She glanced doubtfully at Peter, who said:
‘The worst I know of her is that she doesn’t like my face, but that will hurt her more than it will me. I mean, you know, she’s the one that’s got to look at it. Let her carry on. . . . In the meantime, there is this matter of Bunter’s insubordination, from which I refuse to be diverted by Mrs Ruddle or any other red herring.’
‘My lord?’
‘If, Bunter, you do not immediately sit down here and have your supper, I will have you drummed out of the Regiment. My God!’ said Peter, putting a formidable wedge of foie gras on a cracked plate and handing it to his man, ‘do you realise what will happen to us if you die of neglect and starvation? There appear to be only two tumblers, so your punishment shall be to take your wine in a teacup and make a speech afterwards. There was a little supper below-stairs at my mother’s on Sunday night, I fancy. The speech you made then will serve the purpose, Bunter, with suitable modifications to fit it for our chaste ears.’
‘May I respectfully inquire,’ asked Bunter, drawing up an obedient chair, ‘how your lordship comes to know about that?’
‘You know my methods, Bunter. As a matter of fact, James blew – if I may call it so – the gaff.’
‘Ah, James!’ said Bunter, in a tone that boded James no good. He brooded a little over his supper, but, when called upon, rose without overmuch hesitation, teacup in hand.
‘My orders are,’ said Mr Bunter, ‘to propose the health of the happy couple shortly to – the happy couple now before us. To obey orders in this family has been my privilege for the last twenty years – a privilege which has been an unqualified pleasure, except perhaps when connected with the photography of deceased persons in an imperfect state of preservation.’
He paused, and seemed to expect something.
‘Did the kitchen-maid shriek at that point?’ asked Harriet.
‘No, my lady – the housemaid; the kitchen-maid having been sent out for giggling when Miss Franklin was speaking.’
‘It’s a pity we let Mrs Ruddle go,’ said Peter. ‘In her absence we will deem the shriek to have been duly uttered. Proceed!’
‘Thank you, my lord. . . . I should, perhaps,’ resumed Mr Bunter, ‘apologise for alarming the ladies with so unpleasant an allusion, but that her ladyship’s pen has so adorned the subject as to render the body of a murdered millionaire as agreeable to the contemplative mind as is that of a ripe burgundy to the discriminating palate. (Hear, hear!) His lordship is well known as a connoisseur, both of a fine body (Keep it clean, Bunter!) – in every sense of the word (Laughter) – and of a fine spirit (Cheers) – also in every sense of the word (Renewed laughter and applause). May I express the hope that the present union may happily exemplify that which we find in a first-class port – strength of body fortified by a first-class spirit and mellowing through many years to a noble maturity. My lord and my lady – your very good health!’ (Prolonged applause, during which the orator drained his cup and sat down.)
‘Upon my word,’ said Peter, ‘I have seldom heard an after-dinner speech more remarkable for brevity and – all things considered – propriety.’
‘You’ll have to reply to it, Peter.’
‘I am no orator as Bunter is, but I’ll try. . . . Am I mistaken, by the way, in imagining that that oil-stove is stinking to heaven?’
‘It’s smoking, at any rate,’ said Harriet, ‘like nothing on earth.’
Bunter, whose back was towards it, got up in alarm.
‘I fear, my lord,’ he observed, after some minutes of silent struggle, ‘that some catastrophe has occurred to the burner.’
‘Let’s have a look,’ said Peter.
The ensuing struggle was neither silent nor successful.
‘Turn the blasted thing out and take it away,’ said Peter at length. He came back to the table, his appearance in no way improved by several long smears from the oily smuts which were now falling in every part of the room. ‘Under the present conditions, I can only say, Bunter, in reply to your good wishes for our welfare, that my wife and I thank you sincerely and shall hope that they may be fulfilled in every particular. For myself, I should like to add that any man is rich in friends who has a good wife and a good servant, and I hope I may be dead, as I shall certainly be damned, before I give either of you cause to leave me (as they say) for another. Bunter, your health – and may heaven send her ladyship and you fortitude to endure me, so long as all shall live. I may as well warn you that I for one am firmly resolved to live as long as I possibly can.’
‘To which,’ said Mr Bunter, ‘always excepting the fortitude as being unnecessary, I should wish – if the expression may be permitted – to observe, Amen.’
Here everybody shook hands, and there was a pause, broken by Mr Bunter’s saying, with slightly self-conscious haste, that he thought he had better attend to the bedroom fire.
‘And in the meantime,’ said Peter, ‘we can have a final cigarette over the Beatrice in the sitting-room. I suppose, by the way, Beatrice is capable of heating us a little washing water?’
‘No doubt of it, my lord,’ said Mr Bunter, ‘always supposing that one could find a new wick for it. The present wick appears, I regret to say, inadequate.’
‘Oh!’ said Peter, a little blankly.
And indeed, when they reached the sitting-room, Beatrice was seen to be at her last expiring blue glimmer.
‘You must see what you can do with the bedroom fire,’ was Harriet’s suggestion.
‘Very good, my lady.’
‘At any rate,’ said Peter, lighting the cigarettes, ‘the matches still seem to strike on the box; all the laws of Nature have not been suspended for our confusion. We will muffle ourselves in overcoats and proceed to keep each other warm in the accepted manner of benighted travellers in a snow-bound country. “If I were on Greenland’s coast,” and all that. Not that I see any prospect of a six-months’ night; I wish I did; it is already past midnight.’
Bunter vanished upstairs, kettle in hand.
‘If,’ said her ladyship, a few minutes later, ‘you would remove that contraption from your eye, I could clean the bridge of your nose. Are you sorry we didn’t go to Paris or Mentone after all?’
‘No, definitely not. There is a solid reality about this. It’s convincing, somehow.’
‘It’s beginning to convince me, Peter. Such a series of domestic accidents could only happen to married people. There’s none of that artificial honeymoon glitter that prevents people from discovering each other’s real characters. You stand the test of tribulation remarkably well. It’s very encouraging.’
‘Thank you – but I really don’t know that there’s a great deal to complain of. I’ve got you, that’s the chief thing, and food and fire of sorts, and a roof over my head. What more could any man want? – Besides, I should hate to have missed Bunter’s speech and Mrs Ruddle’s conversation – and even Miss Twitterton’s parsnip wine adds a distinct flavour to life. I might, perhaps, have preferred rather more hot water and less oil about my person. Not that there is anything essentially effeminate about paraffin – but I disapprove on principle of perfumes for men.’
‘It’s a nice, clean smell,’ said his wife, soothingly, ‘much more original than all the powders of the merchant. And I expect Bunter will manage to get it off you.’
‘I hope so,’ said Peter. He remembered that it had once been said of ‘ce blond cadet de famille ducale anglaise’ – said, too, by a lady who had every opportunity of judging – that ‘il tenait son lit en Grand Monarque et s’y démenait en Grand Turc.’ The Fates, it seemed, had determined to strip him of every vanity save one. Let them. He could fight this battle naked. He laughed suddenly.
‘Enfin, du courage! Embrasse-moi, chérie. Je trouverai quandmême le moyen de te faire plaisir. Hein? tu veux? dis donc!’
‘Je veux bien.’
‘Dearest!’
‘Oh, Peter!’
‘I’m sorry – did I hurt you?’
&nbs
p; ‘No. Yes. Kiss me again.’
It was at some point during the next five minutes that Peter was heard to murmur, ‘Not faint Canaries but ambrosial’; and it is symptomatic of Harriet’s state of mind that at the time she vaguely connected the faint canaries with the shabby tigers – only tracing the quotation to its source some ten days later.
Bunter came downstairs. In one hand he held a small and steaming jug, and in the other a case of razors and a spongebag. A bath-towel and a pair of pyjamas hung from his arm, together with a silk dressing-gown.
‘The fire in the bedroom is drawing satisfactorily. I have contrived to heat a small quantity of water for your ladyship’s use.’
His master looked apprehensively.
‘But what to me, my love, but what to me?’
Bunter made no verbal reply, but his glance in the direction of the kitchen was eloquent. Peter looked thoughtfully at his own finger-nails and shuddered.
‘Lady,’ said he, ‘get you to bed and leave me to my destiny.’
The wood upon the hearth was flaring cheerfully, and the water, what there was of it, was boiling. The two brass candlesticks bore their flaming ministers bravely, one on either side of the mirror. The big fourposter, with its patchwork quilt of faded blues and scarlets and its chintz hangings dimmed by age and laundering, had, against the pale, plastered walls, a dignified air as though of exiled royalty. Harriet, warm and powdered and free at last from the smell of soot, paused with the hair-brush in her hand to wonder what was happening to Peter. She slipped across the chill dark of the dressing-room, opened the farther door, and listened. From somewhere far below came an ominous clank of iron, followed by a loud yelp and a burst of half-suffocated laughter.
‘Poor darling!’ said Harriet. . . .
She put out the bedroom candles. The sheets, worn thin by age, were of fine linen, and somewhere in the room there was a scent of lavender. . . . Jordan river. . . . A branch broke and fell upon the hearth in a shower of sparks, and the tall shadows danced across the ceiling.
The door-latch clicked, and her husband sidled apologetically through. His air of chastened triumph made her chuckle, though her blood was thumping erratically and something seemed to have happened to her breath. He dropped on his knees beside her.
‘Sweetheart,’ he said, his voice shaken between passion and laughter, ‘take your bridegroom. Quite clean and not the least paraffiny, but dreadfully damp and cold. Scrubbed like a puppy under the scullery pump!’
‘Dear Peter!’
(‘. . . en Grand Monarque . . .’)
‘I think,’ he went on, rapidly and almost indistinguishably, ‘I think Bunter was enjoying himself. I have set him to clean the blackbeetles out of the copper. What does it matter? What does anything matter? We are here. Laugh, lover, laugh. This is the end of the journey and the beginning of all delight.’
Mr Mervyn Bunter, having chased away the beetles, filled the copper and laid the fire ready for lighting, wrapped himself up in two great-coats and a rug and disposed himself comfortably in a couple of arm-chairs. But he did not sleep at once. Though not precisely anxious, he was filled with a kindly concern. He had (with what exertions!) brought his favourite up to the tape and must leave him now to make the running, but no respect for the proprieties could prevent his sympathetic imagination from following the cherished creature every step of the way. With a slight sigh he drew the candle towards him, took out a fountain-pen and a writing-pad, and began a letter to his mother. The performance of this filial duty might, he thought, serve to calm his mind.
‘DEAR MOTHER, – I write from an “unknown destination—” ’
‘What was that you called me?’
‘Oh, Peter – how absurd! I wasn’t thinking.’
‘What did you call me?’
‘My lord!’
‘The last two words in the language I ever expected to get a kick out of. One never values a thing till one’s earned it, does one? Listen, heart’s lady – before I’ve done I mean to be king and emperor.’
It is not part of the historian’s duty to indulge in what a critic has called ‘interesting revelations of the marriage-bed’. It is enough that the dutiful Mervyn Bunter at length set aside his writing materials, blew out the candle and composed his limbs to rest; and that, of the sleepers beneath that ancient roof, he that had the hardest and coldest couch enjoyed the quietest slumbers.
4
HOUSEHOLD GODS
Sir, he made a chimney in my father’s house, and the bricks are alive to this day to testify it.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE: II Henry VI: IV.2.
LADY PETER WIMSEY propped herself cautiously on one elbow and contemplated her sleeping lord. With the mocking eyes hidden and the confident mouth relaxed, his big, bony nose and tumbled hair gave him a gawky, fledgling look, like a schoolboy. And the hair itself was almost as light as tow – it was ridiculous that anything male should be as fair as that. No doubt when it was damped and sleeked down for the day his head would go back to its normal barley-corn colour. Last night, after Bunter’s ruthless pumping, it had affected her much as the murdered Lorenzo’s glove affected Isabella, and she had had to rub it dry with a towel before cradling it where, in the country phrase, it ‘belonged to be’.
Bunter? She spared him a stray thought from a mind drugged with sleep and the pleasure that comes with sleep. Bunter was up and about; she could faintly hear doors opening and shutting and furniture being moved down below. What an amazing muddle it had all been! But he would miraculously put everything right – wonderful Bunter – and leave one free to live and not bother one’s head. One vaguely hoped Bunter had not spent the whole night chasing blackbeetles, but for the moment what was left of one’s mind was concentrated on Peter – being anxious not to wake him, rather hoping he would soon wake up of his own accord and wondering what he would say when he did. If his first words were French one would at least feel certain that he retained an agreeable impression of the night’s proceedings; on the whole, however, English would be preferable, as showing that he remembered quite distinctly who one was.
As though this disturbing thought had broken his sleep, he stirred at that moment, and, without opening his eyes, felt for her with his hand and pulled her down against him. And his first word was neither French nor English, but a long interrogative ‘M’mmm?’
‘M’m!’ said Harriet, abandoning herself. ‘Mais quel tact, mon dieu! Sais-tu enfin qui je suis?’
‘Yes, my Shulamite, I do, so you needn’t lay traps for my tongue. In the course of a mis-spent life I have learnt that it is a gentleman’s first duty to remember in the morning who it was he took to bed with him. You are Harriet, and you are black but comely. Incidentally, you are my wife, and if you have forgotten it you will have to learn it all over again.’
‘Ah!’ said the baker. ‘I thought there was visitors here. You don’t catch old Noakes or Martha Ruddle putting “please” into an order for bread. How many loaves would you be wanting? I calls every day. Righty-ho! a cottage and a sandwich. And a small brown? Okay, chief. Here they are.’
‘If,’ said Bunter, retreating into the passage, ‘you would kindly step in and set them on the kitchen table, I should be obliged, my hands being covered with paraffin.’
‘Okay,’ said the baker, obliging him. ‘Trouble with the stove?’
‘A trifle,’ admitted Bunter. ‘I have been compelled to dismantle and reassemble the burners, but I am in hopes that it will now function adequately. We should, however, be more comfortable if we could induce the fires to draw. We have sent a message by the milkman to a person called Puffett who, as I understand, is willing to oblige in the chimney-sweeping way.’
‘That’s okay,’ agreed the baker. ‘He’s a builder by rights, is Tom Puffett, but he ain’t above obliging with a chimbley. You stopping here long? A month? Then maybe you’d like me to book the bread. Where’s old Noakes?’
‘Over at Broxford, as I understand,’ said Mr Bunter, ‘and we shou
ld like to know what he means by it. No preparations made for us and the chimneys out of order, after distinct instructions in writing and promises of compliance which have not been adhered to.’
‘Ah!’ said the baker. ‘It’s easy to promise, ain’t it?’ He winked. ‘Promises cost nothing, but chimbleys is eighteen-pence apiece and the soot thrown in. Well, I must scram. Anything I can do for you in a neighbourly way in the village?’
‘Since you are so good,’ replied Mr Bunter, ‘the dispatch of the grocer’s assistant with streaky rashers and eggs would enable us to augment the deficiencies of the breakfast menu.’
‘Say, boy,’ said the baker, ‘that’s okay by me. I’ll tell Willis to send his Jimmy along.’
‘Which,’ observed Mrs Ruddle, suddenly appearing from the sitting-room in a blue-checked apron and with her sleeves rolled up, ‘there’s no call to let George Willis think ’e’s to ’ave all me lord’s custom, seein’ the ’Ome & Colonial is a ’apenny cheaper per pound not to say better and leaner and I can ketch ’im w’en ’e goes by as easy as easy.’
‘You’ll ’ave to do with Willis today,’ retorted the baker, ‘unless you wants your breakfast at dinner-time, seein’ the ’Ome & Colonial don’t get here till past eleven or nearer twelve more like. Nothing more today? Okay. ’Mornin’, Martha. So long, chief.’
The baker hastened down the path, calling to his horse, and leaving Bunter to deduce that somewhere at no great distance the neighbourhood boasted a picture-palace.
‘Peter!’
‘Heart’s desire?’
‘Somebody’s frying bacon.’
‘Nonsense. People don’t fry bacon at dawn.’
‘That was eight by the church clock and the sun’s simply blazing in.’