Presently he came back again.
“Halloa!” he said.
“I'm here,” I said.
“It was the eighth. Reggie, old man, I——”
“Topping,” I said. “Good night.”
It was working along into the small hours now, but I thought I might as well make a night of it and finish the thing up, so I rang up an hotel near the Strand.
“Put me through to Mrs. Cardew,” I said.
“It's late,” said the man at the other end.
“And getting later every minute,” I said. “Buck along, laddie.”
I waited patiently. I had missed my beauty-sleep, and my feet had frozen hard, but I was past regrets.
“What is the matter?” said Mary's voice.
“My feet are cold,” I said. “But I didn't call you up to tell you that particularly. I've just been chatting with Bobbie, Mrs. Cardew.”
“Oh! is that Mr. Pepper?”
“Yes. He's remembered it, Mrs. Cardew.”
She gave a sort of scream. I've often thought how interesting it must be to be one of those Exchange girls. The things they must hear, don't you know. Bobbie's howl and gulp and Mrs. Bobbie's scream and all about my feet and all that. Most interesting it must be.
“He's remembered it!” she gasped. “Did you tell him?”
“No.”
Well, I hadn't.
“Mr. Pepper.”
“Yes?”
“Was he—has he been—was he very worried?”
I chuckled. This was where I was billed to be the life and soul of the party.
“Worried! He was about the most worried man between here and Edinburgh. He has been worrying as if he was paid to do it by the nation. He has started out to worry after breakfast, and——”
Oh, well, you can never tell with women. My idea was that we should pass the rest of the night slapping each other on the back across the wire, and telling each other what bally brainy conspirators we were, don't you know, and all that. But I'd got just as far as this, when she bit at me. Absolutely! I heard the snap. And then she said “Oh!” in that choked kind of way. And when a woman says “Oh!” like that, it means all the bad words she'd love to say if she only knew them.
And then she began.
“What brutes men are! What horrid brutes! How you could stand by and see poor dear Bobbie worrying himself into a fever, when a word from you would have put everything right, I can't——”
“But——”
“And you call yourself his friend! His friend!” (Metallic laugh, most unpleasant.) “It shows how one can be deceived. I used to think you a kind-hearted man.”
“But, I say, when I suggested the thing, you thought it perfectly——”
“I thought it hateful, abominable.”
“But you said it was absolutely top——”
“I said nothing of the kind. And if I did, I didn't mean it. I don't wish to be unjust, Mr. Pepper, but I must say that to me there seems to be something positively fiendish in a man who can go out of his way to separate a husband from his wife, simply in order to amuse himself by gloating over his agony——”
“But——!”
“When one single word would have——”
“But you made me promise not to——” I bleated.
“And if I did, do you suppose I didn't expect you to have the sense to break your promise?”
I had finished. I had no further observations to make. I hung up the receiver, and crawled into bed.
* * * * *
I still see Bobbie when he comes to the club, but I do not visit the old homestead. He is friendly, but he stops short of issuing invitations. I ran across Mary at the Academy last week, and her eyes went through me like a couple of bullets through a pat of butter. And as they came out the other side, and I limped off to piece myself together again, there occurred to me the simple epitaph which, when I am no more, I intend to have inscribed on my tombstone. It was this: “He was a man who acted from the best motives. There is one born every minute.”
HELPING FREDDIE
I don't want to bore you, don't you know, and all that sort of rot, but I must tell you about dear old Freddie Meadowes. I'm not a flier at literary style, and all that, but I'll get some writer chappie to give the thing a wash and brush up when I've finished, so that'll be all right.
Dear old Freddie, don't you know, has been a dear old pal of mine for years and years; so when I went into the club one morning and found him sitting alone in a dark corner, staring glassily at nothing, and generally looking like the last rose of summer, you can understand I was quite disturbed about it. As a rule, the old rotter is the life and soul of our set. Quite the little lump of fun, and all that sort of thing.
Jimmy Pinkerton was with me at the time. Jimmy's a fellow who writes plays—a deuced brainy sort of fellow—and between us we set to work to question the poor pop-eyed chappie, until finally we got at what the matter was.
As we might have guessed, it was a girl. He had had a quarrel with Angela West, the girl he was engaged to, and she had broken off the engagement. What the row had been about he didn't say, but apparently she was pretty well fed up. She wouldn't let him come near her, refused to talk on the phone, and sent back his letters unopened.
I was sorry for poor old Freddie. I knew what it felt like. I was once in love myself with a girl called Elizabeth Shoolbred, and the fact that she couldn't stand me at any price will be recorded in my autobiography. I knew the thing for Freddie.
“Change of scene is what you want, old scout,” I said. “Come with me to Marvis Bay. I've taken a cottage there. Jimmy's coming down on the twenty-fourth. We'll be a cosy party.”
“He's absolutely right,” said Jimmy. “Change of scene's the thing. I knew 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.”
But Freddie wouldn't be comforted. He just went on looking as if he had swallowed his last sixpence. However, I got him to promise to come to Marvis Bay with me. He said he might as well be there as anywhere.
Do you know Marvis Bay? It's in Dorsetshire. It isn't what you'd call a fiercely exciting spot, but it has its 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 gnats. At nine o'clock you rub ointment on the wounds and go to bed.
It seemed to suit poor old Freddie. Once the moon was up and the breeze sighing in the trees, you couldn't drag him from that beach with a rope. He became quite a popular pet with the gnats. They'd hang round waiting for him to come out, and would give perfectly good strollers the miss-in-baulk just so as to be in good condition for him.
Yes, it was a peaceful sort of life, but by the end of the first week I began to wish that Jimmy Pinkerton had arranged to come down earlier: for as a companion Freddie, poor old chap, wasn't anything to write home to mother about. 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. Somewhere round about the third bar a fuse would blow out, and he'd have to start all over again.
He was playing it as usual one morning when I came in from bathing.
“Reggie,” he said, in a hollow voice, looking up, “I've seen her.”
“Seen her?” I said. “What, Miss West?”
“I was down at the post office, getting the letters, and we met in the doorway. She cut me!”
He started “The Rosary” again, and side-slipped in the second bar.
“Reggie,” he said, “you ought never to have brought me here. I must go away.”
“Go away?” I said. “Don't talk such rot. This is the best thing that could have happened. This is where you come out strong.”
“She cut me.”
“Never mind. Be a sportsman. Have another dash at her.”