“Quox of Harley Street went into Shelmadine’s case, elicited the fact that his maternal grandfather had turned the scale at twenty stone, that his mother, Lady Fanny, hadn’t seen her own shoe-buckles for eighteen years, except when the shoes weren’t on—don’t you twig?—and that he possessed what Quox pleased to call ‘a record of family obesity.’ So Shelmadine, who, in spite of rigorous diet and redoubled physical exercises, kept getting more and more uncertain in his outlines, rushed frantically off to Klümpenstein in the Tyrol, with what was, for him, quite a limited wardrobe. He drank the water—infernally nasty, too—and climbed the Rittenberg religiously, without finding his lost silhouette. Only on the Dolomittenweg, a pine-shaded promenade of great promise in the flirtatious line, he did find—a girl. And, despite his anxiety with regard to his silhouette, they had an uncommonly pleasant time together.�
“He had left his lady’s-maid behind, I presume?� hinted the listener.
“He had,� said Bonson. “When he got back to London, though, Mariette met him with a shriek. ‘Heavens!’ cried she, throwing up her hands, ‘the figure of Monsieur—the silhouette on which he justly prided himself, where—where has it gone? Hélas! those beautiful clothes that have arrived from the tailor’s during the absence of Monsieur—jamais de la vie will he be able to get into them, j’en suis baba in contemplating the extraordinary embonpoint of Monsieur.’
“‘Hang it, Mariette!’ said Shelmadine, quite shocked; ‘am I so beastly bulged as all that comes to?’ Mariette broke down at that, and went into floods of tears. It took the best part of a bottle of Cognac to bring her round, and then Shelmadine set about overhauling his wardrobe.�
“Nothing would meet, I presume?� hinted the man who had been listening.
“Not by three finger-breadths,� said the man who was telling the story. “Plowondllellm Wells in North Wales has got a kind of reputation for making stout kine lean. Shelmadine got extension of leave on account of bereavement....�
“When a man loses his figure he may be said to be bereaved!� nodded the listener.
“Shelmadine tried the Wells, without success. All he ate was weighed out in ounces, all he drank measured out with the most grudging care; nothing was allowed to enter his system that contained anything conducive to the accumulation of the hated tissue, but nothing could keep him from putting it on!�
“Poor brute!� said the hearer.
“He had gone to the Wells a distinctly roundabout figure. He came back a potty young man! Despair preyed upon his vitals without reducing his bulk, however. He saw ‘Slimaline’ advertised.�