Uneasy Money

To
My Wife,
Bless Her

I

On a day in June, at the hour when London moves abroad in quest of lunch, a young man stood at the entrance of the Bandolero Restaurant looking earnestly up Shaftesbury Avenue: a large young man in excellent condition, with a pleasant, good-humored, brown, clean-cut face. He paid no attention to the stream of humanity that flowed past him. His mouth was set and his eyes wore a serious, almost a wistful expression. He was frowning slightly. One would have said that here was a man with a secret sorrow.

William FitzWilliam Delamere Chalmers, Lord Dawlish, had no secret sorrow. All that he was thinking of at that moment was the best method of laying a golf ball dead in front of the Palace Theater. It was his habit to pass the time in mental golf when Claire Fenwick was late in keeping her appointments with him. On one occasion she had kept him waiting so long that he had been able to do nine holes, starting at the Savoy Grill and finishing up near Hammersmith. His was a simple mind, able to amuse itself with simple things.

Some men in the circumstances in which Lord Dawlish found himself would have fidgeted and looked at their watches; some would have prowled up and down; others might have sought solace at the excellent bar which the management of the Bandolero maintains for just such emergencies. Lord Dawlish preferred mental golf.

As he stood there, gazing into the middle distance, an individual of disheveled aspect sidled up, a vagrant of almost the maximum seediness, from whose midriff there protruded a trayful of a strange welter of collar studs, shoelaces, rubber rings, buttonhooks and dying roosters. For some minutes he had been eyeing his lordship appraisingly from the edge of the curb, and now, secure in the fact that there seemed to be no policeman in the immediate vicinity, he anchored himself in front of him and observed that he had a wife and four children at home, all starving.

This sort of thing was always happening to Lord Dawlish. There was something about him, some atmosphere of unaffected kindliness, that invited it. Total strangers who had made imprudent marriages without asking his advice were forever stopping him in the street and expecting him to finance the ventures. They did it generally with a touch of reproach in their voices, as if they felt a little wounded that he had not done something about it before.

In these days when everything, from the shape of a man’s hat to his method of dealing with asparagus, is supposed to be an index to character, it is possible to form some estimate of Lord Dawlish from the fact that his vigil in front of the Bandolero had been expensive, even before the advent of the benedict with the studs and laces. In London, as in New York, there are spots where it is unsafe for a man of yielding disposition to stand still, and the corner of Shaftesbury Avenue and Piccadilly Circus is one of them. Scrubby, impecunious men drift to and fro there, waiting for the gods to provide something easy; and the prudent man, conscious of the possession of loose change, whizzes through the danger zone at his best speed, “like one that on a lonesome road doth walk in fear and dread, and having once turned round walks on, and turns no more his head, because he knows a frightful fiend doth close behind him tread.” In the seven minutes he had been waiting two frightful fiends closed in on Lord Dawlish, requesting loans of five shillings till Wednesday week and Saturday week respectively, and he had parted with the money without a murmur.

A further clue to his character is supplied by the fact that both these needy persons seemed to know him intimately and that each called him Bill. All Lord Dawlish’s friends called him Bill, and he had a catholic list of them, ranging from men whose names were in Debrett to men whose names were on the notice boards of obscure clubs in connection with the nonpayment of dues. He was the sort of man one instinctively calls Bill.

The anti-race-suicide enthusiast with the rubber rings did not call Lord Dawlish Bill, but otherwise his manner was intimate. His lordship’s gaze being a little slow in returning from the middle distance—for it was not a matter to be decided carelessly and without thought, this problem of carrying the length of Shaftesbury Avenue with a single brassy shot—he repeated the gossip from the home. Lord Dawlish regarded him thoughtfully.

“It could be done,” he said, “but you’d want a bit of pull on it. I’m sorry; I didn’t catch what you said.”

The other obliged with his remark for the third time, with increased pathos, for constant repetition was making him almost believe it himself.

“Four starving children?”

“Four, gov’nor, so help me!”

“I suppose you don’t get much time for golf then, what?” said Lord Dawlish sympathetically.

It was precisely three days, said the man, mournfully inflating a dying rooster, since his offspring had tasted bread.

This did not touch Lord Dawlish deeply. He was not very fond of bread. But it seemed to be troubling the poor fellow with the studs a great deal, so, realizing that tastes differ and that there is no accounting for them, he looked at him commiseratingly.

“Of course if they like bread—that makes it rather rotten, doesn’t it? What are you going to do about it?”

The man permitted the dying rooster to die noisily.

“Buy a dying rooster, gov’nor,” he advised. “Causes great fun and laughter.”

Lord Dawlish eyed the strange fowl without enthusiasm.

“No,” he said with a slight shudder.

“Buy a rubber ring, gov’nor. Always useful about the little home.”

“I shouldn’t know what to do with it.”

“Buy a nice collar stud.”

“I’ve got a nice collar stud.”

There was a pause. The situation had the appearance of being at a deadlock.

“I’ll tell you what,” said Lord Dawlish with the air of one who, having pondered, has been rewarded with a great idea: “The fact is, I really don’t want to buy anything. You seem by bad luck to be stocked up with just the sort of things I wouldn’t be seen dead in a ditch with. I can’t stand rubber rings—never could. I’m not really keen on buttonhooks. And I don’t want to hurt your feelings, but I think that squeaking bird of yours is about the beastliest thing I ever met. So suppose I give you a shilling and call it square, what?”

“Gawd bless yer, gov’nor!”

“Not at all. You’ll be able to get those children of yours some bread—I expect you can get a lot of bread for a shilling. Do they really like it? Rum kids!”

And having concluded this delicate financial deal Lord Dawlish turned, it being his intention to inspect the fountain in Piccadilly Circus and estimate whether a supposititious hole beneath it could be reached with a single putt, or whether, as he suspected, a preliminary use of the iron would be necessary. The movement brought him face to face with a tall girl in white.

During the business talk which had just come to an end this girl had been making her way up the side street which forms a shortcut between Coventry Street and the Bandolero, and several admirers of feminine beauty who happened to be using the same route had almost dislocated their necks looking after her. She was a strikingly handsome girl. She was tall and willowy. Her eyes, shaded by her hat, were large and gray. Her nose was small and straight, her mouth, though somewhat hard, admirably shaped, and she carried herself magnificently. One cannot blame the policeman on duty in Leicester Square for remarking to a cabman, as she passed, that he envied the bloke that that was going to meet.

Bill Dawlish was this fortunate bloke, but, from the look of him as he caught sight of her, one would have said that he did not appreciate his luck. The fact of the matter was that he had only just finished giving the father of the family his shilling and he was afraid that Claire had seen him doing it. For Claire, dear girl, was apt to be unreasonable about these little generosities of his. He cast a furtive glance behind him in the hope that the disseminator of expiring roosters had vanished, but the man was still at his elbow. Worse, he faced them, and in a hoarse but carrying voice he was instructing heaven to bless his benefactor.