Piccadilly Jim by P. G. Wodehouse (open ebook txt) 📗

Ann stole a glance at Jerry, who answered with an encouraging grin. Ann was constrained to make her meaning plainer than by the language of the eye.

"Would you mind just running away for half a moment, Jerry?" she said winningly. "I want to say something to uncle Peter."

"Sure. Sure."

Ann turned to Mr. Pett as the door closed.

"You'd like somebody to make Ogden a different boy, wouldn't you, uncle Peter?"

"I wish it was possible."

"He's been worrying you a lot lately, hasn't he?" asked Ann sympathetically.

"Yes," sighed Mr. Pett.

"Then that's all right," said Ann briskly. "I was afraid that you might not approve. But, if you do, I'll go right ahead."

Mr. Pett started violently. There was something in Ann's voice and, as he looked at her, something in her face which made him fear the worst. Her eyes were flashing with an inspired light of a highly belligerent nature, and the sun turned the red hair to which she owed her deplorable want of balance to a mass of flame. There was something in the air. Mr. Pett sensed it with every nerve of his apprehensive person. He gazed at Ann, and as he did so the years seemed to slip from him and he was a boy again, about to be urged to lawless courses by the superior will of his boyhood's hero, Hammond Chester. In the boyhood of nearly every man there is a single outstanding figure, some one youthful hypnotic Napoleon whose will was law and at whose bidding his better judgment curled up and died. In Mr. Pett's life Ann's father had filled this role. He had dominated Mr. Pett at an age when the mind is most malleable. And now—so true is it that though Time may blunt our boyish memories the traditions of boyhood live on in us and an emotional crisis will bring them to the surface as an explosion brings up the fish that lurk in the nethermost mud—it was as if he were facing the youthful Hammond Chester again and being irresistibly impelled to some course of which he entirely disapproved but which he knew that he was destined to undertake. He watched Ann as a trapped man might watch a ticking bomb, bracing himself for the explosion and knowing that he is helpless. She was Hammond Chester's daughter, and she spoke to him with the voice of Hammond Chester. She was her father's child and she was going to start something.

"I've arranged it all with Jerry," said Ann. "He's going to help me smuggle Ogden away to that friend of his I told you about who keeps the dog-hospital: and the friend is going to keep him until he reforms. Isn't it a perfectly splendid idea?"

Mr. Pett blanched. The frightfulness of reality had exceeded anticipation.

"But, Ann!"

The words came from him in a strangled bleat. His whole being was paralysed by a clammy horror. This was beyond the uttermost limit of his fears. And, to complete the terror of the moment, he knew, even while he rebelled against the insane lawlessness of her scheme, that he was going to agree to it, and—worst of all—that deep, deep down in him there was a feeling toward it which did not dare to come to the surface but which he knew to be approval.

"Of course Jerry would do it for nothing," said Ann, "but I promised him that you would give him something for his trouble. You can arrange all that yourselves later."

"But, Ann! . . . But, Ann! . . . Suppose your aunt finds out who did it!"

"Well, there will be a tremendous row!" said Ann composedly. "And you will have to assert yourself. It will be a splendid thing for you. You know you are much too kind to every one, uncle Peter. I don't think there's any one who would put up with what you do. Father told me in one of his letters that he used to call you Patient Pete as a boy."

Mr. Pett started. Not for many a day had a nickname which he considered the most distasteful of all possible nicknames risen up from its grave to haunt him. Patient Pete! He had thought the repulsive title buried forever in the same tomb as his dead youth. Patient Pete! The first faint glimmer of the flame of rebellion began to burn in his bosom.

"Patient Pete!"

"Patient Pete!" said Ann inexorably.

"But, Ann,"—there was pathos in Mr. Pett's voice—"I like a peaceful life."

"You'll never have one if you don't stand up for yourself. You know quite well that father is right. You do let every one trample on you. Do you think father would let Ogden worry him and have his house filled with affected imitation geniuses so that he couldn't find a room to be alone in?"

"But, Ann, your father is different. He likes fusses. I've known your father contradict a man weighing two hundred pounds out of sheer exuberance. There's a lot of your father in you, Ann. I've often noticed it."

"There is! That's why I'm going to make you put your foot down sooner or later. You're going to turn all these loafers out of the house. And first of all you're going to help us send Ogden away to Mr. Smithers."

There was a long silence.

"It's your red hair!" said Mr. Pett at length, with the air of a man who has been solving a problem. "It's your red hair that makes you like this, Ann. Your father has red hair, too."

Ann laughed.

"It's not my fault that I have red hair, uncle Peter. It's my misfortune."

Mr. Pett shook his head.

"Other people's misfortune, too!" he said.