‘Hi, Madeline,’ she cried. ‘What do you think I found on the breakfast table? A grovelling letter from the boy friend, no less. He’s surrendered unconditionally. He says he must have been mad to call me a rabbit. He says he can never forgive himself, but can I forgive him. Well, I can answer that one. I’m going to forgive him the day after tomorrow. Not earlier, because we must have discipline.’
‘Oh, Hilda! How glad I am!’
‘I’m pretty pleased about it myself. Good old Harold! A king among men, but, of course, needs keeping in his place from time to time and has to be taught what’s what. But I mustn’t run on about Harold. What I came to tell you was that there’s a fellow outside in a car who says he wants to see you.’
‘To see me?’
‘So he says. Name of Pirbright.’
Madeline turned to me.
‘Why, it must be your friend Claude Pirbright, Bertie. I wonder what he wants. I’d better go and see.’ She threw a quick glance at the solid girl, and seeing that she had stepped through the french window, no doubt to give the gardener the devil about something, came to me and pressed my hand. ‘You must be brave, Bertie,’ she said in a low, roopy voice. ‘Some day another girl will come into your life and you will be happy. When we are both old and grey, we shall laugh together over all this … laugh, but I think with a tear behind the smile.’
She popped off, leaving me feeling sick. The solid girl, whom I had dimly heard telling the gardener he needn’t be afraid of breaking that spade by leaning on it, came back and immediately proceeded, in which I considered an offensively familiar manner, to give me a hearty slap on the back.
‘Well, Wooster, old bloke,’ she said.
‘Well, Gudgeon, old bird,’ I replied courteously.
‘Do you know, Wooster, I keep feeling there’s something familiar about your name? I must have heard Harold mention it. Do you know Harold Anstruther?’
I had recognized the name directly I heard Madeline Bassett utter it. Beefy Anstruther had been my partner at Rackets my last year at Oxford, when I had represented the establishment at that sport. I revealed this to the solid girl, and she slapped my back again.
‘I thought I wasn’t wrong. Harold speaks very highly of you, Wooster, old-timer, and I’ll tell you something. I have a lot of influence with Madeline, and I’ll exert it on your behalf. I’ll talk to her like a mother. Dash it all, we can’t have her marrying a pill like Gussie Fink-Nottle, when there’s a Rackets Blue on her waiting list. Courage, Wooster, old cock. Courage and patience. Come and have a bit of breakfast.’
‘Thanks awfully, no,’ I said, though I needed it sorely. ‘I must be getting along.’
‘Well, if you won’t, you won’t. But I will. I’m going to have the breakfast of a lifetime. I haven’t felt so roaring fit since I won the tennis singles at Roedean.’
I had braced myself for another slap on the back, but with a swift change of policy she prodded me in the ribs, depriving me of what little breath her frightful words had left inside me. At the thought of what might result from a girl of her dominating personality talking to Madeline Bassett like a mother, I had wilted where I stood. It was with what are called leaden steps that I passed through the french window and made my way to the road. I was anxious to intercept Catsmeat when he drove out, so that I might learn from him the result of his interview.
And, of course, when he did drive out, he was hareing along at such a pace that it was impossible to draw myself to his attention. He vanished over the skyline as if he had been competing in some event at Brooklands, leaving me standing.
In sombre mood, bowed down with dark forebodings, I went off to get a bit of breakfast and catch a train back to King’s Deverill.
18
* * *
THE BLOKES WHO run the railway don’t make it easy for you to get from Wimbledon to King’s Deverill, feeling no doubt – and I suppose it’s a kindly thought – that that abode of thugs and ghouls is a place you’re better away from. You change twice before you get to Basingstoke and then change again and take the branch line. And once you’re on the branch line, it’s quicker to walk.
The first person I saw when I finally tottered out at journey’s end, feeling as if I had been glued to the cushioned seat since early boyhood and a bit surprised that I hadn’t put out tendrils like a Virginia creeper, was my cousin Thomas. He was buying motion-picture magazines at the bookstall.
‘Oh, hallo,’ I said. ‘So you got here all right?’
He eyed me coldly and said ‘Crumbs!’ a word of which he is far too fond. This Thos is one of those tough, hardboiled striplings, a sort of juvenile James Cagney with a touch of Edward G. Robinson. He has carroty hair and a cynical expression, and his manner is supercilious. You would think that anyone conscious of having a mother like my Aunt Agatha and knowing it could be proved against him, would be crushed and apologetic, but this is not the case. He swanks about the place as if he’d bought it, and in conversation with a cousin lacks tact and is apt to verge on the personal.
He became personal now, on the subject of my appearance, which I must confess was not spruce. Night travel in milk trains always tends to remove the gloss, and you can’t hobnob with beetles in bushes and remain dapper.
‘Crumbs!’ he said. ‘You look like something the cat brought in.’
You see what I mean? The wrong note. In no frame of mind to bandy words, I clouted the child moodily on the head and passed on. And as I emerged into the station yard, somebody yoo-hooed and I saw Corky sitting in her car.
‘Hallo, Bertie,’ she said. ‘Where did you spring from, moon of my delight?’ She looked about her in a wary and conspiratorial manner, as if she had been registering snakiness in a spy film. ‘Did you see what was in the station?’ she asked, lowering the voice.
‘I did.’
‘Jeeves delivered him as per memo last night. Uncle Sidney looked a little taken aback for a moment, and seemed as if he were on the point of saying some of the things he gave up saying when he took Orders, but everything has turned out for the best. He loves his game of chess, and it seems that Thomas is the undisputed champion of his school, brimming over with gambits and openings and things, so they get along fine. And I love him. What a sympathetic, sweet-natured boy he is, Bertie.’
I blinked.
‘You are speaking of my cousin Thomas?’
‘He’s so loyal. When I told him about the heel Dobbs arresting Sam Goldwyn, he simply boiled with generous indignation. He says he’s going to cosh him.’
‘To what him?’
‘It’s something people do to people in detective stories. You use a small but serviceable rubber bludgeon.’
‘He hasn’t got a small but serviceable rubber bludgeon.’
‘Yes, he has. He bought it in Seven Dials when he was staying at your flat. His original idea was to employ it on a boy called Stinker at Bramley-on-Sea, but it is now earmarked for Dobbs.’
‘Oh, my God!’
‘It will do Dobbs all the good in the world to be coshed. It may prove a turning-point in his life. I have a feeling that things are breaking just right these days and that very shortly an era of universal happiness will set in. Look at Catsmeat, if you want Exhibit A. Have you seen him?’
‘Not to speak to,’ I said, speaking in a distrait manner, for my mind was still occupied with Thos and his plans. The last thing you want, when the nervous system is in a state of hash, are your first cousins socking policemen with rubber bludgeons. ‘What about Catsmeat?’
‘I met him just now, and he was singing like a linnet all over the place. He had a note from Gertrude last night, and she says that, if and when she can elude her mother’s eye, she will elope with him. His cup of joy is full.’
‘I’m glad someone’s is.’
The sombreness of my tone caused her to look sharply at me, and her eyes widened as she saw the disorder of my outer crust.
‘Bertie! My lamb!’ she cried, visibly moved. ‘What have you been do
ing to yourself? You look like –’
‘Something the cat brought in?’
‘I was going to say something excavated from Tutankhamen’s tomb, but your guess is as good as mine. What’s been happening?’
I passed a weary hand over the brow.
‘Corky,’ I said, ‘I’ve been through hell.’
‘About the only place I thought you didn’t have to go through to get to King’s Deverill. And how were they all?’
‘I have a frightful story to relate.’
‘Did somebody cosh you?’
‘I’ve just come from Wimbledon.’
‘From Wimbledon? But Catsmeat was attending to the Wimbledon end. He told me all about it.’
‘He didn’t tell you all about it, because all about it is precisely what he doesn’t know. If you’ve only heard Catsmeat’s reminiscences, you simply aren’t within a million miles of being in possession of the facts. He barely scratched the surface of Wimbledon, whereas I … Would you care to have the ghastly details?’
She said she would love to, and I slipped them to her, and for once she listened attentively from start to finish, an agreeable deviation from her customary deaf-adder tactics. I found her a good audience. She was properly impressed when I spoke of Gussie’s letter, nor did she omit to draw the breath in sharply as I touched on the Gudgeon and the sinister affair of the studio portrait. The facts in connection with the white, woolly dog also went over big.
‘Golly!’ she said, as I wore to a close. ‘You do live, don’t you, Bertie?’
I agreed that I lived, but expressed a doubt as to whether, the circumstances being what they were it was worthwhile continuing to do so. One was rather inclined, I said, to murmur ‘Death, where is thy sting?’ and turn the toes up.
‘The best one can say,’ I concluded, ‘is that one has obtained a brief respite, if respite is the word. And that only if Catsmeat was successful in dissuading the Bassett from her awful purpose. For all I know, she may be coming on the next train.’
‘No, she’s not. He headed her off.’
‘You had that straight from the horse’s mouth?’
‘Direct from his personal lips.’
I drew a deep breath. This certainly put a brighter aspect on the cloud wreck. In fact, it seemed to me that ‘Hallelujah!’ about summed it up, and I mentioned this.
I was concerned to note that she appeared a bit dubious.
‘Yes, I suppose “Hallelujah!” sums it up … to a certain extent. I mean you can make your mind easy about her coming here. She isn’t coming. But in the light of what you tell me about Mervyn Keene, Clubman, and the studio portrait, it’s a pity Catsmeat didn’t hit on some other method of heading her off. I do feel that.’
My heart stood still. I clutched at the windscreen for support, and what-whatted.
‘The great thing to remember, the thing to bear in mind and keep the attention fixed on, is that he meant well.’
My heart stood stiller. In your walks about London you will sometimes see bent, haggard figures that look as if they had recently been caught in some powerful machinery. They are those of fellows who got mixed up with Catsmeat when he was meaning well.
‘What he told Miss Bassett was this. He said that on hearing that she was coming to the hall you betrayed agitation and concern, and finally he got it out of you what the trouble was. Loving her hopelessly as you do, you shrank from the agony of having to see her day after day in Gussie’s society.’
My heart, ceasing to stand still, gave a leap and tried to get out through my front teeth.
‘He told Madeline Bassett that?’ I quavered, shaking on my stem.
‘Yes, and implored her to stay away and not subject you to this anguish. He says he was terrific and wished one or two managers had been there to catch his work, and I think he must have been pretty good, because Miss Bassett cried buckets and said she quite understood and, of course, would cancel her visit, adding something in a low voice about the desire of the moth for the star and how sad life was. What did you say?’
I explained that I had not spoken, merely uttered one of those hollow groans, and she agreed that in the circs hollow groans were perhaps in order.
‘But, of course, it wasn’t easy for the poor angel to think of a good way of stopping her coming,’ she argued. ‘And the great thing was to stop her somehow.’
‘True.’
‘So, if I were you, I would try to look on the bright side. Count your blessings one by one, if you know what I mean.’
This is an appeal which, when addressed to Bertram Wooster, rarely falls on deaf ears. The stunned sensation which her words had induced did not actually leave me, but it diminished somewhat in intensity. I saw her point.
‘There is much in what you say,’ I agreed, rising on stepping-stones of my dead self to higher things, as I have mentioned is my custom. ‘The great thing, as you justly remark, was to stop the Bassett blowing in, and, if that has been accomplished, one does wrong to be fussy about the actual mechanism. And, after all, she was already firmly convinced of my unswerving devotion, so Catsmeat hasn’t really plunged me so very much deeper in the broth than I was before.’
‘That’s my brave little man. That’s the way to talk.’
‘We now have a respite, and all depends on how quickly you can put Gussie on ice. The moment that is done, the whole situation will clarify. Released from your fatal spell, he will automatically return to the old love, feeling that the cagey thing is to go where he is appreciated. When do you expect to cool him off?’
‘Very soon.’
‘Why not instanter?’
‘Well, I’ll tell you, Bertie. There’s a little job I want him to do for me first.’
‘What job?’
‘Ah, here’s Thomas at last. He seems to have bought every fan magazine in existence. To read at the concert, if he’s sensible. You haven’t forgotten the concert is this evening? Well, mind you don’t. And when you see Jeeves, ask him how that claque of Esmond’s has come out. Hop in, Thomas.’
Thos hopped in, giving me another of his supercilious looks, and when in, leaned across and slipped a penny into my hand, saying ‘Here, my poor man’ and urging me not to spend it on drink. At any other moment this coarse ribaldry would have woken the fiend that sleeps in Bertram Wooster and led to the young pot of poison receiving another clout on the head, but I had no time now for attending to Thoses. I fixed Corky with a burning eye.
‘What job?’ I repeated.
‘Oh, it wouldn’t interest you,’ she said. ‘Just a trivial little job about the place.’
And she drove off, leaving me a prey to a nameless fear.
I was hoofing along the road that led to the hall, speculating dully as to what precisely she had meant by the expression ‘trivial little job’, when, as I rounded a corner, something large and Norfolk-coated hove in sight, and I identified it as Esmond Haddock.
19
* * *
OWING TO THE fact that on the instructions of Dame Daphne (‘Safety First’) Winkworth port was no longer served after dinner and the male and female members of the gang now left the table in a body at the conclusion of the evening repast, I had not enjoyed a tête-à-tête with Esmond Haddock since the night of my arrival. I had seen him around the place, of course, but always in the company of a brace of assorted aunts or that of his cousin Gertrude, in each case looking Byronic. (Checking up with Jeeves, I find that that is the word all right. Apparently it means looking like the late Lord Byron, who was a gloomy sort of bird, taking things the hard way.)
We came together, he approaching from the nor’-nor’-east and self approaching from the sou’-sou’-west, and he greeted me with a moody twitch of the cheek muscles, as if he had thought of smiling and then thought again and said ‘Oh, to hell with it’.
‘Hallo,’ he said.
‘Hallo,’ I said.
‘Nice day,’ he said.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Out for a walk?’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘You out for a walk?’
Prudence compelled me to descend to subterfuge.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I’m out for a walk. I just ran into Miss Pirbright.’
At the mention of that name, he winced as if troubled by an old wound.
‘Oh?’ he said. ‘Miss Pirbright, eh?’
He swallowed a couple of times. I could see a question trembling on his lips, but it was plainly one that nauseated him, for after uttering the word ‘Was’ he kept right along swallowing. I was just about to touch on the situation in the Balkans in order to keep the conversation going, when he got it out.
‘Was Wooster with her?’
‘No, she was alone.’
‘You’re sure?’
‘Certain.’
‘He may have been lurking in the background. Behind a tree or something.’
‘The meeting occurred in the station yard.’
‘He wasn’t skulking in a doorway?’
‘Oh, no.’
‘Strange. You don’t often see her without Wooster these days,’ he said, and ground his teeth a trifle.
I had a shot at trying to mitigate his anguish, which I could see was considerable. He, too, had obviously noted Gussie’s spotty work, and it was plain that what is technically known as the green-eyed monster had been slipping it across him properly.
‘They’re old friends, of course,’ I said.
‘Are they?’
‘Oh, rather. We – I should say they – have known each other since childhood. They went to the same dancing class.’
The moment I had mentioned that, I was wishing I hadn’t, for it seemed to affect him as though some hidden hand had given him the hotfoot. You couldn’t say his brow darkened because it had been dark to start with, but he writhed visibly. Like Lord Byron reading a review of his last slim volume of verse and finding it a stinker. I wasn’t surprised. A man in love and viewing with concern the competition of a rival does not like to think of the adored object and that rival pirouetting about together at dancing classes and probably splitting a sociable milk and biscuit in the eleven o’clock interval.