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

“Her son?”

“A rather nice-looking man. He plays heavy parts on tour. He’s married and has two of the sweetest children. Their grandmother is devoted to them. Hasn’t she ever mentioned them to you?”

She poured herself out another cup of cocoa. Conversation again languished.

“I suppose you’re very fond of her?” she said at length.

“I’m devoted to her.” He paused. “Dear little thing!” he added.

She rose and moved to the door. There was a nasty gleam in her eyes.

“You aren’t going?” he said.

“I shall be back in a moment. I’m just going to bring your poor little office-boy up here. He must be missing you.”

He sprang up, but she had gone. Leaning over the banisters, he heard a door open below, then a short conversation, and finally footsteps climbing the stairs.

It was pitch dark on the landing. He stepped aside, and they passed without seeing him. Master Bean was discoursing easily on cocoa, the processes whereby it was manufactured, and the remarkable distances which natives of Mexico had covered with it as their only food. The door opened, flooding the landing with light, and Mr. Ferguson, stepping from ambush, began to descend the stairs.

The girl came to the banisters.

“Mr. Ferguson!”

He stopped.

“Did you want me?” he asked.

“Are you going back to your office?”

“I am. I hope you will enjoy Bean’s society. He has a fund of useful information on all subjects.”

He went on. After a while she returned to the room and closed the door.

Mr. Ferguson went into his office and sat down.

There was once a person of the name of Simeon Stylites, who took up a position on top of a pillar and stayed there, having no other engagements, for thirty years. Mr. Ferguson, who had read Tennyson’s poem on the subject, had until tonight looked upon this as a pretty good thing. Reading the lines:

… thrice ten years,
Thrice multiplied by superhuman pangs,
In hunger and in thirsts, fevers and colds,
In coughs, aches, stitches, ulcerous throes, and cramps,⁠ ⁠…
Patient on this tall pillar I have borne.
Rain, wind, frost, heat, hail, damp, and sleet, and snow,

he had gathered roughly, as it were, that Simeon had not been comfortable. He had pitied him. But now, sitting in his office-chair, he began to wonder what the man had made such a fuss about. He suspected him of having had a touch of the white feather in him. It was not as if he had not had food. He talked about “hungers and thirsts,” but he must have had something to eat, or he could not have stayed the course. Very likely, if the truth were known, there was somebody below who passed him up regular supplies of cake and cocoa.

He began to look on Simeon as an overrated amateur.

Sleep refused to come to him. It got as far as his feet, but no farther. He rose and stamped to restore the circulation.

It was at this point that he definitely condemned Simeon Stylites as a sybaritic fraud.

If this were one of those realistic Zolaesque stories I would describe the crick in the back that⁠—but let us hurry on.

It was about six hours later⁠—he had no watch, but the numbers of aches, stitches, not to mention cramps, that he had experienced could not possibly have been condensed into a shorter period⁠—that his manly spirit snapped. Let us not judge him too harshly. The girl upstairs had broken his heart, ruined his life, and practically compared him to Roland Bean, and his pride should have built up an impassable wall between them, but⁠—she had cake and cocoa. In similar circumstances King Arthur would have grovelled before Guinevere.

He rushed to the door and tore it open. There was a startled exclamation from the darkness outside.

“I hope I didn’t disturb you,” said a meek voice.

Mr. Ferguson did not answer. His twitching nostrils were drinking in a familiar aroma.

“Were you asleep? May I come in? I’ve brought you some cake and cocoa.”

He took the rich gifts from her in silence. There are moments in a man’s life too sacred for words. The wonder of the thing had struck him dumb. An instant before and he had had but a desperate hope of winning these priceless things from her at the cost of all his dignity and self-respect. He had been prepared to secure them through a shower of biting taunts, a blizzard of razor-like “I told you so’s.” Yet here he was, draining the cup, and still able to hold his head up, look the world in the face, and call himself a man.

His keen eye detected a crumb on his coat-sleeve. This retrieved and consumed, he turned to her, seeking explanation.

She was changed. The battle-gleam had faded from her eyes. She seemed scared and subdued. Her manner was of one craving comfort and protection. “That awful boy!” she breathed.

“Bean?” said Mr. Ferguson, picking a crumb off the carpet.

“He’s frightful.”

“I thought you might get a little tired of him! What has he been doing?”

“Talking. I feel battered. He’s like one of those awful encyclopedias that give you a sort of dull leaden feeling in your head directly you open them. Do you know how many tons of water go over Niagara Falls every year?”

“No.”

“He does.”

“I told you he had a fund of useful information. The Purpose and Tenacity books insist on it. That’s how you Catch your Employer’s Eye. One morning the boss suddenly wants to know how many horsehair sofas there are in Brixton, the number of pins that would reach from London Bridge to Waterloo. You tell him, and he takes you into partnership. Later you become a millionaire. But I haven’t thanked you for the cocoa. It was fine.”

He waited for the retort, but it did not come. A pleased wonderment filled him. Could these things really be thus?

“And it isn’t only what he says,” she went on. “I know what you mean about him now. It’s his accusing manner.”

“I’ve tried to analyse that manner. I believe it’s the spectacles.”

“It’s frightful when he looks at you; you think of all the wrong things