Short Fiction - P. G. Wodehouse (top ten ebook reader txt) 📗

him up better,’ says Jerry, severe, to Pa Tuxton, ‘this wouldn’t ever have happened.’ ”

“Pa Tuxton gives a sort of howl.

“ ‘Mr. Moore,’ he yells, ‘what is the meaning of this extraordinary behaviour? You come here and strike me child⁠—’

“Jerry bangs on the table.

“ ‘Yes,’ he says, ‘and I’d strike him again. Listen to me,’ he says. ‘You think just because I’m quiet I ain’t got no spirit. You think all I can do is to sit and smile. You think⁠—Bah! You aren’t on to the hidden depths in me character. I’m one of them still waters that runs deep. I’m⁠—Here, you get out of it! Yes, all of you! Except Jane. Jane and me wants this room to have a private talk in. I’ve got a lot of things to say to Jane. Are you going?’

“I turns to the crowd. I was awful disturbed. ‘You mustn’t take any notice,’ I says. ‘He ain’t well. He ain’t himself.’ When just then the parrot cuts with another of them squawks. Jerry jumps at it.

“ ‘You first,’ he says, and flings the cage out of the window. ‘Now you,’ he says to the yellow dog, putting him out through the door. And then he folds his arms and scowls at us, and we all notice suddenly that he’s very big. We look at one another, and we begins to edge towards the door. All except Jane, who’s staring at Jerry as if he’s a ghost.

“ ‘Mr. Moore,’ says Pa Tuxton, dignified, ‘we’ll leave you. You’re drunk.’

“ ‘I’m not drunk,’ says Jerry. ‘I’m in love.’

“ ‘Jane,’ says Pa Tuxton, ‘come with me, and leave this ruffian to himself.’

“ ‘Jane,’ says Jerry, ‘stop here, and come and lay your head on my shoulder.’

“ ‘Jane,’ says Pa Tuxton, ‘do you hear me?’

“ ‘Jane,’ says Jerry, ‘I’m waiting.’

“She looks from one to the other for a spell, and then she moves to where Jerry’s standing.

“ ‘I’ll stop,’ she says, sort of quiet.

“And we drifts out.”

The waiter snorted.

“I got back home quick as I could,” he said, “and relates the proceedings to Gentleman. Gentleman’s rattled. ‘I don’t believe it,’ he says. ‘Don’t stand there and tell me Jerry Moore did them things. Why, it ain’t in the man. ’Specially after what I said to him about the way he ought to behave. How could he have done so?’ Just then in comes Jerry, beaming all over. ‘Boys,’ he shouts, ‘congratulate me. It’s all right. We’ve fixed it up. She says she hadn’t known me properly before. She says she’d always reckoned me a sheep, while all the time I was one of them strong, silent men.’ He turns to Gentleman⁠—”

The man at the other end of the room was calling for his bill.

“All right, all right,” said the waiter. “Coming! He turns to Gentleman,” he went on rapidly, “and he says, ‘Bailey, I owe it all to you, because if you hadn’t told me to insult her folks⁠—’ ”

He leaned on the traveller’s table and fixed him with an eye that pleaded for sympathy.

“ ’Ow about that?” he said. “Isn’t that crisp? ‘Insult her folks!’ Them was his very words. ‘Insult her folks!’ ”

The traveller looked at him inquiringly.

“Can you beat it?” said the waiter.

“I don’t know what you are saying,” said the traveller. “If it is important, write it on a slip of paper. I am stone-deaf.”

Deep Waters

Historians of the social life of the later Roman Empire speak of a certain young man of Ariminum, who would jump into rivers and swim in ’em. When his friends said, “You fish!” he would answer, “Oh, pish! Fish can’t swim like me, they’ve no vim in ’em.”

Just such another was George Barnert Callender.

On land, in his land clothes, George was a young man who excited little remark. He looked very much like other young men. He was much about the ordinary height. His carriage suggested the possession of an ordinary amount of physical strength. Such was George⁠—on shore. But remove his clothes, drape him in a bathing-suit, and insert him in the water, and instantly, like the gentleman in The Tempest, he “suffered a sea-change into something rich and strange.” Other men puffed, snorted, and splashed. George passed through the ocean with the silent dignity of a torpedo. Other men swallowed water, here a mouthful, there a pint, anon, maybe, a quart or so, and returned to the shore like foundering derelicts. George’s mouth had all the exclusiveness of a fashionable club. His breaststroke was a thing to see and wonder at. When he did the crawl, strong men gasped. When he swam on his back, you felt that that was the only possible method of progression.

George came to Marvis Bay at about five o’clock one evening in July. Marvis Bay has a well-established reputation as a summer resort, and, while not perhaps in every respect the paradise which the excitable writer of the local guidebook asserts it to be, on the whole it earns its reputation. Its sands are smooth and firm, sloping almost imperceptibly into the ocean. There is surf for those who like it, and smoother water beyond for those whose ideals in bathing are not confined to jumping up and down on a given jellyfish. At the northern end of the beach there is a long pier. It was to this that George made his way on his arrival.

It was pleasant on the pier. Once you had passed the initial zareba of fruit stands, souvenir stands, ice-cream stands, and the lair of the enthusiast whose aim in life it was to sell you picture postcards, and had won through to the long walk where the seats were, you were practically alone with Nature. At this hour of the day the place was deserted; George had it to himself. He strolled slowly along. The water glittered under the sun-rays, breaking into a flurry of white foam as it reached the beach. A cool breeze blew. The whole scenic arrangements were a great improvement on the stuffy city he had left. Not that George had come