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

to which he always looked back later with a certain pride. “Mother’s Knee,” it will be remembered, went through the world like a pestilence. Scots elders hummed it on their way to kirk; cannibals crooned it to their offspring in the jungles of Borneo; it was a bestseller among the Bolshevists. In the United States alone three million copies were disposed of. For a man who has not accomplished anything outstandingly great in his life, it is something to have been in a sense responsible for a song like that; and, though there were moments when Archie experienced some of the emotions of a man who has punched a hole in the dam of one of the larger reservoirs, he never really regretted his share in the launching of the thing.

It seems almost bizarre now to think that there was a time when even one person in the world had not heard “Mother’s Knee”; but it came fresh to Archie one afternoon some weeks after the episode of Washy, in his suite at the Hotel Cosmopolis, where he was cementing with cigarettes and pleasant conversation his renewed friendship with Wilson Hymack, whom he had first met in the neighbourhood of Armentières during the war.

“What are you doing these days?” enquired Wilson Hymack.

“Me?” said Archie. “Well, as a matter of fact, there is what you might call a sort of species of lull in my activities at the moment. But my jolly old father-in-law is bustling about, running up a new hotel a bit farther downtown, and the scheme is for me to be manager when it’s finished. From what I have seen in this place, it’s a simple sort of job, and I fancy I shall be somewhat hot stuff. How are you filling in the long hours?”

“I’m in my uncle’s office, darn it!”

“Starting at the bottom and learning the business and all that? A noble pursuit, no doubt, but I’m bound to say it would give me the pip in no uncertain manner.”

“It gives me,” said Wilson Hymack, “a pain in the thorax. I want to be a composer.”

“A composer, eh?”

Archie felt that he should have guessed this. The chappie had a distinctly artistic look. He wore a bow-tie and all that sort of thing. His trousers bagged at the knees, and his hair, which during the martial epoch of his career had been pruned to the roots, fell about his ears in luxuriant disarray.

“Say! Do you want to hear the best thing I’ve ever done?”

“Indubitably,” said Archie, politely. “Carry on, old bird!”

“I wrote the lyric as well as the melody,” said Wilson Hymack, who had already seated himself at the piano. “It’s got the greatest title you ever heard. It’s a lallapaloosa! It’s called ‘It’s a Long Way Back to Mother’s Knee.’ How’s that? Poor, eh?”

Archie expelled a smoke-ring doubtfully.

“Isn’t it a little stale?”

“Stale? What do you mean, stale? There’s always room for another song boosting mother.”

“Oh, is it boosting mother?” Archie’s face cleared. “I thought it was a hit at the short skirts. Why, of course, that makes all the difference. In that case, I see no reason why it should not be ripe, fruity, and pretty well all to the mustard. Let’s have it.”

Wilson Hymack pushed as much of his hair out of his eyes as he could reach with one hand, cleared his throat, looked dreamily over the top of the piano at a photograph of Archie’s father-in-law, Mr. Daniel Brewster, played a prelude, and began to sing in a weak, high, composer’s voice. All composers sing exactly alike, and they have to be heard to be believed.

“One night a young man wandered through the glitter of Broadway:
His money he had squandered. For a meal he couldn’t pay.”

“Tough luck!” murmured Archie, sympathetically.

“He thought about the village where his boyhood he had spent,
And yearned for all the simple joys with which he’d been content.”

“The right spirit!” said Archie, with approval. “I’m beginning to like this chappie!”

“Don’t interrupt!”

“Oh, right-o! Carried away and all that!”

“He looked upon the city, so frivolous and gay:
And, as he heaved a weary sigh, these words he then did say:⁠—
It’s a long way back to mother’s knee,
mother’s knee,
mother’s knee:
It’s a long way back to mother’s knee,
Where I used to stand and prattle
With my teddy-bear and rattle:
Oh, those childhood days in Tennessee,
They sure look good to me!
It’s a long, long way, but I’m gonna start today!
I’m going back,
Believe me, oh!
I’m going back
(I want to go!)
I’m going back⁠—back⁠—on the seven-three
To the dear old shack where I used to be!
I’m going back to mother’s knee!”

Wilson Hymack’s voice cracked on the final high note, which was of an altitude beyond his powers. He turned with a modest cough.

“That’ll give you an idea of it!”

“It has, old thing, it has!”

“Is it or is it not a ball of fire?”

“It has many of the earmarks of a sound egg,” admitted Archie. “Of course⁠—”

“Of course, it wants singing.”

“Just what I was going to suggest.”

“It wants a woman to sing it. A woman who could reach out for that last high note and teach it to take a joke. The whole refrain is working up to that. You need Tetrazzini or someone who would just pick that note off the roof and hold it till the janitor came round to lock up the building for the night.”

“I must buy a copy for my wife. Where can I get it?”

“You can’t get it! It isn’t published. Writing music’s the darndest job!” Wilson Hymack snorted fiercely. It was plain that the man was pouring out the pent-up emotion of many days. “You write the biggest thing in years and you go round trying to get someone to sing it, and they say you’re a genius and then shove the song away in a drawer and forget about it.”

Archie lit another cigarette.

“I’m a jolly old child in these matters, old lad,” he said, “but why don’t