Ukridge Sees her Through - (2)

“I shouldn’t have thought so from what you were telling me the other night.”
    “What happened the other night was the cause of all the trouble. Naturally he woke up with a bit of a head.”
    “I can quite believe it.”
    “Yes, but my gosh, what’s a head! In the old days he would have gone and worked it off by taking a dose of pain-killer and chopping down half-a-dozen trees. But now what happens? Having all this money, he wouldn’t take a simple remedy like that. No, sir! He went to one of those Harley Street sharks who charge a couple of guineas for saying ‘Well, how are we this morning?’ A fatal move, laddie. Naturally, the shark was all over him. Tapped him here and prodded him there, said he was run down, and finally told him he ought to spend six months in a dry, sunny climate. Recommended Egypt. Egypt, I’ll trouble you, for a bloke who lived fifty years thinking that it was a town in Illinois. Well, the long and the short of it is that he’s gone off for six months, doesn’t want a place in England, and I hope he gets bitten by a crocodile. And the lease all drawn out and ready to sign. Upon my Sam, it’s a little hard. Sometimes I wonder whether it’s worth while going on struggling.”
    A sombre silence fell upon us. Ukridge, sunk in gloomy reverie, fumbled absently at his collar stud. I smoked with a heavy heart.
    “What will your friend Dora do now?” I said at length.
    “That’s what’s worrying me,” said Ukridge, lugubriously. “I’ve been trying to think of some other way of raising that hundred, but at the moment I don’t mind confessing I am baffled. I can see no daylight.”
    Nor could I. His chance of raising a hundred pounds by any means short of breaking into the Mint seemed slight indeed.
    “Odd the way things happen,” I said. I gave him the editor’s letter. “Look at that.”
    “What’s this?”
    “He’s sending me to do an article on the Pen and Ink Club dance. If only I had never been to see your aunt——”
    “And made such a mess of it.”
    “I didn’t make a mess of it. It just happened that——”
    “All right, laddie, all right,” said Ukridge, tonelessly. “Don’t let’s split straws. The fact remains, whether it’s your fault or not, the thing was a complete frost. What were you saying?”
    “I was saying that, if only I had never been to your aunt, I could have met her in a perfectly natural way at this dance.”
    “Done Young Disciple stuff,” said Ukridge, seizing on the idea. “Rubbed in the fact that you could do her a bit of good by boosting her in the paper.”
    “And asked her to re-engage Miss Mason as her secretary.”
    Ukridge fiddled with the letter.
    “You don’t think even now——”
    I was sorry for him and sorrier for Dora Mason, but on this point I was firm.
    “No, I don’t.”
    “But consider, laddie,” urged Ukridge. “At this dance she may well be in malleable mood. The lights, the music, the laughter, the jollity.”
    “No,” I said. “It can’t be done. I can’t back out of going to the affair, because if I did I’d never get any more work to do for this paper. But I’ll tell you one thing. I mean to keep quite clear of your aunt. That’s final. I dream of her in the night sometimes and wake up screaming. And in any case it wouldn’t be any use my tackling her. She wouldn’t listen to me. It’s too late. You weren’t there that afternoon at Wimbledon, but you can take it from me that I’m not one of her circle of friends.”
    “That’s the way it always happens,” sighed Ukridge. “Everything comes too late. Well, I’ll be popping off. Lot of heavy thinking to do, laddie. Lot of heavy thinking.”
    And he left without borrowing even a cigar, a sure sign that his resilient spirit was crushed beyond recuperation.
    The dance of the Pen and Ink Club was held, like so many functions of its kind, at the Lotus Rooms, Knightsbridge, that barrack-like building which seems to exist only for these sad affairs. The Pen and Ink evidently went in for quality in its membership rather than quantity; and the band, when I arrived, was giving out the peculiarly tinny sound which bands always produce in very large rooms that are only one-sixth part full. The air was chilly and desolate and a general melancholy seemed to prevail. The few couples dancing on the broad acres of floor appeared sombre and introspective, as if they were meditating on the body upstairs and realizing that all flesh is as grass. Around the room on those gilt chairs which are only seen in subscription-dance halls weird beings were talking in undertones, probably about the trend of Scandinavian literature. In fact, the only bright spot on the whole gloomy business was that it occurred before the era of tortoiseshell-rimmed spectacles.
    That curious grey hopelessness which always afflicts me when I am confronted with literary people in the bulk was not lightened by the reflection that at any moment I might encounter Miss Julia Ukridge. I moved warily about the room, keenly alert, like a cat that has wandered into a strange alley and sees in every shadow the potential hurler of a half-brick. I could envisage nothing but awkwardness and embarrassment springing from such a meeting. The lesson which I had drawn from my previous encounter with her was that happiness for me lay in keeping as far away from Miss Julia Ukridge as possible.
    “Excuse me!”
    My precautions had been in vain. She had sneaked up on me from behind.
    “Good evening,” I said.
    It is never any good rehearsing these scenes in advance. They always turn out so differently. I had been assuming, when I slunk into this hall, that if I met this woman I should feel the same shrinking sense of guilt and inferiority which had proved so disintegrating at Wimbledon. I had omitted to make allowances for the fact that that painful episode had taken place on her own ground, and that right from the start my conscience had been far from clear. To-night the conditions were different.
    “Are you a member of the Pen and Ink Club?” said Ukridge’s aunt, frostily.
    Her stony blue eyes were fixed on me with an expression that was not exactly loathing, but rather a cold and critical contempt. So might a fastidious cook look at a black-beetle in her kitchen.
    “No,” I replied, “I am not.”
    I felt bold and hostile. This woman gave me a pain in the neck, and I endeavoured to express as much in the language of the eyes.
    “Then will you please tell me what you are doing here? This is a private dance.”
    One has one’s moments. I felt much as I presume Battling Billson must have felt in his recent fight with Alf Todd, when he perceived his antagonist advancing upon him wide-open, inviting the knock-out punch.
    “The editor of Society sent me a ticket. He wanted an article written about it.”
    If I was feeling like Mr. Billson, Ukridge’s aunt must have felt very like Mr. Todd. I could see that she was shaken. In a flash I had changed from a black-beetle to a god-like creature, able, if conciliated, to do a bit of that log-rolling which is so dear to the heart of the female novelist. And she had not conciliated me. Of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these: It might have been. It is too much to say that her jaw fell, but certainly the agony of this black moment caused her lips to part in a sort of twisted despair. But there was good stuff in this woman. She rallied gamely.
    “A Press ticket,” she murmured.
    “A Press ticket,” I echoed.
    “May I see it?”
    “Certainly.”
    “Thank you.”
    “Not at all.”
    She passed on.
    I resumed my inspection of the dancers with a lighter heart. In my present uplifted mood they did not appear so bad as they had a few minutes back. Some of them, quite a few of them, looked almost human. The floor was fuller now, and whether owing to my imagination or not, the atmosphere seemed to have taken on a certain cheeriness. The old suggestion of a funeral still lingered, but now it was possible to think of it as a less formal, rather jollier funeral. I began to be glad that I had come.
    “Excuse me!”
    I had thought that I was finished with this sort of thing for the evening, and I turned with a little impatience. It was a refined tenor voice that had addressed me, and it was a refined tenor-looking man whom I saw. He was young and fattish, with a Jovian coiffure and pince-nez attached to a black cord.
    “Pardon me,” said this young man, “but are you a member of the Pen and Ink Club?”
    My momentary annoyance vanished, for it suddenly occurred to me that, looked at in the proper light, it was really extremely flattering, this staunch refusal on the part of these people to entertain the belief that I could be one of them. No doubt, I felt, they were taking up the position of the proprietor of a certain night-club, who, when sued for defamation of character by a young lady to whom he had refused admittance on the ground that she was not a fit person to associate with his members, explained to the court that he had meant it as a compliment.
    “No, thank Heaven!” I replied.
    “Then what——”
    “Press ticket,” I explained.
    “Press ticket? What paper?”
    “Society.”
    There was nothing of the Julia Ukridge spirit in this young man, no ingrained pride which kept him aloof and outwardly indifferent. He beamed like the rising sun. He grasped my arm and kneaded it. He gambolled about me like a young lamb in the springtime.
    “My dear fellow!” he exclaimed, exuberantly, and clutched my arm more firmly, lest even now I might elude him. “My dear fellow, I really must apologise. I would not have questioned you, but there are some persons present who were not invited. I met a man only a moment ago who said that he had bought a ticket. Some absurd mistake. There were no tickets for sale. I was about to question him further, but he disappeared into the crowd and I have not seen him since. This is a quite private dance, open only to members of the club. Come with me, my dear fellow, and I will give you a few particulars which you may find of use for your article.”
    He led me resolutely into a small room off the floor, closed the door to prevent escape, and, on the principle on which you rub a cat’s paws with butter to induce it to settle down in a new home, began to fuss about with whisky and cigarettes.
    “Do, do sit down.”
    I sat down.
    “First, about this club. The Pen and Ink Club is the only really exclusive organisation of its kind in London. We pride ourselves on the fact. We are to the literary world what Brooks’s and the Carlton are to the social. Members are elected solely by invitation. Election, in short, you understand, is in the nature of an accolade. We have exactly one hundred members, and we include only those writers who in our opinion possess vision.”
    “And the big, broad, flexible outlook?”
    “I beg your pardon?”
    “Nothing.”
    “The names of most of those here to-night must be very familiar to you.”
    “I know Miss Ukridge, the president,” I said.
    A faint, almost imperceptible shadow passed over the stout young man’s face. He removed his pince-nez and polished them with a touch of disfavour. There was a rather flat note in his voice.
    “Ah, yes,” he said, “Julia Ukridge. A dear soul, but between ourselves, strictly between ourselves, not a great deal of help in an executive capacity.”
    “No!”
    “No. In confidence, I do all the work. I am the club’s secretary. My name, by the way, is Charlton Prout. You may know it?”
    He eyed me wistfully, and I felt that something ought to be done about him. He was much too sleek, and he had no right to do his hair like that.
    “Of course,” I said. “I have read all your books.”
    “Really?”
    “‘A Shriek in the Night.’ ‘Who Killed Jasper Bossom?’—all of them.”
    He stiffened austerely.
    “You must be confusing me with some other—ah—writer,” he said. “My work is on somewhat different lines. The reviewers usually describe the sort of thing I do as Pastels in Prose. My best-liked book, I believe, is Grey Myrtles. Dunstable’s brought it out last year. It was exceedingly well received. And I do a good deal of critical work for the better class of review.” He paused. “If you think it would interest your readers,” he said, with a deprecating wave of the hand, “I will send you a photograph. Possibly your editor would like to use it.”
    “I bet he would.”
    “A photograph somehow seems to—as it were—set off an article of this kind.”
    “That,” I replied, cordially, “is what it doesn’t do nothing else but.”
    “And you won’t forget Grey Myrtles. Well, if you have finished your cigarette, we might be returning to the ballroom. These people rather rely on me to keep things going, you know.”
    A burst of music greeted us as he opened the door, and even in that first moment I had an odd feeling that it sounded different. That tinny sound had gone from it. And as we debouched from behind a potted palm and came in sight of the floor, I realised why.
    The floor was full. It was crammed, jammed, and overflowing. Where couples had moved as single spies, they were now in battalions. The place was alive with noise and laughter. These people might, as my companion had said, be relying on him to keep things going, but they seemed to have been getting along uncommonly well in his absence. I paused and surveyed the mob in astonishment. I could not make the man’s figures balance.
    “I thought you said the Pen and Ink Club had only a hundred members.”
    The secretary was fumbling for his glasses. He had an almost Ukridge-like knack of dropping his pince-nez in moments of emotion.
    “It—it has,” he stammered.
    “Well, reading from left to right, I make it nearer seven hundred.”
    “I cannot understand it.”
    “Perhaps they have been having a new election and letting in some writers without vision,” I suggested.
    I was aware of Miss Ukridge bearing down upon us, bristling.
    “Mr. Prout!”
    The talented young author of Grey Myrtles leaped convulsively.
    “Yes, Miss Ukridge?”
    “Who are all these people?”
    “I—I don’t know,” said the talented young man.
    “You don’t know! It’s your business to know. You are the secretary of the club. I suggest that you find out as quickly as possible who they are and what they imagine they are doing here.”
    The goaded secretary had something of the air of a man leading a forlorn hope, and his ears had turned bright pink, but he went at it bravely. A serene-looking man with a light moustache and a made-up tie was passing, and he sprang upon him like a stoutish leopard.
    “Excuse me, sir.”
    “Eh?”
    “Will you kindly—would you mind—pardon me if I ask——”
    “What are you doing here?” demanded Miss Ukridge, curtly, cutting in on his flounderings with a masterful impatience. “How do you come to be at this dance?”
    The man seemed surprised.
    “Who, me?” he said. “I came with the rest of ’em.”
    “What do you mean, the rest of them?”
    “The members of the Warner’s Stores Social and Outing Club.”
    “But this is the dance of the Pen and Ink Club,” bleated Mr. Prout.
    “Some mistake,” said the other, confidently. “It’s a bloomer of some kind. Here,” he added, beckoning to a portly gentleman of middle age who was bustling by, “you’d better have a talk with our hon. sec. He’ll know. Mr. Biggs, this gentleman seems to think there’s been some mistake about this dance.”
    Mr. Biggs stopped, looked, and listened. Seen at close range, he had a forceful, determined air. I liked his looks.
    “May I introduce Mr. Charlton Prout?” I said. “Author of Grey Myrtles. Mr. Prout,” I went on, as this seemed to make little or no sensation, “is the secretary of the Pen and Ink Club.”
    “I’m the secretary of the Warner’s Stores Social and Outing Club,” said Mr. Biggs.
    The two secretaries eyed each other warily, like two dogs.
    “But what are you doing here?” moaned Mr. Prout, in a voice like the wind in the tree-tops. “This is a private dance.”
    “Nothing of the kind,” said Mr. Biggs, resolutely. “I personally bought tickets for all my members.”
    “But there were no tickets for sale. The dance was for the exclusive——”
    “It’s perfectly evident that you have come to the wrong hall or chosen the wrong evening,” snapped Miss Ukridge, abruptly superseding Mr. Prout in the supreme command. I did not blame her for feeling a little impatient. The secretary was handling the campaign very feebly.
    The man behind the Warner’s Stores Social and Outing Club cocked a polite but belligerent eye at this new enemy. I liked his looks more than ever. This was a man who would fight it out on these lines if it took all the summer.
    “I have not the honour of this lady’s acquaintance,” he said, smoothly, but with a gradually reddening eye. The Biggses, that eye seemed to say, were loath to war upon women, but if the women asked for it they could be men of iron, ruthless. “Might I ask who this lady is?”
    “This is our president.”
    “Happy to meet you, ma’am.”
    “Miss Ukridge,” added Mr. Prout, completing the introduction.
    The name appeared to strike a chord in Mr. Biggs. He bent forward and a gleam of triumph came into his eyes.
    “Ukridge, did you say?”
    “Miss Julia Ukridge.”
    “Then it’s all right,” said Mr. Biggs, briskly. “There’s been no mistake. I bought our tickets from a gentleman named Ukridge. I got seven hundred at five bob apiece, reduction for taking a quantity and ten per cent. discount for cash. If Mr. Ukridge acted contrary to instructions, it’s too late to remedy the matter now. You should have made it clear to him what you wanted him to do before he went and did it.”
    And with this extremely sound sentiment the honorary secretary of the Warner’s Stores Social and Outing Club turned on the heel of his shining dancing-pump and was gone. And I, too, sauntered away. There seemed nothing to keep me. As I went, I looked over my shoulder. The author of Grey Myrtles appeared to be entering upon the opening stages of what promised to be a painful tête-à-tête. My heart bled for him. If ever a man was blameless Mr. Prout was, but the president of the Pen and Ink Club was not the woman to allow a trifle like that to stand in her way.
    “Oh, it just came to me, laddie,” said Stanley Featherstonehaugh Ukridge modestly, interviewed later by our representative. “You know me. One moment mind a blank, then—bing!—some dashed colossal idea. It was your showing me that ticket for the dance that set me thinking. And I happened to meet a bloke in a pub who worked in Warner’s Stores. Nice fellow, with a fair amount of pimples. Told me their Social and Outing Club was working up for its semi-annual beano. One thing led to another, I got him to introduce me to the hon. sec., and we came to terms. I liked the man, laddie. Great treat to meet a bloke with a good, level business head. We settled the details in no time. Well, I don’t mind telling you, Corky my boy, that at last for the first time in many years I begin to see my way clear. I’ve got a bit of capital now. After sending poor little Dora her hundred, I shall have at least fifty quid left over. Fifty quid! My dear old son, you may take it from me that there’s no limit—absolutely no limit—to what I can accomplish with fifty o’goblins in my kick. From now on I see my way clear. My feet are on solid ground. The world, laddie, is my oyster. Nothing can stop me from making a colossal fortune. I’m not exaggerating, old horse—a colossal fortune. Why, by a year from now I calculate, at a conservative estimate——”
    Our representative then withdrew.
    CHAPTER VII