Indiscretions of Archie by P. G. Wodehouse (novels to read for beginners .TXT) 📕

Archie was a grateful soul. That sausage, coming at the end of a five-hour hike, had made a deep impression on his plastic nature. Reason told him that only an exceptional man could have parted with half a sausage at such a moment; and he could not feel that a job as waiter at a New York hotel was an adequate job for an exceptional man. Of course, the root of the trouble lay in the fact that the fellow could not remember what his real lifework had been before the war. It was exasperating to reflect, as the other moved away to take his order to the kitchen, that there, for all one knew, went the dickens of a lawyer or doctor or architect or whatnot.

His meditations were broken by the voice of the child.

“Mummie,” asked the child interestedly, following the Sausage Chappie with his eyes as the latter disappeared towards the kitchen, “why has that man got such a funny face?”

“Hush, darling.”

“Yes, but why has he?”

“I don’t know, darling.”

The child’s faith in the maternal omniscience seemed to have received a shock. He had the air of a seeker after truth who has been baffled. His eyes roamed the room discontentedly.

“He’s got a funnier face than that man there,” he said, pointing to Archie.

“Hush, darling!”

“But he has. Much funnier.”

In a way it was a sort of compliment, but Archie felt embarrassed. He withdrew coyly into the cushioned recess. Presently the Sausage Chappie returned, attended to the needs of the woman and the child, and came over to Archie. His homely face was beaming.

“Say, I had a big night last night,” he said, leaning on the table.

“Yes?” said Archie. “Party or something?”

“No, I mean I suddenly began to remember things. Something seems to have happened to the works.”

Archie sat up excitedly. This was great news.

“No, really? My dear old lad, this is absolutely topping. This is priceless.”

“Yessir! First thing I remembered was that I was born at Springfield, Ohio. It was like a mist starting to lift. Springfield, Ohio. That was it. It suddenly came back to me.”

“Splendid! Anything else?”

“Yessir! Just before I went to sleep I remembered my name as well.”

Archie was stirred to his depths.

“Why, the thing’s a walkover!” he exclaimed. “Now you’ve once got started, nothing can stop you. What is your name?”

“Why, it’s⁠—That’s funny! It’s gone again. I have an idea it began with an S. What was it? Skeffington? Skillington?”

“Sanderson?”

“No; I’ll get it in a moment. Cunningham? Carrington? Wilberforce? Debenham?”

“Dennison?” suggested Archie, helpfully.⁠—“No, no, no. It’s on the tip of my tongue. Barrington? Montgomery? Hepplethwaite? I’ve got it! Smith!”

“By Jove! Really?”

“Certain of it.”

“What’s the first name?”

An anxious expression came into the man’s eyes. He hesitated. He lowered his voice.

“I have a horrible feeling that it’s Lancelot!”

“Good God!” said Archie.

“It couldn’t really be that, could it?”

Archie looked grave. He hated to give pain, but he felt he must be honest.

“It might,” he said. “People give their children all sorts of rummy names. My second name’s Tracy. And I have a pal in England who was christened Cuthbert de la Hay Horace. Fortunately everyone calls him Stinker.”

The headwaiter began to drift up like a bank of fog, and the Sausage Chappie returned to his professional duties. When he came back, he was beaming again.

“Something else I remembered,” he said, removing the cover. “I’m married!”

“Good Lord!”

“At least I was before the war. She had blue eyes and brown hair and a Pekingese dog.”

“What was her name?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, you’re coming on,” said Archie. “I’ll admit that. You’ve still got a bit of a way to go before you become like one of those blighters who take the Memory Training Courses in the magazine advertisements⁠—I mean to say, you know, the lads who meet a fellow once for five minutes, and then come across him again ten years later and grasp him by the hand and say, ‘Surely this is Mr. Watkins of Seattle?’ Still, you’re doing fine. You only need patience. Everything comes to him who waits.” Archie sat up, electrified. “I say, by Jove, that’s rather good, what! Everything comes to him who waits, and you’re a waiter, what, what. I mean to say, what!”

“Mummie,” said the child at the other table, still speculative, “do you think something trod on his face?”

“Hush, darling.”

“Perhaps it was bitten by something?”

“Eat your nice fish, darling,” said the mother, who seemed to be one of those dull-witted persons whom it is impossible to interest in a discussion on first causes.

Archie felt stimulated. Not even the advent of his father-in-law, who came in a few moments later and sat down at the other end of the room, could depress his spirits.

The Sausage Chappie came to his table again.

“It’s a funny thing,” he said. “Like waking up after you’ve been asleep. Everything seems to be getting clearer. The dog’s name was Marie. My wife’s dog, you know. And she had a mole on her chin.”

“The dog?”

“No. My wife. Little beast! She bit me in the leg once.”

“Your wife?”

“No. The dog. Good Lord!” said the Sausage Chappie.

Archie looked up and followed his gaze.

A couple of tables away, next to a sideboard on which the management exposed for view the cold meats and puddings and pies mentioned in volume two of the bill of fare (“Buffet Froid”), a man and a girl had just seated themselves. The man was stout and middle-aged. He bulged in practically every place in which a man can bulge, and his head was almost entirely free from hair. The girl was young and pretty. Her eyes were blue. Her hair was brown. She had a rather attractive little mole on the left side of her chin.

“Good Lord!” said the Sausage Chappie.

“Now what?” said Archie.

“Who’s that? Over at the table there?”

Archie, through long attendance at the Cosmopolis Grill, knew most of the habitués by sight.

“That’s a man named Gossett. James J. Gossett. He’s a motion-picture man. You must have seen his name around.”

“I don’t mean him. Who’s the girl?”

“I’ve never seen