I must say that young Stiffy gave an extremely convincing performance. She stared at him. She stared at me. She clasped her hands. I rather think she blushed.
‘Why Bertie!’
Old Bassett broke the pen. I had been wondering when he would.
‘Oh, Bertie! You have made me very proud.’
‘Proud?’ I detected an incredulous note in old Bassett’s voice. ‘Did you say “proud”?’
‘Well, it’s the greatest compliment a man can pay a woman, you know. All the nibs are agreed on that. I’m tremendously flattered and grateful … and, well, all that sort of thing. But, Bertie dear, I’m terribly sorry. I’m afraid it’s impossible.’
I hadn’t supposed that there was anything in the world capable of jerking a man from the depths so effectively as one of those morning mixtures of Jeeves’s, but these words acted on old Bassett with an even greater promptitude and zip. He had been sitting in his chair in a boneless, huddled sort of way, a broken man. He now started up, with gleaming eyes and twitching lips. You could see that hope had dawned.
‘Impossible? Don’t you want to marry him?’
‘No.’
‘He said you did.’
‘He must have been thinking of a couple of other fellows. No, Bertie, darling, it cannot be. You see, I love somebody else.’
Old Bassett started.
‘Eh? Who?’
‘The most wonderful man in the world.’
‘He has a name, I presume?’
‘Harold Pinker.’
‘Harold Pinker? … Pinker … The only Pinker I know is –’
‘The curate. That’s right. He’s the chap.’
‘You love the curate?’
‘Ah!’ said Stiffy, rolling her eyes up and looking like Aunt Dahlia when she had spoken of the merits of blackmail. ‘We’ve been secretly engaged for weeks.’
It was plain from old Bassett’s manner that he was not prepared to classify this under the heading of tidings of great joy. His brows were knitted, like those of some diner in a restaurant who, sailing into his dozen oysters, finds that the first one to pass his lips is a wrong ’un. I saw that Stiffy had shown a shrewd knowledge of human nature, if you could call his that, when she had told me that this man would have to be heavily sweetened before the news could be broken. You could see that he shared the almost universal opinion of parents and uncles that curates were nothing to start strewing roses out of a hat about.
‘You know that vicarage that you have in your gift, Uncle Watkyn? What Harold and I were thinking was that you might give him that, and then we could get married at once. You see, apart from the increased dough, it would start him off on the road to higher things. Up till now, Harold has been working under wraps. As a curate, he has no scope. But slip him a vicarage, and watch him let himself out. There is literally no eminence to which that boy will not rise, once he spits on his hands and starts in.’
She wiggled from base to apex with girlish enthusiasm, but there was no girlish enthusiasm in old Bassett’s demeanour. Well, there wouldn’t be, of course, but what I mean is there wasn’t.
‘Ridiculous!’
‘Why?’
‘I could not dream –’
‘Why not?’
‘In the first place, you are far too young –’
‘What nonsense. Three of the girls I was at school with were married last year. I’m senile compared with some of the infants you see toddling up the aisle nowadays.’
Old Bassett thumped the desk – coming down, I was glad to see, on an upturned paper fastener. The bodily anguish induced by this lent vehemence to his tone.
‘The whole thing is quite absurd and utterly out of the question. I refuse to consider the idea for an instant.’
‘But what have you got against Harold?’
‘I have nothing, as you put it, against him. He seems zealous in his duties and popular in the parish –’
‘He’s a baa-lamb.’
‘No doubt.’
‘He played football for England.’
‘Very possibly.’
‘And he’s marvellous at tennis.’
‘I dare say he is. But that is not a reason why he should marry my niece. What means has he, if any, beyond his stipend?’
‘About five hundred a year.’
‘Tchah!’
‘Well, I don’t call that bad. Five hundred’s pretty good sugar, if you ask me. Besides, money doesn’t matter.’
‘It matters a great deal.’
‘You really feel that, do you?’
‘Certainly. You must be practical.’
‘Right ho, I will. If you’d rather I married for money, I’ll marry for money. Bertie, it’s on. Start getting measured for the wedding trousers.’
Her words created what is known as a genuine sensation. Old Bassett’s ‘What!’ and my ‘Here, I say, dash it!’ popped out neck and neck and collided in mid air, my heart-cry having, perhaps, an even greater horse-power than his. I was frankly appalled. Experience has taught me that you never know with girls, and it might quite possibly happen, I felt, that she would go through with this frightful project as a gesture. Nobody could teach me anything about gestures. Brinkley Court in the preceding summer had crawled with them.
‘Bertie is rolling in the stuff and, as you suggest, one might do worse than take a whack at the Wooster millions. Of course, Bertie dear, I am only marrying you to make you happy. I can never love you as I love Harold. But as Uncle Watkyn has taken this violent prejudice against him –’
Old Bassett hit the paper fastener again, but this time didn’t seem to notice it.
‘My dear child, don’t talk such nonsense. You are quite mistaken. You must have completely misunderstood me. I have no prejudice against this young man Pinker. I like and respect him. If you really think your happiness lies in becoming his wife, I would be the last man to stand in your way. By all means, marry him. The alternative –’
He said no more, but gave me a long, shuddering look. Then, as if the sight of me were more than his frail strength could endure, he removed his gaze, only to bring it back again and give me a short, quick one. He then closed his eyes and leaned back in his chair, breathing stertorously. And as there didn’t seem anything to keep me, I sidled out. The last I saw of him, he was submitting without any great animation to a niece’s embrace.
I suppose that when you have an uncle like Sir Watkyn Bassett on the receiving end, a niece’s embrace is a thing you tend to make pretty snappy. It wasn’t more than about a minute before Stiffy came out and immediately went into her dance.
‘What a man! What a man! What a man! What a man! What a man!’ she said, waving her arms and giving other indications of bien-être. ‘Jeeves,’ she explained, as if she supposed that I might imagine her to be alluding to the recent Bassett. ‘Did he say it would work? He did. And was he right? He was. Bertie, could one kiss Jeeves?’
‘Certainly not.’
‘Shall I kiss you?’
‘No, thank you. All I require from you, young Byng, is that notebook.’
‘Well I must kiss someone, and I’m dashed if I’m going to kiss Eustace Oates.’
She broke off. A graver look came into her dial.
‘Eustace Oates!’ she repeated meditatively. ‘That reminds me. In the rush of recent events, I had forgotten him. I exchanged a few words with Eustace Oates just now, Bertie, while I was waiting on the stairs for the balloon to go up, and he was sinister to a degree.’
‘Where’s that notebook?’
‘Never mind about the notebook. The subject under discussion is Eustace Oates and his sinisterness. He’s on my trail about that helmet.’
‘What!’
‘Absolutely. I’m Suspect Number One. He told me that he reads a lot of detective stories, and he says that the first thing a detective makes a bee-line for is motive. After that, opportunity. And finally clues. Well, as he pointed out, with that high-handed behaviour of his about Bartholomew rankling in m
y bosom, I had a motive all right, and seeing that I was going out and about at the time of the crime I had the opportunity, too. And as for clues, what do you think he had with him, when I saw him? One of my gloves! He had picked it up on the scene of the outrage – while measuring footprints or looking for cigar ash, I suppose. You remember when Harold brought me back my gloves, there was only one of them. The other he apparently dropped while scooping in the helmet.’
A sort of dull, bruised feeling weighed me down as I mused on this latest manifestation of Harold Pinker’s goofiness, as if a strong hand had whanged me over the cupola with a blackjack. There was such a sort of hideous ingenuity in the way he thought up new methods of inviting ruin.
‘He would!’
‘What do you mean, he would?’
‘Well, he did, didn’t he?’
‘That’s not the same as saying he would – in a beastly, sneering, supercilious tone, as if you were so frightfully hot yourself. I can’t understand you, Bertie – the way you’re always criticizing poor Harold. I thought you were so fond of him.’
‘I love him like a b. But that doesn’t alter my opinion that of all the pumpkin-headed foozlers who ever preached about Hivites and Jebusites, he is the foremost.’
‘He isn’t half as pumpkin-headed as you.’
‘He is, at a conservative estimate, about twenty-seven times as pumpkin-headed as me. He begins where I leave off. It may be a strong thing to say, but he’s more pumpkin-headed than Gussie.’
With a visible effort, she swallowed the rising choler.
‘Well, never mind about that. The point is that Eustace Oates is on my trail, and I’ve got to look slippy and find a better safe-deposit vault for that helmet than my chest of drawers. Before I know where I am, the Ogpu will be searching my room. Where would be a good place, do you think?’
I dismissed the thing wearily.
‘Oh, dash it, use your own judgement. To return to the main issue, where is that notebook?’
‘Oh, Bertie, you’re a perfect bore about that notebook. Can’t you talk of anything else?’
‘No, I can’t. Where is it?’
‘You’re going to laugh when I tell you.’
I gave her an austere look.
‘It is possible that I may some day laugh again – when I have got well away from this house of terror, but there is a fat chance of my doing so at this early date. Where is that book?’
‘Well, if you really must know, I hid it in the cow-creamer.’
Everyone, I imagine, has read stories in which things turned black and swam before people. As I heard these words, Stiffy turned black and swam before me. It was as if I had been looking at a flickering negress.
‘You – what?’
‘I hid it in the cow-creamer.’
‘What on earth did you do that for?’
‘Oh, I thought I would.’
‘But how am I to get it?’
A slight smile curved the young pimple’s mobile lips.
‘Oh, dash it, use your own judgement,’ she said. ‘Well, see you soon, Bertie.’
She biffed off, and I leaned limply against the banisters, trying to rally from this frightful wallop. But the world still flickered, and a few moments later I became aware that I was being addressed by a flickering butler.
‘Excuse me, sir. Miss Madeline desired me to say that she would be glad if you could spare her a moment.’
I gazed at the man dully, like someone in a prison cell when the jailer has stepped in at dawn to notify him that the firing squad is ready. I knew what this meant, of course. I had recognized this butler’s voice for what it was – the voice of doom. There could be only one thing that Madeline Bassett would be glad if I could spare her a moment about.
‘Oh, did she?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Where is Miss Bassett?’
‘In the drawing-room, sir.’
‘Right ho.’
I braced myself with the old Wooster grit. Up came the chin, back went the shoulders.
‘Lead on,’ I said to the butler, and the butler led on.
10
* * *
THE SOUND OF soft and wistful music percolating through the drawing-room door as I approached did nothing to brighten the general outlook: and when I went in and saw Madeline Bassett seated at the piano, drooping on her stem a goodish deal, the sight nearly caused me to turn and leg it. However, I fought down the impulse and started things off with a tentative ‘What ho.’
The observation elicited no immediate response. She had risen, and for perhaps half a minute stood staring at me in a sad sort of way, like the Mona Lisa on one of the mornings when the sorrows of the world had been coming over the plate a bit too fast for her. Finally, just as I was thinking I had better try to fill in with something about the weather, she spoke.
‘Bertie –’
It was, however, only a flash in the pan. She blew a fuse, and silence supervened again.
‘Bertie –’
No good. Another wash-out.
I was beginning to feel the strain a bit. We had had one of these deaf-mutes-getting-together sessions before, at Brinkley Court, in the summer, but on that occasion I had been able to ease things along by working in a spot of stage business during the awkward gaps in the conversation. Our previous chat as you may or possibly may not recall, had taken place in the Brinkley dining-room in the presence of a cold collation, and it had helped a lot being in a position to bound forward at intervals with a curried egg or a cheese straw. In the absence of these foodstuffs, we were thrown back a good deal on straight staring, and this always tends to embarrass.
Her lips parted. I saw that something was coming to the surface. A couple of gulps, and she was off to a good start.
‘Bertie, I wanted to see you … I asked you to come … because I wanted to say … I wanted to tell you … Bertie, my engagement to Augustus is at an end.’
‘Yes.’
‘You knew?’
‘Oh, rather. He told me.’
‘Then you know why I asked you to come here. I wanted to say –’
‘Yes.’
‘That I’m willing –’
‘Yes.’
‘To make you happy.’
She appeared to be held up for a moment by a slight return of the old tonsil trouble, but after another brace of gulps she got it out.
‘I will be your wife, Bertie.’
I suppose that after this most chaps would have thought it scarcely worthwhile to struggle against the inev., but I had a dash at it. With such vital issues at stake, one would have felt a chump if one had left any stone unturned.
‘Awfully decent of you,’ I said civilly. ‘Deeply sensible of the honour, and what not. But have you thought? Have you reflected? Don’t you feel you’re being a bit rough on poor old Gussie?’
‘What! After what happened this evening?’
‘Ah, I wanted to talk to you about that. I always think, don’t you, that it is as well on these occasions, before doing anything drastic, to have a few words with a seasoned man of the world and get the real low-down. You wouldn’t like later on to have to start wringing your hands and saying “Oh, if I had only known!” In my opinion, the whole thing should be re-examined with a view to threshing out. If you care to know what I think, you’re wronging Gussie.’
‘Wronging him? When I saw him with my own eyes –’
‘Ah, but you haven’t got the right angle. Let me explain.’
‘There can be no explanation. We will not talk about it any more, Bertie. I have blotted Augustus from my life. Until tonight I saw him only through the golden mist of love, and thought him the perfect man. This evening he revealed himself as what he really is – a satyr.’
‘But that’s just what I’m driving at. That’s just where you’re making your bloomer. You see –’
‘We will not talk about it any more.’
‘But –’
‘Please!’
‘Oh, righ
t ho.’
I tuned out. You can’t make any headway with that tout comprendre, c’est tout pardonner stuff if the girl won’t listen.
She turned the bean away, no doubt to hide a silent tear, and there ensued a brief interval during which she swabbed the eyes with a pocket handkerchief and I, averting my gaze, dipped the beak into a jar of pot-pourri which stood on the piano.
Presently, she took the air again.
‘It is useless, Bertie. I know, of course, why you are speaking like this. It is that sweet, generous nature of yours. There are no lengths to which you will not go to help a friend, even though it may mean the wrecking of your own happiness. But there is nothing you can say that will change me. I have finished with Augustus. From tonight he will be to me merely a memory – a memory that will grow fainter and fainter through the years as you and I draw ever closer together. You will help me to forget. With you beside me, I shall be able in time to exorcize Augustus’s spell … And now I suppose I had better go and tell Daddy.’
I started. I could still see Pop Bassett’s face when he had thought that he was going to draw me for a nephew. It would be a bit thick, I felt, while he was still quivering to the roots of the soul at the recollection of that hair’s-breadth escape, to tell him that I was about to become his son-in-law. I was not fond of Pop Bassett, but one has one’s humane instincts.
‘Oh, my aunt!’ I said. ‘Don’t do that!’
‘But I must. He will have to know that I am to be your wife. He is expecting me to marry Augustus three weeks from tomorrow.’
I chewed this over. I saw what she meant, of course. You’ve got to keep a father posted about these things. You can’t just let it all slide and have the poor old egg rolling up to the church in a topper and a buttonhole, to find that the wedding is off and nobody bothered to mention it to him.
‘Well, don’t tell him tonight,’ I urged. ‘Let him simmer a bit. He’s just had a pretty testing shock.’
‘A shock?’
‘Yes. He’s not quite himself.’
A concerned look came into her eyes, causing them to bulge a trifle.
‘So I was right. I thought he was not himself, when I met him coming out of the library just now. He was wiping his forehead and making odd little gasping noises. And when I asked him if anything was the matter, he said that we all had our cross to bear in this world, but that he supposed he ought not to complain, because things were not so bad as they might have been. I couldn’t think what he meant. He then said he was going to have a warm bath and take three aspirins and go to bed. What was it? What had happened?’