‘Busy old fool, unruly sun – but you’re right about the bacon. The smell’s coming up quite distinctly. Through the window, I think. This calls for investigation. . . . I say, it’s a gorgeous morning. . . . Are you hungry?’
‘Ravenous.’
‘Unromantic but reassuring. As a matter of fact, I could do with a large breakfast myself. After all, I work hard for my living. I’ll give Bunter a hail.’
‘For God’s sake put some clothes on – if Mrs Ruddle sees you hanging out of the window like that she’ll have a thousand fits.’
‘It’ll be a treat for her. Nothing so desirable as novelty. I expect old man Ruddle went to bed in his boots. Bunter! Bun-ter! . . . Damn it, here is the Ruddle woman. Stop laughing and chuck me my dressing-gown. . . . Er – good-morning, Mrs Ruddle. Tell Bunter we’re ready for breakfast, would you?’
‘Right you are, me lord,’ replied Mrs Ruddle (for after all, he was a lord). But she expressed herself later in the day to her friend Mrs Hodges.
‘Mother-naked, Mrs ’Odges, if you’ll believe me. I declare I was that ashamed I didden know w’ere to look. And no more ’air on ’is chest than wot I ’as meself.’
‘That’s gentry,’ said Mrs Hodges, referring to the first part of the indictment. ‘You’ve only to look at the pictures of them there sun-bathers as they call them on the Ly-doh. Now, my Susan’s first were a wunnerful ’airy man, jest like a kerridge-rug if you take my meaning. But,’ she added cryptically, ‘it don’t foller, for they never ’ad no family, not till ’e died and she married young Tyler over at Pigott’s.’
When Mr Bunter tapped discreetly at the door and entered with a wooden bucket full of kindling, her ladyship had vanished and his lordship was sitting on the window-ledge smoking a cigarette.
‘Good-morning, Bunter. Fine morning.’
‘Beautiful autumn weather, my lord, very seasonable. I trust your lordship found everything satisfactory.’
‘H’m. Bunter, do you know the meaning of the expression arríre-pensée?’
‘No, my lord.’
‘I’m glad to hear it. Have you remembered to pump up the cistern?’
‘Yes, my lord. I have put the oil-stove in order and summoned the sweep. Breakfast will be ready in a few minutes, my lord, if you will kindly excuse tea for this morning, the local grocer not being acquainted with coffee except in bottles. While you are breakfasting, I will endeavour to kindle a fire in the dressing-room, which I would not attempt last night, on account of the time being short and there being a board in the chimney – no doubt to exclude draughts and pigeons. I fancy, however, it is readily removable.’
‘All right. Is there any hot water?’
‘Yes, my lord – though I would point out there is a slight leak in the copper which creates difficulty as tending to extinguish the fire. I would suggest bringing up the baths in about forty minutes’ time, my lord.’
‘Baths? Thank God! Yes – that’ll do splendidly. No word from Mr Noakes, I suppose?’
‘No, my lord.’
‘We’ll see to him presently. I see you’ve found the fire-dogs.’
‘In the coal-house, my lord. Will you wear the Lovats or the grey suit?’
‘Neither – find me an open shirt and a pair of flannel bags and – did you put in my old blazer?’
‘Certainly, my lord.’
‘Then buzz off and get breakfast before I get like the Duke of Wellington, nearly reduced to a skellington. . . . I say, Bunter.’
‘My lord?’
‘I’m damned sorry you’re having all this trouble.’
‘Don’t mention it, my lord. So long as your lordship is satisfied—’
‘Yes. All right, Bunter. Thanks.’
He dropped his hand lightly on the servant’s shoulder in what might have been a gesture of affection or dismissal as you chose to take it, and stood looking thoughtfully into the fireplace till his wife rejoined him.
‘I’ve been exploring – I’d never been in that part of the house. After you go down five steps to the modern bit you turn a corner and go up six steps and bump your head and there’s another passage and a little ramification and two more bedrooms and a triangular cubby-hole and a ladder that goes up to the attics. And the cistern lives in a cupboard to itself – you open the door and fall down two steps and bump your head, and bring up with your chin on the ball-cock.’
‘My God! You haven’t put the ball-cock out of order? Do you realise, woman, that country life is entirely conditioned by the ball-cock in the cistern and the kitchen boiler?’
‘I do – but I didn’t think you would.’
‘Don’t I? If you’d spent your childhood in a house with a hundred and fifty bedrooms and perpetual house-parties, where every drop had to be pumped up by hand and the hot water carried because there were only two bathrooms and all the rest hip-baths, and had the boiler burst when you were entertaining the Prince of Wales, what you didn’t know about insanitary plumbing wouldn’t be worth knowing.’
‘Peter, I believe you’re a fraud. You may play at being a great detective and a scholar and a cosmopolitan man-about-town, but at bottom you’re nothing but an English country gentleman, with his soul in the stables and his mind on the parish pump.’
‘God help all married men! You would pluck out the heart of my mystery. No – but my father was one of the old school and thought that all these new-fangled luxuries made you soft and merely spoilt the servants. . . . Come in! . . . Ah! I have never regretted Paradise Lost since I discovered that it contained no eggs-and-bacon.’
‘The trouble with these here chimneys,’ observed Mr Puffett, oracularly, ‘is that they wants sweeping.’
He was an exceedingly stout man, rendered still stouter by his costume. This had reached what, in recent medical jargon, is known as ‘a high degree of onionisation’, consisting as it did of a greenish-black coat and trousers and a series of variegated pullovers one on top of the other, which peeped out at the throat in a graduated scale of décolleté.
‘There ain’t no sweeter chimneys in the county,’ pursued Mr Puffett, removing his coat and displaying the outermost sweater in a glory of red and yellow horizontal stripes, ‘if they was given half a chance, as who should know better than me what’s been up them time and again as a young lad, me ole Dad bein’ in the chimney-sweeping line.’
‘Indeed?’ said Mr Bunter.
‘The law wouldn’t let me do it now,’ said Mr Puffett, shaking his head, which was crowned with a bowler hat. ‘Not as me figure would allow of it at my time of life. But I knows these here chimneys from ’earth to pot as I may say, and a sweeter-drawing pair of chimneys you couldn’t wish for. Not when properly swep’. But no chimney can be sweet if not swep’, no more than a room can, as I’m sure you’ll agree with me, Mr Bunter.’
‘Quite so,’ said Mr Bunter. ‘Would you be good enough to proceed to sweep them?’
‘To oblige you, Mr Bunter, and to oblige the lady and gentleman, I shall be ’appy to sweep them. I’m a builder by trade, but always ’appy to oblige with a chimney when called upon. I ’ave, as you might say, a soft spot for chimneys, ’avin’ been brought up in ’em, like, and though I says it, Mr Bunter, there ain’t no one ’andles a chimney kinder nor wot I does. It’s knowing ’em, you see, wot does it – knowing w’ere they wants easin’ and ’umourin’ and w’ere they wants the power be’ind the rods.’
So saying, Mr Puffett turned up his various sleeves, flexed his biceps once or twice, picked up his rods and brushes, which he had laid down in the passage, and asked where he should begin.
‘The sitting-room will be required first,’ said Mr Bunter. ‘In the kitchen I can, for the immediate moment, manage with the oil-stove. This way, Mr Puffett, if you please.’
Mrs Ruddle, who, as far as the Wimseys were concerned, was a new broom, had made a clean and determined sweep of the sitting-room, draping all the uglier pieces of furniture with particular care in dust-sheets, covering the noisy rugs with news
paper, decorating with handsome dunce’s caps two exceptionally rampageous bronze cavaliers which flanked the fireplace on pedestals and were too heavy to move, and tying up in a duster the withered pampas-grass in the painted drain-pipe near the door, for, as she observed, ‘them things do ’old the dust so.’
‘Ah!’ said Mr Puffett. He removed his top sweater to display a blue one, spread out his apparatus on the space between the shrouded settles and plunged beneath the sacking that enveloped the chimney-breast. He emerged again, beaming with satisfaction. ‘What did I tell you? Full ’o sut this chimney is. Ain’t bin swep’ for a mort o’ years, I reckon.’
‘We reckon so too,’ said Mr Bunter. ‘We should like to have a word with Mr Noakes on the subject of these chimneys.’
‘Ah!’ said Mr Puffett. He thrust his brush up the chimney and screwed a rod to its hinder end. ‘If I was to give you a pound note, Mr Bunter’ – the rod jerked upwards and he added another joint – ‘a pound note for every penny’ – he added another joint – ‘every penny Mr Noakes has paid me’ – he added another joint – ‘or any other practical sweep for that matter’ – he added another joint – ‘in the last ten years or may be more’ – he added another joint – ‘for sweeping of these here chimneys’ – he added another joint – ‘I give you my word, Mr Bunter’ – he added another joint and swivelled round on his haunches to deliver his peroration with more emphasis – ‘you wouldn’t be one ’apenny better off than you are now.’
‘I believe you,’ said Mr Bunter. ‘And the sooner that chimney is clear, the better we shall be pleased.’
He retired into the scullery, where Mrs Ruddle, armed with a hand-bowl, was scooping boiling water from the copper into a large bath-can.
‘You had better leave it to me, Mrs Ruddle, to negotiate the baths round the turn of the stairs. You may follow me with the cans, if you please.’
Returning thus processionally through the sitting-room he was relieved to see only Mr Puffett’s ample base emerging from under the chimney-breast and to hear him utter loud groans and cries of self-encouragement which boomed hollow in the funnel of the brickwork. It is always pleasant to see a fellow-creature toiling still harder than one’s self.
In nothing has the whirligig of time so redressed the balance between the sexes as in this business of getting up in the morning. Woman, when not an adept of the Higher Beauty Culture, has now little to do beyond washing, stepping into a garment or so, and walking downstairs. Man, still slave to the button and the razor, clings to the ancient ceremonial of potter and gets himself up by instalments. Harriet was knotting her tie before the sound of splashing was heard in the next room. She accordingly classed her new possession as a confirmed potterer and made her way down by what Peter, with more exactness than delicacy, had already named the Privy Stair. This led into a narrow passage, containing the modern convenience before-mentioned, a boot-hole and a cupboard with brooms in it, and debouched at length into the scullery and so to the back door.
The garden, at any rate, had been well looked after. There were cabbages at the back, and celery trenches, also an asparagus bed well strawed up and a number of scientifically pruned apple-trees. There was also a small cold-house sheltering a hardy vine with half a dozen bunches of black grapes on it and a number of half-hardy plants in pots. In front of the house, a good show of dahlias and chrysanthemums and a bed of scarlet salvias lent colour to the sunshine. Mr Noakes apparently had some little taste for gardening, or at any rate a good gardener; and this was the pleasantest thing yet known of Mr Noakes, thought Harriet. She explored the potting-shed, where the tools were in good order, and found a pair of scissors, armed with which she made an assault upon the long trail of vine-leaves and the rigid bronze sheaves of the chrysanthemums. She grinned a little to find herself thus supplying the statutory ‘feminine touch’ to the household and, looking up, was rewarded with the sight of her husband. He was curled on the sill of the open window, in a dressing-gown, with The Times on his knee and a cigarette between his lips, and was trimming his nails in a thoughtful leisurely way, as though he had world and time enough at his disposal. At the other side of the casement, come from goodness knew where, was a large ginger cat, engaged in thoroughly licking one fore-paw before applying it to the back of its ear. The two sleek animals, delicately self-absorbed, sat on in a mandarin-like calm till the human one, with the restlessness of inferiority, lifted his eyes from his task, caught sight of Harriet and said ‘Hey!’ – whereupon the cat rose up, affronted, and leapt out of sight.
‘That,’ said Peter, who had sometimes an uncanny way of echoing one’s own thoughts, ‘is a very dainty, ladylike occupation.’
‘Isn’t it?’ said Harriet. She stood on one leg to inspect the pound or two of garden mould adhering to her stout brogue shoe. ‘A garden is a lovesome thing, God wot.’
‘Her feet beneath her pettitcoat like little mice stole in and out,’ agreed his lordship gravely. ‘Can you tell me, rosy-fingered Aurora, whether the unfortunate person in the room below me is being slowly murdered or only having a fit?’
‘I was beginning to wonder myself,’ said Harriet; for strange, strangled cries were proceeding from the sitting-room. ‘Perhaps I had better go and find out.’
‘Must you go? You improve the scenery so much. I like a landscape with figures. . . . Dear me! what a shocking sound – like Nell Cook under the paving-stone! It seemed to come right up into the room beside me. I am becoming a nervous wreck.’
‘You don’t look it. You look abominably placid and pleased with life.’
‘Well, so I am. But one should not be selfish in one’s happiness. I feel convinced that somewhere about the house there is a fellow-creature in trouble.’
At this point Bunter emerged from the front door, walked backwards across the strip of turf, with eyes cast upwards as though seeking a heavenly revelation, and solemnly shook his head, like Lord Burleigh in The Critic.
‘Ain’t we there yet?’ cried the voice of Mrs Ruddle from the window.
‘No,’ said Bunter, returning, ‘we appear to be making no progress at all.’
‘It seems,’ said Peter, ‘that we are expecting a happy event. Parturiunt montes. At any rate, the creation seems to be groaning and travailing together a good deal.’
Harriet got off the flower-bed and scraped the earth from her shoes with a garden label.
‘I shall cease to decorate the landscape and go and form part of a domestic interior.’
Peter uncoiled himself from the window-sill, took off his dressing-gown and pulled away his blazer from under the ginger cat.
‘All that’s the matter with this chimney, Mr Bunter,’ pronounced Mr Puffett, ‘is, sut.’ Having thus, as it were, come out by the same road as he had gone in, he began to withdraw his brush from the chimney, unscrewing it with extreme deliberation, rod by rod.
‘So,’ said Mr Bunter, with an inflection of sarcasm quite lost on Mr Puffett, ‘so we had inferred.’
‘That’s it,’ pursued Mr Puffett, ‘corroded sut. No chimney can’t draw when the pot’s full of corroded sut like this ’ere chimney-pot is. You can’t ask it. It ain’t reasonable.’
‘I don’t ask it,’ retorted Mr Bunter. ‘I ask you to get it clear, that’s all.’
‘Well now, Mr Bunter,’ said Mr Puffett, with an air of injury, ‘I put it to you to just take a look at this ’ere sut.’ He extended a grimy hand filled with what looked like clinkers. ‘ ’Ard as a crock, that sut is, corroded ’ard. That’s wot your chimney-pot’s full of, and you can’t get a brush through it, not with all the power you puts be’ind it. Near forty feet of rod I’ve got up that chimney, Mr Bunter, trying to get through the pot, and it ain’t fair on a man nor his rods.’ He pulled down another section of his apparatus and straightened it out with loving care.
‘Some means will have to be devised to penetrate the obstruction,’ said Mr Bunter, his eyes on the window, ‘and without delay. Her ladyship is coming in from the garden. You can t
ake out the breakfast tray, Mrs Ruddle.’
‘Ah!’ said Mrs Ruddle, peeping under the dish-covers before lifting the tray from the radio cabinet where Bunter had set it down, ‘they’re taking their vittles well – that’s a good sign in a young couple. I remember when me and Ruddle was wed—’
‘And the lamps all need new wicks,’ added Bunter austerely, ‘and the burners cleaned before you fill them.’
‘Mr Noakes ain’t used no lamps this long time,’ said Mrs Ruddle, with a sniff. ‘Says ’e can see well enough by candle-light. Comes cheaper, I suppose.’ She flounced out with the tray and, encountering Harriet in the doorway, dropped a curtsy that sent the dish-covers sliding.
‘Oh, you’ve got the sweep, Bunter – that’s splendid! We thought we heard something going on.’
‘Yes, my lady. Mr Puffett has been good enough to oblige. But I understand that he has encountered some impenetrable obstacle in the upper portion of the chimney.’
‘How kind of you to come, Mr Puffett. We had a dreadful time last night.’
Judging from the sweep’s eye that propitiation was advisable, Harriet extended her hand. Mr Puffett looked at it, looked at his own, pulled up his sweaters to get at his trousers pocket, extracted a newly laundered red-cotton handkerchief, shook it slowly from its folds, draped it across his palm and so grasped Harriet’s fingers, rather in the manner of a royal proxy bedding his master’s bride with the sheet between them.
‘Well, me lady,’ said Mr Puffett, ‘I’m allus willin’ to oblige. Not but what you’ll allow as a chimney wot’s choked like this chimney is ain’t fair to a man nor yet to ’is rods. But I will make bold to say that if any man can get the corroded sut out of this ’ere chimney-pot, I’m the man to do it. It’s experience, you see, that’s wot it is, and the power I puts be’ind it.’
‘I’m sure it is,’ said Harriet.
‘As I understand the matter, my lady,’ put in Bunter, ‘it is the actual pot that’s choked – no structural defect in the stack.’