Plum Pie (24 page)

"Ah, my dear," he said, "there you are. Sorry to have seemed a bit taciturn, but your abrupt appearance surprised me. I thought you were in bed and asleep. Well, no doubt it seems odd to you to find me here, but I can explain, and you will see how I am situated."

'You are situated in an armchair with a whacking great cigar in your mouth, and I shall be glad to have the inside story."

"You shall have it at once, and I think it will touch your heart. You were away from home, I believe, when Mrs. Potter entered my service?"

'She had been here a year when I first saw her."

"So I thought. She was in the employment of a friend of mine when I was introduced to her superlative cooking. When he conked out-apoplexy, poor fellow, brought on, I have always felt, by over-indulgence in her steak and kidney pies-I immediately asked her to come to me, and I was stunned when she enquired if I was a non-smoker, adding that she held smoking to be the primary cause of all human ills and would never consider serving under the banner of an employer who indulged in the revolting practice. You follow me so far?"

"I get the picture."

"It was a tricky situation, you will admit. On the one hand, I loved cigars. On the other, I adored good food. Which to choose? The whole of that night I lay sleepless on my bed, pondering, and when morning came I knew what my decision must be. I made the great sacrifice. I told her I never smoked, and until tonight I never have. But this morning the chauffeur or somebody dropped this cigar on the lawn, and the sight of it shook me to my depths. I had not seen one for three years, and all the old craving returned. Unable to resist the urge, I crept down here and…Well, that is the story, my dear, and I am sure you will not let this little lapse of mine come to Mrs. Potter's ears. I can rely on you?"

"Of course."

"Thank you, thank you. You have taken a great weight off my mind. Bless my soul, I haven't felt so relieved since the afternoon in West Africa when a rhinoceros, charging on me with flashing eyes, suddenly sprained an ankle and had to call the whole thing off. I shudder to think what would have happened if Mrs. Potter had learned of my doings this night. She would have been off like a jack rabbit. I wouldn't have been able to see her for dust. She would have vanished like a dream at daybreak. But provided you seal your lips---"

"Oh, I'll seal them."

"Thank you, my dear. I knew I could rely on you."

"And you on your side will write me a cheque for that bit of cash of mine. You see, I want to get married."

"You do? Who to?"

"You know him. Lancelot Bingley."

A hoarse exclamation in some little known Senegambian dialect burst from the Colonel's lips.

"You mean that artist fellow?"

“That's right."

 "You're joking."

"I am not."

"You mean you seriously intend to marry that pop-eyed voting slab of damnation?"

"He is not pop-eyed."

"But you will concede that he is a slab of damnation?"

"I will do nothing of the sort. Lancelot is a baa-lamb."

"A baa-lamb?"

"Yes, a baa-lamb."

"Well, he doesn't look to me like a baa-lamb. More like something the cat brought in, and not a very fastidious cat at that."

In his nook behind the desk Lancelot flushed hotly. For a moment he thought of rising to his feet with a curt "I resent that remark", but prudence told him it was better not to interrupt.

"And it is not only his looks I object to," continued the Colonel. "I suppose he has kept it from you, but he goes about jumping on people's stomachs."

"Yes, he mentioned that to me."

"Well, then. You don't expect me to abet you in your crazy scheme of marrying a chap like that. I won't give you a penny."

"Then I'll tell Mrs. Potter you're a secret smoker."

The Colonel gasped. The cigar fell from his hand. He picked it up, dusted it and returned it to his lips. His voice, when he spoke, was hoarse and trembled.

"This is blackmail! "

"With the possible exception of diamonds," said Gladys, "a girl's best friend."

Silence fell. The Colonel's eyes were strained and bleak. His chins vibrated. It was plain that he was engaged in serious thought. But the clash of wills could have but one ending.

"Very well," he said at length, "I consent. I do it with the utmost reluctance, for the idea of you marrying that…that how shall I describe him…well, never mind, you know what I mean…chills me to the marrow. But I have no alternative. I, cannot do without Mrs. Potter's cooking."

"You shall have it."

"And furthermore," said Lancelot, shooting up from behind the desk and causing the Colonel to quiver like a smitten jelly, "you shall have all the cigars you want. I have a box of fifty-or, rather, forty-nine-upstairs in my room and I give them to you freely. And after breakfast tomorrow I will show you a spot in the shrubbery where you can smoke your head off without fear of detection."

The Colonel drew a deep breath. His eyes glowed with a strange light. His chins vibrated again, but this time with ecstasy. He said a few words in Cape Dutch, then, seeing that his companions had missed the gist, he obligingly translated.

"Gladys," he said, "I could wish you no better husband. He is, as you were telling me, one of the baa-lambs and in my opinion by no means the worst of them. I think you will be very happy."

Our Man in America

It always happens. Just as one is feeling pretty good and saying to oneself
that it
is not a bad little world after all, along comes something
to
take the joy out
of
life. This news from Washington D.C., for instance. It seems that for many years it has been the practice
of
members
of
the United States Congress to go
into
the House restaurant, order a cup of coffee and reach out
and grab
slices
of
bread and butter, for which until recently
there was no
charge. So for the
price of
a cup of coffee they were
able to fill
themselves to the brim with nourishing food and go
back
to
the
debate with that cosy feeling of being ahead
of
the game.

This has now been changed. The law-giver who wants bread will have to pay for it, arid it is not too much to say that consternation reigns. These starchy food aficionados get only $22,500 annually, so they have
to
keep a watchful eye on the budget, and
if
they pay out good money for a slice off the loaf it throws the whole thing out
of
gear. It is not unusual for visitors to Washington these days to find themselves stopped in the street
by
President Johnson and asked
if
they can spare a dime. "My Congressmen are crying for bread,"
he
says.

*

It is pretty generally agreed that we are living as of even date in the times that try men's souls, and it is interesting, as one surveys the American scene, to note the steps the various states are taking to cope with them. Thus, in Grand Rapids, Michigan, the populace was conscious recently of a great wave of relief, for they knew that even if a hostile power were to start unloading unpleasant things from the skies above America, they at least would be sitting pretty. Grand Rapids has just passed a law making it illegal for any aviator to 'drop a bomb while flying over the city without leave from the city commission', and it is very improbable that such permission would be given a foreign foe.

In Wisconsin they fortify themselves somewhat differently. Reports from there reveal that last year Wisconsin men, women and children all pulling together drank 1,025,739,909 bottles of beer. It worked   splendidly.   After about  the 25,739,909th bottle they simply stopped caring. 'Who's afraid of the big bad wolf?' was the slogan heard on all sides, though in one or two instances the words were so slurred as to be indistinguishable.

*

Rather sad the way America's most cherished customs and traditions are dying out nowadays. The latest to become one with Nineveh and Tyre is the annual woolly bear hunt on Bear Mountain. Each autumn for nearly a decade it has been the practice of Dr. C. H. Curran, curator of insects and spiders at the Museum of Natural History, to take a paper bag and set forth, accompanied by Mrs. Curran and a bevy of friends and well-wishers, to collect specimens of the caterpillar of that name and inspect them with a view to seeing what sort of winter we were going to have.

The idea has always been that if in the Autumn the brown bands on the woolly bear were wide, conditions from December to March would be clement, while if they were narrow the populace was in for ice and snow and all the trimmings. And now Dr. Curran has rocked the country with a bombshell.

"This," he said, as the hunters returned to the hunting lodge and were gloating over the bulging paper bag,' is the last woolly bear hunt we will conduct. Statistics over the last nine years show that the width of the little chiseller's brown bands can tell us nothing whatsoever about the weather. The woolly bear stands stripped of its mask at the bar of world opinion. '

Well, naturally, everyone was pretty appalled. Mrs. Curran fought to keep back the tears and many of those present paled visibly. A reporter from the New York Herald-Tribune, who had come along because there was a free lunch, was heard to cry "Oh, Doctor Curran, say it ain't so!", but the doc was adamant. He had had it. "Look what happened last year," he said. One knows what was in his mind. Last October every woolly bear you met was sporting the widest possible bands, and the winter should have been springlike. But was it? Not by a jugful. It was a stinker. No wonder Dr. Curran had felt compelled to take this strong line. As he rather aptly puts it, you can fool all the people some of the time, you can even fool some of the people all the time, but you can't fool all the people all the time. From now on the woolly bear means nothing in his life. He will take the high road and it the low road, and if they happen to meet he will merely nod coldly, if that.

*

It is unlikely, perhaps, that Mr. Ernest Crowley of Watkins Glen, N.Y., will ever invite me to spend a long week-end at his home, but if he does I shall certainly tell him I can't possibly fit it in, for, according to an interview he has given to the press, he has a singing dog on the premises. According to him the animal has a repertory ranging from 'My Wild Irish Rose' to 'Happy Birthday'.

Buster, for such is his name, presumably confines himself to rendering the music of these items, omitting the words like a citizen joining in 'The Star-Spangled Banner' and possibly sings only in his bath, but even so the whole thing strikes me as fairly sinister.

In his interview Mr. Crowley says he is in the habit of taking Buster to hospitals 'to entertain the aged and mentally ill', and no one more surprised than he, one imagines, when the performance scares the pants off them. I am aged myself—eighty-five next birthday—and mentally not very bright, and I know that if I were lying in bed and a dog came in and suddenly started singing the Jewel Song from Faust, I would shoot straight up to and through the ceiling, sustaining bruises and contusions.

9.
Life With Freddie

Mr. Bunting, of the legal firm of Bunting and Satterthwaite, looked at his watch and saw with satisfaction that it was getting on for lunch time. His digestion being none too good, he seldom took more for his mid-day meal than a glass of hot water, but he enjoyed the agreeable break it made in the morning's routine. He also welcomed the prospect of being able to stop trying to explain the law of Great Britain to his visitor Freddie Threepwood.

"Well, as you will have gathered," he said, "it's all pretty complicated and one never knows how these cases are going to go with a jury, so I think the best thing is to try for a settlement out of court. You agree, Satterthwaite?"

Mr. Satterthwaite said he did.

"And you, Freddie?"

"Not for me to say, is it? Up to old Donaldson, surely?"

"Quite right. It's for him to decide. I'll get him on the transatlantic phone and ask him how he feels about it."

"Good idea," said Freddie, relieved, for the discussion had begun to make his head ache. Sent over to England from Long Island City by his employer Mr. Donaldson of Donaldson's Dog joy, his task a roving commission to ginger up the English end of the business, he had looked in on Bunting and Satterthwaite to learn how that law suit of Mr. Donaldson's was coming along and had been unable to make much of what Mr. Bunting had told him. Legal minutiae were not in his line. His genius lay in selling dog biscuits.

"You must enjoy these visits of yours to the old homeland, Freddie," said Mr. Bunting, becoming chatty now that the conference was concluded. "How did you leave Donaldson, by the way? Fit, I hope?"

"Oh, very. Still inclined to bark at one a bit."

"I remember that trait of his. Like a seal surprised while bathing. When do you go back?"

"In about three weeks?"

"I suppose you have been hobnobbing with all the friends of your youth?"

"Well, actually, no. I've been too busy. I ran into Joe Cardinal yesterday. He tells me he's given up his painting and is working in a bank. You know Joe, don't you?"

"Very well indeed."

"Then perhaps you can give me his address? I forgot to ask him."

"I'll write it down," said Mr. Bunting, and as he spoke the intercom sounded.

"There's a girl out there wants to see you, Bunting," said Mr. Satterthwaite, having answered it. "Some name like Riddell."