‘Oh, it just came to me.’
‘I understand. A sort of sudden inspiration. The central theme of “Spindrift” came like that. Jeeves says you want to speak to me. Is it something very important?’
‘Oh, no. Not important.’
‘Then we will keep it till later. I must go back now and see if there isn’t some way of floating those clippings off with hot water.’
She hurried away, turning as she entered the house to wave a loving hand, and I was left alone to submit the situation to the analysis it demanded.
I don’t know anything that seems to jar the back teeth like having a sure thing come unstuck, and it was with a dull sensation of having been hit in the stomach by a medicine ball, as once happened to me during a voyage to America, that I stood contemplating the future. Not even the fact that in the recent scene this girl had shown a warm, human side to her nature, which I had not suspected that she possessed, could reconcile me to what I was now so unavoidably in for. A Florence capable of wanting to skin Edwin was better, of course, than a Florence susceptible of no such emotion, but no, I couldn’t bring myself to like the shape of things to come.
How long I stood brooding there before I became aware of the squeaking that was going on at my side, I cannot say. Quite a time it must have been. For when at length I came out of my reverie, to find that Nobby was endeavouring to attract my attention, I saw that her manner was impatient, like that of one who has been trying to hobnob with a deaf mute and is finding the one-sided conversation weighing upon the spirits.
‘Bertie!’
‘Oh, sorry. I was musing.’
‘Well, stop musing. You’ll be late.’
‘Late?’
‘For Uncle Percy. In the study.’
I have mentioned earlier in this narrative that I am a pretty good silver-lining spotter, and that if there is a bright side to any cataclysm or disaster I seldom fail to put my finger on it sooner or later. Her words reminded me that there was one attached to the present catastrophe. Murky the future might be, what with all those wedding bells and what not which now seemed so inescapable, but at least I was in a position to save something out of the wreck. I could at any rate give Uncle Percy the go-by.
‘Oh, that?’ I said. ‘That’s off.’
‘Off?’
‘My reward for sitting in on the scheme,’ I explained, ‘was to have been the learning of the Fittleworth secret process for getting out of being engaged to Florence. I have learned it, and it is awash-out. I, therefore, hand in my portfolio.’
‘You mean you won’t help us?’
‘In some other way, to be decided on later, certainly. But not by inflaming Uncle Percy.’
‘Oh, Bertie!’
‘And it’s no good saying, “Oh, Bertie!’”
She looked at me with bulging eyes, and it seemed for an instant as if those pearly drops, of which Boko had spoken so eloquently, were about to start functioning once more. But there was good stuff in the Hopwoods. The dam did not burst.
‘But I don’t understand.’
I explained in some detail what had occurred.
‘Boko,’ I concluded, ‘claimed that this secret remedy of his was infallible. It is not. So unless he has something else to suggest—’
‘But he has. I mean, I have.’
‘You?’
‘You want Florence to break off the engagement?’
‘I do.’
‘Well, go and talk to Uncle Percy, and I’ll show her that letter you wrote me, saying what you thought of her. That’ll work it.’
I started. In fact, I leaped about a foot.
‘Golly!’
‘Don’t you agree?’
‘Well, I’m dashed!’
I don’t know when I’ve been so affected. I had forgotten all about that letter, but now, as its burning phrases came back to me, hope, which I had thought dead, threw off the winding sheet and resumed business at the old stand. The Fittleworth method might have failed, but there was no question that the Hopwood remedy would bring home the bacon.
‘Nobby!’
‘Think on your feet!’
‘You promise you’ll show Florence that letter?’
‘Faithfully. If you will give Uncle Percy the treatment.’
‘Is Boko at his post?’
‘Sure to be by now.’
‘Then out of my way! Here we go!’
And, moving as if on wings, I flitted to the house, plunged across the threshold, shot down the passage that led to the relative’s sanctum and dived in.
Part 3
CHAPTER 22
U
ncle Percy’s study, to which this was of course my first visit, proved to be what they call on the stage a ‘rich interior’, liberally equipped with desks, chairs, tables, carpets and all the usual fixings. Books covered one side of it, and on the opposite wall there hung a large picture showing nymphs, or something similar, sporting with what, from the look of them and the way they were behaving, I took to be fauns. One also noted a terrestrial globe, some bowls of flowers, a stuffed trout, a cigar humidor, and a bust which might have been that of the late Mr Gladstone.
In short, practically the only thing you could think of that could have been in the room, but wasn’t, was Uncle Percy. He was not seated in the chair behind the desk, nor was he pacing the carpet, twiddling the globe, sniffing the flowers, reading the books, admiring the stuffed trout or taking a gander at the nymphs and fauns. Not a glimpse of him met the eye, and this total absence of uncles, so different from what I had been led to expect, brought me up with a bit of a turn.
It’s a rummy feeling, when you’ve got yourself all braced for the fray and suddenly discover that the fray hasn’t turned up. Rather like treading on the last stair when it isn’t there. I stood chewing the lip in some perplexity, wondering what to do for the best.
The scent of a robust cigar, still lingering in the air, showed that he must have been on the spot quite recently, and the open French windows suggested that he had popped out into the garden, there possibly to wrestle with the problems which were weighing on his mind – notably, no doubt, that of how the dickens life at Steeple Bumpleigh being what it was, he was to obtain an uninterrupted five minutes with Chichester Clam. And what I was debating within myself was whether to follow him or to remain in
status quo
till he came back.
Much depended, of course, on how long he was going to be. I mean, it wasn’t as if the mood of fiery resolution in which I had hurled myself across the threshold was a thing which would last indefinitely. Already, the temperature of the feet had become sensibly lowered, and I was conscious of an emptiness behind the diaphragm and a disposition to gulp. Postpone the fixture for even another minute or two, and the evil would spread to such an extent that the relative, when he eventually showed up, would find a Bertram out of whom all the sawdust had trickled – a Wooster capable of nothing better than a mild ‘Yes, Uncle Percy,’ and ‘No, Uncle Percy.’
Looking at it from every angle, therefore, it seemed that it would be best to go and tackle him in the great open spaces, where Boko by this time was presumably lurking. And I had reached the French windows, and was about to pass through, though with little or no relish for what lay before me, when my attention was arrested by the sound of raised voices. They came from a certain distance, and the actual wording of the dialogue escaped the eardrum, but from the fact that they were addressing each other as ‘My dear Worplesdon’ and ‘You blot’, I divined that they belonged – respectively – to Boko and the seigneur of Bumpleigh Hall.
A moment later, my conjecture was proved correct. A little procession came into view, crossing the strip of lawn outside the study. Heading it was Boko, looking less debonair than I have sometimes seen him. Following him came a man of garden-eresque appearance, armed with a pitchfork and accompanied by a dog of uncertain breed. The rear was brought up by Uncle Percy, waving a cigar menacingly like the angel expelling Adam from the Garden of Eden.
It was he who seemed to be doing most of the talking. From time to time, Boko would look around, as if about to say something, but whatever eloquence he may have been intending was checked by the expression on the face of the dog, which was that of one fit for treasons, stratagems and spoils, and the fact that the pitchfork to which I have alluded was almost touching the seat of his trousers.
Half-way across the lawn, Uncle Percy detached himself from the convoy and came stumping rapidly towards me, puffing emotionally at his cigar. Boko and his new friends continued in the direction of the drive.
After the painful shock, inevitable on seeing an old friend given the push from enclosed premises, my first thought, as you may have surmised, had been that there was nothing to keep me. The whole essence of the scheme to which I had consented to lend my services had been that Boko should be within earshot while I was making my observations to Uncle Percy, and nothing was clearer than that by the time the latter reached his sanctum he would have drifted away like thistledown.
I shot off, accordingly, not standing upon the order of my going but going at once, as the fellow said, and was making good progress when, as I approached the door, I suddenly observed that there hung over it a striking portrait of Aunt Agatha, from the waist upwards. In making my entrance, I had, of course, missed this, but there it had been all the time, and now it caught my eye and halted me in my tracks as if I had run into a lamppost.
It was the work of one of those artists who reveal the soul of the sitter, and it had revealed so much of Aunt Agatha’s soul that for all practical purposes it might have been that danger to traffic in person. Indeed, I came within an ace of saying ‘Oh, hullo!’ at the same moment when I could have sworn it said ‘Bertie!’ in that compelling voice which had so often rung in my ears and caused me to curl up in a ball in the hope that a meek subservience would enable me to get off lightly.
The weakness was, of course, merely a temporary one. A moment later, Bertram was himself again. But the pause had been long enough to allow Uncle Percy to come clumping into the room, and escape was now impossible. I remained, therefore, and stood shooting my cuffs, trusting that the action would induce fortitude. It does sometimes.
Uncle Percy appeared to be soliloquizing.
‘I trod on him!
Trod
on him! There he was, nestling in the grass, and I trod on him! It’s not enough that the fellow comes roaming my grounds uninvited at all hours of the night. He comes also by day, and reclines in my personal grass. No keeping him out, apparently. He oozes into the place like oil.’
Here, for the first time, he seemed to become aware of a nephew’s presence.
‘Bertie!’
‘Oh, hullo, Uncle Percy.’
‘My dear fellow! Just the chap I wanted to see.’
To say that I was surprised at this remark would be to portray my emotions but feebly. It absolutely knocked me endways.
I mean, consider the facts. Man and boy, I had known this old buzzard a matter of fifteen years, and not once during that period had he even hinted that my society held any attraction for him. In fact, on most of the occasions when we had foregathered, he had rather gone out of his way to indicate that the reverse was the case. I have already alluded to the episode of the hunting crop, and there had been other similar passages through the course of the years.
I have, I think, made it sufficiently clear that few harder eggs ever stepped out of the saucepan than this Percival, Lord Worplesdon. Rugged sea captains, accustomed to facing gales in the Western Ocean without a tremor, quivered like blancmanges when hauled up before him in his office and asked why the devil they had – or had not – ported the helm or spliced the main-brace during their latest voyage in his service. In disposition akin to a more than ordinarily short-tempered snapping turtle, he resembled in appearance a malevolent Aubrey Smith, and usually, when one encountered him, gave the impression of being just about to foam at the mouth.
Yet now he was gazing at me in a manner which, when you came to look closely and got past the bristling moustache, revealed itself as not only part human, but actually kindly. From the pain in the neck generally induced by the sight of Bertram Wooster he appeared to be absolutely free.
‘Who, me?’ I said, weakly, my amazement such that I was compelled to support myself against the terrestrial globe.
‘Yes, you. The very fellow. Have a drink, Bertie.’
I said something about it being a bit early, but he pooh-poohed the suggestion.
‘It’s never too early to have a drink, if you’ve been wading ankle deep in blasted Fittleworths. I was taking a stroll with my cigar, my mind deeply occupied with vital personal problems, and my foot came down on something squashy, and there the frightful chap was, reclining in the lush grass by the lake as if he had been a dashed field-mouse or something. If I had had a weak heart, it might have been the end of me.’
I couldn’t help mourning for Boko. I could picture what must have occurred. Making his way snakily towards the study window, he had heard Uncle Percy’s approach and had taken cover, little knowing that a moment later the latter’s number eleven foot was about to descend upon what – from the fact that the other had described it as squashy – must have been some tender portion of his anatomy. A nastyjar for the poor chap. A nastyjar for Uncle Percy, too, of course. In fact, one of those situations where the heart bleeds for both the party of the first part and the party of the second part.
‘Fittleworth!’ He shot an accusing glance at me. ‘Friend of yours, isn’t he?’
‘Oh, bosom.’
‘You would do well to choose your friends more carefully,’ he said, with the first lapse from that strange benevolence of his which he had yet shown.
I suppose this was really the moment for embarking upon an impassioned defence of Boko, stressing his admirable qualities. Not being able to think of any, however, I remained silent, and he carried on.