Young Men in Spats (7 page)

‘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.

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.

It was the sight of Tennyson's poems that turned the scale. The volume had arrived early on the previous day, and already he had mugged up two-thirds of the ‘Lady of Shalott'. And the thought that, if he were to oil out now, all this frightful sweat would be so much dead loss, decided the issue. That afternoon he called once more at Tudsleigh Court, prepared to proceed with the matter along the lines originally laid out. And picture his astonishment and delight when he discovered that Captain Bradbury was not among those present.

There are very few advantages about having a military man as a rival in your wooing, but one of these is that every now and then such a military man has to pop up to London to see the blokes at the War Office. This Captain Bradbury had done today, and it was amazing what a difference his absence made. A gay confidence seemed to fill Freddie as he sat there wolfing buttered toast. He had finished the ‘Lady of Shalott' that morning and was stuffed to the tonsils with good material. It was only a question of time, he felt, before some chance remark would uncork him and give him the cue to do his stuff.

And presently it came. Lady Carroway, withdrawing to write letters, paused at the door to ask April if she had any message for her Uncle Lancelot.

‘Give him my love,' said April, ‘and say I hope he likes Bournemouth.'

The door closed. Freddie coughed.

‘He's moved then?' he said.

‘I beg your pardon?'

‘Just a spot of persiflage. Lancelot, you know. Tennyson, you know. You remember in the “Lady of Shalott” Lancelot was putting in most of his time at Camelot.'

The girl stared at him, dropping a slice of bread-and-butter in her emotion.

‘You don't mean to say you read Tennyson, Mr Widgeon?'

‘Me?' said Freddie. ‘Tennyson? Read Tennyson? Me read Tennyson? Well, well, well! Bless my soul! Why, I know him by heart – some of him.'

‘So do I! “Break, break, break, on your cold grey stones, oh Sea . . .”'

‘Quite. Or take the “Lady of Shalott”.'

‘“I hold it truth with him who sings . . .”'

‘So do I, absolutely. And then, again, there's the “Lady of Shalott”. Dashed extraordinary that you should like Tennyson, too.'

‘I think he's wonderful.'

‘What a lad! That “Lady of Shalott”! Some spin on the ball there.'

‘It's so absurd, the way people sneer at him nowadays.'

‘The silly bounders. Don't know what's good for them.'

‘He's my favourite poet.'

‘Mine, too. Any bird who could write the “Lady of Shalott” gets the cigar or coconut, according to choice, as far as I'm concerned.'

They gazed at one another emotionally.

‘Well, I'd never have thought it,' said April.

‘Why not?'

‘I mean, you gave me the impression of being . . . well, rather the dancing, night-club sort of man.'

‘What! Me? Night clubs? Good gosh! Why, my idea of a happy evening is to curl up with Tennyson's latest.'

‘Don't you love “Locksley Hall”?'

‘Oh, rather. And the “Lady of Shalott”.'

‘And “Maud”?'

‘Aces,' said Freddie. ‘And the “Lady of Shalott”.'

‘How fond you seem of the “Lady of Shalott”!'

‘Oh, I am.'

‘So am I, of course. The river here always reminds me so much of that poem.'

‘Why, of course it does!' said Freddie. ‘I've been trying to think all the time why it seemed so dashed familiar. And, talking of the river, I suppose you wouldn't care for a row up it tomorrow?'

The girl looked doubtful.

‘Tomorrow?'

‘My idea was to hire a boat, sling in a bit of chicken and ham and a Tennyson . . .'

‘But I had promised to go to Birmingham tomorrow with Captain Bradbury to help him choose a fishing-rod. Still, I suppose, really, any other day would do for that, wouldn't it?'

‘Exactly.'

‘We could go later on.'

‘Positively,' said Freddie. ‘A good deal later on. Much later on. In fact, the best plan would be to leave it quite open. One o'clock tomorrow, then, at the Town Bridge? Right. Fine. Splendid. Topping. I'll be there with my hair in a braid.'

All through the rest of the day Freddie was right in the pink. Walked on air, you might say. But towards nightfall, as he sat in the bar of the Blue Lion, sucking down a whisky and splash and working his way through ‘Locksley Hall', a shadow fell athwart the table and, looking up, he perceived Captain Bradbury.

‘Good evening, Widgeon,' said Captain Bradbury.

There is only one word, Freddie tells me, to describe the
gallant C.'s aspect at this juncture. It was sinister. His eyebrows had met across the top of his nose, his chin was sticking out from ten to fourteen inches, and he stood there flexing the muscles of his arms, making the while a low sound like the rumbling of an only partially extinct volcano. The impression Freddie received was that at any moment molten lava might issue from the man's mouth, and he wasn't absolutely sure that he liked the look of things.