Indiscretions of Archie - P. G. Wodehouse (essential books to read txt) 📗

brown shoes, patted the straw hat, and eyed Archie questioningly.

“I don’t seem to place you,” he said.

Archie slapped the back of the evening dress coat. He linked his arm affectionately with that of the dress-reformer.

“We met outside St. Mihiel in the war. You gave me a bit of sausage. One of the most sporting events in history. Nobody but a real sportsman would have parted with a bit of sausage at that moment to a stranger. Never forgotten it, by Jove. Saved my life, absolutely. Hadn’t chewed a morsel for eight hours. Well, have you got anything on? I mean to say, you aren’t booked for lunch or any rot of that species, are you? Fine! Then I move we all toddle off and get a bite somewhere.” He squeezed the other’s arm fondly. “Fancy meeting you again like this! I’ve often wondered what became of you. But, by Jove, I was forgetting. Dashed rude of me. My friend, Mr. van Tuyl.”

Reggie gulped. The longer he looked at it, the harder this man’s costume was to bear. His eye passed shudderingly from the brown shoes to the tweed trousers, to the green scarf, from the green scarf to the straw hat.

“Sorry,” he mumbled. “Just remembered. Important date. Late already. Er⁠—see you some time⁠—”

He melted away, a broken man. Archie was not sorry to see him go. Reggie was a good chap, but he would undoubtedly have been de trop at this reunion.

“I vote we go to the Cosmopolis,” he said, steering his newly-found friend through the crowd. “The browsing and sluicing isn’t bad there, and I can sign the bill which is no small consideration nowadays.”

The Sausage Chappie chuckled amusedly.

“I can’t go to a place like the Cosmopolis looking like this.”

Archie, was a little embarrassed.

“Oh, I don’t know, you know, don’t you know!” he said. “Still, since you have brought the topic up, you did get the good old wardrobe a bit mixed this morning what? I mean to say, you seem absentmindedly, as it were, to have got hold of samples from a good number of your various suitings.”

“Suitings? How do you mean, suitings? I haven’t any suitings! Who do you think I am? Vincent Astor? All I have is what I stand up in.”

Archie was shocked. This tragedy touched him. He himself had never had any money in his life, but somehow he had always seemed to manage to have plenty of clothes. How this was he could not say. He had always had a vague sort of idea that tailors were kindly birds who never failed to have a pair of trousers or something up their sleeve to present to the deserving. There was the drawback, of course, that once they had given you things they were apt to write you rather a lot of letters about it; but you soon managed to recognise their handwriting, and then it was a simple task to extract their communications from your morning mail and drop them in the wastepaper basket. This was the first case he had encountered of a man who was really short of clothes.

“My dear old lad,” he said, briskly, “this must be remedied! Oh, positively! This must be remedied at once! I suppose my things wouldn’t fit you? No. Well, I tell you what. We’ll wangle something from my father-in-law. Old Brewster, you know, the fellow who runs the Cosmopolis. His’ll fit you like the paper on the wall, because he’s a tubby little blighter, too. What I mean to say is, he’s also one of those sturdy, square, fine-looking chappies of about the middle height. By the way, where are you stopping these days?”

“Nowhere just at present. I thought of taking one of those self-contained Park benches.”

“Are you broke?”

“Am I!”

Archie was concerned.

“You ought to get a job.”

“I ought. But somehow I don’t seem able to.”

“What did you do before the war?”

“I’ve forgotten.”

“Forgotten!”

“Forgotten.”

“How do you mean⁠—forgotten? You can’t mean⁠—forgotten?”

“Yes. It’s quite gone.”

“But I mean to say. You can’t have forgotten a thing like that.”

“Can’t I! I’ve forgotten all sorts of things. Where I was born. How old I am. Whether I’m married or single. What my name is⁠—”

“Well, I’m dashed!” said Archie, staggered. “But you remembered about giving me a bit of sausage outside St. Mihiel?”

“No, I didn’t. I’m taking your word for it. For all I know you may be luring me into some den to rob me of my straw hat. I don’t know you from Adam. But I like your conversation⁠—especially the part about eating⁠—and I’m taking a chance.”

Archie was concerned.

“Listen, old bean. Make an effort. You must remember that sausage episode? It was just outside St. Mihiel, about five in the evening. Your little lot were lying next to my little lot, and we happened to meet, and I said ‘What ho!’ and you said ‘Halloa!’ and I said ‘What ho! What ho!’ and you said ‘Have a bit of sausage?’ and I said ‘What ho! What ho! What ho!’ ”

“The dialogue seems to have been darned sparkling but I don’t remember it. It must have been after that that I stopped one. I don’t seem quite to have caught up with myself since I got hit.”

“Oh! That’s how you got that scar?”

“No. I got that jumping through a plate-glass window in London on Armistice night.”

“What on earth did you do that for?”

“Oh, I don’t know. It seemed a good idea at the time.”

“But if you can remember a thing like that, why can’t you remember your name?”

“I remember everything that happened after I came out of hospital. It’s the part before that’s gone.”

Archie patted him on the shoulder.

“I know just what you want. You need a bit of quiet and repose, to think things over and so forth. You mustn’t go sleeping on Park benches. Won’t do at all. Not a bit like it. You must shift to the Cosmopolis. It isn’t half a bad spot, the old Cosmop. I didn’t like it much the first night I was there, because there was a dashed