DOCTOR SALLY
By
P. G. WODEHOUSE
All the characters in this book are purely imaginary and have no relation whatsoever to any living persons.
CHAPTER I
THE eighteenth hole at Bingley-on-Sea, that golfers’ Mecca on the south coast of England, is one of those freak holes—a very short mashie-shot up a very steep hill off a tee screened from the club-house by a belt of trees. From the terrace, where the stout man in the vivid plus-fours stood waiting for his partner to arrive for the morning round, only the green was visible.
On this green, falling from the sky in a perfect arc, there suddenly descended a white ball. It struck the ground, took a back spin, and rolled to within a foot of the hole.
The stout man congealed like one who has seen a vision. So might a knight of the Middle Ages have looked on beholding the Holy Grail. He had been at Bingley only two days, and so had played this hole only six times, but he knew that if he played it for the rest of his life he would never get a two on it, as this unseen expert was so obviously about to do. Four was Sir Hugo Drake’s best—his worst twenty-seven, on the occasion when he overran the green and got imbedded in a sort of Sahara which lay beyond it.
A player like this, he decided, demanded inspection at close range. Possibly it was the pro. taking a little practice, but even the pro. might reasonably expect homage after such a shot. Sir Hugo toddled over to the green, and, having reached it and peered into the depths, stood stunned with amazement.
It was not the pro. It was not a man at all. It was a girl—and a small girl, at that. That she was also extremely pretty seemed of slight importance to Sir Hugo. He was not a man who paid much attention to women’s looks. What mattered to him was that he stood in the presence of a female who could handle a mashie like that. And, being a man who liked to give credit where credit was due, he said so.
“My dear young lady,” puffed Sir Hugo, “that was an extraordinary fine stroke.”
There is a camaraderie among golfers. Girls of the species, complimented on their game by unintroduced males, do not draw themselves up haughtily and say “Sir!” This one smiled. She had a charming smile.
“Where on earth did you learn to play like that?” asked Sir Hugo reverently.
“At Garden City, mostly.”
The name was new to Sir Hugo.
“Garden City?”
“It’s outside New York.”
“Oh?” Sir Hugo was enlightened. He had a deep respect for transatlantic golf. “You come from America?”
“Yes, I’ve been in London about two years. I’m surprised my game hasn’t gone off more. I don’t get much time for playing.”
Sir Hugo sighed.
“Nor do I,” he replied sadly. “A busy specialist, you know…. They keep one’s nose pretty tightly to the grindstone.”
“A specialist?” The girl seemed suddenly interested. “What sort of specialist?”
“Nerves.”
“Really?”
“Drake’s my name—Sir Hugo Drake.”
The girl’s interest was now unmistakable. She beamed.
“Fancy!” she said. “I thought your last book was wonderful. This is a proud moment for a mere general practitioner, Sir Hugo.”
“A what?”
“A general practitioner. I’m one.”
Sir Hugo gaped.
“Good God! You’re not a doctor?”
“Yes, I am. Smith—Sally Smith. Doctor Sally Smith.”
“Good God!” exclaimed Sir Hugo again. The suspicion of a shadow passed over the girl’s face. She was always meeting men who exclaimed “Good God!” or its equivalent, when informed of her profession, and she disliked it. It seemed to her that they said it in the voice a small boy would use on being introduced to a circus freak. The male mind did not appear to be able to grasp immediately the fact that a woman doctor need not of necessity be a gargoyle with steel-rimmed spectacles and a wash-leather complexion.
However, this was a nice old man, so she decided not to bite his head off.
“I suppose it does seem funny,” she said. “But there it is.”
“Funny?” said Sir Hugo, recovering. “Not at all. Certainly not. Quite the contrary.”
“I like being a doctor, and it doesn’t do anybody any harm—at least, I’ve never killed a patient yet— so what I say to myself is, ‘Why not?’”
“Quite,” said Sir Hugo. “Why not? Precisely. Very sensible.”
The girl tapped her ball into the hole and picked it up.
“Nice course, this,” she said.
“Very,” said Sir Hugo. “Are you making a long stay?”
“Just a two weeks’ vacation. Are you here for long?”
Sir Hugo Drake had now come to look upon this girl as a soul-mate. A member of his own profession and a golfer capable of a two on the eighteenth, she deserved, he felt, his full confidence. He was not a man who, as a rule, discussed his private affairs with strangers, but he could not bring himself to regard as a stranger a girl so outstanding at the short mashie-shot.
“I don’t know how long I’m going to be here,” he confided. “The fact is, I’m looking for my nephew.”
“Have you lost him?” Sally asked, surprised.
“He’s given me the slip,” said Sir Hugo, turning a deeper mauve, for the affair had caused him much annoyance. “He was living quietly in the country down in Hampshire, and he came up to London, and suddenly he disappeared from London, and I met a man who said he had seen him down here—in company,” said Sir Hugo, lowering his voice to a portentous whisper, “with a female of flashy appearance.”
Sally smiled.
“Not me,” she said.
“I wish it had been you,” said Sir Hugo devoutly. “If he would only have the sense to fall in love with a nice girl like you I could be easier in my mind.”
“You shouldn’t worry.”
“But I do worry,” said Sir Hugo vehemently. “His poor mother was my sister, and since her death I have regarded myself as in loco parentis to the boy. Causes me a great deal of anxiety. Too much money, that’s what he’s got, and too much time on his hands. When he was at Cambridge he came within an ace,” said Sir Hugo, fixing his companion with a gaze calculated to make the flesh creep, “of marrying a girl in a tobacco shop!”
“Boys will be boys.”
“Not while I’m in loco parentis to them, they won’t,” said Sir Hugo stoutly. “The trouble with William is that he’s impulsive. Got a habit of falling in love at first sight. I don’t know who this flashy female is, but I’ve come down here to break the thing up and take him back to Woollam Chersey, where he belongs.”
“Is that the name of his place in the country?”
“Yes.”
“I should have thought he would be safe, living in the country.”
“He is. He is safe while living in the country. But he keeps dashing away from the country and losing his head. Oh, well, I mustn’t bother you with my troubles. I see my partner looking for me.”
He whooped and waved his hand at the terrace. A long, thin man, clad, like himself, in plus-fours of a regrettable pattern, whooped and waved back.
“Hope we shall meet again,” he said.
“I hope so,” said Sally.
“Give me a lesson, perhaps?”
“I should be delighted.”
“Good!” said Sir Hugo, and strode off to the first tee.
CHAPTER II
ON the Front—or Esplanade—of Bingley-on-Sea stands the Hotel Superba; and at twenty minutes past four the thin mist which had been hanging over the resort since lunch-time disappeared and there filtered through the windows of suite number seven on the second floor that curious faint gamboge light which passes for suns
hine in England. Its mild rays shone deprecatingly on one of those many-coloured carpets peculiar to suites at south coast hotels, on the engraving of “The Stag at Bay” over the mantelpiece, on the table set for tea, and on Marie, maid to Mrs. Higginbotham, who had just deposited on the table a plate of sandwiches.
In addition to the sunshine, there entered also the strains of a dance band, presumably from the winter garden below, where Swiss waiters prowled among potted palms and such of the Superba’s guests as wished to do so were encouraged to dance. Carried away by the melody, Marie went so far as to dance a step or two herself. And so absorbed was she in this pursuit that a knocking on the outer door did not penetrate to her consciousness.
It got through, however, to Mrs. Higginbotham in the bedroom, and she gave tongue.
“Marie!”
The maid ceased to pirouette. Her employer’s voice was one of those which impress themselves on the most preoccupied.
“Yes, moddom?”
“Are you deaf, you poor fish? Somebody at the door.”
“Very good, moddom.”
Marie opened the door. There was nothing much to reward her for the effort. Merely a man in spats.
“Mrs. Higginbotham in?” asked this individual.
“Yes, sir.”
The visitor crossed the threshold. He was an immaculate and yet somehow subtly battered person in the early thirties. He wore a suit of grey material and unimpeachable cut and—until he removed it— a white bowler hat. In his right eye there was a monocle, and through this he inspected the tea-table. With a slight diminution of what appeared to be a constitutional gloom, he moved towards it and picked up a sandwich.
Mrs. Higginbotham, still a disembodied voice, continued to interest herself in the proceedings.
“Is that you, Bill?”
“It is not Mr. Bannister, moddom. It is—”
Marie looked at the feaster inquiringly. He was now well into his second sandwich, but he could still speak, and did so.
“Lord Tidmouth.”
“Who the dickens is Lord Tidmouth?”
The new-comer seemed to feel that he ought to enter into the spirit of this long-distance conversation. He approached the bedroom door.
“What-ho within there! Is that Lottie?”
“Who are you?”
“Tidmouth’s the name at the present. It was Bixby till I hooked the old title. I don’t know if you remember me. We used to be married once.”
Evidently Mrs. Higginbotham possessed one of those highly trained memories from which no fact, however trivial, escapes. She uttered a pleased screech.
“Squiffy!”
“That’s right.”
“Well, I’m blowed! Where did you spring from?”
“Oh, various parts. I’ve been travelling a lot. Not been in England for some years. I happened to blow down here and saw you going up in the lift— yesterday, that was—and I asked your name, and they told me you were staying here, so at the earliest opportunity up I popped.”
“Splendid! I’ll be out in a minute.”
“Right-ho. I say, when did you acquire the Higginbotham?”
“About two years ago.”
“Is he here?”
“No. Kensal Green Cemetery.”
“Oh, well, see you soon.”
Lord Tidmouth wandered back to the table and started on another sandwich.
“I shan’t be long now,” Mrs. Higginbotham assured him. “I’m just shaving.”
“What!”
“My neck, you silly ass!”
“Oh!”
“Have a sandwich.”
“I am.”
“You’re what?”
“A sandwich. I mean, I’m having one; and most extraordinarily good they are. Sardine, or my trained senses deceive me.”
He tested this theory by taking another, and all doubts were removed.
“Yes,” he continued, “absolutely sardine. Lottie!”
“Hullo?”
“I read an interesting thing in the paper the other day,” said Lord Tidmouth. “It appears that the sardine’s worst enemy is the halibut, and I give you my word that until I read it I didn’t know the sardine had an enemy. And I don’t mind telling you that my opinion of the halibut has gone down considerably. Very considerably. Fancy anything wanting to bully a sardine. I mean to say— He would have proceeded further, but at this moment there was a flash of light in the doorway of the bedroom, and he found himself blinking at one of the most vivid suits of pyjamas ever conceived by the diseased mind of a fashionable haberdasher.
“Holy smoke!” he exclaimed. “I mean—well, well, well!”
“Well, well, well!” said Lottie.
“Well, well, well, well!” said Lord Tidmouth. He took her hand in a sort of trance. He was visibly affected. The thought that he had been married to this and had allowed it to get away from him was evidently moving him powerfully. His monocle slipped from his eye and danced madly on the end of its string.
“My Gosh!” he said. “Is that how you look?”
“That’s how.”
“Well, well, well, well, well, WELL!” said Lord Tidmouth.
Lottie moved to the mirror and scrutinized herself in it. She was pleased that her very considerable beauty had won this striking tribute.
“Sit down,” she said.
Lord Tidmouth sat down.
“Tell me all,” he said.
“All what?”
“All about yourself. Who was the recent Higginbotham?”
“Oh, a man. Very rich. From up North. I met him when I was in ‘Follow the Girl’. I went back to the stage after you and I parted brass-rags. He passed on last July.”
“Marry again?”
“Ass! If I had, would my name still be Higginbotham?”
“Something in that,” agreed his lordship. “I mean, a girl doesn’t call herself Higginbotham unless she has to.”
“Absolutely not.”
“Still I am sort of engaged.”
“Oh?”
“To a man named Bannister—Bill Bannister. Country squire sort of chap. Has a big place in Hampshire. Woollam Chersey it’s called.”
“What!” Lord Tidmouth’s manner became almost animated. “Bill Bannister? One of my oldest pals. I’d like to see old Bill again.”
“Well, you will, if you stick around. He’s calling soon to take me to dance. Tell me about yourself.”
“Oh, I’ve just been mooching round.”
“Did you marry again?”
“Oh, yes, here and there. My second wife ran away with a Frenchman.”
“Did you get a divorce?”
“Yes, and married again. My third wife ran away with a Spaniard.”
“Too bad.”
“When I married my fourth wife—”
“Who did she run away with?”
“A Brazilian.”
“Your home during the last few years seems to have been a sort of meeting—place of the nations.”
“Yes.”
“How many wives have you got now?”
“None at the moment. The supply has sort of petered out. By the way, talking of wives, how do you feel on the subject of rocking-horses?”
“What on earth are you talking about?”
“You see, to-morrow is my second wife’s first son’s third birthday, and I’ve just bought him a rocking-horse.”
“You still keep up with them, then?”
“Oh, a fellow has to be civil. Anyway, I’ve just bought this rocking-horse, and I told the man to send it round here till my train went. You don’t mind?”
“Of course not.”
“Thanks!”
There was a pause. The jazz band below had now begun to play a waltz of a singularly glutinous nature. Its effect on the pair in the sitting-room seemed to be to induce a certain sentimentality.
“Odd,” said Lord Tidmouth.
“What’s odd?”
“Meeting again like this after all these y
ears.”
“Yes.”
There was another pause.
“Dancing much these days?” asked Lord Tidmouth.
“Quite a lot.”
“Why not a spot now? Music and everything.”
“That’s an idea.”
They started to dance, and Lord Tidmouth’s emotion appeared to deepen. He sighed once or twice.
“Good tune.”
“Topping.”
Into the rather fish-like eyes of Lord Tidmouth there had begun to creep a strange light, indicative of a brain at work. He was not a man who often thought, but he was thinking now. And what he was thinking was that, conditions having placed such an action within the sphere of practical politics, it would be silly not to kiss this girl. Here she was, he meant to say, within range, as it were, and—well, to put it in a nutshell, what, what?
He kissed her.
And as he did so the door opened and there appeared on the threshold a large young man in a flannel suit. His agreeable face, at the moment of his entry, had been wearing a rather preoccupied look. This, as he observed the entwined couple before him, changed to one of disapproval. He eyed them in silence for a space, then in a cold voice he said:
“Good afternoon!”
The effect of these words on the tender scene was immediate. It broke it up like a bomb. Lord Tidmouth released his erstwhile helpmate and straightened his tie. Lottie bit her tongue.
There was one of those embarrassing pauses.
“I didn’t hear you come in,” said Lottie.
“So I imagined,” said Bill Bannister.
Silence fell again. It was not one of those episodes about which there is much to be said. It impeded rather than inspired conversation.
“Well, I’ll go and get dressed,” said Lottie.
“I should,” said Bill.
Lord Tidmouth, during these exchanges, had been directing at his long-lost friend a look in which remorse and brotherly love were nicely blended. Remorse now faded, and brotherly love had the field to itself. Bill, turning to deal with this cuckoo in the nest, was surprised to observe him advancing with outstretched hand.
“Bill, old man!” said Lord Tidmouth emotionally.
“Eh?” said Bill, at a loss.
Lord Tidmouth sighed.
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