The scene is the Strand, hard by Bedford Street; the time, that restful hour of the afternoon when they of the gnarled faces and the bright clothing gather together in groups to tell each other how good they are.
Hark! A voice.
"Rather! Courtneidge and the Guv"nor keep on trying to get me, but I turn them down every time. "No," I said to Malone only yesterday, "not for me! I"m going with old Wally Jelliffe, the same as usual, and there isn"t the money in the Mint that"ll get me away." Malone got all worked up. He-"
It is the voice of Pifield Rice, actor.
EXTRICATING YOUNG GUSSIE
She sprang it on me before breakfast. There in seven words you have a complete character sketch of my Aunt Agatha. I could go on indefinitely about brutality and lack of consideration. I merely say that she routed me out of bed to listen to her painful story somewhere in the small hours. It can"t have been half past eleven when Jeeves, my man, woke me out of the dreamless and broke the news:
"Mrs Gregson to see you, sir."
I thought she must be walking in her sleep, but I crawled out of bed and got into a dressing-gown. I knew Aunt Agatha well enough to know that, if she had come to see me, she was going to see me. That"s the sort of woman she is.
She was sitting bolt upright in a chair, staring into s.p.a.ce. When I came in she looked at me in that darn critical way that always makes me feel as if I had gelatine where my spine ought to be. Aunt Agatha is one of those strong-minded women. I should think Queen Elizabeth must have been something like her. She bosses her husband, Spencer Gregson, a battered little chappie on the Stock Exchange. She bosses my cousin, Gussie Mannering-Phipps. She bosses her sister-in-law, Gussie"s mother. And, worst of all, she bosses me. She has an eye like a man-eating fish, and she has got moral suasion down to a fine point.
I dare say there are fellows in the world-men of blood and iron, don"t you know, and all that sort of thing-whom she couldn"t intimidate; but if you"re a chappie like me, fond of a quiet life, you simply curl into a ball when you see her coming, and hope for the best. My experience is that when Aunt Agatha wants you to do a thing you do it, or else you find yourself wondering why those fellows in the olden days made such a fuss when they had trouble with the Spanish Inquisition.
"Halloa, Aunt Agatha!" I said
"Bertie," she said, "you look a sight. You look perfectly dissipated."
I was feeling like a badly wrapped brown-paper parcel. I"m never at my best in the early morning. I said so.
"Early morning! I had breakfast three hours ago, and have been walking in the park ever since, trying to compose my thoughts."
If I ever breakfasted at half past eight I should walk on the Embankment, trying to end it all in a watery grave.
"I am extremely worried, Bertie. That is why I have come to you."
And then I saw she was going to start something, and I bleated weakly to Jeeves to bring me tea. But she had begun before I could get it.
"What are your immediate plans, Bertie?"
"Well, I rather thought of tottering out for a bite of lunch later on, and then possibly staggering round to the club, and after that, if I felt strong enough, I might trickle off to Walton Heath for a round of golf."
I am not interested in your totterings and tricklings. I mean, have you any important engagements in the next week or so?"
I scented danger.
"Rather," I said. "Heaps! Millions! Booked solid!"
"What are they?"
"I-er-well, I don"t quite know."
"I thought as much. You have no engagements. Very well, then, I want you to start immediately for America."
"America!"
Do not lose sight of the fact that all this was taking place on an empty stomach, shortly after the rising of the lark.
"Yes, America. I suppose even you have heard of America?"
"But why America?"
"Because that is where your Cousin Gussie is. He is in New York, and I can"t get at him."
"What"s Gussie been doing?"
"Gussie is making a perfect idiot of himself."
To one who knew young Gussie as well as I did, the words opened up a wide field for speculation.
"In what way?"
"He has lost his head over a creature."
On past performances this rang true. Ever since he arrived at man"s estate Gussie had been losing his head over creatures. He"s that sort of chap. But, as the creatures never seemed to lose their heads over him, it had never amounted to much.
"I imagine you know perfectly well why Gussie went to America, Bertie.
You know how wickedly extravagant your Uncle Cuthbert was."
She alluded to Gussie"s governor, the late head of the family, and I am bound to say she spoke the truth. n.o.body was fonder of old Uncle Cuthbert than I was, but everybody knows that, where money was concerned, he was the most complete chump in the annals of the nation. He had an expensive thirst. He never backed a horse that didn"t get housemaid"s knee in the middle of the race. He had a system of beating the bank at Monte Carlo which used to make the administration hang out the bunting and ring the joy-bells when he was sighted in the offing. Take him for all in all, dear old Uncle Cuthbert was as willing a spender as ever called the family lawyer a bloodsucking vampire because he wouldn"t let Uncle Cuthbert cut down the timber to raise another thousand.
"He left your Aunt Julia very little money for a woman in her position. Beechwood requires a great deal of keeping up, and poor dear Spencer, though he does his best to help, has not unlimited resources. It was clearly understood why Gussie went to America. He is not clever, but he is very good-looking, and, though he has no t.i.tle, the Mannering-Phippses are one of the best and oldest families in England. He had some excellent letters of introduction, and when he wrote home to say that he had met the most charming and beautiful girl in the world I felt quite happy. He continued to rave about her for several mails, and then this morning a letter has come from him in which he says, quite casually as a sort of afterthought, that he knows we are broadminded enough not to think any the worse of her because she is on the vaudeville stage."
"Oh, I say!"
"It was like a thunderbolt. The girl"s name, it seems, is Ray Denison, and according to Gussie she does something which he describes as a single on the big time. What this degraded performance may be I have not the least notion. As a further recommendation he states that she lifted them out of their seats at Mosenstein"s last week. Who she may be, and how or why, and who or what Mr Mosenstein may be, I cannot tell you."
"By jove," I said, "it"s like a sort of thingummybob, isn"t it? A sort of fate, what?"
"I fail to understand you."
"Well, Aunt Julia, you know, don"t you know? Heredity, and so forth. What"s bred in the bone will come out in the wash, and all that kind of thing, you know."
"Don"t be absurd, Bertie."
That was all very well, but it was a coincidence for all that. n.o.body ever mentions it, and the family have been trying to forget it for twenty-five years, but it"s a known fact that my Aunt Julia, Gussie"s mother, was a vaudeville artist once, and a very good one, too, I"m told. She was playing in pantomime at Drury Lane when Uncle Cuthbert saw her first. It was before my time, of course, and long before I was old enough to take notice the family had made the best of it, and Aunt Agatha had pulled up her socks and put in a lot of educative work, and with a microscope you couldn"t tell Aunt Julia from a genuine dyed-in-the-wool aristocrat. Women adapt themselves so quickly!
I have a pal who married Daisy Trimble of the Gaiety, and when I meet her now I feel like walking out of her presence backwards. But there the thing was, and you couldn"t get away from it. Gussie had vaudeville blood in him, and it looked as if he were reverting to type, or whatever they call it.
"By Jove," I said, for I am interested in this heredity stuff, "perhaps the thing is going to be a regular family tradition, like you read about in books-a sort of Curse of the Mannering-Phippses, as it were. Perhaps each head of the family"s going to marry into vaudeville for ever and ever. Unto the what-d"you-call-it generation, don"t you know?"
"Please do not be quite idiotic, Bertie. There is one head of the family who is certainly not going to do it, and that is Gussie. And you are going to America to stop him."
"Yes, but why me?"
"Why you? You are too vexing, Bertie. Have you no sort of feeling for the family? You are too lazy to try to be a credit to yourself, but at least you can exert yourself to prevent Gussie"s disgracing us. You are going to America because you are Gussie"s cousin, because you have always been his closest friend, because you are the only one of the family who has absolutely nothing to occupy his time except golf and night clubs."