P.G. Wodehouse - Piccadilly Jim

The Project Gutenberg EBook of Piccadilly Jim, by P.G. Wodehouse#1 in our series by Pelham Grenville Wodehouse

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Title: Piccadilly Jim

Author: Pelham Grenville Wodehouse

Release Date: December, 1999 [EBook #2005][This edition 11 was first posted on April 1, 2002][Date last updated: June 6, 2004]

Edition: 11

Language: English

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PICCADILLY JIM ***

Etext produced by Jim Tinsley

The residence of Mr. Peter Pett, the well-known financier, onRiverside Drive is one of the leading eyesores of that breezy andexpensive boulevard. As you pass by in your limousine, or whileenjoying ten cents worth of fresh air on top of a green omnibus,it jumps out and bites at you. Architects, confronted with it,reel and throw up their hands defensively, and even the layobserver has a sense of shock. The place resembles in almostequal proportions a cathedral, a suburban villa, a hotel and aChinese pagoda. Many of its windows are of stained glass, andabove the porch stand two terra-cotta lions, considerably morerepulsive even than the complacent animals which guard New York'sPublic Library. It is a house which is impossible to overlook:and it was probably for this reason that Mrs. Pett insisted onher husband buying it, for she was a woman who liked to benoticed.

Through the rich interior of this mansion Mr. Pett, its nominalproprietor, was wandering like a lost spirit. The hour was aboutten of a fine Sunday morning, but the Sabbath calm which was uponthe house had not communicated itself to him. There was a look ofexasperation on his usually patient face, and a muttered oath,picked up no doubt on the godless Stock Exchange, escaped hislips.

"Darn it!"

He was afflicted by a sense of the pathos of his position. It wasnot as if he demanded much from life. He asked but little herebelow. At that moment all that he wanted was a quiet spot wherehe might read his Sunday paper in solitary peace, and he couldnot find one. Intruders lurked behind every door. The place wascongested.

This sort of thing had been growing worse and worse ever sincehis marriage two years previously. There was a strong literaryvirus in Mrs. Pett's system. She not only wrote voluminouslyherselfthe name Nesta Ford Pett is familiar to all lovers ofsensational fictionbut aimed at maintaining a salon. Starting,in pursuance of this aim, with a single specimen,her nephew,Willie Partridge, who was working on a new explosive which wouldeventually revolutionise warshe had gradually added to hercollections, until now she gave shelter beneath her terra-cottaroof to no fewer than six young and unrecognised geniuses. Sixbrilliant youths, mostly novelists who had not yet started andpoets who were about to begin, cluttered up Mr. Pett's rooms onthis fair June morning, while he, clutching his Sunday paper,wandered about, finding, like the dove in Genesis, no rest. Itwas at such times that he was almost inclined to envy his wife'sfirst husband, a business friend of his named Elmer Ford, who hadperished suddenly of an apoplectic seizure: and the pity which hegenerally felt for the deceased tended to shift its focus.

Marriage had certainly complicated life for Mr. Pett, as itfrequently does for the man who waits fifty years before tryingit. In addition to the geniuses, Mrs. Pett had brought with herto her new home her only son, Ogden, a fourteen-year-old boy of asingularly unloveable type. Years of grown-up society and theabsence of anything approaching discipline had given him aprecocity on which the earnest efforts of a series of privatetutors had expended themselves in vain. They came, full ofoptimism and self-confidence, to retire after a brief interval,shattered by the boy's stodgy resistance to education in any formor shape. To Mr. Pett, never at his ease with boys, Ogden Fordwas a constant irritant. He disliked his stepson's personality,and he more than suspected him of stealing his cigarettes. Itwas an additional annoyance that he was fully aware of theimpossibility of ever catching him at it.

Mr. Pett resumed his journey. He had interrupted it for a momentto listen at the door of the morning-room, but, a remark in ahigh tenor voice about the essential Christianity of the poetShelley filtering through the oak, he had moved on.

Silence from behind another door farther down the passageencouraged him to place his fingers on the handle, but a crashingchord from an unseen piano made him remove them swiftly. Heroamed on, and a few minutes later the process of elimination hadbrought him to what was technically his own private libraryalarge, soothing room full of old books, of which his father hadbeen a great collector. Mr. Pett did not read old books himself,but he liked to be among them, and it is proof of his pessimismthat he had not tried the library first. To his depressed mind ithad seemed hardly possible that there could be nobody there.

He stood outside the door, listening tensely. He could hearnothing. He went in, and for an instant experienced that ecstaticthrill which only comes to elderly gentlemen of solitary habitwho in a house full of their juniors find themselves alone atlast. Then a voice spoke, shattering his dream of solitude.

"Hello, pop!"

Ogden Ford was sprawling in a deep chair in the shadows.

"Come in, pop, come in. Lots of room."

Mr. Pett stood in the doorway, regarding his step-son with asombre eye. He resented the boy's tone of easy patronage, all theharder to endure with philosophic calm at the present moment fromthe fact that the latter was lounging in his favourite chair.Even from an aesthetic point of view the sight of the bulgingchild offended him. Ogden Ford was round and blobby and lookedoverfed. He had the plethoric habit of one to whom wholesomeexercise is a stranger and the sallow complexion of the confirmedcandy-fiend. Even now, a bare half hour after breakfast, his jawswere moving with a rhythmical, champing motion.

"What are you eating, boy?" demanded Mr. Pett, his disappointmentturning to irritability.

"Candy."

"I wish you would not eat candy all day."

"Mother gave it to me," said Ogden simply. As he had anticipated,the shot silenced the enemy's battery. Mr. Pett grunted, but madeno verbal comment. Ogden celebrated his victory by puttinganother piece of candy in his mouth.

"Got a grouch this morning, haven't you, pop?"

"I will not be spoken to like that!"

"I thought you had," said his step-son complacently. "I canalways tell. I don't see why you want to come picking on me,though. I've done nothing."

Mr. Pett was sniffing suspiciously.

"You've been smoking."

"Me!!"

"Smoking cigarettes."

"No, sir!"

"There are two butts in the ash-tray."

"I didn't put them there."

"One of them is warm."

"It's a warm day."

"You dropped it there when you heard me come in."

"No, sir! I've only been here a few minutes. I guess one of thefellows was in here before me. They're always swiping yourcoffin-nails. You ought to do something about it, pop. You oughtto assert yourself."