A Gentleman of Leisure - P. G. Wodehouse (best english books to read for beginners txt) 📗

game was anything out of the common as an exposition of billiards. As a matter of fact, it would have been hard to imagine a worse game. Lord Dreever, who was conceding twenty, was poor, and his opponent an obvious beginner. Again, as he looked on, Jimmy was possessed of an idea that he had met Hargate before. But once more he searched his memory and drew blank. He did not give the thing much thought, being intent on his diagnosis of Lord Dreever, who, by a fluky series of cannons, had wobbled into the forties, and was now a few points ahead of his opponent.

Presently, having summed his lordship up to his satisfaction, and grown bored with the game, Jimmy strolled out of the room. He paused outside the door for a moment, wondering what to do. There was bridge in the smoking room, but he did not feel inclined for bridge. From the drawing room there came sounds of music. He turned in that direction, then stopped again. He came to the conclusion that he did not feel sociable. He wanted to think. A cigar on the terrace would meet his needs.

He went up to his room for his cigar-case. The window was open. He leaned out. There was almost a full moon, and it was very light out of doors. His eye was caught by a movement at the farther end of the terrace, where the shadow was. A girl came out of the shadow, walking slowly.⁠ ⁠…

Not since early boyhood had Jimmy descended stairs with such a rare burst of speed. He negotiated the nasty turn at the end of the first flight at quite a suicidal pace. Fate, however, had apparently wakened up again and resumed business, for he did not break his neck. A few moments later he was out on the terrace, bearing a cloak which he had snatched up en route in the hall.

“I thought you might be cold,” he said, breathing quickly.

“Oh, thank you,” said Molly. “How kind of you!” He put it round her shoulders. “Have you been running?”

“I came downstairs rather fast.”

“Were you afraid the boogaboos would get you?” she laughed. “I was thinking of when I was a small child. I was always afraid of them. I used to race downstairs when I had to go to my room in the dark, unless I could persuade someone to hold my hand all the way there and back.”

Her spirits had risen with Jimmy’s arrival. Things had been happening that worried her. She had gone out onto the terrace to be alone. When she heard his footsteps she had dreaded the advent of some garrulous fellow guest, full of small talk. Jimmy, somehow, was a comfort⁠—he did not disturb the atmosphere. Little as they had seen of each other, something in him⁠—she could not say what⁠—had drawn her to him. He was a man, she felt instinctively, she could trust.

They walked on in silence. Words were pouring into Jimmy’s mind, but he could not frame them. He seemed to have lost the power of coherent thought.

Molly said nothing. It was not a night for conversation. The moon had turned terrace and garden into a fairyland of black and silver. It was a night to look and listen and think.

They walked slowly up and down. As they turned for the second time Molly’s thoughts formed themselves into a question. Twice she was on the point of asking it, but each time she checked herself. It was an impossible question. She had no right to put it, and he had no right to answer. Yet something was driving her on to ask it.

It came out suddenly, without warning.

“Mr. Pitt, what do you think of Lord Dreever?”

Jimmy started. No question could have chimed in more aptly with his thoughts. Even as she spoke he was struggling to keep himself from asking her the same thing.

“Oh, I know I ought not to ask,” she went on. “He’s your host and you’re his friend, I know. But⁠—”

Her voice trailed off. The muscles of Jimmy’s back tightened and quivered, but he could find no words.

“I wouldn’t ask anyone else. But you’re⁠—different somehow. I don’t know what I mean⁠—we hardly know each other⁠—but⁠—”

She stopped again, and still he was dumb.

“I feel so alone,” she said very quietly, almost to herself. Something seemed to break in Jimmy’s head. His brain suddenly cleared. He took a step forward.

A huge shadow blackened the white grass. Jimmy wheeled round. It was McEachern.

“I have been looking for you, Molly, my dear. I thought you must have gone to bed.”

He turned to Jimmy and addressed him for the first time since their meeting in the bedroom.

“Will you excuse us, Mr. Pitt?”

Jimmy bowed and walked rapidly towards the house. At the door he stopped and looked back. The two were standing where he had left them.

XVI A Marriage Has Been Arranged

Neither Molly nor her father had moved or spoken while Jimmy was covering the short strip of turf that ended at the stone steps of the house. McEachern stood looking down at her in grim silence. His great body against the dark mass of the castle wall seemed larger than ever in the uncertain light. To Molly there was something sinister and menacing in his attitude. She found herself longing that Jimmy would come back. She was frightened. Why, she could not have said. It was as if some instinct told her that a crisis in her affairs had been reached, and that she needed him. For the first time in her life she felt nervous in her father’s company. Ever since she was a child she had been accustomed to look upon him as her protector, but now she was afraid.

“Father!” she cried.

“What are you doing out here?”

His voice was tense and strained.

“I came out because I wanted to think, father dear.”

She thought she knew his moods, but this was one that she had never seen. It frightened her.

“Why did