'Jeeves,' I said, looking in on him one afternoon on my return from the
club, 'I don't want to interrupt you.'
'No, sir?'
'But I would like a word with you.'
'Yes, sir?'
He had been packing a few of the Wooster necessaries in the old kitbag
against our approaching visit to the seaside, and he now rose and stood
bursting with courteous zeal.
'Jeeves,' I said, 'a somewhat disturbing situation has arisen with
regard to a pal of mine.'
'Indeed, sir?'
'You know Mr Bullivant?'
'Yes, sir.'
'Well, I slid into the Drones this morning for a bite of lunch, and
found him in a dark corner of the smoking-room looking like the last
rose of summer. Naturally I was surprised. You know what a bright lad
he is as a rule. The life and soul of every gathering he attends.'
'Yes, sir.'
'Quite the little lump of fun, in fact.'
'Precisely, sir.'
'Well, I made inquiries, and he told me that he had had a quarrel with
the girl he's engaged to. You knew he was engaged to Miss Elizabeth
Vickers?'
'Yes, sir. I recall reading the announcement in the _Morning Post_.'
'Well, he isn't any longer. What the row was about he didn't say, but
the broad facts, Jeeves, are that she has scratched the fixture. She
won't let him come near her, refuses to talk on the phone, and sends
back his letters unopened.'
'Extremely trying, sir.'
'We ought to do something, Jeeves. But what?'
'It is somewhat difficult to make a suggestion, sir.'
'Well, what I'm going to do for a start is to take him down to Marvis
Bay with me. I know these birds who have been handed their hat by the
girl of their dreams, Jeeves. What they want is complete change of
scene.'
'There is much in what you say, sir.'
'Yes. Change of scene is the thing. I heard of a man. Girl refused him.
Man went abroad. Two months later girl wired him "Come back, Muriel."
Man started to write out a reply; suddenly found that he couldn't
remember girl's surname; so never answered at all, and lived happily
ever after. It may well be, Jeeves, that after Freddie Bullivant has
had a few weeks of Marvis Bay he will get completely over it.'
'Very possibly, sir.'
'And, if not, it is quite likely that, refreshed by sea air and good
simple food, you will get a brain-wave and think up some scheme for
bringing these two misguided blighters together again.'
'I will do my best, sir.'
'I knew it, Jeeves, I knew it. Don't forget to put in plenty of socks.'
'No, sir.'
'Also of tennis shirts not a few.'
'Very good, sir.'
I left him to his packing, and a couple of days later we started off
for Marvis Bay, where I had taken a cottage for July and August.
I don't know if you know Marvis Bay? It's in Dorsetshire; and, while
not what you would call a fiercely exciting spot, has many good points.
You spend the day there bathing and sitting on the sands, and in the
evening you stroll out on the shore with the mosquitoes. At nine p.m.
you rub ointment on the wounds and go to bed. It was a simple, healthy
life, and it seemed to suit poor old Freddie absolutely. Once the moon
was up and the breeze sighing in the trees, you couldn't drag him
from that beach with ropes. He became quite a popular pet with the
mosquitoes. They would hang round waiting for him to come out, and
would give a miss to perfectly good strollers just so as to be in good
condition for him.
It was during the day that I found Freddie, poor old chap, a trifle
heavy as a guest. I suppose you can't blame a bloke whose heart is
broken, but it required a good deal of fortitude to bear up against
this gloom-crushed exhibit during the early days of our little holiday.
When he wasn't chewing a pipe and scowling at the carpet, he was
sitting at the piano, playing 'The Rosary' with one finger. He couldn't
play anything except 'The Rosary', and he couldn't play much of that.
However firmly and confidently he started off, somewhere around the
third bar a fuse would blow out and he would have to start all over
again.
He was playing it as usual one morning when I came in from bathing: and
it seemed to me that he was extracting more hideous melancholy from it
even than usual. Nor had my sense deceived me.
'Bertie,' he said in a hollow voice, skidding on the fourth crotchet
from the left as you enter the second bar and producing a distressing
sound like the death-rattle of a sand-eel, 'I've seen her!'
'Seen her?' I said. 'What, Elizabeth Vickers? How do you mean, you've
seen her? She isn't down here.'
'Yes, she is. I suppose she's staying with relations or something. I
was down at the post office, seeing if there were any letters, and we
met in the doorway.'
'What happened?'
'She cut me dead.'
He started 'The Rosary' again, and stubbed his finger on a semi-quaver.
'Bertie,' he said, 'you ought never to have brought me here. I must go
away.'
'Go away? Don't talk such rot. This is the best thing that could have
happened. It's a most amazing bit of luck, her being down here. This is
where you come out strong.'
'She cut me.'
'Never mind. Be a sportsman. Have another dash at her.'
'She looked clean through me.'
'Well, don't mind that. Stick at it. Now, having got her down here,
what you want,' I said, 'is to place her under some obligation to you.
What you want is to get her timidly thanking you. What you want--'
'What's she going to thank me timidly for?'
I thought for a while. Undoubtedly he had put his finger on the nub of
the problem. For some moments I was at a loss, not to say nonplussed.
Then I saw the way.
'What you want,' I said, 'is to look out for a chance and save her from
drowning.'
'I can't swim.'
That was Freddie Bullivant all over. A dear old chap in a thousand
ways, but no help to a fellow, if you know what I mean.
He cranked up the piano once more, and I legged it for the open.
I strolled out on the beach and began to think this thing over. I would
have liked to consult Jeeves, of course, but Jeeves had disappeared for
the morning. There was no doubt that it was hopeless expecting Freddie
to do anything for himself in this crisis. I'm not saying that dear old
Freddie hasn't got his strong qualities. He is good at polo, and I have
heard him spoken of as a coming man at snooker-pool. But apart from
this you couldn't call him a man of enterprise.
Well, I was rounding some rocks, thinking pretty tensely, when I caught
sight of a blue dress, and there was the girl in person. I had never
met her, but Freddie had sixteen photographs of her sprinkled round
his bedroom, and I knew I couldn't be mistaken. She was sitting on the
sand, helping a small, fat child to build a castle. On a chair close
by was an elderly female reading a novel. I heard the girl call her
'aunt'. So, getting the reasoning faculties to work, I deduced that the
fat child must be her cousin. It struck me that if Freddie had been
there he would probably have tried to work up some sentiment about the
kid on the strength of it. I couldn't manage this. I don't think I ever
saw a kid who made me feel less sentimental. He was one of those round,
bulging kids.
After he had finished his castle he seemed to get bored with life and
began to cry. The girl, who seemed to read him like a book, took him
off to where a fellow was selling sweets at a stall. And I walked on.
Now, those who know me, if you ask them, will tell you that I'm a
chump. My Aunt Agatha would testify to this effect. So would my
Uncle Percy and many more of my nearest and--if you like to use the
expression--dearest. Well, I don't mind. I admit it. I _am_ a chump.
But what I do say--and I should like to lay the greatest possible
stress on this--is that every now and then, just when the populace has
given up hope that I will ever show any real human intelligence--I
get what it is idle to pretend is not an inspiration. And that's what
happened now. I doubt if the idea that came to me at this juncture
would have occurred to a single one of any dozen of the largest-brained
blokes in history. Napoleon might have got it, but I'll bet Darwin and
Shakespeare and Thomas Hardy wouldn't have thought of it in a thousand
years.
It came to me on my return journey. I was walking back along the
shore, exercising the old bean fiercely, when I saw the fat child
meditatively smacking a jelly-fish with a spade. The girl wasn't with
him. The aunt wasn't with him. In fact, there wasn't anybody else in
sight. And the solution of the whole trouble between Freddie and his
Elizabeth suddenly came to me in a flash.
From what I had seen of the two, the girl was evidently fond of this
kid: and, anyhow, he was her cousin, so what I said to myself was this:
If I kidnap this young heavyweight for a brief space of time: and if,
when the girl has got frightfully anxious about where he can have got
to, dear old Freddie suddenly appears leading the infant by the hand
and telling a story to the effect that he found him wandering at large
about the country and practically saved his life, the girl's gratitude
is bound to make her chuck hostilities and be friends again.
So I gathered up the kid and made off with him.
Freddie, dear old chap, was rather slow at first in getting on to the
fine points of the idea. When I appeared at the cottage, carrying
the child, and dumped him down in the sitting-room, he showed no joy
whatever. The child had started to bellow by this time, not thinking
much of the thing, and Freddie seemed to find it rather trying.
'What the devil's all this?' he asked, regarding the little visitor
with a good deal of loathing.
The kid loosed off a yell that made the windows rattle, and I saw that
this was a time for strategy. I raced to the kitchen and fetched a pot
of honey. It was the right idea. The kid stopped bellowing and began to
smear his face with the stuff.
'Well?' said Freddie, when silence had set in.
I explained the scheme. After a while it began to strike him. The
careworn look faded from his face, and for the first time since his
arrival at Marvis Bay he smiled almost happily.
'There's something in this, Bertie.'
'It's the goods.'
'I think it will work,' said Freddie.
And, disentangling the child from the honey, he led him out.
'I expect Elizabeth will be on the beach somewhere,' he said.
What you might call a quiet happiness suffused me, if that's the word I
want. I was very fond of old Freddie, and it was jolly to think that he
was shortly about to click once more. I was leaning back in a chair on
the veranda, smoking a peaceful cigarette, when down the road I saw the
old boy returning, and, by George, the kid was still with him.
'Hallo!' I said. 'Couldn't you find her?'
I then perceived that Freddie was looking as if he had been kicked in
the stomach.
'Yes, I found her,' he replied, with one of those bitter, mirthless
laughs you read about.
'Well, then--?'
He sank into a chair and groaned.
'This isn't her cousin, you idiot,' he said. 'He's no relation at
all--just a kid she met on the beach. She had never seen him before in
her life.'
'But she was helping him build a sand-castle.'
'I don't care. He's a perfect stranger.'
It seemed to me that, if the modern girl goes about building
sand-castles with kids she has only known for five minutes and probably
without a proper introduction at that, then all that has been written
about her is perfectly true. Brazen is the word that seems to meet the
case.