Ukridge Stories · A Bit of Luck for Mabel (1/3)

A Bit of Luck for Mabel

“Life, laddie,” said Ukridge, “is very rum.”

He had been lying for some time silent on the sofa, his face toward the ceiling; and I had supposed that he was asleep. But now it appeared that it was thought, not slumber that had caused his unwonted quietude.

“Very, very rum,” said Ukridge.

He heaved himself up and stared out of the window. The sitting-room window of the cottage which I had taken in the country looked upon a stretch of lawn, backed by a little spinney; and now there stole in through it from the waking world outside that first cool breeze which heralds the dawning of a summer day.

“Great Scott!” I said, looking at my watch. “Do you realize you’ve kept me up talking all night?”

Ukridge did not answer. There was a curious, faraway look on his face, and he uttered a sound like the last gurgle of an expiring soda-water siphon, which I took to be his idea of a sigh. I saw what had happened. There is a certain hour at the day’s beginning which brings with it a strange magic, tapping wells of sentiment in the most hard-boiled. In this hour, with the sun pinking the eastern sky and the early bird chirping over its worm, Stanley Featherstonehaugh Ukridge, that battered man of wrath, had become maudlin; and, instead of being allowed to go to bed, I was in for some story of his murky past.

“Extraordinarily rum,” said Ukridge. “So is Fate. It’s curious to think, Corky, old horse, that if things had not happened as they did I might now be a man of tremendous importance, looked up to and respected by all in Singapore.”

“Why should anyone respect you in Singapore?”

“Rolling in money,” proceeded Ukridge wistfully.

“You?”

“Yes, me. Did you ever hear of one of those blokes out East who didn’t amass a huge fortune? Of course you didn’t. Well, think what I should have done, with my brain and vision. Mabel’s father made a perfect pot of money in Singapore and I don’t suppose he had any vision whatsoever.”

“Who was Mabel?”

“Haven’t I ever spoken to you of Mabel?”

“No. Mabel who?”

“I won’t mention names.”

“I hate stories without names.”

“You’ll have this story without names⁠—and like it,” said Ukridge with spirit. He sighed again. A most unpleasant sound. “Corky, my boy,” he said, “do you realize on what slender threads our lives hang? Do you realize how trifling can be the snags on which we stub our toes as we go through this world? Do you realize⁠—”

“Get on with it.”

“In my case it was a top hat.”

“What was a top hat?”

“The snag.”

“You stubbed your toe on a top hat?”

“Figuratively, yes. It was a top hat which altered the whole course of my life.”

“You never had a top hat.”

“Yes, I did have a top hat. It’s absurd for you to pretend that I never had a top hat. You know perfectly well that when I go to live with my Aunt Julia in Wimbledon I roll in top hats⁠—literally roll.”

“Oh, yes, when you go to live with your aunt.”

“Well, it was when I was living with her that I met Mabel. The affair of the top hat happened⁠—”

I looked at my watch again.

“I can give you half an hour,” I said. “After that I’m going to bed. If you can condense Mabel into a thirty-minute sketch, carry on.”

“This is not quite the sympathetic attitude I would like to see in an old friend, Corky.”

“It’s the only attitude I’m capable of at half past three in the morning. Snap into it.”

Ukridge pondered.

“It’s difficult to know where to begin.”

“Well, to start with, who was she?”

“She was the daughter of a bloke who ran some sort of immensely wealthy business in Singapore.”

“Where did she live?”

“In Onslow Square.”

“Where were you living?”

“With my aunt in Wimbledon.”

“Where did you meet her?”

“At a dinner party at my aunt’s.”

“You fell in love with her at first sight?”

“Yes.”

“For a while it seemed she might return your love?”

“Exactly.”

“And then one day she saw you in a top hat and the whole thing was off. There you are. The entire story in two minutes, fifteen seconds. Now let’s go to bed.”

Ukridge shook his head.

“You’ve got it wrong, old horse. Nothing like that at all. You’d better let me tell the whole thing from the beginning.”

The first thing I did after that dinner (said Ukridge) was to go and call at Onslow Square. As a matter of fact, I called about three times in the first week; and it seemed to me that everything was going like a breeze. You know what I’m like when I’m staying with my Aunt Julia, Corky. Dapper is the word. Debonair. Perfectly groomed. Mind you, I don’t say I enjoy dressing the way she makes me dress when I’m with her, but there’s no getting away from it that it gives me an air. Seeing me strolling along the street with the gloves, the cane, the spats, the shoes and the old top hat, you might wonder if I was a marquis or a duke, but you would be pretty sure I was one of the two.

These things count with a girl. They count still more with her mother. By the end of the second week you wouldn’t be far wrong in saying that I was the popular pet at Onslow Square. And then, rolling in one afternoon for a dish of tea, I was shocked to perceive nestling in my favorite chair, with all the appearance of a cove who is absolutely at home, another bloke. Mabel’s mother was fussing over him as if he were the long-lost son. Mabel seemed to like him a good deal. And the nastiest shock of all came when I discovered that the fellow was a baronet.

Now, you know as well as I do, Corky, that for the ordinary workaday bloke Barts are tough birds to go up against. There is something about Barts that appeals to the most soulful girl. And, as for the average mother, she eats them alive. Even an elderly Bart with two chins and a bald head is bad enough, and this was a young and juicy specimen. He had a clean-cut, slightly pimply, patrician face; and, what was worse, he was in the Coldstream Guards. And you will bear me out, Corky, when I say that, while an ordinary civilian Bart is bad enough, a Bart who is also a Guardee is a rival the stoutest-hearted cove might well shudder at.

And when you consider that practically all I had to put up against this serious menace was honest worth and a happy disposition, you will understand why the brow was a good deal wrinkled as I sat sipping my tea and listening to the rest of the company talking about people I’d never heard of and entertainments where I hadn’t been among those we also noticed.

After a while the conversation turned to Ascot.

“Are you going to Ascot, Mr. Ukridge?” said Mabel’s mother, apparently feeling that it was time to include me in the chitchat.

“Wouldn’t miss it for worlds,” I said.

Though, as a matter of fact, until that moment I had rather intended to give it the go-by. Fond as I am of the sport of kings, to my mind a race meeting where you’ve got to go in a morning coat and a top hat⁠—with the thermometer probably in the nineties⁠—lacks fascination. I’m all for being the young duke when occasion requires, but races and toppers don’t seem to me to go together.

“That’s splendid,” said Mabel, and I’m bound to say these kind words cheered me up a good deal. “We shall meet there.”

“Sir Aubrey,” said Mabel’s mother, “has invited us to his house party.”

“Taken a place for the week down there,” explained the Bart.

“Ah!” I said. And, mark you, that was about all there was to say. For the sickening realization that this Guardee Bart, in addition to being a Bart and a Guardee, also possessed enough cash to take country houses for Ascot Week in that careless, offhand manner, seemed to go all over me like nettle rash. I was rattled, Corky. Your old friend was rattled. I did some pretty tense thinking on my way back to Wimbledon.

When I got there, I found my aunt in the drawing-room. And suddenly something in her attitude seemed to smite me like a blow. I don’t know if you have ever had that rummy feeling which seems to whisper in your ear that hell’s foundations are about to quiver, but I got it the moment I caught sight of her. She was sitting bolt upright in a chair, and as I came in she looked at me. You know her, Corky, and you know just how she shoots her eyes at you without turning her head, as if she were a basilisk with a stiff neck. Well, that’s how she looked at me now.

“Good evening,” she said.

“Good evening,” I said.

“So you’ve come in,” she said.

“Yes,” I said.

“Well, then, you can go straight out again,” she said.

“Eh?” I said.

“And never come back,” she said.

I goggled at her. Mark you, I had been heaved out of the old home by my Aunt Julia many a time before, so it wasn’t as if I wasn’t used to it; but I had never got the boot quite so suddenly before and so completely out of a blue sky. Usually, when Aunt Julia bungs me out on my ear, it is possible to see it coming days ahead.

“I might have guessed that something like this would happen,” she said.

And then all things were made plain. She had found out about the clock. And it shows what love can do to a fellow, Corky, when I tell you that I had clean forgotten all about it.

You know the position of affairs when I go to live with my Aunt Julia. She feeds me and buys me clothes, but for some reason best known to her own distorted mind it is impossible to induce her to part with a little ready cash. The consequence was that, falling in love with Mabel as I had done and needing a quid or two for current expenses, I had had to rely on my native ingenuity and resources. It was absolutely imperative that I should give the girl a few flowers and chocolates from time to time, and this runs into money. So, seeing a rather juicy clock doing nothing on the mantelpiece of the spare bedroom, I had sneaked it off under my coat and put it up the spout at the local pawnbroker’s. And now, apparently, in some devious and underhand manner she had discovered this.

Well, it was no good arguing. When my Aunt Julia is standing over you with her sleeves rolled up preparatory to getting a grip on the scruff of your neck and the seat of your trousers, it has always been my experience that words are useless. The only thing to do is to drift away and trust to Time, the great healer. Some forty minutes later, therefore, a solitary figure might have been observed legging it to the station with a suitcase. I was out in the great world once more.

However, you know me, Corky. The old campaigner. It takes more than a knock like that to crush your old friend. I took a bed-sitting-room in Arundel Street and sat down to envisage the situation.

Undeniably things had taken a nasty twist, and many a man lacking my vision and enterprise might have turned his face to the wall and said, “This is the end!” But I am made of sterner stuff. It seemed to me that all was not yet over. I had packed the morning coat, the waistcoat, the trousers, the shoes, the spats and the gloves, and had gone away wearing the old top hat; so, from a purely ornamental point of view, I was in precisely the position I had been before. That is to say, I could still continue to call at Onslow Square; and, what is more, if I could touch George Tupper for a fiver⁠—which I intended to do without delay⁠—should have the funds to go to Ascot.

The sun, it appeared to me, therefore, was still shining. How true it is, Corky, that no matter how the tempests lower there is always sunshine somewhere! How true it is⁠—oh, all right. I was only mentioning it.

Well, George Tupper, splendid fellow, parted without a murmur. Well, no, not⁠—to be absolutely accurate⁠—without a murmur. Still, he parted. And the position of affairs was now as follows: Cash in hand, five pounds. Price of admission to grandstand and paddock at Ascot for first day of meeting, two pounds. Time to elapse before Ascot, ten days. Net result⁠—three quid in my kick to keep me going till then and pay my fare down and buy flowers and so on. It all looked very rosy.

But note, Corky, how Fate plays with us. Two days before Ascot, as I was coming back from having tea at Onslow Square⁠—not a little preoccupied, for the Bart had been very strong on the wing that afternoon⁠—there happened what seemed at first sight an irremediable disaster.

The weather, which had been fair and warm until that evening, had suddenly broken, and a rather nippy wind had sprung up from the east. Now, if I had not been so tensely occupied with my thoughts, brooding on the Bart, I should, of course, have exercised reasonable precautions; but, as it was, I turned the corner into the Fulham Road in what you might call a brown study; and the first thing I knew my top hat had been whisked off my head and was tooling along briskly in the direction of Putney.

Well, you know what the Fulham Road’s like. A top hat has about as much chance in it as a rabbit at a dog show. I dashed after the thing with all possible speed, but what was the use? A taxicab knocked it sideways toward a bus, and the bus, curse it, did the rest. By the time the traffic had cleared a bit, I caught sight of the ruins and turned away with a silent groan. The thing wasn’t worth picking up.

So there I was, dished.

Or, rather, what the casual observer who didn’t know my enterprise and resource would have called dished. For a man like me, Corky, may be down, but he is never out. So swift were my mental processes that the time that elapsed between the sight of that ruined hat and my decision to pop round to the Foreign Office and touch George Tupper for another fiver was not more than fifty seconds. It is in the crises of life that brains really tell.

You can’t accumulate if you don’t speculate. So, though funds were running a bit low by this time, I invested a couple of bob in a cab. It was better to be two shillings out than to risk getting to the Foreign Office and finding that Tuppy had left.

Well, late though it was, he was still there. That’s one of the things I like about George Tupper, one of the reasons why I always maintain that he will rise to impressive heights in his country’s service⁠—he does not shirk; he is not a clock watcher. Many civil servants are apt to call it a day at five o’clock, but not George Tupper. That is why one of these days, Corky, when you are still struggling along turning out articles for Interesting Bits and writing footling short stories about girls who want to be loved for themselves alone, Tuppy will be Sir George Tupper, K.C.M.G., and a devil of a fellow among the Chancelleries.

I found him up to his eyes in official-looking papers, and I came to the point with all speed. I knew that he was probably busy declaring war on Montenegro or somewhere and wouldn’t want a lot of idle chatter.

“Tuppy, old horse,” I said, “it is imperative that I have a fiver immediately.”

“A what?” said Tuppy.

“A tenner,” I said.

It was at this point that I was horrified to observe in the man’s eye that rather cold, forbidding look which you sometimes see in blokes’ eyes on these occasions.

“I lent you five pounds only a week ago,” he said.

“And may heaven reward you, old horse,” I replied courteously.

“What do you want any more for?”

I was just about to tell him the whole circumstances when it was as if a voice whispered to me, “Don’t do it!” Something told me that Tuppy was in a nasty frame of mind and was going to turn me down⁠—yes, me, an old schoolfellow, who had known him since he was in Eton collars. And at the same time I suddenly perceived, lying on a chair by the door, Tuppy’s topper. For Tuppy is not one of those civil servants who lounge into Whitehall in flannels and a straw hat. He is a correct dresser, and I honor him for it.

“What on earth,” said Tuppy, “do you need money for?”

“Personal expenses, laddie,” I replied. “The cost of living is very high these days.”

“What you want,” said Tuppy, “is work.”

“What I want,” I reminded him⁠—if old Tuppy has a fault, it is that he will not stick to the point⁠—“is a fiver.”

He shook his head in a way I did not like to see.