'What a night, what a night!' she said amusedly. 'A close call that, Bertie. Who were those men I heard going out?'
And then she suddenly sighted Chuffy, gave a kind of gasping squeak, and the love light came into her eyes as if somebody had pressed a switch.
'Marmaduke!' she cried, and stood there, staring.
But, by Jove, it was the poor old schoolmate who was doing the real staring, in the truest and fullest sense of the word. I've seen starers in my time, many of them, but never one who came within a mile of putting up the performance which Chuffy did then. The eyebrows had shot up, the jaw had fallen, and the eyes were protruding one to two inches from the parent sockets. He also appeared to be trying to say something, but in this he flopped badly. Nothing came through except a rather unpleasant whistling sound, not quite so loud as the row your radio makes when you twiddle the twiddler a bit too hard but in other respects closely resembling it.
Pauline, meanwhile, had begun to advance with the air of a woman getting together with her demon lover, and a sort of pity for the girl shot through the Wooster bosom. I mean to say, any observant outsider like myself could see so clearly that she had got quite the wrong angle on the situation. I could read Chuffy like a book, and I knew that she was totally mistaken in what she supposed to be his emotions at this juncture. That odd noise he was making I could diagnose, not as the love call which she appeared to think it, but as the stern and censorious gruffle of a man who, finding his loved one on alien premises in heliotrope pyjamas, is stricken to the core, cut to the quick, and as sore as a gumboil.
But she, poor simp, being so dashed glad to behold him, had not so much as begun to suspect that he, the circs being what they were, might possibly not be equally glad to behold her. With the result that when at this juncture he stepped back and folded his arms with a bitter sneer, it was as if he had jabbed her in the eye with a burnt stick. The light faded from her face, and in its stead there appeared the hurt, bewildered look of a barefoot dancer who, while half-way through 'The Vision of Salome', steps on a tin tack.
'Marmaduke!'
Chuffy unleashed another bitter sneer.
'So!' he said, finding speech – if you can call that speech.
'What do you mean? Why are you looking like that?'
I thought it about time that I put in a word. I had risen from the bed on Pauline's entry and for some moments had been teetering towards the door with a sort of sketchy idea of making for the great open spaces. But partly because I felt that it ill beseemed a Wooster to leg it at such a time and partly because I had no boots on, I had decided to remain. I now intervened, coming across with the word in season.
'What you want on an occasion like this, Chuffy, old man,' I said, 'is simple faith. The poet Tennyson tells us ...'
'Shut up,' said Chuffy. 'I don't want to hear anything from you.'
'Right ho,' I said. 'But, all the same, simple faith is better than Norman blood, and you can't get away from it.'
Pauline was looking a bit fogged.
'Simple faith? What ... Oh!' she said, abruptly signing off. And I noted that the features were suffused with a crimson blush.
'Oh!' she said.
The cheeks continued to glow. But now it was not the blush of modesty that hotted them up. That first 'Oh!' I take it, had been caused by her catching sight of her pyjamaed limbs and suddenly getting on to the equivocal nature of her position. The second one was different. It was the heart cry of a woman who is madder than a hornet.
I mean, you know how it is. A sensitive and high-spirited girl goes through the deuce of an ordeal to win through to the bloke she loves, jumping off yachts, swimming through dashed cold water, climbing into cottages, and borrowing other people's pyjamas, and then, when she has come to journey's end, so to speak, and is expecting the tender smile and the whispered endearments, gets instead the lowering frown, the curled lip, the suspicious eye, and – in a word – the raspberry. Naturally, she's a bit upset.
'Oh!' she said, for the third time, and her teeth gave a little click, most unpleasant. 'So that's what you think?'
Chuffy shook his head in an impatient sort of way.
'Of course I don't.'
'You do.'
'I don't.'
'Yes, you do.'
'I don't think anything of the kind,' said Chuffy. 'I know that Bertie has been ...'
'... Scrupulously correct in his behaviour throughout,' I suggested.
'... sleeping in a potting shed,' continued Chuffy, and I must say it didn't sound half as good as my version. 'That's not the point. The fact remains that in spite of being engaged to me and pretending this afternoon that you were tickled pink to be engaged to me, you are still so much in love with Bertie that you can't keep away from him. You think I don't know all about your being engaged to him in New York, but I do. Oh, I'm not complaining,' said Chuffy, looking rather like Saint Sebastian on receipt of about the fifteenth arrow. You have a perfect right to love who you like ...'
'Whom, old man,' I couldn't help saying. Jeeves has made me rather a purist in these matters.
'Will you keep quiet!'
'Of course, of course.'
'You keep shoving your oar in....'
'Sorry, sorry. Shan't occur again.'
Chuffy, who had been gazing at me as if he would have liked to strike me with a blunt instrument, gazed once more at Pauline as if he would have liked to strike her with a blunt instrument.
'But ...' He paused. 'Now you've made me forget what I was going to say,' he said in a rather peevish manner.
Pauline took the floor. She was still on the pink side, and her eyes were gleaming glitteringly. I've seen my Aunt Agatha's eyes gleam just like that when she prepared to tick me off for some fancied misdemeanour. Of the love light no traces remained.
'Well, then, perhaps you'll listen to what I'm going to say. I suppose you have no objection to my putting in a word?'
'None,' said Chuffy.
'None, none,' I said.
Pauline was beyond a question stirred to the core. I could see her toes wiggling.
'In the first place, you make me sick!'
'Indeed?'
'Yes, indeed. In the second place, I hope I shall never see you again in this world or the next.'
'Really?'
'Yes, really. I hate you. I wish I'd never met you. I think you're a worse pig than any you've got up at that beastly house of yours.'
This interested me.
'I didn't know you kept pigs, Chuffy'
'Black Berkshires,' he said absently. 'Well, if that's how you ...'
'There's money in pigs.'
'Well, all right,' said Chuffy. 'If that's how you feel, well, all right.'
'You bet it's all right.'
'That's what I said, it's all right.'
'My Uncle Henry...'
'Bertie,' said Chuffy.
'Hallo?'
'I don't want to hear about your Uncle Henry. I am not interested in your Uncle Henry. It will be all right with me if your damned Uncle Henry trips over his feet and breaks his blasted neck.'
'Too late, old man. He passed away three years ago. Pneumonia. I was only saying he kept pigs. Made a good thing out of them, too.'
'Will you stop ...'
'Yes, and will you,' said Pauline. 'Are you going to spend the night here? I wish you would leave off talking and go.'
'I will,' said Chuffy.
'Do,' said Pauline.
'Good night,' said Chuffy.
He strode to the head of the stairs.
'But one last word ... 'he said with a wide, passionate gesture.
Well, I could have told the poor old chap that you can't do that sort of thing in these old-world country cottages. His knuckles hit a projecting beam, he danced in agony, overbalanced, and the next moment was on his way to the ground floor like a sack of coals.
Pauline Stoker ran to the banisters and looked over.
'Are you hurt?' she cried.
'Yes
,' yelled Chuffy.
'Good,' cried Pauline.
She came back into the room, and the front door slammed like the bursting of an overwrought heart.
10 ANOTHER VISITOR
I drew a deepish breath. With the departure of the male half of the sketch a certain strain seemed to have gone out of the atmosphere. Excellent companion though I had always found him in the past, Chuffy had not shown himself at his chummiest during the recent scene, with the result that for some little time I had been feeling rather like Daniel in the lions' den.
Pauline was panting somewhat. Not exactly snorting, but coming very near to what you might call the borderland of the snort. Her eyes were hard and bright. Deeply moved. She picked up her bathing suit.
'Push off, Bertie,' she said.
I had been hoping for a quiet chat, in the course of which we would review the situation, touching on this point and on that, and strive to ascertain what to do for the best.
'But listen....'
'I want to change.'
'Change what?'
'Put on my swimming suit.'
I could not follow her.
'Why?'
'Because I am going to swim.'
'Swim?'
'Swim.'
I stared.
'You aren't going back to the yacht?'
'I am going back to the yacht.'
'But I wanted to talk about Chuffy.'
'I never wish to hear his name mentioned again.'
It seemed time to be the wise old mediator.
'Oh, come!'
'Well?'
'When I say "Oh, come!"' I explained, 'I mean surely you don't intend to give the poor blighter the permanent air on account of a trifling lovers' tiff?'
She looked at me in rather a peculiar manner.
'Would you mind repeating that? Just the last three words.'
'Trifling lovers' tiff?'
She breathed heavily, and for a moment I experienced a return of that lions' den sensation.
'I wasn't sure I had caught them correctly,' she said.
'I mean to say you get (a) a girl and (b) a bloke and stir up their generous natures, and the result is that each says lots of things she or he doesn't mean.'
'Oh? Well, let me tell you I meant every word I said. I told him I never wanted to speak to him again. I don't. I told him I hated him. I do. I called him a pig. He is.'
'Now, that's rummy about Chuffy's pigs. I had no notion he kept them.'
'Why not? Birds of a feather.'
There seemed nothing much more to say about pigs.
'Aren't you a bit hard?'
'Am I?'
'And rather rough on Chuffy?'
'Am I?'
'You wouldn't say his attitude was excusable?'
'I would not.'
'Must have been a shock for the poor old chap, I mean, barging in and finding you here.'
'Bertie.'
'Hallo?'
'Ever been hit over the head with a chair?'
'No.'
'Well, you soon may be.'
I began to see she was in difficult mood.
'Oh, well!'
'Does that mean the same as "Oh, come!"?'
'No. All I was driving at was that it seems a pity. Two loving hearts sundered for ever – bingo!'
'Yes?'
'Still, if that's the way you feel, well, that's the way you feel, what?'
'Yes.'
'We now come to this idea of swimming home. Potty, it strikes me as.'
'There's nothing to keep me here now, is there?'
'No. But the midnight swim.... You're going to find it pretty cold.'
'And wet. I don't care.'
'And how are you going to get aboard?'
'I'll get aboard. I can climb up by the thing they hang the anchor from. I've done it before. So will you remove yourself and let me change.'
I went out on to the landing. And presently she emerged in the bathing suit.
'You needn't see me out.'
'Of course I will, if you're really going.'
'I'm going, all right.'
'Well, if you must.'
Outside the front door the air seemed nippier than ever. The mere thought of plunging into the harbour gave me the shivers. But it had no effect on her. She slipped off into the darkness without a word, and I went upstairs to bed.
You might have thought that after garages and potting sheds the fact that I was in a bed would have resulted in instant slumber. But no. I couldn't get off. The more I tried, the more I found the mind turning to what you might call the tragedy in which I had so recently participated. I don't mind admitting that my heart ached for Chuffy. It also ached for Pauline. It ached for both of them.
I mean to say, consider the facts. Two thoroughly sound eggs, destined for each other, you might almost say, through all eternity, giving each other the bird like this for no reason whatever, really. Pitiful. Rotten. No good to man or beast. The more I thought of it, the sillier it seemed.
And yet there it was. Words had passed. Relations had been severed. The whole binge was irrevocably off.
There is only one thing for the sympathetic bystander to do on these occasions, and I realized now that it was madness not to have done it before going to bed and attempting sleep. I slid out from between the sheets and went downstairs.
The whisky bottle was in the cupboard. So was the siphon. So was the glass. I mixed myself a healing beaker and sat down. And, as I did so, I observed on the table a sheet of paper.
It was a note from Pauline Stoker.
Dear Bertie,
You were right about it being cold. I couldn't face the swim. But there's a boat down by the landing stage. I shall row to the yacht and set it adrift. I've come back to borrow your overcoat. I didn't want to disturb you, so I climbed in through the window. I'm afraid you will have to sacrifice the coat, as of course I shall have to throw it overboard when I get to the yacht. Sorry.
P.S.
You notice the style? Curt. Staccato. Evidence of the wounded heart and the heavy mind. I felt sorrier for her than ever, but glad she probably wasn't going to get a cold in the head. As for the coat, a careless shrug of the shoulders covered that. I did not grudge it her, though new and silk-lined. Only too pleased, about summed up my attitude in the matter.
I tore up the note and returned to my spot.
There is nothing like a strong w-and-s for calming the system. In about another quarter of an hour I was feeling so soothed that I could contemplate bed once more, this time confident that the betting was at least eight to three that a refreshing slumber would be my portion.
I rose accordingly, and was just about to ankle upstairs, when for the second time that night there was the dickens of a knocking on the front door.
I don't know that you would call me an irascible man. I rather think not. Ask them about me at the Drones, and they will probably tell you that Bertram Wooster, wind and weather permitting, is as a general rule suavity itself. But, as I had been compelled to show Jeeves in the matter of the banjolele, I can be pushed too far. It was with drawn brow and cold eye that I now undid the chain. I was just about ready to give Sergeant Voules – for I assumed that it was he – the ticking-off of a lifetime.
'Voules,' I was preparing to say, 'enough is enough. This police persecution must stop. It is monstrous and uncalled-for. We are not in Russia, Voules. There are such things, I would have you remember, Voules, as strong letters to The Times!
That, or something like it, is what I would have said to Sergeant Voules: and what caused me to refrain was not weakness or pity, but the fact that the man attached to the knocker wasn't Voules at all. It was J. Washburn Stoker, and he was regarding me with a sort of hard-boiled fury which, but for the fact that I had just finished a life-giving snort and knew that his daughter Pauline was safely off the premises, would undoubtedly have tickled me up not a little.
As it was, I remained tranquil.
'Yes?' I said.
> I had packed so much cold surprise and hauteur into the word that a lesser man might well have keeled over backwards as if hit by a bullet. J. W. Stoker took it without blinking. He pushed past me into the house, then turned and grabbed me by the shoulder.
'Now, then!' he said.
I disengaged myself coldly. I had to wriggle out of my pyjama jacket to do so, but I managed it.
'I beg your pardon?'
'Where's my daughter?'
'Your daughter Pauline?'
'I have only one daughter.'
'And you ask me where this one daughter is?'
'I know where she is.'
'Then why did you ask?'
'She's here.'
'Then give me my pyjama jacket and tell her to come in,' I said.
I've never actually seen a man grind his teeth, so I wouldn't care to state definitely that this is what J. Washburn Stoker did at this juncture. He may have done. He may not have done. All I can say authoritatively is that the muscles stood out on his cheeks and his jaws began to work as if he were chewing gum. It was not a pleasant spectacle, but thanks to the fact that I had mixed that whisky and splash particularly strong so as to facilitate sleep I was enabled to endure it with fortitude and phlegm.
'She's in this house!' he said, continuing to grind, if he was grinding.
'What makes you think that?'
'I'll tell you what makes me think that. I went to her stateroom half an hour ago, and it was empty.'
'But why on earth should you suppose she's come here?'
'Because I know she's infatuated with you.'
'Not at all. She regards me as a sister.'
'I am going to search this house.'
'Charge right ahead.'
He dashed upstairs and I returned to my spot. Not the same spot. Another one. I felt that in the circumstances a repeat was justified. And presently my visitor, who had gone up like a lion, came down like a lamb. I suppose a parent who has barged into a comparative stranger's cottage in the small hours in search of a missing daughter and finds the place completely free from daughters, feels more or less of a silly ass. I know I should, and apparently this Stoker did, for he shuffled a bit and I could see that a lot of the steam or motive force had gone out of him.