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

Lord Dreever moved a step nearer the door.

“Stop!” cried Sir Thomas again. “Spencer!”

“Well?”

“Spencer, my boy, it occurs to me that perhaps I have not always treated you very well.”

“ ‘Perhaps!’ ‘Not always!’ Great Scot! I’ll have a fiver each way on both those. Considering you’ve treated me like a frightful kid practically ever since you’ve known me, I call that pretty rich. Why, what about this very night, when I asked you for a few pounds?”

“It was only the thought that you had been gambling⁠—”

“Gambling! How about palming off faked diamonds on Aunt Julia for a gamble?”

“A game of skill, surely,” murmured Jimmy.

“I have been thinking the matter over,” said Sir Thomas, “and if you really need the⁠—Was it not fifty pounds?”

“It was twenty,” said his lordship, “and I don’t need it. Keep it. You’ll want all you can save for a new necklace.”

His fingers closed on the door handle.

“Spencer⁠—stop!”

“Well?”

“We must talk this over. We must not be hasty.”

He passed the handkerchief over his forehead.

“In the past, perhaps,” he resumed, “our relations have not been quite⁠—The fault was mine. I have always endeavoured to do my duty. It is a difficult task to look after a young man of your age⁠—”

His lordship’s sense of his grievances made him eloquent.

“Dash it all!” he cried. “That’s just what I jolly well complain of. Who the dickens wanted you to look after me? Hang it! you’ve kept your eye on me all these years like a frightful policeman! You cut off my allowance right in the middle of my time at the ’Varsity, just when I needed it most, and I had to come and beg for money whenever I wanted to buy a cigarette. I looked a fearful ass I can tell you! Men who knew me used to be dashed funny about it. I’m sick of the whole bally business. You’ve given me a jolly thin time all this while, and now I’m going to get a bit of my own back. Wouldn’t you, Pitt, old man?”

Jimmy, thus suddenly appealed to, admitted that, in his lordship’s place, he might have experienced a momentary temptation to do something of the kind.

“Of course,” said his lordship. “Any fellow would.”

“But, Spencer, let me⁠—”

“You’ve soured my life,” said his lordship, frowning a tense, Byronic frown. “That’s what you’ve done⁠—soured my whole bally life. I’ve had a rotten time. I’ve had to go about touching my friends for money to keep me going. Why, I owe you a fiver, don’t I, Pitt, old man?”

It was a tenner, to be finickingly accurate about details, but Jimmy did not say so. He concluded, rightly, that the memory of the original five pounds which he had lent Lord Dreever at the Savoy Hotel had faded from the other’s mind.

“Don’t mention it,” he said.

“But I do mention it,” protested his lordship shrilly. “It just proves what I say. If I had had a decent allowance it wouldn’t have happened. And you wouldn’t give me enough to set me going in the Diplomatic Service. That’s another thing. Why wouldn’t you do that?”

Sir Thomas pulled himself together.

“I hardly thought you qualified, my dear boy.”

His lordship did not actually foam at the mouth, but he looked as if he might do so at any moment. Excitement and the memory of his wrongs, lubricated, as it were, by the champagne he had consumed both at and after dinner, had produced in him a frame of mind far removed from the normal. His manners no longer had that repose which stamps the caste of Vere de Vere. He waved his hands.

“I know, I know!” he shouted. “I know you didn’t. You thought me a fearful fool. I tell you I’m sick of it. And always trying to make me marry money! Dashed humiliating! If she hadn’t been a jolly sensible girl you’d have spoiled Miss McEachern’s life as well as mine. You came very near it. I tell you, I’ve had enough of it. I’m in love! I’m in love with the rippingest girl in England. You’ve seen her, Pitt, old top. Isn’t she a ripper?”

Jimmy stamped the absent lady with the seal of his approval.

“I tell you, if she’ll have me, I’m going to marry her.”

The dismay written on every inch of Sir Thomas’s countenance became intensified at these terrific words. Great as had been his contempt for the actual holder of the title considered simply as a young man, he had always been filled with a supreme respect for the Dreever name.

“But, Spencer,” he almost howled, “consider your position! You cannot⁠—”

“Can’t I, by Jove! if she’ll have me; and dash my position! What’s my position got to do with it? Katie’s the daughter of a general, if it comes to that. Her brother was at the House with me. If I had a penny to call my own I’d have asked her to marry me ages ago. Don’t you worry about my position!”

Sir Thomas croaked feebly.

“Now, look here,” said his lordship, with determination. “Here’s the whole thing in a jolly old nutshell. If you want me to forget about this little flutter in fake diamonds of yours you’ve got to pull your socks up and start in to do things. You’ve got to get me attached to some Embassy, for a beginning. It won’t be difficult. There’s dozens of old boys in London who knew the governor when he was alive who will jump at the chance of doing me a good turn. I know I’m a bit of an ass in some ways, but that’s expected of you in the Diplomatic Service. They only want you to wear evening clothes as if you were used to them, and be a bit of a flier at dancing, and I can fill the bill all right as far as that goes. And you’ve got to give your jolly old blessing to Katie and me⁠—if she’ll have me. That’s about all I can think of for the moment. Now do we go? Are