Obviously, then, the above Porter having expressed himself as he had done about Vanessa Cook, the shrewd thing for me to do was to keep away from her. I put this up to Jeeves when I returned, and he saw eye to eye with me.
‘What are those things circumstances have, Jeeves?’ I said.
‘Sir?’
‘You know what I mean. You talk of a something of circumstances which leads to something. Cats enter into it, if I’m not wrong.’
‘Would concatenation be the word you are seeking?’
‘That’s right. It was on the tip of my tongue. Do concatenations of circumstances arise?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Well, one has arisen now. The facts are these. When we were in London, I formed a slight acquaintance with a Miss Cook who turns out to be the daughter of the chap who owns the horse which thinks so highly of that cat. She had a spot of trouble with the police, and her father summoned her home to see that she didn’t get into more. So she is now at Eggesford Court. Got the scenario so far?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘This caused her betrothed, a man named Porter, to follow her here in order to give her aid and comfort. Got that?’
‘Yes, sir. This frequently happens when two young hearts are sundered.’
‘Well, I met him this morning, and my presence in Maiden Eggesford came as a surprise to him.’
‘One can readily imagine it, sir.’
‘He took it for granted that I had come in pursuit of Miss Cook.’
‘Like young Lochinvar, when he came out of the West.’
The name was new to me, but I didn’t ask for further details. I saw that he was following the plot, and it never does, when you’re telling a story, to wander off into side issues.
‘And he said if I didn’t desist, he would tear my insides out with his bare hands.’
‘Indeed, sir?’
‘You don’t know Porter, do you?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Well, you know Spode. Porter is Spode plus. Hasty temper. Quick to take offence. And the muscles of his brawny arms are strong as iron bands, as the fellow said. The last chap you’d want to annoy. So what do you suggest?’
‘I think it would be advisable to avoid the society of Miss Cook.’
‘Exactly the idea which occurred to me. And it ought not to be difficult. The chances of Pop Cook asking me to drop in are very slim. So if I take the high road and she takes the low road … Answer that, will you, Jeeves,’ I said as the telephone rang in the hall. ‘It’s probably Aunt Dahlia, but it may be Porter, and I do not wish to have speech with him.’
He went out, to return a few moments later.
‘It was Miss Cook, sir, speaking from the post office. She desired me to inform you that she would be calling on you immediately.’
A sharp ‘Lord-love-a-duck’ escaped me, and I eyed him with reproach.
‘You didn’t think to say I was out?’
‘The lady gave me no opportunity of doing so, sir. She delivered her message and rang off without waiting for me to speak.’
My brow got all knitted again.
‘This isn’t too good, Jeeves.’
‘No, sir.’
‘Calling at my home address like this.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Who’s to say that Orlo Porter is not lurking outside with his bird-watching binoculars?’ I said.
But before I could go into the matter in depth, the door bell had rung, and Vanessa Cook was in my midst. Jeeves, I need scarcely say, had vanished like a family spectre at the crack of dawn. He always does when company arrives. I hadn’t seen him go, and I doubted if Vanessa had, but he had gone.
As I stood gazing at Vanessa, I was conscious of the uneasiness you feel when you run up against something particularly hot and are wondering when it is going to explode. It was more than a year since I had seen her, except in the distance when about to be scooped in by the police, and the change in her appearance was calculated to curdle the blood a bit. Her outer aspect was still that of a girl who would have drawn whistles from susceptible members of America’s armed forces, but there was something sort of formidable about her which had not been there before, something kind of imperious and defiant, if you know what I mean. Due no doubt to the life she had been leading. You can’t go heading protest marches and socking the constabulary without it showing.
Hard, that’s the word I was trying for. She had always been what they call a proud beauty, but now she was a hard one. Her lips were tightly glued together, her chin protruding, her whole lay-out that of a girl who intended to stand no rannygazoo. Except that the latter was way down in Class D as a looker, while she, as I have indicated, was the pin-up girl to end all pin-up girls, she reminded me of my childhood dancing mistress. The thought occurred to me that in another thirty years or so she would look just like my Aunt Agatha, before whose glare, as is well known, strong men curl up like rabbits.
Nor was there anything in her greeting to put me at my ease. Having given me a nasty look as if I ranked in her esteem in one of the lowest brackets, she said:
‘I am very angry with you, Bertie.’
I didn’t like the sound of this at all. It is never agreeable to incur the displeasure of a girl with a punch like hers. I said I was sorry to hear that, and asked what seemed to be the trouble.
‘Following me here!’
There is nothing that braces one up like being accused of something to which you can find a ready answer. I laughed merrily, and her reaction to my mirth was much the same as Orlo Porter’s had been, though where he had spoken of hens laying eggs she preferred the simile of a hyena with a bone stuck in its throat. I said I hadn’t had a notion that she was in these parts, and this time she laughed, one of those metallic ones that are no good to man or beast.
‘Oh, come!’ she said. ‘Oddly enough,’ she added, ‘although I am furious, I can’t help admiring you in a way. I am surprised to find that you have so much initiative. It is abominable, but it does show spirit. It makes me feel that if I had married you, I could have made something of you.’
I shuddered from hair-do to shoe-sole. I was even more thankful than before that she had given me the bum’s rush. I know what making something of me meant. Ten minutes after the Bishop and colleague had done their stuff she would have been starting to mould me and jack up my soul, and I like my soul the way it is. It may not be the sort of soul that gets crowds cheering in the streets, but it suits me and I don’t want people fooling about with it.
‘But it is quite impossible, Bertie. I love Orlo and can love no one else.’
‘That’s all right. Entirely up to you. I must put you straight on one thing, though. I really didn’t know you were here.’
‘Are you trying to make me believe that it was a pure coincidence—’
‘No, not that. More what I would call a concatenation of circumstances. My doctor ordered me a quiet life in the country, and I chose Maiden Eggesford because my aunt is staying with some people here and I thought it would be nice being near her. A quiet life in the country can be a bit too quiet if you don’t know anybody. She got me this cottage.’
You might have thought that that would have cleaned everything up and made life one grand sweet song, as the fellow said, but no, she went on looking puff-faced. No pleasing some girls.
‘So I was wrong in thinking that you had initiative,’ she said, and if her lip didn’t curl scornfully, I don’t know a scornfully curling lip when I see one. ‘You are just an ordinary footling member of the bourgeoisie that Orlo dislikes so much.’
‘A typical young man about town, some authorities say.’
‘I don’t suppose you have ever done anything worthwhile in your life.’
I could have made her look pretty silly at this juncture by revealing that I had won a Scripture Knowledge prize at my private school, a handsomely bound copy of a devotional work whose name has escaped me, and that when Aunt Dahlia was running that Milady’s Boudoir paper
of hers I contributed to it an article, or piece as we writers call it, on What The Well-Dressed Man Is Wearing, but I let it go, principally because she had gone on speaking and it is practically impossible to cut in on a woman who has gone on speaking. They get the stuff out so damn quick that the slower male hasn’t a hope.
‘But the matter of your wasted life is beside the point. God made you, and presumably he knew what he was doing, so we need not go into that. What you will want to hear is my reason for coming to see you.’
‘Any time you’re passing,’ I said in my polished way, but she took no notice and continued.
‘Father’s friend, Major Plank, who is staying with us, was talking at lunch about someone named Wooster who had called this morning, and when Father turned purple and choked on his lamb cutlet I knew it must be you. You are the sort of young man he dislikes most.’
‘Do young men dislike him?’
‘Invariably. Father is and always has been a cross between Attila the Hun and a snapping turtle. Well, having found that you were in Maiden Eggesford I came to ask you to do something for me.’
‘Anything I can.’
‘It’s quite simple. I shall of course be writing to Orlo, but I don’t want him to send his letters to the Court because Father, in addition to resembling a snapping turtle, is a man of low cunning who wouldn’t hesitate to intercept and destroy them, and he always gets down to breakfast before I do, which gives him a strategical advantage. By the time I got to the table the cream of my correspondence would be in his trouser pocket. So I am going to tell Orlo to address his letters care of you, and I will call for them every afternoon.’
I never heard a proposition I liked the sound of less. The idea of her calling at the cottage daily, with Orlo Porter, already heated to boiling point, watching its every move, froze my young blood and made my two eyes, like stars, start from their spheres, as I have heard Jeeves put it. It was with infinite relief that I realized a moment later that my fears were groundless, there being no need for correspondence between the parties of the first and second part.
‘But he’s here,’ I said.
‘Here? In Maiden Eggesford?’
‘Right plump spang in Maiden Eggesford.’
‘Are you being funny, Bertie?’
‘Of course I’m not being funny. If I were being funny, I’d have had you in convulsions from the outset. I tell you he’s here. I met him this afternoon. He was watching a Clarkson’s warbler. Arising from which, you don’t happen to have any data relating to Clarkson, do you? I’ve been wondering who he was and how he got a warbler.’
She ignored my observation. This generally happens with me. Show me a woman, I sometimes say, and I will show you someone who is going to ignore my observations.
Looking at her closely, I noted a change in her aspect. I have said that her face had hardened as the result of going about the place socking policemen, but now it had got all soft. And while her two eyes didn’t actually start from their spheres, they widened to about the size of regulation golf balls, and a tender smile lit up her map. She said, ‘Well, strike me pink!’ or words to that effect.
‘So he has come! He has followed me!’ She spoke as if it had given her no end of a kick that he had done this. Apparently it wasn’t being followed that she objected to; it just had to be the right chap. ‘Like some knight in shining armour riding up on his white horse.’
Here would have been a chance to give Jeeves’s friend who came out of the west a plug by saying that Orlo reminded me of him, but I had to give it a miss because I couldn’t remember the fellow’s name.
‘I wonder how he managed to get away from his job,’ I said.
‘He was on his annual two weeks’ holiday. That is how he came to be at that protest march. He and I were heading the procession.’
‘I know. I was watching from afar.’
‘I have not found out yet what happened to him that day. After he knocked the policeman down he suddenly disappeared.’
‘Always the best thing to do if you knock a policeman down. He jumped into my car and I drove him to safety.’
‘Oh, I see.’
I must say I thought she might have put it a bit stronger. One does not desire thanks for these little kindnesses one does here and there, but considering that on his behalf I had interfered with the police in the execution of their duty, if that’s how the script reads, thereby rendering myself liable to a sizeable sojourn in chokey, a little enthusiasm would not have been amiss. Nothing to be done about it except give her a reproachful look. I did this. It made no impression whatever, and she proceeded.
‘Is he staying at the Goose and Grasshopper?’
‘I couldn’t say,’ I said, and if I spoke with a touch of what-d’you-call-it in my voice, who can blame me? ‘When I met him, we talked mostly about my interior organs.’
‘What’s wrong with your interior organs?’
‘Nothing so far, but he thought there might be something later on.’
‘He has a wonderfully sympathetic nature.’
‘Yes, hasn’t he.’
‘Did he recommend anything that would be good for you?’
‘As a matter of fact he did.’
‘How like him!’
She was silent for a while, no doubt pondering on all Orlo’s lovable qualities, many of which I had missed. At length she spoke.
‘He must be at the Goose and Grasshopper. It’s the only decent inn in the place. Go there and tell him to meet me here at three o’clock tomorrow afternoon.’
‘Here?’
‘Yes.’
‘You mean at this cottage?’
‘Why not?’
‘I thought you might want to see him alone.’
‘Oh, that’s all right. You can go for a walk.’
Once more I sent up a silent vote of thanks to my guardian angel for having fixed it that this proud beauty should not become Mrs Bertram Wooster. Her cool assumption that she had only got to state her wishes and all and sundry would jump to fulfil them gave me the pip. So stung was the Wooster pride by the thought of being slung out at her bidding from my personal cottage that it is not too much to say that my blood boiled, and I would probably have said something biting like ‘Oh, yes?’, only I felt that a preux chevalier, which I always aim to be, ought not to crush the gentler sex beneath the iron heel, no matter what the provocation.
So I changed it to ‘Right-ho’, and went off to the Goose and Grasshopper to give Orlo the low-down.
8
* * *
I FOUND HIM in the private bar having a gin and ginger ale. His face, never much to write home about, was rendered even less of a feast for the eye by a dark scowl. His spirits were plainly at their lowest ebb, as so often happens when Sundered Heart A is feeling that the odds against his clicking with Sundered Heart B cannot be quoted at better than a hundred to eight.
Of course he may have been brooding because he had just heard that a pal of his in Moscow had been liquidated that morning, or he had murdered a capitalist and couldn’t think of a way of getting rid of the body, but I preferred to attribute his malaise to frustrated love, and I couldn’t help feeling a pang of pity for him.
He looked at me as I entered in a manner which made me realize how little chance there was of our exchanging presents at Christmas, and I remember thinking what a lot of him there was and all of it anti-Wooster. I had often felt the same about Spode. It seemed that there was something about me that aroused the baser passions in men who were eight feet tall and six across. I took this up with Jeeves once, and he agreed that it was singular.
His eye as I approached was what I have heard described as lacklustre. Whatever it was that was causing this V-shaped depression, seeing me had not brought the sunshine into his life. His demeanour was that of any member of a Wednesday matinée audience or, let us say, a dead fish on a fishmonger’s slab. Nor did he brighten when I had delivered my message. After I had done so there was a long silence, broken only by the gu
rgling of ginger ale as it slid down his throat.
Eventually he spoke, his voice rather like that of a living corpse in one of those horror films where the fellow takes the lid off the tomb in the vault beneath the ruined chapel and blowed if the occupant doesn’t start a conversation with him.
‘I don’t understand this.’
‘What don’t you understand?’ I said, adding ‘Comrade’, for there is never anything lost by being civil. ‘Any assistance I can give in the way of solving any little problems you may have will be freely given. I am only here to help.’
The amount of sunny charm I had put into these words ought to have melted the reserve of a brass monkey, but they got absolutely nowhere with him. He continued to eye me in an Aunt Agathaesque manner.
‘It seems odd, if as you say you are the merest acquaintance, that she should be paying you clandestine visits at your cottage. Taken in conjunction with your surreptitious appearance at Eggesford Court, it cannot but invite suspicion.’
When someone talks like that, using words like ‘clandestine’ and ‘surreptitious’ and saying that something cannot but invite suspicion, the prudent man watches his step. It was a great relief to me that I had a watertight explanation. I gave it with a winning frankness which I felt could scarcely fail to bring home the bacon.
‘My appearance at Eggesford Court wasn’t surreptitious. I was there because I had come to the wrong house. And Miss Cook’s visit to my cottage had to be clandestine because her father watches her as closely as the paper on the wall. And she visited my cottage because there was no other way of getting in touch with you. She didn’t know you were in Maiden Eggesford, and she thought if you wrote her a letter that Pop would intercept it, he being a man who would intercept a daughter’s letter at the drop of a hat.’
It sounded absolutely copper-bottomed to me, but he went on giving me the eye.
‘All the same,’ he said, ‘I find it curious that she should have confided in you. It suggests an intimacy.’