Well-meaning chappies at the club sometimes amble up to me and tap me
on the wishbone, and say "Reggie, old top,"--my name's Reggie
Pepper--"you ought to get married, old man." Well, what I mean to say
is, it's all very well, and I see their point and all that sort of
thing; but it takes two to make a marriage, and to date I haven't met a
girl who didn't seem to think the contract was too big to be taken on.
Looking back, it seems to me that I came nearer to getting over the
home-plate with Ann Selby than with most of the others. In fact, but
for circumstances over which I had no dashed control, I am inclined to
think that we should have brought it off. I'm bound to say that, now
that what the poet chappie calls the first fine frenzy has been on the
ice for a while and I am able to consider the thing calmly, I am deuced
glad we didn't. She was one of those strong-minded girls, and I hate to
think of what she would have done to me.
At the time, though, I was frightfully in love, and, for quite a while
after she definitely gave me the mitten, I lost my stroke at golf so
completely that a child could have given me a stroke a hole and got
away with it. I was all broken up, and I contend to this day that I was
dashed badly treated.
Let me give you what they call the data.
One day I was lunching with Ann, and was just proposing to her as
usual, when, instead of simply refusing me, as she generally did, she
fixed me with a thoughtful eye and kind of opened her heart.
"Do you know, Reggie, I am in doubt."
"Give me the benefit of it," I said. Which I maintain was pretty good
on the spur of the moment, but didn't get a hand. She simply ignored
it, and went on.
"Sometimes," she said, "you seem to me entirely vapid and brainless; at
other times you say or do things which suggest that there are
possibilities in you; that, properly stimulated and encouraged, you
might overcome the handicap of large private means and do something
worthwhile. I wonder if that is simply my imagination?" She watched me
very closely as she spoke.
"Rather not. You've absolutely summed me up. With you beside me,
stimulating and all that sort of rot, don't you know, I should show a
flash of speed which would astonish you."
"I wish I could be certain."
"Take a chance on it."
She shook her head.
"I must be certain. Marriage is such a gamble. I have just been staying
with my sister Hilda and her husband----"
"Dear old Harold Bodkin. I know him well. In fact, I've a standing
invitation to go down there and stay as long as I like. Harold is one
of my best pals. Harold is a corker. Good old Harold is----"
"I would rather you didn't eulogize him, Reggie. I am extremely angry
with Harold. He is making Hilda perfectly miserable."
"What on earth do you mean? Harold wouldn't dream of hurting a fly.
He's one of those dreamy, sentimental chumps who----"
"It is precisely his sentimentality which is at the bottom of the whole
trouble. You know, of course, that Hilda is not his first wife?"
"That's right. His first wife died about five years ago."
"He still cherishes her memory."
"Very sporting of him."
"Is it! If you were a girl, how would you like to be married to a man
who was always making you bear in mind that you were only number two in
his affections; a man whose idea of a pleasant conversation was a
string of anecdotes illustrating what a dear woman his first wife was.
A man who expected you to upset all your plans if they clashed with
some anniversary connected with his other marriage?"
"That does sound pretty rotten. Does Harold do all that?"
"That's only a small part of what he does. Why, if you will believe me,
every evening at seven o'clock he goes and shuts himself up in a little
room at the top of the house, and meditates."
"What on earth does he do that for?"
"Apparently his first wife died at seven in the evening. There is a
portrait of her in the room. I believe he lays flowers in front of it.
And Hilda is expected to greet him on his return with a happy smile."
"Why doesn't she kick?"
"I have been trying to persuade her to, but she won't. She just
pretends she doesn't mind. She has a nervous, sensitive temperament,
and the thing is slowly crushing her. Don't talk to me of Harold."
Considering that she had started him as a topic, I thought this pretty
unjust. I didn't want to talk of Harold. I wanted to talk about myself.
"Well, what has all this got to do with your not wanting to marry me?"
I said.
"Nothing, except that it is an illustration of the risks a woman runs
when she marries a man of a certain type."
"Great Scott! You surely don't class me with Harold?"
"Yes, in a way you are very much alike. You have both always had large
private means, and have never had the wholesome discipline of work."
"But, dash it, Harold, on your showing, is an absolute nut. Why should
you think that I would be anything like that?"
"There's always the risk."
A hot idea came to me.
"Look here, Ann," I said, "Suppose I pull off some stunt which only a
deuced brainy chappie could get away with? Would you marry me then?"
"Certainly. What do you propose to do?"
"Do! What do I propose to do! Well, er, to be absolutely frank, at the
moment I don't quite know."
"You never will know, Reggie. You're one of the idle rich, and your
brain, if you ever had one, has atrophied."
Well, that seemed to me to put the lid on it. I didn't mind a
heart-to-heart talk, but this was mere abuse. I changed the subject.
"What would you like after that fish?" I said coldly.
You know how it is when you get an idea. For a while it sort of simmers
inside you, and then suddenly it sizzles up like a rocket, and there
you are, right up against it. That's what happened now. I went away
from that luncheon, vaguely determined to pull off some stunt which
would prove that I was right there with the gray matter, but without
any clear notion of what I was going to do. Side by side with this in
my mind was the case of dear old Harold. When I wasn't brooding on the
stunt, I was brooding on Harold. I was fond of the good old lad, and I
hated the idea of his slowly wrecking the home purely by being a chump.
And all of a sudden the two things clicked together like a couple of
chemicals, and there I was with a corking plan for killing two birds
with one stone--putting one across that would startle and impress Ann,
and at the same time healing the breach between Harold and Hilda.
My idea was that, in a case like this, it's no good trying opposition.
What you want is to work it so that the chappie quits of his own
accord. You want to egg him on to overdoing the thing till he gets so
that he says to himself, "Enough! Never again!" That was what was going
to happen to Harold.
When you're going to do a thing, there's nothing like making a quick
start. I wrote to Harold straight away, proposing myself for a visit.
And Harold wrote back telling me to come right along.
Harold and Hilda lived alone in a large house. I believe they did a
good deal of entertaining at times, but on this occasion I was the only
guest. The only other person of note in the place was Ponsonby, the
butler.
Of course, if Harold had been an ordinary sort of chappie, what I had
come to do would have been a pretty big order. I don't mind many
things, but I do hesitate to dig into my host's intimate private
affairs. But Harold was such a simple-minded Johnnie, so grateful for a
little sympathy and advice, that my job wasn't so very difficult.
It wasn't as if he minded talking about Amelia, which was his first
wife's name. The difficulty was to get him to talk of anything else. I
began to understand what Ann meant by saying it was tough on Hilda.
I'm bound to say the old boy was clay in my hands. People call me a
chump, but Harold was a super-chump, and I did what I liked with him.
The second morning of my visit, after breakfast, he grabbed me by the
arm.
"This way, Reggie. I'm just going to show old Reggie Amelia's portrait,
dear."
There was a little room all by itself on the top floor. He explained to
me that it had been his studio. At one time Harold used to do a bit of
painting in an amateur way.
"There!" he said, pointing at the portrait. "I did that myself, Reggie.
It was away being cleaned when you were here last. It's like dear
Amelia, isn't it?"
I suppose it was, in a way. At any rate, you could recognize the
likeness when you were told who it was supposed to be.
He sat down in front of it, and gave it the thoughtful once-over.
"Do you know, Reggie, old top, sometimes when I sit here, I feel as if
Amelia were back again."
"It would be a bit awkward for you if she was."
"How do you mean?"
"Well, old lad, you happen to be married to someone else."
A look of childlike enthusiasm came over his face.
"Reggie, I want to tell you how splendid Hilda is. Lots of other women
might object to my still cherishing Amelia's memory, but Hilda has been
so nice about it from the beginning. She understands so thoroughly."
I hadn't much breath left after that, but I used what I had to say:
"She doesn't object?"
"Not a bit," said Harold. "It makes everything so pleasant."