Pelham Wodehouse - Not George Washington — an Autobiographical Novel

The only thing that I can think of as needing suppression is the part I played in Mr. Cloyster's system.

There's no doubt that the Reverend, Blake and I have, between us, put a fairly considerable spoke in Mr. Cloyster's literary wheel. But what am I to do? To begin with, it's no use my telling Norah about the affair, because it would do her no good, and might tend possibly to lessen her valuation of my capabilities. At present, my dialogues dazzle her; and once your fiancée is dazzled the basis of matrimonial happiness is assured. Again, looking at it from Mr. Cloyster's point of view, what good would it be to him if I were to stop writing? Both the editor and the public have realised by now that his work is only second-rate. He can never hope to get a tenth of his original prices, even if his work is accepted, which it won't be; for directly I leave his market clear, someone else will collar it slap off.

Besides, I've no right to stop my dialogues. My duty to Norah is greater than my duty to Mr. Cloyster. Unless I continue to be paid by literature I shall not be able to marry Norah until three years next quarter. The "Moon" has passed a rule about it, and an official who marries on an income not larger than eighty pounds per annum is liable to dismissal without notice.

Norah's mother wouldn't let her wait three years, and though fellows have been known to have had a couple of kids at the time of their official marriage, I personally couldn't stand the wear and tear of that hole-and-corner business. It couldn't be done.

(End of Sidney Price's narrative .)

It is all very, very queer. I do not understand it at all. It makes me sleepy to think about it.

A month ago I hated Eva. Tomorrow I marry her by special licence.

Now, what about this?

My brain is not working properly. I am becoming jerky.

I tried to work the thing out algebraically. I wrote it down as an equation, thus:—

HATRED, denoted by x + Eva.

REVERSE OF HATRED, " " y + Eva

ONE MONTH " " z.

From which we get:—

x + Eva = (y + Eva)z.

And if anybody can tell me what that means (if it means anything—which I doubt) I shall be grateful. As I said before, my brain is not working properly.

There is no doubt that my temperament has changed, and in a very short space of time. A month ago I was soured, cynical, I didn't brush my hair, and I slept too much. I talked a good deal about Life. Now I am blithe and optimistic. I use pomade, part in the middle, and sleep eight hours and no more. I have not made an epigram for days. It is all very queer.

I took a new attitude towards life at about a quarter to three on the morning after the Gunton-Cresswells's dance. I had waited for James in his rooms. He had been to the dance.

Examine me for a moment as I wait there.

I had been James' friend for more than two years and a half. I had watched his career from the start. I knew him before he had located exactly the short cut to Fortune. Our friendship embraced the whole period of his sudden, extraordinary success.

Had not envy by that time been dead in me, it might have been pain to me to watch him accomplish unswervingly with his effortless genius the things I had once dreamt I, too, would laboriously achieve.

But I grudged him nothing. Rather, I had pleasure in those triumphs of my friend.

There was no confidence we had withheld from one another.

When he told me of his relations with Margaret Goodwin he had counted on my sympathy as naturally as he had requested and received my advice.

To no living soul, save James, would I have confessed my own tragedy—my hopeless love for Eva.

It is inconceivable that I should have misjudged a man so utterly as I misjudged James.

That is the latent factor at the root of my problem. The innate rottenness, the cardiac villainy of James Orlebar Cloyster.

In a measure it was my own hand that laid the train which eventually blew James' hidden smoulder of fire into the blazing beacon of wickedness, in which my friend's Satanic soul is visible in all its lurid nakedness.

I remember well that evening, mild with the prelude of spring, when I evolved for James' benefit the System. It was a device which was to preserve my friend's liberty and, at the same time, to preserve my friend's honour. How perfect in its irony!

Margaret Goodwin, mark you, was not to know he could afford to marry her, and my system was an instrument to hide from her the truth.

He employed that system. It gave him the holiday he asked for. He went into Society.

Among his acquaintances were the Gunton-Cresswells, and at their house he met Eva. Whether his determination to treat Eva as he had treated Margaret came to him instantly, or by degrees I do not know. Inwardly he may have had his scheme matured in embryo, but outwardly he was still the accomplished hypocrite. He was the soul of honour—outwardly. He was the essence of sympathetic tact as far as his specious exterior went. Then came the 27th of May. On that date the first of James Orlebar Cloyster's masks was removed.

I had breakfasted earlier than usual, so that by the time I had walked from Rupert Court to Walpole Street it was not yet four o'clock.

James was out. I thought I would wait for him. I stood at his window.

Then I saw Margaret Goodwin. What features! What a complexion! "And James," I murmured, "is actually giving this the miss in baulk!" I discovered, at that instant, that I did not know James. He was a fool.

In a few hours I was to discover he was a villain, too.

She came in and I introduced myself to her. I almost forget what pretext I manufactured, but I remember I persuaded her to go back to Guernsey that very day. I think I said that James was spending Friday till Monday in the country, and had left no address. I was determined that they should not meet. She was far too good for a man who obviously did not appreciate her in the least.

We had a very pleasant chat. She was charming. At first she was apt to touch on James a shade too frequently, but before long I succeeded in diverting our conversation into less uninteresting topics.

She talked of Guernsey, I of London. I said I felt I had known her all my life. She said that one had, undeniably, one's affinities.

I said, "Might I think of her as 'Margaret'?"

She said it was rather unconventional, but that she could not control my thoughts.

I said, "There you are wrong—Margaret."

She said, "Oh, what are you saying, Mr. Eversleigh?"

I said I was thinking out loud.

On the doorstep she said, "Well, yes—Julian—you may write to me—sometimes. But I won't promise to answer."

Angel!

The next thing that awakened me was the coming of James.

After I had given him a suitable version of Margaret's visit, he told me he was engaged to Eva. That was an astounding thing; but what was more astounding was that James had somehow got wind of the real spirit of my interview with Margaret.

I have called James Orlebar Cloyster a fool; I have called him a villain. I will never cease to call him a genius. For by some marvellous capacity for introspection, by some incredible projection of his own mind into other people's matters, he was able to tax me to my face with an attempt to win his former fiancée's affections. I tried to choke him off. I used every ounce of bluff I possessed. In vain. I left Walpole Street in a state approaching mental revolution.

My exact feelings towards James were too intricate to be defined in a single word. Not so my feelings towards Eva. "Hate" supplied the lacuna in her case.

Thus the month began.