ABSENT TREATMENT


I want to tell you all about dear old Bobbie Cardew. It's a most
interesting story. I can't put in any literary style and all that; but
I don't have to, don't you know, because it goes on its Moral Lesson.
If you're a man you mustn't miss it, because it'll be a warning to you;
and if you're a woman you won't want to, because it's all about how a
girl made a man feel pretty well fed up with things.

If you're a recent acquaintance of Bobbie's, you'll probably be
surprised to hear that there was a time when he was more remarkable for
the weakness of his memory than anything else. Dozens of fellows, who
have only met Bobbie since the change took place, have been surprised
when I told them that. Yet it's true. Believe _me_.

In the days when I first knew him Bobbie Cardew was about the most
pronounced young rotter inside the four-mile radius. People have called
me a silly ass, but I was never in the same class with Bobbie. When it
came to being a silly ass, he was a plus-four man, while my handicap
was about six. Why, if I wanted him to dine with me, I used to post him
a letter at the beginning of the week, and then the day before send him
a telegram and a phone-call on the day itself, and--half an hour before
the time we'd fixed--a messenger in a taxi, whose business it was to
see that he got in and that the chauffeur had the address all correct.
By doing this I generally managed to get him, unless he had left town
before my messenger arrived.

The funny thing was that he wasn't altogether a fool in other ways.
Deep down in him there was a kind of stratum of sense. I had known him,
once or twice, show an almost human intelligence. But to reach that
stratum, mind you, you needed dynamite.

At least, that's what I thought. But there was another way which hadn't
occurred to me. Marriage, I mean. Marriage, the dynamite of the soul;
that was what hit Bobbie. He married. Have you ever seen a bull-pup
chasing a bee? The pup sees the bee. It looks good to him. But he still
doesn't know what's at the end of it till he gets there. It was like
that with Bobbie. He fell in love, got married--with a sort of whoop,
as if it were the greatest fun in the world--and then began to find out
things.

She wasn't the sort of girl you would have expected Bobbie to rave
about. And yet, I don't know. What I mean is, she worked for her
living; and to a fellow who has never done a hand's turn in his life
there's undoubtedly a sort of fascination, a kind of romance, about a
girl who works for her living.

Her name was Anthony. Mary Anthony. She was about five feet six; she
had a ton and a half of red-gold hair, grey eyes, and one of those
determined chins. She was a hospital nurse. When Bobbie smashed himself
up at polo, she was told off by the authorities to smooth his brow and
rally round with cooling unguents and all that; and the old boy hadn't
been up and about again for more than a week before they popped off to
the registrar's and fixed it up. Quite the romance.

Bobbie broke the news to me at the club one evening, and next day he
introduced me to her. I admired her. I've never worked myself--my
name's Pepper, by the way. Almost forgot to mention it. Reggie Pepper.
My uncle Edward was Pepper, Wells, and Co., the Colliery people. He
left me a sizable chunk of bullion--I say I've never worked myself, but
I admire any one who earns a living under difficulties, especially a
girl. And this girl had had a rather unusually tough time of it, being
an orphan and all that, and having had to do everything off her own bat
for years.

Mary and I got along together splendidly. We don't now, but we'll come
to that later. I'm speaking of the past. She seemed to think Bobbie the
greatest thing on earth, judging by the way she looked at him when she
thought I wasn't noticing. And Bobbie seemed to think the same about
her. So that I came to the conclusion that, if only dear old Bobbie
didn't forget to go to the wedding, they had a sporting chance of being
quite happy.

Well, let's brisk up a bit here, and jump a year. The story doesn't
really start till then.

They took a flat and settled down. I was in and out of the place quite
a good deal. I kept my eyes open, and everything seemed to me to be
running along as smoothly as you could want. If this was marriage, I
thought, I couldn't see why fellows were so frightened of it. There
were a lot of worse things that could happen to a man.

But we now come to the incident of the quiet Dinner, and it's just here
that love's young dream hits a snag, and things begin to occur.

I happened to meet Bobbie in Piccadilly, and he asked me to come back
to dinner at the flat. And, like a fool, instead of bolting and putting
myself under police protection, I went.

When we got to the flat, there was Mrs. Bobbie looking--well, I tell
you, it staggered me. Her gold hair was all piled up in waves and
crinkles and things, with a what-d'-you-call-it of diamonds in it. And
she was wearing the most perfectly ripping dress. I couldn't begin to
describe it. I can only say it was the limit. It struck me that if this
was how she was in the habit of looking every night when they were
dining quietly at home together, it was no wonder that Bobbie liked
domesticity.

"Here's old Reggie, dear," said Bobbie. "I've brought him home to have
a bit of dinner. I'll phone down to the kitchen and ask them to send it
up now--what?"

She stared at him as if she had never seen him before. Then she turned
scarlet. Then she turned as white as a sheet. Then she gave a little
laugh. It was most interesting to watch. Made me wish I was up a tree
about eight hundred miles away. Then she recovered herself.

"I am so glad you were able to come, Mr. Pepper," she said, smiling at
me.

And after that she was all right. At least, you would have said so. She
talked a lot at dinner, and chaffed Bobbie, and played us ragtime on
the piano afterwards, as if she hadn't a care in the world. Quite a jolly
little party it was--not. I'm no lynx-eyed sleuth, and all that sort of
thing, but I had seen her face at the beginning, and I knew that she was
working the whole time and working hard, to keep herself in hand, and
that she would have given that diamond what's-its-name in her hair and
everything else she possessed to have one good scream--just one. I've
sat through some pretty thick evenings in my time, but that one had the
rest beaten in a canter. At the very earliest moment I grabbed my hat and
got away.

Having seen what I did, I wasn't particularly surprised to meet Bobbie
at the club next day looking about as merry and bright as a lonely
gum-drop at an Eskimo tea-party.

He started in straightway. He seemed glad to have someone to talk to
about it.

"Do you know how long I've been married?" he said.

I didn't exactly.

"About a year, isn't it?"

"Not _about_ a year," he said sadly. "Exactly a year--yesterday!"

Then I understood. I saw light--a regular flash of light.

"Yesterday was----?"

"The anniversary of the wedding. I'd arranged to take Mary to the
Savoy, and on to Covent Garden. She particularly wanted to hear Caruso.
I had the ticket for the box in my pocket. Do you know, all through
dinner I had a kind of rummy idea that there was something I'd
forgotten, but I couldn't think what?"

"Till your wife mentioned it?"

He nodded----

"She--mentioned it," he said thoughtfully.

I didn't ask for details. Women with hair and chins like Mary's may be
angels most of the time, but, when they take off their wings for a bit,
they aren't half-hearted about it.

"To be absolutely frank, old top," said poor old Bobbie, in a broken
sort of way, "my stock's pretty low at home."

There didn't seem much to be done. I just lit a cigarette and sat
there. He didn't want to talk. Presently he went out. I stood at the
window of our upper smoking-room, which looks out on to Piccadilly, and
watched him. He walked slowly along for a few yards, stopped, then
walked on again, and finally turned into a jeweller's. Which was an
instance of what I meant when I said that deep down in him there was a
certain stratum of sense.

* * * * *

It was from now on that I began to be really interested in this problem
of Bobbie's married life. Of course, one's always mildly interested in
one's friends' marriages, hoping they'll turn out well and all that;
but this was different. The average man isn't like Bobbie, and the
average girl isn't like Mary. It was that old business of the immovable
mass and the irresistible force. There was Bobbie, ambling gently
through life, a dear old chap in a hundred ways, but undoubtedly a
chump of the first water.

And there was Mary, determined that he shouldn't be a chump. And
Nature, mind you, on Bobbie's side. When Nature makes a chump like
dear old Bobbie, she's proud of him, and doesn't want her handiwork
disturbed. She gives him a sort of natural armour to protect him
against outside interference. And that armour is shortness of memory.
Shortness of memory keeps a man a chump, when, but for it, he might
cease to be one. Take my case, for instance. I'm a chump. Well, if I
had remembered half the things people have tried to teach me during my
life, my size in hats would be about number nine. But I didn't. I
forgot them. And it was just the same with Bobbie.

For about a week, perhaps a bit more, the recollection of that quiet
little domestic evening bucked him up like a tonic. Elephants, I read
somewhere, are champions at the memory business, but they were fools to
Bobbie during that week. But, bless you, the shock wasn't nearly big
enough. It had dinted the armour, but it hadn't made a hole in it.
Pretty soon he was back at the old game.

It was pathetic, don't you know. The poor girl loved him, and she was
frightened. It was the thin edge of the wedge, you see, and she knew
it. A man who forgets what day he was married, when he's been married
one year, will forget, at about the end of the fourth, that he's
married at all. If she meant to get him in hand at all, she had got to
do it now, before he began to drift away.

I saw that clearly enough, and I tried to make Bobbie see it, when he
was by way of pouring out his troubles to me one afternoon. I can't
remember what it was that he had forgotten the day before, but it was
something she had asked him to bring home for her--it may have been a
book.

"It's such a little thing to make a fuss about," said Bobbie. "And she
knows that it's simply because I've got such an infernal memory about
everything. I can't remember anything. Never could."

He talked on for a while, and, just as he was going, he pulled out a
couple of sovereigns.

"Oh, by the way," he said.

"What's this for?" I asked, though I knew.

"I owe it you."

"How's that?" I said.

"Why, that bet on Tuesday. In the billiard-room. Murray and Brown were
playing a hundred up, and I gave you two to one that Brown would win,
and Murray beat him by twenty odd."

"So you do remember some things?" I said.

He got quite excited. Said that if I thought he was the sort of rotter
who forgot to pay when he lost a bet, it was pretty rotten of me after
knowing him all these years, and a lot more like that.

"Subside, laddie," I said.

Then I spoke to him like a father.

"What you've got to do, my old college chum," I said, "is to pull
yourself together, and jolly quick, too. As things are shaping, you're
due for a nasty knock before you know what's hit you. You've got to
make an effort. Don't say you can't. This two quid business shows that,
even if your memory is rocky, you can remember some things. What you've
got to do is to see that wedding anniversaries and so on are included
in the list. It may be a brainstrain, but you can't get out of it."

"I suppose you're right," said Bobbie. "But it beats me why she thinks
such a lot of these rotten little dates. What's it matter if I forgot
what day we were married on or what day she was born on or what day the
cat had the measles? She knows I love her just as much as if I were a
memorizing freak at the halls."

"That's not enough for a woman," I said. "They want to be shown. Bear
that in mind, and you're all right. Forget it, and there'll be
trouble."

He chewed the knob of his stick.

"Women are frightfully rummy," he said gloomily.

"You should have thought of that before you married one," I said.

* * * * *

I don't see that I could have done any more. I had put the whole thing
in a nutshell for him. You would have thought he'd have seen the point,
and that it would have made him brace up and get a hold on himself. But
no. Off he went again in the same old way. I gave up arguing with him.
I had a good deal of time on my hands, but not enough to amount to
anything when it was a question of reforming dear old Bobbie by argument.
If you see a man asking for trouble, and insisting on getting it, the
only thing to do is to stand by and wait till it comes to him. After
that you may get a chance. But till then there's nothing to be done.
But I thought a lot about him.

Bobbie didn't get into the soup all at once. Weeks went by, and months,
and still nothing happened. Now and then he'd come into the club with a
kind of cloud on his shining morning face, and I'd know that there had
been doings in the home; but it wasn't till well on in the spring that
he got the thunderbolt just where he had been asking for it--in the
thorax.

I was smoking a quiet cigarette one morning in the window looking out
over Piccadilly, and watching the buses and motors going up one way and
down the other--most interesting it is; I often do it--when in rushed
Bobbie, with his eyes bulging and his face the colour of an oyster,
waving a piece of paper in his hand.

"Reggie," he said. "Reggie, old top, she's gone!"

"Gone!" I said. "Who?"

"Mary, of course! Gone! Left me! Gone!"

"Where?" I said.

Silly question? Perhaps you're right. Anyhow, dear old Bobbie nearly
foamed at the mouth.

"Where? How should I know where? Here, read this."

He pushed the paper into my hand. It was a letter.

"Go on," said Bobbie. "Read it."

So I did. It certainly was quite a letter. There was not much of it,
but it was all to the point. This is what it said:

"MY DEAR BOBBIE,--I am going away. When you care enough about me
to remember to wish me many happy returns on my birthday, I will
come back. My address will be Box 341, _London Morning News_."

I read it twice, then I said, "Well, why don't you?"

"Why don't I what?"

"Why don't you wish her many happy returns? It doesn't seem much to
ask."

"But she says on her birthday."

"Well, when is her birthday?"

"Can't you understand?" said Bobbie. "I've forgotten."

"Forgotten!" I said.

"Yes," said Bobbie. "Forgotten."

"How do you mean, forgotten?" I said. "Forgotten whether it's the
twentieth or the twenty-first, or what? How near do you get to it?"

"I know it came somewhere between the first of January and the
thirty-first of December. That's how near I get to it."

"Think."

"Think? What's the use of saying 'Think'? Think I haven't thought? I've
been knocking sparks out of my brain ever since I opened that letter."

"And you can't remember?"

"No."

I rang the bell and ordered restoratives.

"Well, Bobbie," I said, "it's a pretty hard case to spring on an
untrained amateur like me. Suppose someone had come to Sherlock Holmes
and said, 'Mr. Holmes, here's a case for you. When is my wife's
birthday?' Wouldn't that have given Sherlock a jolt? However, I know
enough about the game to understand that a fellow can't shoot off his
deductive theories unless you start him with a clue, so rouse yourself
out of that pop-eyed trance and come across with two or three. For
instance, can't you remember the last time she had a birthday? What
sort of weather was it? That might fix the month."

Bobbie shook his head.

"It was just ordinary weather, as near as I can recollect."

"Warm?"

"Warmish."

"Or cold?"

"Well, fairly cold, perhaps. I can't remember."

I ordered two more of the same. They seemed indicated in the Young
Detective's Manual. "You're a great help, Bobbie," I said. "An
invaluable assistant. One of those indispensable adjuncts without
which no home is complete."

Bobbie seemed to be thinking.

"I've got it," he said suddenly. "Look here. I gave her a present on
her last birthday. All we have to do is to go to the shop, hunt up the
date when it was bought, and the thing's done."

"Absolutely. What did you give her?"

He sagged.

"I can't remember," he said.

Getting ideas is like golf. Some days you're right off, others it's
as easy as falling off a log. I don't suppose dear old Bobbie had ever
had two ideas in the same morning before in his life; but now he did
it without an effort. He just loosed another dry Martini into the
undergrowth, and before you could turn round it had flushed quite a
brain-wave.

Do you know those little books called _When were you Born_?
There's one for each month. They tell you your character, your talents,
your strong points, and your weak points at fourpence halfpenny a go.
Bobbie's idea was to buy the whole twelve, and go through them till we
found out which month hit off Mary's character. That would give us the
month, and narrow it down a whole lot.

A pretty hot idea for a non-thinker like dear old Bobbie. We sallied
out at once. He took half and I took half, and we settled down to work.
As I say, it sounded good. But when we came to go into the thing, we
saw that there was a flaw. There was plenty of information all right,
but there wasn't a single month that didn't have something that exactly
hit off Mary. For instance, in the December book it said, "December
people are apt to keep their own secrets. They are extensive travellers."
Well, Mary had certainly kept her secret, and she had travelled quite
extensively enough for Bobbie's needs. Then, October people were "born
with original ideas" and "loved moving." You couldn't have summed
up Mary's little jaunt more neatly. February people had "wonderful
memories"--Mary's speciality.

We took a bit of a rest, then had another go at the thing.

Bobbie was all for May, because the book said that women born in that
month were "inclined to be capricious, which is always a barrier to a
happy married life"; but I plumped for February, because February women
"are unusually determined to have their own way, are very earnest, and
expect a full return in their companion or mates." Which he owned was
about as like Mary as anything could be.

In the end he tore the books up, stamped on them, burnt them, and went
home.

It was wonderful what a change the next few days made in dear old
Bobbie. Have you ever seen that picture, "The Soul's Awakening"? It
represents a flapper of sorts gazing in a startled sort of way into the
middle distance with a look in her eyes that seems to say, "Surely that
is George's step I hear on the mat! Can this be love?" Well, Bobbie had
a soul's awakening too. I don't suppose he had ever troubled to think
in his life before--not really _think_. But now he was wearing his
brain to the bone. It was painful in a way, of course, to see a fellow
human being so thoroughly in the soup, but I felt strongly that it was
all for the best. I could see as plainly as possible that all these
brainstorms were improving Bobbie out of knowledge. When it was all
over he might possibly become a rotter again of a sort, but it would
only be a pale reflection of the rotter he had been. It bore out the
idea I had always had that what he needed was a real good jolt.

I saw a great deal of him these days. I was his best friend, and he
came to me for sympathy. I gave it him, too, with both hands, but I
never failed to hand him the Moral Lesson when I had him weak.

One day he came to me as I was sitting in the club, and I could see
that he had had an idea. He looked happier than he had done in weeks.

"Reggie," he said, "I'm on the trail. This time I'm convinced that I
shall pull it off. I've remembered something of vital importance."

"Yes?" I said.

"I remember distinctly," he said, "that on Mary's last birthday we went
together to the Coliseum. How does that hit you?"

"It's a fine bit of memorizing," I said; "but how does it help?"

"Why, they change the programme every week there."

"Ah!" I said. "Now you are talking."

"And the week we went one of the turns was Professor Some One's
Terpsichorean Cats. I recollect them distinctly. Now, are we narrowing
it down, or aren't we? Reggie, I'm going round to the Coliseum this
minute, and I'm going to dig the date of those Terpsichorean Cats out
of them, if I have to use a crowbar."

So that got him within six days; for the management treated us like
brothers; brought out the archives, and ran agile fingers over the
pages till they treed the cats in the middle of May.

"I told you it was May," said Bobbie. "Maybe you'll listen to me
another time."

"If you've any sense," I said, "there won't be another time."

And Bobbie said that there wouldn't.

Once you get your money on the run, it parts as if it enjoyed doing it.
I had just got off to sleep that night when my telephone-bell rang. It
was Bobbie, of course. He didn't apologize.

"Reggie," he said, "I've got it now for certain. It's just come to me.
We saw those Terpsichorean Cats at a matinee, old man."

"Yes?" I said.

"Well, don't you see that that brings it down to two days? It must have
been either Wednesday the seventh or Saturday the tenth."

"Yes," I said, "if they didn't have daily matinees at the Coliseum."

I heard him give a sort of howl.

"Bobbie," I said. My feet were freezing, but I was fond of him.

"Well?"

"I've remembered something too. It's this. The day you went to the
Coliseum I lunched with you both at the Ritz. You had forgotten to
bring any money with you, so you wrote a cheque."

"But I'm always writing cheques."

"You are. But this was for a tenner, and made out to the hotel. Hunt up
your cheque-book and see how many cheques for ten pounds payable to the
Ritz Hotel you wrote out between May the fifth and May the tenth."

He gave a kind of gulp.

"Reggie," he said, "you're a genius. I've always said so. I believe
you've got it. Hold the line."

Presently he came back again.

"Halloa!" he said.

"I'm here," I said.

"It was the eighth. Reggie, old man, I----"

"Topping," I said. "Good night."

It was working along into the small hours now, but I thought I might as
well make a night of it and finish the thing up, so I rang up an hotel
near the Strand.

"Put me through to Mrs. Cardew," I said.

"It's late," said the man at the other end.

"And getting later every minute," I said. "Buck along, laddie."

I waited patiently. I had missed my beauty-sleep, and my feet had
frozen hard, but I was past regrets.

"What is the matter?" said Mary's voice.

"My feet are cold," I said. "But I didn't call you up to tell you that
particularly. I've just been chatting with Bobbie, Mrs. Cardew."

"Oh! is that Mr. Pepper?"

"Yes. He's remembered it, Mrs. Cardew."

She gave a sort of scream. I've often thought how interesting it must
be to be one of those Exchange girls. The things they must hear, don't
you know. Bobbie's howl and gulp and Mrs. Bobbie's scream and all about
my feet and all that. Most interesting it must be.

"He's remembered it!" she gasped. "Did you tell him?"

"No."

Well, I hadn't.

"Mr. Pepper."

"Yes?"

"Was he--has he been--was he very worried?"

I chuckled. This was where I was billed to be the life and soul of the
party.

"Worried! He was about the most worried man between here and Edinburgh.
He has been worrying as if he was paid to do it by the nation. He has
started out to worry after breakfast, and----"

Oh, well, you can never tell with women. My idea was that we should
pass the rest of the night slapping each other on the back across the
wire, and telling each other what bally brainy conspirators we were,
don't you know, and all that. But I'd got just as far as this, when she
bit at me. Absolutely! I heard the snap. And then she said "Oh!" in
that choked kind of way. And when a woman says "Oh!" like that, it
means all the bad words she'd love to say if she only knew them.

And then she began.

"What brutes men are! What horrid brutes! How you could stand by and
see poor dear Bobbie worrying himself into a fever, when a word from
you would have put everything right, I can't----"

"But----"

"And you call yourself his friend! His friend!" (Metallic laugh, most
unpleasant.) "It shows how one can be deceived. I used to think you a
kind-hearted man."

"But, I say, when I suggested the thing, you thought it perfectly----"

"I thought it hateful, abominable."

"But you said it was absolutely top----"

"I said nothing of the kind. And if I did, I didn't mean it. I don't
wish to be unjust, Mr. Pepper, but I must say that to me there seems to
be something positively fiendish in a man who can go out of his way to
separate a husband from his wife, simply in order to amuse himself by
gloating over his agony----"

"But----!"

"When one single word would have----"

"But you made me promise not to----" I bleated.

"And if I did, do you suppose I didn't expect you to have the sense to
break your promise?"

I had finished. I had no further observations to make. I hung up the
receiver, and crawled into bed.

* * * * *

I still see Bobbie when he comes to the club, but I do not visit
the old homestead. He is friendly, but he stops short of issuing
invitations. I ran across Mary at the Academy last week, and her eyes
went through me like a couple of bullets through a pat of butter. And
as they came out the other side, and I limped off to piece myself
together again, there occurred to me the simple epitaph which, when I
am no more, I intend to have inscribed on my tombstone. It was this:
"He was a man who acted from the best motives. There is one born every
minute."