MONEY FOR NOTHING

Taranaki Daily News, 15 October 1934, Page 13

MONEY FOR NOTHING

By

P. G. Wodehouse

;• CHAPTER 4 (Continued). It is curious, when one reflects, to think how many different impressions a single individual can make simultaneously on a number of his or her fellow creatures. At the present moment it was almost as though four separate and distinct Dolly Molloys had entered the • establishment of Chas. By water. The Dolly whom Colonel Wyvern beheld was' a beautiful woman with just that hint of diablerie in her bearing which makes elderly widowers feel that there is life in the old dog yet. Colonel Wyvern Was no longer the dashing Hussar, who in the nineties had made his presence .felt in many a dim sitting-out place, and in many a punt beneath the willows of the Thames, but there still lingered in him a trace of the old bar-rack-room fire. Drawing himself up, he automatically twirled his moustache. To Colonel Wyvern, Dolly represented Beauty. To. Chas. Bywater, with his more practical and worldly outlook, she represented Wealth. He saw in Dolly riot so much a beautiful woman as a richlooking woman. Although' Soapy had contrived with subtle reasoning to head her off from the extensive purchases which she had contemplated making in preparation for her visit to Rudge, Dolly undoubtedly took the eye. She was, as she would have put it herself, a snappy dresser, and in Chas. Bywater’s mind she awoke roseate visions of large orders for face-creams, imported scents, and expensive bath salts. . ’ Emily, it was evident, regarded Mrs. Molloy as Perfection. A dog who, as a rule, kept- herself to herself, and looked on the world with a cool and rather sardonic eye, she had conceived for Dolly the moment they met one of those capricious adorations which come occasionally to the most hard-boiled Welsh terriers. Hastily swallowing her cough-drop, she bounded at Dolly, and fawned on her.

So far, the reactions caused by the newcomer’s entrance have been unmixedly favourable.‘ It is only when we come to Pat that we find Disapproval rearing its ugly head. Disapproval, indeed, is a mild and inadequate word. Loathing would be more correct. Where Colonel Wyvern beheld beauty, and Mr Bywater opulence, Pat saw only flashiness, vulgarity, and general horribleness. Piercing with .woman’s intuitive eye through an outer crust which to vapid and irreflective males might possibly seem attractive, she saw Dolly as a vampire and a menace—the sort of woman who " goes about the place ensnaring miserable fat-headed, innocent young men who have lived all their lives in the country and so lack the experience to see through females of her type. For, beyond a question;. felt Pat, this girl must have come to Rudge in brazen pursuit of poor old Johnnie. The fact that she took walks abroad accompanied by Emily showed that she. was staying at the Hall; and what reason could she have had for getting herself invited to the Hall if not that she wished to continue the acquaintance begun at the Mustard Spoon?,

This, then, was the explanation of John’s failure to come and pass the time of day with an old friend. What she had assumed to be jellyfishmess was in reality base treachery. Like Emily, whom, slavering over Mrs. Molloy’s shoes, she could gladly have kicked, he had been hypnotised by this woman’s specious glamour and had forsaken old allegiances.

Pat, eyeing Dolly coldly, was filled with a sisterly desire to save John from one who could never make him happy. Dolly was all friendliness. “Why, hallo,’’' she said, removing a shapely foot from Emily’s mouth, “I was wondering when I was going to run into you, I heard you lived in these parts.” “Yes?” said Pat frigidly. “I’m staying at the Hall.” “Yes?” “What a wonderful old place it is.” “Yei.” “All those pictures -and tapestries and things.” “Yer.”' '

“Is this your father?” “Yes. This is Miss Molloy, father. We met in London.” “Pleased to meet you,” said Dolly. “Charmed,” said Colonel Wyvern. l He gave another twirl of his moustache. Chas. Bywater hovered beamingly. Emily, still ecstatic, continuing to gnaw one of Dolly’s shoes. The whole spectacle was so utterly revolting that, Pat turned to the door. “I’ll be going, father,” she said. “I want to buy some stamps.” “I can sell you stamps, miss,” said Chas. Bywater affably. “Thank you, I will' go to the post office,” said Pat. Her manner suggested that you got a superior brand of stamp there. She walked out. Rudge, as she looked upon it, seemed a more depressing phce than ever. Sunshine flooded the High Street. Sunshine fell on the Carmody Arms, the Village Hall, the Plough and Chickens, the Bunch of Grapes, the Waggoner’s Rest, and the Jubilee Watering Trough, But there was no sunshine in the heart of Pat Wyvern. CHAPTER 5. And, curiously enough, at this, very moment, up at the Hall the same experience was happening to Mr. Lester Carmody. Staring out of his study window, he gazed upon a world bathed in a golden glow; but his heart was cold and heavy. He had just had a visit from, the Rev. Alistair Pond-Pond, and the Rev. Alistair had touched him for five shillings, Many men in 1 Mr. Carmody’s place would have considered that they had got off lightly. The vicar had come seeking subscriptions to thi Church Organ Fund, the Mothers’ Pleasant Sunday Evenings, the Distressed Cottagers’ Aid Society, the Stipend of the Additional Curate and the Rudge Lads’ Annual Summer Outing; and there had been moments of mad optimism when he had hoped for as much as a ten pound note.

The actual bag, as he totted it up while riding pensively away on his, motorbicycle, was the above-mentioned five shillings and a promise that the Squire’s nephew Hugo and his friend Mr. Fish should perform at the village concert next week.

And even so, Mr. Carmody was looking on him as a robber. Five shillings had gone —just like that: and every moment now he was expecting his nephew John to walk in and increase his expenditure. For just after breakfast John had asked if he could have a word with him later on in the morning and Mr. Carmody knew what that meant. John ran the Hall's dairy farm, and he was always coming to Mr. Carmody for. money to buy exotic machinery which could not, the latter considered, be really necessary. To Mr. Carmody a dairy farm was a straight issue between man and cow. You backed the cow up against a wall, secured its milk, and there you were. John always seemed to want to make the thing so complicated and difficult; and only the fact that he also made it pay induced his uncle ever to accede to his monstrous demands.

Nor was this all that was poisoning a perfect summer day for Mr. Carmody. There was in addition the soul-searing behavious of Doctor Alexander Twist, of Healthward Ho. When Doctor Twist had undertaken the contract of making a. new Lester Carmody out cf the old Lester Carmody, ho had cannily stipulated for cash down in advance—this to cover a course of thrge weeks. But at the end of the second week Mr. Carmody, learning from his nephew Hugo that an American millionaire was arriving at the Hall, had naturally felt compelled to forgo the final stages of the treatment and return home. Equally naturally, he had invited Doctor Twist to refund one-third of the fee. This the eminent physician and physical culture • expert had resolutely declined to do, and Mr. Carmody, re-read-ing the man’s letter, thought he had never set eyes upon a baser document. He was shuddering at the depths of depravity which it revealed, wheri the door opened and John came in. Mr. Carmody beheld him and shuddered. John—he could tell it by his eye—was planning another bad dent in the Budget. ! “Oh,. Uncle Lester,” said John. “Well?” said Mr. Carmody hopelessly. “I think we ought to have some new Alpha Separators.” “What?’’ “Alpha Separators,” “Why?” . “The old ones are past their work.” “What,” inquired Mr. Carmody, “is an Alpha Separator?” John said it was an Alpha Separator.

There was a pause,. John, who appeared to have something on his mind these days, stared gloomily at the carpet. Mr. Carmody shifted in his chair. “Very well,” he said. “And new tractors,” said John. “And i we could do with a few harrows.” “Why do you vzant harrows?” “For harrowing.” Even Mr. Carmody, anxious though he was to find flaws in the other’s reasoning, could see that this, might well be so. Try harrowing without harrows, and you are handicapped from the start. But why harrow at all? That was what seemed to him superfluous and wasteful. Still, he supposed it was unavoidable. After all,- John had been carefully trained at an agricultural college after leaving Oxford and presumably knew. “Very well,” he said. “All right,” said John. He went out, and Mr. Carmody experienced a little relief at the thought that he had now heard all this morning’s bad news. But dairy-farmers have second thoughts. The door opened again. “I was forgetting,” said John, poking his head in. Mr. Carmody uttered a low groan. “We want some Thomas tap-cinders.” “Thomas what?” “Thomas tap-cinders?” “Thomas tap-cinders.” Mr. Carmody swallowed unhappily. He knew it was no use asking what these mysterious implements were, for his nephew would simply reply that they were Thomas tap-cinders or that they were something invented by a Mr. Thomas "for the purpose of cinder-tap-ping, leaving his brain in the same addled condition in which it was at present. If John wished to tap cinders, he supposed he must humour him. “Very well,” he said dully. He held his breath for a few moments after .the door had closed once more;then, gathering at length that the assault on his purse was over, expelled it in a long sigh and gave himself up to bleak meditation. The lot of the English landed proprietor, felt Mr. Carmody, ; is not what it - used to be in tfie good old times. When ; the first Carmody settled in Rudge he had found little to view with alarm. He 1 was sitting pretty, and he admitted it. Those were the days when churls were churls, and a scurvy knave was quite - content } to work twelve hours a day, ' Saturdays included, in return for a little • black bread and an occasional nod of ! approval from his overlord. But in this ; twentieth century England’s peasantry . has degenerated. They expect coddling. j (To be continued). ’ 1