Pelham Wodehouse - Spring Fever

"Do you, my dear boy? You are certainly most comforting. But unfortunately there is one very formidable obstacle in my path. She won't marry anyone who cannot put up two hundred pounds to buy a public house."

"Ah? So the real trouble is dough?"

"You betcher. In this world," said Lord Shortlands weightily, "the real trouble is always dough. All through my life I have found that out. And mine has been a long life. I'm fifty-two today."

Stanwood started as if a chord in his soul had been touched. He threw back his head and began to sing in a booming bass:

He broke off abruptly and pressed both hands to his temples. Too late he realized that the whole enterprise of throwing his head back and singing old music-hall ballads, however apposite, was one against which his best friends would have warned him.

"If you'll excuse me," he said, rising, "I think I'll just go to the washroom and put my head under the cold tap. Have you ever had that feeling that someone is driving white-hot rivets into your bean?"

"Not in recent years," said Lord Shortlands with a touch of wistfulness. "As a young man—"

"Ice, of course, would be better," said Stanwood, "but you look so silly ordering a bucket of ice and sticking your head in it. But maybe cold water will do something."

He tottered out, hoping for the best, and Lord Shortlands, allowing his lower jaw to droop restfully, gave himself up to meditation.

He thought of Mrs. Punter, and wondered how she was enjoying herself with her relatives at Walham Green. He thought of Terry, and hoped she would buy a nice hat. He thought of ordering another McGufTy Special, but decided that it was not worth the effort. And then suddenly he found himself thinking of something else, something that sent an icy chill trickling down his spine and restored him to a sobriety which could not have been more complete if he had been spending the morning drinking malted milk.

Had he been wise, he asked himself, had he been entirely prudent in confiding to that charming young fellow who had just gone out to put his head under the tap the secret of his love? Suppose the thing were to come to Adela's ears?

A look of glassy horror came into Lord Shortlands' eyes. Perspiration bedewed his forehead, and the word "Crikey!" trembled on his lips. From the very inception of his wooing he had been troubled by the thought of what the deuce would happen if Adela ever got to hear of it.

Then Reason reassured him. The young fellow and he were just ships that pass in the night. They had met and spoken, and now they would part, never to meet again. There could be no possibility of the other ever coming into Adela's orbit. He had been alarming himself unnecessarily.

Comforted and relieved, but feeling an imperative need for an immediate restorative, he turned, with the purpose of establishing communication with Aloysius McGuffy, and found that he was being scrutinized by a pair of extraordinarily good-looking twins, who on closer inspection coalesced into one extraordinarily good-looking young man in a grey suit, who had come in unperceived and taken a seat at the adjoining table. And to his surprise this young man now rose and approached him with outstretched hand.

"How do you do?" he said.

Lord Shortlands blinked.

"How do you do," he replied cautiously. Sixteen years ago he had once been stung for five by an agreeable stranger who had scraped acquaintance with him in a bar, and he could not forget that he had at this moment nearly twelve pounds on his person. "Be on the alert, Claude Percival John Delamere," he was saying to himself.

"I have not got my facts twisted?" the other proceeded. "You are Lord Shortlands?"

Though still wary, the fifth earl saw no harm in conceding this. He said he was, and the young man said he had been convinced of it; he, the fifth earl, having changed very little since the old days; looking, in fact, or so it seemed to him, younger than ever.

Lord Shortlands, though continuing to keep a hand on the money in his pocket, began to like this young man.

"You don't remember me. You wouldn't, of course. It's a long time since we met. Your son Tony brought me to Beevor for the summer holidays once, when we were boys together. Cardinal is the name."

"Cardinal?"

"I mentioned that on the phone this morning, if you remember, but nothing seemed to stir. Nice running into one another like this. How is Tony?"

"He's all right. Cardinal? Out in Kenya, growing coffee and all that. Cardinal?" said Lord Shortlands, his McGuffy-Specialized brain at last answering the call. "Why, you're the chap who's in love with my daughter Terry."

The young man bowed.

"I could wish no neater description of myself," he said. "It cuts out all superfluities and gets right down to essentials. One of these days I shall be President of the United States, but I am quite content to live in history as the chap who was in love with your daughter Terry. It must be a very wonderful thing to have such a daughter."

"Oh, decidedly."

"Makes you chuck the chest out more than somewhat, I should imagine?"

"You betcher."

"I'm surprised you don't go around singing all the time. It was a great relief to me when you told me she was still doing her hair the same way. It would be madness to go fooling about with that superb superstructure. And yet I don't know. I doubt whether any rearrangement of the tresses could destroy their charm. The first time I saw her, she had them down her back in pigtails, and I remember thinking the effect perfect."

"Yes, Terry has pretty hair."

"I would have said gorgeous. I love her eyes too, don't you?"

Lord Shortlands said that he thought his daughter had nice eyes, and the young man frowned.

"Not 'nice.' If we are going to talk about Terry, we must take a little trouble to get the right word. Her eyes are heavenly. I don't suppose there's another pair of eyes like that in existence. How do you check up on her nose? That way it turns up slightly at the tip."

"Ah," said Lord Shortlands, wisely refraining from a more definite expression of opinion in the presence of this evidently meticulous critic, and the young man paused to light a cigarette.

Lord Shortlands goggled at him with a solemn intentness. He could see what Terry had meant about the fellow being good-looking. The word understated it. He was sort of super-Spink. Sitting where he did, he presented his profile to Lord Shortlands, and the latter was able to study its clean-cut lines. There was no getting away from it. The chap began where Spink left off.

Mike Cardinal had finished lighting his cigarette and was ready to talk once more.

"Yes, she's got everything, hasn't she? I don't suppose you've the slightest conception of how I love that girl. What a great day that was when she came back into my life; on the hoof, as it were, and not merely as a golden, insubstantial memory. It happened quite by chance, and at a moment, oddly enough, when I was not thinking of her but of chump chops, Brussels sprouts and French-fried potatoes. I was sauntering through the grillroom here, looking for a table, and I saw a friend of mine sitting with a girl and went over to exchange a word, and—"

"Yes, she told me."

"Ah, she has been talking about me, has she? A promising sign. By the way, have I your permission to pay my addresses to your daughter? One likes to get these things settled."

"Well, dash it, you have been paying your addresses to her."