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

in his mind such outstanding events of the evening as he remembered⁠—the nervousness, the relief of finding that he was gripping his audience, the growing conviction that he had made good⁠—while Jimmy seemed to be thinking his own private thoughts. They had gone some distance before either spoke.

“Who is she, Jimmy?” asked Mifflin.

Jimmy came out of his thoughts with a start.

“What’s that?”

“Who is she?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Yes, you do! The sea air. Who is she?”

“I don’t know,” said Jimmy simply.

“You don’t know? Well, what’s her name?”

“I don’t know.”

“Doesn’t the Mauretania still print a passenger list?”

“She does.”

“And you couldn’t find out her name in five days?”

“No.”

“And that’s the man who thinks he can burgle a house!” said Mifflin despairingly.

They had arrived now at the building on the second floor of which was Jimmy’s flat.

“Coming in?” said Jimmy.

“Well, I was rather thinking of pushing on as far as the park. I tell you, I feel all on wires.”

“Come in and smoke a cigar. You’ve got all night before you if you want to do marathons. I haven’t seen you for a couple of months. I want you to tell me all the news.”

“There isn’t any. Nothing happens in New York. The papers say things do, but they don’t. However, I’ll come in. It seems to me that you’re the man with the news.”

Jimmy fumbled with his latchkey.

“You’re a bright sort of burglar,” said Mifflin disparagingly. “Why don’t you use your oxyacetylene blowpipe? Do you realise, my boy, that you’ve let yourself in for buying a dinner for twelve hungry men next week? In the cold light of the morning, when Reason returns to her throne, that’ll come home to you.”

“I haven’t done anything of the sort,” said Jimmy, unlocking the door.

“Don’t tell me you really mean to try it.”

“What else did you think I was going to do?”

“But you can’t. You would get caught for a certainty. And what are you going to do then? Say it was all a joke? Suppose they fill you full of bullet holes? Nice sort of fool you’ll look appealing to some outraged householder’s sense of humour, while he pumps you full of lead with a Colt!”

“These are the risks of the profession. You ought to know that, Arthur. Think what you went through tonight.”

Arthur Mifflin looked at his friend with some uneasiness. He knew how entirely reckless he could be when he had set his mind on accomplishing anything. Jimmy, under the stimulus of a challenge, ceased to be a reasonable being, amenable to argument. And in the present case he knew that Willett’s words had driven the challenge home. Jimmy was not the man to sit still under the charge of being a “fakir,” no matter whether his accuser had been sober or drunk.

Jimmy, meanwhile, had produced whisky and cigars, and was lying on his back on the lounge, blowing smoke rings at the ceiling.

“Well?” said Arthur Mifflin at length.

“Well? What?”

“What I meant was, is this silence to be permanent, or are you going to begin shortly to amuse, elevate, and instruct? Something’s happened to you, Jimmy. There was a time when you were a bright little chap, a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy. Where be your gibes now, your gambols, your songs, your flashes of merriment that were wont to set the table in a roar when you were paying for the dinner? You remind me more of a deaf-mute celebrating the Fourth of July with noiseless powder than anything else on earth. Wake up, or I shall go. Jimmy, we were boys together. Tell me about this girl⁠—the girl you loved and were idiot enough to lose.”

Jimmy drew a deep breath.

“Very well,” said Mifflin complacently; “sigh if you like⁠—it’s better than nothing.”

Jimmy sat up.

“Yes, dozens of times,” said Mifflin.

“What do you mean?”

“You were just going to ask me if I had ever been in love, weren’t you?”

“I wasn’t, because I know you haven’t. You have no soul. You don’t know what love is.”

“Have it your own way,” said Mifflin resignedly.

Jimmy bumped back onto the sofa.

“I don’t either,” he said. “That’s the trouble.”

Mifflin looked interested.

“I know,” he said. “You’ve got that strange premonitory fluttering, when the heart seems to thrill within you like some baby bird singing its first song, when⁠—”

“Oh, shut up!”

“When you ask yourself timidly, ‘Is it? Can it really be?’ and answer shyly, ‘No. Yes. I believe it is.’ I’ve been through it dozens of times. It is a recognised early symptom. Unless prompt measures are taken it will develop into something acute. In these matters stand on your Uncle Arthur. He knows.”

“You make me tired,” said Jimmy briefly.

“You have our ear,” said Mifflin kindly. “Tell me all.”

“There’s nothing to tell.”

“Don’t lie, James.”

“Well, practically nothing.”

“That’s better.”

“It was like this.”

“Good!”

Jimmy wriggled himself into a more comfortable position and took a sip from his glass.

“I didn’t see her till the second day out.”

“I know that second day out. Well?”

“We didn’t really meet at all.”

“Just happened to be going to the same spot, eh?”

“As a matter of fact, it was like this. Like a fool, I’d bought a second-class ticket.”

“What? Our young Rockerbilt Astergould, the boy millionaire, travelling second-class! Why?”

“I had an idea it would be better fun. Everybody’s so much more cheery in the second cabin. You get to know people so much quicker. Nine trips out of ten I’d much rather go second.”

“And this was the tenth?”

“She was in the first cabin,” said Jimmy.

Mifflin clutched his forehead.

“Wait!” he cried. “This reminds me of something⁠—something in Shakespeare. Romeo and Juliet? No. I’ve got it!⁠—Pyramus and Thisbe.”

“I don’t see the slightest resemblance.”

“Read your Midsummer Night’s Dream. ‘Pyramus and Thisbe,’ says the story, ‘did talk through the chink of a wall,’ ” quoted Mifflin.

“We didn’t.”

“Don’t be so literal. You talked across a railing.”

“We didn’t.”

“Do you mean to say you didn’t talk at all?”

“We didn’t say a single word.”

Mifflin shook his head sadly.

“I give you up,” he said. “I thought you were a man of enterprise. What did you