‘Hullo, Monty’
He looked up, distrait.
'Oh, hullo,' he said.
If anybody had told Monty Bodkin - say, while he shaved that morning - that a time would come, and that ere yonder sun had set, when he would not be glad to see Gertrude Butterwick, he would have placed the speaker in the mental class to which Albert Peasemarch belonged. Yet now he felt no responsive thrill as his eyes met hers. She represented merely an obstacle between himself and the task that lay before him, the task of getting hold of Lottie Blossom and somehow choking that mouse out of her. He wanted to think, not to have to talk, even to the divinest of her sex.
Gertrude's gaze was melting. Remorse had softened her up, A child could have taken a hockey ball from her.
'What a lovely morning !'
‘Yes’
'Did you get my note?’ ‘Yes’
A look of anxiety came into Gertrude's shining eyes. In the dreams she had dreamed of this lovers' meeting she had not budgeted for a rigid Monty, a smileless Monty, a Monty who looked as if he had been stuffed by some good taxidermist. She had been expecting something that beamed and prattled and rather leaped about a bit. Could it be, she asked herself, that the Bodkins never forgave?
‘Monty,' she faltered, 'you aren't cross?'
‘Cross?'
'You seem so funny’
Monty came out of his reverie with a start. He pulled him-' self together. Preoccupation, he realized, was causing him to squander a golden moment. Whatever might happen subse’ quently, the present was the present.
'I'm awfully sorry’ he said. 'I was thinking of something. Sort of musing, don't you know.'
'You aren't cross?'
‘No, I'm not cross’
'You looked cross’
'Well, I wasn't cross’
'I was afraid you might be cross because I thought such
horrid things about you. Can you ever forgive me, darling?’ ‘Forgive you?'
'I seem to do nothing but make a fool of myself.' ‘No, no.'
‘Well, I'm glad you're not cross.' ‘No, I'm not cross at all.' ‘Monty!’ 'Gertrude!’
It was not for some moments that a reporter, had one been lurking in the vicinity with his note-book, would have overheard any conversation worthy of being recorded. Each party to the scene seemed to feel instinctively that it was one that called for business rather than dialogue. But presently, the first emotional transports over, Monty straightened his tie and Gertrude patted her hair, and conversation was resumed.
Gertrude, opening it, began to speak of Reginald Tennyson, throwing out the opinion that he ought to be skinned. Alive, she specified. And, she added, for she was not a girl who believed in spoiling the ship for a ha'porth of tar, dipped in boiling oil. It was her view that that would teach him.
Monty was conscious of a pang. Indeed, his heart ached for his friend. Lightly though Reggie had talked about not valuing Gertrude's good opinion, he could not bring himself to believe that he could possibly really feel like that. To himself a world in which Gertrude Butterwick was going about saying that he ought to be skinned alive and dipped in boiling oil would have been a desert, and he could not imagine how anyone could hold a different view.
'Oh, Reggie's all right,' he said awkwardly.
'All right?' Gertrude's voice was that of one who is thunderstruck. 'After the way he has behaved?'
·Oh, well.'
'What do you mean - "Oh, well"?'
‘I mean, see jewness saway,' said Monty, once more availing himself of Albert Peasemarch's non-copyright material. 'I mean to say, I suppose he was rather an ass, but young blood, don't you know, if you know what I mean.'
'I certainly don't know what you mean. There's no excuse for him whatsoever. He might have ruined both our lives. I can't imagine a man being so idiotic. For quite a long while, when he came and told me that it was he who had written that stuff on the wall, I couldn't believe him. Jane Passenger was so certain that it had been done by a woman.'
Monty passed a finger round his collar. A perfect fit, made to measure by the finest hosier in London, it seemed to be too tight.
'You shouldn't listen to Jane Passenger.’ 'Well, I thought it was a woman's handwriting myself. And then I remembered.' 'Eh?'
'I suddenly remembered that when we were children together Reggie used to write things on walls. Things like -'
'Yes, yes,' said Monty hurriedly. 'I know what you mean.’
'Things like "Death to Blenkinsop".' Monty blinked. "Death to-"?'
'We had a butler called Blenkinsop in those days, and he reported Reggie to father for stealing jam, and father beat Reggie, and Reggie went out and wrote "Death to Harold Blenkinsop" on all the walls in white chalk. Blenkinsop was very annoyed about it. He said it would weaken his authority with the lower domestics, especially as he had always been most careful to keep it from them that his name was Harold. Well, when I remembered that, I knew that Reggie was telling the truth this morning.'
A silent vote of thanks to H. Blenkinsop, in whatever quiet haven he might be passing the evening of his life, floated out from Monty's soul. But for that sterling butler's admirably austere attitude towards the stealing of jam ...
'I suppose, really,' said Gertrude, more charitably, 'he must be mad. But don't let's waste time talking of Reggie. I can only stay a minute, because Jane wants all the team to show up in the gymnasium before lunch. She saw Angela Prosser, our inside left, take three helpings of pudding at dinner last night, and she's scared of our getting out of condition on board. When are you going to give me back my mouse?'
There were probably moments when Damocles forgot about the sword which hung over his head. Certainly, during these last few rapturous minutes, the thought of the peril menacing him had been completely purged from Monty's mind. It now returned in full measure, and he quivered from stem to stern like some vessel buffeted by the storm.
'Mer-mouse?' he said, in a low, hoarse voice.
'My Mickey Mouse. I wish you would go down and get it now. I shan't feel that everything is really all right again till I have it.’
'Oh, ah,' said Monty. 'Oh, ah, yes.’
'Yes,' she said.
'Well, I'll tell you,' he said.
And then, for the second time in four days, he received inspiration, thereby putting himself in a class of his own as far as the Bodkins were concerned - his nearest competitor being that Sir Hilary Bodkin, temp. Queen Anne, who, according to family tradition handed down over the years from father to son, got an idea just before the Battle of Blenheim and another in the following spring.
'Well, I'll tell you,' he said. 'I'm frightfully sorry, but as a matter of fact that mouse is off the active list for the moment.’
'You haven't lost it?'
'Not lost it, no. But as a matter of fact when you sent it back to me I'm afraid I was so peeved that I sort of gave it a bit of a kick ... as a matter of fact I hoofed it across the state-room... and as a matter of fact one of its legs came off.'
'I'll sew it on again.'
'It's being sewn on again. By the stewardess. A slow worker. A very slow worker. I doubt if she will be able to put it back into circulation for some time to come ... some little time ... As a matter of fact -’
'Oh, well, so long as you know where it is.'
'I know where it is,' said Monty.
Gertrude, reluctant to leave but obedient to the call of duty, went off to do bending and stretching exercises with her comrades of the All England Hockey Team, and Monty remained seated in his chair, immobile except for what had the appearance of an occasional attack of St Vitus's dance.
For some twenty minutes he sat thus; then suddenly he shot up like a young Hindu fakir with a sensitive skin making acquaintance with his first bed of spikes. He had just realized that he was wasting precious time. Every moment was of importance. The slightest delay in getting together with Lottie Blossom might be fatal. He hurried from the room and began to search the more likely spots of the
vessel for her. Ten minutes later he found her on the boat deck. She was playing quoits with the ship's doctor.
This practice of ships' doctors of always grabbing the prettiest girl on board and carrying her off to play quoits or deck-tennis is one of the most disturbing phenomena of ocean travel, and it is one that has caused many a young man to chew the lower lip and scowl with drawn brows. But few young men had ever chewed and scowled with more rancour than did Monty. Hovering about, standing now on this leg, now on that, he found his resentment against this frivolous pill-slinger who was preventing the girl from getting into conference with him growing more and more intense as the minutes went by.
There were a thousand things the fellow ought to have been doing - looking at people's tongues, extracting people's appendices, bottling the mixture as before or even just sitting in his cabin with his text-books, brushing up his medical knowledge. Instead of which, there he stood, laughing all over his fat face, bunging quoits at a wooden peg with Lottie Blossom.
A pretty state of things, felt Monty with justifiable bitterness.
The only policy that suggested itself to him was to walk past them very quickly with a sharp cough and a meaning glance and then to walk very quickly back again with another sharp cough and another meaning glance. And he had done this perhaps half a dozen times when he perceived that the treatment was beginning to take effect. Halfway through the seventh lap he saw Lottie stir as if mildly surprised. The eighth had her plainly wavering. And as he turned to begin lap nine she was staring at him with undisguised interest.
So was the doctor. Quoit in hand, he eyed Monty keenly, and a close observer would have noticed on his face a look of professional interest. Always alert for significant symptoms in the passengers under his charge, he thought that he detected in this young man marked indications of a paranoiac diathesis.
And then, just as it seemed that solid results were about to be obtained, from the direction of the gymnasium, her face flushed with healthy exercise, came Gertrude Butterwick.
'Monty,' she called, and Monty spun round as if the word had been a gimlet inserted in his person. He had forgotten that the gymnasium was on the boat deck.
'Oh, hullo, darling,' he said. 'Finished already?'
'Already?' said Gertrude. 'Why, it's nearly lunch-time. Come for a walk. There's something I hadn't time to say to you down in the library.'
With a cold glance at Miss Blossom, she led him away and they descended the steps to the promenade deck. 'Monty,' said Gertrude. 'Hullo?’
She seemed to hesitate.
'Monty, will you think me an awful idiot if I ask you something?' 'I should say not'
'But you haven't heard what it is. I was going to ask if you would promise me something.' 'Anything.'
'Well, it's about that Blossom girl. Oh, I know,’ said Gertrude, as Monty began to fling his arms heavenwards, 'that there's absolutely nothing between you. But oh, Monty darling, will you promise me never to speak to her again?'
Monty moved to the rail and leaned limply against it He had not foreseen this complication.
'What!'
‘Yes.'
'Not to speak to her?'
‘No.'
'But -'
A slight, a very slight chill crept into Gertrude's manner. 'Why,' she said, 'do you want to so much?' 'No, no. Positively not. Only -' 'Only what?'
'Well, you know what she's like.'
'I do. That's why I don't want you to speak to her.’
Chapter 16
Monty supported himself with a hand on the dressing-table and stared at Albert Peasemarch. His jaw was drooping and his complexion had shaded away to about the colour of the underside of a fish. His demeanour occasioned the steward some little concern. He had often seen passengers look like this, but never When the vessel was riding, as now, upon an even keel. As far as appearance went, Monty might have been one of the victims of that gas explosion in the London street. Even such a man so faint, so spiritless, so dead, so dull in look, so woebegone, drew Priam’s curtain in the dead of night and would have told him half his Troy was burnt - or so it seemed to Albert Peasemarch.
Monty found himself unable to speak. For the past few moments he had merely been making a sort of low, gulping sound, reminding the steward of a cat belonging to his mother which had always gulped like that when about to be sick.
'Vou gug -?’
‘Sir?'
'Yougug-gug-?’ ‘Sir?'
'You gug - gave -?'
‘Yes, sir. I gave the lady her mouse.’
Another long, silent stare played about Albert Peasemarch like a death-ray. Then Monty shook from tie to socks as with an ague, and for an instant it seemed as if words like molten lava were about to gush from him. But they remained unspoken. His was not an extensive vocabulary, and he found it impossible to think of anything which would really do justice to his feelings regarding Albert. Shakespeare might have managed it. So might Rabelais. Monty could not. Of all the nouns and adjectives which presented themselves for his inspection there was not one that he did not recognize as paltry and inadequate. So, being in no mood to accept the second best, he remained silent. Still silent, he put on his coat, brushed his hair and under his companion's wondering gaze tottered out of the room.
As he dragged his stumbling feet along the corridor, he was musing on Albert Peasemarch and the grave social problem which such men as Albert Peasemarch presented. You could not murder them. You could not even have them shut up in asylums. Yet, left to run around loose, what a gangrene in the body politic they were. He seemed to picture the world as a vast cauldron of soup, with good men like himself for ever standing on the brink and for ever being shoved into it by the Albert Peasemarches.
And at the end of the voyage, mark you, he would have to tip the fellow... ‘
Deep in his sombre thoughts, he ran into Reggie Tennyson.
‘Oh, there you are,' said Reggie.
Monty might have replied that what the other saw before him was not really the Bodkin he knew but merely the shell or husk of that Bodkin after Albert Peasemarch had done with it But he was not equal to metaphysical flights. He said yes, there he was.
‘I was just coming to see you.’ 'Were you?'
‘I wanted to hear if Lottie had talked you into the scheme of going to Hollywood. Have you seen her?' 'I've seen her.' ‘And did she?' 'No.'
Reggie nodded.
'I had an idea she wouldn't. Rummy, this going-to-Holly-wood business. I'd give anything to buzz off there. So would Ambrose. Whereas you, with everybody begging you on bended knee to give the place a trial, will have none of it. Ironical. Still there it is. Have you seen Gertrude?'
'Not yet.'
'I squared you all right.'
‘I know. I had a note from her.’
Monty dabbed at his forehead.
‘I mean, she's a bit inclined rather to thrust her society on a fellow somewhat, if you' know what I mean. What I'm driving at is suppose she speaks tome?'
'In that case, you simply bow and say quietly: "I should prefer to hold no sort of communication with you, Miss Blossom." '
'Who, me?' said Monty, appalled.
'And walk away. She's a very dangerous woman.'
'But, dash it, she's engaged to Ambrose.'
'So she says.'
'But she is. It's a well-known fact.’
'Well, even if she is, what difference does that make? A girl like that would never be content with one man. I expect she's flirting with half the men on the ship. Look at the way she was going on with that doctor up there.'
Monty felt compelled to challenge this statement.
'No, I say, dash it! All she was doing was playing quoits with the chap - and pretty blamelessly, it seemed to me.'
The chill in Gertrude's manner deepened.
'You certainly stick up for your friends.'
Monty sawed the air once more.
'She isn't a friend. Just an acquaintance - if that.'
'Well, that's
the way I want her to stay,' said Gertrude. 'The if-thatter the better. So you will promise not to speak to her again, won't you?'
It was not immediately that Monty replied. When he did, it was with an odd, grating sound in his voice.
'Right ho.'
'Splendid.'
The note of a bugle floated through the air. 'Lunch!' said Gertrude happily. 'Come along.'
To a young man who wishes to communicate with a young woman and has promised his betrothed not to speak to her our modern civilization, for all the unpleasant things which have been said about it from time to time, undeniably offers certain advantages which earlier ages would have had to do without.
Had Monty Bodkin been a tr1obite wallowing in the primeval slime, he would not have been able to establish contact with Lottie Blossom at all. Had he been Cro-Magnon Man, he would have been confined to expressing himself by means of painting paleolithic bisons on the wall of a cave, and everybody knows how unsatisfactory that is. Living in the twentieth century, he had pencils, envelopes and paper at his disposal, and he intended to make use of them.
Immediately after lunch, avoiding the ship's public rooms for fear of encountering Gertrude, he withdrew to his stateroom, taking a plentiful supply of stationery with him, and at three-fifteen summer-time the Bodkin-Blossom correspondence broke out with extraordinary virulence.
In affairs of this kind it is always the first letter that is the most difficult to write, because it sets the tone. Withheld from beginning 'Miss Blossom, your behaviour is inexplicable' owing to the fact that, Mr Llewellyn having failed him, 'inexplicable' was a word which he still did not know how to spell, Monty very wisely fell back on the third person.
'Mr Bodkin presents his compliments to Miss Blossom and Mr Bodkin would be glad if Miss Blossom would return Mr Bodkin's Mickey Mouse which Miss Blossom was given by that ass Albert Peasemarch at Miss Blossom's earliest convenience.'
He read this through and was satisfied with it. It seemed to him both lucid and dignified. He had never seen a diplomatic note from the ambassadorial representatives of one great power to another, but he imagined that such a note would have been worded in very much the same style - civil and restrained, but getting crisply down to brass tacks.
Luck of the Bodkins Page 18
