Short Fiction

“Sylvia!”

“Yes, papa.”

“That infernal dog of yours⁠—”

“Oh, papa!”

“Yes, that infernal dog of yours has been at my carnations again!”

Colonel Reynolds, V.C., glared sternly across the table at Miss Sylvia Reynolds, and Miss Sylvia Reynolds looked in a deprecatory manner back at Colonel Reynolds, V.C.; while the dog in question⁠—a foppish pug⁠—happening to meet the colonel’s eye in transit, crawled unostentatiously under the sideboard, and began to wrestle with a bad conscience.

“Oh, naughty Tommy!” said Miss Reynolds mildly, in the direction of the sideboard.

“Yes, my dear,” assented the colonel; “and if you could convey to him the information that if he does it once more⁠—yes, just once more!⁠—I shall shoot him on the spot you would be doing him a kindness.” And the colonel bit a large crescent out of his toast, with all the energy and conviction of a man who has thoroughly made up his mind. “At six o’clock this morning,” continued he, in a voice of gentle melancholy, “I happened to look out of my bedroom window, and saw him. He had then destroyed two of my best plants, and was commencing on a third, with every appearance of self-satisfaction. I threw two large brushes and a boot at him.”

“Oh, papa! They didn’t hit him?”

Outside in the passage was standing a girl, tall and sleepy-eyed. She wore a picture-hat and a costume the keynote of which was a certain aggressive attractiveness. There was no room for doubt as to which particular brand of scent was her favourite at the moment.

She gazed at Rutherford dully. Like Banquo’s ghost, she had no speculation in her eyes. Rutherford looked at her inquiringly, somewhat conscious of his shirtsleeves.

“Did you knock?” he said, opening, as a man must do, with the inevitable foolish question.

The apparition spoke.

“Say,” she said, “got a cigarette?”

“I’m afraid I haven’t,” said Rutherford, apologetically. “I’ve been smoking a pipe. I’m very sorry.”

“What?” said the apparition.

“I’m afraid I haven’t.”

“Oh!” A pause. “Say, got a cigarette?”

The intellectual pressure of the conversation was beginning to be a little too much for Rutherford. Combined with the heat of the night it made his head swim.

His visitor advanced into the room. Arriving at the table, she began fiddling with its contents. The pen seemed to fascinate her. She picked it up and inspected it closely.

“Say, what d’you call this?” she said.

“That’s a pen,” said Rutherford, soothingly. “A fountain-pen.”

“Oh!” A pause. “Say, got a cigarette?”

Rutherford clutched a chair with one hand, and his forehead with the other. He was in sore straits.

At this moment Rescue arrived, not before it was needed. A brisk sound of footsteps in the passage, and there appeared in the doorway a second girl.

It was to Wilson, his valet, with whom he frequently chatted in airy fashion before rising of a morning, that Rollo Finch first disclosed his great idea. Wilson was a man of silent habit, and men of silent habit rarely escaped Rollo’s confidences.

“Wilson,” he said one morning from the recesses of his bed, as the valet entered with his shaving-water, “have you ever been in love?”

“Yes, sir,” said the valet, unperturbed.

One would hardly have expected the answer to be in the affirmative. Like most valets and all chauffeurs, Wilson gave the impression of being above the softer emotions.

“What happened?” inquired Rollo.

“It came to nothing, sir,” said Wilson, beginning to strop the razor with no appearance of concern.

“Ah!” said Rollo. “And I bet I know why. You didn’t go the right way to work.”

“No, sir?”

“Not one fellow in a hundred does. I know. I’ve thought it out. I’ve been thinking the deuce of a lot about it lately. It’s dashed tricky, this making love. Most fellows haven’t a notion how to work it. No system. No system, Wilson, old scout.”

“No, sir?”

“Now, I have a system. And I’ll tell it you. It may do you a bit of good next time you feel that impulse. You’re not dead yet. Now, my system is simply to go to it gradually, by degrees. Work by schedule. See what I mean?”

“Not entirely, sir.”

“Well, I’ll give you the details. First thing, you want to find the girl.”

Historians of the social life of the later Roman Empire speak of a certain young man of Ariminum, who would jump into rivers and swim in ’em. When his friends said, “You fish!” he would answer, “Oh, pish! Fish can’t swim like me, they’ve no vim in ’em.”

Just such another was George Barnert Callender.

On land, in his land clothes, George was a young man who excited little remark. He looked very much like other young men. He was much about the ordinary height. His carriage suggested the possession of an ordinary amount of physical strength. Such was George⁠—on shore. But remove his clothes, drape him in a bathing-suit, and insert him in the water, and instantly, like the gentleman in The Tempest, he “suffered a sea-change into something rich and strange.” Other men puffed, snorted, and splashed. George passed through the ocean with the silent dignity of a torpedo. Other men swallowed water, here a mouthful, there a pint, anon, maybe, a quart or so, and returned to the shore like foundering derelicts. George’s mouth had all the exclusiveness of a fashionable club. His breaststroke was a thing to see and wonder at. When he did the crawl, strong men gasped. When he swam on his back, you felt that that was the only possible method of progression.

I want to tell you all about dear old Bobbie Cardew. It’s a most interesting story. I can’t put in any literary style and all that; but I don’t have to, don’t you know, because it goes on its Moral Lesson. If you’re a man you mustn’t miss it, because it’ll be a warning to you; and if you’re a woman you won’t want to, because it’s all about how a girl made a man feel pretty well fed up with things.

If you’re a recent acquaintance of Bobbie’s, you’ll probably be surprised to hear that there was a time when he was more remarkable for the weakness of his memory than anything else. Dozens of fellows, who have only met Bobbie since the change took place, have been surprised when I told them that. Yet it’s true. Believe me.

In the days when I first knew him Bobbie Cardew was about the most pronounced young rotter inside the four-mile radius. People have called me a silly ass, but I was never in the same class with Bobbie. When it came to being a silly ass, he was a plus-four man, while my handicap was about six. Why, if I wanted him to dine with me, I used to post him a letter at the beginning of the week, and then the day before send him a telegram and a phone-call on the day itself, and⁠—half an hour before the time we’d fixed⁠—a messenger in a taxi, whose business it was to see that he got in and that the chauffeur had the address all correct.