Uneasy Money

Uneasy Money

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Title: Uneasy Money
Author: P.G. Wodehouse
Release Date: October, 2004 [EBook #6684] [Yes, we are more than
one year ahead of schedule] [This file was first posted on January 12,
2003]
Edition: 10

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MONEY ***

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UNEASY MONEY

By P. G. Wodehouse

1
In a day in June, at the hour when London moves abroad in quest of
lunch, a young man stood at the entrance of the Bandolero Restaurant
looking earnestly up Shaftesbury Avenue--a large young man in
excellent condition, with a pleasant, good-humoured, brown, clean-cut
face. He paid no attention to the stream of humanity that flowed past
him. His mouth was set and his eyes wore a serious, almost a wistful
expression. He was frowning slightly. One would have said that here
was a man with a secret sorrow.
William FitzWilliam Delamere Chalmers, Lord Dawlish, had no secret
sorrow. All that he was thinking of at that moment was the best method
of laying a golf ball dead in front of the Palace Theatre. It was his habit
to pass the time in mental golf when Claire Fenwick was late in
keeping her appointments with him. On one occasion she had kept him
waiting so long that he had been able to do nine holes, starting at the
Savoy Grill and finishing up near Hammersmith. His was a simple
mind, able to amuse itself with simple things.
As he stood there, gazing into the middle distance, an individual of
dishevelled aspect sidled up, a vagrant of almost the maximum
seediness, from whose midriff there protruded a trayful of a strange
welter of collar-studs, shoe-laces, rubber rings, buttonhooks, and dying
roosters. For some minutes he had been eyeing his lordship

appraisingly from the edge of the kerb, and now, secure in the fact that
there seemed to be no policeman in the immediate vicinity, he anchored
himself in front of him and observed that he had a wife and four
children at home, all starving.
This sort of thing was always happening to Lord Dawlish. There was
something about him, some atmosphere of unaffected kindliness, that
invited it.
In these days when everything, from the shape of a man's hat to his
method of dealing with asparagus, is supposed to be an index to
character, it is possible to form some estimate of Lord Dawlish from
the fact that his vigil in front of the Bandolero had been expensive even
before the advent of the Benedict with the studs and laces. In London,
as in New York, there are spots where it is unsafe for a man of yielding
disposition to stand still, and the corner of Shaftesbury Avenue and
Piccadilly Circus is one of them. Scrubby, impecunious men drift to
and fro there, waiting for the gods to provide something easy; and the
prudent man, conscious of the possession of loose change, whizzes
through the danger zone at his best speed, 'like one that on a lonesome
road doth walk in fear and dread, and having once turned round walks
on, and turns no more his head, because he knows a frightful fiend doth
close behind him tread.' In the seven minutes he had been waiting two
frightful fiends closed in on Lord Dawlish, requesting loans of five
shillings till Wednesday week and Saturday week respectively, and he
had parted with the money without a murmur.
A further clue to his character is supplied by the fact that both these
needy persons seemed to know him intimately, and that each called him
Bill. All Lord Dawlish's friends called him Bill, and he had a catholic
list of them, ranging from men whose names were