Short Fiction P. G. Wodehouse (good books to read in english .txt) 📖

It was raw work. Oh, yes, I know all about that duty-of-a-citizen stuff. It doesn’t go. There are exceptions to every rule, and this was one of them. When a man risks his liberty to come and root at a ballgame, you’ve got to hand it to him. He isn’t a crook. He’s a fan. And we exiled fans have got to stick together.”

Waterall was quivering with fury, disappointment, and the peculiar unpleasantness of being treated by an elderly gentleman like a sack of coals. He stammered with rage.

“You damned old fool, do you realize what you’ve done? The police will be here in another minute.”

“Let them come.”

“But what am I to say to them? What explanation can I give? What story can I tell them? Can’t you see what a hole you’ve put me in?”

Something seemed to click inside Mr. Birdsey’s soul. It was the berserk mood vanishing and reason leaping back on to her throne. He was able now to think calmly, and what he thought about filled him with a sudden gloom.

“Young man,” he said, “don’t worry yourself. You’ve got a cinch. You’ve only got to hand a story to the police. Any old tale will do for them. I’m the man with the really difficult job⁠—I’ve got to square myself with my wife!”

At Geisenheimer’s

As I walked to Geisenheimer’s that night I was feeling blue and restless, tired of New York, tired of dancing, tired of everything. Broadway was full of people hurrying to the theatres. Cars rattled by. All the electric lights in the world were blazing down on the Great White Way. And it all seemed stale and dreary to me.

Geisenheimer’s was full as usual. All the tables were occupied, and there were several couples already on the dancing-floor in the centre. The band was playing “Michigan”:

I want to go back, I want to go back
To the place where I was born.
Far away from harm
With a milk-pail on my arm.

I suppose the fellow who wrote that would have called for the police if anyone had ever really tried to get him on to a farm, but he has certainly put something into the tune which makes you think he meant what he said. It’s a homesick tune, that.

I was just looking round for an empty table, when a man jumped up and came towards me, registering joy as if I had been his long-lost sister.

He was from the country. I could see that. It was written all over him, from his face to his shoes.

He came up with his hand out, beaming.

“Why, Miss Roxborough!”

“Why not?” I said.

“Don’t you remember me?”

I didn’t.

“My name is Ferris.”

“It’s a nice name, but it means nothing in my young life.”

“I was introduced to you last time I came here. We danced together.”

This seemed to bear the stamp of truth. If he was introduced to me, he probably danced with me. It’s what I’m at Geisenheimer’s for.

“When was it?”

“A year ago last April.”

You can’t beat these rural charmers. They think New York is folded up and put away in camphor when they leave, and only taken out again when they pay their next visit. The notion that anything could possibly have happened since he was last in our midst to blur the memory of that happy evening had not occurred to Mr. Ferris. I suppose he was so accustomed to dating things from “when I was in New York” that he thought everybody else must do the same.

“Why, sure, I remember you,” I said. “Algernon Clarence, isn’t it?”

“Not Algernon Clarence. My name’s Charlie.”

“My mistake. And what’s the great scheme, Mr. Ferris? Do you want to dance with me again?”

He did. So we started. Mine not to reason why, mine but to do and die, as the poem says. If an elephant had come into Geisenheimer’s and asked me to dance I’d have had to do it. And I’m not saying that Mr. Ferris wasn’t the next thing to it. He was one of those earnest, persevering dancers⁠—the kind that have taken twelve correspondence lessons.

I guess I was about due that night to meet someone from the country. There still come days in the spring when the country seems to get a stranglehold on me and start in pulling. This particular day had been one of them. I got up in the morning and looked out of the window, and the breeze just wrapped me round and began whispering about pigs and chickens. And when I went out on Fifth Avenue there seemed to be flowers everywhere. I headed for the Park, and there was the grass all green, and the trees coming out, and a sort of something in the air⁠—why, say, if there hadn’t have been a big policeman keeping an eye on me, I’d have flung myself down and bitten chunks out of the turf.

And as soon as I got to Geisenheimer’s they played that “Michigan” thing.

Why, Charlie from Squeedunk’s “entrance” couldn’t have been better worked up if he’d been a star in a Broadway show. The stage was just waiting for him.

But somebody’s always taking the joy out of life. I ought to have remembered that the most metropolitan thing in the metropolis is a rustic who’s putting in a week there. We weren’t thinking on the same plane, Charlie and me. The way I had been feeling all day, what I wanted to talk about was last season’s crops. The subject he fancied was this season’s chorus girls. Our souls didn’t touch by a mile and a half.

“This is the life!” he said.

There’s always a point when that sort of man says that.

“I suppose you come here quite a lot?” he said.

“Pretty often.”

I didn’t tell him that I came there every night, and that I came because I was paid for it. If you’re a professional dancer at Geisenheimer’s, you aren’t supposed to advertise the fact. The management thinks that if you did it might send the public away thinking too hard when