Ukridge Stories - P. G. Wodehouse (e book free reading TXT) 📗

chat, and I haven’t the heart to tell her that my aunt absolutely and finally disowned me the day after that business of the dance.”

“You didn’t tell me that.”

“Didn’t I? Oh, yes. I got a letter from her saying that as far as she was concerned I had ceased to exist. I thought it showed a nasty, narrow spirit, but I can’t say I was altogether surprised. Still, it makes it awkward when Mrs. Price wants to get matey with her. I’ve had to tell her that my aunt is a chronic invalid and never goes out, being practically bedridden. I find all this a bit wearing, laddie.”

“I suppose so.”

“You see,” said Ukridge, “I dislike subterfuge.”

There seemed no possibility of his beating this, so I left the man and resumed my researches.

After this I was out of town for a few weeks, taking my annual vacation. When I got back to Ebury Street, Bowles, my landlord, after complimenting me in a stately way on my sunburned appearance, informed me that George Tupper had called several times while I was away.

“Appeared remarkably anxious to see you, sir.”

I was surprised at this. George Tupper was always glad⁠—or seemed to be glad⁠—to see an old school friend when I called upon him, but he rarely sought me out in my home.

“Did he say what he wanted?”

“No, sir. He left no message. He merely enquired as to the probable date of your return and expressed a desire that you would visit him as soon as convenient.”

“I’d better go and see him now.”

“It might be advisable, sir.”

I found George Tupper at the Foreign Office, surrounded by important-looking papers.

“Here you are at last!” cried George, resentfully, it seemed to me. “I thought you were never coming back.”

“I had a splendid time, thanks very much for asking,” I replied. “Got the roses back to my cheeks.”

George, who seemed far from his usual tranquil self, briefly cursed my cheeks and their roses.

“Look here,” he said, urgently, “something’s got to be done. Have you seen Ukridge yet?”

“Not yet. I thought I would look him up this evening.”

“You’d better. Do you know what has happened? That poor ass has gone and got himself engaged to be married to a girl at Clapham!”

“What?”

“Engaged! Girl at Clapham! Clapham Common,” added George Tupper, as if in his opinion that made the matter even worse.

“You’re joking!”

“I’m not joking,” said George peevishly. “Do I look as if I were joking? I met him in Battersea Park with her, and he introduced me. She reminded me,” said George Tupper, shivering slightly, for that fearful evening had seared his soul deeply, “of that ghastly female in pink he brought with him the night I gave you two dinner at the Regent Grill⁠—the one who talked at the top of her voice all the time about her aunt’s stomach-trouble.”

Here I think he did Miss Price an injustice. She had struck me during our brief acquaintance as something of a blister, but I had never quite classed her with Battling Billson’s Flossie.

“Well, what do you want me to do?” I asked, not, I think, unreasonably.

“You’ve got to think of some way of getting him out of it. I can’t do anything. I’m busy all day.”

“So am I busy.”

“Busy my left foot!” said George Tupper, who in moments of strong emotion was apt to relapse into the phraseology of school days and express himself in a very un-Foreign Official manner. “About once a week you work up energy enough to write a rotten article for some rag of a paper on ‘Should Curates Kiss?’ or some silly subject, and the rest of the time you loaf about with Ukridge. It’s obviously your job to disentangle the poor idiot.”

“But how do you know he wants to be disentangled? It seems to me you’re jumping pretty readily to conclusions. It’s all very well for you bloodless officials to sneer at the holy passion, but it’s love, as I sometimes say, that makes the world go round. Ukridge probably feels that until now he never realised what true happiness could mean.”

“Does he?” snorted George Tupper. “Well, he didn’t look it when I met him. He looked like⁠—well, do you remember when he went in for the heavyweights at school and that chap in Seymour’s house hit him in the wind in the first round? That’s how he looked when he was introducing the girl to me.”

I am bound to say the comparison impressed me. It is odd how these little incidents of one’s boyhood linger in the memory. Across the years I could see Ukridge now, half doubled up, one gloved hand caressing his diaphragm, a stunned and horrified bewilderment in his eyes. If his bearing as an engaged man had reminded George Tupper of that occasion, it certainly did seem as if the time had come for his friends to rally round him.

“You seem to have taken on the job of acting as a sort of unofficial keeper to the man,” said George. “You’ll have to help him now.”

“Well, I’ll go and see him.”

“The whole thing is too absurd,” said George Tupper. “How can Ukridge get married to anyone! He hasn’t a bob in the world.”

“I’ll point that out to him. He’s probably overlooked it.”

It was my custom when I visited Ukridge at his lodgings to stand underneath his window and bellow his name⁠—upon which, if at home and receiving, he would lean out and drop me down his latchkey, thus avoiding troubling his landlady to come up from the basement to open the door. A very judicious proceeding, for his relations with that autocrat were usually in a somewhat strained condition. I bellowed now, and his head popped out.

“Hallo, laddie!”

It seemed to me, even at this long range, that there was something peculiar about his face, but it was not till I had climbed the stairs to his room that I was able to be certain. I then perceived that he had somehow managed to acquire a black eye, which, though past