'What about it?' said Rocky.
'What about it?' I said.
'Yes. What on earth am I going to do?'
It was only then that I really got on to the extremely rummy attitude
of the chappie, in view of the fact that a quite unexpected mess of
good cash had suddenly descended on him from a blue sky. To my mind it
was an occasion for the beaming smile and the joyous whoop; yet here
the man was, looking and talking as if Fate had swung on his solar
plexus. It amazed me.
'Aren't you bucked?' I said.
'Bucked!'
'If I were in your place I should be frightfully braced. I consider
this pretty soft for you.'
He gave a kind of yelp, stared at me for a moment, and then began to
talk of New York in a way that reminded me of Jimmy Mundy, the reformer
bloke. Jimmy had just come to New York on a hit-the-trail campaign, and
I had popped in at Madison Square Garden a couple of days before, for
half an hour or so, to hear him. He had certainly told New York some
pretty straight things about itself, having apparently taken a dislike
to the place, but, by Jove, you know, dear old Rocky made him look like
a publicity agent for the old metrop!
'Pretty soft!' he cried. 'To have to come and live in New York! To have
to leave my little cottage and take a stuffy, smelly, over-heated hole
of an apartment in this Heaven-forsaken, festering Gehenna. To have
to mix night after night with a mob who think that life is a sort of
St Vitus's dance, and imagine that they're having a good time because
they're making enough noise for six and drinking too much for ten. I
loathe New York, Bertie. I wouldn't come near the place if I hadn't
got to see editors occasionally. There's a blight on it. It's got moral
delirium tremens. It's the limit. The very thought of staying more than
a day in it makes me sick. And you call this thing pretty soft for me!'
I felt rather like Lot's friends must have done when they dropped in
for a quiet chat and their genial host began to criticize the Cities of
the Plain. I had no idea old Rocky could be so eloquent.
'It would kill me to have to live in New York,' he went on. 'To have
to share the air with six million people! To have to wear stiff
collars and decent clothes all the time! To--' He started. 'Good Lord!
I suppose I should have to dress for dinner in the evenings. What a
ghastly notion!'