CHAPTER II
I
There is something about those repellent words, Healthward Ho, that has a familiar ring. You feel that you have heard them before. And then you remember. They have figured in letters to the daily papers from time to time.
THE STRAIN OF MODERN LIFE
To the Editor
The Times.
Sir:
In connection with the recent correspondence in your columns on the Strain of Modern Life, I wonder if any of your readers are aware that there exists in the county of Worcestershire an establishment expressly designed to correct this strain. At Healthward Ho (formerly Graveney Court), under the auspices of the well-known American physician and physical culture expert, Doctor Alexander Twist, it is possible for those who have allowed the demands of modern life to tax their physique too greatly to recuperate in ideal surroundings and by means of early hours, wholesome exercise, and Spartan fare to build up once more their debilitated tissues.
It is the boast of Doctor Twist that he makes New Men for Old.
I am, sir,
Yrs. etc.,
Mens Sana in Corpore Sano.
DO WE EAT TOO MUCH?
To the Editor
Daily Mail.
Sir:
The correspondence in your columns on the above subject calls to mind a remark made to me not long ago by Doctor Alexander Twist, the well-known American physician and physical culture expert. "Over-eating," said Doctor Twist emphatically, "is the curse of the Age."
At Healthward Ho (formerly Graveney Court), his physical culture establishment in Worcestershire, wholesale exercise and Spartan fare are the order of the day, and Doctor Twist has, I understand, worked miracles with the most apparently hopeless cases.
It is the boast of Doctor Twist that he makes New Men for Old.
I am, sir,
Yrs. etc.,
Moderation in all Things.
SHOULD THE CHAPERONE BE RESTORED?
To the Editor
Daily Express.
Sir:
A far more crying need than that of the Chaperone in these modern days is for a Supervisor of the middle-aged man who has allowed himself to get "out of shape."
At Healthward Ho (formerly Graveney Court), in Worcestershire, where Doctor Alexander Twist, the well-known American physician and physical culture expert, ministers to such cases, wonders have been achieved by means of simple fare and mild, but regular, exercise.
It is the boast of Doctor Twist that he makes New Men for Old.
I am, sir,
Yrs. etc.
Vigilant.
These letters and many others, though bearing a pleasing variety of signatures, proceeded in fact from a single gifted pen—that of Doctor Twist himself—and among that class of the public which consistently does itself too well when the gong goes and yet is never wholly free from wistful aspirations toward a better liver they had created a scattered but quite satisfactory interest in Healthward Ho. Clients had enrolled themselves on the doctor's books, and now, on this summer afternoon, he was enabled to look down from his study window at a group of no fewer than eleven of them, skipping with skipping ropes under the eye of his able and conscientious assistant, ex-Sergeant-Major Flannery.
Sherlock Holmes—and even, on one of his bright days, Doctor Watson—could have told at a glance which of those muffled figures was Mr. Flannery. He was the only one who went in instead of out at the waist-line. All the others were well up in the class of man whom Julius Cæsar once expressed a desire to have about him. And pre-eminent among them in stoutness, dampness, and general misery was Mr. Lester Carmody, of Rudge Hall.
The fact that Mr. Carmody was by several degrees the most unhappy-looking member of this little band of martyrs was due to his distress, unlike that of his fellow-sufferers, being mental as well as physical. He was allowing his mind, for the hundredth time, to dwell on the paralyzing cost of these hygienic proceedings.
Thirty guineas a week, thought Mr. Carmody as he bounded up and down. Four pound ten a day.... Three shillings and ninepence an hour.... Three solid farthings a minute.... To meditate on these figures was like turning a sword in his heart. For Lester Carmody loved money as he loved nothing else in this world except a good dinner.
Doctor Twist turned from the window. A maid had appeared bearing a card on a salver.
"Show him in," said Doctor Twist, having examined this. And presently there entered a lissom young man in a gray flannel suit.
"Doctor Twist?"
"Yes, sir."
The newcomer seemed a little surprised. It was as if he had been expecting something rather more impressive, and was wondering why, if the proprietor of Healthward Ho had the ability which he claimed, to make New Men for Old, he had not taken the opportunity of effecting some alterations in himself. For Doctor Twist was a small man, and weedy. He had a snub nose and an expression of furtive slyness. And he wore a waxed moustache.
However, all this was not the visitor's business. If a man wishes to wax his moustache, it is a matter between himself and his God.
"My name's Carmody," he said. "Hugo Carmody."
"Yes. I got your card."
"Could I have a word with my uncle?"
"Sure, if you don't mind waiting a minute. Right now," explained Doctor Twist, with a gesture toward the window, "he's occupied."
Hugo moved to the window, looked out, and started violently.
"Great Scott!" he exclaimed.
He gaped down at the group below. Mr. Carmody and colleagues had now discarded the skipping ropes and were performing some unpleasant-looking bending and stretching exercises, holding their hands above their heads and swinging painfully from what one may loosely term their waists. It was a spectacle well calculated to astonish any nephew.
"How long has he got to go on like that?" asked Hugo, awed.
Doctor Twist looked at his watch.
"They'll be quitting soon now. Then a cold shower and rub down, and they'll be through till lunch."
"Cold shower?"
"Yes."
"You mean to say you make my uncle Lester take cold shower baths?"
"That's right."
"Good God!"
A look of respect came into Hugo's face as he gazed upon this master of men. Anybody who, in addition to making him tie himself in knots under a blazing sun, could lure Uncle Lester within ten yards of a cold shower bath was entitled to credit.
"I suppose after all this," he said, "they do themselves pretty well at lunch?"
"They have a lean mutton chop apiece, with green vegetables and dry toast."
"Is that all?"
"That's all."
"And to drink?"
"Just water."
"Followed, of course, by a spot of port?"
"No, sir."
"No port?"
"Certainly not."
"You mean—literally—no port?"
"Not a drop. If your old man had gone easier on the port, he'd not have needed to come to Healthward Ho."
"I say," said Hugo, "did you invent that name?"
"Sure. Why?"
"Oh, I don't know. I just thought I'd ask."
"Say, while I think of it," said Doctor Twist, "have you any cigarettes?"
"Oh, rather." Hugo produced a bulging case. "Turkish this side, Virginian that."
"Not for me. I was only going to say that when you meet your uncle just bear in mind he isn't allowed tobacco."
"Not allowed...? You mean to say you tie Uncle Lester into a lover's knot, shoot him under a cold shower, push a lean chop into him accompanied by water, and then don't even let the poor old devil get his lips around a single gasper?"
"That's right."
"Well, all I can say is," said Hugo, "it's no life for a refined Caucasian."
Dazed by the information he had received, he began to potter aimlessly about the room. He was not particularly fond of his uncle. Mr. Carmody Senior's practice of giving him no allowance and keeping him imprisoned all the year round at Rudge would alone have been enough to check anything in the nature of tenderness, but he did not think he deserved quite all that seemed to be coming to him at Healthward Ho.
He mused upon his uncle. A complex character. A man with Lester Carmody's loathing for expenditure ought by rights to have been a simple liver, existing off hot milk and triturated sawdust like an American millionaire. That Fate should have given him, together with his prudence in money matters, a recklessness as regarded the pleasures of the table seemed ironic.
"I see they've quit," said Doctor Twist, with a glance out of the window. "If you want to have a word with your uncle you could do it now. No bad news, I hope?"
"If there is I'm the one that's going to get it. Between you and me," said Hugo, who had no secrets from his fellow men, "I've come to try to touch him for a bit of money."
"Is that so?" said Doctor Twist, interested. Anything to do with money always interested the well-known American physician and physical culture expert.
"Yes," said Hugo. "Five hundred quid, to be exact."
He spoke a little despondently, for, having arrived at the window again, he was in a position now to take a good look at his uncle. And so forbidding had bodily toil and mental disturbance rendered the latter's expression that he found the fresh young hopes with which he had started out on this expedition rapidly ebbing away. If Mr. Carmody were to burst—and he looked as if he might do so at any moment—he, Hugo, being his nearest of kin, would inherit, but, failing that, there seemed to be no cash in sight whatever.
"Though when I say 'touch'," he went on, "I don't mean quite that. The stuff is really mine. My father left me a few thousand, you see, but most injudiciously made Uncle Lester my trustee, and I'm not allowed to get at the capital without the old blighter's consent. And now a pal of mine in London has written offering me a half share in a new night club which he's starting if I will put up five hundred pounds."
"I see."
"And what I ask myself," said Hugo, "is will Uncle Lester part? That's what I ask myself. I can't say I'm betting on it."
"From what I have seen of Mr. Carmody, I shouldn't say that parting was the thing he does best."
"He's got absolutely no gift for it whatever," said Hugo gloomily.
"Well, I wish you luck," said Doctor Twist. "But don't you try to bribe him with cigarettes."
"Do what?"
"Bribe him with cigarettes. After they have been taking the treatment for a while, most of these birds would give their soul for a coffin nail."
Hugo started. He had not thought of this; but, now that it had been called to his attention, he saw that it was most certainly an idea.
"And don't keep him standing around longer than you can help. He ought to get under that shower as soon as possible."
"I suppose I couldn't tell him that owing to my pleading and persuasion you've consented to let him off a cold shower to-day?"
"No, sir."
"It would help," urged Hugo. "It might just sway the issue, as it were."
"Sorry. He must have his shower. When a man's been exercising and has got himself into a perfect lather of sweat...."
"Keep it clean," said Hugo coldly. "There is no need to stress the physical side. Oh, very well, then, I suppose I shall have to trust to tact and charm of manner. But I wish to goodness I hadn't got to spring business matters on him on top of what seems to have been a slightly hectic morning."
He shot his cuffs, pulled down his waistcoat, and walked with a resolute step out of the room. He was about to try to get into the ribs of a man who for a lifetime had been saving up to be a miser and who, even apart from this trait in his character, held the subversive view that the less money young men had the better for them. Hugo was a gay optimist, cheerful of soul and a mighty singer in the bath tub, but he could not feel very sanguine. However, the Carmodys were a bulldog breed. He decided to have a pop at it.
II
Theoretically, no doubt, the process of exercising flaccid muscles, opening hermetically sealed pores, and stirring up a liver which had long supposed itself off the active list ought to engender in a man a jolly sprightliness. In practice, however, this is not always so. That Lester Carmody was in no radiant mood was shown at once by the expression on his face as he turned in response to Hugo's yodel from the rear. In spite of all that Healthward Ho had been doing to Mr. Carmody this last ten days, it was plain that he had not yet got that Kruschen feeling.
Nor, at the discovery that a nephew whom he had supposed to be twenty miles away was standing at his elbow, did anything in the nature of sudden joy help to fill him with sweetness and light.
"How the devil did you get here?" were his opening words of welcome. His scarlet face vanished for an instant into the folds of a large handkerchief; then reappeared, wearing a look of acute concern. "You didn't," he quavered, "come in the Dex-Mayo?"
A thought to shake the sturdiest man. It was twenty miles from Rudge Hall to Healthward Ho, and twenty miles back again from Healthward Ho to Rudge Hall. The Dex-Mayo, that voracious car, consumed a gallon of petrol for every ten miles it covered. And for a gallon of petrol they extorted from you nowadays the hideous sum of one shilling and sixpence halfpenny. Forty miles, accordingly, meant—not including oil, wear and tear of engines, and depreciation of tires—a loss to his purse of over six shillings—a heavy price to pay for the society of a nephew whom he had disliked since boyhood.
"No, no," said Hugo hastily. "I borrowed John's two-seater,"
"Oh," said Mr. Carmody, relieved.
There was a pause, employed by Mr. Carmody in puffing; by Hugo in trying to think of something to say that would be soothing, tactful, ingratiating, and calculated to bring home the bacon. He turned over in his mind one or two conversational gambits.
("Well, Uncle, you look very rosy."
Not quite right.
"I say, Uncle what ho the School-Girl Complexion?"
Absolutely no! The wrong tone altogether.
Ah! That was more like it. "Fit." Yes, that was the word.)
"You look very fit, Uncle," said Hugo.
Mr. Carmody's reply to this was to make a noise like a buffalo pulling its foot out of a swamp. It might have been intended to be genial, or it might not. Hugo could not tell. However, he was a reasonable young man, and he quite understood that it would be foolish to expect the milk of human kindness instantly to come gushing like a geyser out of a two-hundred-and-twenty-pound uncle who had just been doing bending and stretching exercises. He must be patient and suave—the Sympathetic Nephew.
"I expect it's been pretty tough going, though," he proceeded. "I mean to say, all these exercises and cold showers and lean chops and so forth. Terribly trying. Very upsetting. A great ordeal. I think it's wonderful the way you've stuck it out. Simply wonderful. It's Character that does it. That's what it is. Character. Many men would have chucked the whole thing up in the first two days."
"So would I," said Mr. Carmody, "only that damned doctor made me give him a cheque in advance for the whole course."
Hugo felt damped. He had had some good things to say about Character, and it seemed little use producing them now.
"Well, anyway, you look very fit. Very fit indeed. Frightfully fit. Remarkably fit. Extraordinarily fit." He paused. This was getting him nowhere. He decided to leap straight to the point at issue. To put his fortune to the test, to win or lose it all. "I say, Uncle Lester, what I really came about this afternoon was a matter of business."
"Indeed? I supposed you had come merely to babble. What business?"
"You know a friend of mine named Fish?"
"I do not know a friend of yours named Fish."
"Well, he's a friend of mine. His name's Fish. Ronnie Fish."
"What about him?"
"He's starting a new night club."
"I don't care," said Mr. Carmody, who did not.
"It's just off Bond Street, in the heart of London's pleasure-seeking area. He's calling it the Hot Spot."
The only comment Mr. Carmody vouchsafed on this piece of information was a noise like another buffalo. His face was beginning to lose its vermilion tinge, and it seemed possible that in a few moments he might come off the boil.
"I had a letter from him this morning. He says he will give me a half share if I put up five hundred quid."
"Then you won't get a half share," predicted Mr. Carmody.
"But I've got five hundred. I mean to say, you're holding a lot more than that in trust for me."
"Holding," said Mr. Carmody, "is the right word."
"But surely you'll let me have this quite trivial sum for a really excellent business venture that simply can't fail? Ronnie knows all about night clubs. He's practically lived in them since he came down from Cambridge."
"I shall not give you a penny. Have you no conception of the duties of a trustee? Trust money has to be invested in gilt-edged securities."
"You'll never find a gilter-edged security than a night club run by Ronnie Fish."
"If you have finished this nonsense I will go and take my shower bath."
"Well, look here, Uncle, may I invite Ronnie to Rudge, so that you can have a talk with him?"
"You may not. I have no desire to talk with him."
"You'd like Ronnie. He has an aunt in the looney-bin."
"Do you consider that a recommendation?"
"No, I just mentioned it."
"Well, I refuse to have him at Rudge."
"But listen, Uncle. The vicar will be round any day now to get me to perform at the village concert. If Ronnie were on the spot, he and I could do the Quarrel Scene from Julius Cæsar and really give the customers something for their money."
Even this added inducement did not soften Mr. Carmody.
"I will not invite your friends to Rudge."
"Right ho," said Hugo, a game loser. He was disappointed, but not surprised. All along he had felt that that Hot Spot business was merely a Utopian dream. There are some men who are temperamentally incapable of parting with five hundred pounds, and his uncle Lester was one of them. But in the matter of a smaller sum it might be that he would prove more pliable, and of this smaller sum Hugo had urgent need. "Well, then, putting that aside," he said, "there's another thing I'd like to chat about for a moment, if you don't mind."
"I do," said Mr. Carmody.
"There's a big fight on to-night at the Albert Hall. Eustace Rodd and Cyril Warburton are going twenty rounds for the welter-weight championship. Have you ever noticed," said Hugo, touching on a matter to which he had given some thought, "a rather odd thing about boxers these days? A few years ago you never heard of one that wasn't Beefy This or Porky That or Young Cat's-meat or something. But now they're all Claudes and Harolds and Cuthberts. And when you consider that the heavyweight champion of the world is actually named Eugene, it makes you think a bit. However, be that as it may, these two birds are going twenty rounds to-night, and there you are."
"What," inquired Mr. Carmody, "is all this drivel?"
He eyed his young relative balefully. In an association that had lasted many years, he had found Hugo consistently irritating to his nervous system, and he was finding him now rather more trying than usual.
"I only meant to point out that Ronnie Fish has sent me a ticket, and I thought that, if you were to spring a tenner for the necessary incidental expenses—bed, breakfast, and so on ... well, there I would be, don't you know."
"You mean you wish to go to London to see a boxing contest?"
"That's it."
"Well, you're not going. You know I have expressly forbidden you to visit London. The last time I was weak enough to allow you to go there, what happened? You spent the night in a police station."
"Yes, but that was Boat-Race Night."
"And I had to pay five pounds for your fine."
Hugo dismissed the past with a gesture.
"The whole thing," he said, "was an unfortunate misunderstanding, and, if you ask me, the verdict of posterity will be that the policeman was far more to blame than I was. They're letting a bad type of men into the force nowadays. I've noticed it on several occasions. Besides, it won't happen again."
"You are right. It will not."
"On second thoughts, then, you will spring that tenner?"
"On first, second, third, and fourth thoughts I will do nothing of the kind."
"But, Uncle, do you realize what it would mean if you did?"
"The interpretation I would put upon it is that I was suffering from senile decay."
"What it would mean is that I should feel you trusted me, Uncle Lester, that you had faith in me. There's nothing so dangerous as a want of trust. Ask anybody. It saps a young man's character."
"Let it," said Mr. Carmody callously.
"If I went to London, I could see Ronnie Fish and explain all the circumstances about my not being able to go into that Hot Spot thing with him."
"You can do that by letter."
"It's so hard to put things properly in a letter."
"Then put them improperly," said Mr. Carmody. "Once and for all, you are not going to London."
He had started to turn away as the only means possible of concluding this interview, when he stopped, spellbound. For Hugo, as was his habit when matters had become difficult and required careful thought, was pulling out of his pocket a cigarette case.
"Goosh!" said Mr. Carmody, or something that sounded like that.
He made an involuntary motion with his hand, as a starving man will make toward bread: and Hugo, with a strong rush of emotion, realized that the happy ending had been achieved and that at the eleventh hour matters could at last be put on a satisfactory business basis.
"Turkish this side, Virginian that," he said. "You can have the lot for ten quid."
"Say, I think you'd best be getting along and taking your shower, Mr. Carmody," said the voice of Doctor Twist, who had come up unobserved and was standing at his elbow.
The proprietor of Healthward Ho had a rather unpleasant voice, but never had it seemed so unpleasant to Mr. Carmody as it did at that moment. Parsimonious though he was, he would have given much for the privilege of heaving a brick at Doctor Twist. For at the very instant of this interruption he had conceived the Machiavellian idea of knocking the cigarette case out of Hugo's hand and grabbing what he could from the débris: and now this scheme must be abandoned.
With a snort which came from the very depths of an overwrought soul, Lester Carmody turned and shuffled off toward the house.
"Say, you shouldn't have done that," said Doctor Twist, waggling a reproachful head at Hugo. "No, sir, you shouldn't have done that. Not right to tantalize the poor fellow."
Hugo's mind seldom ran on parallel lines with that of his uncle, but it was animated now by the identical thought which only a short while back Mr. Carmody had so wistfully entertained. He, too, was feeling that what Doctor Twist needed was a brick thrown at him. When he was able to speak, however, he did not mention this, but kept the conversation on a pacific and businesslike note.
"I say," he said, "you couldn't lend me a tenner, could you?"
"I could not," agreed Doctor Twist.
In Hugo's mind the inscrutable problem of why an all-wise Creator should have inflicted a man like this on the world deepened.
"Well, I'll be pushing along, then," he said moodily.
"Going already?"
"Yes, I am."
"I hope," said Doctor Twist, as he escorted his young guest to his car, "you aren't sore at me for calling you down about those student's lamps. You see, maybe your uncle was hoping you would slip him one, and the disappointment will have made him kind of mad. And part of the system here is to have the patients think tranquil thoughts."
"Think what?"
"Tranquil, beautiful thoughts. You see, if your mind's all right, your body's all right. That's the way I look at it."
Hugo settled himself at the wheel.
"Let's get this clear," he said. "You expect my uncle Lester to think beautiful thoughts?"
"All the time."
"Even under a cold shower?"
"Yes, sir."
"God bless you!" said Hugo.
He stepped on the self-starter, and urged the two-seater pensively down the drive. He was glad when the shrubberies hid him from the view of Doctor Twist, for one wanted to forget a fellow like that as soon as possible. A moment later, he was still gladder: for, as he turned the first corner, there popped out suddenly from a rhododendron bush a stout man with a red and streaming face. Lester Carmody had had to hurry, and he was not used to running.
"Woof!" he ejaculated, barring the fairway.
Relief flooded over Hugo. The marts of trade had not been closed after all.
"Give me those cigarettes!" panted Mr. Carmody.
For an instant Hugo toyed with the idea of creating a rising market. But he was no profiteer. Hugo Carmody, the Square Dealer.
"Ten quid," he said, "and they're yours."
Agony twisted Mr. Carmody's glowing features.
"Five," he urged.
"Ten," said Hugo.
"Eight."
"Ten."
Mr. Carmody made the great decision.
"Very well. Give me them. Quick."
"Turkish this side, Virginian that," said Hugo.
The rhododendron bush quivered once more from the passage of a heavy body: birds in the neighbouring trees began to sing again their anthems of joy: and Hugo, in his trousers pocket two crackling five-pound notes, was bowling off along the highway.
Even Doctor Twist could have found nothing to cavil at in the beauty of the thoughts he was thinking. He carolled like a linnet in the springtime.