Indiscretions of Archie quotes

“Then I think the Cosmopolis is a bally rotten hotel!”

Mr. Brewster’s compact frame quivered. The unforgivable insult had been offered.

Question the legitimacy of Mr. Brewster’s parentage, knock Mr. Brewster down and walk on his face with spiked shoes, and you did not irremediably close all avenues to a peaceful settlement. But make a remark like that about his hotel, and war was definitely declared.

“Well,” mused Archie, on his way to the station, “one thing’s certain. I’ll never set foot in that bally place again!”

But nothing in this world is certain.

J. B. Wheeler, a stickler for accuracy, had wanted him to remove his socks and shoes; but there Archie had stood firm.

He was willing to make an ass of himself, but not a silly ass.

“All right,” said J. B. Wheeler, laying down his brush. “That will do for today.

General Mannister did not seem to share his enthusiasm.

He looked like a horse with a secret sorrow.

He coughed three times, like a horse who, in addition to a secret sorrow, had contracted asthma.

When he reached the door of his room, the passage was empty. He inserted the key in his door, turned it, pushed the door open, and pocketed the key. He was about to enter when the bag again squirmed gently in his grip.

From the days of Pandora, through the epoch of Bluebeard’s wife, down to the present time, one of the chief failings of humanity has been the disposition to open things that were better closed.

It would have been simple for Archie to have taken another step and put a door between himself and the world, but there came to him the irresistible desire to peep into the bag now—not three seconds later, but now.

Peril sharpens the intellect.

Archie’s mind as a rule worked in rather a languid and restful sort of way, but now it got going with a rush and a whir. He glared round the room. He had never seen a room so devoid of satisfactory cover.

The whole affair took but a few seconds.

Generals have received the thanks of their nations for displaying less resource on the field of battle.

He opened the door. Outside stood the bereaved woman, and beside her a bullet-headed gentleman with a bowler hat on the back of his head, in whom Archie recognised the hotel detective.

“

Squiffy always was a chap of infinite resource!

Well, I’m dashed sorry this should have happened, don’t you know.”

“Yes, it’s an egg, isn’t it!”

“Queen of my soul,” said Archie enthusiastically, “it’s an omelette!”

The business negotiations in connection with the bracelet and the ring occupied Archie on his arrival in New York to an extent which made it impossible for him to call on Brother Bill before lunch.

Professor Binstead had unwrapped his parcel, and had placed the Pongo on the table. There was a weighty silence. Archie picked up the little china figure and balanced it on the palm of his hand.

It was a small thing, he reflected philosophically, but it had made quite a stir in the world.

Mr. Brewster fermented for a while without speaking.

a fluffy pink dressing gown, hung over the back of a chair, an entirely strange suitcase, and, on the bureau, a photograph in a silver frame of a stout gentleman in evening dress whom he had never seen before in his life.

Much has been written of the emotions of the wanderer who, returning to his childhood home, finds it altered out of all recognition; but poets have neglected the theme⁠—far more poignant⁠—of the man who goes up to his room in an hotel and finds it full of somebody else’s dressing gowns and bulldogs.

Bulldogs! Archie’s heart jumped sideways and upwards with a wiggling movement, turning two somersaults, and stopped beating. The hideous truth, working its way slowly through the concrete, had at last penetrated to his brain.

Stiff suits, looking like the body when discovered by the police, hung from hooks. Limp suits, with the appearance of having swooned from exhaustion, lay about on chairs and boxes.

The place was a cloth morgue, a Sargasso Sea of serge.

Archie would not have had it otherwise. In these quiet groves of clothing a regiment could have lain hid.

Archie regarded the distressing garment with a shuddering horror. A young man with an educated taste in clothes, it got right in among his nerve centres.

“But, honestly, old soul, I don’t want to hurt your feelings, but that isn’t a suit, it’s just a regrettable incident!”

The proprietor turned to the door in a listening attitude.

rhapsodised the proprietor. “You’ll give ’em a treat! What you going to do with ’em? Carry ’em under your arm?” Archie shuddered strongly. “Well, then, I can send ’em for you anywhere you like. It’s all the same to me. Where’ll I send ’em?”

Archie meditated. The future was black enough as it was.

He shrank from the prospect of being confronted next day, at the height of his misery, with these appalling reach-me-downs.

Archie went out into the street, and began to walk pensively down a now peaceful Ninth Avenue. Out of the depths that covered him, black as the pit from pole to pole, no single ray of hope came to cheer him.

He could not, like the poet, thank whatever gods there be for his unconquerable soul, for his soul was licked to a splinter.

He felt alone and friendless in a rotten world. With the best intentions, he had succeeded only in landing himself squarely amongst the ribstons. Why had he not been content with his wealth, instead of risking it on that blighted bet with Reggie?

At least, he’s made his mother promise that she won’t sell.”

“A boy’s best friend is his mother,” said Archie approvingly.

“I had a sort of idea all along—”

“Oh, positively!” said Archie.

“Beneath a rugged exterior I hide a brain like a buzz saw. Sense? I exude it, laddie; I drip with it.”

There were moments during the ensuing days when Mr. Brewster permitted himself to hope; but more frequent were the moments when he told himself that a pronounced chump like his son-in-law could not fail somehow to make a mess of the negotiations.

His best friend could not have called him dapper. Take him for all in all and on the hoof, he might have been posing as a model for a sketch of What the Well-Dressed Man Should Not Wear.

In costume, as in most other things, it is best to take a definite line and stick to it.

This man had obviously vacillated. His neck was swathed in a green scarf; he wore an evening dress coat; and his lower limbs were draped in a pair of tweed trousers built for a larger man.

This man had obviously vacillated. His neck was swathed in a green scarf; he wore an evening dress coat; and his lower limbs were draped in a pair of tweed trousers built for a larger man.

To the north he was bounded by a straw hat, to the south by brown shoes.

Archie surveyed the man’s back carefully.

“I say, old top,” said Archie, apologetically, “the Emperor of the Blighters out yonder says you can have a job here as waiter, and he won’t do another dashed thing for you. How about it?”

“I suppose so. Though, by Jove, come to think of it, I’ve never seen one at it.”

“That’s good enough for me!” said the Sausage Chappie. “When do I begin?”

“Sorry, old man. Can’t. Just on my way to the Ritz. Stepped in because I thought you might be here. I wanted you to be the first to hear the news.”

“I’m the happiest man alive!”

“You look it, darn you!” growled Bill, on whose mood of grey gloom this human sunbeam was jarring heavily.

“I’ve never seen her before.”

“It’s my wife!” said the Sausage Chappie.

“Of course I’m sure!”

“Your wife!”

“Well, well, well!” said Archie. “Many happy returns of the day!”

At the other table, the girl, unconscious of the drama which was about to enter her life, was engrossed in conversation with the stout man. And at this moment the stout man leaned forward and patted her on the cheek.

Everybody had something to say, but the only one among those present who had anything sensible to say was the child in the sailor suit.

“Do it again!” said the child, cordially.

The Sausage Chappie did it again. He took up a fruit salad, poised it for a moment, then decanted it over Mr. Gossett’s bald head. The child’s happy laughter rang over the restaurant.

Gossett’s bald head. The child’s happy laughter rang over the restaurant. Whatever anybody else might think of the affair, this child liked it and was prepared to go on record to that effect.

Epic events have a stunning quality. They paralyse the faculties.

For a moment there was a pause. The world stood still. Mr. Brewster bubbled inarticulately. Mr. Gossett dried himself sketchily with a napkin. The Sausage Chappie snorted.

He might have had the tact to go to another hotel. But, after all, I don’t suppose it was the poor little fellow’s fault. He does whatever his wife tells him to.”

“We all do that,” said Archie the married man.

“Isn’t it a shame, precious, that all husbands haven’t nice wives like me?”

“She’s sailing for England tomorrow morning, early. No, I must go and see her now. What a shame! She’s sure to make me stop to dinner, I tell you what. Order something for me, and, if I’m not back in half an hour, start.”

“Jane Murchison,” said Archie, “is a bally nuisance.”

“Yes. But I’ve known her since she was eight.”

“Yes. But I’ve known her since she was eight.”

“If her parents had had any proper feeling,” said Archie, “they would have drowned her long before that.”

He unhooked the receiver, and asked despondently to be connected with Room Service. He thought bitterly of the exigent Jane, whom he recollected dimly as a tall female with teeth.

He had pale red hair, sandy eyelashes, and a long neck; and his eyes, as he removed them from the table and raised them to Archie’s, had a hungry look. He reminded Archie of a half-grown, half-starved hound.

“That smells good!” said the long boy. He inhaled deeply.

“Yes, sir,” he continued, as one whose mind is definitely made up, “that smells good!”

The spectacle which he witnessed was consequently at first a little unnerving. The long boy’s idea of trifling with a meal appeared to be to swallow it whole and reach out for more.

He ate like a starving Eskimo.

Archie, in the time he had spent in the trenches making the world safe for the workingman to strike in, had occasionally been quite peckish, but he sat dazed before this majestic hunger. This was real eating.

The long boy removed himself slowly, loath to leave. At the door he cast an affectionate glance back at the table.

“Some meal!” he said, devoutly. “Considerable meal!”

Archie lit a cigarette. He felt like a Boy Scout who has done his day’s Act of Kindness.

The long boy was gazing earnestly at the poster. It seemed to fascinate him.

“Pie!” he said in a hushed voice.

The word was like a battle-cry.

“Pie!” he said in a hushed voice.

The word was like a battle-cry.

“And father’s certain to find out.”

“Am I afraid of father?” cried Archie, manfully. “Well, yes, I am!”

he added, after a moment’s reflection. “But I don’t see how he can possibly get to know.”

Mr. Connolly was as firmly settled in his chair as some primeval rock. As for Mr. Brewster, he, too, had seated himself, and was gazing at Archie with a weary repulsion.

Mr. Brewster’s glance always made Archie feel as though there were soup on his shirtfront.

And suddenly from the orchestra at the other end of the room there came a familiar sound, the prelude of “Mother’s Knee.”

He stared at his old friend and business enemy, wondering if he could have heard aright.

Hope began to creep back into Mr. Brewster’s heart, like a shamefaced dog that has been away from home hunting for a day or two.

“I’ll send the men back tomorrow! That song was sent to guide me, Dan! It was meant! Thirty years ago last October me dear old mother—”

“Sorry, old man. I was just counting.”

“Birds, old thing. Only birds!” said Archie.

His memory was weak, he knew; but never before had it let him down so scurvily as this. This was a record. It stood in a class by itself, printed in red ink and marked with a star, as the bloomer of a lifetime.

For a man may forget many things: he may forget his name, his umbrella, his nationality, his spats, and the friends of his youth: but there is one thing which your married man, your in-sickness-and-in-health lizard must not forget: and that is the anniversary of his wedding day.

Remorse swept over Archie like a wave. His heart bled for Lucille. No wonder the poor girl had been rummy at breakfast. What girl wouldn’t be rummy at breakfast, tied for life to a ghastly outsider like himself?

“But, laddie,” said Archie, puzzled, “you talk as though there were something wrong with the picture. I thought it dashed hot stuff.”

“God bless you!” said J. B. Wheeler.

Archie proceeded on his way, still mystified. Then he reflected that artists as a class were all pretty weird and rummy and talked more or less consistently through their hats. You couldn’t ever take an artist’s opinion on a picture.