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

“Come, come,” said Mr. Rackstraw, “you wouldn’t let a little private difference like that influence you in a really important thing like this football match, would you?”

“I would.”

“You would practically blackmail the father of the girl you love?”

“Every time.”

“Her white-haired old father?”

“The colour of his hair would not affect me.”

“Nothing would move you?”

“Nothing.”

“Then, by George, you’re just the son-in-law I want. You shall marry Isabel; and I’ll take you into partnership in my business this very day. I’ve been looking for a good able-bodied bandit like you for years. You make Captain Kidd look like a preliminary three-round bout. My boy, we’ll be the greatest combination, you and I, that the City has ever seen. Shake hands.”

For a moment Clarence hesitated. Then his better nature prevailed, and he spoke.

“Mr. Rackstraw,” he said, “I cannot deceive you.”

“That won’t matter,” said the enthusiastic old man. “I bet you’ll be able to deceive everybody else. I see it in your eye. My boy, we’ll be the greatest⁠—”

“My name is not Jones.”

“Nor is mine. What does that matter?”

“My name is Tresillian. The Hon. Tresillian. I am the younger son of the Earl of Runnymede. To a man of your political views⁠—”

“Nonsense, nonsense,” said Mr. Rackstraw. “What are political views compared with the chance of getting a goalkeeper like you into the family? I remember Isabel saying something to me about you, but I didn’t know who you were then.”

“I am a preposterous excrescence on the social cosmos,” said Clarence, eyeing him doubtfully.

“Then I’ll be one too,” cried Mr. Rackstraw. “I own I’ve set my face against it hitherto, but circumstances alter cases. I’ll ring up the Prime Minister on the phone tomorrow, and buy a title myself.”

Clarence’s last scruple was removed. Silently he gripped the old man’s hand, outstretched to meet his.

Little remains to be said, but I am going to say it, if it snows. I am at my best in these tender scenes of idyllic domesticity.

Four years have passed. Once more we are in the Rackstraw home. A lady is coming down the stairs, leading by the hand her little son. It is Isabel. The years have dealt lightly with her. She is still the same stately, beautiful creature whom I would have described in detail long ago if I had been given half a chance. At the foot of the stairs the child stops and points at a small, round object in a glass case.

“Wah?” he says.

“That?” said Isabel. “That is the ball Mr. Meredith used to play with when he was a little boy.”

She looks at a door on the left of the hall, and puts a finger to her lip.

“Hush!” she says. “We must be quiet. Daddy and grandpa are busy in there cornering wheat.”

And softly mother and child go out into the sunlit garden.

Any man under thirty years of age who tells you he is not afraid of an English butler lies. He may not show his fear. Outwardly he may be brave⁠—aggressive even, perhaps to the extent of calling the great man “Here!” or “Hi!” But, in his heart, when he meets that cold, blue, introspective eye, he quakes.

The effect that Keggs, the butler at the Keiths’, had on Martin Rossiter was to make him feel as if he had been caught laughing in a cathedral. He fought against the feeling. He asked himself who Keggs was, anyway; and replied defiantly that Keggs was a Menial⁠—and an overfed Menial. But all the while he knew that logic was useless.

When the Keiths had invited him to their country home he had been delighted. They were among his oldest friends. He liked Mr. Keith. He liked Mrs. Keith. He loved Elsa Keith, and had done so from boyhood.

But things had gone wrong. As he leaned out of his bedroom window at the end of the first week, preparatory to dressing for dinner, he was more than half inclined to make some excuse and get right out of the place next day. The bland dignity of Keggs had taken all the heart out of him.

Nor was it Keggs alone who had driven his thoughts towards flight. Keggs was merely a passive evil, like toothache or a rainy day. What had begun actively to make the place impossible was a perfectly pestilential young man of the name of Barstowe.

The house-party at the Keiths had originally been, from Martin’s viewpoint, almost ideal. The rest of the men were of the speechless, moustache-tugging breed. They had come to shoot, and they shot. When they were not shooting they congregated in the billiard-room and devoted their powerful intellects exclusively to snooker-pool, leaving Martin free to talk undisturbed to Elsa. He had been doing this for five days with great contentment when Aubrey Barstowe arrived. Mrs. Keith had developed of late leanings towards culture. In her town house a charge of small-shot, fired in any direction on a Thursday afternoon, could not have failed to bring down a poet, a novelist, or a painter. Aubrey Barstowe, author of The Soul’s Eclipse and other poems, was a constant member of the crowd. A youth of insinuating manners, he had appealed to Mrs. Keith from the start; and unfortunately the virus had extended to Elsa. Many a pleasant, sunshiny Thursday afternoon had been poisoned for Martin by the sight of Aubrey and Elsa together on a distant settee, matching temperaments. The rest is too painful. It was a rout. The poet did not shoot, so that when Martin returned of an evening his rival was about five hours of soul-to-soul talk up and only two to play. And those two, the after-dinner hours, which had once been the hours for which Martin had lived, were pure torture.

So engrossed was he with his thoughts that the first intimation he had that he was not alone in the room was a genteel cough. Behind him, holding a small can, was Keggs.

“Your ’ot water, sir,” said the butler, austerely but not unkindly.

Keggs was a man⁠—one must use that word, though it seems