Nothing Serious (20 page)

“She
told me I ought to putt off the right foot. I said I was darned well going to
keep right along putting off the left foot, as I had been taught at my mother’s
knee. She then broke off the engagement.”

Smallwood
Bessemer was not a golfer, but manlike he sympathized with the male, and he
was in a mood to be impatient of exhibitions of temperament in women.

“Women,”
he said, “are all alike. They need to be brought to heel. You have to teach
them where they get off and show them that they can’t go about the place
casting away a good man’s love as if it were a used tube of toothpaste. Let me
give you a bit of advice. Don’t sit brooding in bars. Do as I intend to do. Go
out and start making vigorous passes at some other girl.”

“To
make her jealous?”

“Exactly.”

“So
that she will come legging it back, pleading to be forgiven?”

“Precisely.”

Sidney
brightened.

“That
sounds pretty good to me. Because I mean to say there’s always the chance that
the other girl will let you kiss her, and then you’re that much ahead of the
game.”

“Quite,”
said Smallwood Bessemer.

He
returned to the dance room, glad to have been able to be of assistance to a
fellow man in his hour of distress. Celia was nowhere to be seen, and he
presumed that she was still cooling off on the terrace. He saw Sidney, who had
stayed behind for a moment to finish the bottle, flash past in a purposeful
way, and then he looked about him to decide who should be his assistant in the
little psychological experiment which he proposed to undertake. His eyes fell
on Agnes Flack, sitting in a corner, rapping her substantial foot on the floor.

Have
you met Agnes Flack? You don’t remember? Then you have not, for once seen she
is not forgotten. She is our female club champion, a position which she owes
not only to her skill at golf but to her remarkable physique. She is a fine,
large, handsome girl, built rather on the lines of Pop-Eye the sailor, and
Smallwood Bessemer, who was on the slender side, had always admired her.

He
caught her eye, and she smiled brightly. He went over to where she sat, and
presently they were out on the floor. He saw Celia appear at the French windows
and stand looking in, and intensified the silent passion of his dancing, trying
to convey the idea of being something South American, which ought to be chained
up and muzzled in the interests of pure womanhood. Celia sniffed with a
violence that caused the lights to flicker, and an hour or so later Smallwood
Bessemer went home, well pleased with the start he had made.

He was
climbing into bed, feeling that all would soon be well once more, when the
telephone rang and Sidney McMurdo’s voice boomed over the wire.

“Hoy!”
said Sidney.

“Yes?”
said Bessemer.

“You
know that advice you gave me?”

“You
took it, I hope?”

“Yes,”
said Sidney. “And a rather unfortunate thing has occurred. How it happened, I
can’t say, but I’ve gone and got engaged.”

“Too
bad,” said Bessemer sympathetically. “There was always that risk, of course.
The danger on these occasions is that one may overdo the thing and become too
fascinating. I ought to have warned you to hold yourself in. Who is the girl?”

“A
frightful pie-faced little squirt named Celia Todd,” said Sidney and hung up
with a hollow groan.

To say
that this information stunned Smallwood Bessemer would scarcely be to overstate
the facts. For some moments after the line had gone dead, he sat motionless,
his soul seething within him like a welsh rabbit at the height of its fever. He
burned with rage and resentment, and all the manhood in him called to him to
make a virile gesture and show Celia Todd who was who and what was what.

An idea
struck him. He called up Agnes Flack.

“Miss
Flack?”

“Hello?”

“Sorry
to disturb you at this hour, but will you marry me?”

“Certainly.
Who is that?”

“Smallwood
Bessemer.”

“I don’t
get the second name.”

“Bessemer.
B. for banana, e for erysipelas—”

“Oh,
Bessemer? Yes, delighted. Good night, Mr Bessemer.”

“Good
night, Miss Flack.”

Sometimes
it happens that after a restorative sleep a man finds that his views on what
seemed in the small hours a pretty good idea have undergone a change. It was so
with Bessemer. He woke next morning oppressed by a nebulous feeling that in
some way, which for the moment eluded his memory, he had made rather a chump of
himself overnight. And then, as he was brushing his teeth, he was able to put
his finger on the seat of the trouble. Like a tidal wave, the events of the
previous evening came flooding back into his mmd, and he groaned in spirit.

Why in
this dark hour he should have thought of me, I cannot say, for we were the
merest acquaintances. But he must have felt that I was the sort of man who
would lend a sympathetic ear, for he called me up on the telephone and
explained the situation, begging me to step round and see Agnes and sound her
regarding her views on the matter. An hour later, I was able to put him
abreast.

“She
says she loves you devotedly.”

“But
how can she? I scarcely know the girl.”

“That
is what she says. No doubt you are one of those men who give a woman a single
glance and—big!—all is over.”

There
was a silence at the other end of the wire. When he spoke again, there was an
anxious tremor in his voice.

“What
would you say chances were,” he asked, “for explaining that it was all a little
joke, at which I had expected that no one would laugh more heartily than
herself?”

“Virtually
nil. As a matter of fact, that point happened to come up, and she stated
specifically that if there was any rannygazoo— if, in other words, it should
prove that you had been pulling her leg and trying to make her the plaything of
an idle moment—she would know what to do about it.”

“Know
what to do about it.”

“That
was the expression she employed.”

“Know
what to do about it,” repeated Smallwood Bessemer thoughtfully. “‘Myes. I see
what you mean. Know what to do about it. Yes. But why on earth does this
ghastly girl love me? She must be cuckoo.”

“For
your intellect, she tells me. She says she finds you a refreshing change after
her late
fiancée,
Sidney McMurdo.”

“Was
she engaged to Sidney McMurdo?”

“Yes.”

“H’m!”
said Bessemer.

He told
me subsequently that his first action after he had hung up was to go to his
cupboard and take from it a bottle of tonic port which he kept handy in case he
required a restorative or stimulant. He had fallen into the habit of drinking a
little of this whenever he felt low, and Reason told him that he was never
going to feel lower than he did at that moment. To dash off a glass and fill
another was with him the work of an instant.

Generally,
the effect of this tonic port was to send the blood coursing through his veins
like liquid fire and make him feel that he was walking on the tip of his toes
with his hat on the side of his head. But now its magic seemed to have failed.
Spiritually, he remained a total loss.

Nor, I
think, can we be surprised at this. It is not every day that a young fellow
loses the girl he worships and finds that he has accumulated another whom he
not only does not love but knows that he can never love. Smallwood Bessemer
respected Agnes Flack. He would always feel for her that impersonal admiration
which is inspired by anything very large, like the Empire State Building or the
Grand Canyon of Arizona. But the thought of being married to her frankly
appalled him.

And in
addition to this there was the Sidney McMurdo angle. Smallwood Bessemer, as I
say, did not know Sidney McMurdo well. But he knew him well enough to be aware
that his reactions on finding that another man had become engaged to his
temporarily
ex-fiancée
would be of a marked nature. And as the picture
rose before his eyes of that vast frame of his and those almost varicose
muscles that rippled like dangerous snakes beneath his pullover, his soul
sickened and he had to have a third glass of tonic port.

It was
while he was draining it that Sidney McMurdo came lumbering over the threshold,
and so vivid was the impression he created of being eight foot high and broad
in proportion that Smallwood Bessemer nearly swooned. Recovering himself, he
greeted him with almost effusive cordiality.

“Come
in, McMurdo, come in,” he cried buoyantly. “Just the fellow I wanted to see. I
wonder, McMurdo, if you remember what you were saying to me the other day about
the advisability of my taking out an all-accident insurance with your firm? I
have been thinking it over, and am strongly inclined to do so.”

“It’s
the sensible thing,” said Sidney McMurdo. “A man ought to look to the future.”

“Precisely.”

“You
never know when you may not get badly smashed up.”

“Never.
Shall we go round to your place and get a form?”

“I have
one with me.”

“Then I
will sign it at once,” said Bessemer.

And he
had just done so and had written out a cheque for the first year’s premium,
when the telephone bell rang.

“Yoo-hoo,
darling,” bellowed a voice genially, and he recognized it as Agnes Flack’s. A
quick glance out of the corner of his eye told him that his companion had
recognized it, too. Sidney McMurdo had stiffened. His face was flushed. He sat
clenching and unclenching his hands. When Agnes Flack spoke on the telephone,
there was never any need for extensions to enable the bystander to follow her
remarks.

Smallwood
Bessemer swallowed once or twice.

“Oh,
good morning, Miss Flack,” he said formally.

“What
do you mean—Miss Flack? Call me Aggie. Listen, I’m at the club-house. Come on
out. I want to give you a golf lesson.”

“Very
well.”

“You
mean ‘Very well, darling’.”

“Er—yes.
Er—very well, darling.”

“Right,”
said Agnes Flack.

Smallwood
Bessemer hung up the receiver, and turned to find his companion scrutinizing
him narrowly. Sidney McMurdo had turned a rather pretty mauve, and his eyes had
an incandescent appearance. It seemed to Bessemer that with a few minor changes
he could have stepped straight into the Book of Revelations and no questions
asked.

“That
was Agnes Flack!” said McMurdo hoarsely.

“Er—yes,”
said Bessemer. “Yes, I believe it was.”

“She
called you ‘darling’.”

“Er—yes.
Yes, I believe she did.”

“You
called her ‘darling’.”

“Ee—yes.
That’s right. She seemed to wish it.”

“Why?”
asked Sidney McMurdo, who was one of those simple, direct men who like to come
straight to the point.

“I’ve
been meaning to tell you about that,” said Smallwood Bessemer. “We’re engaged.
It happened last night after the dance.”

Sidney
McMurdo gave a hitch to his shoulder muscles, which were leaping about under
his pullover like adagio dancers. His scrutiny, already narrow, became
narrower.

“So it
was all a vile plot, was it?”

“No,
no.”

“Of
course it was a vile plot,” said Sidney McMurdo petulantly, breaking off a
corner of the mantelpiece and shredding it through his fingers. “You gave me
that advice about going out and making passes purely in order that you should
be left free to steal Agnes from me. If that wasn’t a vile plot, then I don’t
know a vile plot when I see one. Well, well, we must see what we can do about
it.”

It was
the fact that Smallwood Bessemer at this moment sprang nimbly behind the table
that temporarily eased the strain of the situation. For as Sidney McMurdo
started to remove the obstacle, his eye fell on the insurance policy. He
stopped as if spellbound, staring at it, his lower jaw sagging.

Bessemer,
scanning him anxiously, could read what was passing through his mind. Sidney
McMurdo was a lover, but he was also a second vice-president of the Jersey City
and All Points West Mutual and Co-operative Life and Accident Insurance
Company, an organization which had an almost morbid distaste for parting with
its money. If as the result of any impulsive action on his part the Co. were
compelled to pay over a large sum to Smallwood Bessemer almost before they had
trousered his first cheque, there would be harsh words and raised eyebrows. He
might even be stripped of his second vice-president’s desk in the middle of a
hollow square. And next to Agnes Flack and his steel-shafted driver, he loved
his second vice-presidency more than anything in the world.

For
what seemed an eternity, Smallwood Bessemer gazed at a strong man wrestling
with himself. Then the crisis passed. Sidney McMurdo flung himself into a
chair, and sat moodily gnashing his teeth.