Ukridge Stories · No Wedding Bells for Him (2/4)

“I’m not joking,” said George peevishly. “Do I look as if I were joking? I met him in Battersea Park with her, and he introduced me. She reminded me,” said George Tupper, shivering slightly, for that fearful evening had seared his soul deeply, “of that ghastly female in pink he brought with him the night I gave you two dinner at the Regent Grill⁠—the one who talked at the top of her voice all the time about her aunt’s stomach-trouble.”

Here I think he did Miss Price an injustice. She had struck me during our brief acquaintance as something of a blister, but I had never quite classed her with Battling Billson’s Flossie.

“Well, what do you want me to do?” I asked, not, I think, unreasonably.

“You’ve got to think of some way of getting him out of it. I can’t do anything. I’m busy all day.”

“So am I busy.”

“Busy my left foot!” said George Tupper, who in moments of strong emotion was apt to relapse into the phraseology of school days and express himself in a very un-Foreign Official manner. “About once a week you work up energy enough to write a rotten article for some rag of a paper on ‘Should Curates Kiss?’ or some silly subject, and the rest of the time you loaf about with Ukridge. It’s obviously your job to disentangle the poor idiot.”

“But how do you know he wants to be disentangled? It seems to me you’re jumping pretty readily to conclusions. It’s all very well for you bloodless officials to sneer at the holy passion, but it’s love, as I sometimes say, that makes the world go round. Ukridge probably feels that until now he never realised what true happiness could mean.”

“Does he?” snorted George Tupper. “Well, he didn’t look it when I met him. He looked like⁠—well, do you remember when he went in for the heavyweights at school and that chap in Seymour’s house hit him in the wind in the first round? That’s how he looked when he was introducing the girl to me.”

I am bound to say the comparison impressed me. It is odd how these little incidents of one’s boyhood linger in the memory. Across the years I could see Ukridge now, half doubled up, one gloved hand caressing his diaphragm, a stunned and horrified bewilderment in his eyes. If his bearing as an engaged man had reminded George Tupper of that occasion, it certainly did seem as if the time had come for his friends to rally round him.

“You seem to have taken on the job of acting as a sort of unofficial keeper to the man,” said George. “You’ll have to help him now.”

“Well, I’ll go and see him.”

“The whole thing is too absurd,” said George Tupper. “How can Ukridge get married to anyone! He hasn’t a bob in the world.”

“I’ll point that out to him. He’s probably overlooked it.”

It was my custom when I visited Ukridge at his lodgings to stand underneath his window and bellow his name⁠—upon which, if at home and receiving, he would lean out and drop me down his latchkey, thus avoiding troubling his landlady to come up from the basement to open the door. A very judicious proceeding, for his relations with that autocrat were usually in a somewhat strained condition. I bellowed now, and his head popped out.

“Hallo, laddie!”

It seemed to me, even at this long range, that there was something peculiar about his face, but it was not till I had climbed the stairs to his room that I was able to be certain. I then perceived that he had somehow managed to acquire a black eye, which, though past its first bloom, was still of an extraordinary richness.

“Great Scott!” I cried, staring at this decoration. “How and when?”

Ukridge drew at his pipe moodily.

“It’s a long story,” he said. “Do you remember some people named Price at Clapham⁠—”

“You aren’t going to tell me your fiancée has biffed you in the eye already?”

“Have you heard?” said Ukridge, surprised. “Who told you I was engaged?”

“George Tupper. I’ve just been seeing him.”

“Oh, well, that saves a lot of explanation. Laddie,” said Ukridge, solemnly, “let this be a warning to you. Never⁠—”

I wanted facts, not moralisings.

“How did you get the eye?” I interrupted.

Ukridge blew out a cloud of smoke and his other eye glowed sombrely.

“That was Ernie Finch,” he said, in a cold voice.

“Who is Ernie Finch? I’ve never heard of him.”

“He’s a sort of friend of the family, and as far as I can make out was going rather strong as regards Mabel till I came along. When we got engaged he was away, and no one apparently thought it worth while to tell him about it, and he came along one night and found me kissing her goodbye in the front garden. Observe how these things work out, Corky. The sight of him coming along suddenly gave Mabel a start, and she screamed; the fact that she screamed gave this man Finch a totally wrong angle on the situation; and this caused him, blast him, to rush up, yank off my glasses with one hand, and hit me with the other right in the eye. And before I could get at him the family were roused by Mabel’s screeches and came out and separated us and explained that I was engaged to Mabel. Of course, when he heard that, the man apologised. And I wish you could have seen the beastly smirk he gave when he was doing it. Then there was a bit of a row and old Price forbade him the house. A fat lot of good that was? I’ve had to stay indoors ever since waiting for the colour-scheme to dim a bit.”

“Of course,” I urged, “one can’t help being sorry for the chap in a way.”

“I can,” said Ukridge, emphatically. “I’ve reached the conclusion that there is not room in this world for Ernie Finch and myself, and I’m living in the hope of meeting him one of these nights down in a dark alley.”

“You sneaked his girl,” I pointed out.

“I don’t want his beastly girl,” said Ukridge, with ungallant heat.

“Then you really do want to get out of this thing?”

“Of course I want to get out of it.”

“But, if you feel like that, how on earth did you ever let it happen?”

“I simply couldn’t tell you, old horse,” said Ukridge, frankly. “It’s all a horrid blur. The whole affair was the most ghastly shock to me. It came absolutely out of a blue sky. I had never so much as suspected the possibility of such a thing. All I know is that we found ourselves alone in the drawing-room after Sunday supper, and all of a sudden the room became full of Prices of every description babbling blessings. And there I was!”

“But you must have given them something to go on.”

“I was holding her hand. I admit that.”

“Ah!”

“Well, my gosh, I don’t see why there should have been such a fuss about that. What does a bit of hand-holding amount to? The whole thing, Corky, my boy, boils down to the question, Is any man safe? It’s got so nowadays,” said Ukridge, with a strong sense of injury, “that you’ve only to throw a girl a kindly word, and the next thing you know you’re in the Lord Warden Hotel at Dover, picking the rice out of your hair.”

“Well, you must own that you were asking for it. You rolled up in a new Daimler and put on enough dog for half a dozen millionaires. And you took the family for rides, didn’t you?”

“Perhaps a couple of times.”

“And talked about your aunt, I expect, and how rich she was?”

“I may have touched on my aunt occasionally.”

“Well, naturally these people thought you were sent from heaven. The wealthy son-in-law.” Ukridge projected himself from the depths sufficiently to muster up the beginnings of a faint smile of gratification at the description. Then his troubles swept him back again. “All you’ve got to do, if you want to get out of it, is to confess to them that you haven’t a bob.”

“But, laddie, that’s the difficulty. It’s a most unfortunate thing, but, as it happens, I am on the eve of making an immense fortune, and I’m afraid I hinted as much to them from time to time.”

“What do you mean?”

“Since I saw you last I’ve put all my money in a bookmaker’s business.”

“How do you mean⁠—all your money? Where did you get any money?”

“You haven’t forgotten the fifty quid I made selling tickets for my aunt’s dance? And then I collected a bit more here and there out of some judicious bets. So there it is. The firm is in a small way at present, but with the world full of mugs shoving and jostling one another to back losers, the thing is a potential goldmine, and I’m a sleeping partner. It’s no good my trying to make these people believe I’m hard up. They would simply laugh in my face and rush off and start breach-of-promise actions. Upon my Sam, it’s a little hard! Just when I have my foot firmly planted on the ladder of success, this has to happen.” He brooded in silence for awhile. “There’s just one scheme that occurred to me,” he said at length. “Would you have any objection to writing an anonymous letter?”

“What’s the idea?”

“I was just thinking that, if you were to write them an anonymous letter, accusing me of all sorts of things⁠—Might say I was married already.”

“Not a bit of good.”

“Perhaps you’re right,” said Ukridge, gloomily, and after a few minutes more of thoughtful silence I left him. I was standing on the front steps when I heard him clattering down the stairs.

“Corky, old man!”

“Hallo?”

“I think I’ve got it,” said Ukridge, joining me on the steps. “Came to me in a flash a second ago. How would it be if someone were to go down to Clapham and pretend to be a detective making enquiries about me? Dashed sinister and mysterious, you know. A good deal of meaning nods and shakes of the head. Give the impression that I was wanted for something or other. You get the idea? You would ask a lot of questions and take notes in a book⁠—”

“How do you mean⁠—I would?”

Ukridge looked at me in pained surprise.

“Surely, old horse, you wouldn’t object to doing a trifling service like this for an old friend?”

“I would, strongly. And in any case, what would be the use of my going? They’ve seen me.”

“Yes, but they wouldn’t recognise you. Yours,” said Ukridge, ingratiatingly, “is an ordinary, meaningless sort of face. Or one of those theatrical costumier people would fit you out with a disguise⁠—”

“No!” I said, firmly. “I’m willing to do anything in reason to help you out of this mess, but I refuse to wear false whiskers for you or anyone.”

“All right then,” said Ukridge, despondently; “in that case, there’s nothing to be⁠—”

At this moment he disappeared. It was so swiftly done that he seemed to have been snatched up to heaven. Only the searching odour of his powerful tobacco lingered to remind me that he had once been at my side, and only the slam of the front door told me where he had gone. I looked about, puzzled to account for this abrupt departure, and as I did so heard galloping footsteps and perceived a stout, bearded gentleman of middle age, clad in a frock-coat and a bowler hat. He was one of those men who, once seen, are not readily forgotten; and I recognised him at once. It was the creditor, the bloke Ukridge owed a bit of money to, the man who had tried to board our car in the Haymarket. Halting on the pavement below me, he removed the hat and dabbed at his forehead with a large coloured silk handkerchief.

“Was that Mr. Smallweed you were talking to?” he demanded, gustily. He was obviously touched in the wind.

“No,” I replied, civilly. “No. Not Mr. Smallweed.”

“You’re lying to me, young man!” cried the creditor, his voice rising in a too-familiar shout. And at the words, as if they had been some magic spell, the street seemed suddenly to wake from slumber. It seethed with human life. Maids popped out of windows, areas disgorged landladies, the very stones seemed to belch forth excited spectators. I found myself the centre of attraction⁠—and, for some reason which was beyond me, cast for the role of the villain of the drama. What I had actually done to the poor old man, nobody appeared to know; but the school of thought which held that I had picked his pocket and brutally assaulted him had the largest number of adherents, and there was a good deal of informal talk of lynching me. Fortunately a young man in a blue flannel suit, who had been one of the earliest arrivals on the scene, constituted himself a peacemaker.

“Come along, o’ man,” he said, soothingly, his arm weaving itself into that of the fermenting creditor. “You don’t want to make yourself conspicuous, do you?”

“In there!” roared the creditor, pointing at the door.

The crowd seemed to recognise that there had been an error in its diagnosis. The prevalent opinion now was that I had kidnapped the man’s daughter and was holding her prisoner behind that sinister door. The movement in favour of lynching me became almost universal.

“Now, now!” said the young man, whom I was beginning to like more every minute.

“I’ll kick the door in!”

“Now, now! You don’t want to go doing anything silly or foolish,” pleaded the peacemaker. “There’ll be a policeman along before you know where you are, and you’ll look foolish if he finds you kicking up a silly row.”

I must say that, if I had been in the bearded one’s place and had had right so indisputably on my side, this argument would not have influenced me greatly, but I suppose respectable citizens with a reputation to lose have different views on the importance of colliding with the police, however right they may be. The creditor’s violence began to ebb. He hesitated. He was plainly trying to approach the matter in the light of pure reason.

“You know where the fellow lives,” argued the young man. “See what I mean? Meantersay, you can come and find him whenever you like.”

This, too, sounded thin to me. But it appeared to convince the injured man. He allowed himself to be led away, and presently, the star having left the stage, the drama ceased to attract. The audience melted away. Windows closed, areas emptied themselves, and presently the street was given over once more to the cat lunching in the gutter and the coster hymning his Brussels sprouts.

A hoarse voice spoke through the letter-box.

“Has he gone, laddie?”

I put my mouth to the slit, and we talked together like Pyramus and Thisbe.

“Yes.”

“You’re sure?”

“Certain.”

“He isn’t lurking round the corner somewhere, waiting to pop out?”

“No. He’s gone.”

The door opened and an embittered Ukridge emerged.

“It’s a little hard!” he said, querulously. “You would scarcely credit it, Corky, but all that fuss was about a measly one pound two and threepence for a rotten little clockwork man that broke the first time I wound it up. Absolutely the first time, old man! It’s not as if it had been a tandem bicycle, an enlarging camera, a Kodak, and a magic lantern.”

I could not follow him.

“Why should a clockwork man be a tandem bicycle and the rest of it?”

“It’s like this,” said Ukridge. “There was a bicycle and photograph shop down near where I lived a couple of years ago, and I happened to see a tandem bicycle there which I rather liked the look of. So I ordered it provisionally from this cove. Absolutely provisionally, you understand. Also an enlarging camera, a Kodak, and a magic lantern. The goods were to be delivered when I had made up my mind about them. Well, after about a week the fellow asks if there are any further particulars I want to learn before definitely buying the muck. I say I am considering the matter, and in the meantime will he be good enough to let me have that little clockwork man in his window which walks when wound up?”

“Well?”