p
smith rose courteously as she entered.
“my dear miss clarkson,” he said, “if you can spare me a moment of your valuable time . . .”
“good gracious!” said eve. “how extraordinary!”
“a singular coincidence,” agreed psmith.
“you never gave me time to thank you for the umbrella,” said eve reproachfully. “you must have thought me awfully rude. but you took my breath away.”
“my dear miss clarkson, please do not . . .”
“why do you keep calling me that?”
“aren’t you miss clarkson either?”
“of course i’m not.”
“then,” said psmith, “i must start my quest all over again. these constant checks are trying to an ardent spirit. perhaps you are a young bride come to engage her first cook?”
“no. i’m not married.”
“good!”
eve found his relieved thankfulness a little embarrassing. in the momentary pause which followed his remark, enquiries entered alertly.
“miss clarkson will see you now, sir.”
“leave us,” said psmith with a wave of his hand. “we would be alone.”
[p. 71]enquiries stared; then, awed by his manner and general appearance of magnificence, withdrew.
“i suppose really,” said eve, toying with the umbrella, “i ought to give this back to you.” she glanced at the dripping window. “but it is raining rather hard, isn’t it?”
“like the dickens,” assented psmith.
“then would you mind very much if i kept it till this evening?”
“please do.”
“thanks ever so much. i will send it back to you to-night if you will give me the name and address.”
psmith waved his hand deprecatingly.
“no, no. if it is of any use to you, i hope that you will look on it as a present.”
“a present!”
“a gift,” explained psmith.
“but i really can’t go about accepting expensive umbrellas from people. where shall i send it?”
“if you insist, you may send it to the hon. hugo walderwick, drones club, dover street. but it really isn’t necessary.”
“i won’t forget. and thank you very much, mr. walderwick.”
“why do you call me that?”
“well, you said . . .”
“ah, i see. a slight confusion of ideas. no, i am not mr. walderwick. and between ourselves i should hate to be. his is a very c3 intelligence. comrade walderwick is merely the man to whom the umbrella belongs.”
eve’s eyes opened wide.
“do you mean to say you gave me somebody else’s umbrella?”
[p. 72]“i had unfortunately omitted to bring my own out with me this morning.”
“i never heard of such a thing!”
“merely practical socialism. other people are content to talk about the redistribution of property. i go out and do it.”
“but won’t he be awfully angry when he finds out it has gone?”
“he has found out. and it was pretty to see his delight. i explained the circumstances, and he was charmed to have been of service to you.”
the door opened again, and this time it was miss clarkson in person who entered. she had found enquiries’ statement over the speaking-tube rambling and unsatisfactory, and had come to investigate for herself the reason why the machinery of the office was being held up.
“oh, i must go,” said eve, as she saw her. “i’m interrupting your business.”
“i’m so glad you’re still here, dear,” said miss clarkson. “i have just been looking over my files, and i see that there is one vacancy. for a nurse,” said miss clarkson with a touch of the apologetic in her voice.
“oh, no, that’s all right,” said eve. “i don’t really need anything. but thanks ever so much for bothering.”
she smiled affectionately upon the proprietress, bestowed another smile upon psmith as he opened the door for her, and went out. psmith turned away from the door with a thoughtful look upon his face.
“is that young lady a nurse?” he asked.
“do you want a nurse?” inquired miss clarkson, at once the woman of business.
“i want that nurse,” said psmith with conviction.
[p. 73]“she is a delightful girl,” said miss clarkson with enthusiasm. “there is no one in whom i would feel more confidence in recommending to a position. she is a miss halliday, the daughter of a very clever but erratic writer, who died some years ago. i can speak with particular knowledge of miss halliday, for i was for many years an assistant mistress at wayland house, where she was at school. she is a charming, warm-hearted, impulsive girl. . . . but you will hardly want to hear all this.”
“on the contrary,” said psmith, “i could listen for hours. you have stumbled upon my favourite subject.”
miss clarkson eyed him a little doubtfully, and decided that it would be best to reintroduce the business theme.
“perhaps, when you say you are looking for a nurse, you mean you need a hospital nurse?”
“my friends have sometimes suggested it.”
“miss halliday’s greatest experience has, of course, been as a governess.”
“a governess is just as good,” said psmith agreeably.
miss clarkson began to be conscious of a sensation of being out of her depth.
“how old are your children, sir?” she asked.
“i fear,” said psmith, “you are peeping into volume two. this romance has only just started.”
“i am afraid,” said miss clarkson, now completely fogged, “i do not quite understand. what exactly are you looking for?”
psmith flicked a speck of fluff from his coat-sleeve.
“a job,” he said.
“a job!” echoed miss clarkson, her voice breaking in an amazed squeak.
[p. 74]psmith raised his eyebrows.
“you seem surprised. isn’t this a job emporium?”
“this is an employment bureau,” admitted miss clarkson.
“i knew it, i knew it,” said psmith. “something seemed to tell me. possibly it was the legend ‘employment bureau’ over the door. and those framed testimonials would convince the most sceptical. yes, miss clarkson, i want a job, and i feel somehow that you are the woman to find it for me. i have inserted an advertisement in the papers, expressing my readiness to undertake any form of employment, but i have since begun to wonder if after all this will lead to wealth and fame. at any rate, it is wise to attack the great world from another angle as well, so i come to you.”
“but you must excuse me if i remark that this application of yours strikes me as most extraordinary.”
“why? i am young, active, and extremely broke.”
“but your—er—your clothes . . .”
psmith squinted, not without complacency, down a faultlessly fitting waistcoat, and flicked another speck of dust off his sleeve.
“you consider me well dressed?” he said. “you find me natty? well, well, perhaps you are right, perhaps you are right. but consider, miss clarkson. if one expects to find employment in these days of strenuous competition, one must be neatly and decently clad. employers look askance at a baggy trouser-leg. a zippy waistcoat is more to them than an honest heart. this beautiful crease was obtained with the aid of the mattress upon which i tossed feverishly last night in my attic room.”
“i can’t take you seriously.”
“oh, don’t say that, please.”
[p. 75]“you really want me to find you work?”
“i prefer the term ‘employment.’”
miss clarkson produced a notebook.
“if you are really not making this application just as a joke . . .”
“i assure you, no. my entire capital consists, in specie, of about ten pounds.”
“then perhaps you will tell me your name.”
“ah! things are beginning to move. the name is psmith. p-smith. the p is silent.”
“psmith?”
“psmith.”
miss clarkson brooded over this for a moment in almost pained silence, then recovered her slipping grip of affairs.
“i think,” she said, “you had better give me a few particulars about yourself.”
“there is nothing i should like better,” responded psmith warmly. “i am always ready—i may say eager—to tell people the story of my life, but in this rushing age i get little encouragement. let us start at the beginning. my infancy. when i was but a babe, my eldest sister was bribed with sixpence an hour by my nurse to keep an eye on me and see that i did not raise cain. at the end of the first day she struck for a shilling, and got it. we now pass to my boyhood. at an early age i was sent to eton, everybody predicting a bright career for me. those were happy days, miss clarkson. a merry, laughing lad with curly hair and a sunny smile, it is not too much to say that i was the pet of the place. the old cloisters. . . . but i am boring you. i can see it in your eye.”
“no, no,” protested miss clarkson. “but what i meant was . . . i thought you might have had[p. 76] some experience in some particular line of . . . in fact, what sort of work . . . ?”
“employment.”
“what sort of employment do you require?”
“broadly speaking,” said psmith, “any reasonably salaried position that has nothing to do with fish.”
“fish!” quavered miss clarkson, slipping again. “why fish?”
“because, miss clarkson, the fish trade was until this morning my walk in life, and my soul has sickened of it.”
“you are in the fish trade?” squeaked miss clarkson, with an amazed glance at the knife-like crease in his trousers.
“these are not my working clothes,” said psmith, following and interpreting her glance. “yes, owing to a financial upheaval in my branch of the family, i was until this morning at the beck and call of an uncle who unfortunately happens to be a mackerel monarch or a sardine sultan, or whatever these merchant princes are called who rule the fish market. he insisted on my going into the business to learn it from the bottom up, thinking, no doubt, that i would follow in his footsteps and eventually work my way to the position of a whitebait wizard. alas! he was too sanguine. it was not to be,” said psmith solemnly, fixing an owl-like gaze on miss clarkson through his eyeglass.
“no?” said miss clarkson.
“no. last night i was obliged to inform him that the fish business was all right, but it wouldn’t do, and that i proposed to sever my connection with the firm for ever. i may say at once that there ensued something in the nature of a family earthquake. hard words,” sighed psmith. “black looks. unseemly wrangle. and the upshot of it all was that my uncle[p. 77] washed his hands of me and drove me forth into the great world. hence my anxiety to find employment. my uncle has definitely withdrawn his countenance from me, miss clarkson.”
“dear, dear!” murmured the proprietress sympathetically.
“yes. he is a hard man, and he judges his fellows solely by their devotion to fish. i never in my life met a man so wrapped up in a subject. for years he has been practically a monomaniac on the subject of fish. so much so that he actually looks like one. it is as if he had taken one of those auto-suggestion courses and had kept saying to himself, ‘every day, in every way, i grow more and more like a fish.’ his closest friends can hardly tell now whether he more nearly resembles a halibut or a cod. . . . but i am boring you again with this family gossip?”
he eyed miss clarkson with such a sudden and penetrating glance that she started nervously.
“no, no,” she exclaimed.
“you relieve my apprehensions. i am only too well aware that, when fairly launched on the topic of fish, i am more than apt to weary my audience. i cannot understand this enthusiasm for fish. my uncle used to talk about an unusually large catch of pilchards in cornwall in much the same awed way as a right-minded curate would talk about the spiritual excellence of his bishop. to me, miss clarkson, from the very start, the fish business was what i can only describe as a wash-out. it nauseated my finer feelings. it got right in amongst my fibres. i had to rise and partake of a simple breakfast at about four in the morning, after which i would make my way to billingsgate market and stand for some hours knee-deep in dead fish of every description. a jolly life for a cat,[p. 78] no doubt, but a bit too thick for a shropshire psmith. mine, miss clarkson, is a refined and poetic nature. i like to be surrounded by joy and life, and i know nothing more joyless and deader than a dead fish. multiply that dead fish by a million, and you have an environment which only a dante could contemplate with equanimity. my uncle used to tell me that the way to ascertain whether a fish was fresh was to peer into its eyes. could i spend the springtime of life staring into the eyes of dead fish? no!” he rose. “well, i will not detain you any longer. thank you for the unfailing courtesy and attention with which you have listened to me. you can understand now why my talents are on the market and why i am compelled to state specifically that no employment can be considered which has anything to do with fish. i am convinced that you will shortly have something particularly good to offer me.”
“i don’t know that i can say that, mr. psmith.”
“the p is silent, as in pshrimp,” he reminded her. “oh, by the way,” he said, pausing at the door, “there is one other thing before i go. while i was waiting for you to be disengaged, i chanced on an instalment of a serial story in the girl’s pet for january, 1919. my search for the remaining issues proved fruitless. the title was ‘her honour at stake,’ by jane emmeline moss. you don’t happen to know how it all came out in the end, do you? did lord eustace ever learn that, when he found clarice in sir jasper’s rooms at midnight, she had only gone there to recover some compromising letters for a girl friend? you don’t know? i feared as much. well, good morning, miss clarkson, good morning. i leave my future in your hands with a light heart.”
“i will do my best for you, of course.”
[p. 79]“and what,” said psmith cordially, “could be better than miss clarkson’s best?”
he closed the door gently behind him, and went out. struck by a kindly thought, he tapped upon enquiries’ window, and beamed benevolently as her bobbed head shot into view.
“they tell me,” he said, “that aspidistra is much fancied for the four o’clock race at birmingham this afternoon. i give the information without prejudice, for what it is worth. good day!”
