THE LUCK OF THE BODKINS

Dominion, Volume 29, Issue 94, 15 January 1936, Page 13

THE LUCK OF THE BODKINS

By

P. G. WODEHOUSE

29 As be sat there, quailing at the pros pect before him, a solid bodj’ suddenly lowered itself into the chair opposite, and he perceived that his solitude had been invaded by Mr. Ivor Llewellyn. "Join you?” said Mr. Llewellyn.

*‘oh, right ho,” said Monty, though far from cordially. ‘‘Just want a little chat,” said Mr. Llewellyn. If there is one quality more than another which a man must have who wishes to become president of a large motion picture corporation, it is tenacity, that sturdy bulldog spirit which refuses to admit defeat. This Ivor Llewellyn possessed in large measure. Many men in bls position, up against an obdurate Customs spy who bad flatly declined an invitation to play ball, would have been completely discouraged. Their attitude would have been that of Albert I’easemnreh caught in the toils of a remorseless Fate—bitter, resentful, but supine. Thby would have told themselves that it was futile to go on struggling.

And that is what for a whole afternoon and evening Ivor Llewellyn had told himself.

But dinner had wrought a wondrous change in his outlook. It had made him his old trustful self again. He had had vermicelli soup, turbot and boiled potatoes, two whacks at the chicken hot-pot, a slice of boar’s bead, a specially ordered souffle, Scotch woodcock and about a pint of ice-cream, and had finished with coffee and brandy in the lounge. A man of spirit cannot fill himself up like this without something happening. With Mr. Llewellyn what had happened was the dawning of hope. The thought came to him as he sat in the lounge, stuffed virtually to the brim, that the reason for Monty’s refusal to join the SuperbaLlewellyn might quite conceivably be that the ambassador sent to sound him had bungled bis end of the negotiations.

The more he examined this theory, the more plausible did it seem. Apart from being the wrong Tennyson, Ambrose, lie considered, lacked charm. He remembered now that, when despatched to place the Superba-Llewellyn’s offer before Monty, the fellow bad been wearing an unpleasant, sullen, brooding look. He must, on starting to parley with Monty, have been too curt or too obscure or too something. It was the old. old story, felt Mr. Llewellyn—no co-operation. What was needed was a personal appeal from himself. That would put everything right. He had now come to make it.

He could hardly have selected a worse moment. Already all of a twitter, Monty resenting his intrusion, had become keenly exasperated. As he had told Ambrose, except for asking him bow to spell things he scarcely knew Mr. Llewellyn, and at a time like this he would have preferred to dispense with the society of his dearest friend. He wanted to be alone, to meditate without interruption on what the dickens he was going to say to Lottie Blossom that would keep her rooted to the spot for a quarter of an hour. Chafing, he took out a cigarette and lit it. “Beautiful!” said Mr. Llewellyn. “Eh?” “Beautiful!” repeated Mr. Llewellyn, nodding -his head in a sort of ecstasy, as" if someone had shown him the Mona Lisa. “The way you lit that cigarette. Graceful. . . . Easy. . . . Deb-wlint-ever-the-word-is. Like Leslie Howard.” It was not Ivor Llewellyn’s habit to flatter those whom he was hoping to employ, his customary mode of procedure being a series of earnest attempts to create in them an inferiority complex which would come in handy when the discussion of terms began. But this was a special case. Here, clearly, was one of those rare occasions when nothing would serve but the old oil, and that in the most liberal of doses.

“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 by 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 bis 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 aetioil 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 Sebnozzle Durante or such other artists as might suggest himself to his lively imagination.

A generous wrath began to surge within him. He bad bad enough, he told himself, of all this rot. First Ambrose then Lotus Blossom, and now Ivor Llewellyn. ... Il 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 writ' ing in for your autograph?”

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 Loueila Parsons?" “No.” “Wouldn't you like to act opposi.e 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 yon don’t like. Weli, come ami 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. Bather charming, he felt, that this tough man of affairs, who might have been expected after years of struggle witli ruthless competitors to become hardened and blase, should so have preserved the heart of a child as to yearn to piay ball with people. He paused and regarded Mr. Llewellyn with a kindlier eye. "Oh. rather,” he said. “1 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 that production expert idea.” “We’ll take it up later, what? —when I’ve more time For the moment,” said Monty, “pip-pip. 1 must be pushing.”

Ho 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 dimlylit promenade deck of the second-class. Looking about him aiG finding it empty, he was well content. Lottie Blossom had not yet arrived at the tryst. He lit a cigarette ami began to muse again upon the coming interview. But once more his thoughts were diverted before lie 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 fog-horn. The painful affair continued for some little time. Then the voice ceased, ami tumultous applause broke out from an unseen audience.

But though the song was ended, the melody lingered on. 'This was due co 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 bad become inextricably associated in his mind with the thought of Gertrude Butterwick.

Twice, at village revels, he bad sung it to her accompaniment, and these two occasions, together with the reheai-sais which had preceded them, were green in his memory. To day, when he heard •The Bandolero’ or thought about ‘Tlie Bandolero’ or sang a snatch of ‘The Bandolero’ in his liath, 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 be staggered back as if the girl he loved had bit him over the head with a hockey-stick. Gertrude was tlie 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 lie 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, lie was so nervous. He asked me to come and applaud.” All those old bitter anti-Peasemareb thoughts which had turned Monty Bodkin’s blood to flame after the man’s boneheaded behaviour in the matter of the Mickey Mouse camo surging back to him now, as he heard Gertrude speak these words. So that was why she was here! Because Albert Peasemarch had asked her to come and applaud his loathsome singing. The thing made .Monty feel physically unwell. It was not only the sickening vanity of tlie 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 Peaseinnreli.

In a blinding flash of mental illumination Monty saw Albert Pcasepiarch for tlie first time for what he really was—not a mere steward but the official Bodkin Hoodoo. (To be continued.)