HELPING FREDDIE
I don’t want to you, don’t you know, and all that of rot, but I must tell you about dear old Freddie Meadowes. I’m not a at style, and all that, but I’ll some to give the thing a wash and up when I’ve finished, so that’ll be all right.
Dear old Freddie, don’t you know, has been a dear old of mine for years and years; so when I into the one and him alone in a dark corner, at nothing, and looking like the last rose of summer, you can I was about it. As a rule, the old is the life and of our set. Quite the little of fun, and all that of thing.
Jimmy Pinkerton was with me at the time. Jimmy’s a who plays—a of fellow—and us we set to work to question the pop-eyed chappie, until we got at what the was.
As we might have guessed, it was a girl. He had had a with Angela West, the girl he was to, and she had off the engagement. What the had been about he didn’t say, but she was well up. She wouldn’t let him come near her, to talk on the phone, and sent his unopened.
I was sorry for old Freddie. I what it like. I was once in love myself with a girl called Elizabeth Shoolbred, and the that she couldn’t me at any price will be recorded in my autobiography. I the thing for Freddie.
“Change of is what you want, old scout,” I said. “Come with me to Marvis Bay. I’ve taken a there. Jimmy’s on the twenty-fourth. We’ll be a party.”
“He’s right,” said Jimmy. “Change of scene’s the thing. I a man. Girl him. Man abroad. Two months later girl him, ‘Come back. Muriel.’ Man started to out a reply; that he couldn’t girl’s surname; so answered at all.”
But Freddie wouldn’t be comforted. He just on looking as if he had his last sixpence. However, I got him to promise to come to Marvis Bay with me. He said he might as well be there as anywhere.
Do you know Marvis Bay? It’s in Dorsetshire. It isn’t what you’d call a spot, but it has its good points. You the day there and on the sands, and in the you out on the with the gnats. At nine o’clock you on the and go to bed.
It to old Freddie. Once the moon was up and the in the trees, you couldn’t him from that beach with a rope. He a popular with the gnats. They’d waiting for him to come out, and would give perfectly good the miss-in-baulk just so as to be in good condition for him.
Yes, it was a peaceful of life, but by the end of the week I to wish that Jimmy Pinkerton had to come earlier: for as a Freddie, old chap, wasn’t anything to home to mother about. When he wasn’t a pipe and at the carpet, he was at the piano, playing “The Rosary” with one finger. He couldn’t play anything “The Rosary,” and he couldn’t play much of that. Somewhere about the third a would out, and he’d have to start all over again.
He was playing it as one when I came in from bathing.
“Reggie,” he said, in a voice, looking up, “I’ve her.”
“Seen her?” I said. “What, Miss West?”
“I was at the post office, the letters, and we met in the doorway. She cut me!”
He started “The Rosary” again, and side-slipped in the second bar.
“Reggie,” he said, “you ought to have me here. I must go away.”
“Go away?” I said. “Don’t talk such rot. This is the best thing that have happened. This is where you come out strong.”
“She cut me.”
“Never mind. Be a sportsman. Have another at her.”
“She looked clean through me!”
“Of she did. But don’t mind that. Put this thing in my hands. I’ll see you through. Now, what you want,” I said, “is to place her under some to you. What you want is to her you. What you want——”
“But what’s she going to thank me for?”
I for a moment.
“Look out for a and save her from drowning,” I said.
“I can’t swim,” said Freddie.
That was Freddie all over, don’t you know. A dear old in a thousand ways, but no help to a fellow, if you know what I mean.
He up the piano once more and I for the open.
I out on to the and to think this thing over. There was no that the brain-work had got to be done by me. Dear old Freddie had his qualities. He was top-hole at polo, and in days I’ve him give an of cats in a that would have you. But from that he wasn’t a man of enterprise.
Well, don’t you know, I was some rocks, with my brain like a dynamo, when I of a dress, and, by Jove, it was the girl. I had met her, but Freddie had sixteen of her his bedroom, and I I couldn’t be mistaken. She was on the sand, helping a small, child a castle. On a chair close by was an lady reading a novel. I the girl call her “aunt.” So, doing the Sherlock Holmes business, I that the child was her cousin. It me that if Freddie had been there he would have to work up some about the kid on the of it. Personally I couldn’t manage it. I don’t think I saw a child who me less sentimental. He was one of those round, kids.
After he had the he to with life, and to whimper. The girl took him off to where a was selling at a stall. And I walked on.
Now, fellows, if you ask them, will tell you that I’m a chump. Well, I don’t mind. I admit it. I am a chump. All the Peppers have been chumps. But what I do say is that every now and then, when you’d least it, I a brain-wave; and that’s what now. I if the idea that came to me then would have to a single one of any dozen of the you to name.
It came to me on my return journey. I was walking along the shore, when I saw the kid a jelly-fish with a spade. The girl wasn’t with him. In fact, there didn’t to be any one in sight. I was just going to pass on when I got the brain-wave. I the whole thing out in a flash, don’t you know. From what I had of the two, the girl was of this kid, and, anyhow, he was her cousin, so what I said to myself was this: If I this heavy-weight for the moment, and if, when the girl has got about where he can have got to, dear old Freddie leading the by the hand and telling a to the that he has him at large about the country and saved his life, why, the girl’s is to make her and be friends again. So I in the kid and off with him. All the way home I pictured that of reconciliation. I see it so vividly, don’t you know, that, by George, it gave me a in my throat.
Freddie, dear old chap, was slow at on to the points of the idea. When I appeared, the kid, and him in our sitting-room, he didn’t with joy, if you know what I mean. The kid had started to by this time, and old Freddie to it trying.
“Stop it!” he said. “Do you think nobody’s got any you? What the is all this, Reggie?”
The kid came at him with a that the window rattle. I to the and a of honey. It was the right stuff. The kid stopped and to his with the stuff.
“Well?” said Freddie, when had set in. I the idea. After a while it to him.
“You’re not such a as you look, sometimes, Reggie,” he said handsomely. “I’m to say this good.”
And he the kid from the honey-jar and took him out, to the beach for Angela.
I don’t know when I’ve so happy. I was so of dear old Freddie that to know that he was soon going to be his old self again me as if somebody had left me about a pounds. I was in a chair on the veranda, peacefully, when the road I saw the old boy returning, and, by George, the kid was still with him. And Freddie looked as if he hadn’t a friend in the world.
“Hello!” I said. “Couldn’t you her?”
“Yes, I her,” he replied, with one of those bitter, laughs.
“Well, then——?”
Freddie into a chair and groaned.
“This isn’t her cousin, you idiot!” he said.
“He’s no relation at all. He’s just a kid she to meet on the beach. She had him in her life.”
“What! Who is he, then?”
“I don’t know. Oh, Lord, I’ve had a time! Thank you’ll the next years of your life in Dartmoor for kidnapping. That’s my only consolation. I’ll come and at you through the bars.”
“Tell me all, old boy,” I said.
It took him a good long time to tell the story, for he off in the middle of nearly every to call me names, but I what had happened. She had like an while he told the he had prepared, and then—well, she didn’t actually call him a liar, but she gave him to in a of way that if he and Dr. Cook to meet, and started stories, it would be about the biggest on record. And then he had away with the kid, to a splinter.
“And mind, this is your affair,” he concluded. “I’m not mixed up in it at all. If you want to your sentence, you’d go and the kid’s and return him the police come for you.”
By Jove, you know, till I started to the place with this kid, I had a it would have been so difficult to a child to its parents. It’s a to me how caught. I Marvis Bay like a bloodhound, but nobody came to the infant. You’d have thought, from the of in him, that he was stopping there all by himself in a of his own. It wasn’t till, by an inspiration, I to ask the sweet-stall man that I out that his name was Medwin, and that his at a place called Ocean Rest, in Beach Road.
I off there like an and at the door. Nobody answered. I again. I movements inside, but nobody came. I was just going to to work on that in such a way that the idea would through into these people’s that I wasn’t there just for the fun of the thing, when a voice from above shouted, “Hi!”
I looked up and saw a round, pink face, with east and west of it, from an upper window.
“Hi!” it again.
“What the do you by ‘Hi’?” I said.
“You can’t come in,” said the face. “Hello, is that Tootles?”
“My name is not Tootles, and I don’t want to come in,” I said. “Are you Mr. Medwin? I’ve your son.”
“I see him. Peep-bo, Tootles! Dadda can see ’oo!”
The with a jerk. I voices. The reappeared.
“Hi!”
I the madly.
“Do you live here?” said the face.
“I’m here for a weeks.”
“What’s your name?”
“Pepper. But——”
“Pepper? Any relation to Edward Pepper, the owner?”
“My uncle. But——”
“I used to know him well. Dear old Edward Pepper! I wish I was with him now.”
“I wish you were,” I said.
He at me.
“This is most fortunate,” he said. “We were what we were to do with Tootles. You see, we have the here. My Bootles has just mumps. Tootles must not be to the of infection. We not think what we were to do with him. It was most your him. He from his nurse. I would to trust him to the of a stranger, but you are different. Any nephew of Edward Pepper’s has my confidence. You must take Tootles to your house. It will be an arrangement. I have to my in London to come and him. He may be here in a days.”
“May!”
“He is a man, of course; but he should be here a week. Till then Tootles can stop with you. It is an excellent plan. Very much to you. Your wife will like Tootles.”
“I haven’t got a wife,” I yelled; but the window had closed with a bang, as if the man with the had a trying to escape, don’t you know, and had it off just in time.
I a and my forehead.
The window up again.
“Hi!”
A about a me on the and like a bomb.
“Did you catch it?” said the face, reappearing. “Dear me, you missed it! Never mind. You can it at the grocer’s. Ask for Bailey’s Granulated Breakfast Chips. Tootles takes them for with a little milk. Be to Bailey’s.”
My was broken, if you know what I mean. I the situation. Taking Tootles by the hand, I walked slowly away. Napoleon’s from Moscow was a by the of it.
As we up the road we met Freddie’s Angela.
The of her had a marked on the kid Tootles. He pointed at her and said, “Wah!”
The girl stopped and smiled. I the kid, and he ran to her.
“Well, baby?” she said, to him. “So father you again, did he? Your little son and I friends on the beach this morning,” she said to me.
This was the limit. Coming on top of that with the it so me, don’t you know, that she had good-bye and was half-way the road I up with my to the of being the infant’s father.
I hadn’t dear old Freddie to sing with when he out what had happened, but I did think he might have a little more fortitude. He up, at the kid, and his head. He didn’t speak for a long time, but, on the other hand, when he he did not off for a long time. He was emotional, dear old boy. It me where he have up such expressions.
“Well,” he said, when he had finished, “say something! Heavens! man, why don’t you say something?”
“You don’t give me a chance, old top,” I said soothingly.
“What are you going to do about it?”
“What can we do about it?”
“We can’t our time acting as to this—this exhibit.”
He got up.
“I’m going to London,” he said.
“Freddie!” I cried. “Freddie, old man!” My voice shook. “Would you a at a time like this?”
“I would. This is your business, and you’ve got to manage it.”
“Freddie,” I said, “you’ve got to by me. You must. Do you that this child has to be undressed, and bathed, and again? You wouldn’t me to do all that single-handed? Freddie, old scout, we were at together. Your mother me. You me a tenner.”
He sat again.
“Oh, well,” he said resignedly.
“Besides, old top,” I said, “I did it all for your sake, don’t you know?”
He looked at me in a way.
“Reggie,” he said, in a voice, “one moment. I’ll a good deal, but I won’t for being to be grateful.”
Looking at it, I see that what saved me from Colney Hatch in that was my idea of up most of the of the local sweet-shop. By out to the kid we managed to through the of that day satisfactorily. At eight o’clock he asleep in a chair, and, having him by every in and, where there were no buttons, till something gave, we him up to bed.
Freddie looking at the of on the and I what he was thinking. To the kid had been simple—a of muscle. But how were we to him into his again? I the with my foot. There was a long which might have been anything. Also a of pink which was like nothing on earth. We looked at each other and wanly.
But in the I that there were children at the next but one. We there and their nurse. Women are wonderful, by George they are! She had that kid and looking fit for anything in about eight minutes. I on her, and she promised to come in and evening. I sat to almost again. It was the of there had been to the cloud up to date.
“And after all,” I said, “there’s to be said for having a child about the house, if you know what I mean. Kind of and domestic—what!”
Just then the kid the milk over Freddie’s trousers, and when he had come after his he to talk about what a much-maligned man King Herod was. The more he saw of Tootles, he said, the less he at those views of his on infanticide.
Two days later Jimmy Pinkerton came down. Jimmy took one look at the kid, who to be at the moment, and up his portmanteau.
“For me,” he said, “the hotel. I can’t with that of thing going on. Whose work is this? Which of you this little treasure?”
I told him about Mr. Medwin and the mumps. Jimmy interested.
“I might work this up for the stage,” he said. “It wouldn’t make a for act two of a farce.”
“Farce!” old Freddie.
“Rather. Curtain of act one on hero, a well-meaning, half-baked of just like—that is to say, a well-meaning, half-baked of idiot, the child. Second act, his with it. I’ll it out to-night. Come along and me the hotel, Reggie.”
As we I told him the of the story—the Angela part. He his and looked at me like an through his glasses.
“What!” he said. “Why, it, this is a play, ready-made. It’s the old ‘Tiny Hand’ business. Always safe stuff. Parted lovers. Lisping child. Reconciliation over the little cradle. It’s big. Child, centre. Girl L.C.; Freddie, up stage, by the piano. Can Freddie play the piano?”
“He can play a little of ‘The Rosary’ with one finger.”
Jimmy his head.
“No; we shall have to cut out the soft music. But the rest’s all right. Look here.” He in the sand. “This is the girl. This of seaweed’s the child. This is Freddie. Dialogue leading up to child’s line. Child speaks like, ‘Boofer lady, i’oo love dadda?’ Business of hands. Hold picture for a moment. Freddie L., takes girl’s hand. Business of in throat. Then big speech. ‘Ah, Marie,’ or her name is—Jane—Agnes—Angela? Very well. ‘Ah, Angela, has not this gone on too long? A little child us! Angela!’ And so on. Freddie must work up his own part. I’m just you the outline. And we must a good line for the child. ‘Boofer lady, ’oo love dadda?’ isn’t enough. We want something more—ah! ‘Kiss Freddie,’ that’s it. Short, crisp, and has the punch.”
“But, Jimmy, old top,” I said, “the only is, don’t you know, that there’s no way of the girl to the cottage. She Freddie. She wouldn’t come a mile of him.”
Jimmy frowned.
“That’s awkward,” he said. “Well, we shall have to make it an set of an interior. We can easily her on the beach somewhere, when we’re ready. Meanwhile, we must the kid letter-perfect. First for lines and eleven to-morrow.”
Poor old Freddie was in such a of mind that we not to tell him the idea till we had the kid. He wasn’t in the mood to have a thing like that over him. So we on Tootles. And early in the we saw that the only way to Tootles up to the of the thing was to of some as a sub-motive, so to speak.
“The difficulty,” said Jimmy Pinkerton at the end of the rehearsal, “is to a in the kid’s mind his line and the sweets. Once he has the that those two words, spoken, result in acid-drops, we have got a success.”
I’ve often thought, don’t you know, how it must be to be one of those animal-trainer Johnnies: to the intelligence, and that of thing. Well, this was every as exciting. Some days success to be us in the eye, and the kid got the line out as if he’d been an old professional. And then he’d go all to pieces again. And time was flying.
“We must up, Jimmy,” I said. “The kid’s uncle may arrive any day now and take him away.”
“And we haven’t an understudy,” said Jimmy. “There’s something in that. We must work! My goodness, that kid’s a study. I’ve deaf-mutes who would have learned the part quicker.”
I will say this for the kid, though: he was a trier. Failure didn’t him. Whenever there was any of sweet near he had a at his line, and on saying something till he got what he was after. His only fault was his uncertainty. Personally, I would have been prepared to it, and start the performance at the opportunity, but Jimmy said no.
“We’re not nearly ready,” said Jimmy. “To-day, for instance, he said ‘Kick Freddie.’ That’s not going to win any girl’s heart. And she might do it, too. No; we must production yet.”
But, by George, we didn’t. The up the very next afternoon.
It was nobody’s fault—certainly not mine. It was just Fate. Freddie had settled at the piano, and I was leading the kid out of the house to it, when, just as we’d got out to the veranda, along came the girl Angela on her way to the beach. The kid set up his at the of her, and she stopped at the of the steps.
“Hello, baby!” she said. “Good morning,” she said to me. “May I come up?”
She didn’t wait for an answer. She just came. She to be that of girl. She came up on the and started over the kid. And six away, mind you, Freddie the piano in the sitting-room. It was a situation, don’t you know. At any minute Freddie might take it into his to come out on to the veranda, and we hadn’t to him in his part.
I to up the scene.
“We were just going to the beach,” I said.
“Yes?” said the girl. She for a moment. “So you’re having your piano tuned?” she said. “My aunt has been trying to a for ours. Do you mind if I go in and tell this man to come on to us when he’s here?”
“Er—not yet!” I said. “Not yet, if you don’t mind. He can’t to be when he’s working. It’s the temperament. I’ll tell him later.”
“Very well,” she said, up to go. “Ask him to call at Pine Bungalow. West is the name. Oh, he to have stopped. I he will be out in a minute now. I’ll wait.”
“Don’t you think—shouldn’t we be going on to the beach?” I said.
She had started talking to the kid and didn’t hear. She was in her pocket for something.
“The beach,” I babbled.
“See what I’ve for you, baby,” she said. And, by George, don’t you know, she up in of the kid’s a of about the size of the Automobile Club.
That it. We had just been having a long rehearsal, and the kid was all up in his part. He got it right time.
“Kiss Fweddie!” he shouted.
And the door opened, and Freddie came out on to the veranda, for all the world as if he had been taking a cue.
He looked at the girl, and the girl looked at him. I looked at the ground, and the kid looked at the toffee.
“Kiss Fweddie!” he yelled. “Kiss Fweddie!”
The girl was still up the toffee, and the kid did what Jimmy Pinkerton would have called “business of hands” it.
“Kiss Fweddie!” he shrieked.
“What this mean?” said the girl, to me.
“You’d give it to him, don’t you know,” I said. “He’ll go on till you do.”
She gave the kid his toffee, and he subsided. Poor old Freddie still there gaping, without a word.
“What it mean?” said the girl again. Her was pink, and her were in the of way, don’t you know, that makes a as if he hadn’t any in him, if you know what I mean. Did you on your partner’s dress at a and tear it, and see her at you like an and say: “Please don’t apologize. It’s nothing,” and then meet her clear and as if you had on the teeth of a and had the jump up and you in the face? Well, that’s how Freddie’s Angela looked.
“Well?” she said, and her teeth gave a little click.
I gulped. Then I said it was nothing. Then I said it was nothing much. Then I said, “Oh, well, it was this way.” And, after a about Jimmy Pinkerton, I told her all about it. And all the while Idiot Freddie there gaping, without a word.
And the girl didn’t speak, either. She just listening.
And then she to laugh. I a girl laugh so much. She against the of the and shrieked. And all the while Freddie, the World’s Champion Chump, there, saying nothing.
Well I the steps. I had said all I had to say, and it to me that about here the stage-direction “exit” was in my part. I gave old Freddie up in despair. If only he had said a word, it might have been all right. But there he stood, speechless. What can a do with a like that?
Just out of of the house I met Jimmy Pinkerton.
“Hello, Reggie!” he said. “I was just to you. Where’s the kid? We must have a big to-day.”
“No good,” I said sadly. “It’s all over. The thing’s finished. Poor dear old Freddie has an of himself and killed the whole show.”
“Tell me,” said Jimmy.
I told him.
“Fluffed in his lines, did he?” said Jimmy, thoughtfully. “It’s always the way with these amateurs. We must go at once. Things look bad, but it may not be too late,” he said as we started. “Even now a well-chosen from a man of the world, and——”
“Great Scot!” I cried. “Look!”
In of the six children, a nurse, and the from the grocer’s staring. From the of the houses opposite about four hundred of sexes, staring. Down the road came five more children, a dog, three men, and a boy, about to stare. And on our porch, as of the as if they had been alone in the Sahara, Freddie and Angela, in each other’s arms.
Dear old Freddie may have been in his lines, but, by George, his had gone with a bang!
