ABSENT TREATMENT
I want to tell you all about dear old Bobbie Cardew. It’s a most story. I can’t put in any and all that; but I don’t have to, don’t you know, it goes on its Moral Lesson. If you’re a man you mustn’t miss it, it’ll be a to you; and if you’re a woman you won’t want to, it’s all about how a girl a man well up with things.
If you’re a of Bobbie’s, you’ll be to that there was a time when he was more for the of his memory than anything else. Dozens of fellows, who have only met Bobbie since the took place, have been when I told them that. Yet it’s true. Believe me.
In the days when I him Bobbie Cardew was about the most the four-mile radius. People have called me a ass, but I was in the same class with Bobbie. When it came to being a ass, he was a plus-four man, while my was about six. Why, if I wanted him to with me, I used to post him a at the of the week, and then the day send him a and a phone-call on the day itself, and—half an hour the time we’d fixed—a messenger in a taxi, it was to see that he got in and that the had the address all correct. By doing this I managed to him, unless he had left town my messenger arrived.
The thing was that he wasn’t a in other ways. Deep in him there was a of of sense. I had him, once or twice, an almost intelligence. But to that stratum, mind you, you needed dynamite.
At least, that’s what I thought. But there was another way which hadn’t to me. Marriage, I mean. Marriage, the of the soul; that was what Bobbie. He married. Have you a bull-pup a bee? The sees the bee. It looks good to him. But he still doesn’t know what’s at the end of it till he there. It was like that with Bobbie. He in love, got married—with a of whoop, as if it were the fun in the world—and then to out things.
She wasn’t the of girl you would have Bobbie to about. And yet, I don’t know. What I is, she for her living; and to a who has done a hand’s turn in his life there’s a of fascination, a of romance, about a girl who for her living.
Her name was Anthony. Mary Anthony. She was about five six; she had a and a of red-gold hair, eyes, and one of those chins. She was a hospital nurse. When Bobbie himself up at polo, she was told off by the to his and with and all that; and the old boy hadn’t been up and about again for more than a week they off to the registrar’s and it up. Quite the romance.
Bobbie the news to me at the one evening, and next day he me to her. I her. I’ve myself—my name’s Pepper, by the way. Almost to mention it. Reggie Pepper. My uncle Edward was Pepper, Wells, and Co., the Colliery people. He left me a of bullion—I say I’ve myself, but I any one who earns a under difficulties, a girl. And this girl had had a time of it, being an and all that, and having had to do off her own for years.
Mary and I got along together splendidly. We don’t now, but we’ll come to that later. I’m speaking of the past. She to think Bobbie the thing on earth, by the way she looked at him when she I wasn’t noticing. And Bobbie to think the same about her. So that I came to the that, if only dear old Bobbie didn’t to go to the wedding, they had a of being happy.
Well, let’s up a here, and jump a year. The doesn’t start till then.
They took a and settled down. I was in and out of the place a good deal. I my open, and to me to be along as as you want. If this was marriage, I thought, I couldn’t see why were so of it. There were a of that to a man.
But we now come to the of the Dinner, and it’s just here that love’s a snag, and to occur.
I to meet Bobbie in Piccadilly, and he asked me to come to dinner at the flat. And, like a fool, of and myself under police protection, I went.
When we got to the flat, there was Mrs. Bobbie looking—well, I tell you, it me. Her gold was all up in and and things, with a what-d’-you-call-it of diamonds in it. And she was the most perfectly dress. I couldn’t to it. I can only say it was the limit. It me that if this was how she was in the of looking every night when they were at home together, it was no wonder that Bobbie liked domesticity.
“Here’s old Reggie, dear,” said Bobbie. “I’ve him home to have a of dinner. I’ll phone to the and ask them to send it up now—what?”
She at him as if she had him before. Then she scarlet. Then she as white as a sheet. Then she gave a little laugh. It was most to watch. Made me wish I was up a tree about eight hundred miles away. Then she herself.
“I am so you were able to come, Mr. Pepper,” she said, at me.
And after that she was all right. At least, you would have said so. She talked a at dinner, and Bobbie, and played us on the piano afterwards, as if she hadn’t a in the world. Quite a little party it was—not. I’m no lynx-eyed sleuth, and all that of thing, but I had her at the beginning, and I that she was the whole time and hard, to keep herself in hand, and that she would have that diamond what’s-its-name in her and else she to have one good scream—just one. I’ve sat through some thick in my time, but that one had the in a canter. At the very moment I my and got away.
Having what I did, I wasn’t particularly to meet Bobbie at the next day looking about as and as a gum-drop at an Eskimo tea-party.
He started in straightway. He to have someone to talk to about it.
“Do you know how long I’ve been married?” he said.
I didn’t exactly.
“About a year, isn’t it?”
“Not about a year,” he said sadly. “Exactly a year—yesterday!”
Then I understood. I saw light—a regular of light.
“Yesterday was——?”
“The of the wedding. I’d to take Mary to the Savoy, and on to Covent Garden. She particularly wanted to Caruso. I had the ticket for the box in my pocket. Do you know, all through dinner I had a of idea that there was something I’d forgotten, but I couldn’t think what?”
“Till your wife mentioned it?”
He nodded——
“She—mentioned it,” he said thoughtfully.
I didn’t ask for details. Women with and like Mary’s may be most of the time, but, when they take off their for a bit, they aren’t half-hearted about it.
“To be frank, old top,” said old Bobbie, in a of way, “my stock’s low at home.”
There didn’t much to be done. I just a cigarette and sat there. He didn’t want to talk. Presently he out. I at the window of our upper smoking-room, which looks out on to Piccadilly, and him. He walked slowly along for a yards, stopped, then walked on again, and into a jeweller’s. Which was an of what I meant when I said that in him there was a of sense.
It was from now on that I to be in this problem of Bobbie’s married life. Of course, one’s always in one’s friends’ marriages, they’ll turn out well and all that; but this was different. The man isn’t like Bobbie, and the girl isn’t like Mary. It was that old of the and the force. There was Bobbie, through life, a dear old in a hundred ways, but a of the water.
And there was Mary, that he shouldn’t be a chump. And Nature, mind you, on Bobbie’s side. When Nature makes a like dear old Bobbie, she’s proud of him, and doesn’t want her disturbed. She him a of natural to protect him against interference. And that is of memory. Shortness of memory a man a chump, when, but for it, he might to be one. Take my case, for instance. I’m a chump. Well, if I had the people have to teach me my life, my size in would be about number nine. But I didn’t. I them. And it was just the same with Bobbie.
For about a week, a more, the of that little him up like a tonic. Elephants, I read somewhere, are at the memory business, but they were to Bobbie that week. But, you, the wasn’t nearly big enough. It had the armour, but it hadn’t a in it. Pretty soon he was at the old game.
It was pathetic, don’t you know. The girl loved him, and she was frightened. It was the thin of the wedge, you see, and she it. A man who what day he was married, when he’s been married one year, will forget, at about the end of the fourth, that he’s married at all. If she meant to him in hand at all, she had got to do it now, he to away.
I saw that enough, and I to make Bobbie see it, when he was by way of out his to me one afternoon. I can’t what it was that he had the day before, but it was something she had asked him to home for her—it may have been a book.
“It’s such a little thing to make a about,” said Bobbie. “And she that it’s I’ve got such an memory about everything. I can’t anything. Never could.”
He talked on for a while, and, just as he was going, he out a of sovereigns.
“Oh, by the way,” he said.
“What’s this for?” I asked, though I knew.
“I it you.”
“How’s that?” I said.
“Why, that on Tuesday. In the billiard-room. Murray and Brown were playing a hundred up, and I gave you two to one that Brown would win, and Murray him by twenty odd.”
“So you do some things?” I said.
He got excited. Said that if I he was the of who to pay when he a bet, it was of me after him all these years, and a more like that.
“Subside, laddie,” I said.
Then I spoke to him like a father.
“What you’ve got to do, my old college chum,” I said, “is to together, and quick, too. As are shaping, you’re for a you know what’s you. You’ve got to make an effort. Don’t say you can’t. This two that, if your memory is rocky, you can some things. What you’ve got to do is to see that wedding and so on are in the list. It may be a brainstrain, but you can’t out of it.”
“I you’re right,” said Bobbie. “But it me why she thinks such a of these little dates. What’s it if I what day we were married on or what day she was on or what day the cat had the measles? She I love her just as much as if I were a at the halls.”
“That’s not for a woman,” I said. “They want to be shown. Bear that in mind, and you’re all right. Forget it, and there’ll be trouble.”
He the of his stick.
“Women are rummy,” he said gloomily.
“You should have of that you married one,” I said.
I don’t see that I have done any more. I had put the whole thing in a for him. You would have he’d have the point, and that it would have him up and a on himself. But no. Off he again in the same old way. I gave up with him. I had a good of time on my hands, but not to amount to anything when it was a question of dear old Bobbie by argument. If you see a man for trouble, and on it, the only thing to do is to by and wait till it comes to him. After that you may a chance. But till then there’s nothing to be done. But I a about him.
Bobbie didn’t into the all at once. Weeks by, and months, and still nothing happened. Now and then he’d come into the with a of cloud on his face, and I’d know that there had been doings in the home; but it wasn’t till well on in the that he got the just where he had been for it—in the thorax.
I was a cigarette one in the window looking out over Piccadilly, and the and going up one way and the other—most it is; I often do it—when in Bobbie, with his and his the colour of an oyster, a piece of paper in his hand.
“Reggie,” he said. “Reggie, old top, she’s gone!”
“Gone!” I said. “Who?”
“Mary, of course! Gone! Left me! Gone!”
“Where?” I said.
Silly question? Perhaps you’re right. Anyhow, dear old Bobbie nearly at the mouth.
“Where? How should I know where? Here, read this.”
He pushed the paper into my hand. It was a letter.
“Go on,” said Bobbie. “Read it.”
So I did. It was a letter. There was not much of it, but it was all to the point. This is what it said:
“MY DEAR BOBBIE,—I am going away. When you about me to to wish me many happy returns on my birthday, I will come back. My address will be Box 341, London Morning News.”
I read it twice, then I said, “Well, why don’t you?”
“Why don’t I what?”
“Why don’t you wish her many happy returns? It doesn’t much to ask.”
“But she says on her birthday.”
“Well, when is her birthday?”
“Can’t you understand?” said Bobbie. “I’ve forgotten.”
“Forgotten!” I said.
“Yes,” said Bobbie. “Forgotten.”
“How do you mean, forgotten?” I said. “Forgotten it’s the or the twenty-first, or what? How near do you to it?”
“I know it came the of January and the thirty-first of December. That’s how near I to it.”
“Think.”
“Think? What’s the use of saying ‘Think’? Think I haven’t thought? I’ve been out of my brain since I opened that letter.”
“And you can’t remember?”
“No.”
I the and ordered restoratives.
“Well, Bobbie,” I said, “it’s a hard case to on an like me. Suppose someone had come to Sherlock Holmes and said, ‘Mr. Holmes, here’s a case for you. When is my wife’s birthday?’ Wouldn’t that have Sherlock a jolt? However, I know about the game to that a can’t shoot off his unless you start him with a clue, so out of that pop-eyed and come across with two or three. For instance, can’t you the last time she had a birthday? What of weather was it? That might the month.”
Bobbie his head.
“It was just ordinary weather, as near as I can recollect.”
“Warm?”
“Warmish.”
“Or cold?”
“Well, cold, perhaps. I can’t remember.”
I ordered two more of the same. They in the Young Detective’s Manual. “You’re a great help, Bobbie,” I said. “An assistant. One of those without which no home is complete.”
Bobbie to be thinking.
“I’ve got it,” he said suddenly. “Look here. I gave her a present on her last birthday. All we have to do is to go to the shop, up the date when it was bought, and the thing’s done.”
“Absolutely. What did you give her?”
He sagged.
“I can’t remember,” he said.
Getting ideas is like golf. Some days you’re right off, others it’s as easy as off a log. I don’t dear old Bobbie had had two ideas in the same in his life; but now he did it without an effort. He just another Martini into the undergrowth, and you turn it had a brain-wave.
Do you know those little books called When were you Born? There’s one for each month. They tell you your character, your talents, your points, and your weak points at a go. Bobbie’s idea was to the whole twelve, and go through them till we out which month off Mary’s character. That would give us the month, and narrow it a whole lot.
A idea for a non-thinker like dear old Bobbie. We out at once. He took and I took half, and we settled to work. As I say, it good. But when we came to go into the thing, we saw that there was a flaw. There was of all right, but there wasn’t a single month that didn’t have something that off Mary. For instance, in the December book it said, “December people are to keep their own secrets. They are travellers.” Well, Mary had her secret, and she had for Bobbie’s needs. Then, October people were “born with original ideas” and “loved moving.” You couldn’t have up Mary’s little more neatly. February people had “wonderful memories”—Mary’s speciality.
We took a of a rest, then had another go at the thing.
Bobbie was all for May, the book said that in that month were “inclined to be capricious, which is always a to a happy married life”; but I for February, February “are to have their own way, are very earnest, and a full return in their or mates.” Which he owned was about as like Mary as anything be.
In the end he the books up, on them, them, and home.
It was what a the next days in dear old Bobbie. Have you that picture, “The Soul’s Awakening”? It a of in a of way into the middle with a look in her that to say, “Surely that is George’s step I on the mat! Can this be love?” Well, Bobbie had a soul’s too. I don’t he had to think in his life before—not think. But now he was his brain to the bone. It was painful in a way, of course, to see a being so in the soup, but I that it was all for the best. I see as as possible that all these were Bobbie out of knowledge. When it was all over he might possibly a again of a sort, but it would only be a of the he had been. It out the idea I had always had that what he needed was a good jolt.
I saw a great of him these days. I was his best friend, and he came to me for sympathy. I gave it him, too, with hands, but I failed to hand him the Moral Lesson when I had him weak.
One day he came to me as I was in the club, and I see that he had had an idea. He looked than he had done in weeks.
“Reggie,” he said, “I’m on the trail. This time I’m that I shall it off. I’ve something of importance.”
“Yes?” I said.
“I distinctly,” he said, “that on Mary’s last birthday we together to the Coliseum. How that you?”
“It’s a of memorizing,” I said; “but how it help?”
“Why, they the programme every week there.”
“Ah!” I said. “Now you are talking.”
“And the week we one of the was Professor Some One’s Terpsichorean Cats. I them distinctly. Now, are we it down, or aren’t we? Reggie, I’m going to the Coliseum this minute, and I’m going to the date of those Terpsichorean Cats out of them, if I have to use a crowbar.”
So that got him six days; for the management us like brothers; out the archives, and ran over the pages till they the cats in the middle of May.
“I told you it was May,” said Bobbie. “Maybe you’ll to me another time.”
“If you’ve any sense,” I said, “there won’t be another time.”
And Bobbie said that there wouldn’t.
Once you your memory on the run, it parts as if it doing it. I had just got off to sleep that night when my telephone-bell rang. It was Bobbie, of course. He didn’t apologize.
“Reggie,” he said, “I’ve got it now for certain. It’s just come to me. We saw those Terpsichorean Cats at a matinee, old man.”
“Yes?” I said.
“Well, don’t you see that that it to two days? It must have been either Wednesday the seventh or Saturday the tenth.”
“Yes,” I said, “if they didn’t have daily at the Coliseum.”
I him give a of howl.
“Bobbie,” I said. My were freezing, but I was of him.
“Well?”
“I’ve something too. It’s this. The day you to the Coliseum I with you at the Ritz. You had to any money with you, so you a cheque.”
“But I’m always cheques.”
“You are. But this was for a tenner, and out to the hotel. Hunt up your cheque-book and see how many for ten to the Ritz Hotel you out May the and May the tenth.”
He gave a of gulp.
“Reggie,” he said, “you’re a genius. I’ve always said so. I you’ve got it. Hold the line.”
Presently he came again.
“Halloa!” he said.
“I’m here,” I said.
“It was the eighth. Reggie, old man, I——”
“Topping,” I said. “Good night.”
It was along into the small hours now, but I I might as well make a night of it and the thing up, so I up an hotel near the Strand.
“Put me through to Mrs. Cardew,” I said.
“It’s late,” said the man at the other end.
“And later every minute,” I said. “Buck along, laddie.”
I waited patiently. I had missed my beauty-sleep, and my had hard, but I was past regrets.
“What is the matter?” said Mary’s voice.
“My are cold,” I said. “But I didn’t call you up to tell you that particularly. I’ve just been with Bobbie, Mrs. Cardew.”
“Oh! is that Mr. Pepper?”
“Yes. He’s it, Mrs. Cardew.”
She gave a of scream. I’ve often how it must be to be one of those Exchange girls. The they must hear, don’t you know. Bobbie’s and and Mrs. Bobbie’s and all about my and all that. Most it must be.
“He’s it!” she gasped. “Did you tell him?”
“No.”
Well, I hadn’t.
“Mr. Pepper.”
“Yes?”
“Was he—has he been—was he very worried?”
I chuckled. This was where I was to be the life and of the party.
“Worried! He was about the most man here and Edinburgh. He has been as if he was paid to do it by the nation. He has started out to worry after breakfast, and——”
Oh, well, you can tell with women. My idea was that we should pass the of the night each other on the across the wire, and telling each other what we were, don’t you know, and all that. But I’d got just as as this, when she at me. Absolutely! I the snap. And then she said “Oh!” in that of way. And when a woman says “Oh!” like that, it means all the she’d love to say if she only them.
And then she began.
“What men are! What brutes! How you by and see dear Bobbie himself into a fever, when a word from you would have put right, I can’t——”
“But——”
“And you call his friend! His friend!” (Metallic laugh, most unpleasant.) “It how one can be deceived. I used to think you a kind-hearted man.”
“But, I say, when I the thing, you it perfectly——”
“I it hateful, abominable.”
“But you said it was top——”
“I said nothing of the kind. And if I did, I didn’t it. I don’t wish to be unjust, Mr. Pepper, but I must say that to me there to be something positively in a man who can go out of his way to a husband from his wife, in order to himself by over his agony——”
“But——!”
“When one single word would have——”
“But you me promise not to——” I bleated.
“And if I did, do you I didn’t you to have the to your promise?”
I had finished. I had no to make. I up the receiver, and into bed.
I still see Bobbie when he comes to the club, but I do not visit the old homestead. He is friendly, but he stops of invitations. I ran across Mary at the Academy last week, and her through me like a of through a of butter. And as they came out the other side, and I off to piece myself together again, there to me the which, when I am no more, I to have on my tombstone. It was this: “He was a man who from the best motives. There is one every minute.”
