Piccadilly Jim · Chapter 1 (2/4)

“Well, that’s all these fancy dogs ever have the matter with them. It looks to me as if I might do business with this man. I’ll get his address from Mitchell.”

“It’s no use thinking of it, uncle Peter. You couldn’t do business with him⁠—in that way. All Mr. Smethurst does when anyone brings him a fat, unhealthy dog is to feed it next to nothing⁠—just the simplest kind of food, you know⁠—and make it run about a lot. And in about a week the dog’s as well and happy and nice as he can possibly be.”

“Oh,” said Mr. Pett, disappointed.

Ann touched the keys of her machine softly.

“Why I mentioned Mr. Smethurst,” she said, “it was because we had been talking of Ogden. Don’t you think his treatment would be just what Ogden needs?”

Mr. Pett’s eyes gleamed.

“It’s a shame he can’t have a week or two of it!”

Ann played a little tune with her fingertips on the desk.

“It would do him good, wouldn’t it?”

Silence fell upon the room, broken only by the tapping of the typewriter. Mr. Pett, having finished the comic supplement, turned to the sporting section, for he was a baseball fan of no lukewarm order. The claims of business did not permit him to see as many games as he could wish, but he followed the national pastime closely on the printed page and had an admiration for the Napoleonic gifts of Mr. McGraw which would have gratified that gentleman had he known of it.

“Uncle Peter,” said Ann, turning round again.

“Eh?”

“It’s funny you should have been talking about Ogden getting kidnapped. This story of aunt Nesta’s is all about an angel-child⁠—I suppose it’s meant to be Ogden⁠—being stolen and hidden and all that. It’s odd that she should write stories like this. You wouldn’t expect it of her.”

“Your aunt,” said Mr. Pett, “lets her mind run on that sort of thing a good deal. She tells me there was a time, not so long ago, when half the kidnappers in America were after him. She sent him to school in England⁠—or, rather, her husband did. They were separated then⁠—and, as far as I can follow the story, they all took the next boat and besieged the place.”

“It’s a pity somebody doesn’t smuggle him away now and keep him till he’s a better boy.”

“Ah!” said Mr. Pett wistfully.

Ann looked at him fixedly, but his eyes were once more on his paper. She gave a little sigh, and turned to her work again.

“It’s quite demoralising, typing aunt Nesta’s stories,” she said. “They put ideas into one’s head.”

Mr. Pett said nothing. He was reading an article of medical interest in the magazine section, for he was a man who ploughed steadily through his Sunday paper, omitting nothing. The typewriter began tapping again.

“Great Godfrey!”

Ann swung round, and gazed at her uncle in concern. He was staring blankly at the paper.

“What’s the matter?”

The page on which Mr. Pett’s attention was concentrated was decorated with a fanciful picture in bold lines of a young man in evening dress pursuing a young woman similarly clad along what appeared to be a restaurant supper-table. An enjoyable time was apparently being had by both. Across the page this legend ran:

The Recent Adventures of Young Mr. Crocker of New York and London

It was not upon the title, however, nor upon the illustration that Mr. Pett’s fascinated eye rested. What he was looking at was a small reproduction of a photograph which had been inserted in the body of the article. It was the photograph of a woman in the early forties, rather formidably handsome, beneath which were printed the words:

Mrs. Nesta Ford Pett
Well-Known Society Leader and Authoress

Ann had risen and was peering over his shoulder. She frowned as she caught sight of the heading of the page. Then her eye fell upon the photograph.

“Good gracious! Why have they got aunt Nesta’s picture there?”

Mr. Pett breathed a deep and gloomy breath.

“They’ve found out she’s his aunt. I was afraid they would. I don’t know what she will say when she sees this.”

“Don’t let her see it.”

“She has the paper downstairs. She’s probably reading it now.”

Ann was glancing through the article.

“It seems to be much the same sort of thing that they have published before. I can’t understand why the Chronicle takes such an interest in Jimmy Crocker.”

“Well, you see he used to be a newspaper man, and the Chronicle was the paper he worked for.”

Ann flushed.

“I know,” she said shortly.

Something in her tone arrested Mr. Pett’s attention.

“Yes, yes, of course,” he said hastily. “I was forgetting.”

There was an awkward silence. Mr. Pett coughed. The matter of young Mr. Crocker’s erstwhile connection with the New York Chronicle was one which they had tacitly decided to refrain from mentioning.

“I didn’t know he was your nephew, uncle Peter.”

“Nephew by marriage,” corrected Mr. Pett a little hurriedly. “Nesta’s sister Eugenia married his father.”

“I suppose that makes me a sort of cousin.”

“A distant cousin.”

“It can’t be too distant for me.”

There was a sound of hurried footsteps outside the door. Mrs. Pett entered, holding a paper in her hand. She waved it before Mr. Pett’s sympathetic face.

“I know, my dear,” he said backing. “Ann and I were just talking about it.”

The little photograph had not done Mrs. Pett justice. Seen life-size, she was both handsomer and more formidable than she appeared in reproduction. She was a large woman, with a fine figure and bold and compelling eyes, and her personality crashed disturbingly into the quiet atmosphere of the room. She was the type of woman whom small, diffident men seem to marry instinctively, as unable to help themselves as cockleshell boats sucked into a maelstrom.

“What are you going to do about it?” she demanded, sinking heavily into the chair which her husband had vacated.

This was an aspect of the matter which had not occurred to Mr. Pett. He had not contemplated the possibility of actually doing anything. Nature had made him out of office hours essentially a passive organism, and it was his tendency, when he found himself in a sea of troubles, to float plaintively, not to take arms against it. To pick up the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune and fling them back was not a habit of his. He scratched his chin and said nothing. He went on saying nothing.

“If Eugenia had had any sense, she would have foreseen what would happen if she took the boy away from New York where he was working too hard to get into mischief and let him run loose in London with too much money and nothing to do. But, if she had had any sense, she would never have married that impossible Crocker man. As I told her.”

Mrs. Pett paused, and her eyes glowed with reminiscent fire. She was recalling the scene which had taken place three years ago between her sister and herself, when Eugenia had told her of her intention to marry an obscure and middle-aged actor named Bingley Crocker. Mrs. Pett had never seen Bingley Crocker, but she had condemned the proposed match in terms which had ended definitely and forever her relations with her sister. Eugenia was not a woman who welcomed criticism of her actions. She was cast in the same formidable mould as Mrs. Pett and resembled her strikingly both in appearance and character.

Mrs. Pett returned to the present. The past could look after itself. The present demanded surgery.

“One would have thought it would have been obvious even to Eugenia that a boy of twenty-one needed regular work.”

Mr. Pett was glad to come out of his shell here. He was the Apostle of Work, and this sentiment pleased him.

“That’s right,” he said. “Every boy ought to have work.”

“Look at this young Crocker’s record since he went to live in London. He is always doing something to make himself notorious. There was that breach-of-promise case, and that fight at the political meeting, and his escapades at Monte Carlo, and⁠—and everything. And he must be drinking himself to death. I think Eugenia’s insane. She seems to have no influence over him at all.”

Mr. Pett moaned sympathetically.

“And now the papers have found out that I am his aunt, and I suppose they will print my photograph whenever they publish an article about him.”

She ceased and sat rigid with just wrath. Mr. Pett, who always felt his responsibilities as chorus keenly during these wifely monologues, surmised that a remark from him was indicated.

“It’s tough,” he said.

Mrs. Pett turned on him like a wounded tigress.

“What is the use of saying that? It’s no use saying anything.”

“No, no,” said Mr. Pett, prudently refraining from pointing out that she had already said a good deal.

“You must do something.”

Ann entered the conversation for the first time. She was not very fond of her aunt, and liked her least when she was bullying Mr. Pett. There was something in Mrs. Pett’s character with which the imperiousness which lay beneath Ann’s cheerful attitude towards the world was ever at war.

“What can uncle Peter possibly do?” she inquired.

“Why, get the boy back to America and make him work. It’s the only possible thing.”

“But is it possible?”

“Of course it is.”

“Assuming that Jimmy Crocker would accept an invitation to come over to America, what sort of work could he do here? He couldn’t get his place on the Chronicle back again after dropping out for all these years and making a public pest of himself all that while. And outside of newspaper work what is he fit for?”

“My dear child, don’t make difficulties.”

“I’m not. These are ready-made.”

Mr. Pett interposed. He was always nervously apprehensive of a clash between these two. Ann had red hair and the nature which generally goes with red hair. She was impulsive and quick of tongue, and⁠—as he remembered her father had always been⁠—a little too ready for combat. She was usually as quickly remorseful as she was quickly pugnacious, like most persons of her colour. Her offer to type the story which now lay on her desk had been the amende honourable following on just such a scene with her aunt as this promised to be. Mr. Pett had no wish to see the truce thus consummated broken almost before it had had time to operate.

“I could give the boy a job in my office,” he suggested.

Giving young men jobs in his office was what Mr. Pett liked doing best. There were six brilliant youths living in his house and bursting with his food at that very moment whom he would have been delighted to start addressing envelopes downtown.

Notably his wife’s nephew, Willie Partridge, whom he looked on as a specious loafer. He had a stubborn disbelief in the explosive that was to revolutionise war. He knew, as all the world did, that Willie’s late father had been a great inventor, but he did not accept the fact that Willie had inherited the dead man’s genius. He regarded the experiments on Partridgite, as it was to be called, with the profoundest scepticism, and considered that the only thing Willie had ever invented or was likely to invent was a series of ingenious schemes for living in fatted idleness on other people’s money.

“Exactly,” said Mrs. Pett, delighted at the suggestion. “The very thing.”

“Will you write and suggest it?” said Mr. Pett, basking in the sunshine of unwonted commendation.

“What would be the use of writing? Eugenia would pay no attention. Besides, I could not say all I wished to in a letter. No, the only thing is to go over to England and see her. I shall speak very plainly to her. I shall point out what an advantage it will be to the boy to be in your office and to live here.⁠ ⁠…”

Ann started.

“You don’t mean live here⁠—in this house?”

“Of course. There would be no sense in bringing the boy all the way over from England if he was to be allowed to run loose when he got here.”

Mr. Pett coughed deprecatingly.

“I don’t think that would be very pleasant for Ann, dear.”

“Why in the name of goodness should Ann object?”

Ann moved towards the door.

“Thank you for thinking of it, uncle Peter. You’re always a dear. But don’t worry about me. Do just as you want to. In any case I’m quite certain that you won’t be able to get him to come over here. You can see by the paper he’s having far too good a time in London. You can call Jimmy Crockers from the vasty deep, but will they come when you call for them?”

Mrs. Pett looked at the door as it closed behind her, then at her husband.

“What do you mean, Peter, about Ann? Why wouldn’t it be pleasant for her if this Crocker boy came to live with us?”

Mr. Pett hesitated.

“Well, it’s like this, Nesta. I hope you won’t tell her I told you. She’s sensitive about it, poor girl. It all happened before you and I were married. Ann was much younger then. You know what schoolgirls are, kind of foolish and sentimental. It was my fault really, I ought to have⁠ ⁠…”

“Good Heavens, Peter! What are you trying to tell me?”

“She was only a child.⁠ ⁠…”

Mrs. Pett rose in slow horror.

“Peter! Tell me! Don’t try to break it gently.”

“Ann wrote a book of poetry and I had it published for her.”

Mrs. Pett sank back in her chair.

“Oh!” she said⁠—it would have been hard to say whether with relief or disappointment. “Whatever did you make such a fuss for? Why did you want to be so mysterious?”

“It was all my fault, really,” proceeded Mr. Pett. “I ought to have known better. All I thought of at the time was that it would please the child to see the poems in print and be able to give the book to her friends. She did give it to her friends,” he went on ruefully, “and ever since she’s been trying to live it down. I’ve seen her bite a young fellow’s head off when he tried to make a grandstand play with her by quoting her poems which he’d found in his sister’s bookshelf.”

“But, in the name of goodness, what has all this to do with young Crocker?”

“Why, it was this way. Most of the papers just gave Ann’s book a mention among ‘Volumes Received,’ or a couple of lines that didn’t amount to anything, but the Chronicle saw a Sunday feature in it, as Ann was going about a lot then and was a well-known society girl. They sent this Crocker boy to get an interview from her, all about her methods of work and inspirations and whatnot. We never suspected it wasn’t the straight goods. Why, that very evening I mailed an order for a hundred copies to be sent to me when the thing appeared. And⁠—” pinkness came upon Mr. Pett at the recollection “it was just a josh from start to finish. The young hound made a joke of the poems and what Ann had told him about her inspirations and quoted bits of the poems just to kid the life out of them.⁠ ⁠… I thought Ann would never get over it. Well, it doesn’t worry her any more⁠—she’s grown out of the schoolgirl stage⁠—but you can bet she isn’t going to get up and give three cheers and a tiger if you bring young Crocker to live in the same house.”

“Utterly ridiculous!” said Mrs. Pett. “I certainly do not intend to alter my plans because of a trivial incident that happened years ago. We will sail on Wednesday.”

“Very well, my dear,” said Mr. Pett resignedly.

“Just as you say. Er⁠—just you and I?”

“And Ogden, of course.”

Mr. Pett controlled a facial spasm with a powerful effort of the will. He had feared this.

“I wouldn’t dream of leaving him here while I went away, after what happened when poor dear Elmer sent him to school in England that time.” The late Mr. Ford had spent most of his married life either quarrelling with or separated from his wife, but since death he had been canonised as “poor dear Elmer.” “Besides, the sea voyage will do the poor darling good. He has not been looking at all well lately.”

“If Ogden’s coming, I’d like to take Ann.”

“Why?”

“She can⁠—” he sought for a euphemism.

“Keep in order” was the expression he wished to avoid. To his mind Ann was the only known antidote for Ogden, but he felt it would be impolitic to say so. “⁠—look after him on the boat,” he concluded. “You know you are a bad sailor.”