"Bertie," he said as we walked along, "you are present at a crisis in
your old friend's life. It may be that this vigil in a broken-down car
will cause Rosie to see what you'd have thought she ought to have seen
years ago: viz., that the Pyke is entirely unfit for human consumption
and must be cast into outer darkness where there is wailing and
gnashing of teeth.
"I am not betting on it, but stranger things have happened. Rosie is
the sweetest girl in the world, but, like all women, she gets edgy
toward tea time. And to-day, having missed lunch----Hark!"
He grabbed my arm, and we paused. Tense. Agog. From down the road came
the sound of voices, and a mere instant was enough to tell us that it
was Mrs. Bingo and the Pyke talking things over.
I had never listened in on a real, genuine female row before, and
I'm bound to say it was pretty impressive. During my absence matters
appeared to have developed on rather a spacious scale. They had reached
the stage now where the combatants had begun to dig into the past and
rake up old scores.
Mrs. Bingo was saying that the Pyke would never have got into the
hockey team at St. Adela's if she hadn't flattered and fawned upon
the captain in a way that it made Mrs. Bingo, even after all these
years, sick to think of. The Pyke replied that she had refrained from
mentioning it until now, having always felt it better to let bygones
be bygones, but that if Mrs. Bingo supposed her to be unaware that
Mrs. Bingo had won the Scripture prize by taking a list of the Kings
of Judah into the examination room, tucked into her middy blouse, Mrs.
Bingo was vastly mistaken.
Furthermore, the Pyke proceeded, Mrs. Bingo was also labouring under
an error if she imagined that the Pyke proposed to remain a night
longer under her roof. It had been in a moment of weakness, a moment
of mistaken kindliness, supposing her to be lonely and in need of
intellectual society, that the Pyke had decided to pay her a visit at
all.
Her intention now was, if ever Providence sent them aid and enabled
her to get out of this beastly car and back to her trunks, to pack
those trunks and leave by the next train, even if that train was a milk
train, stopping at every station. Indeed, rather than endure another
night at Mrs. Bingo's, the Pyke was quite willing to walk to London.
To this, Mrs. Bingo's reply was long and eloquent, and touched on the
fact that in her last term at St. Adela's a girl named Simpson had told
her (Mrs. Bingo) that a girl named Waddesley had told her (the Simpson)
that the Pyke, while pretending to be a friend of hers (the Bingo's),
had told her (the Waddesley) that she (the Bingo) couldn't eat
strawberries and cream without coming out in spots, and, in addition,
had spoken in the most catty manner about the shape of her nose. It
could all have been condensed, however, into the words "Right ho."
It was when the Pyke had begun to say that she had never had such a
hearty laugh in her life as when she read the scene in Mrs. Bingo's
last novel where the heroine's little boy dies of croup that we felt
it best to call the meeting to order before bloodshed set in. Jeeves
had come up in the car, and Bingo, removing a can of gasoline from
the dickey, placed it in the shadows at the side of the road. Then we
hopped on and made the spectacular entry.
"Hullo, hullo, hullo!" said Bingo brightly. "Bertie tells me you've had
a breakdown."
"Oh, Bingo!" cried Mrs. Bingo, wifely love trilling in every syllable.
"Thank goodness you've come!"
"Now, perhaps," said the Pyke, "I can get home and do my packing. If
Mr. Wooster will allow me to use his car his man can drive me back to
the house in time to catch the six-fifteen."
"You aren't leaving us?" said Bingo.
"I am," said the Pyke.
"Too bad," said Bingo.
She climbed in beside Jeeves and they popped off. There was a short
silence after they had gone. It was too dark to see her, but I could
feel Mrs. Bingo struggling between love of her mate and the natural
urge to say something crisp about his forgetting to fill the gasoline
tank that morning. Eventually Nature took its course.
"I must say, sweetie-pie," she said, "it was a little careless of you
to leave the tank almost empty when we started to-day. You promised me
you would fill it, darling."
"But I did fill it, darling."
"But darling, it's empty."
"It can't be, darling."
"Laura said it was."
"The woman's an ass," said Bingo. "There's plenty of gas. What's
wrong is probably that the sprockets aren't running true with the
differential gear. It happens that way sometimes. I'll fix it in a
second. But I don't want you to sit freezing out here while I'm doing
it. Why not go to that house over there and ask them if you can't come
in and sit down for ten minutes? They might give you a cup of tea, too."
A soft moan escaped Mrs. Bingo. "Tea!" I heard her whisper.