Piccadilly Jim P. G. Wodehouse (great book club books .TXT) 📖

Jimmy loved his father as he loved nobody else in the world, and the thought of having hurt him was like a physical pain. His laughter died away and he set himself with a sinking heart to try to undo the effect of his words.

“I’m awfully sorry, dad. I had no idea you would care. I wouldn’t have done a fool thing like that for a million dollars if I’d known. Isn’t there anything I can do? Gee whiz! I’ll go right round to Percy now and apologise. I’ll lick his boots. Don’t you worry, dad. I’ll make it all right.”

The whirl of words roused Mr. Crocker from his thoughts.

“It doesn’t matter, Jimmy. Don’t worry yourself. It’s only a little unfortunate, because your stepmother says she won’t think of our going back to America till these people here have given me a title. She wants to put one over on her sister. That’s all that’s troubling me, the thought that this affair will set us back, this Lord Percy being in so strong with the guys who give the titles. I guess it will mean my staying on here for a while longer, and I’d liked to have seen another ballgame. Jimmy, do you know they call baseball Rounders in this country, and children play it with a soft ball!”

Jimmy was striding up and down the little room. Remorse had him in its grip.

“What a damned fool I am!”

“Never mind, Jimmy. It’s unfortunate, but it wasn’t your fault. You couldn’t know.”

“It was my fault. Nobody but a fool like me would go about beating people up. But don’t worry, dad. It’s going to be all right. I’ll fix it. I’m going right round to this fellow Percy now to make things all right. I won’t come back till I’ve squared him. Don’t you bother yourself about it any longer, dad. It’s going to be all right.”

VI Jimmy Abandons Piccadilly

Jimmy removed himself sorrowfully from the doorstep of the Duke of Devizes’ house in Cleveland Row. His mission had been a failure. In answer to his request to be permitted to see Lord Percy Whipple, the butler had replied that Lord Percy was confined to his bed and was seeing nobody. He eyed Jimmy, on receiving his name, with an interest which he failed to conceal, for he too, like Bayliss, had read and heartily enjoyed Bill Blake’s spirited version of the affair of last night which had appeared in the Daily Sun. Indeed, he had clipped the report out and had been engaged in pasting it in an album when the bell rang.

In face of this repulse, Jimmy’s campaign broke down. He was at a loss to know what to do next. He ebbed away from the Duke’s front door like an army that has made an unsuccessful frontal attack on an impregnable fortress. He could hardly force his way in and search for Lord Percy.

He walked along Pall Mall, deep in thought. It was a beautiful day. The rain which had fallen in the night and relieved Mr. Crocker from the necessity of watching cricket had freshened London up.

The sun was shining now from a turquoise sky. A gentle breeze blew from the south. Jimmy made his way into Piccadilly, and found that thoroughfare a-roar with happy automobilists and cheery pedestrians. Their gaiety irritated him. He resented their apparent enjoyment of life.

Jimmy’s was not a nature that lent itself readily to introspection, but he was putting himself now through a searching self-examination which was revealing all kinds of unsuspected flaws in his character. He had been having too good a time for years past to have leisure to realise that he possessed any responsibilities. He had lived each day as it came in the spirit of the Monks of Thelema. But his father’s reception of the news of last night’s escapade and the few words he had said had given him pause. Life had taken on of a sudden a less simple aspect. Dimly, for he was not accustomed to thinking along these lines, he perceived the numbing truth that we human beings are merely as many pieces in a jigsaw puzzle and that our every movement affects the fortunes of some other piece. Just so, faintly at first and taking shape by degrees, must the germ of civic spirit have come to Prehistoric Man. We are all individualists till we wake up.

The thought of having done anything to make his father unhappy was bitter to Jimmy Crocker. They had always been more like brothers than father and son. Hard thoughts about himself surged through Jimmy’s mind. With a dejectedness to which it is possible that his headache contributed he put the matter squarely to himself. His father was longing to return to America⁠—he, Jimmy, by his idiotic behaviour was putting obstacles in the way of that return⁠—what was the answer? The answer, to Jimmy’s way of thinking, was that all was not well with James Crocker, that, when all the evidence was weighed, James Crocker would appear to be a fool, a worm, a selfish waster, and a hopeless, low-down skunk.

Having come to this conclusion, Jimmy found himself so low in spirit that the cheerful bustle of Piccadilly was too much for him. He turned, and began to retrace his steps. Arriving in due course at the top of the Haymarket he hesitated, then turned down it till he reached Cockspur Street. Here the Transatlantic steamship companies have their offices, and so it came about that Jimmy, chancing to look up as he walked, perceived before him, riding gallantly on a cardboard ocean behind a plate-glass window, the model of a noble vessel. He stopped, conscious of a curious thrill. There is a superstition in all of us. When an accidental happening chances to fit smoothly in with a mood, seeming to come as a direct commentary on that mood, we are apt to accept it in defiance of our pure reason as an