Which being so, I need scarcely tell you, knowing Freddie as you do, that his first act on entering Sir Mortimer Prenderby’s orbit was to make the scaliest kind of floater, hitting him on the back of the neck with a tortoiseshell cat not ten minutes after his arrival.
His train having been a bit late, there was no time on reaching the house for any stately receptions or any of that ‘Welcome to Meadowsweet Hall’ stuff. The girl simply shot him up to his room and told him to dress like a streak, because dinner was in a quarter of an hour, and then buzzed off to don the soup and fish herself. And Freddie was just going well when, looking round for his shirt, which he had left on the bed, he saw a large tortoiseshell cat standing on it, kneading it with its paws.
Well, you know how a fellow feels about his shirt-front. For an instant, Freddie stood spellbound. Then with a hoarse cry he bounded forward, scooped up the animal, and, carrying it out on to the balcony, flung it into the void. And an elderly gentleman, coming round the corner at this moment, received a direct hit on the back of his neck.
‘Hell!’ cried the elderly gentleman.
A head popped out of a window.
‘Whatever is the matter, Mortimer?’
‘It’s raining cats.’
‘Nonsense. It’s a lovely evening,’ said the head, and disappeared.
Freddie thought an apology would be in order.
‘I say,’ he said.
The old gentleman looked in every direction of the compass, and finally located Freddie on his balcony.
‘I say,’ said Freddie, ‘I’m awfully sorry you got that nasty buffet. It was me.’
‘It was not you. It was a cat.’
‘I know. I threw the cat.’
‘Why?’
‘Well . . .’
‘Dam’ fool.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Freddie.
‘Go to blazes,’ said the old gentleman.
Freddie backed into the room, and the incident closed.
Freddie is a pretty slippy dresser, as a rule, but this episode had shaken him, and he not only lost a collar-stud but made a mess of the first two ties. The result was that the gong went while he was still in his shirt-sleeves: and on emerging from his boudoir he was informed by a footman that the gang were already nuzzling their bouillon in the dining-room. He pushed straight on there, accordingly, and sank into a chair beside his hostess just in time to dead-heat with the final spoonful.
Awkward, of course, but he was feeling in pretty good form owing to the pleasantness of the thought that he was shoving his knees under the same board as the girl Dahlia: so, having nodded to his host, who was glaring at him from the head of the table, as much as to say that all would be explained in God’s good time, he shot his cuffs and started to make sparkling conversation to Lady Prenderby.
‘Charming place you have here, what?’
Lady Prenderby said that the local scenery was generally admired. She was one of those tall, rangy, Queen Elizabeth sort of women, with tight lips and cold, blanc-mange-y eyes. Freddie didn’t like her looks much, but he was feeling, as I say, fairly fizzy, so he carried on with a bright zip.
‘Pretty good hunting country, I should think?’
‘I believe there is a good deal of hunting near here, yes.’
‘I thought as much,’ said Freddie. ‘Ah, that’s the stuff, is it not? A cracking gallop across good country with a jolly fine kill at the end of it, what, what? Hark for’ard, yoicks, tally-ho, I mean to say, and all that sort of thing.’
Lady Prenderby shivered austerely.
‘I fear I cannot share your enthusiasm,’ she said. ‘I have the strongest possible objection to hunting. I have always set my face against it, as against all similar brutalizing blood-sports.’
This was a nasty jar for poor old Freddie, who had been relying on the topic to carry him nicely through at least a couple of courses. It silenced him for the nonce. And as he paused to collect his faculties, his host, who had now been glowering for six and a half minutes practically without cessation, put a hand in front of his mouth and addressed the girl Dahlia across the table. Freddie thinks he was under the impression that he was speaking in a guarded whisper, but, as a matter of fact, the words boomed through the air as if he had been a costermonger calling attention to his Brussels sprouts.
‘Dahlia!’
‘Yes, Father?’
‘Who’s that ugly feller?’
‘Hush!’
‘What do you mean, hush? Who is he?’
‘Mr Widgeon.’
‘Mr Who?’
‘Widgeon.’
‘I wish you would articulate clearly and not mumble,’ said Sir Mortimer fretfully. ‘It sounds to me just like “Widgeon”. Who asked him here?’
‘I did.’
‘Why?’
‘He’s a friend of mine.’
‘Well, he looks a pretty frightful young slab of damnation to me. What I’d call a criminal face.’
‘Hush!’
‘Why do you keep saying “Hush”? Must be a lunatic, too. Throws cats at people.’
‘Please, Father!’
‘Don’t say “Please, Father!” No sense in it. I tell you he does throw cats at people. He threw one at me. Half-witted, I’d call him – if that. Besides being the most offensive-looking young toad I’ve ever seen on the premises. How long’s he staying?’
‘Till Monday.’
‘My God! And today’s only Friday!’ bellowed Sir Mortimer Prenderby.
It was an unpleasant situation for Freddie, of course, and I’m bound to admit he didn’t carry it off particularly well. What he ought to have done, obviously, was to have plunged into an easy flow of small-talk: but all he could think of was to ask Lady Prenderby if she was fond of shooting. Lady Prenderby having replied that, owing to being deficient in the savage instincts and wanton blood-lust that went to make up a callous and cold-hearted murderess, she was not, he relapsed into silence with his lower jaw hanging down.
All in all, he wasn’t so dashed sorry when dinner came to an end.
As he and Sir Mortimer were the only men at the table, most of the seats having been filled by a covey of mildewed females whom he had classified under the general heading of Aunts, it seemed to Freddie that the moment had now arrived when they would be able to get together once more, under happier conditions than those of their last meeting, and start to learn to appreciate one another’s true worth. He looked forward to a cosy tête-à-tête over the port, in the course of which he would smooth over that cat incident and generally do all that lay within his power to revise the unfavourable opinion of him which the other must have formed.
But apparently Sir Mortimer had his own idea of the duties and obligations of a host. Instead of clustering round Freddie with decanters, he simply gave him a long, lingering look of distaste and shot out of the french window into the garden. A moment later, his head reappeared and he uttered the words: ‘You and your dam’ cats!’ Then the night swallowed him again.
Freddie was a good deal perplexed. All this was new stuff to him. He had been in and out of a number of country-houses in his time, but this was the first occasion on which he had ever been left flat at the conclusion of the evening meal, and he wasn’t quite sure how to handle the situation. He was still wondering, when Sir Mortimer’s head came into view again and its owner, after giving him another of those long, lingering looks, said: ‘Cats, forsooth!’ and disappeared once more.
Freddie was now definitely piqued. It was all very well, he felt, Dahlia Prenderby telling him to make himself solid with her father, but how can you make yourself solid with a fellow who doesn’t stay put for a couple of consecutive seconds? If it was Sir Mortimer’s intention to spend the remainder of the night flashing past like a merry-go-round, there seemed little hope of anything amounting to a genuine rapprochement. It was a relief to his feelings when there suddenly appeared from nowhere his old acquaintance the tortoiseshell cat. It seemed to offer to him a means of working off h
is spleen.
Taking from Lady Prenderby’s plate, accordingly, the remains of a banana, he plugged the animal at a range of two yards. It yowled and withdrew. And a moment later, there was Sir Mortimer again.
‘Did you kick that cat?’ said Sir Mortimer.
Freddie had half a mind to ask this old disease if he thought he was a man or a jack-in-the-box, but the breeding of the Widgeons restrained him.
‘No,’ he said, ‘I did not kick that cat.’
‘You must have done something to it to make it come charging out at forty miles an hour.’
‘I merely offered the animal a piece of fruit.’
‘Do it again and see what happens to you.’
‘Lovely evening,’ said Freddie, changing the subject.
‘No, it’s not, you silly ass,’ said Sir Mortimer. Freddie rose. His nerve, I fancy, was a little shaken.
‘I shall join the ladies,’ he said, with dignity.
‘God help them!’ replied Sir Mortimer Prenderby in a voice instinct with the deepest feeling, and vanished once more.
Freddie’s mood, as he made for the drawing-room, was thoughtful. I don’t say he has much sense, but he’s got enough to know when he is and when he isn’t going with a bang. Tonight, he realized, he had been very far from going in such a manner. It was not, that is to say, as the Idol of Matcham Scratchings that he would enter the drawing-room, but rather as a young fellow who had made an unfortunate first impression and would have to do a lot of heavy ingratiating before he could regard himself as really popular in the home.
He must bustle about, he felt, and make up leeway. And, knowing that what counts with these old-style females who have lived in the country all their lives is the exhibition of those little politenesses and attentions which were all the go in Queen Victoria’s time, his first action, on entering, was to make a dive for one of the aunts who seemed to be trying to find a place to put her coffee-cup.
‘Permit me,’ said Freddie, suave to the eyebrows.
And bounding forward with the feeling that this was the stuff to give them, he barged right into a cat.
‘Oh, sorry,’ he said, backing and bringing down his heel on another cat.
‘I say, most frightfully sorry,’ he said.
And, tottering to a chair, he sank heavily on to a third cat.
Well, he was up and about again in a jiffy, of course, but it was too late. There was the usual not-at-all-ing and don’t-mention-it-ing, but he could read between the lines. Lady Prenderby’s eyes had rested on his for only a brief instant, but it had been enough. His standing with her, he perceived, was now approximately what King Herod’s would have been at an Israelite Mothers Social Saturday Afternoon.
The girl Dahlia during these exchanges had been sitting on a sofa at the end of the room, turning the pages of a weekly paper, and the sight of her drew Freddie like a magnet. Her womanly sympathy was just what he felt he could do with at this juncture. Treading with infinite caution, he crossed to where she sat: and, having scanned the terrain narrowly for cats, sank down on the sofa at her side. And conceive his agony of spirit when he discovered that womanly sympathy had been turned off at the main. The girl was like a chunk of ice-cream with spikes all over it.
‘Please do not trouble to explain,’ she said coldly, in answer to his opening words. ‘I quite understand that there are people who have this odd dislike of animals.’
‘But, dash it . . .’ cried Freddie, waving his arm in a frenzied sort of way. ‘Oh, I say, sorry,’ he added, as his fist sloshed another of the menagerie in the short ribs.
Dahlia caught the animal as it flew through the air.
‘I think perhaps you had better take Augustus, Mother,’ she said. ‘He seems to be annoying Mr Widgeon.’
‘Quite,’ said Lady Prenderby. ‘He will be safer with me.’
‘But, dash it . . .’ bleated Freddie.
Dahlia Prenderby drew in her breath sharply.
‘How true it is,’ she said, ‘that one never really knows a man till after one has seen him in one’s own home.’
‘What do you mean by that?’
‘Oh, nothing,’ said Dahlia Prenderby.
She rose and moved to the piano, where she proceeded to sing old Breton folk-songs in a distant manner, leaving Freddie to make out as best he could with a family album containing faded photographs with ‘Aunt Emily bathing at Llandudno, 1893’, and ‘This is Cousin George at the fancy-dress ball’ written under them.
And so the long, quiet, peaceful home evening wore on, till eventually Lady Prenderby mercifully blew the whistle and he was at liberty to sneak off to his bedroom.
You might have supposed that Freddie’s thoughts, as he toddled upstairs with his candle, would have dwelt exclusively on the girl Dahlia. This, however, was not so. He did give her obvious shirtiness a certain measure of attention, of course, but what really filled his mind was the soothing reflection that at long last his path and that of the animal kingdom of Matcham Scratchings had now divided. He, so to speak, was taking the high road while they, as it were, would take the low road. For whatever might be the conditions prevailing in the dining-room, the drawing-room, and the rest of the house, his bedroom, he felt, must surely be a haven totally free from cats of all descriptions.
Remembering, however, that unfortunate episode before dinner, he went down on all fours and subjected the various nooks and crannies to a close examination. His eye could detect no cats. Relieved, he rose to his feet with a gay song on his lips: and he hadn’t got much beyond the first couple of bars when a voice behind him suddenly started taking the bass: and, turning, he perceived on the bed a fine Alsatian dog.
Freddie looked at the dog. The dog looked at Freddie. The situation was one fraught with embarrassment. A glance at the animal was enough to convince him that it had got an entirely wrong angle on the position of affairs and was regarding him purely in the light of an intrusive stranger who had muscled in on its private sleeping quarters. Its manner was plainly resentful. It fixed Freddie with a cold, yellow eye and curled its upper lip slightly, the better to display a long, white tooth. It also twitched its nose and gave a sotto-voce imitation of distant thunder.
Freddie did not know quite what avenue to explore. It was impossible to climb between the sheets with a thing like that on the counterpane. To spend the night in a chair, on the other hand, would have been foreign to his policy. He did what I consider the most statesmanlike thing by sidling out on to the balcony and squinting along the wall of the house to see if there wasn’t a lighted window hard by, behind which might lurk somebody who would rally round with aid and comfort.
There was a lighted window only a short distance away, so he shoved his head out as far as it would stretch and said:
‘I say!’
There being no response, he repeated:
‘I say!’
And, finally, to drive his point home, he added:
‘I say! I say! I say!’
This time he got results. The head of Lady Prenderby suddenly protruded from the window.
‘Who,’ she enquired, ‘is making that abominable noise?’
It was not precisely the attitude Freddie had hoped for, but he could take the rough with the smooth.
‘It’s me. Widgeon, Frederick.’
‘Must you sing on your balcony, Mr Widgeon?’
‘I wasn’t singing. I was saying “I say”.’
‘What were you saying?’
‘“I say”.’
‘You say what?’
‘I say I was saying “I say”. Kind of a heart-cry, if you know what I mean. The fact is, there’s a dog in my room.’
‘What sort of dog?’
‘A whacking great Alsatian.’
‘Ah, that would be Wilhelm. Good night, Mr Widgeon.’
The window closed. Freddie let out a heart-stricken yip.
‘But I say!’
The window reopened. ‘Really, Mr Widgeon!’
‘But what am
I to do?’
‘Do?’
‘About this whacking great Alsatian!’
Lady Prenderby seemed to consider.
‘No sweet biscuits,’ she said. ‘And when the maid brings you your tea in the morning please do not give him sugar. Simply a little milk in the saucer. He is on a diet. Good night, Mr Widgeon.’
Freddie was now pretty well nonplussed. No matter what his hostess might say about this beastly dog being on a diet, he was convinced from its manner that its medical adviser had not forbidden it Widgeons, and once more he bent his brain to the task of ascertaining what to do next.
There were several possible methods of procedure. His balcony being not so very far from the ground, he could, if he pleased, jump down and pass a health-giving night in the nasturtium bed. Or he might curl up on the floor. Or he might get out of the room and doss downstairs somewhere.
This last scheme seemed about the best. The only obstacle in the way of its fulfilment was the fact that, when he started for the door, his room-mate would probably think he was a burglar about to loot silver of lonely country-house and pin him. Still, it had to be risked, and a moment later he might have been observed tiptoeing across the carpet, with all the caution of a slack-wire artist who isn’t any too sure he remembers the correct steps.
Well, it was a near thing. At the instant when he started, the dog seemed occupied with something that looked like a cushion on the bed. It was licking this object in a thoughtful way, and paid no attention to Freddie till he was half-way across No Man’s Land. Then it suddenly did a sort of sitting high-jump in his direction, and two seconds later Freddie, with a draughty feeling about the seat of his trouserings, was on top of a wardrobe, with the dog underneath looking up. He tells me that if he ever moved quicker in his life it was only on the occasion when, a lad of fourteen, he was discovered by his uncle, Lord Blicester, smoking one of the latter’s cigars in the library: and he rather thinks he must have clipped at least a fifth of a second off the record then set up.
It looked to him now as if his sleeping arrangements for the night had been settled for him. And the thought of having to roost on top of a wardrobe at the whim of a dog was pretty dashed offensive to his proud spirit, as you may well imagine. However, as you cannot reason with Alsatians, it seemed the only thing to be done: and he was trying to make himself as comfortable as a sharp piece of wood sticking into the fleshy part of his leg would permit, when there was a snuffling noise in the passage and through the door came an object which in the dim light he was at first not able to identify. It looked something like a pen-wiper and something like a piece of a hearth-rug. A second and keener inspection revealed it as a Pekingese puppy.