Pelham Wodehouse: Spring Fever

Spring had come to New York, the eight-fifteen train from Great Neck had come to the Pennsylvania terminus, and G. Ellery Cobbold, that stout economic royalist, had come to his downtown office, all set to prise another wad of currency out of the common people.

It was a lovely morning, breathing of bock beer and the birth of a new baseball season, and the sap was running strongly in Mr. Cobbold's veins. He looked like a cartoon of Capital in a labor paper, but he felt fine. It would not have taken much to make him break into a buck-and-wing dance, and if he had had roses in his possession it is more than probable that he would have strewn them from his hat.

Borne aloft in the elevator, he counted his blessings one by one and found them totting up to a highly satisfactory total. The boil on the back of his neck had yielded to treatment. His golf handicap was down to twenty-four. His son Stanwood was in London, safely removed from the wiles of Miss Eileen Stoker of Beverly Hills, Cal. He was on the point of concluding remunerative deals with the Messrs. Simms and Weinstein of Detroit and the Consolidated Nail File and Eyebrow Tweezer Corporation of Scranton, Pa. And a fortunate glance at Debrett's Peerage that morning had reminded him that tomorrow was Lord Shortlands' birthday.

He floated lightly into the office and found Miss Sharpies, his efficient secretary, there, right on the job as always, and a mass of torn envelopes in the wastepaper basket told him that she had attended to his correspondence and was all ready to give him the headline news. But though that correspondence almost certainly included vital communications from both Simms and Weinstein and the Nail File and Eyebrow Tweezer boys, it was the matter of Lord Shortlands' natal day that claimed his immediate attention.

"Morning, Miss Sharpies," he said, and you could see that what he really meant was 'Good morning, good morning, Miss Sharpies, what a beautiful morning it is, is it not? With a Hey and a Ho and a Hey nonny no, Miss Sharpies.' "Take a memo."

"Yes, Mr. Cobbold."

"Western Union."

"Western Union," echoed Miss Sharpies, inscribing on her tablet something that resembled an impressionistic sketch of a pneumonia germ.

"Tell them to put in a personal call at... Say, what time do you reckon an English peer would be waking up in the morning?"

He had come to the woman who knew.

"Eleven, Mr. Cobbold."

"Eleven?"

"That's the time young Lord Peebles wakes up in the novel I'm reading. He props his eyes open with his ringers and presses the bell, and Meadowes, his man, brings him a bromo-seltzer and an anchovy on hot toast."

Mr. Cobbold uttered a revolted "Pshaw."

"This fellow isn't one of those dissolute society playboys. He lives in the country, and he's fifty-two. At least, he will be tomorrow. Seems to me seven would be more like it. Have Western Union put in a personal call at seven, English time, tomorrow to the Earl of Shortlands, Beevor Castle, Kent, and sing 'Happy birthday,' to him."

"'Happy birthday,'" murmured Miss Sharpies, pencilling in two squiggles and a streptococcus.

"Tell them to pick out a fellow with a nice tenor voice."

"Yes, Mr. Cobbold."

"Or maybe they tear it off in a bunch, like a barbershop quartette?"

"I don't think so, Mr. Cobbold. Just one vocalist, I believe."

"Ah? Well, see that they do it, anyway. It's important. I wouldn't like Lord Shortlands to think I'd forgotten his birthday. He's the head of my family."

"You don't say!"

"Sure. Cobbold's the family name. There's a son, Lord Beevor, who's out in Kenya, but all the others are Cobbolds. Three daughters. The eldest married a fellow named Topping I was in college with. I'll tell you how I first came to hear of them. I was in the club one day, and I happened to pick up one of those English illustrated weeklies, and there was a photograph of a darned pretty girl with the caption under it 'Lady Teresa Cobbold, youngest daughter of the Earl of Shortlands.' 'Hello,' I said to myself. 'Cobbold? Well, what do you know about that?', and I had the College of Arms in London get busy and look into the thing."

"And it turned out that you were a relation?"

"That's right. Just what kind I couldn't exactly tell you. Sort of cousin is the way I figure it out. I've written Lord Shortlands a letter or two about it and sent him a few cables, but he hasn't got around to answering yet. Busy, maybe. Still, there it is. Seems that in 1700 or thereabouts one of the younger sons sailed for America—"

Mr. Cobbold broke off the gossip from the old home and gave a rather formal cough. He perceived that the spirit of Spring had lured him on to jeopardize office discipline by chewing the fat with one who, however efficient and however capital a listener, was after all an underling.

"Well, that's that," he said. "And now," becoming his business self after this frivolous interlude, "what's new?"

Miss Sharpies would have been glad to hear more of the younger son who had sailed for America and all the rest of the Hands-Across-the-Sea stuff, for hers was a romantic nature, but she, too, recognized that this was not the time and place. She consulted her notes.

"Simms and Weinstein will meet your terms, Mr. Cobbold," she said, translating the one that looked like part of Grover Whalen's moustache.

"They better."

"But the Nail File and Eyebrow Tweezer people don't seem any too well pleased."

"They don't, don't they?"

"They say they are at a loss to comprehend."

"Is that so? I'll fix 'em. Anything else?"

"No letters of importance, Mr. Cobbold. There is a cable from Mr. Stanwood."

"Asking for money?"

"Yes, Mr. Cobbold."

"He would be. Seems to me he spends more in London than he did over here."

A frown came into Ellery Cobbold's bulbous face. He was a man of enviable financial standing, for despite the notorious hardness of the times, he always managed to get his, but this did not make it any the more agreeable to him to be tapped by his son. A great many prosperous fathers have this adhesive attitude towards their wealth when the issue show a disposition to declare themselves in on the gross.

A song of his youth flitted through Mr. Cobbold's mind:

Then he brightened. Whatever kind of hell Stanwood might be up to, his father's heart had this consolation, that he was not up to it in the society of Miss Eileen Stoker. With restored equanimity he dismissed him from his thoughts and settled down to dictate a letter to the Consolidated Nail File and Eyebrow Tweezer Corporation of Scranton, Pa., which would make them realize that life is stern and earnest and that Nail File and Eyebrow Tweezer Corporations are not put into this world for pleasure alone.

The morning wore on, filled with its little tasks and duties. Lunch time came. The afternoon followed. In due season everything needed to keep Mr.

Cobbold's affairs in apple-pie order for another day had been done, and he took the six-ten train back to his Great Neck home. At eight he dined, and by nine he was in his favorite armchair, a cigar between his lips and a highball at his side, preparing to read the evening paper which the intrusion of a garrulous neighbor had prevented him perusing on the train.

But even when settled in his chair he did not begin to read immediately. Dreamily watching the smoke curl up from his perfecto, he found his thoughts turning to his son Stanwood and the adroitness with which he had flung the necessary spanner into that young man's incipient romance with Miss Eileen Stoker of Hollywood.