Pelham Wodehouse - The Intrusion of Jimmy

A curious constraint fell upon him.

"Why, how do you do, Mr. Pitt?" she said, holding out her hand.

Jimmy began to feel better. It was something that she remembered his name.

"It's like meeting somebody out of a dream," said Molly. "I have sometimes wondered if you were real. Everything that happened that night was so like a dream."

Jimmy found his tongue.

"You haven't altered," he said, "you look just the same."

"Well," she laughed, "after all, it's not so long ago, is it?"

He was conscious of a dull hurt. To him, it had seemed years. But he was nothing to her—just an acquaintance, one of a hundred. But what more, he asked himself, could he have expected? And with the thought came consolation. The painful sense of having lost ground left him. He saw that he had been allowing things to get out of proportion. He had not lost ground. He had gained it. He had met her again, and she remembered him. What more had he any right to ask?

"I've crammed a good deal into the time," he explained. "I've been traveling about a bit since we met."

"Do you live in Shropshire?" asked Molly.

"No. I'm on a visit. At least, I'm supposed to be. But I've lost the way to the place, and I am beginning to doubt if I shall ever get there. I was told to go straight on. I've gone straight on, and here I am, lost in the snow. Do you happen to know whereabouts Dreever Castle is?"

She laughed.

"Why," she said, "I am staying at Dreever Castle, myself."

"What?"

"So, the first person you meet turns out to be an experienced guide. You're lucky, Mr. Pitt."

"You're right," said Jimmy slowly, "I am."

"Did you come down with Lord Dreever? He passed me in the car just as I was starting out. He was with another man and Lady Julia Blunt. Surely, he didn't make you walk?"

"I offered to walk. Somebody had to. Apparently, he had forgotten to let them know he was bringing me."

"And then he misdirected you! He's very casual, I'm afraid."

"Inclined that way, perhaps."

"Have you known Lord Dreever long?"

"Since a quarter past twelve last night."

"Last night!"

"We met at the Savoy, and, later, on the Embankment. We looked at the river together, and told each other the painful stories of our lives, and this morning he called, and invited me down here."

Molly looked at him with frank amusement.

"You must be a very restless sort of person," she said. "You seem to do a great deal of moving about."

"I do," said Jimmy. "I can't keep still. I've got the go-fever, like that man in Kipling's book."

"But he was in love."

"Yes," said Jimmy. "He was. That's the bacillus, you know."

She shot a quick glance at him. He became suddenly interesting to her. She was at the age of dreams and speculations. From being merely an ordinary young man with rather more ease of manner than the majority of the young men she had met, he developed in an instant into something worthy of closer attention. He took on a certain mystery and romance. She wondered what sort of girl it was that he loved. Examining him in the light of this new discovery, she found him attractive. Something seemed to have happened to put her in sympathy with him. She noticed for the first time a latent forcefulness behind the pleasantness of his manner. His self-possession was the self-possession of the man who has been tried and has found himself.

At the bottom of her consciousness, too, there was a faint stirring of some emotion, which she could not analyze, not unlike pain. It was vaguely reminiscent of the agony of loneliness which she had experienced as a small child on the rare occasions when her father had been busy and distrait, and had shown her by his manner that she was outside his thoughts. This was but a pale suggestion of that misery; nevertheless, there was a resemblance. It was a rather desolate, shut-out sensation, half-resentful.

It was gone in a moment. But it had been there. It had passed over her heart as the shadow of a cloud moves across a meadow in the summer-time.

For some moments, she stood without speaking. Jimmy did not break the silence. He was looking at her with an appeal in his eyes. Why could she not understand? She must understand.

But the eyes that met his were those of a child.

As they stood there, the horse, which had been cropping in a perfunctory manner at the short grass by the roadside, raised its head, and neighed impatiently. There was something so human about the performance that Jimmy and the girl laughed simultaneously. The utter materialism of the neigh broke the spell. It was a noisy demand for food.

"Poor Dandy!" said Molly. "He knows he's near home, and he knows it's his dinner-time."

"Are we near the castle, then?"

"It's a long way round by the road, but we can cut across the fields. Aren't these English fields and hedges just perfect! I love them. Of course, I loved America, but—"

"Have you left New York long?" asked Jimmy.

"We came over here about a month after you were at our house."

"You didn't spend much time there, then."

"Father had just made a good deal of money in Wall Street. He must have been making it when I was on the Lusitania. He wanted to leave New York, so we didn't wait. We were in London all the winter. Then, we went over to Paris. It was there we met Sir Thomas Blunt and Lady Julia. Have you met them? They are Lord Dreever's uncle and aunt."

"I've met Lady Julia."

"Do you like her?"

Jimmy hesitated.

"Well, you see—"

"I know. She's your hostess, but you haven't started your visit yet. So, you've just got time to say what you really think of her, before you have to pretend she's perfect."

"Well—"

"I detest her," said Molly, crisply. "I think she's hard and hateful."

"Well, I can't say she struck me as a sort of female Cheeryble Brother. Lord Dreever introduced me to her at the station. She seemed to bear it pluckily, but with some difficulty."

"She's hateful," repeated Molly. "So is he, Sir Thomas, I mean. He's one of those fussy, bullying little men. They both bully poor Lord Dreever till I wonder he doesn't rebel. They treat him like a school-boy. It makes me wild. It's such a shame—he's so nice and good-natured! I am so sorry for him!"

Jimmy listened to this outburst with mixed feelings. It was sweet of her to be so sympathetic, but was it merely sympathy? There had been a ring in her voice and a flush on her cheek that had suggested to Jimmy's sensitive mind a personal interest in the down-trodden peer. Reason told him that it was foolish to be jealous of Lord Dreever, a good fellow, of course, but not to be taken seriously. The primitive man in him, on the other hand, made him hate all Molly's male friends with an unreasoning hatred. Not that he hated Lord Dreever: he liked him. But he doubted if he could go on liking him for long if Molly were to continue in this sympathetic strain.

His affection for the absent one was not put to the test. Molly's next remark had to do with Sir Thomas.

"The worst of it is," she said, "father and Sir Thomas are such friends. In Paris, they were always together. Father did him a very good turn."

"How was that?"

"It was one afternoon, just after we arrived. A man got into Lady Julia's room while we were all out except father. Father saw him go into the room, and suspected something was wrong, and went in after him. The man was trying to steal Lady Julia's jewels. He had opened the box where they were kept, and was actually holding her rope of diamonds in his hand when father found him. It's the most magnificent thing I ever saw. Sir Thomas told father he gave a hundred thousand dollars for it."

"But, surely," said Jimmy, "hadn't the management of the hotel a safe for valuables?"

"Of course, they had; but you don't know Sir Thomas. He wasn't going to trust any hotel safe. He's the sort of a man who insists on doing everything in his own way, and who always imagines he can do things better himself than anyone else can do them for him. He had had this special box made, and would never keep the diamonds anywhere else. Naturally, the thief opened it in a minute. A clever thief would have no difficulty with a thing like that."