The Clicking of Cuthbert

"What would you do in a case like this?" he said.

"Like what?"

"Well----" He choked, and a rich blush permeated his surface. "Well, it

seems a silly thing to say and all that, but I'm in love with Miss

Tennant, you know!"

"You are in love with Celia Tennant?"

"Of course I am. I've got eyes, haven't I? Who else is there that any

sane man could possibly be in love with? That," he went on, moodily,

"is the whole trouble. There's a field of about twenty-nine, and I

should think my place in the betting is about thirty-three to one."

"I cannot agree with you there," I said. "You have every advantage, it

appears to me. You are young, amiable, good-looking, comfortably off,

scratch----"

"But I can't talk, confound it!" he burst out. "And how is a man to get

anywhere at this sort of game without talking?"

"You are talking perfectly fluently now."

"Yes, to you. But put me in front of Celia Tennant, and I simply make a

sort of gurgling noise like a sheep with the botts. It kills my chances

stone dead. You know these other men. I can give Claude Mainwaring a

third and beat him. I can give Eustace Brinkley a stroke a hole and

simply trample on his corpse. But when it comes to talking to a girl,

I'm not in their class."

"You must not be diffident."

"But I am diffident. What's the good of saying I mustn't be

diffident when I'm the man who wrote the words and music, when

Diffidence is my middle name and my telegraphic address? I can't help

being diffident."

"Surely you could overcome it?"

"But how? It was in the hope that you might be able to suggest

something that I came round tonight."

And this was where I did the fatal thing. It happened that, just before

I took up "Braid on the Push-Shot," I had been dipping into the current

number of a magazine, and one of the advertisements, I chanced to

remember, might have been framed with a special eye to George's

unfortunate case. It was that one, which I have no doubt you have seen,

which treats of "How to Become a Convincing Talker". I picked up this

magazine now and handed it to George.

He studied it for a few minutes in thoughtful silence. He looked at the

picture of the Man who had taken the course being fawned upon by lovely

women, while the man who had let this opportunity slip stood outside

the group gazing with a wistful envy.

"They never do that to me," said George.

"Do what, my boy?"

"Cluster round, clinging cooingly."

"I gather from the letterpress that they will if you write for the

booklet."

"You think there is really something in it?"

"I see no reason why eloquence should not be taught by mail. One seems

to be able to acquire every other desirable quality in that manner

nowadays."

"I might try it. After all, it's not expensive. There's no doubt about

it," he murmured, returning to his perusal, "that fellow does look

popular. Of course, the evening dress may have something to do with

it."

"Not at all. The other man, you will notice, is also wearing evening

dress, and yet he is merely among those on the outskirts. It is simply

a question of writing for the booklet."

"Sent post free."

"Sent, as you say, post free."

"I've a good mind to try it."

"I see no reason why you should not."

"I will, by Duncan!" He tore the page out of the magazine and put it in

his pocket. "I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll give this thing a trial

for a week or two, and at the end of that time I'll go to the boss and

see how he reacts when I ask for a rise of salary. If he crawls, it'll

show there's something in this. If he flings me out, it will prove the

thing's no good."

We left it at that, and I am bound to say--owing, no doubt, to my not

having written for the booklet of the Memory Training Course advertised

on the adjoining page of the magazine--the matter slipped from my mind.

When, therefore, a few weeks later, I received a telegram from young

Mackintosh which ran:

    Worked like magic,

I confess I was intensely puzzled. It was only a quarter of an hour

before George himself arrived that I solved the problem of its meaning.

"So the boss crawled?" I said, as he came in.

He gave a light, confident laugh. I had not seen him, as I say, for

some time, and I was struck by the alteration in his appearance. In

what exactly this alteration consisted I could not at first have said;

but gradually it began to impress itself on me that his eye was

brighter, his jaw squarer, his carriage a trifle more upright than it

had been. But it was his eye that struck me most forcibly. The George

Mackintosh I had known had had a pleasing gaze, but, though frank and

agreeable, it had never been more dynamic than a fried egg. This new

George had an eye that was a combination of a gimlet and a searchlight.

Coleridge's Ancient Mariner, I imagine, must have been somewhat

similarly equipped. The Ancient Mariner stopped a wedding guest on his

way to a wedding; George Mackintosh gave me the impression that he

could have stopped the Cornish Riviera express on its way to Penzance.

Self-confidence--aye, and more than self-confidence--a sort of sinful,

overbearing swank seemed to exude from his very pores.