Laughing Gas (17 page)

It was, as may be supposed, with no little chagrin that I walked off. Every minute that separated me from that pie was like an hour. I made for the bathing-hut, chafing.

There was a gardener inside, cleaning it out with a mop.

'Good afternoon, sir,' he said.

The purity of his enunciation surprised me a bit, for he looked Japanese and I should have expected something that sounded more like a buffalo pulling its foot out of a swamp. However, I was not at leisure to go into this, for I wanted to get him out of here with the greatest possible despatch.

'Are you going to be long?' I said.

'You wish to sit in this hut, sir?'

'Yes.'

'I have just finished. There, I think that will do.'

He did a couple of dabs with his mop and came out. As he passed me, I saw that he had a squint and a wart on his nose, and I divined that this must be the man of whom Joey Cooley had spoken. I felt very much inclined to take up the matter of horned toads with him. The window from which Miss Brinkmeyer had spoken was next but one to my bedroom, numbering off from the right, so that I now knew where to go in order to deposit horned toads where they would do most good. And after the way she had butted in just now, upsetting my schemes, she needed a sharp lesson.

However, I resisted the urge, and went into the hut. And presently Ann appeared.

I sprang to my feet eagerly, but my dreams were not yet to come true. All she was carrying was what Miss Brinkmeyer would have called a nosegay of roses. I stared at it dully.

'I'm sorry,' said Ann, noting my perturbation and reading its cause aright. 'You'll have to wait a little longer. I was just coming out of the hall, when Miss Brinkmeyer came downstairs. I had to cache the stuff hurriedly in an Oriental vase. I'll get it as soon as the coast's clear, so don't look so shattered.'

I tried not to look shattered, but the disappointment had been severe and it was difficult to wear the mask.

'And, anyway, here's something that will make you laugh,' said Ann. 'You see these roses. Who do you think sent them?'

I shrugged my shoulders moodily. It did not seem to me to matter who had sent them. Roses as a substitute for pork pie left me very tepid.

'Who?'

'April June.'

My lethargy slipped from me like a garment. 'What!'

'Yes. I thought that would hand you a giggle.'

It hadn't handed me a
giggle at all. She had got the
wrong angle entirely. I was profoundly touched. The thought of April June finding time in the midst of her busy life to send flowers to a sick—or tolerably sick—child made me glow all over. It even made me forget the hunger that gnawed me.

There seemed to me something so beautifully characteristic about the kindly act. That gentle heart, I felt, had functioned so absolutely in a
ccordance with the form book. All
the old devotion came sweeping back over me.

'Yes, she has sent you roses. Conscience, I suppose.'

'Conscience?' I said coldly, for she had spoken in a nasty dry way which I didn't at all like. I found myself
eyeing
her askance. The warmth of emotion which her offer of a pork pie had aroused in me was fading. I began to feel that I had been wrong about her hidden depths. A shallow girl, I now considered. 'Conscience?' I said. 'What do you mean?'

'I suppose she felt she owed you something, after horning in on your big scene like that and trying to steal your publicity the way she did. I'm sure I don't know what the girl needs a press agent for. There isn't one in the business who can teach her anything about sneaking the spotlight.'

'I don't understand you.'

She laughed.

'Hasn't anyone told you about that? Yesterday, when you were under the gas, the door suddenly burst open and April June rushed in. "Where is my little pal?" she cried, clasping her hands and acting all over the lot. "I want my little pal" - directing, as she spoke, a meaning glance at the newspaper boys, who snapped her in six positions -including bending over you and kissing your unconscious brow. Somebody then led her gently away, shaking with sobs. Oh, horse-feathers
!'

I gave her another cold look. The expression which she had used was new to me, but one could gather its trend. Her ribald and offensive tone jarred upon me indescribably.

'I consider her behaviour little short of angelic,' I said.

'What!
'

'Certainly. There is no other word for it. How many girls in her position would have bothered to take time off in order to come and kiss brows?'

She stared.

'Are you trying to kid me?' 'I am not.'

'You mean you really don't think April June is a pill?'

The first time I had heard this monstrous word applied to the woman I loved - by Joey Cooley over the
National Geographic Magazine -
I had, it will be remembered, choked down my indignation and extended the olive branch. But now I was in no mood to overlook the slur.

'That is quite enough,' I said. 'Either cease to speak derogatorily of that divine woman, or leave my presence.'

She was plainly piqued. A sudden flush mantled her cheek. I could see that she burned, not with shame and remorse, but with resentment.

'Oh?' she said. 'Well, if that's the way you feel about it
...
all right, then. Good-bye.'

'Good-bye.'

'And not a bit of that pork pie do you get. No, sir, not a sniff of it.'

I confess that I wavered. The thrust was a keen one. But I was strong. I waved a hand nonchalantly - or as nonchalantly as I could.'

'That is entirely your affair,' I said in a reserved manner.

She paused at the door. Her bearing betrayed irresolution. Her better self, it appeared, was not wholly dead. 'You'd like that pie.' I vouchsafed no answer.

'And you know you think her a pill. You've told me so yourself.'

'I would prefer not to discuss the matter.' 'Oh, very well.'

She was gone. I sat there, brooding.

My thoughts were very bitter. Now that I was at leisure to devote myself to concentrating on it exclusively once more, I realized all that that pork pie had meant to me. My whole policy was wrapped up in it. And the reflection that April June would never know what I had given up for her sake stung like a serpent's tooth.

Presently I rose and wandered out into the sunshine, tightening my belt in the hope of dulling the ache within me. I walked at random, too distrait to care where I was going, until an unwonted softness in the terrain caused me to look down, and I saw that I had strayed off the path on to a border, beyond which was the low wall which encircled the Brinkmeyer estate. And I was about to put myself into reverse, for I had little doubt that one got hell in this establishment for trampling on the flower-beds, when I was arrested by the sight of a head. It shot up over the wall and said 'Yah!' The apparition was so unexpected that I halted in my tracks and stood staring.

It was a red head, whose roundness and outstanding ears gave it a resemblance to one of those antique vases with handles on each side, and it belonged to a tough-looking boy with green eyes and spots on his face. He was eyeing me in a manner unmistakably hostile.

'Yah!'
he said.

The lad was a complete stranger to me. But then, so was almost everybody else I met in this new world of mine. To Joey Cooley, I presumed, he would have been well known. From this aspect and tone of voice I deduced that this must be someone whom my predecessor had at one time or another offended by word or act.

My silence seemed to spur him on to further flights.

'Yah!' he said. 'Little Lord Fauntleroy!'

I was conscious of a rising resentment. At the outset, I had had no views about this young blister one way or the other, but now there was beginning to burgeon within me a very definite feeling that what he wanted was a good sock on the jaw. That epithet 'Little Lord Fauntleroy' had pierced the armour and struck home. Ever since my awakening in the chair of B. K. Burwash, those golden ringlets had been my hidden shame. And I have no doubt, so stirred was I, that I should have leaped the wall and attacked him with tooth and claw, had not I been brought up short by the sight of that miserably inadequate hand which had so depressed me earlier in the day. To try to sock anybody on the jaw with a hand like that would have been just labour chucked away. With a sigh, I realized that a pitched battle was out of the question.

I was obliged to fall back on words.

'Yah! 'I said, feeling that there was no copyright in that very effective ejaculation. It wasn't too bright, of course, but it was something.

'Yah!' he replied.

'Yah
!'
I came back, as quick as a flash. 'Yah!' he riposted. 'Sissy! Pansy! Cake-eater!' I began to fear that he was getting the better of the exchanges.

'Curly-top! You look like a girl.'

A happy recollection came to me of something which Barmy Fotheringay-Phipps of the Drones had once said to Oofy Prosser in my presence, on the occasion of Oofy declining to lend him ten bob till next Wednesday. It had made Oofy, I recalled, as shirty as dammit.

'You look like a spotted dog,' I said.

It was the right note. He winced and turned vermilion. I suppose a profusely spotted chap dislikes having it drawn to his attention what a profusely spotted chap he is.

'Come on out here,' he cried. 'I dare you.'

I did not reply. I was feeling ray arm, to see if, after all, something could not be done about this. But the forearm was like a match-stick and the biceps like a pimple. Hopeless.

'I dare you! I double dare you
!'

Suddenly, out of a clear sky, the solution came to me. I have said that I was standing on a flower-bed. This flowerbed, I now perceived, was adorned by a small tree, on which the genial Californian sun had brought out a great profusion of hard, nobbly oranges. It altered the whole aspect of affairs. Say it with oranges! The very thing.

To pluck one and let fly was with me the work of an instant. And conceive my gratification on discovering that Joey Cooley, whatever his shortcomings in the matter of physique, was an extraordinarily fine shot with an orange. David, having his unpleasantness with Goliath, could not have made better target practice. My missile took the lad squarely on the tip of the nose, and before he could recover from his natural surprise and consternation I had copped him again no less than thrice - one on the left eye, one on the right eye, and one on the chin, in the order named. I then plucked more fruit and resumed the barrage.

The thing was a walkover. It was the old story. Brains tell. The untutored savage jumps about howling threats and calling for dirty work at close quarters, and the canny scion of a more enlightened race just stays away and lets him have it at long range with his artillery, causing him to look a bit of an ass.

This red-headed stripling looked more than a bit of an ass. He stuck it out for another half-dozen oranges, and then decided to yield to my superior generalship. He legged it, and I got him on the back of the neck with a final effort.

Final, because as I poised myself for another pop my arm was gripped by an iron hand, and I found myself whirling in the air like a trout fly.

'For goodness gracious sake
!'
said Miss Brinkmeyer, seeming not a little moved. 'Can't I take my eyes off you for a single minute without your being up to some fool game? You've ruined my orange tree.'

I had not much breath with which to make a reasoned defence, and I think she did not hear what I said about military necessity. She lugged me to the house.

'You get off to your room this instant,' she said, among a number of other remarks of a deleterious nature, 'and don't you dare to leave it till it's time to go to the studio.'

I could not but feel that it was a poorish sort of homecoming for one who had conducted himself with such notable resource in a difficult situation and achieved
so signal a victory, but there
was nothing to be accomplished by arguing the point. It was evident that she would not be a good listener. I permitted her, therefore, to escort me to my room, and she went off, banging the door behind her. I lay down on the bed and gave myself up to thought.

I speculated as to the identity of the spotted lad, and wondered what was the source of his obvious distaste for Joey Cooley. Knowing Joey Cooley, I imagined that this measles case probably had a good deal of right on his side, but all the same I was glad that I had put it across him. My pride was involved. There are some remarks which one does not forgive, and if you have been forced to assume the identity of a kid with golden ringlets, 'Little Lord Fauntleroy' is one of them.

But it was only for a brief space that I was able to relive the recent scene and glory in my prowess. Abruptly, as if a button had been pressed, that agonizing desire for food began to assert itself once more.

I was still wrestling with it, when I heard footsteps outside the door and Ann came in.

'Here you are, you little mutt,' she said. 'I hadn't the heart to hold out on you.'