P G Wodehouse – Man Upstairs

“Clarence!” whispered a voice from the sofa.

“Yes, father?”

The silver-haired old man gasped for utterance.

“I’ve lost my little veto,” he said, brokenly, at length.

“Where did you see it last?” asked Clarence, ever practical.

“It’s that fellow Rackstraw!” cried the old man, in feeble rage. “That bounder Rackstraw! He’s the man behind it all. The robber!”

“Clarence!”

It was his mother who spoke. Her voice seemed to rip the air into a million shreds and stamp on them. There are few things more terrible than a Chicago voice raised in excitement or anguish.

“Mother?”

“Never mind your pop and his old veto. He didn’t know he had one till the paper said he’d lost it. You listen to me. Clarence, we are ruined.”

Clarence looked at her inquiringly.

“Ruined much?” he asked.

“Bed-rock,” said his mother. “If we have sixty thousand dollars a year after this, it’s all we shall have.”

A low howl escaped from the stricken old man on the sofa.

Clarence betrayed no emotion.

“Ah,” he said, calmly. “How did it happen?”

“I’ve just had a cable from Chicago, from your grand-pop. He’s been trying to corner wheat. He always was an impulsive old gazook.”

“But surely,” said Clarence, a dim recollection of something he had heard or read somewhere coming to him, “isn’t cornering wheat a rather profitable process?”

“Sure,” said his mother. “Sure it is. I guess dad’s try at cornering wheat was about the most profitable thing that ever happened-to the other fellows. It seems like they got busy and clubbed fifty-seven varieties of Hades out of your old grand-pop. He’s got to give up a lot of his expensive habits, and one of them is sending money to us. That’s how it is.”

“And on top of that, mind you,” moaned Lord Runnymede, “I lose my little veto. It’s bitter-bitter.”

Clarence lit a cigarette and drew at it thoughtfully. “I don’t see how we’re going to manage on twelve thousand quid a year,” he said.

His mother crisply revised his pronouns.

“We aren’t,” she said. “You’ve got to get out and hustle.”

Clarence looked at her blankly.

“Me?”

“You.”

“Work?”

“Work.”

Clarence drew a deep breath.

“Work? Well, of course, mind you, fellows do work.” he went on, thoughtfully. “I was lunching with a man at the Bachelor’s only yesterday who swore he knew a fellow who had met a man whose cousin worked. But I don’t see what I could do, don’t you know.”

His father raised himself on the sofa.

“Haven’t I given you the education of an English gentleman?”

“That’s the difficulty,” said Clarence.

“Can’t you do anything?” asked his mother.

“Well, I can play footer. By Jove, I’ll sign on as a pro. I’ll take a new name. I’ll call myself Jones. I can get signed on in a minute. Any club will jump at me.”

This was no idle boast. Since early childhood Clarence had concentrated his energies on becoming a footballer, and was now an exceedingly fine goal-keeper. It was a pleasing sight to see him, poised on one foot in the attitude of a Salomé dancer, with one eye on the man with the ball, the other gazing coldly on the rest of the opposition forward line, uncurl abruptly like the main-spring of a watch and stop a hot one. Clarence in goal was the nearest approach to an india-rubber acrobat and society contortionist to be seen off the music-hall stage. He was, in brief, hot stuff. He had the goods.

Scarcely had he uttered these momentous words when the butler entered with the announcement that he was wanted by a lady on the telephone.

It was Isabel, disturbed and fearful.

“Oh, Clarence,” she cried, “my precious angel wonder-child, I don’t know how to begin.”

“Begin just like that,” said Clarence, approvingly. “It’s topping. You can’t beat it.”

“Clarence, a terrible thing has happened. I told papa of our engagement, and he wouldn’t hear of it. He c-called you a p-p-p-”

“A what?”

“A pr-pr-pr-”

“He’s wrong. I’m nothing of the sort. He must be thinking of someone else.”

“A preposterous excrescence on the social cosmos. He doesn’t like your father being an earl.”

“A man may be an earl and still a gentleman,” said Clarence, not without a touch of coldness in his voice.