‘Tell me, Clarice,’ he said, ‘why is it that you spurn a fellow’s suit? I can’t for the life of me see why you won’t consent to marry a chap. It isn’t as if I hadn’t asked you often enough. Playing fast and loose with a good man’s love is the way I look at it.’
And he gazed at her in a way that was partly melting and partly suggestive of the dominant male. And Clarice Mallaby gave one of those light, tinkling laughs and replied:
‘Well, if you really want to know, you’re such an ass.’
Mervyn could make nothing of this.
‘An ass? How do you mean an ass? Do you mean a silly ass?’
‘I mean a goof,’ said the girl. A gump. A poop. A nitwit and a returned empty. Your name came up the other day in the course of conversation at home, and mother said you were a vapid and irreflective guffin, totally lacking in character and purpose.’
‘Oh?’ said Mervyn. ‘She did, did she?’
‘She did. And while it isn’t often that I think along the same lines as mother, there — for once — I consider her to have hit the bull’s-eye, rung the bell, and to be entitled to a cigar or coco-nut, according to choice. It seemed to me what they call the mot juste.’
‘Indeed?’ said Mervyn, nettled. ‘Well, let me tell you something. When it comes to discussing brains, your mother, in my opinion, would do better to recede modestly into the background and not try to set herself up as an authority. I strongly suspect her of being the woman who was seen in Charing Cross Station the other day, asking a potter if he could direct her to Charing Cross Station. And, in the second place,’ said Mervyn, ‘I’ll show you if I haven’t got character and purpose. Set me some quest, like the knights of old, and see how quick I’ll deliver the goods as per esteemed order.’
‘How do you mean — a quest?’
‘Why, bid me do something for you, or get something for you, or buff somebody in the eye for you. You know the procedure.’
Clarice thought for a moment. Then she said:
All my life I’ve wanted to eat strawberries in the middle of winter. Get me a basket of strawberries before the end of the month and we’ll take up this matrimonial proposition of yours in a spirit of serious research.’
‘Strawberries?’ said Mervyn.
‘Strawberries.’
Mervyn gulped a little.
‘Strawberries?’
‘But, I say, dash it! Strawberries?’
‘Strawberries,’ said Clarice.
And then at last Mervyn, reading between the lines, saw that what she wanted was strawberries. And how he was to get any in December was more than he could have told you.
‘I could do you oranges,’ he said.
‘Strawberries.’
‘Or nuts. You wouldn’t prefer a nice nut?’
‘Strawberries,’ said the girl firmly. ‘And you’re jolly lucky, my lad, not to be sent off after the Holy Grail or something, or told to pluck me a sprig of edelweiss from the top of the Alps. Mind you, I’m not saying yes and I’m not saying no, but this I will say— that if you bring me that basket of strawberries in the stated time, I shall know that there’s more in you than sawdust — which the casual observer wouldn’t believe — and I will reopen your case and examine it thoroughly in the light of the fresh evidence. Whereas, if you fail to deliver the fruit, I shall know that mother was right, and you can jolly well make up your mind to doing without my society from now on.’
Here she stopped to take in breath, and Mervyn, after a lengthy pause, braced himself up and managed to utter a brave laugh. It was a little roopy, if not actually hacking, but he did it.
‘Right-ho,’ he said. ‘Right-ho. If that’s the way you feel, well, to put it in a nutshell, right-ho.’
My cousin’s son Mervyn passed a restless night that night, tossing on the pillow not a little, and feverishly at that. If this girl had been a shade less attractive, he told himself, he would have sent her a telegram telling her to go to the dickens. But, as it so happened, she was not; so the only thing that remained for him to do was to pull up the old socks and take a stab at the programme, as outlined. And he was sipping his morning cup of tea, when something more or less resembling an idea came to him.
He reasoned thus. The wise man, finding himself in a dilemma, consults an expert. If, for example, some knotty point of the law has arisen, he will proceed immediately in search of a legal expert, bring out his eight-and-six, and put the problem up to him. If it is a cross-word puzzle and he is stuck for the word in three letters, beginning with E and ending with U and meaning ‘large Australian bird’, he places the matter in the hands of the editor of the Encyclopædia Britannica.
And, similarly, when the question confronting him is how to collect strawberries in December, the best plan is obviously to seek out that one of his acquaintances who has the most established reputation for giving expensive parties.
This, Mervyn considered, was beyond a doubt Oofy Prosser. Thinking back, he could recall a dozen occasions when he had met chorus-girls groping their way along the street with a dazed look in their eyes, and when he had asked them what the matter was they had explained that they were merely living over again the exotic delights of the party Oofy Prosser had given last night. If anybody knew how to get strawberries in December, it would be Oofy.
He called, accordingly, at the latter’s apartment, and found him in bed, staring at the ceiling and moaning in an undertone.
‘Hullo!’ said Mervyn. ‘You look a bit red-eyed, old corpse.
‘I feel red-eyed,’ said Oofy. ‘And I wish, if it isn’t absolutely necessary, that you wouldn’t come charging in here early in the morning like this. By about ten o’clock to-night, I imagine, if I take great care of myself and keep quite quiet, I shall once more be in a position to look at gargoyles without wincing; but at the moment the mere sight of your horrible face gives me an indefinable shuddering feeling.’
‘Did you have a party last night?’
‘I did.’
‘I wonder if by any chance you had strawberries?’
Oofy Prosser gave a g sort of quiver and shut his eyes. He seemed to be wrestling with some powerful emotion. Then the spasm passed, and he spoke.
‘Don’t talk about the beastly things,’ he said. ‘I never want to see strawberries again in my life. Nor lobster, caviare, pâté de fois gras, prawns in aspic, or anything remotely resembling Bronx cocktails, Martinis, Side-Cars, Lizard’s Breaths, All Quiet on the Western Fronts, and any variety of champagne, whisky, brandy, chartreuse, benedictine, and curaçoa.’
Mervyn nodded sympathetically.
‘I know just how you feel, old man,’ he said. ‘And I hate to have to press the point. But I happen — for purposes which I will not reveal — to require about a dozen strawberries.’
‘Then go and buy them, blast you,’ said Oofy, turning his face to the wall.
‘Can you buy strawberries in December?’
‘Certainly. Bellamy’s in Piccadilly have them.’
‘Are they frightfully expensive?’ asked Mervyn, feeling in his pocket and fingering the one pound, two shillings and three-pence which had got to last him to the end of the quarter when his allowance came in. ‘Do they cost a fearful lot?’
‘Of course not. They’re dirt cheap.’
Mervyn heaved a relieved sigh.
‘I don’t suppose I pay more than a pound apiece — or at most, thirty shillings — for mine,’ said Oofy. ‘You can get quite a lot for fifty quid.’
Mervyn uttered a hollow groan.
‘Don’t gargle,’ said Oofy. ‘Or, if you must gargle, gargle outside.’
‘Fifty quid?’ said Mervyn.
‘Fifty or a hundred, I forget which. My man attends to these things.’
Mervyn looked at him in silence. He was trying to decide whether the moment had arrived to put Oofy into circulation.
In the matter of borrowing money, my cousin’s son, Mervyn, was shrewd and level-headed. He had vision. At an early date he had come
to the conclusion that it would be foolish to fritter away a fellow like Oofy in a series of ten bobs and quids. The prudent man, he felt, when he has an Oofy Prosser on his list, nurses him along till he feels the time is ripe for one of those quick Send-me-two-hundred-by-messenger-old-man-or-my-head-goes-in-the-gas-oven touches. For years accordingly, he had been saving Oofy up for some really big emergency.
And the point he had to decide was: Would there ever be a bigger emergency than this? That was what he asked himself.
Then it came home to him that Oofy was not in the mood. The way it seemed to Mervyn was that, if Oofy’s mother had crept to Oofy’s bedside at this moment and tried to mace him for as much as five bob, Oofy would have risen and struck her with the bromo-seltzer bottle.
With a soft sigh, therefore, he gave up the idea and oozed out of the room and downstairs into Piccadilly.
Piccadilly looked pretty mouldy to Mervyn. It was full, he tells me, of people and other foul things. He wandered along for a while in a distrait way, and then suddenly out of the corner of his eye he became aware that he was in the presence of fruit. A shop on the starboard side was full of it, and he discovered that he was standing outside Bellamy’s.
And what is more, there, nestling in a basket in the middle of a lot of cotton-wool and blue paper, was a platoon of strawberries.
And, as he gazed at them, Mervyn began to see how this thing could be worked with the minimum of discomfort and the maximum of profit to all concerned. He had just remembered that his maternal uncle Joseph had an account at Bellamy’s.
The next moment he had bounded through the door and was in conference with one of the reduced duchesses who do the fruit-selling at this particular emporium. This one, Mervyn tells me, was about six feet high and looked down at him with large, haughty eyes in a derogatory manner — being, among other things, dressed from stem to stern in black satin. He was conscious of a slight chill, but he carried on according to plan.
‘Good morning,’ he said, switching on a smile and then switching it off again as he caught her eye. ‘Do you sell fruit?’
If she had answered ‘No,’ he would, of course, have been nonplussed. But she did not. She inclined her head proudly.
‘Quate,’ she said.
‘That’s fine,’ said Mervyn heartily. ‘Because fruit happens to be just what I’m after.’
‘Quate.’
‘I want that basket of strawberries in the window.’
‘Quate.’
She reached for them and started to wrap them up. She did not seem to enjoy doing it. As she tied the string, her brooding look deepened. Mervyn thinks she may have had some great love tragedy in her life.
‘Send them to the Earl of Blotsam, 66A, Berkeley Square, ‘said Mervyn, alluding to his maternal uncle Joseph.
‘Quate.’
‘On second thoughts,’ said Mervyn, ‘no. I’ll take them with me. Save trouble. Hand them over, and send the bill to Lord Blotsam.’
This, naturally, was the crux or nub of the whole enterprise. And to Mervyn’s concern, his suggestion did not seem to have met with the ready acceptance for which he had hoped. He had looked for the bright smile, the courteous inclination of the head. Instead of which, the girl looked doubtful.
‘You desi-ah to remove them in person?’
‘Quate,’ said Mervyn.
‘Podden me,’ said the girl, suddenly disappearing.
She was not away long. In fact, Mervyn, roaming hither and thither about the shop, had barely had time to eat three or four dates and a custard apple, when she was with him once more.
And now she was wearing a look of definite disapproval, like a duchess who has found half a caterpillar in the castle salad.
‘His lordship informs me that he desi-ahs no strawberries.’
‘Eh?’
‘I have been in telephonic communication with his lordship and he states explicitly that he does not desi-ah strawberries.’
Mervyn gave a little at the knees, but he came back stoutly.
‘Don’t you listen to what he says,’ he urged. ‘He’s always kidding. That’s the sort of fellow he is. Just a great big happy schoolboy. Of course he desi-ahs strawberries. He told me so himself. I’m his nephew.’
Good stuff, he felt, but it did not seem to be getting over. He caught a glimpse of the girl’s face, and it was definitely cold and hard and proud. However, he gave a careless laugh, just to show that his heart was in the right place, and seized the basket.
‘Ha, ha!’ he tittered lightly, and started for the street at something midway between a saunter and a gallop.
And he had not more than reached the open spaces when he heard the girl give tongue behind him.
‘EEEE — EEEE — EEEE — EEEE — EEEEEEEEEEE!’ she said, in substance.
Now, you must remember that all this took place round about the hour of noon, when every young fellow is at his lowest and weakest and the need for the twelve o’clock bracer has begun to sap his morale pretty considerably. With a couple of quick cold ones under his vest, Mervyn would, no doubt, have faced the situation and carried it off with an air. He would have raised his eyebrows. He would have been nonchalant and lit a Murad. But, coming on him in his reduced condition, this fearful screech unnerved him completely.
The duchess had now begun to cry ‘Stop thief!’ and Mervyn, most injudiciously, instead of keeping his head and leaping carelessly into a passing taxi, made the grave strategic error of picking up his feet with a jerk and starting to run along Piccadilly.
Well, naturally, that did him no good at all. Eight hundred people appeared from nowhere, willing hands gripped his collar and the seat of his trousers, and the next thing he knew he was cooling off in Vine Street Police Station.
After that, everything was more or less of a blur. The scene seemed suddenly to change to a police-court, in which he was confronted by a magistrate who looked like an owl with a dash of weasel blood in him.
A dialogue then-took place, of which all he recalls is this:
POLICEMAN: ‘Earing cries of ‘Stop thief!’ your worship, and observing the accused running very ‘earty, I apprehended ‘im.
MAGISTRATE: How did he appear, when apprehended?
POLICEMAN: Very apprehensive, your worship.
MAGISTRATE: You mean he had a sort of pinched look?
(Laughter in court.)
POLICEMAN: It then transpired that ‘e ‘ad been attempting to purloin strawberries.
MAGISTRATE: He seems to have got the raspberry.
(Laughter in court.)
Well, what have you to say, young man?
MERVYN: Oh, ah!
MAGISTRATE: More ‘owe’ than ‘ah’, I fear.
(Laughter in court, in which his worship joined.)
Ten pounds or fourteen days.
Well, you can see how extremely unpleasant this must have been for my cousin’s son. Considered purely from the dramatic angle, the magistrate had played him right off the stage, hogging all the comedy and getting the sympathy of the audience from the start; and, apart from that, here he was, nearing the end of the quarter, with all his allowance spent except one pound, two and threepence, suddenly called upon to pay ten pounds or go to durance Vile for a matter of two weeks.
There was only one course before him. His sensitive soul revolted at the thought of languishing in a dungeon for a solid fortnight, so it was imperative that he raise the cash somewhere. And the only way of raising it that he could think of was to apply to his uncle, Lord Blotsam.
So he sent a messenger round to Berkeley Square, explaining that he was in jail and hoping his uncle was the same, and presently a letter was brought back by the butler, containing ten pounds in postal orders, the Curse of the Blotsams, a third-class ticket to Blotsarn Regis in Shropshire and instructions that, as soon as they smote the fetters from his wrists, he was to take the first train there and go and stay at Blotsam Castle till further notice.
Because at the castle, his uncle said in a powe
rful passage, even a blasted pimply pop-eyed good-for-nothing scallywag and nincompoop like his nephew couldn’t get into mischief and disgrace the family name.
And in this, Mervyn tells me, there was a good deal of rugged sense. Blotsam Castle, a noble pile, is situated at least half a dozen miles from anywhere, and the only time anybody ever succeeded in disgracing the family name, while in residence, was back in the reign of Edward the Confessor, when the then Earl of Blotsam, having lured a number of neighbouring landowners into the banqueting hall on the specious pretence of standing them mulled sack, had proceeded to murder one and all with a baffle-axe — subsequently cutting their heads off and — un rather loud taste — sticking them on spikes along the outer battlements.
So Mervyn went down to Blotsam Regis and started to camp at the castle, and it was not long, he tells me, before he began to find the time hanging a little heavy on his hands. For a couple of days he managed to endure the monotony, occupying himself in carving the girl’s initials on the immemorial elms with a heart round them. But on the third morning, having broken his Boy Scout pocket-knife, he was at something of a loose end. And to fill in the time he started on a moody stroll through the messuages and pleasances, feeling a good deal cast down.
After pacing hither and thither for a while, thinking of the girl Clarice, he came to a series of hothouses. And, it being extremely cold, with an east wind that went through his plus-fours like a javelin, he thought it would make an agreeable change if he were to go inside where it was warm and smoke two or perhaps three cigarettes.
And, scarcely had he got past the door, when he found he was almost entirely surrounded by strawberries. There they were, scores of them, all hot and juicy.
For a moment, he tells me, Mervyn had a sort of idea that a miracle had occurred. He seemed to remember a similar thing having happened to the Israelites in the desert — that time, he reminded me, when they were all saying to each other how well a spot of manna would go down and what a dashed shame it was they hadn’t any manna and that was the slipshod way the commissariat department ran things and they wouldn’t be surprised if it wasn’t a case of graft in high places, and then suddenly out of a blue sky all the manna they could do with and enough over for breakfast next day.