'So Carlisle got the cabinet?'
'I told you he did,' said Mr Saxby. 'But when you say "So Carlisle got the cabinet?" as if that were the important thing, it seems to me that you are missing the whole point of my story. It is immaterial which of the two eccentrics made the higher bid, what is so extraordinary is that they were bidding at all in fifties and hundreds for this entirely worthless object. It bears out what I was saying to Barbara Crowe just now—'
Sir Raymond sat up with a jerk. His pipe fell from his mouth in a shower of sparks. Mr Saxby regarded it with a shake of the head.
'That's how fires get started,' he said reprovingly.
'Barbara Crowe?'
'Though Boy Scouts start them, I believe, by rubbing two sticks together. How, I have never been able to understand. Why two sticks, rubbed together, should—'
'Is Barbara Crowe here?'
'She was when I went to take my bath. Looking very well, I thought.'
As Sir Raymond picked up his pipe, strange emotions were stirring within him – exultation one of them, tenderness another. There could be only one reason for Barbara's arrival in Dovetail Hammer. She had come to see him, to try to effect a reconciliation. She was, in short, making what is known as the first move, and it touched him deeply that anyone as proud as she could have brought herself to do it. All the old love, so long kept in storage, as if it had been something Albert Peasemarch had locked up in a wine cellar, came popping out as good as new, and in spite of the presence in it of men like Gordon Carlisle and his nephew Cosmo the world seemed to him a very pleasant world indeed.
That strange tenderness grew. He could see now how wrong had been the stand he had taken about Phoebe sharing their home. Of course a bride would not want her home shared by anyone, let alone a woman like his sister Phoebe. Wincing a little, he resolved that, even if it meant paying out the two thousand pounds a year she had mentioned, Barbara must be alone with him in their little nest.
He had just reached this admirable decision, when Lord Ickenham came in through the french windows, and paused, momentarily disconcerted, at the sight of Mr Saxby. He had come to talk to Sir Raymond privately, and there was nothing in Howard Saxby senior's manner to suggest that he did not intend to remain rooted to the spot for hours.
But he had always been a quick thinker. There were ways of removing this adhesive old gentleman, and it took him but an instant to select the one he knew could not fail.
'Oh, there you are, Saxby,' he said. 'I was looking for you. Flannery wants to see you.'
Mr Saxby gave an interested bleat.
'Flannery? Is he here?'
'Just arrived.'
'Why didn't you bring him along?'
'He said he wanted to see you on some private matter.'
'It must be something to do with those Amalgamated Rubber shares.'
Sir Raymond, who had been daydreaming about little nests, came out of his reverie.
'Who's Flannery?'
'He's on the stock exchange. He looks after my investments.'
'They could be in no safer hands,' said Lord Ickenham, with a curious little thrill of satisfaction as he realized that the mists had at last cleared away and he now knew who Flannery was. 'I wouldn't keep him waiting. Beefy,' he went on, as Mr Saxby ambled off, making remarkably good time for a man of his years, 'I come bearing news which will, unless I am greatly mistaken, send you gambolling about the house and grounds like a lamb in springtime. But before going into that,' he said, cocking an interested eyebrow, 'I would like, if I may do so without giving offence, to comment on your personal appearance. Possibly it is my imagination, but you give me the idea of being a bit more dusty than usual. Have you been rolling in something, or do you always have cobwebs in your hair?'
A cloud marred the sunniness of Sir Raymond's mood. This reminder that he was sharing the same planet with Albert Peasemarch caused a purple flush to spread over his face.
'You'd have cobwebs in your hair, if you'd been in a cellar all the afternoon,' he said warmly. 'Do you know where Peasemarch is?'
'I was chatting with him on the phone not long ago, and he told me he was going to London for a week or two, presumably to stay with his sister, who has a house at East Dulwich. I was surprised at his leaving you so suddenly. No unpleasantness, I trust?'
Sir Raymond breathed heavily.
'He locked me in the cellar, if you call that unpleasantness.'
Lord Ickenham seemed staggered, as a man might well be at hearing such sensational words.
'Locked you in the cellar?'
'The wine cellar. If Saxby hadn't come along, I'd be there still. The man's insane.'
'One of the mad Peasemarches, you think? I'm not so sure. I admit that his behaviour was peculiar, but I believe I can understand it. Owing to a singular piece of good fortune which has just befallen him, Albert Peasemarch is a bit above himself this afternoon. Needing an outlet for his high spirits and feeling that he had to do something by way of expressing himself, he chose this unusual course. Where you or I in similar circumstances would have opened a bottle of champagne or gone about giving small boys sixpences, Peasemarch locked you in the cellar. It's just a matter of how these things happen to take you. I suppose he thought you would laugh as heartily as he at the amusing little affair.'
'Well, he was wrong,' said Sir Raymond, still breathing heavily. 'If Peasemarch were here and I could get my hands on him, I would take him apart, limb by limb, and dance on his fragments.'
Lord Ickenham nodded.
'Yes, I can see your side of the thing. Well, when I meet him, I will let him know that you are displeased, and you will certainly get a letter of apology from him, for there is good stuff in Albert Peasemarch and no one is quicker than he to admit it when he knows he has acted mistakenly. But we must not waste precious moments talking of Albert Peasemarch, for there are other and far more important matters that call for our attention. Prepare yourself for a surprise, Beefy. Barbara Crowe is here.'
'It isn't a surprise.'
'You knew?'
'Saxby told me.'
And what steps do you propose to take?'
'I'm going to tell her I've been a fool.'
'Doesn't she know?'
And I'm going to marry her, if she'll still have me.'
'Oh, she'll have you, all right. I could tell that by the way, every time I mentioned your name, she buried her face in her hands and murmured "Toots! Toots!"'
'She did?' said Sir Raymond, much moved.
'Brokenly,' Lord Ickenham assured him.
'You know what the trouble was,' said Sir Raymond, removing a cobweb from his left eyebrow. 'She didn't want Phoebe living with us.'
'Very naturally.'
'Yes, I see that now. I'm going to give her two thousand pounds a year and tell her to go off and take a flat somewhere.'
'A sound and generous decision.'
'Or do you think she might settle for fifteen hundred?' said Sir Raymond wistfully.
Lord Ickenham considered the question.
'If I were you, Beefy, I would cross that bridge when you come to it. For all you know, Phoebe may be getting married herself
Sir Raymond stared.
'Phoebe?'
'Yes.'
'My sister Phoebe?'
'Stranger things have happened.'
For an instant it seemed that Sir Raymond was about to say 'Name three', but he merely gave a grunt and brushed away another cobweb. Lord Ickenham studied him with a thoughtful eye. He was debating within himself whether or not this was a suitable moment to reveal to the barrister-novelist that he was about to become allied by marriage to the East Dulwich Pease-marches. He decided that it was not. It is only an exceptionally mild and easy-tempered man who can receive with equanimity the news that his sister will shortly be taking for better or for worse a butler who has recently locked him in the wine cellar. Apprised of the impending union, it seemed highly probable to Lord Ickenham that Sir Raymond Bastable would follow in th
e footsteps of Nannie Bruce's Uncle Charlie and curl up in a ball. He turned to another matter, one to which ever since his momentous talk with Johnny Pearce he had been devoting his powerful mind.
'Well, I'm delighted, my dear fellow, that all is well again between you and Barbara,' he said. 'If there is one thing that braces me up, it is to see two sundered hearts come together, whether it be in springtime or somewhat later in the year. Oh, blessings on the falling out that all the more endears, as the fellow said. But there's one thing you must budget for, Beefy, when you marry Barbara, and this may come as something of a shock to you. You will have to be prepared to start work on another book.'
'What!'
'Well, of course.'
'But I can't.'
'You'll have to. If you think you can write a novel and sell it for a hundred and fifty thousand dollars and marry a literary agent and not have her make you sit down on your trouser seat and write another, you sadly underestimate the determination and will to win of literary agents. You won't have a moment's peace till you take pen in hand.'
Sir Raymond's lower jaw had fallen to its fullest extent. He stared into the future and was appalled by what he saw.
'But I can't, I tell you! It nearly killed me, writing Cocktail Time. You haven't any conception what it means to sweat your way through one of these damned books. I daresay it's all right for fellows who are used to it, but for somebody like myself... I'd much rather be torn to pieces with red-hot pincers.'
Lord Ickenham nodded.
'I thought that might possibly be your attitude. But I see a way out of the difficulty. Ever hear of Dumas?'
'Who?'
'Alexandre Dumas. The Three Musketeers. Count of Monte Cristo.'
'Oh, Dumas? Yes, of course. Everybody's read Dumas.'
'You're wrong. They just think they have. What they were really getting was the output of his corps of industrious assistants. He was in rather the same position as you. He wanted the money, as much of it as he could gouge out of the reading public, but he strongly objected to having to turn out the stuff. So he assigned the rough spadework – the writing of his books – to others.'
Hope leaped into Sir Raymond's haggard eyes. There flooded over him a relief similar to that which he had experienced when hearing Mr Saxby's voice outside the cellar door. It was as though spiritual United States Marines had arrived.
'You mean I could get someone else to write the infernal thing?'
'Exactly. And who more suitable than my godson, Johnny Pearce?'
'Why, of course! He's an author, isn't he?'
'Been one for years.'
'Would he do it?'
'Nothing would please him more. Like Dumas, he needs the money. Fifty-fifty would be a fair arrangement, I think?'
'Yes, that seems reasonable.'
'And of course he would have to have something down in advance. A refresher you call it at the Bar, don't you? Five hundred pounds suggests itself as a suitable figure. Just step to your desk, Beefy, and write him a cheque for that amount.'
Sir Raymond stared.
'You want me to give him five hundred pounds?'
'In advance of royalties.'
'I'm not going to give him any five hundred pounds.'
'Then I, on my side, am not going to give you that letter of young Cosmo's. I quite forgot to mention, Beefy, that shortly after our Mr Carlisle placed it in the cabinet, I found and removed it. I have it in my pocket now,' said Lord Ickenham, producing it. 'And if, he added, noting that his companion had begun to stir in his chair and seemed to be gathering himself for a spring, 'you are thinking of rising and busting me one and choking it out of me, let me mention that I have a rudimentary knowledge of ju-jitsu, amply sufficient to enable me to tie you into a lover's knot which it would take you hours and hours to get out of. Five hundred pounds, Beefy, payable to Jonathan Twistleton Pearce.'
There was a silence, during which a man might have uttered the words 'Jonathan Twistleton Pearce' ten or perhaps twelve times, speaking slowly. Then Sir Raymond heaved himself up. His manner was not blithe. Roget, asked to describe it, would have selected some term such as 'resigned' or 'nonresisting' or possibly 'down on his marrowbones (slang)', but it was plain, when he spoke, that he had made his decision.
'How do you spell Pearce?' he said. 'P-e-a-r-c-e or P-i-e-r-c-e?'
The shadows were lengthening across the grass as Ickenham started to saunter back through the park to Hammer Hall, the cheque in his pocket which would bring wedding bells to Belinda Farringdon, his godson Johnny, Nannie Bruce and Officer Cyril McMurdo – unless, of course, they were all going to be married at the registrar's, in which event there would be no bells. It was one of those perfect days which come from three to five times in an English summer. The setting sun reddened the waters of the lake, westward the sky was ablaze with green and gold and amethyst and purple, and somewhere a bird, probably an intimate friend of Mr Saxby's, was singing its evensong before knocking off for the night.
Everywhere was peace and gentle stillness, and it made Lord Ickenham think how jolly it would be to be in London.
He had become a little tired of country life. Well enough in its way, of course, but dull... humdrum... nothing ever happening. What he needed to tone up his system was a night out in the pleasure-seeking section of the metropolis in the society of some congenial companion.
Not his nephew Pongo. You couldn't dig Pongo out nowadays. Marriage had turned him into a sober citizen out of tune with the hopes and dreams of a man who liked his evenings lively. Ichabod was the word that sprang to the lips when the mind dwelt on Pongo Twistleton, and for a moment, looking back on the days when a telephone call had always been enough to bring his nephew out with, as the expression is, a whoop and a holler, Lord Ickenham was conscious of a slight depression.
Then he was his bright self again. He had remembered that in his little red book in his bedroom at the Hall he had the address of Albert Peasemarch.
What pleasanter than to go to Chatsworth, Mafeking Road, East Dulwich, imitate the cry of the white owl, tell Albert Peasemarch to put on his bowler hat, and, having checked that bowler hat in the cloakroom of some gay restaurant, to plunge with him into London's glittering night life?
Which, he was convinced, would have much to offer to two young fellows up from the country.
THE END
P. G. Wodehouse
IN ARROW BOOKS
If you have enjoyed Uncle Fred, you'll love Jeeves and Wooster
FROM
Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves
I marmaladed a slice of toast with something of a flourish, and I don't suppose I have ever come much closer to saying 'Tra-la-la' as I did the lathering, for I was feeling in mid-season form this morning. God, as I once heard Jeeves put it, was in His Heaven and all was right with the world. (He added, I remember, some guff about larks and snails, but that is a side issue and need not detain us.)
It is no secret in the circles in which he moves that Bertram Wooster, though as glamorous as one could wish when night has fallen and the revels get under way, is seldom a ball of fire at the breakfast table. Confronted with the eggs and b., he tends to pick cautiously at them, as if afraid they may leap from the plate and snap at him. Listless, about sums it up. Not much bounce to the ounce.
But today vastly different conditions had prevailed. All had been verve, if that's the word I want, and animation. Well, when I tell you that after sailing through a couple of sausages like a tiger of the jungle tucking into its luncheon coolie I was now, as indicated, about to tackle the toast and marmalade, I fancy I need say no more.
The reason for this improved outlook on the proteins and carbohydrates is not far to seek. Jeeves was back, earning his weekly envelope once more at the old stand. Her butler having come down with an ailment of some sort, my Aunt Dahlia, my good and deserving aunt, had borrowed him for a house-party she was throwing at Brinkley Court, her Worcestershire residence, and he had been away for more than a week. Jeeves, of
course, is a gentleman's gentleman, not a butler, but if the call comes, he can buttle with the best of them. It's in the blood. His Uncle Charlie is a butler, and no doubt he has picked up many a hint on technique from him.
He came in a little later to remove the debris, and I asked him if he had had a good time at Brinkley.
'Extremely pleasant, thank you, sir.'
'More than I had in your absence. I felt like a child of tender years deprived of its Nannie. If you don't mind me calling you a Nannie.'
'Not at all, sir.'
Though, as a matter of fact, I was giving myself a slight edge, putting it that way. My Aunt Agatha, the one who eats broken bottles and turns into a werewolf at the time of the full moon, generally refers to Jeeves as my keeper.
'Yes, I missed you sorely, and had no heart for whooping it up with the lads at the Drones. From sport to sport they... how does that gag go?'
'Sir?'
'I heard you pull it once with reference to Freddie Widgeon, when one of his girls had given him the bird. Something about hurrying.'
Ah yes, sir. From sport to sport they hurry me, to stifle my regret – '
And when they win a smile from me, they think that I forget. That was it. Not your own, by any chance?'
'No, sir. An old English drawing-room ballad.'
'Oh? Well, that's how it was with me. But tell me all about Brinkley. How was Aunt Dahlia?'
'Mrs Travers appeared to be in her customary robust health, sir.'
And how did the party go off?'
'Reasonably satisfactorily, sir.'
'Only reasonably?'
'The demeanour of Mr Travers cast something of a gloom on the proceedings. He was low-spirited.'
'He always is when Aunt Dahlia fills the house with guests. I've known even a single foreign substance in the woodwork to make him drain the bitter cup.'
'Very true, sir, but on this occasion I think his despondency was due principally to the presence of Sir Watkyn Bassett.'
'You don't mean that old crumb was there?' I said, Great-Scott-ing, for I knew that if there is one man for whose insides my Uncle Tom has the most vivid distaste, it is this Bassett. 'You astound me, Jeeves.'