The man who found himself (Smith's Magazine 1920)/Chapter 5
CHAPTER V.
Now Moxon had come up that morning from Framlingham in Kent, where he was taking a holiday, to transact some business. Among other things, he had to see Simon Pettigrew on a question about some bills.
The apparition he had encountered in the Lall of the Charing Crosse Hotel pursued him to Plunder's office, where he first went and, when he left Plunder's for luncheon at Prosser's in Chancery Lane, it still pursued him. Though he knew it could not be Pettigrew, some uneasy spirit in his subconsciousness kept insisting that it was Pettigrew.
At two o'clock he called at Old Sergeant's Inn. He saw Brownlow, who had just returned from lunch. No, Mr. Pettigrew was not in. He had gone out that morning early and had not returned.
“I must see him,' said Moxon. “When do you think he will be in?”
Brownlow couldn't say.
“Would he be at his house, do you think?”
“Hardly,” said Brownlow. “He might have gone home, but I think it's improbable.”
“I must see him,” said Moxon again. “It's extraordinary. Why, I wrote to him telling him I was coming this afternoon, and he knows the importance of my business.”
“Mr. Pettigrew hasn't opened his morning letters yet,” said Brownlow.
“Good Lord!” said Moxon. Then, after a pause, “Will you telephone to his house to see?”
“Mr. Pettigrew has no telephone,” said Brownlow. “He dislikes them except in business.”
Moxon remembered this and other old-fashioned traits in Pettigrew. The remembrance did not ease his irritation.
“Then I'll go to his house myself,” said he.
When he arrived at King Charles Street, Mudd opened the door.
Mudd and Moxon were mutually known one to the other, Moxon having often dined there.
“Is your master in, Mudd?” asked Moxon.
“No, sir,” answered Mudd, “he's not at home and mayn't be at home for some time.”
“What do you mean?”
“He left me directions that if he wasn't at the office when the brougham called to take him to luncheon, I was to tell the office he was called away. The coachman has just come back to say he wasn't there, so I am sending him back to the office to tell them.”
“Called away! For how long?”
“Well, it might be a month,” said Mudd, remembering.
“Extraordinary!” said Moxon. “Well, I can't help it, and I can't wait. I must take my business elsewhere. I thought I saw Mr. Pettigrew in the Charing Cross Hotel, but he was dressed differently and seemed strange. Well, this is a great nuisance, but it can't be helped, I suppose.”
Off he went in a huff.
Mudd watched him as he went. Then he closed the hall door and sat down on one of the hall chairs.
“Dressed differently, and seemed strange.” It only wanted those words to start alarm in the mind of Mudd. The affair of a year ago had always perplexed him, and now this! “Seemed strange,” he repeated. “Could it be” He got up and went downstairs.
“Why, what's the matter with you, Mr. Mudd?” asked the housekeeper. “Why, you're all of a shake.”
“It's my stomach,” said Mudd.
He took a glass of ginger wine; then he fetched his hat.
“I'm going out to get the air,” said Mudd. “I mayn't be back for some time. Don't bother about me if I'm not, and be sure to lock up the plate.”
“God bless my soul! What's the matter with the man?” murmured the astonished housekeeper, as Mudd vanished. “Blest if he isn't getting as queer as his master.”
Out in the street, Mudd paused to blow his nose in a bandanna handkerchief just like Simon's. Then, as though this act had started his mechanism, off he went, hailed an omnibus in the next street, and got off at Charing Cross. He entered the Charing Cross Hotel.
“Is a Mr. Pettigrew here?” asked Mudd of the hall porter.
The hall porter grinned.
“Yes, there's a Mr. Pettigrew staying here, but he's out.”
“Well, I'm his servant,” said Mudd.
“Staying here with him?” asked the porter.
“Yes, I've followed him on. What's the number of his room?”
“The office will know,” replied the other.
“Well, just go to the office and get his key,” said Mudd. “And send a messenger boy to No. 12 King Charles Street—that's our address—to tell Mrs. Jukes, the housekeeper, I won't be able to get back to-night, maybe. Here's a shilling for him—but show me Mr. Pettigrew's room first.”
Mudd carried conviction. The hall porter went to the office.
“Key of Mr. Pettigrew's room,” said he. “His servant has just come.”
The superior damsel detached herself from bookkeeping, looked up the number, and gave the key.
Mudd took it and went up in the elevator. He opened the door of the room and went in. The place had not been tidied. Clothes lay everywhere. Like a cat in a strange house, Mudd looked around. Then he shut the door.
He took up a coat and looked at the maker's name on the tab. “Holland & Woolson.” Simon's tailors! Then he examined all the garments. Such garments! Boating flannels, serge suits! Then the shoes, the patent-leather boots. He opened the chest of drawers and found the bundle of discarded clothes—the old coat with the left elbow “going” and the rest. He held them up, examined them, folded them, and put them back.
He sat down to recover himself, blew his nose, wondered whether he or Simon were crazy, and then, rising up, began to fold and put away the new things in the wardrobe and chest of drawers. He noticed that one of the portmanteaus was locked. Yet there was something in it that slid up and down as he tilted and lowered it.
Having looked round the room once again, he went downstairs, gave up the key, made arrangements for his room, and started out.
He made for Sackville Street. Meyer, the foreman of Holland & Woolson's, was known to him. He had sometimes called on matters regarding Simon's clothes, with directions for this or that.
“That blue serge suit you've just sent for Mr. Pettigrew don't quite rightly fit, Mr. Meyer,” said the cunning Mudd. “I had the coat done up in a parcel to bring back to you for the sleeves to be shortened half an inch, but I forgot it, and only remembered I'd forgot it when I got to your door.”
“We'll send for it,” said Meyer.
“Right,” said Mudd. Then, “No—on second thoughts, I'll fetch it myself when I have a moment to spare, for we're going from home for a few days. Mr. Pettigrew has had a good lot of clothes lately, Mr. Meyer.”
“He has,” said Meyer with a twinkle in his eye. “Suits and suits—almost as if he were going to be married.”
“Married!” cried the other. “What put that into your head, Mr. Meyer? He's not a marrying man. Why, I've never seen him as much as glance an eye at a female.”
“Oh, it was only my joke,” said Meyer.
Now, in Mudd's soul there had lain for years an uneasiness, a crumpled rose-leaf of thought that touched him sometimes as he turned at night in bed. It was the fear that some day Simon might ruin Mudd's life with a mistress. He couldn't stand a mistress. He had always sworn that to himself. The experience of fellow butlers whose lives were made loathsome by mistresses would have been enough without his down deep-rooted antipathy to females except as spectacular objects. Mrs. Jukes was a relation of his and he could stand her; the maidservants were automatons beneath his notice. But a mistress
Mad alarm filled his mind, for his heart told him that the words of Meyer had foundation in probability. That affair of last year, when Simon had departed and returned in new, strange clothes, might have been the courting, this the real thing.
He left the tailors, called a taxi, and drove to the office. Brownlow was in.
“What is it, Mudd?” asked Brownlow, as the latter was shown into his room.
“Did you get my message, Mr. Brownlow?” asked Mudd.
“Yes.”
“Oh, that's all right,” said Mudd. “I just thought I'd call and ask. The master told me to send the message; he's gone away for a bit. Wants a change, too. I think he's been overworking lately, Mr. Brownlow.”
“He's always overworking,” said Brownlow. “I think he's been suffering from brain fag, Mudd. He's very reticent about himself, but I'm glad he saw a doctor.”
“Saw a doctor! Why, he never told me!”
“Didn't he? Well, he did—Doctor Oppenshaw, of Harley Street. This is between you and me. Try and make him rest more, Mudd.”
“I will,” said Mudd. “He wants rest. I've been uneasy about him a long while. What's the doctor's number in Harley Street, Mr. Brownlow?”
“No. 100A,” said Brownlow, picking the number out of his marvelous memory, “but don't let Mr. Pettigrew know I told you. He's very touchy about himself.”
“I won't,” promised Mudd, as he went off.
“Faithful old servitor,” thought Brownlow.
The faithful old servitor got into a taxi.
“No. 100A Harley Street,” said he to the driver. “Be quick and I'll give you an extra tuppence.”
Oppenshaw was in. When he was informed that Pettigrew's servant had called to see him, he turned over a duchess he was busy with, gave her a harmless prescription, bowed her out, and rang the bell.
Mudd was shown in.
“I've come to ask” began Mudd.
“Sit down,” said Oppenshaw.
“I've come to speak”
“About your master. How is he?”
“Well, I've come to ask you, sir. He's at the Charing Cross Hotel at present.”
“Has he gone there to live?”
“Well, he's there.”
“I saw him some time ago about the state of his health and, frankly, Mr. Mudd, it's serious.”
Simon broke in. “How much?” said he. “Tuppence,” said the conductor.
Mudd nodded.
“Tell me,” said Oppenshaw, “has he been buying new clothes?”
“Heaps, no end,” said Mudd, “and such clothes! Things he's never worn before.”
“So! Well, it's fortunate you found him. What is his conversation like? Have you talked to him much?”
“I haven't seen him yet,” Mudd explained.
“Well, stay close to him, and be very careful. He is suffering from a form of mental upset. You must cross him as little as possible. Use persuasion, gentle persuasion. The thing will run its course. It mustn't be suddenly checked.”
“Is he mad?” asked the other.
“No, but he is not himself—or rather he is himself—in a different way, but a sudden check might make him mad. You have heard of people walking in their sleep. Well, this is something akin to that. You know it is highly dangerous to awaken a sleepwalker suddenly. Well, it's just the same with Mr. Pettigrew. It might unbalance his mind for good.”
“What am I to do?”
“Just keep watch on him.”
“But suppose he don't know me?”
“He won't know you, but if you are kind to him he will accept you into his environment, and then you will link on to his mental state.”
“He's out now, and God knows where, or doing what,” said Mudd, “but I'll be on the watch for him coming in—if he ever comes.”
“Oh, he'll come home right enough.”
“Is there any fear of those women getting hold of him?” asked Mudd, returning to his old dread.
“That's just what there is—every fear—but you must be very careful not to interpose your will violently. Get gently between, gently between. You understand me. Suggestion does a lot in these cases. Another thing: you must treat him as one treats a boy. You must imagine to yourself that your master is only twenty, for that, in truth, is what he is. He has gone back to a younger state, or rather, a younger state has come to meet him, having lain dormant, just as a wisdom tooth lies dormant, then grows.”
“Oh, Lord!” said Mudd. “I never did think I'd live to see this day!”
“Oh, it might be worse. From what I can make out of his youth, it was not a vicious one, only foolish. Had he been vicious when young, he might be terrible now.”
“The first solicitor in London,” said Mudd in a dreary voice.
“Well, he's not the first solicitor in London to make a fool of himself, nor will he be the last. Cheer up, and keep your eyes open and do your duty. No man can do more than that.”
“Shall I send for you, doctor, if he gets worse?”
“Well,” said Oppenshaw, “from what you tell me, he couldn't be much worse. No, don't bother to send—unless the thing took a different course and he were to become violent without reason. But that won't happen, you can take my word for it.”
Mudd departed. He walked all the way back to the Charing Cross Hotel, but instead of entering, he suddenly took a taxi, and returned to Charles Street. Here he packed some things in a hand bag and, having again given directions to Mrs. Jukes to lock up the plate, he told her he might be gone some time.
“I'm going with the master on some law business,” said Mudd. “Make sure and bolt the front door—and lock up the plate.”
It was the third or fourth time he had given her these instructions.
“He's out of his mind,” said Mrs. Jukes, as she watched him go. She wasn't far wrong.
Mudd had been used to a rut, a rut forty years deep. His light and pleasant duties carried him easily through the day. Of evenings when Simon was dining out, he would join a social circle in the private room of a highly respectable tavern close by, smoke his pipe, drink two hot gins, and depart for home at ten-thirty. When Simon was in, he could smoke his pipe and read his paper in his own private room. He had five hundred pounds laid by in the bank—no stocks and shares for Mudd—and he would vary his evening amusements by counting the toll of his money. It is easy to be seen that this jolt out of the rut was, literally, a jolt.
At the Charing Cross Hotel he found the room allotted to him, deposited his things, and, disdaining the servant's quarters, went out to a tavern to read the paper. He reckoned Simon might not return till late, and he reckoned right.