Sam in the Suburbs by P. G. Wodehouse - HTML preview

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
 MR. CORNELIUS READS HIS HISTORY

§ 1

IT is a curious fact, and one frequently noted by philosophers, that every woman in this world cherishes within herself a deep-rooted belief, from which nothing can shake her, that the particular man to whom she has plighted her love is to be held personally blameworthy for practically all of the untoward happenings of life. The vapid and irreflective would call these things accidents, but she knows better. If she arrives at a station at five minutes past nine to catch a train which has already left at nine minutes past five, she knows that it is her Henry who is responsible, just as he was responsible the day before for a shower of rain coming on when she was wearing her new hat.

But there was sterling stuff in Kay Derrick. Although no doubt she felt in her secret heart that the omission of the late Mr. Edward Finglass to deposit his ill-gotten gains beneath the floor of the top back bedroom of Mon Repos could somehow have been avoided if Sam had shown a little enterprise and common sense, she uttered no word of reproach. Her reception of the bad news, indeed, when, coming out into the garden, he saw her waiting for him on the lawn of San Rafael and climbed the fence to deliver it, was such as to confirm once and for all his enthusiastic view of her splendid qualities. Where others would have blamed, she sympathised. And not content with mere sympathy, she went on to minimise the disaster with soothing argument.

“What does it matter?” she said. “We have each other.”

The mind of man, no less than that of woman, works strangely. When, a few days before, Sam had read that identical sentiment, couched in almost exactly the same words, as part of the speech addressed by Leslie Mordyke to the girl of his choice in the third galley of Cordelia Blair’s gripping serial, Hearts Aflame, he had actually gone so far as to write in the margin the words, “Silly fool!” Now he felt that he had never heard anything not merely so beautiful but so thoroughly sensible, practical and inspired.

“That’s right!” he cried.

If he had been standing by a table he would have banged it with his fist. Situated as he was, in the middle of a garden, all he could do was to kiss Kay. This he did.

“Of course,” he said, when the first paroxysm of enthusiasm had passed, “there’s just this one point to be taken into consideration. I’ve lost my job, and I don’t know how I’m to get another.”

“Of course you’ll get another!”

“Why, so I will!” said Sam, astounded by the clearness of her reasoning. The idea that the female intelligence was inferior to the male seemed to him a gross fallacy. How few men could have thought a thing all out in a flash like that.

“It may not be a big job, but that will be all the more fun.”

“So it will.”

“I always think that people who marry on practically nothing have a wonderful time.”

“Terrific!”

“So exciting.”

“Yes.”

“I can cook a bit.”

“I can wash dishes.”

“If you’re poor, you enjoy occasional treats. If you’re rich, you just get bored with pleasure.”

“Bored stiff.”

“And probably drift apart.”

Sam could not follow her here. Loth as he was to disagree with her lightest word, this was going too far.

“No,” he said firmly, “if I had a million I wouldn’t drift apart from you.”

“You might.”

“No, I wouldn’t.”

“I’m only saying you might.”

“But I shouldn’t.”

“Well, anyhow,” said Kay, yielding the point, “all I’m saying is that it will be much more fun being awfully hard up and watching the pennies and going out to the Palais de Dance at Hammersmith on Saturday night, or if it was my birthday or something, and cooking our own dinner and making my own clothes, than—than——”

“——living in a gilded cage, watching love stifle,” said Sam, remembering Leslie Mordyke’s remarks on the subject.

“Yes. So, honestly, I’m very glad it was all a fairy story about that money being in Mon Repos.”

“So am I. Darned glad.”

“I’d have hated to have it.”

“So would I.”

“And I think it’s jolly, your uncle disinheriting you.”

“Absolutely corking.”

“It would have spoiled everything, having a big allowance from him.”

“Everything.”

“I mean, we should have missed all the fun we’re going to have, and we shouldn’t have felt so close together and——”

“Exactly. Do you know, I knew a wretched devil in America who came into about twenty million dollars when his father died, and he went and married a girl with about double that in her own right.”

“What became of him?” asked Kay, shocked.

“I don’t know. We lost touch. But just imagine that marriage!”

“Awful!”

“What possible fun could they have had?”

“None. What was his name?”

“Blenkiron,” said Sam in a hushed voice. “And hers was Poskitt.”

For some moments, deeply affected by the tragedy of these two poor bits of human wreckage, they stood in silence. Sam felt near to tears, and he thought Kay was bearing up only with some difficulty.

The door leading into the garden opened. Light from the house flashed upon them.

“Somebody’s coming out,” said Kay, giving a little start as though she had been awakened from a dream.

“Curse them!” said Sam. “Or rather, no,” he corrected himself. “I think it’s your uncle.”

Even at such a moment as this, he could harbour no harsh thought toward any relative of hers.

It was Mr. Wrenn. He stood on the steps, peering out.

“Kay!” he called.

“Yes?”

“Oh, you’re there. Is Shotter with you?”

“Yes.”

“Could you both come in for a minute?” inquired Mr. Wrenn, his voice—for he was a man of feeling—conveying a touch of apology. “Cornelius is here. He wants to read you that chapter from his history of Valley Fields.”

Sam groaned in spirit. On such a night as this young Troilus had climbed the walls of Troy and stood gazing at the Grecian tents where lay his Cressida, and he himself had got to go into a stuffy house and listen to a bore with a white beard drooling on about the mouldy past of a London suburb.

“Well, yes, I know; but——” he began doubtfully.

Kay laid a hand upon his arm.

“We can’t disappoint the poor old man,” she whispered. “He would take it to heart so.”

“Yes, but I mean——”

“No.”

“Just as you say,” said Sam.

He was going to make a good husband.

Mr. Cornelius was in the drawing-room. From under his thick white brows he peered at them, as they entered, with the welcoming eyes of a man who, loving the sound of his own voice, sees a docile audience assembling. He took from the floor a large brown paper parcel and, having carefully unfastened the string which tied it, revealed a second and lighter wrapping of brown paper. Removing this, he disclosed a layer of newspaper, then another, and finally a formidable typescript bound about with lilac ribbon.

“The matter having to do with the man Finglass occurs in Chapter Seven of my book,” he said.

“Just one chapter?” said Sam, with a touch of hope.

“That chapter describes the man’s first visit to my office, my early impressions of him, his words as nearly as I can remember them, and a few other preliminary details. In Chapter Nine——”

“Chapter Nine!” echoed Sam, aghast. “You know, as a matter of fact, there really isn’t any need to read all that, because it turns out that Finglass never——”

“In Chapter Nine,” proceeded Mr. Cornelius, adjusting a large pair of horn-rimmed spectacles, “I show him accepted perfectly unsuspiciously by the residents of the suburb, and I have described at some length, because it is important as indicating how completely his outward respectability deceived those with whom he came in contact, a garden party given by Mrs. Bellamy-North, of Beau Rivage, in Burberry Road, at which he appeared and spoke a few words on the subject of the forthcoming election for the district council.”

“We shall love to hear that,” said Kay brightly. Her eye, wandering aside, met Sam’s. Sam, who had opened his mouth, closed it again.

“I remember that day very distinctly,” said Mr. Cornelius. “It was a beautiful afternoon in June, and the garden of Beau Rivage was looking extraordinarily attractive. It was larger, of course, in those days. The house which I call Beau Rivage in my history has since been converted into two semi-detached houses, known as Beau Rivage and Sans Souci. That is a change which has taken place in a great number of cases in this neighbourhood. Five years ago Burberry Road was a more fashionable quarter, and the majority of the houses were detached. This house where we are now sitting, for example, and its neighbour, Mon Repos, were a single residence when Edward Finglass came to Valley Fields. Its name was then Mon Repos, and it was only some eighteen months later that San Rafael came into existence as a separate——”

He broke off; and breaking off, bit his tongue, for that had occurred which had startled him considerably. One unit in his audience, until that moment apparently as quiet and well-behaved as the other units, had suddenly, to all appearances, gone off his head. The young man Shotter, uttering a piercing cry, had leaped to his feet and was exhibiting strange emotion.

“What’s that?” cried Sam. “What did you say?”

Mr. Cornelius regarded him through a mist of tears. His tongue was giving him considerable pain.

“Did you say,” demanded Sam, “that in Finglass’ time San Rafael was part of Mon Repos?”

“Yeh,” said Mr. Cornelius, rubbing the wound tenderly against the roof of his mouth.

“Give me a chisel!” bellowed Sam. “Where’s a chisel? I want a chisel!”

§ 2

“Bleck my soul!” said Mr. Cornelius. He spoke a little thickly, for his tongue was still painful. But its anguish was forgotten under the spell of a stronger emotion. Five minutes had passed since Sam’s remarkable outburst in the drawing-room; and now, with Mr. Wrenn and Kay, he was standing in the top back bedroom of San Rafael, watching the young man as he drew up from the chasm in which he had been groping a very yellowed, very dusty package which crackled and crumbled in his fingers.

“Bleck my soul!” said Mr. Cornelius.

“Good heavens!” said Mr. Wrenn.

“Sam!” cried Kay.

Sam did not hear their voices. With the look of a mother bending over her sleeping babe, he was staring at the parcel.

“Two million!” said Sam, choking. “Two million—count ’em—two million!”

A light of pure avarice shone in his eyes. He looked like a man who had never heard of the unhappy fate of Dwight Blenkiron, of Chicago, Illinois, and Genevieve, his bride, née Poskitt; or who, having heard, did not give a whoop.

“What’s ten per cent on two million?” asked Sam.

§ 3

Valley Fields lay asleep. Clocks had been wound, cats put out of back doors, front doors bolted and chained. In a thousand homes a thousand good householders were restoring their tissues against the labours of another day. The silver-voiced clock on the big tower over the college struck the hour of two.

But though most of its inhabitants were prudently getting their eight hours and insuring that schoolgirl complexion, footsteps still made themselves heard in the silence of Burberry Road. They were those of Sam Shotter of Mon Repos, pacing up and down outside the gate of San Rafael. Long since had Mr. Wrenn, who slept in the front of that house, begun to wish Sam Shotter in bed or dead; but he was a mild and kindly man, loth to shout winged words out of windows. So Sam paced, unrebuked, until presently other footsteps joined in chorus with his and he perceived that he was no longer alone.

A lantern shone upon him.

“Out late, sir,” said the sleepless guardian of the peace behind him.

“Late?” said Sam. Trifles like time meant nothing to him. “Is it late?”

“Just gone two, sir.”

“Oh? Then perhaps I had better be going to bed.”

“Suit yourself, sir. Resident here, sir?”

“Yes.”

“Then I wonder,” said the constable, “if I can interest you in a concert which is shortly to take place in aid of a charitubulorganisation connection with a body of men to ’oom you as a nouse’older will——”

“Do you believe in palmists?”

“No, sir—— be the first to admit that you owe the safety of your person and the tranquillity of your ’ome—the police.”

“Well, let me tell you this,” said Sam warmly: “Some time ago a palmist told me that I was shortly about to be married, and I am shortly about to be married.”

“Wish you luck, sir. Then perhaps I can ’ave the pleasure of selling you and your good lady to be a couple of tickets for this concert in aid of the Policemen’s Orphanage. Tickets, which may be ’ad in any quantity, consist of the five-shilling ticket——”

“Are you married?”

“Yes sir—— the three-shilling ticket, the half-crown ticket, the shilling ticket, and the sixpenny ticket.”

“It’s the only life, isn’t it?” said Sam.

“That of the policeman, sir, or the orphan?”

“Married life.”

The constable ruminated.

“Well, sir,” he replied judicially, “it’s like most things—’as its advantages and its disadvantages.”

“Of course,” said Sam, “I can see that if two people married without having any money, it might lead to a lot of unhappiness. But if you’ve plenty of money, nothing can possibly go wrong.”

“Have you plenty of money, sir?”

“Pots of it.”

“In that case, sir, I recommend the five-shilling tickets. Say, one for yourself, one for your good lady to be and—to make up the round sovereign—a couple for any gentlemen friends you may meet at the club ’oo may desire to be present at what you can take it from me will be a slap-up entertainment, high class from start to finish. Constable Purvis will render Asleep on the Deep——”

“Look here,” said Sam, suddenly becoming aware that the man was babbling about something, “what on earth are you talking about?”

“Tickets, sir.”

“But you don’t need tickets to get married.”

“You need tickets to be present at the annual concert in aid of the Policemen’s Orphanage, and I strongly advocate the purchase of ’alf a dozen of the five-shilling.”

“How much are the five-shilling?”

“Five shillings, sir.”

“But I’ve only got a ten-pound note on me.”

“Bring your change to your ’ome to-morrow.”

Sam became aware with a shudder of self-loathing that he was allowing this night of nights to be marred by sordid huckstering.

“Never mind the change,” he said.

“Sir?”

“Keep it all. I’m going to be married,” he added in explanation.

“Keep the ’ole ten pounds, sir?” quavered the stupefied officer.

“Certainly. What’s ten pounds?”

There was a silence.

“If everybody was like you, sir,” said the constable at length, in a deep, throaty voice, “the world would be a better place.”

“The world couldn’t be a better place,” said Sam. “Good night.”

“Good night, sir,” said the constable reverently.

(THE END)