Fifty Years Young

Cromwell Argus, Volume LXI, Issue 3160, 27 April 1931, Page 7

Fifty Years Young

MOTHER, I SHALL BE LATE FOR SCHOOL. After some years it began to dawn upon Mr. Amos Goodenough that marriage to a beautiful and enterprising girl twenty years his junior was not without its drawbacks. Difficulty lay not so much in disparity of taste. Dinner at a smart restaurant, followed by a dance at one of the latest night clubs appealed to Amos with the same zest as it appealed to Felicia. After a youth spent laboriously in piling up fortune at the expense of any kind of relaxation, he felt it was up to him to claim back reckonings. But at fifty it was not possible to raise a mortgage on the bank of vitality without paying pretty heavily in interest, and the time came when, however theoretically he yearned for the White Lights, in practice the evenings presented no fairer prospect than a fire, a pipe, and a pair of roomy slippers. This was the position on the morning that Felicia passed him a joint invitation from Tommy Argot to dine and dance at the Cosmopolus, and Amos cried off. If Felicia really didn't mind he'd just stay quietly at home. Slightly to his disappointment she replied that of course she didn't mind a bit.

From thenceforward the old order began gradually to change. Yearning with every fibre of his middle-aged being to be the life and soul of the party, Amos became less and less able to stay the course. He still wanted a gay life, but he wanted a rest more. Often and more often he remained at home to nurse the fire and a growing sense of grievance. It was not that he blamed Felicia for the will and energy with which she threw herself into whatever pleasure happened to be going; as the youngest daughter of a congested vicarage, she had arrears of her own to work oft*.

It was the man Tommy Argot who was the trouble. Dark and slim against his own rather bald rotundity, Tommy was smart and dashing in the way that is so attractive to women and so repugnant to their husbands. Nevertheless, it was not until when, in a single week, Felicia had dined and danced with Tommy upon no fewer than four separate evenings, that Amos nerved himself to complaint. Felicia,' slim and adorable in pea-cock-green charmeuse, stretched ivory arms high above her burnished copper head in a gesture that contained less of anger than of rather bored protest.

"Don't be silly!" she said tolerantly. "Of course I'd rather dance with you, but if you won't brace up and come along you can't expect me to sit at home and knit. Besides," she added as an afterthought, "you couldn't have anyone more completely harmless than Tommy. Amos wasn't quite so sure of that, but thought it wouldn't be wise to put ideas into Felicia's head by saying so And then, that same night, Argot didn't bring her home until nearly two o'clock.

Amos was short with Tommy, and to cover the discourtesy Felicia went out of her way to be particularly gracious. Tommy retired looking distinctly puzzled. Upstairs, as she ran the brush through the bronze mass of her curls, Felicia turned and rent Amos: accused him of being a back-number, which was true; having insulted her by absurd jealousy, which was only fringing upon truth; and a desire to keep her chained up like a slave, which was gross libel. Finally she said that which devastated: "If you don't brace up, Amos, my lad," she remarked, "you and I will have to part." After which she retired into her own room. The circumstance that in the morning she failed to appear at breakfast did nothing to appease the jangled and protesting nerves of her hubsand. When he reached the office, Jack Symes, his friend and partner, commenting on his appearance, pressed for first causes. Repression giving way at last, Amos told the whole story, pleading for counsel. Symes was one of those self-confi-dent men who pride themselves upon keeping slightly ahead of the tide. "My dear feller," he said in his selfadvertising voice, "why not go and see that new self-rejuvenation chap, Professor Crackenthorpe? American. Simply marvellous, they tell me. New lamps for old, and all that sort of thing."

Amos's negative was bleak but determined. There were limits, even to please Felicia. "I'm not going to have gorilla-juice shot into my system, N thank you very much," he said with ( finality. Symes waved a white but spatulate * hand.'"Gorilla-juice nothing!" he protested. "It's an entirely new treatment. No injection; no operation. Just a few questions to answer and you'll come away with a bottle of medicine. To drink, mark you, not to squirt into your neck, or anything like that. But by the time you've taken the last dose you'll feel like pulling up the trees in Yarra Park."

Though Amos shrugged his shoulders, he most urgently wanted to be convinced. "There's a catch somewhere," he said aubiously. Symes waved the remark confidently aside. "The only catch," he promised, "is the expense. The Professor is no philanthropist, believe me!" Amos brightened; he was one to whom everything inexpensive is worthless.

"I'll ring him up and make an appointment," he promised. Professor Zebedee Crackenthorpe, with a string of letters after his name which may or may not have meant

anything In particular, was a bony individual with a piercing eye and a thing he did was what he called "run the rule" over Amos. After the examination there was no square inch of Amos's superficial area or interior mechanism the American couldn't have written a book about.

"Mr. Goodenough, sir," he said at last, speaking very firmly through his nose, "if ever a case was just made by Act of Congress an' the natural reactions of the hooman constitootion for my treatment, I'll say it's you. Stick around a while, an' I'll go fetch somethin' that in two three months'll make you so you'll be made as a wet hen if a person don't take you for your own son. And say," he continued, warming to his subject, "you'll feel that het-up you'll likely start in to scrap Gene Tunney." "All I want," Amos pointed out, "is to be able to put in an evening's dancing without feeling like a last-minute ccrpse the next morning." "Bo," said the Professor, whose fault, if any, was a lack of the true bedside manner, "in two —three months you'll be startin' a Correspon dence. School for the Russian Bally." "That's exactly how I want to feel,' Amos agreed- "What's your fee?"

This time the Professor did not embroider his reply with smiles. "Two hundred of your guineas," he said, "an' the dope's yours." Amos wrote a cheque, and then "stuck around" while the Professor made up the draught, which proved to be contained in an elaborate widenecked bottle the patient estimated to hold only slightly less than a quart As the Professor handed it over his manner changed. "See here, brother," he explained earnestly, "you gotter go careful with this here likker. It's got zip, this here has, an' you gotter treat it with respect. Just five drops with the mornin' corfee, an' another five when you hit the hay at nighi. Don't take moren' that at any one shot. Your spare parts have gotter get used to it gradual." "Just as you say," Amos said, and lugged the flagon to a taxi.

When he reached home he found that, a little tired from a succession of late nights, Felicia had gone to her room.

He tapped at her door. Looking ab surdly young, and ravishing in the usual "loose negligee," she was reading in front of the fire. There was an unusual sparkle in her ey<: when she turned to him. "My dear," she said, "what do you think? Lady de Hooche telephoned this afternoon and asked us —both of us—to a dance."

If Amos was not as thrilled as might have been the case had he not known that Felicia had angled for this invitation for six months past, at least he contrived to display all necessary gratification-

"When's it for?" he inquired. "To-morrow night," Felicia responded. She laid a small white hand on his arm. "And, darling," she added, "I want you to be at your best; sparkling and —er —dashing, like you were when we were first married." "I'll try, dear," Amos promised, kissed her and passed through into his own room. As he undressed he found it difficult to prevent his eyes from straying to the small bedside table upon which was the bottle of "Renewvo," a tumbler, and a small teaspoon. An ass, that man of his, to provide a halfpint glass for taking five drops of medicine .... and to forget the drinking water. It was clever of Felicia to have pulled off that Invitation from Lady do Hooche, by George! Might be useful to him, too. Sir Humphrey de Hooche was chairman of Hooche, Bludgeon, and Hooche, a concern he'd been trying to "get in with" for donkeys* years. With favorable conditions he might be able to throw out a hint or two to-morrow night. Get on terms, as it were, and follow it up later. Nothing like getting on terms. Felicia was right. He must be at his best. Full of pep and zip, like the Professor'd promised he'd be by the time that bottle was finished —like that young blighter Argot was now. Pity the treatment was going to be so long, though. Five drops twice a day seemed dashed little. Funny thing if his system couldn't cope with more than that . . ." v

And then, from the next room, came Felicia's voice, vibrant and fresh as the morning. "Good-night, dear old thing; sleep well —you've to be at your best to-morrow." "Good-night, darling," he called. Involuntarily his eyes wandered in the direction of "Renewvo." Time for the first dose. He withdrew the cork, poured five drops into the teaspoon, and from thence into the glass. , Absolutely tasteless! But, by George, there was something to it! That worn-out, jaded feeling seemed literally to flow out from him, replaced by a delicious languor. With in five minutes he was affected by a sense of mental and physical wellbeing that contained the very spirit and essence of sleep. It was about three o'clock when he awakened; a healthful, restful awakening that was as new to him recently as the beautiful drowsy feeling that had lulled him to sleep. The fact that he awakened now did not trouble him at all; he'd done so about this time for years. But where latterly he had been awake for the rest of the night, now, drowsily, he knew chat as soon as he'd drunk his usua. glass of water he'd be asleep again. No need for a light . . . All to do was just to stretch out his hand.

Yes, there they were. Caraffe and glass in their customary places. Sleepily he filled the tumbler. The flow seemed slower than usual, but with this new and delicious somnolence time was easily miscalculated. He put one finger over the edge of the glass

so that he would know when to stop pouring. He drank. Jolly nice water thatstimulating somehow.

As she looked down on her sleeping husband there was on Felicia's beautiful face an expression of bewilderment. What in the world had possessed him to buy a wig? He'd said nothing about it to her. She bent closer.

What had the man been doing to himself? Where were the wrinkles? And the crow's feet? When he'd wished her good-night he'd been just a tired, middle-aged man. And now

She laid a shaking hand on his shoulder. He stirred; brought his knuckles to his eyes in a gesture that reminded her of her own young brothers. Then, his hands withdrawn, he gazed at her with eyes that were blue and limpid. "Do you know it's nine o'clock?" Felicia asked shakily.

For a second he gazed at her without comprehension. Then, with a flash and a bound, he was out of bed. "My word," he shouted in his clear, young voice. "My word, mother, I shall be late for school!"