Luck of the Bodkins (32 page)

'I dare say,' he proceeded, continuing the policy of applying the salve, 'you're thinking that it isn't anything to make a song and dance about - simply lighting a cigarette. But let me tell you that it's just those little things that you can tell if a fellow's got real screen sense. You have. Yessir. There!
’
exclaimed Mr Llewellyn with a fresh burst of enthusiasm. The way you took that drink of whisky. Swell! Like Ronald Colman.
’

Satisfied that he had made a good beginning and that the leaven must shortly start to work, he paused to allow these eulogies to sink in. He gazed admiringly across the table at his gifted young companion, and when, doing so, he encountered a glare which might have made another man wilt, was in no way disconcerted. He seemed to relish it. Even for that peevish glare he had a good word to say.

'Clark Gable makes his eyes act that way,' he said, 'but not so good.
’

Monty was beginning to experience some of the emotions which one may suppose a bashful goldfish to feel. He seemed unable to perform the simplest action without exciting criticism. The fact that this criticism so far had been uniformly favourable made it no better. His nose had begun to tickle, but he refrained from scratching it as he would have done in happier circumstances, feeling that should he do so Mr Llewellyn would immediately compare his technique to that of Schnozzle Durante or such other artist as might suggest himself to bis lively imagination.

A generous wrath began to surge within him. He had had enough, he told himself, of all this rot. First Ambrose, then Lotus Blossom, and now Ivor Llewellyn... It was absolute dashed persecution.

'Look here,' he said heatedly, 'if all this is leading up to your asking me to become a bally motion-picture actor, you might just as well cheese it instanter. I won't do it'

Mr Llewellyn's heart sank a little, but he persevered. Even in the face of this obduracy he could not really bring himself to believe that there existed a man capable of spurning the chance to join the Superba-Llewellyn.

'Now listen,' he began.

‘
I won't listen,' cried Monty shrilly. 'I'm sick of the whole dashed business. From morning till night, dash it, I do nothing but comb people who want me to become a motion-picture actor out of my hair. I told Ambrose Tennyson I wouldn't do it. I told Lotus Blossom I wouldn't do it. And now, just when
I
want to devote my whole mind to thinking about - to thinking, up you come and I've got to stop thinking and tell you
I
won't do it. I'm fed up, I tell you.'

'Don't you want,' asked Mr Llewellyn, a quaver in his voice,
‘
to see your name up in lights?'

‘
No.'

‘
Don't you want a million girls wr
iting in for your autograph?' ‘
No.'

Optimist though the chicken hot-pot had made him, Mr Llewellyn was unable to disguise it from himself that he was not gaining ground.

‘
Don't you want to meet Louella Parsons?'

‘
No.'

‘
Wouldn't you like to act opposite Jean Harlow?
’

‘
No. I wouldn't like to act opposite Cleopatra.'

A sudden idea flashed upon Mr Llewellyn. He thought he saw where the trouble lay.

'I've got it now,
’
he exclaimed. 'Now I see the whole thing. It's the idea of acting you don't like. Well, come and do something else. How would you feel about being a production expert?'

'What's the sense of asking me to be a production expert?
I
wouldn't know enough.'

'It ain't possible not to know enough to be a production expert,' said Mr Llewellyn, and was about to drive home this profound truth by adding that his wife's brother George was one when Monty, who had just looked at his watch, uttered a sharp cry and leaped from his seat. So absorbing had been the other's conversation that he had not remarked the passage of time. The hands of the watch stood perilously near the hour of ten.

'I've got to rush,' he said. 'Good night.' 'Hey, wait.' 'I can't wait.'

'Well, listen,' said Mr Llewellyn, perceiving that no words of his could hold this wild thing. 'Just chew it over, will you?

Think about it when you've got a minute, and if you ever do feel like playing ball with me, let me know and we'll get together.
’

Despite his agitation, Monty could not help being a little touched. Rather charming, he felt, that this tough man of affairs, who might have been expected after years- of struggle with ruthless competito
rs to become hardened and blasé,
should so have preserved the heart of a child as to yearn to play ball with people. He paused and regarded Mr Llewellyn with
a
kindlier eye.

'Oh, rather,' he said.
‘I
will.'

'That's good.'

‘I
wouldn't be a bit surprised if
I
didn't want to play ball one of these days.
’

'Fine,' said Mr Llewellyn. 'Think over the production expert idea.
’

'Well take it up later, what? - when
I
've more time. For the moment,' said Monty, 'pip-pip.
I
must be pushing.
’

He left the smoking-room and set a course for the other end of the vessel. And such was the speed with which he leaped from point to point that a mere minute sufficed to put him on the dimly-lit promenade deck of the second-class. Looking about him and finding it empty, he was well content. Lottie Blossom had not yet arrived at the tryst.

He lit a cigarette and began to muse again upon the coming interview. But once more his thoughts were diverted before he could really get the machinery going properly. Strains of music fell upon his ear.

There appeared to be a binge of some sort in progress hard by. A piano was tinkling, and a moment later there burst into song a voice in its essentials not unlike that of the ship's foghorn. The painful affair continued for some little time. Then the voice ceased, and tumultuous applause broke out from an unseen audience.

But though the song was ended, the melody lingered on. This was due to the fact that Monty was humming it under his breath. For this was a song he knew, a song which he himself had frequently rendered, a song which evoked tender memories -none other, in fact, than 'The Bandolero'.

His bosom swelled with emotion. From the days of his freshman year at the university he had always been a Bandolero addict - one of the major problems confronting his little circle of friends being that of how to keep him from singing it - but recently the number had become inextricably associated in his mind with the thought of Gertrude Butterwick.

Twice, at village revels, he had sung it to her accompaniment, and these two occasions, together with the rehearsals which had preceded them, were green in his memory. Today, when he heard 'The Bandolero' or thought about 'The Bandolero' or sang a snatch of 'The Bandolero' in his bath, her sweet face seemed to float before him.

It seemed to be floating before him now. In fact, it was. She had just emerged from a doorway in front of him and was standing gazing at him in manifest surprise. And the recollection that in about another two ticks Lottie Blossom would come bounding out of the night, turning their little twosome into a party of three, filled him with so sick a horror that he staggered back as if the girl he loved had hit him over the head with a hockey-stick.

Gertrude was the first to recover. It is not customary for the haughty nobles of the first-class to invade the second-class premises of an ocean liner, and for a moment she had been quite as astonished to see Monty as he was to see her. But
a
solution had now occurred to her.

'Why, hullo, Monty, darling,' she said. 'Did you come to hear it, too?
’

‘
Eh?'

'Albert Peasemarch's song.
’

No drowning man, about to sink for the third time, ever clutched at a lifebelt more eagerly than did Monty at this life-saving suggestion.

'Yes,' he said. 'That's right. Albert Peasemarch's song,
’

Gertrude laughed indulgently.

'Poor dear, he was so nervous. He asked me to come and applaud.'

All those old bitter anti-Peasemarch thoughts which had turned Monty Bodkin's blood to flame after the man's bone-headed behaviour in the matter of the Mickey Mouse came surging back to him now, as he heard Gertrude speak those words. So that was why she was here! Because Albert Peasemarch had asked her to come and applaud his loathsome sing' ing!

The thing made Monty feel physically unwell. It was not only the sickening vanity of the fellow - come and applaud him, forsooth! - why couldn't he be content like a true artist to give of his best and care nothing for the world's applause or censure? - it was something deeper than that. We all have a grain of superstition in us, and it had begun to seem to Monty that there was something eerie and uncanny in the way this Peasemarch kept cropping up in his path. It was like one of those Family Curses. Where the What-d'you-call-'ems had their Headless Monk and the Thingummybobs their Spectral Hound, he had Albert Peasemarch.

In a blinding flash of mental illumination Monty saw Albert Peasemarch for the first time for what he really was - not
a
mere steward but the official Bodkin Hoodoo.

'You've just missed him,' said Gertrude. He finished
a
moment ago. He went quite well. In fact, very well. But nobody sings "The Bandolero" like you, Monty.
’

It was a graceful compliment, and one which in happier circumstances Monty would have appreciated to the full. But such was his agony of mind at this moment that he scarcely heard it. He was gazing about him like Macbeth expecting the ghost of Banquo to appear. Ten o'clock to the tick, Reggie had said when outlining the arrangements for the Bodkin-Blossom conference, and it was already some minutes past ten o'clock to the tick. At any moment now, Lotus Blossom, red hair and all, might be expected to loom up through the darkness.

And then what?

‘
I say,' he asked feverishly, "what do you make the time?
’
'Why?'

'Oh, I don't know. I was just wondering if my watch was right.
’
'What do you make it?
’
'Five past ten.'

Gertrude consulted the dainty timepiece on her wrist. 'I think you're fast. I make it five to.'

A snort of relief escaped Monty.

'Let's buzz off,' he urged.

'Oh, why? It's such fun being here
’

‘
Fun?
’

'It's like being on another ship.'

‘
I hate it.
’

‘
Why?'

'It's - er - it's so dark.
’

'I like it dark. Besides, I must see Peasemarch.
’
‘
What on earth for?'

'To congratulate him. He did go quite well, and he was feeling terribly nervous, because they made him change his song at the last moment. I expect he's relieved it's all over. I think he would be hurt if I didn't tell him how good he was.'

'That's right,' he said. 'Of course. Quite. Yes. You're absolutely correct. Wait here. Ill go and fetch him.'

'There's no need to fetch him.'

'Yes, there is, definitely. I mean to say, he may be returning to the first-class by devious routes. You know, via passages and water-tight compartments and what not'

'I never thought of that. All right. But don't fetch him. Tell him to go to my state-room and get me a wrap, and then come back here.
’

‘
Right ho.
’

'Or shall I come with you?'

'No,' said Monty. 'No. No. Don't you bother. In fact, no.
’

It was some minutes before he returned. When he did so, his demeanour had undergone a marked change for the better. His brow was smooth and he no longer mopped it. He had the air of a man who has passed through the furnace and now prepares to relax in cooler surroundings.

‘
Jolly,' he said, 'it is out here. Like being on another ship.'