SENSATIONAL OCCURRENCE AT A POETRY READING
§ 1
Breakfast was over, and the guests of Blandings had scattered to their
morning occupations. Some were writing letters, some were in the
billiard-room: some had gone to the stables, some to the links: Lady
Constance was interviewing the housekeeper, Lord Emsworth harrying
head-gardener McAllister among the flower-beds: and in the Yew Alley,
the dappled sunlight falling upon her graceful head, Miss Peavey walked
pensively up and down.
She was alone. It is a sad but indisputable fact that in this imperfect
world Genius is too often condemned to walk alone--if the earthier
members of the community see it coming and have time to duck. Not one
of the horde of visitors who had arrived overnight for the County Ball
had shown any disposition whatever to court Miss Peavey’s society.
One regrets this. Except for that slight bias towards dishonesty
which led her to steal everything she could lay her hands on that was
not nailed down, Aileen Peavey’s was an admirable character; and,
oddly enough, it was the noble side of her nature to which these
coarse-fibred critics objected. Of Miss Peavey, the purloiner of
other people’s goods, they knew nothing; the woman they were dodging
was Miss Peavey, the poetess. And it may be mentioned that, however
much she might unbend in the presence of a congenial friend like Mr.
Edward Cootes, she was a perfectly genuine poetess. Those six volumes
under her name in the British Museum catalogue were her own genuine
and unaided work: and, though she had been compelled to pay for the
production of the first of the series, the other five had been brought
out at her publisher’s own risk, and had even made a little money.
Miss Peavey, however, was not sorry to be alone: for she had that on
her mind which called for solitary thinking. The matter engaging her
attention was the problem of what on earth had happened to Mr. Edward
Cootes. Two days had passed since he had left her to go and force
Psmith at the pistol’s point to introduce him into the castle: and
since that moment he had vanished completely. Miss Peavey could not
understand it.
His non-appearance was all the more galling in that her superb brain
had just completed in every detail a scheme for the seizure of Lady
Constance Keeble’s diamond necklace; and to the success of this plot
his aid was an indispensable adjunct. She was in the position of a
general who comes from his tent with a plan of battle all mapped out,
and finds that his army has strolled off somewhere and left him. Little
wonder that, as she paced the Yew Alley, there was a frown on Miss
Peavey’s fair forehead.
The Yew Alley, as Lord Emsworth had indicated in his extremely
interesting lecture to Mr. Ralston McTodd at the Senior Conservative
Club, contained among other noteworthy features certain yews which rose
in solid blocks with rounded roof and stemless mushroom finials, the
majority possessing arched recesses, forming arbors. As Miss Peavey was
passing one of these, a voice suddenly addressed her.
“Hey!”
Miss Peavey started violently.
“Anyone about?”
A damp face with twigs sticking to it was protruding from a near-by
yew. It rolled its eyes in an ineffectual effort to see round the
corner.
Miss Peavey drew nearer, breathing heavily. The question as to the
whereabouts of her wandering boy was solved; but the abruptness of his
return had caused her to bite her tongue; and joy, as she confronted
him, was blended with other emotions.
“You dish-faced gazooni!” she exclaimed heatedly, her voice trembling
with a sense of ill-usage, “where do you get that stuff, hiding in
trees, and barking a girl’s head off?”
“Sorry, Liz. I . . .”
“And where,” proceeded Miss Peavey, ventilating another grievance,
“have you been all this darned time? Gosh-dingit, you leave me a coupla
days back saying you’re going to stick up this bozo that calls himself
McTodd with a gat and make him get you into the house, and that’s the
last I see of you. What’s the big idea?”
“It’s all right, Liz. He did get me into the house. I’m his valet.
That’s why I couldn’t get at you before. The way the help has to keep
itself to itself in this joint, we might as well have been in different
counties. If I hadn’t happened to see you snooping off by yourself this
morning . . .”
Miss Peavey’s keen mind grasped the position of affairs.
“All right, all right,” she interrupted, ever impatient of long
speeches from others. “I understand. Well, this is good, Ed. It
couldn’t have worked out better. I’ve got a scheme all doped out, and
now you’re here we can get busy.”
“A scheme?”
“A pippin,” assented Miss Peavey.
“It’ll need to be,” said Mr. Cootes, on whom the events of the last few
days had caused pessimism to set its seal. “I tell you that McTodd gook
is smooth. He somehow,” said Mr. Cootes prudently, for he feared harsh
criticisms from his lady-love should he reveal the whole truth, “he
somehow got wise to the notion that, as I was his valet, I could go and
snoop round in his room, where he’d be wanting to hide the stuff if he
ever got it, and now he’s gone and got them to let him have a kind of
shack in the woods.”
“H’m!” said Miss Peavey. “Well,” she resumed after a thoughtful pause,
“I’m not worrying about him. Let him go and roost in the woods all he
wants to. I’ve got a scheme all ready, and it’s gilt-edged. And, unless
you ball up your end of it, Ed, it can’t fail to drag home the gravy.”
“Am I in it?”
“You bet you’re in it. I can’t work it without you. That’s what’s been
making me so darned mad when you didn’t show up all this time.”
“Spill it, Liz,” said Mr. Cootes humbly. As always in the presence of
this dynamic woman, he was suffering from an inferiority complex. From
the very start of their combined activities she had been the brains of
the firm, he merely the instrument to carry into effect the plans she
dictated.
Miss Peavey glanced swiftly up and down the Yew Alley. It was still the
same peaceful, lonely spot. She turned to Mr. Cootes again, and spoke
with brisk decision.
“Now, listen, Ed, and get this straight, because maybe I shan’t have
another chance of talking to you.”
“I’m listening,” said Mr. Cootes obsequiously.
“Well, to begin with, now that the house is full, Her Nibs is wearing
that necklace every night. And you can take it from me, Ed, that you
want to put on your smoked glasses before you look at it. It’s a
lalapaloosa.”
“As good as that?”
“Ask me! You don’t know the half of it.”
“Where does she keep it, Liz? Have you found that out?” asked Mr.
Cootes, a gleam of optimism playing across his sad face for an instant.
“No, I haven’t. And I don’t want to. I’ve not got time to waste
monkeying about with safes and maybe having the whole bunch pile on the
back of my neck. I believe in getting things easy. Well, to-night this
bimbo that calls himself McTodd is going to give a reading of his poems
in the big drawing-room. You know where that is?”
“I can find out.”
“And you better had find out,” said Miss Peavey vehemently. “And before
to-night at that. Well, there you are. Do you begin to get wise?”
Mr. Cootes, his head protruding unhappily from the yew tree, would have
given much to have been able to make the demanded claim to wisdom,
for he knew of old the store his alert partner set upon quickness
of intellect. He was compelled, however, to disturb the branches by
shaking his head.
“You always were pretty dumb,” said Miss Peavey with scorn. “I’ll say
that you’ve got good solid qualities, Ed--from the neck up. Why, I’m
going to sit behind Lady Constance while that goof is shooting his fool
head off, and I’m going to reach out and grab that necklace off of her.
See?”
“But, Liz”--Mr. Cootes diffidently summoned up courage to point out
what appeared to him to be a flaw in the scheme--“if you start any
strong-arm work in front of everybody like the way you say, won’t
they . . . ?”
“No, they won’t. And I’ll tell you why they won’t. They aren’t going to
see me do it, because when I do it it’s going to be good and dark in
that room. And it’s going to be dark because you’ll be somewheres out
at the back of the house, wherever they keep the main electric-light
works, turning the switch as hard as you can go. See? That’s your end
of it, and pretty soft for you at that. All you have to do is to find
out where the thing is and what you have to do to it to put out all the
lights in the joint. I guess I can trust you not to bungle that?”
“Liz,” said Mr. Cootes, and there was reverence in his voice, “you can
do just that little thing. But what . . . ?”
“All right, I know what you’re going to say. What happens after that,
and how do I get away with the stuff? Well, the window’ll be open, and
I’ll just get to it and fling the necklace out. See? There’ll be a big
fuss going on in the room on account of the darkness and all that, and
while everybody’s cutting up and what-the-helling, you’ll pick up your
dogs and run round as quick as you can make it and pouch the thing. I
guess it won’t be hard for you to locate it. The window’s just over the
terrace, all smooth turf, and it isn’t real dark nights now, and you
ought to have plenty of time to hunt around before they can get the
lights going again. . . . Well, what do you think of it?” There was a
brief silence.
“Liz,” said Mr. Cootes at length.
“Is it or is it not,” demanded Miss Peavey, “a ball of fire?”
“Liz,” said Mr. Cootes, and his voice was husky with such awe as some
young officer of Napoleon’s staff might have felt on hearing the
details of the latest plan of campaign, “Liz, I’ve said it before, and
I’ll say it again. When it comes to the smooth stuff, old girl, you’re
the oyster’s eye-tooth!”
And, reaching out an arm from the recesses of the yew, he took Miss
Peavey’s hand in his and gave it a tender squeeze. A dreamy look came
into the poetess’s fine eyes, and she giggled a little. Dumb-bell
though he was, she loved this man.
§ 2
“Mr. Baxter!”
“Yes, Miss Halliday?”
The Brains of Blandings looked abstractedly up from his desk. It was
only some half-hour since luncheon had finished, but already he was in
the library surrounded by large books like a sea-beast among rocks.
Most of his time was spent in the library when the castle was full of
guests, for his lofty mind was ill-attuned to the frivolous babblings
of Society butterflies.
“I wonder if you could spare me this afternoon?” said Eve.
Baxter directed the glare of his spectacles upon her inquisitorially.
“The whole afternoon?”
“If you don’t mind. You see, I had a letter by the second post from a
great friend of mine, saying that she will be in Market Blandings this
afternoon and asking me to meet her there. I must see her, Mr. Baxter,
_please_. You’ve no notion how important it is.”
Eve’s manner was excited, and her eyes as they met Baxter’s sparkled in
a fashion that might have disturbed a man made of less stern stuff. If
it had been the Hon. Freddie Threepwood, for instance, who had been
gazing into their blue depths, that impulsive youth would have tied
himself into knots and yapped like a dog. Baxter, the superman, felt
no urge towards any such display. He reviewed her request calmly and
judicially, and decided that it was a reasonable one.
“Very well, Miss Halliday.”
“Thank you ever so much. I’ll make up for it by working twice as hard
to-morrow.”
Eve flitted to the door, pausing there to bestow a grateful smile upon
him before going out; and Baxter returned to his reading. For a moment
he was conscious of a feeling of regret that this quite attractive and
uniformly respectful girl should be the partner in crime of a man of
whom he disapproved even more than he disapproved of most malefactors.
Then he crushed down the weak emotion and was himself again.
Eve trotted downstairs, humming happily to herself. She had expected
a longer and more strenuous struggle before she obtained her order of
release, and told herself that, despite a manner which seldom deviated
from the forbidding, Baxter was really quite nice. In short, it seemed
to her that nothing could possibly occur to mar the joyfulness of this
admirable afternoon; and it was only when a voice hailed her as she was
going through the hall a few minutes later that she realised that she
was mistaken. The voice, which trembled throatily, was that of the Hon.
Freddie; and her first look at him told Eve, an expert diagnostician,
that he was going to propose to her again.
“Well, Freddie?” said Eve resignedly.
The Hon. Frederick Threepwood was a young man who was used to hearing
people say “Well, Freddie?” resignedly when he appeared. His father
said it; his Aunt Constance said it; all his other aunts and uncles
said it. Widely differing personalities in every other respect, they
all said “Well, Freddie?” resignedly directly they caught sight of him.
Eve’s words, therefore, and the tone in which they were spoken, did not
damp him as they might have damped another. His only feeling was one of
solemn gladness at the thought that at last he had managed to get her
alone for half a minute.
The fact that this was the first time he had been able to get her
alone since her arrival at the castle had caused Freddie a good deal
of sorrow. Bad luck was what he attributed it to, thereby giving the
object of his affections less credit than was her due for a masterly
policy of evasion. He sidled up, looking like a well-dressed sheep.
“Going anywhere?” he inquired.
“Yes. I’m going to Market Blandings. Isn’t it a lovely afternoon?
I suppose you are busy all the time now that the house is full?
Good-bye,” said Eve.
“Eh?” said Freddie, blinking.
“Good-bye. I must be hurrying.”
“Where did you say you were going?”
“Market Blandings.”
“I’ll come with you.”
“No, I want to be alone. I’ve got to meet someone there.”
“Come with you as far as the gates,” said Freddie, the human limpet.
The afternoon sun seemed to Eve to be shining a little less brightly as
they started down the drive. She was a kind-hearted girl, and it irked
her to have to be continually acting as a black frost in Freddie’s
garden of dreams. There appeared, however, to be but two ways out of
the thing: either she must accept him or he must stop proposing. The
first of these alternatives she resolutely declined to consider, and,
as far as was ascertainable from his actions, Freddie declined just
as resolutely to consider the second. The result was that solitary
interviews between them were seldom wholly free from embarrassing
developments.
They walked for a while in silence. Then:
“You’re dashed hard on a fellow,” said Freddie.
“How’s your putting coming on?” asked Eve.
“Eh?”
“Your putting. You told me you had so much trouble with it.”
She was not looking at him, for she had developed a habit of not
looking at him on these occasions; but she assumed that the odd sound
which greeted her remark was a hollow, mirthless laugh.
“My putting!”
“Well, you told me yourself it’s the most important part of golf.”
“Golf! Do you think I have time to worry about golf these days?”
“Oh, how splendid, Freddie! Are you really doing some work of some
kind? It’s quite time, you know. Think how pleased your father will be.”
“I say,” said Freddie, “I do think you might marry a chap.”
“I suppose I shall some day,” said Eve, “if I meet the right one.”
“No, no!” said Freddie despairingly. She was not usually so dense as
this. He had always looked on her as a dashed clever girl. “I mean
_me_.”
Eve sighed. She had hoped to avert the inevitable.
“Oh, Freddie!” she exclaimed, exasperated. She was still sorry for
him, but she could not help being irritated. It was such a splendid
afternoon and she had been feeling so happy. And now he had spoiled
everything. It always took her at least half an hour to get over the
nervous strain of refusing his proposals.
“I love you, dash it!” said Freddie.
“Well, do stop loving me,” said Eve. “I’m an awful girl, really. I’d
make you miserable.”
“Happiest man in the world,” corrected Freddie devoutly.
“I’ve got a frightful temper.”
“You’re an angel.”
Eve’s exasperation increased. She always had a curious fear that one of
these days, if he went on proposing, she might say “Yes” by mistake.
She wished that there was some way known to science of stopping him
once and for all. And in her desperation she thought of a line of
argument which she had not yet employed.
“It’s so absurd, Freddie,” she said. “Really, it is. Apart from the
fact that I don’t want to marry you, how can you marry anyone--anyone,
I mean, who hasn’t plenty of money?”
“Wouldn’t dream of marrying for money.”
“No, of course not, but . . .”
“Cupid,” said Freddie woodenly, “pines and sickens in a gilded cage.”
Eve had not expected to be surprised by anything her companion might
say, it being her experience that he possessed a vocabulary of about
forty-three words and a sum-total of ideas that hardly ran into two
figures; but this poetic remark took her back.
“What!”
Freddie repeated the observation. When it had been flashed on the
screen as a spoken sub-title in the six-reel wonder film, “Love or
Mammon” (Beatrice Comely and Brian Fraser), he had approved and made a
note of it.
“Oh!” said Eve, and was silent. As Miss Peavey would have put it, it
held her for a while. “What I meant,” she went on after a moment, “was
that you can’t possibly marry a girl without money unless you’ve some
money of your own.”
“I say, dash it!” A strange note of jubilation had come into the
wooer’s voice. “I say, is that really all that stands between us?
Because . . .”
“No, it isn’t!”
“Because, look here, I’m going to have quite a good deal of money at
any moment. It’s more or less of a secret, you know--in fact a pretty
deadish secret--so keep it dark, but Uncle Joe is going to give me a
couple of thousand quid. He promised me. Two thousand of the crispest.
Absolutely!”
“Uncle Joe?”
“_You_ know. Old Keeble. He’s going to give me a couple of thousand
quid, and then I’m going to buy a partnership in a bookie’s business
and simply coin money. Stands to reason, I mean. You can’t help making
your bally fortune. Look at all the mugs who are losing money all the
time at the races. It’s the bookies that get the stuff. A pal of mine
who was up at Oxford with me is in a bookie’s office, and they’re going
to let me in if I . . .”
The momentous nature of his information had caused Eve to deviate now
from her policy of keeping her eyes off Freddie when in emotional vein.
And, if she had desired to check his lecture on finance, she could
have chosen no better method than to look at him; for, meeting her
gaze, Freddie immediately lost the thread of his discourse and stood
yammering. A direct hit from Eve’s eyes always affected him in this
way.
“Mr. Keeble is going to give you two thousand pounds!”
A wave of mortification swept over Eve. If there was one thing on which
she prided herself, it was the belief that she was a loyal friend,
a staunch pal; and now for the first time she found herself facing
the unpleasant truth that she had been neglecting Phyllis Jackson’s
interests in the most abominable way ever since she had come to
Blandings. She had definitely promised Phyllis that she would tackle
this stepfather of hers and shame him with burning words into yielding
up the three thousand pounds which Phyllis needed so desperately for
her Lincolnshire farm. And what had she done? Nothing.
Eve was honest to the core, even in her dealings with herself. A less
conscientious girl might have argued that she had had no opportunity
of a private interview with Mr. Keeble. She scorned to soothe herself
with this specious plea. If she had given her mind to it she could have
brought about a dozen private interviews, and she knew it. No. She
had allowed the pleasant persistence of Psmith to take up her time,
and Phyllis and her troubles had been thrust into the background. She
confessed, despising herself, that she had hardly given Phyllis a
thought.
And all the while this Mr. Keeble had been in a position to scatter
largess, thousands of pounds of it, to undeserving people like Freddie.
Why, a word from her about Phyllis would have . . .
“Two thousand pounds?” she repeated dizzily. “Mr. Keeble!”
“Absolutely!” cried Freddie radiantly. The first shock of looking into
her eyes had passed, and he was now revelling in that occupation.
“What for?”
Freddie’s rapt gaze flickered. Love, he perceived, had nearly caused
him to be indiscreet.
“Oh, I don’t know,” he mumbled. “He’s just giving it me, you know,
don’t you know.”
“Did you simply go to him and ask him for it?”
“Well--er--well, yes. That was about the strength of it.”
“And he didn’t object?”
“No. He seemed rather pleased.”
“Pleased!” Eve found breathing difficult. She was feeling rather like a
man who suddenly discovers that the hole in his back yard which he has
been passing nonchalantly for months is a goldmine. If the operation of
extracting money from Mr. Keeble was not only easy but also agreeable
to the victim . . . She became aware of a sudden imperative need for
Freddie’s absence. She wanted to think this thing over.
“Well, then,” said Freddie, “coming back to it, will you?”
“What?” said Eve, distrait.
“Marry me, you know. What I mean to say is, I worship the very
ground you walk on, and all that sort of rot . . . I mean, and all
that. And now that you realise that I’m going to get this couple of
thousand . . . and the bookie’s business . . . and what not, I mean to
say . . .”
“Freddie,” said Eve tensely, expressing her harassed nerves in a voice
that came hotly through clenched teeth, “go away!”
“Eh?”
“I don’t want to marry you, and I’m sick of having to keep on telling
you so. Will you please go away and leave me alone?” She stopped. Her
sense of fairness told her that she was working off on her hapless
suitor venom which should have been expended on herself. “I’m sorry,
Freddie,” she said, softening; “I didn’t mean to be such a beast as
that. I know you’re awfully fond of me, but really, really I can’t
marry you. You don’t want to marry a girl who doesn’t love you, do you?”
“Yes, I do,” said Freddie stoutly. “If it’s you, I mean. Love is a
tiny seed that coldness can wither, but if tended and nurtured in the
fostering warmth of an honest heart . . .”
“But, Freddie.”
“Blossoms into a flower,” concluded Freddie rapidly. “What I mean to
say is, love would come after marriage.”
“Nonsense!”
“Well, that’s the way it happened in ‘A Society Mating.’”
“Freddie,” said Eve, “I really don’t want to talk any more. Will you be
a dear and just go away? I’ve got a lot of thinking to do.”
“Oh, thinking?” said Freddie, impressed. “Right ho!”
“Thank you so much.”
“Oh--er--not at all. Well, pip-pip.”
“Good-bye.”
“See you later, what?”
“Of course, of course.”
“Fine! Well, toodle-oo!”
And the Hon. Freddie, not ill-pleased--for it seemed to him that at
long last he detected signs of melting in the party of the second
part--swivelled round on his long legs and started for home.
§ 3
The little town of Market Blandings was a peaceful sight as it slept
in the sun. For the first time since Freddie had left her, Eve became
conscious of a certain tranquillity as she entered the old grey High
Street, which was the centre of the place’s life and thought. Market
Blandings had a comforting air of having been exactly the same for
centuries. Troubles might vex the generations it housed, but they did
not worry that lichened church with its sturdy four-square tower, nor
those red-roofed shops, nor the age-old inns whose second stories
bulged so comfortably out over the pavements. As Eve walked in slow
meditation towards the “Emsworth Arms,” the intensely respectable
hostelry which was her objective, archways met her gaze, opening with a
picturesque unexpectedness to show heartening glimpses of ancient nooks
all cool and green. There was about the High Street of Market Blandings
a suggestion of a slumbering cathedral close. Nothing was modern in
it except the moving-picture house--and even that called itself an
Electric Theatre, and was ivy-covered and surmounted by stone gables.
On second thoughts, that statement is too sweeping. There was one other
modern building in the High Street--Jno. Banks, Hairdresser, to wit,
and Eve was just coming abreast of Mr. Banks’s emporium now.
In any ordinary surroundings these premises would have been a tolerably
attractive sight, but in Market Blandings they were almost an eyesore;
and Eve, finding herself at the door, was jarred out of her reverie as
if she had heard a false note in a solemn anthem. She was on the point
of hurrying past, when the door opened and a short, solid figure came
out. And at the sight of this short, solid figure Eve stopped abruptly.
It was with the object of getting his grizzled locks clipped in
preparation for the County Ball that Joseph Keeble had come to Mr.
Banks’s shop as soon as he had finished lunch. As he emerged now into
the High Street he was wondering why he had permitted Mr. Banks to
finish off the job with a heliotrope-scented hair-wash. It seemed to
Mr. Keeble that the air was heavy with heliotrope, and it came to him
suddenly that heliotrope was a scent which he always found particularly
objectionable.
Ordinarily Joseph Keeble was accustomed to show an iron front to
hairdressers who tried to inflict lotions upon him; and the reason his
vigilance had relaxed under the ministrations of Jno. Banks was that
the second post, which arrived at the castle at the luncheon hour,
had brought him a plaintive letter from his stepdaughter Phyllis--the
second he had had from her since the one which had caused him to
tackle his masterful wife in the smoking-room. Immediately after
the conclusion of his business deal with the Hon. Freddie, he had
written to Phyllis in a vein of optimism rendered glowing by Freddie’s
promises, assuring her that at any moment he would be in a position to
send her the three thousand pounds which she required to clinch the
purchase of that dream-farm in Lincolnshire. To this she had replied
with thanks. And after that there had been a lapse of days and still
he had not made good. Phyllis was becoming worried, and said so in six
closely-written pages.
Mr. Keeble, as he sat in the barber’s chair going over this letter in
his mind, had groaned in spirit, while Jno. Banks with gleaming eyes
did practically what he liked with the heliotrope bottle. Not for the
first time since the formation of their partnership, Joseph Keeble was
tormented with doubts as to his wisdom in entrusting a commission so
delicate as the purloining of his wife’s diamond necklace to one of his
nephew Freddie’s known feebleness of intellect. Here, he told himself
unhappily, was a job of work which would have tested the combined
abilities of a syndicate consisting of Charles Peace and the James
Brothers, and he had put it in the hands of a young man who in all
his life had only once shown genuine inspiration and initiative--on
the occasion when he had parted his hair in the middle at a time when
all the other members of the Bachelors’ Club were brushing it straight
back. The more Mr. Keeble thought of Freddie’s chances, the slimmer
they appeared. By the time Jno. Banks had released him from the spotted
apron he was thoroughly pessimistic, and as he passed out of the door,
“so perfumed that the winds were love-sick with him,” his estimate of
his colleague’s abilities was reduced to a point where he began to
doubt whether the stealing of a mere milk-can was not beyond his scope.
So deeply immersed was he in these gloomy thoughts that Eve had to call
his name twice before he came out of them.
“Miss Halliday?” he said apologetically. “I beg your pardon. I was
thinking.”
Eve, though they had hardly exchanged a word since her arrival at the
castle, had taken a liking to Mr. Keeble; and she felt in consequence
none of the embarrassment which might have handicapped her in the
discussion of an extremely delicate matter with another man. By nature
direct and straightforward, she came to the point at once.
“Can you spare me a moment or two, Mr. Keeble?” she said. She glanced
at the clock on the church tower and saw that she had ample time before
her own appointment. “I want to talk to you about Phyllis.” Mr. Keeble
jerked his head back in astonishment, and the world became noisome with
heliotrope. It was as if the Voice of Conscience had suddenly addressed
him.
“Phyllis!” he gasped, and the letter crackled in his breast-pocket.
“Your stepdaughter Phyllis.”
“Do you know her?”
“She was my best friend at school. I had tea with her just before I
came to the castle.”
“Extraordinary!” said Mr. Keeble.
A customer in quest of a shave thrust himself between them and went
into the shop. They moved away a few paces.
“Of course if you say it is none of my business . . .”
“My dear young lady . . .”
“Well, it _is_ my business, because she’s my friend,” said Eve firmly.
“Mr. Keeble, Phyllis told me she had written to you about buying that
farm. Why don’t you help her?”
The afternoon was warm, but not warm enough to account for the
moistness of Mr. Keeble’s brow. He drew out a large handkerchief and
mopped his forehead. A hunted look was in his eyes. The hand which was
not occupied with the handkerchief had sought his pocket and was busy
rattling keys.
“I want to help her. I would do anything in the world to help her.”
“Then why don’t you?”
“I--I am curiously situated.”
“Yes, Phyllis told me something about that. I can see that it is a
difficult position for you. But, Mr. Keeble, surely, surely if you
can manage to give Freddie Threepwood two thousand pounds to start a
bookmaker’s business . . .”
Her words were cut short by a strangled cry from her companion. Sheer
panic was in his eyes now, and in his heart an overwhelming regret that
he had ever been fool enough to dabble in crime in the company of a
mere animated talking-machine like his nephew Freddie. This girl knew!
And if she knew, how many others knew? The young imbecile had probably
babbled his hideous secret into the ears of every human being in the
place who would listen to him.
“He told you!” he stammered. “He t-told you!”
“Yes. Just now.”
“Goosh!” muttered Mr. Keeble brokenly.
Eve stared at him in surprise. She could not understand this emotion.
The handkerchief, after a busy session, was lowered now, and he was
looking at her imploringly.
“You haven’t told anyone?” he croaked hoarsely.
“Of course not. I said I had only heard of it just now.”
“You wouldn’t tell anyone?”
“Why should I?”
Mr. Keeble’s breath, which had seemed to him for a moment gone for
ever, began to return timidly. Relief for a space held him dumb. What
nonsense, he reflected, these newspapers and people talked about the
modern girl. It was this very broad-mindedness of hers, to which they
objected so absurdly, that made her a creature of such charm. She
might behave in certain ways in a fashion that would have shocked her
grandmother, but how comforting it was to find her calm and unmoved in
the contemplation of another’s crime. His heart warmed to Eve.
“You’re wonderful!” he said.
“What do you mean?”
“Of course,” argued Mr. Keeble, “it isn’t really stealing.”
“What!”
“I shall buy my wife another necklace.”
“You will--what?”
“So everything will be all right. Constance will be perfectly happy,
and Phyllis will have her money, and . . .”
Something in Eve’s astonished gaze seemed to smite Mr. Keeble.
“Don’t you _know_?” he broke off.
“Know? Know what?”
Mr. Keeble perceived that he had wronged Freddie. The young ass had
been a fool even to mention the money to this girl, but he had at
least, it seemed, stopped short of disclosing the entire plot. An
oyster-like reserve came upon him.
“Nothing, nothing,” he said hastily. “Forget what I was going to say.
Well, I must be going, I must be going.”
Eve clutched wildly at his retreating sleeve. Unintelligible though
his words had been, one sentence had come home to her, the one about
Phyllis having her money. It was no time for half-measures. She grabbed
him.
“Mr. Keeble,” she cried urgently. “I don’t know what you mean, but you
were just going to say something which sounded . . . Mr. Keeble, do
trust me. I’m Phyllis’s best friend, and if you’ve thought out any way
of helping her I wish you would tell me . . . You must tell me. I might
be able to help . . .”
Mr. Keeble, as she began her broken speech, had been endeavouring with
deprecatory tugs to disengage his coat from her grasp. But now he
ceased to struggle. Those doubts of Freddie’s efficiency, which had
troubled him in Jno. Banks’s chair, still lingered. His opinion that
Freddie was but a broken reed had not changed. Indeed, it had grown.
He looked at Eve. He looked at her searchingly. Into her pleading
eyes he directed a stare that sought to probe her soul, and saw there
honesty, sympathy, and--better still--intelligence. He might have stood
and gazed into Freddie’s fishy eyes for weeks without discovering a
tithe of such intelligence. His mind was made up. This girl was an
ally. A girl of dash and vigour. A girl worth a thousand Freddies--not,
however, reflected Mr. Keeble, that that was saying much. He hesitated
no longer.
“It’s like this,” said Mr. Keeble.
§ 4
The information, authoritatively conveyed to him during breakfast
by Lady Constance, that he was scheduled that night to read select
passages from Ralston McTodd’s _Songs of Squalor_ to the entire
house-party assembled in the big drawing-room, had come as a complete
surprise to Psmith, and to his fellow-guests--such of them as were
young and of the soulless sex--as a shock from which they found it
hard to rally. True, they had before now gathered in a vague sort
of way that he was one of those literary fellows, but so normal and
engaging had they found his whole manner and appearance that it had
never occurred to them that he concealed anything up his sleeve as
lethal as _Songs of Squalor_. Among these members of the younger set
the consensus of opinion was that it was a bit thick, and that at such
a price even the lavish hospitality of Blandings was scarcely worth
having. Only those who had visited the castle before during the era
of her ladyship’s flirtation with Art could have been described as
resigned. These stout hearts argued that while this latest blister was
probably going to be pretty bad, he could hardly be worse than the
chappie who had lectured on Theosophy last November, and must almost of
necessity be better than the bird who during the Shifley race-week had
attempted in a two-hour discourse to convert them to vegetarianism.
Psmith himself regarded the coming ordeal with equanimity. He was not
one of those whom the prospect of speaking in public afflicts with
nervous horror. He liked the sound of his own voice, and night, when it
came, found him calmly cheerful. He listened contentedly to the murmur
of the drawing-room filling up as he strolled on the star-lit terrace,
smoking a last cigarette before duty called him elsewhere. And when,
some few yards away, seated on the terrace wall gazing out into the
velvet darkness, he perceived Eve Halliday, his sense of well-being
became acute.
All day he had been conscious of a growing desire for another of those
cosy chats with Eve which had done so much to make life agreeable for
him during his stay at Blandings. Her prejudice--which he deplored--in
favour of doing a certain amount of work to justify her salary, had
kept him during the morning away from the little room off the library
where she was wont to sit cataloguing books; and when he had gone there
after lunch he had found it empty. As he approached her now, he was
thinking pleasantly of all those delightful walks, those excellent
driftings on the lake, and those cheery conversations which had gone
to cement his conviction that of all possible girls she was the only
possible one. It seemed to him that in addition to being beautiful she
brought out all that was best in him of intellect and soul. That is
to say, she let him talk oftener and longer than any girl he had ever
known.
It struck him as a little curious that she made no move to greet him.
She remained apparently unaware of his approach. And yet the summer
night was not of such density as to hide him from view--and, even
if she could not see him, she must undoubtedly have heard him; for
only a moment before he had tripped with some violence over a large
flower-pot, one of a row of sixteen which Angus McAllister, doubtless
for some good purpose, had placed in the fairway that afternoon.
“A pleasant night,” he said, seating himself gracefully beside her on
the wall.
She turned her head for a brief instant, and, having turned it, looked
away again.
“Yes,” she said.
Her manner was not effusive, but Psmith persevered.
“The stars,” he proceeded, indicating them with a kindly yet not
patronising wave of the hand. “Bright, twinkling, and--if I may say
so--rather neatly arranged. When I was a mere lad, someone whose name
I cannot recollect taught me which was Orion. Also Mars, Venus, and
Jupiter. This thoroughly useless chunk of knowledge has, I am happy to
say, long since passed from my mind. However, I am in a position to
state that that wiggly thing up there a little to the right is King
Charles’s Wain.”
“Yes?”
“Yes, indeed, I assure you.” It struck Psmith that Astronomy was not
gripping his audience, so he tried Travel. “I hear,” he said, “you went
to Market Blandings this afternoon.”
“Yes.”
“An attractive settlement.”
“Yes.”
There was a pause. Psmith removed his monocle and polished it
thoughtfully. The summer night seemed to him to have taken on a touch
of chill.
“What I like about the English rural districts,” he went on, “is
that when the authorities have finished building a place they stop.
Somewhere about the reign of Henry the Eighth, I imagine that the
master-mason gave the final house a pat with his trowel and said,
‘Well, boys, that’s Market Blandings.’ To which his assistants no doubt
assented with many a hearty ‘Grammercy!’ and ‘I’fackins!’ these being
expletives to which they were much addicted. And they went away and
left it, and nobody has touched it since. And I, for one, thoroughly
approve. I think it makes the place soothing. Don’t you?”
“Yes.”
As far as the darkness would permit, Psmith subjected Eve to an
inquiring glance through his monocle. This was a strange new
mood in which he had found her. Hitherto, though she had always
endeared herself to him by permitting him the major portion of
the dialogue, they had usually split conversations on at least a
seventy-five--twenty-five basis. And though it gratified Psmith to be
allowed to deliver a monologue when talking with most people, he found
Eve more companionable when in a slightly chattier vein.
“Are you coming in to hear me read?” he asked.
“No.”
It was a change from “Yes,” but that was the best that could be said of
it. A good deal of discouragement was always required to damp Psmith,
but he could not help feeling a slight diminution of buoyancy. However,
he kept on trying.
“You show your usual sterling good sense,” he said approvingly. “A
scalier method of passing the scented summer night could hardly be
hit upon.” He abandoned the topic of the reading. It did not grip.
That was manifest. It lacked appeal. “I went to Market Blandings this
afternoon, too,” he said. “Comrade Baxter informed me that you had gone
thither, so I went after you. Not being able to find you, I turned in
for half an hour at the local moving-picture palace. They were showing
Episode Eleven of a serial. It concluded with the heroine, kidnapped by
Indians, stretched on the sacrificial altar with the high-priest making
passes at her with a knife. The hero meanwhile had started to climb a
rather nasty precipice on his way to the rescue. The final picture was
a close-up of his fingers slipping slowly off a rock. Episode Twelve
next week.”
Eve looked out into the night without speaking.
“I’m afraid it won’t end happily,” said Psmith with a sigh. “I think
he’ll save her.”
Eve turned on him with a menacing abruptness.
“Shall I tell you why I went to Market Blandings this afternoon?” she
said.
“Do,” said Psmith cordially. “It is not for me to criticise, but as
a matter of fact I was rather wondering when you were going to begin
telling me all about your adventures. I have been monopolising the
conversation.”
“I went to meet Cynthia.”
Psmith’s monocle fell out of his eye and swung jerkily on its cord. He
was not easily disconcerted, but this unexpected piece of information,
coming on top of her peculiar manner, undoubtedly jarred him. He
foresaw difficulties, and once again found himself thinking hard
thoughts of this confounded female who kept bobbing up when least
expected. How simple life would have been, he mused wistfully, had
Ralston McTodd only had the good sense to remain a bachelor.
“Oh, Cynthia?” he said.
“Yes, Cynthia,” said Eve. The inconvenient Mrs. McTodd possessed a
Christian name admirably adapted for being hissed between clenched
teeth, and Eve hissed it in this fashion now. It became evident to
Psmith that the dear girl was in a condition of hardly suppressed fury
and that trouble was coming his way. He braced himself to meet it.
“Directly after we had that talk on the lake, the day I arrived,”
continued Eve tersely, “I wrote to Cynthia, telling her to come here at
once and meet me at the ‘Emsworth Arms’ . . .”
“In the High Street,” said Psmith. “I know it. Good beer.”
“What!”
“I said they sell good beer . . .”
“Never mind about the beer,” cried Eve.
“No, no. I merely mentioned it in passing.”
“At lunch to-day I got a letter from her saying that she would be there
this afternoon. So I hurried off. I wanted----” Eve laughed a hollow,
mirthless laugh of a calibre which even the Hon. Freddie Threepwood
would have found beyond his powers, and he was a specialist--“I wanted
to try to bring you two together. I thought that if I could see her and
have a talk with her that you might become reconciled.”
Psmith, though obsessed with a disquieting feeling that he was fighting
in the last ditch, pulled himself together sufficiently to pat her hand
as it lay beside him on the wall like some white and fragile flower.
“That was like you,” he murmured. “That was an act worthy of your great
heart. But I fear that the rift between Cynthia and myself has reached
such dimensions . . .”
Eve drew her hand away. She swung round, and the battery of her
indignant gaze raked him furiously.
“I saw Cynthia,” she said, “and she told me that her husband was in
Paris.”
“Now, how in the world,” said Psmith, struggling bravely but with a
growing sense that they were coming over the plate a bit too fast for
him, “how in the world did she get an idea like that?”
“Do you really want to know?”
“I do, indeed.”
“Then I’ll tell you. She got the idea because she had had a letter from
him, begging her to join him there. She had just finished telling me
this, when I caught sight of you from the inn window, walking along
the High Street. I pointed you out to Cynthia, and she said she had
never seen you before in her life.”
“Women soon forget,” sighed Psmith.
“The only excuse I can find for you,” stormed Eve in a vibrant
undertone necessitated by the fact that somebody had just emerged from
the castle door and they no longer had the terrace to themselves, “is
that you’re mad. When I think of all you said to me about poor Cynthia
on the lake that afternoon, when I think of all the sympathy I wasted
on you . . .”
“Not wasted,” corrected Psmith firmly. “It was by no means wasted. It
made me love you--if possible--even more.”
Eve had supposed that she had embarked on a tirade which would last
until she had worked off her indignation and felt composed again, but
this extraordinary remark scattered the thread of her harangue so
hopelessly that all she could do was to stare at him in amazed silence.
“Womanly intuition,” proceeded Psmith gravely, “will have told you long
ere this that I love you with a fervour which with my poor vocabulary
I cannot hope to express. True, as you are about to say, we have known
each other but a short time, as time is measured. But what of that?”
Eve raised her eyebrows. Her voice was cold and hostile.
“After what has happened,” she said, “I suppose I ought not to be
surprised at finding you capable of anything, but--are you really
choosing this moment to--to propose to me?”
“To employ a favourite word of your own--yes.”
“And you expect me to take you seriously?”
“Assuredly not. I look upon the present disclosure purely as a sighting
shot. You may regard it, if you will, as a kind of formal proclamation.
I wish simply to go on record as an aspirant to your hand. I want you,
if you will be so good, to make a note of my words and give them a
thought from time to time. As Comrade Cootes--a young friend of mine
whom you have not yet met--would say, ‘Chew on them.’”
“I . . .”
“It is possible,” continued Psmith, “that black moments will come to
you--for they come to all of us, even the sunniest--when you will find
yourself saying, ‘Nobody loves me!’ On such occasions I should like
you to add, ‘No, I am wrong. There _is_ somebody who loves me.’ At
first, it may be, that reflection will bring but scant balm. Gradually,
however, as the days go by and we are constantly together and my nature
unfolds itself before you like the petals of some timid flower beneath
the rays of the sun . . .”
Eve’s eyes opened wider. She had supposed herself incapable of further
astonishment, but she saw that she had been mistaken.
“You surely aren’t dreaming of staying on here _now_?” she gasped.
“Most decidedly. Why not?”
“But--but what is to prevent me telling everybody that you are not Mr.
McTodd?”
“Your sweet, generous nature,” said Psmith. “Your big heart. Your
angelic forbearance.”
“Oh!”
“Considering that I only came here as McTodd--and if you had seen
him you would realise that he is not a person for whom the man
of sensibility and refinement would lightly allow himself to be
mistaken--I say considering that I only took on the job of understudy
so as to get to the castle and be near you, I hardly think that you
will be able to bring yourself to get me slung out. You must try to
understand what happened. When Lord Emsworth started chatting with
me under the impression that I was Comrade McTodd, I encouraged the
mistake purely with the kindly intention of putting him at his ease.
Even when he informed me that he was expecting me to come down to
Blandings with him on the five o’clock train, it never occurred to
me to do so. It was only when I saw you talking to him in the street
and he revealed the fact that you were about to enjoy his hospitality
that I decided that there was no other course open to the man of
spirit. Consider! Twice that day you had passed out of my life--may I
say taking the sunshine with you?--and I began to fear you might pass
out of it for ever. So, loath though I was to commit the solecism of
planting myself in this happy home under false pretences, I could see
no other way. And here I am!”
“You _must_ be mad!”
“Well, as I was saying, the days will go by, you will have ample
opportunity of studying my personality, and it is quite possible that
in due season the love of an honest heart may impress you as worth
having. I may add that I have loved you since the moment when I saw
you sheltering from the rain under that awning in Dover Street, and I
recall saying as much to Comrade Walderwick when he was chatting with
me some short time later on the subject of his umbrella. I do not press
you for an answer now . . .”
“I should hope not!”
“I merely say ‘Think it over.’ It is nothing to cause you mental
distress. Other men love you. Freddie Threepwood loves you. Just add me
to the list. That is all I ask. Muse on me from time to time. Reflect
that I may be an acquired taste. You probably did not like olives the
first time you tasted them. Now you probably do. Give me the same
chance you would an olive. Consider, also, how little you actually have
against me. What, indeed, does it amount to, when you come to examine
it narrowly? All you have against me is the fact that I am not Ralston
McTodd. Think how comparatively few people _are_ Ralston McTodd. Let
your meditations proceed along these lines and . . .”
He broke off, for at this moment the individual who had come out of
the front door a short while back loomed beside them, and the glint of
starlight on glass revealed him as the Efficient Baxter.
“Everybody is waiting, Mr. McTodd,” said the Efficient Baxter. He spoke
the name, as always, with a certain sardonic emphasis.
“Of course,” said Psmith affably, “of course. I was forgetting. I will
get to work at once. You are quite sure you do not wish to hear a
scuttleful of modern poetry, Miss Halliday?”
“Quite sure.”
“And yet even now, so our genial friend here informs us, a bevy of
youth and beauty is crowding the drawing-room, agog for the treat.
Well, well! It is these strange clashings of personal taste which
constitute what we call Life. I think I will write a poem about it
some day. Come, Comrade Baxter, let us be up and doing. I must not
disappoint my public.”
For some moments after the two had left her--Baxter silent and chilly,
Psmith, all debonair chumminess, kneading the other’s arm and pointing
out as they went objects of interest by the wayside--Eve remained
on the terrace wall, thinking. She was laughing now, but behind her
amusement there was another feeling, and one that perplexed her. A good
many men had proposed to her in the course of her career, but none of
them had ever left her with this odd feeling of exhilaration. Psmith
was different from any other man who had come her way, and difference
was a quality which Eve esteemed. . . .
She had just reached the conclusion that life for whatever girl might
eventually decide to risk it in Psmith’s company would never be dull,
when strange doings in her immediate neighbourhood roused her from her
meditations.
The thing happened as she rose from her seat on the wall and started to
cross the terrace on her way to the front door. She had stopped for an
instant beneath the huge open window of the drawing-room to listen to
what was going on inside. Faintly, with something of the quality of a
far-off phonograph, the sound of Psmith reading came to her; and even
at this distance there was a composed blandness about his voice which
brought a smile to her lips.
And then, with a startling abruptness, the lighted window was dark. And
she was aware that all the lighted windows on that side of the castle
had suddenly become dark. The lamp that shone over the great door
ceased to shine. And above the hubbub of voices in the drawing-room she
heard Psmith’s patient drawl.
“Ladies and gentlemen, I think the lights have gone out.”
The night air was rent by a single piercing scream. Something flashed
like a shooting star and fell at her feet; and, stooping, Eve found in
her hands Lady Constance Keeble’s diamond necklace.
§ 5
To be prepared is everything in this life. Ever since her talk with Mr.
Joseph Keeble in the High Street of Market Blandings that afternoon
Eve’s mind had been flitting nimbly from one scheme to another, all
designed to end in this very act of seizing the necklace in her hands
and each rendered impracticable by some annoying flaw. And now that
Fate in its impulsive way had achieved for her what she had begun to
feel she could never accomplish for herself, she wasted no time in
bewildered inaction. The miracle found her ready for it.
For an instant she debated with herself the chances of a dash through
the darkened hall up the stairs to her room. But the lights might go
on again, and she might meet someone. Memories of sensational novels
read in the past told her that on occasions such as this people were
detained and searched. . . .
Suddenly, as she stood there, she found the way. Close beside her,
lying on its side, was the flower-pot which Psmith had overturned as he
came to join her on the terrace wall. It might have defects as a cache,
but at the moment she could perceive none. Most flower-pots are alike,
but this was a particularly easily-remembered flower-pot: for in its
journeying from the potting shed to the terrace it had acquired on its
side a splash of white paint. She would be able to distinguish it from
its fellows when, late that night, she crept out to retrieve the spoil.
And surely nobody would ever think of suspecting . . .
She plunged her fingers into the soft mould, and straightened herself,
breathing quickly. It was not an ideal piece of work, but it would
serve.
She rubbed her fingers on the turf, put the flower-pot back in the row
with the others, and then, like a flying white phantom, darted across
the terrace and into the house. And so with beating heart, groping her
way, to the bathroom to wash her hands.
The twenty-thousand-pound flower-pot looked placidly up at the winking
stars.
§ 6
It was perhaps two minutes later that Mr. Cootes, sprinting lustily,
rounded the corner of the house and burst on to the terrace. Late as
usual.