
overdressed, in the drawing-room with a sleek-haired, pale young
man known to me as Tankerville Gifford--to his intimates, of whom
I was not one, and in the personal paragraphs of the coloured
sporting weeklies, as 'Tanky'. I had seen him frequently at
restaurants. Once, at the Empire, somebody had introduced me to
him; but, as he had not been sober at the moment, he had missed
any intellectual pleasure my acquaintanceship might have afforded
him. Like everybody else who moves about in London, I knew all
about him. To sum him up, he was a most unspeakable little cad,
and, if the drawing-room had not been Mrs Drassilis's, I should
have wondered at finding him in it.
Mrs Drassilis introduced us.
'I think we have already met,' I said.
He stared glassily.
'Don't remember.'
I was not surprised.
At this moment Cynthia came in. Out of the corner of my eye I
observed a look of fuddled displeasure come into Tanky's face at
her frank pleasure at seeing me.
I had never seen her looking better. She is a tall girl, who
carries herself magnificently. The simplicity of her dress gained
an added dignity from comparison with the rank glitter of her
mother's. She wore unrelieved black, a colour which set off to
wonderful advantage the clear white of her skin and her pale-gold
hair.
'You're late, Peter,' she said, looking at the clock.
'I know. I'm sorry.'
'Better be pushing, what?' suggested Tanky.
'My cab's waiting.'
'Will you ring the bell, Mr Gifford?' said Mrs Drassilis. 'I will
tell Parker to whistle for another.'
'Take me in yours,' I heard a voice whisper in my ear.
I looked at Cynthia. Her expression had not changed. Then I looked
at Tanky Gifford, and I understood. I had seen that stuffed-fish
look on his face before--on the occasion when I had been
introduced to him at the Empire.
'If you and Mr Gifford will take my cab,' I said to Mrs Drassilis,
'we will follow.'
Mrs Drassilis blocked the motion. I imagine that the sharp note in
her voice was lost on Tanky, but it rang out like a clarion to me.
'I am in no hurry,' she said. 'Mr Gifford, will you take Cynthia?
I will follow with Mr Burns. You will meet Parker on the stairs.
Tell him to call another cab.'
As the door closed behind them, she turned on me like a many-coloured
snake.
'How can you be so extraordinarily tactless, Peter?' she cried.
'You're a perfect fool. Have you no eyes?'
'I'm sorry,' I said.
'He's devoted to her.'
'I'm sorry.'
'What do you mean?'
'Sorry for her.'
She seemed to draw herself together inside her dress. Her eyes
glittered. My mouth felt very dry, and my heart was beginning to
thump. We were both furiously angry. It was a moment that had been
coming for years, and we both knew it. For my part I was glad that
it had come. On subjects on which one feels deeply it is a relief
to speak one's mind.
'Oh!' she said at last. Her voice quivered. She was clutching at
her self-control as it slipped from her. 'Oh! And what is my
daughter to you, Mr Burns!'
'A great friend.'
'And I suppose you think it friendly to try to spoil her chances?'
'If Mr Gifford is a sample of them--yes.'
'What do you mean?'
She choked.
'I see. I understand. I am going to put a stop to this once and
for all. Do you hear? I have noticed it for a long time. Because I
have given you the run of the house, and allowed you to come in
and out as you pleased, like a tame cat, you presume--'
'Presume--' I prompted.
'You come here and stand in Cynthia's way. You trade on the fact
that you have known us all this time to monopolize her attention.
You spoil her chances. You--'
The invaluable Parker entered to say that the cab was at the door.
We drove to the Fletchers' house in silence. The spell had been
broken. Neither of us could recapture that first, fine, careless
rapture which had carried us through the opening stages of the
conflict, and discussion of the subject on a less exalted plane
was impossible. It was that blessed period of calm, the rest
between rounds, and we observed it to the full.
When I reached the ballroom a waltz was just finishing. Cynthia, a
statue in black, was dancing with Tanky Gifford. They were
opposite me when the music stopped, and she caught sight of me
over his shoulder.
She disengaged herself and moved quickly towards me.
'Take me away,' she said under her breath. 'Anywhere. Quick.'
It was no time to consider the etiquette of the ballroom. Tanky,
startled at his sudden loneliness, seemed by his expression to be
endeavouring to bring his mind to bear on the matter. A couple
making for the door cut us off from him, and following them, we
passed out.
Neither of us spoke till we had reached the little room where I
had meditated.
She sat down. She was looking pale and tired.
'Oh, dear!' she said.
I understood. I seemed to see that journey in the cab, those
dances, those terrible between-dances ...
It was very sudden.
I took her hand. She turned to me with a tired smile. There were
tears in her eyes ...
I heard myself speaking ...
She was looking at me, her eyes shining. All the weariness seemed
to have gone out of them.
I looked at her.
There was something missing. I had felt it when I was speaking. To
me my voice had had no ring of conviction. And then I saw what it
was. There was no mystery. We knew each other too well. Friendship
kills love.
She put my thought into words.
'We have always been brother and sister,' she said doubtfully.
'Till tonight.'
'You have changed tonight? You really want me?'
Did I? I tried to put the question to myself and answer it
honestly. Yes, in a sense, I had changed tonight. There was an
added appreciation of her fineness, a quickening of that blend of
admiration and pity which I had always felt for her. I wanted with
all my heart to help her, to take her away from her dreadful
surroundings, to make her happy. But did I want her in the sense
in which she had used the word? Did I want her as I had wanted
Audrey Blake? I winced away from the question. Audrey belonged to
the dead past, but it hurt to think of her.
Was it merely because I was five years older now than when I had
wanted Audrey that the fire had gone out of me?
I shut my mind against my doubts.
'I have changed tonight,' I said.
And I bent down and kissed her.
I was conscious of being defiant against somebody. And then I knew
that the somebody was myself.
I poured myself out a cup of hot coffee from the flask which
Smith, my man, had filled against my return. It put life into me.
The oppression lifted.
And yet there remained something that made for uneasiness, a sort
of foreboding at the back of my mind.
I had taken a step in the dark, and I was afraid for Cynthia. I
had undertaken to give her happiness. Was I certain that I could
succeed? The glow of chivalry had left me, and I began to doubt.
Audrey had taken from me something that I could not recover--poetry
was as near as I could get to a definition of it. Yes, poetry.
With Cynthia my feet would always be on the solid earth. To the
end of the chapter we should be friends and nothing more.
I found myself pitying Cynthia intensely. I saw her future a
series of years of intolerable dullness. She was too good to be
tied for life to a battered hulk like myself.
I drank more coffee and my mood changed. Even in the grey of a
winter morning a man of thirty, in excellent health, cannot pose
to himself for long as a piece of human junk, especially if he
comforts himself with hot coffee.
My mind resumed its balance. I laughed at myself as a sentimental
fraud. Of course I could make her happy. No man and woman had ever
been more admirably suited to each other. As for that first
disaster, which I had been magnifying into a life-tragedy, what of
it? An incident of my boyhood. A ridiculous episode which--I rose
with the intention of doing so at once--I should now proceed to
eliminate from my life.
I went quickly to my desk, unlocked it, and took out a photograph.
And then--undoubtedly four o'clock in the morning is no time for a
man to try to be single-minded and decisive--I wavered. I had
intended to tear the thing in pieces without a glance, and fling
it into the wastepaper-basket. But I took the glance and I
hesitated.
The girl in the photograph was small and slight, and she looked
straight out of the picture with large eyes that met and
challenged mine. How well I remembered them, those Irish-blue eyes
under their expressive, rather heavy brows. How exactly the
photographer had caught that half-wistful, half-impudent look, the
chin tilted, the mouth curving into a smile.
In a wave all my doubts had surged back upon me. Was this mere
sentimentalism, a four-in-the-morning tribute to the pathos of the
flying years, or did she really fill my soul and stand guard over
it so that no successor could enter in and usurp her place?
I had no answer, unless the fact that I replaced the photograph in
its drawer was one. I felt that this thing could not be decided
now. It was more difficult than I had thought.
All my gloom had returned by the time I was in bed. Hours seemed
to pass while I tossed restlessly aching for sleep.
When I woke my last coherent thought was still clear in my mind.
It was a passionate vow that, come what might, if those Irish eyes
were to haunt me till my death, I would play the game loyally with
Cynthia.
II
The telephone bell rang just as I was getting ready to call at
Marlow Square and inform Mrs Drassilis of the position of affairs.
Cynthia, I imagined, would have broken the news already, which
would mitigate the embarrassment of the interview to some extent;
but the recollection of my last night's encounter with Mrs
Drassilis prevented me from looking forward with any joy to the
prospect of meeting her again.
Cynthia's voice greeted me as I unhooked the receiver.
'Hullo, Peter! Is that you? I want you to come round here at
once.'
'I was just starting,' I said.
'I don't mean Marlow Square. I'm not there. I'm at the Guelph. Ask
for Mrs Ford's suite. It's very important. I'll tell you all about
it when you get here. Come as soon as you can.'
My rooms were conveniently situated for visits to the Hotel
Guelph. A walk of a couple of minutes took me there. Mrs Ford's
suite was on the third floor. I rang the bell and Cynthia opened
the door to me.
'Come in,' she said. 'You're a dear to be so quick.'
'My rooms are only just round the corner.' She shut the door, and
for the first time we looked at one another. I could not say that
I was nervous, but there was certainly, to me, a something strange
in the atmosphere. Last night seemed a long way off and somehow a
little unreal. I suppose I must have shown this in my manner, for
she suddenly broke what had amounted to a distinct pause by giving
a little laugh. 'Peter,' she said, 'you're embarrassed.' I denied
the charge warmly, but without real conviction. I was embarrassed.
'Then you ought to be,' she said. 'Last night, when I was looking
my very best in a lovely dress, you asked me to marry you. Now you
see me again in cold blood, and you're wondering how you can back
out of it without hurting my feelings.'
I smiled. She did not. I ceased to smile. She was looking at me in
a very peculiar manner.
'Peter,' she said, 'are you sure?'
'My dear old Cynthia,' I said, 'what's the matter with you?'
'You are sure?' she persisted.
'Absolutely, entirely sure.' I had a vision of two large eyes
looking at me out of a photograph. It came and went in a flash.
I kissed Cynthia.
'What quantities of hair you have,' I said. 'It's a shame to cover
it up.' She was not responsive. 'You're in a very queer mood
today, Cynthia,' I went on. 'What's the matter?'
'I've been thinking.'
'Out with it. Something has gone wrong.' An idea flashed upon me.
'Er--has your mother--is your mother very angry about--'
'Mother's delighted. She always liked you, Peter.'
I had the self-restraint to check a grin.
'Then what is it?' I said. 'Tired after the dance?'
'Nothing as simple as that.'
'Tell me.'
'It's so difficult to put it into words.'
'Try.'
She was playing with the papers on the table, her face turned
away. For a moment she did not speak.
'I've been worrying myself, Peter,' she said at last. 'You are so
chivalrous and unselfish. You're quixotic. It's that that is
troubling me. Are you marrying me just because you're sorry for
me? Don't speak. I can tell you now if you will just let me say
straight out what's in my mind. We have known each other for two
years now. You know all about me. You know how--how unhappy I am
at home. Are you marrying me just because you pity me and want to
take me out of all that?'
'My dear girl!'
'You haven't answered my question.'
'I answered it two minutes ago when you asked me if--'
'You do love me?'
'Yes.'
All this time she had been keeping her face averted, but now she
turned and looked into my eyes with an abrupt intensity which, I
confess, startled me. Her words startled me more.
'Peter, do you love me as much as you loved Audrey Blake?'
In the instant which divided her words from my reply my mind flew
hither and thither, trying to recall an occasion when I could have
mentioned Audrey to her. I was convinced that I had not done so. I
never mentioned Audrey to anyone.
There is a grain of superstition in the most level-headed man. I
am not particularly level-headed, and I have more than a grain in
me. I was shaken. Ever since I had asked Cynthia to marry me, it
seemed as if the ghost of Audrey had come back into my life.
'Good Lord!' I cried. 'What do you know of Audrey Blake?'
She turned her face away again.
'Her name seems to affect you very strongly,' she said quietly.
I recovered myself.
'If you ask an old soldier,' I said, 'he will tell you that a
wound, long after it has healed, is apt to give you an occasional
twinge.'
'Not if it has really healed.'
'Yes, when it has really healed--when you can hardly remember how
you were fool enough to get it.'
She said nothing.
'How did you hear about--it?' I asked.
'When I first met you, or soon after, a friend of yours--we
happened to be talking about you--told me that you had been engaged
to be married to a girl named Audrey Blake. He was to have been
your best man, he said, but one day you wrote and told him there
would be no wedding, and then you disappeared; and nobody saw you
again for three years.'
'Yes,' I said: 'that is all quite true.'
'It seems to have been a serious affair, Peter. I mean--the sort
of thing a man would find it hard to forget.'
I tried to smile, but I knew that I was not doing it well. It was
hurting me extraordinarily, this discussion of Audrey.
'A man would find it almost impossible,' I said, 'unless he had a
remarkably poor memory.'
'I didn't mean that. You know what I mean by forget.'
'Yes,' I said, 'I do.'
She came quickly to me and took me by the shoulders, looking into
my face.
'Peter, can you honestly say you have forgotten her--in the sense
I mean?'
'Yes,' I said.
Again that feeling swept over me--that curious sensation of being
defiant against myself.
'She does not stand between us?'
'No,' I said.
I could feel the effort behind the word. It was as if some
subconscious part of me were working to keep it back.
'Peter!'
There was a soft smile on her face; as she raised it to mine I put
my arms around her.
She drew away with a little laugh. Her whole manner had changed.
She was a different being from the girl who had looked so gravely
into my eyes a moment before.
'Oh, my dear boy, how terribly muscular you are! You've crushed
me. I expect you used to be splendid at football, like Mr
Broster.'
I did not reply at once. I cannot wrap up the deeper emotions and
put them back on their shelf directly I have no further immediate
use for them. I slowly adjusted myself to the new key of the
conversation.
'Who's Broster?' I asked at length.
'He used to be tutor to'--she turned me round and pointed--'to
_that_.'
I had seen a picture standing on one of the chairs when I entered
the room but had taken no particular notice of it. I now gave it a
closer glance. It was a portrait, very crudely done, of a
singularly repulsive child of about ten or eleven years old.
_Was_ he, poor chap! Well, we all have our troubles, don't
we! Who _is_ this young thug! Not a friend of yours, I hope?'
'That is Ogden, Mrs Ford's son. It's a tragedy--'
'Perhaps it doesn't do him justice. Does he really squint like
that, or is it just the artist's imagination?'
'Don't make fun of it. It's the loss of that boy that is breaking
Nesta's heart.'
I was shocked.
'Is he dead? I'm awfully sorry. I wouldn't for the world--'
'No, no. He is alive and well. But he is dead to her. The court
gave him into the custody of his father.'
'The court?'
'Mrs Ford was the wife of Elmer Ford, the American millionaire.
They were divorced a year ago.'
'I see.'
Cynthia was gazing at the portrait.
'This boy is quite a celebrity in his way,' she said. 'They call
him "The Little Nugget" in America.'
'Oh! Why is that?'
'It's a nickname the kidnappers have for him. Ever so many
attempts have been made to steal him.'
She stopped and looked at me oddly.
'I made one today, Peter,' she said. I went down to the country,
where the boy was, and kidnapped him.'
'Cynthia! What on earth do you mean?'
'Don't you understand? I did it for Nesta's sake. She was breaking
her heart about not being able to see him, so I slipped down and
stole him away, and brought him back here.'
I do not know if I was looking as amazed as I felt. I hope not,
for I felt as if my brain were giving way. The perfect calmness
with which she spoke of this extraordinary freak added to my
confusion.
'You're joking!'
'No; I stole him.'
'But, good heavens! The law! It's a penal offence, you know!'
'Well, I did it. Men like Elmer Ford aren't fit to have charge of
a child. You don't know him, but he's just an unscrupulous
financier, without a thought above money. To think of a boy
growing up in that tainted atmosphere--at his most impressionable
age. It means death to any good there is in him.'
My mind was still grappling feebly with the legal aspect of the
affair.
'But, Cynthia, kidnapping's kidnapping, you know! The law doesn't
take any notice of motives. If you're caught--'
She cut through my babble.
'Would you have been afraid to do it, Peter?'
'Well--' I began. I had not considered the point before.
'I don't believe you would. If I asked you to do it for my sake--'
'But, Cynthia, kidnapping, you know! It's such an infernally low-down
game.'
'I played it. Do you despise _me_?'
I perspired. I could think of no other reply.
'Peter,' she said, 'I understand your scruples. I know exactly how
you feel. But can't you see that this is quite different from the
sort of kidnapping you naturally look on as horrible? It's just
taking a boy away from surroundings that must harm him, back to
his mother, who worships him. It's not wrong. It's splendid.'
She paused.
'You _will_ do it for me, Peter?' she said.
'I don't understand,' I said feebly. 'It's done. You've kidnapped
him yourself.'
'They tracked him and took him back. And now I want _you_ to
try.' She came closer to me. 'Peter, don't you see what it will
mean to me if you agree to try? I'm only human, I can't help, at
the bottom of my heart, still being a little jealous of this
Audrey Blake. No, don't say anything. Words can't cure me; but if
you do this thing for me, I shall be satisfied. I shall _know_.'
She was close beside me, holding my arm and looking into my face.
That sense of the unreality of things which had haunted me since
that moment at the dance came over me with renewed intensity. Life
had ceased to be a rather grey, orderly business in which day
succeeded day calmly and without event. Its steady stream had
broken up into rapids, and I was being whirled away on them.
'Will you do it, Peter? Say you will.'
A voice, presumably mine, answered 'Yes'.
'My dear old boy!'
She pushed me into a chair, and, sitting on the arm of it, laid
her hand on mine and became of a sudden wondrously business-like.
'Listen,' she said, 'I'll tell you what we have arranged.'
It was borne in upon me, as she began to do so, that she appeared
from the very beginning to have been extremely confident that that
essential part of her plans, my consent to the scheme, could be
relied upon as something of a certainty. Women have these
intuitions.
III
Looking back, I think I can fix the point at which this insane
venture I had undertaken ceased to be a distorted dream, from
which I vaguely hoped that I might shortly waken, and took shape
as a reality of the immediate future. That moment came when I met
Mr Arnold Abney by appointment at his club.
Till then the whole enterprise had been visionary. I gathered from
Cynthia that the boy Ogden was shortly to be sent to a preparatory
school, and that I was to insinuate myself into this school and,
watching my opportunity, to remove him; but it seemed to me that
the obstacles to this comparatively lucid scheme were insuperable.
In the first place, how were we to discover which of England's
million preparatory schools Mr Ford, or Mr Mennick for him, would
choose? Secondly, the plot which was to carry me triumphantly into
this school when--or if--found, struck me as extremely thin. I
was to pose, Cynthia told me, as a young man of private means,
anxious to learn the business, with a view to setting up a school
of his own. The objection to that was, I held, that I obviously
did not want to do anything of the sort. I had not the appearance
of a man with such an ambition. I had none of the conversation of
such a man.
I put it to Cynthia.
'They would find me out in a day,' I assured her. 'A man who wants
to set up a school has got to be a pretty brainy sort of fellow. I
don't know anything.'
'You got your degree.'
'A degree. At any rate, I've forgotten all I knew.'
'That doesn't matter. You have the money. Anybody with money can
start a school, even if he doesn't know a thing. Nobody would
think it strange.'
It struck me as a monstrous slur on our educational system, but
reflection told me it was true. The proprietor of a preparatory
school, if he is a man of wealth, need not be able to teach, any
more than an impresario need be able to write plays.
'Well, we'll pass that for the moment,' I said. 'Here's the real
difficulty. How are you going to find out the school Mr Ford has
chosen?'
'I have found it out already--or Nesta has. She set a detective to
work. It was perfectly easy. Ogden's going to Mr Abney's. Sanstead
House is the name of the place. It's in Hampshire somewhere. Quite
a small school, but full of little dukes and earls and things.
Lord Mountry's younger brother, Augustus Beckford, is there.'
I had known Lord Mountry and his family well some years ago. I
remembered Augustus dimly.
'Mountry? Do you know him? He was up at Oxford with me.'
She seemed interested.
'What kind of a man is he?' she asked.
'Oh, quite a good sort. Rather an ass. I haven't seen him for
years.'
'He's a friend of Nesta's. I've only met him once. He is going to
be your reference.'
'My what?'
'You will need a reference. At least, I suppose you will. And,
anyhow, if you say you know Lord Mountry it will make it simpler
for you with Mr Abney, the brother being at the school.'
'Does Mountry know about this business? Have you told him why I
want to go to Abney's?'
'Nesta told him. He thought it was very sporting of you. He will
tell Mr Abney anything we like. By the way, Peter, you will have
to pay a premium or something, I suppose. But Nesta will look
after all expenses, of course.'
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