Miss Peavey now fluttered again into the centre of things. On the arrival of Baxter she had withdrawn for a moment into the background, but she was not the woman to stay there long. She came forward holding out a small oblong book, which, with a languishing firmness, she pressed into Psmith’s hands.
‘Could I persuade you, Mr McTodd,’ said Miss Peavey pleadingly, ‘to write some little thought in my autograph-book and sign it? I have a fountain-pen.’
Light flooded the arbour. The Efficient Baxter, who knew where everything was, had found and pressed the switch. He did this not so much to oblige Miss Peavey as to enable him to obtain a clearer view of the visitor. With each minute that passed the Efficient Baxter was finding himself more and more doubtful in his mind about this visitor.
‘There!’ said Miss Peavey, welcoming the illumination.
Psmith tapped his chin thoughtfully with the fountain-pen. He felt that he should have foreseen this emergency earlier. If ever there was a woman who was bound to have an autograph-book, that woman was Miss Peavey.
‘Just some little thought . . .’
Psmith hesitated no longer. In a firm hand he wrote the words ‘Across the pale parabola of Joy . . .’ added an unfaltering ‘Ralston McTodd’, and handed the book back.
‘How strange,’ sighed Miss Peavey.
‘May I look?’ said Baxter, moving quickly to her side.
‘How strange!’ repeated Miss Peavey. ‘To think that you should have chosen that line! There are several of your more mystic passages that I meant to ask you to explain, but particularly “Across the pale parabola of Joy . . .’
‘You find it difficult to understand?’
A little, I confess.’
‘Well, well,’ said Psmith indulgently, ‘perhaps I did put a bit of top-spin on that one.’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘I say, perhaps it is a little obscure. We must have a long chat about it – later on.’
‘Why not now?’ demanded the Efficient Baxter, flashing his spectacles.
‘I am rather tired,’ said Psmith with gentle reproach, ‘after my journey. Fatigued. We artists . . .’
‘Of course,’ said Miss Peavey, with an indignant glance at the secretary. ‘Mr Baxter does not understand the sensitive poetic temperament.’
‘A bit unspiritual, eh?’ said Psmith tolerantly. ‘A trifle earthy? So I thought, so I thought. One of these strong, hard men of affairs, I shouldn’t wonder.’
‘Shall we go and find Lord Emsworth, Mr McTodd?’ said Miss Peavey, dismissing the fermenting Baxter with a scornful look. ‘He wandered off just now. I suppose he is among his flowers. Flowers are very beautiful by night.’
‘Indeed, yes,’ said Psmith. And also by day. When I am surrounded by flowers, a sort of divine peace floods over me, and the rough, harsh world seems far away. I feel soothed, tranquil. I sometimes think, Miss Peavey, that flowers must be the souls of little children who have died in their innocence.’
‘What a beautiful thought, Mr McTodd!’ exclaimed Miss Peavey rapturously.
‘Yes,’ agreed Psmith. ‘Don’t pinch it. It’s copyright.’
The darkness swallowed them up. Lady Constance turned to the Efficient Baxter, who was brooding with furrowed brow.
‘Charming, is he not?’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘I said I thought Mr McTodd was charming.’
‘Oh, quite.’
‘Completely unspoiled.’
‘Oh, decidedly.’
‘I am so glad that he was able to come after all. That telegram he sent this afternoon cancelling his visit seemed so curt and final.’
‘So I thought it.’
‘Almost as if he had taken offence at something and decided to have nothing to do with us.’
‘Quite.’
Lady Constance shivered delicately. A cool breeze had sprung up. She drew her wrap more closely about her shapely shoulders, and began to walk to the house. Baxter did not accompany her. The moment she had gone he switched off the light and sat down, chin in hand. That massive brain was working hard.
8 CONFIDENCES ON THE LAKE
§ 1
‘MISS Halliday,’ announced the Efficient Baxter, removing another letter from its envelope and submitting it to a swift, keen scrutiny, ‘arrives at about three to-day. She is catching the twelve-fifty train.’
He placed the letter on the pile beside his plate; and, having decapitated an egg, peered sharply into its interior as if hoping to surprise guilty secrets. For it was the breakfast hour, and the members of the house party, scattered up and down the long table, were fortifying their tissues against another day. An agreeable scent of bacon floated over the scene like a benediction.
Lord Emsworth looked up from the seed catalogue in which he was immersed. For some time past his enjoyment of the meal had been marred by a vague sense of something missing, and now he knew what it was.
‘Coffee!’ he said, not violently, but in the voice of a good man oppressed. ‘I want coffee. Why have I no coffee? Constance, my dear, I should have coffee. Why have I none?’
‘I’m sure I gave you some,’ said Lady Constance, brightly presiding over the beverages at the other end of the table.
‘Then where is it?’ demanded his lordship clinchingly.
Baxter – almost regretfully, it seemed – gave the egg a clean bill of health, and turned in his able way to cope with this domestic problem.
‘Your coffee is behind the catalogue you are reading, Lord Emsworth. You propped the catalogue against your cup.’
‘Did I? Did I? Why, so I did! Bless my soul!’ His lordship, relieved, took an invigorating sip. ‘What were you saying just then, my dear fellow?’
‘I have had a letter from Miss Halliday,’ said Baxter. ‘She writes that she is catching the twelve-fifty train at Paddington, which means that she should arrive at Market Blandings at about three.’
‘Who,’ asked Miss Peavey, in a low, thrilling voice, ceasing for a moment to peck at her plate of kedgeree, ‘is Miss Halliday?’
‘The exact question I was about to ask myself,’ said Lord Emsworth. ‘Baxter, my dear fellow, who is Miss Halliday?’
Baxter, with a stifled sigh, was about to refresh his employer’s memory, when Psmith anticipated him. Psmith had been consuming toast and marmalade with his customary languid grace and up till now had firmly checked all attempts to engage him in conversation.
‘Miss Halliday,’ he said, ‘is a very old and valued friend of mine. We two have, so to speak, pulled the gowans fine. I had been hoping to hear that she had been sighted on the horizon.’
The effect of these words on two of the company was somewhat remarkable. Baxter, hearing them, gave such a violent start that he spilled half the contents of his cup: and Freddie, who had been flitting like a butterfly among the dishes on the sideboard and had just decided to help himself to scrambled eggs, deposited a liberal spoonful on the carpet, where it was found and salvaged a moment later by Lady Constance’s spaniel.
Psmith did not observe these phenomena, for he had returned to his toast and marmalade. He thus missed encountering perhaps the keenest glance that had ever come through Rupert Baxter’s spectacles. It was not a protracted glance, but while it lasted it was like the ray from an oxy-acetylene blowpipe.
‘A friend of yours?’ said Lord Emsworth. ‘Indeed? Of course, Baxter, I remember now. Miss Halliday is the young lady who is coming to catalogue the library.’
‘What a delightful task!’ cooed Miss Peavey ‘To live among the stored-up thoughts of dead and gone genius!’
‘You had better go down and meet her, my dear fellow,’ said Lord Emsworth. ‘At the station, you know,’ he continued, clarifying his meaning. ‘She will be glad to see you.’
‘I was about to suggest it myself,’ said Psmith.
‘Though why the library needs cataloguing,’ said his lordship, returning to a problem which still vexed his soul when he had leisure to give a thought to it, ‘I can’t
. . . However . . .’
He finished his coffee and rose from the table. A stray shaft of sunlight had fallen provocatively on his bald head, and sunshine always made him restive.
‘Are you going to your flowers, Lord Emsworth?’ asked Miss Peavey.
‘Eh? What? Yes. Oh, yes. Going to have a look at those lobelias.’
‘I will accompany you, if I may,’ said Psmith.
‘Eh? Why, certainly, certainly.’
‘I have always held,’ said Psmith, ‘that there is no finer tonic than a good look at a lobelia immediately after breakfast. Doctors, I believe, recommend it.’
‘Oh, I say,’ said Freddie hastily, as he reached the door, ‘can I have a couple of words with you a bit later on?’
‘A thousand if you wish it,’ said Psmith. ‘You will find me somewhere out there in the great open spaces where men are men.’
He included the entire company in a benevolent smile, and left the room.
‘How charming he is!’ sighed Miss Peavey. ‘Don’t you think so, Mr Baxter?’
The Efficient Baxter seemed for a moment to find some difficulty in replying.
‘Oh, very,’ he said, but not heartily.
‘And such a soul! It shines on that wonderful brow of his, doesn’t it?’
‘He has a good forehead,’ said Lady Constance. ‘But I wish he wouldn’t wear his hair so short. Somehow it makes him seem unlike a poet.’
Freddie, alarmed, swallowed a mouthful of scrambled egg.
‘Oh, he’s a poet all right,’ he said hastily.
‘Well, really, Freddie,’ said Lady Constance, piqued, ‘I think we hardly need you to tell us that.’
‘No, no, of course. But what I mean is, in spite of his wearing his hair short, you know.’
‘I ventured to speak to him of that yesterday,’ said Miss Peavey, ‘and he said he rather expected to be wearing it even shorter very soon.’
‘Freddie!’ cried Lady Constance with asperity. ‘What are you doing?’
A brown lake of tea was filling the portion of the tablecloth immediately opposite the Hon. Frederick Threepwood. Like the Efficient Baxter a few minutes before, sudden emotion had caused him to upset his cup.
§ 2
The scrutiny of his lordship’s lobelias had palled upon Psmith at a fairly early stage in the proceedings, and he was sitting on the terrace wall enjoying a meditative cigarette when Freddie found him.
‘Ah, Comrade Threepwood,’ said Psmith, ‘welcome to Blandings Castle! You said something about wishing to have speech with me, if I remember rightly?’
The Hon. Freddie shot a nervous glance about him, and seated himself on the wall.
‘I say,’ he said, ‘I wish you wouldn’t say things like that.’
‘Like what, Comrade Threepwood?’
‘What you said to the Peavey woman.’
‘I recollect having a refreshing chat with Miss Peavey yesterday afternoon,’ said Psmith, ‘but I cannot recall saying anything calculated to bring the blush of shame to the cheek of modesty. What observation of mine was it that meets with your censure?’
‘Why, that stuff about expecting to wear your hair shorter. If you’re going to go about saying that sort ofthing – well, dash it, you might just as well give the whole bally show away at once and have done with it.’
Psmith nodded gravely.
‘Your generous heat, Comrade Threepwood, is not unjustified. It was undoubtedly an error of judgment. If I have a fault – which I am not prepared to admit – it is a perhaps ungentlemanly desire to pull that curious female’s leg. A stronger man than myself might well find it hard to battle against the temptation. However, now that you have called it to my notice, it shall not occur again. In future I will moderate the persiflage. Cheer up, therefore, Comrade Threepwood, and let us see that merry smile of yours, of which I hear such good reports.’
The appeal failed to alleviate Freddie’s gloom. He smote morosely at a fly which had settled on his furrowed brow.
‘I’m getting as jumpy as a cat,’ he said.
‘Fight against this unmanly weakness,’ urged Psmith. ‘As far as I can see, everything is going along nicely.’
‘I’m not so sure. I believe that blighter Baxter suspects something.’
‘What do you think he suspects?’
‘Why, that there’s something fishy about you.’
Psmith winced.
‘I would be infinitely obliged to you, Comrade Threepwood, if you would not use that particular adjective. It awakens old memories, all very painful. But let us go more deeply into this matter, for you interest me strangely. Why do you think that cheery old Baxter, a delightful personality if ever I met one, suspects me?’
‘It’s the way he looks at you.’
‘I know what you mean, but I attribute no importance to it. As far as I have been able to ascertain during my brief visit, he looks at everybody and everything in precisely the same way. Only last night at dinner I observed him glaring with keen mistrust at about as blameless and innocent a plate of clear soup as was ever dished up. He then proceeded to shovel it down with quite undisguised relish. So possibly you are all wrong about his motive for looking at me like that. It may be admiration.’
‘Well, I don’t like it.’
‘Nor, from an aesthetic point of view, do I. But we must bear these things manfully. We must remind ourselves that it is Baxter’s misfortune rather than his fault that he looks like a dyspeptic lizard.’
Freddie was not to be consoled. His gloom deepened.
‘And it isn’t only Baxter.’
‘What else is on your mind?’
‘The whole atmosphere of the place is getting rummy, if you know what I mean.’ He bent towards Psmith and whispered pallidly, ‘I say, I believe that new housemaid is a detective!’
Psmith eyed him patiently.
‘Which new housemaid, Comrade Threepwood? Brooding, as I do, pretty tensely all the time on deep and wonderful subjects, I have little leisure to keep tab on the domestic staff. Is there a new housemaid?’
‘Yes. Susan, her name is.’
‘Susan? Susan? That sounds all right. Just the name a real housemaid would have.’
‘Did you ever,’demanded Freddie earnestly, ‘see a real housemaid sweep under a bureau?’
‘Does she?’
‘Caught her at it in my room this morning.’
‘But isn’t it a trifle far-fetched to imagine that she is a detective? Why should she be a detective?’
‘Well, I’ve seen such a dashed lot of films where the housemaid or the parlourmaid or what not were detectives. Makes a fellow uneasy.’
‘Fortunately,’ said Psmith, ‘there is no necessity to remain in a state of doubt. I can give you an unfailing method by means of which you may discover if she is what she would have us believe her.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Kiss her.’
‘Kiss her!’
‘Precisely. Go to her and say, “Susan, you’re a very pretty girl . . .”’
‘But she isn’t.’
‘We will assume, for purposes of argument, that she is. Go to her and say, “Susan, you are a very pretty girl. What would you do if I were to kiss you?” If she is a detective, she will reply, “How dare you, sir!” or, possibly, more simply, “Sir!” Whereas if she is the genuine housemaid I believe her to be and only sweeps under bureaux out of pure zeal, she will giggle and remark, “Oh, don’t be silly, sir!” You appreciate the distinction?’
‘How do you know?’
‘My grandmother told me, Comrade Threepwood. My advice to you, if the state of doubt you are in is affecting your enjoyment of life, is to put the matter to the test at the earliest convenient opportunity.’
‘I’ll think it over,’ said Freddie dubiously.
Silence fell upon him for a space, and Psmith was well content to have it so. He had no specific need of Freddie’s prattle to help him enjoy the pleasant sunshine and the scent of Angus McAlli
ster’s innumerable flowers. Presently, however, his companion was off again. But now there was a different note in his voice. Alarm seemed to have given place to something which appeared to be embarrassment. He coughed several times, and his neatly-shod feet, writhing in self-conscious circles, scraped against the wall.
‘I say!’
‘You have our ear once more, Comrade Threepwood,’ said Psmith politely.
‘I say, what I really came out here to talk about was something else. I say, are you really a pal of Miss Halliday’s?’
‘Assuredly. Why?’
‘I say!’ A rosy blush mantled the Hon. Freddie’s young cheek. ‘I say, I wish you would put in a word for me, then.’
‘Put in a word for you?’
Freddie gulped.
‘I love her, dash it!’
‘A noble emotion,’ said Psmith courteously. ‘When did you feel it coming on?’
‘I’ve been in love with her for months. But she won’t look at me.’
‘That, of course,’ agreed Psmith, ‘must be a disadvantage. Yes, I should imagine that that would stick the gaffinto the course of true love to no small extent.’
‘I mean, won’t take me seriously, and all that. Laughs at me, don’t you know, when I propose. What would you do?’
‘I should stop proposing,’ said Psmith, having given the matter thought.
‘But I can’t.’
‘Tut, tut!’ said Psmith severely. And, in case the expression is new to you, what I mean is “Pooh, pooh!” Just say to yourself, “From now on I will not start proposing until after lunch.” That done, it will be an easy step to do no proposing during the afternoon. And by degrees you will find that you can give it up altogether. Once you have conquered the impulse for the after-breakfast proposal, the rest will be easy. The first one of the day is always the hardest to drop.’
‘I believe she thinks me a mere butterfly,’ said Freddie, who had not been listening to this most valuable homily.
Psmith slid down from the wall and stretched himself.
‘Why,’ he said, ‘are butterflies so often described as “mere”? I have heard them so called a hundred times, and I cannot understand the reason. . . . Well, it would, no doubt, be both interesting and improving to go into the problem, but at this point, Comrade Threepwood, I leave you. I would brood.’
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