You will notice, as you flit through these reminiscences of mine, that
from time to time the scene of action is laid in and around the city of
New York; and it is just possible that this may occasion the puzzled
look and the start of surprise. 'What,' it is possible that you may ask
yourselves, 'is Bertram doing so far from his beloved native land?'
Well, it's a fairly longish story; but, reefing it down a bit and
turning it for the nonce into a two-reeler, what happened was that my
Aunt Agatha on one occasion sent me over to America to try to stop
young Gussie, my cousin, marrying a girl on the vaudeville stage, and
I got the whole thing so mixed up that I decided it would be a sound
scheme to stop on in New York for a bit instead of going back and
having long, cosy chats with her about the affair.
So I sent Jeeves out to find a decent flat, and settled down for a
spell of exile.
I'm bound to say New York's a most sprightly place to be exiled in.
Everybody was awfully good to me, and there seemed to be plenty of
things going on so, take it for all in all, I didn't undergo any
frightful hardships. Blokes introduced me to other blokes, and so on
and so forth, and it wasn't long before I knew squads of the right
sort, some who rolled in the stuff in houses up by the Park, and
others who lived with the gas turned down mostly around Washington
Square--artists and writers and so forth. Brainy coves.
Corky, the bird I am about to treat of, was one of the artists.
A portrait-painter, he called himself, but as a matter of fact
his score up to date had been nil. You see, the catch about
portrait-painting--I've looked into the thing a bit--is that you
can't start painting portraits till people come along and ask you to,
and they won't come and ask you to until you've painted a lot first.
This makes it kind of difficult, not to say tough, for the ambitious
youngster.
Corky managed to get along by drawing an occasional picture for the
comic papers--he had rather a gift for funny stuff when he got a good
idea--and doing bedsteads and chairs and things for the advertisements.
His principal source of income, however, was derived from biting
the ear of a rich uncle--one Alexander Worple, who was in the jute
business. I'm a bit foggy as to what jute is, but it's apparently
something the populace is pretty keen on, for Mr Worple had made quite
an indecently large stack out of it.
Now, a great many fellows think that having a rich uncle is a pretty
soft snap; but, according to Corky, such is not the case. Corky's uncle
was a robust sort of cove, who looked like living for ever. He was
fifty-one, and it seemed as if he might go to par. It was not this,
however, that distressed poor Corky, for he was not bigoted and had no
objection to the man going on living. What Corky kicked at was the way
the above Worple used to harry him.
Corky's uncle, you see, didn't want him to be an artist. He didn't
think he had any talent in that direction. He was always urging him
to chuck Art and go into the jute business and start at the bottom
and work his way up. And what Corky said was that, while he didn't
know what they did at the bottom of a jute business, instinct told him
that it was something too beastly for words. Corky, moreover, believed
in his future as an artist. Some day, he said, he was going to make
a hit. Meanwhile, by using the utmost tact and persuasiveness, he
was inducing his uncle to cough up very grudgingly a small quarterly
allowance.
He wouldn't have got this if his uncle hadn't had a hobby. Mr Worple
was peculiar in this respect. As a rule, from what I've observed, the
American captain of industry doesn't do anything out of business hours.
When he has put the cat out and locked up the office for the night,
he just relapses into a state of coma from which he emerges only to
start being a captain of industry again. But Mr Worple in his spare
time was what is known as an ornithologist. He had written a book
called _American Birds_, and was writing another, to be called _More
American Birds_. When he had finished that, the presumption was that
he would begin a third, and keep on till the supply of American birds
gave out. Corky used to go to him about once every three months and let
him talk about American birds. Apparently you could do what you liked
with old Worple if you gave him his head first on his pet subject, so
these little chats used to make Corky's allowance all right for the
time being. But it was pretty rotten for the poor chap. There was the
frightful suspense, you see, and, apart from that, birds, except when
broiled and in the society of a cold bottle, bored him stiff.
To complete the character-study of Mr Worple, he was a man of extremely
uncertain temper, and his general tendency was to think that Corky was
a poor chump and that whatever step he took in any direction on his own
account was just another proof of his innate idiocy. I should imagine
Jeeves feels very much the same about me.
So when Corky trickled into my apartment one afternoon, shooing a girl
in front of him, and said, 'Bertie, I want you to meet my fiancée, Miss
Singer,' the aspect of the matter which hit me first was precisely the
one which he had come to consult me about. The very first words I
spoke were, 'Corky, how about your uncle?'
The poor chap gave one of those mirthless laughs. He was looking
anxious and worried, like a man who has done the murder all right but
can't think what the deuce to do with the body.
'We're so scared, Mr Wooster,' said the girl. 'We were hoping that you
might suggest a way of breaking it to him.'
Muriel Singer was one of those very quiet, appealing girls who have a
way of looking at you with their big eyes as if they thought you were
the greatest thing on earth and wondered that you hadn't got on to it
yet yourself. She sat there in a sort of shrinking way, looking at me
as if she were saying to herself, 'Oh, I do hope this great strong
man isn't going to hurt me.' She gave a fellow a protective kind of
feeling, made him want to stroke her hand and say, 'There, there,
little one!' or words to that effect. She made me feel that there
was nothing I wouldn't do for her. She was rather like one of those
innocent-tasting American drinks which creep imperceptibly into your
system so that, before you know what you're doing, you're starting out
to reform the world by force if necessary and pausing on your way to
tell the large man in the corner that, if he looks at you like that,
you will knock his head off. What I mean is, she made me feel alert and
dashing, like a knight-errant or something of that kind. I felt that I
was with her in this thing to the limit.
'I don't see why your uncle shouldn't be most awfully bucked,' I said
to Corky. 'He will think Miss Singer the ideal wife for you.'
Corky declined to cheer up.
'You don't know him. Even if he did like Muriel, he wouldn't admit
it. That's the sort of pig-headed ass he is. It would be a matter of
principle with him to kick. All he would consider would be that I had
gone and taken an important step without asking his advice, and he
would raise Cain automatically. He's always done it.'