‘Your ladyship is wanted on the telephone, m’lady,’ said Jane, who believed in respect to the titled. ‘It’s the Vicar, m’lady.’
‘Thank you, Jane. I will come at once.’
‘And I,’ said Sir Aylmer with a weary snort, ‘had better go and welcome this blasted Reginald, I suppose.’
‘You won’t forget about Hermione?’
‘No, I won’t forget about Hermione,’ said Sir Aylmer moodily. He did not waver in his view that his daughter’s future husband was bound to be a deleterious slab of damnation like all other young men nowadays, but if Hermione desired it he was prepared to coo to him like a turtle dove; or as nearly like a turtle dove as was within the scope of one whose vocal delivery was always rather reminiscent of a bad-tempered toastmaster.
He made his way to the drawing-room, and finding it empty was for a moment baffled. But ex-Governors are quick-thinking men, trained to deal with emergencies. When an ex-Governor, seeking a Twistleton, arrives in the drawing-room where that Twistleton ought to be and finds no Twistleton there, he does not stand twiddling his thumbs and wondering what to do. He inflates his lungs and shouts.
‘REGINALD!’ thundered Sir Aylmer.
It seemed to him, as the echoes died away, that he could hear the sound of movements in the collection room across the hall. He went thither, and poked his head in.
It was as he had suspected. Something, presumably of a Twistletonian nature, was standing there. He crossed the threshold, and these two representatives of the older and the younger generation were enabled to see each other steadily and see each other whole.
On both sides the reaction to the scrutiny was unfavourable. Pongo, gazing apprehensively at the rugged face with its top dressing of moustache, was thinking that this Bostock, so far from being the kindly Dickens character of his dreams, was without exception the hardest old gumboil he had ever encountered in a career by no means free from gumboils of varying hardness: while Sir Aylmer, drinking Pongo in from his lemon-coloured hair to his clocked socks and suede shoes, was feeling how right he had been in anticipating that his future son-in-law would be a pot of cyanide and a deleterious young slab of damnation. He could see at a glance that he was both.
However, he had come there grimly resolved to coo like a turtle dove, so he cooed.
‘Oh, there you are. Reginald Twistleton?’
‘That’s right. Twistleton, Reginald.’
‘H’ar yer?’ roared Sir Aylmer like a lion which had just received an ounce of small shot in the rear quarters while slaking its thirst at a water hole, though, if questioned, he would have insisted that he was still cooing. ‘Glad to see yer, Reginald. My wife will be down in a moment. What you doing in here?’
‘I was having a look at these — er — objects.’
‘My collection of African curios. It’s priceless.’
‘Really? How priceless!’
‘You won’t find many collections like that. Took me ten years to get it together. You interested in African curios?’
‘Oh, rather. I love ‘em.’
The right note had been struck. A sort of writhing movement behind his moustache showed that Sir Aylmer was smiling, and in another moment who knows what beautiful friendship might not have begun to blossom. Unfortunately, however, before the burgeoning process could set in, Sir Aylmer’s eye fell on the remains of the what-not and the smile vanished from his face like breath off a razor blade, to be replaced by a scowl of such malignity that Pongo had the illusion that his interior organs were being scooped out with a spade or trowel.
‘Gorbl …!‘ he cried, apparently calling on some tribal god. ‘How the…. What the…. Did you do that?’
‘Er, yes,’ said Pongo, standing on one leg. ‘Frightfully sorry.’
Sir Aylmer, not without some justice, asked what was the use of being sorry, and Pongo, following his reasoning, said Yes, he saw what he meant, supplementing the words with a nervous giggle.
Many people do not like nervous giggles. Sir Aylmer was one of them. On several occasions in the old days he had had to mention this to his aides-de-camp. Not even the thought of his daughter Hermione could restrain him from bestowing on Pongo a second scowl, compared with which its predecessor had been full of loving kindness. He lowered himself to the ground, and, crouched on all fours over the remains like Marius among the ruins of Carthage, began to mutter beneath his breath about young fools and clumsy idiots. Pongo could not catch his remarks in their entirety, but he heard enough to give him the general idea.
He gulped pallidly. A sticky moisture had begun to bedew his brow, as if he had entered the hot room of some Turkish bath of the soul. Governesses in his childhood and schoolmasters in his riper years had sometimes spoken slightingly of his I.Q., but he was intelligent enough to realize that on this visit of his, where it was so vital for him to make a smash hit with Hermione’s parents, he had got off to a poor start.
It was as Sir Aylmer rose and began to say that the what-not had been the very gem and pearl of his collection and that he wouldn’t have parted with it for a hundred pounds, no, not if the intending purchaser had gone on his bended knees to add emphasis to the offer, that there was a whirring sound without, indicating that some solid body was passing down the hall at a high rate of m.p.h. The next moment, Lady Bostock entered, moving tempestuously.
From Lady Bostock’s aspect only Sherlock Holmes, perhaps, would have been able to deduce that she had just heard from the Vicar over the telephone that the curate was down with measles, but even Doctor Watson could have seen that her soul had in some way been badly jolted. So moved was she that, though a polished hostess, she paid no attention to Pongo, who was now standing on the other leg.
‘Aylmer!’
‘Well?’
‘Aylmer …. The Vicar….‘
‘WELL?’
‘The Vicar says Mr Brotherhood has got measles. He wants us to go and see him at once.’
‘Who the devil’s Mr Brotherhood?’
‘The curate. You know Mr Brotherhood, the curate. That nice young man with the pimples. He has gone and got measles, and I was relying on him to judge the babies.’
‘What babies?’
‘The bonny babies. At the fete.’
A word about this fete. It was the high spot of Ashenden Oakshott’s social year, when all that was bravest and fairest in the village assembled in the Manor grounds and made various kinds of whoopee. Races were run, country dances danced, bonny babies judged in order of merit in the big tent and tea and buns consumed in almost incredible quantities. Picture a blend of the Derby and a garden party at Buckingham Palace, add Belshazzar’s Feast, and you have the Ashenden Oakshott Fete.
One can readily appreciate, therefore, Lady Bostock’s concern at the disaster which had occurred. A lady of the manor, with an important fete coming along and the curate in bed with measles, is in the distressing position of an impresario whose star fails him a couple of days before the big production or a general whose crack regiment gets lumbago on the eve of battle.
‘It’s terrible. Dreadful. I can’t think who I can get to take his place.’
Sir Aylmer, who believed in having a thorough understanding about these things at the earliest possible moment, said he was dashed if he was going to do it, and Lady Bostock said No, no, dear, she wouldn’t dream of asking him.
‘But I must find somebody.’ Lady Bostock’s eye, rolling in a fine frenzy from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven, picked on Pongo, now back on the leg he had started with, and she stared at him dazedly, like one seeing unpleasant things in a dream. ‘Are you Reginald?’ she said distractedly.
The emotional scene, following upon his chat with Sir Aylmer about what-nots, had left Pongo in a condition of such mental turmoil that for an instant he was not quite sure. Reginald? Was he Reginald? Was Reginald a likely thing for anyone to be? … Why, yes, of course. The woman was perfectly correct.
‘Yes, I’m Reginald.’
‘How nic
e to meet you at last,’ wailed Lady Bostock like a soul in torment.
It is never easy off-hand to find the ideal reply to such an observation. Discarding ‘Yes!’ as too complacent and ‘What ho!’ as too familiar, and not being fortunate enough to think of ‘I’ve been looking forward so much to meeting you,’ Pongo contented himself with another of his nervous giggles.
A sudden light came into Lady Bostock’s haggard eyes.
‘Have you ever judged bonny babies, Reginald?’
‘Me?’ said Pongo, reeling.
Before he could speak further, an angel, in the very effective disguise of Sir Aylmer, intervened to save him from the ghastly peril which had so suddenly risen to confront him.
‘You don’t want Reginald,’ he said, and Pongo, who a moment earlier would have scoffed at the suggestion that it would ever be possible for him to want to leap at his host and kiss him on both cheeks, was conscious of a powerful urge in that direction. ‘I’ll tell you who gets the job.’
After uttering the words ‘I’m dashed if I’m going to do it’ and receiving his wife’s reassuring reply, Sir Aylmer had fallen into a silence, as if musing or pondering, and it was plain now that the brain work on which he had been engaged had borne fruit. His manner had become animated, and in his eye, which, resting upon Pongo, had been dull and brooding, there was a triumphant gleam.
It was a gleam which might have puzzled an untravelled beholder, but anybody who had ever seen a Corsican feudist suddenly presented with the opportunity of wreaking a sinister vengeance on a family foe would have recognized it immediately. It was that strange, almost unearthly light which comes in the eyes of wronged uncles when they see a chance of getting a bit of their own back from erring nephews.
‘I’ll tell you who gets the job,’ he repeated. ‘William.’
‘William?’
‘William,’ said Sir Aylmer, rolling the word round his tongue like vintage port. Lady Bostock stared.
‘But William…. Surely, dear…. The very last person….
‘William.’
‘But he would hate it.’
‘William.’
‘You know how terribly shy he is.’
‘William. I don’t want any argument, Emily. It’s no good you standing there blinding and stiffing. William judges the bonny babies. I insist. Perhaps now he’ll be sorry he skulked in trains and went on toots with old Ickenham.’
Lady Bostock sighed. But a habit of obsequiousness which had started at the altar rails was too strong for her.
‘Very well, dear.’
‘Good. Tell him when you see him. Meanwhile, you say, the Vicar wants us to go down to the vicarage and confer with him. Right. I’ll drive you in the car. Come along.’
He darted through the french windows, followed by Lady Bostock, and after a few moments occupied in mopping his forehead with the handkerchief which so perfectly matched his tie and socks, Pongo followed them.
He felt he needed air. A similar sensation had often come to sensitive native chiefs at the conclusion of an interview with Sir Aylmer Bostock on the subject of unpaid hut taxes.
Sunshine and the pure Hampshire breezes playing about his temples soon did wonders in the way of restoring him to the normal. Presently, feeling almost himself again, he returned to the house, and, as always happened with those who had once seen Sir Aylmer’s collection of African curios, there came over him a morbid urge to take another look at these weird exhibits, to ascertain whether they really looked as frightful as they had appeared at first sight. He passed through the french window into the collection room, and a pink policeman, who had been bicycling dreamily up the drive, uttered a sharp ‘Ho!’ and accelerated his pace, his eyes hard and his jaw protruding belligerently.
The policeman’s name was Harold Potter. He represented the awful majesty of the Law in Ashenden Oakshott. His pinkness was due to the warmth of the weather, and he was dreamy because he had been musing on Elsie Bean, the Manor housemaid, to whom he was affianced.
It was in order to enjoy a chat with Elsie Bean that he had come here, and until he turned the corner and was in view of the house his thoughts had been all of love. But at the sight of furtive forms slinking in through french windows Potter, the Romeo, became in a flash Potter, the sleepless guardian of the peace. His substantial feet pressed on the pedals like those of a racing cyclist.
It looked to Harold Potter like a fair cop.
And so it came about that Pongo, his opinion of the intelligence of African natives now even lower than before, was disturbed in his contemplation of their fatuous handiwork by the sound of emotional breathing in his rear. He spun round, to find himself gazing into the steely eyes of a large policeman with a ginger moustache.
‘Ho!’ he cried, startled.
‘Ho!’ said Constable Potter, like an echo in the Swiss mountains.
It would be idle to pretend that the situation was not one of some embarrassment. It belonged to the type which would have enchanted Lord Ickenham, who enjoyed nothing better than these variations in the calm monotone of life, but it brought Pongo out from head to foot in a sort of prickly heat.
Unlike most of his light-hearted companions of the Drones Club, who rather made pets of policemen, tipping them when in funds and stealing their helmets on Boat Race night, Pongo had always had a horror of the Force. That sombreness of his on the day at the Dog Races, for which Lord Ickenham had reproached him, had been occasioned by the fact that a member of that Force, who might have been this one’s twin brother, had been attached to his coat collar and advising him to come quietly.
He smiled a weak smile.
‘Oh, hullo,’ he said.
‘Hullo,’ replied Constable Potter coldly. ‘What’s all this?’
‘What’s all what?’
‘What are you doing on these enclosed premises?’
‘I’ve been invited here for a brief visit.’
‘Ho!’
It seemed to Pongo that he was not making headway. The situation, sticky at the outset, appeared to be growing progressively stickier. He was relieved, accordingly, when a third party arrived to break up the tête-à-tête.
This was a small, sturdy girl of resolute appearance with blue eyes and a turned-up nose, clad in the uniform of a housemaid. She regarded with interest the picture in still life before her.
‘Hullo,’ she said. ‘Where did you spring from, Harold? And who’s this?’
‘Chap I’ve apprehended on enclosed premises,’ said Constable Potter briefly.
Pongo, who had been dabbing at his forehead, waved his handkerchief in passionate protest against this too professional view.
‘What’s all this rot about enclosed premises?’ he demanded with spirit. ‘I resent the way, officer, you keep chewing the fat about enclosed premises. Why shouldn’t I be on enclosed premises, when specially invited? Here, you, what’s your name, my dear old housemaid —‘
‘Miss Bean, my fiancée,’ said Constable Potter, frigidly doing the honours.
‘Oh, really? Heartiest congratulations. Pip-pip, Miss Bean.’
‘Toodle-oo.’
‘I hope you’ll be very, very happy. Well, what I was going to say was that you will be able to bear me out that I’m a guest at this joint. I’ve just arrived in my car to spend a few days. I’m the celebrated Twistleton, the bird who’s engaged to Miss Bostock. You must know all about me. No doubt the place has been ringing with my name.’
‘Miss Hermione is engaged to a gentleman named Twistleton.’
‘Exactly.’
‘And Jane heard them saying at dinner that he was expected here, Harold. I believe this is him.’
‘Well spoken, young Bean,’ said Pongo with enthusiasm. He had taken an immediate liking to this clear-reasoning girl. ‘Of course I’m him. Look,’ said Pongo, turning back the pocket of his coat. ‘Read this definite statement by one of the most reputable tailors in London. “R. G. Twistleton.” There you are, in black and white.’
‘I
t could be somebody else’s coat that you’d bought second hand,’ argued Constable Potter, fighting in the last ditch.
Pongo gave him a look.
‘Don’t say such things even in jest, officer. Rather,’ he said with a sudden flash of inspiration, ‘ring up the Vicar and ask for Sir Aylmer, who is in conference with him on the subject of bonny babies, and put it squarely up to the latter — Sir Aylmer, I mean, not the bonny babies — whether he didn’t leave me here only a few moments ago after a pleasant and invigorating chat.’
‘You mean you’ve met Sir Aylmer?’
‘Of course I’ve met Sir Aylmer. We’re just like that.’
Constable Potter seemed reluctantly convinced.
‘Well, I suppose it’s all right, then. I beg your pardon, sir.’
‘Quite all right, officer.’
‘Then I’ll be saying good afternoon, sir. How about a pot of tea in the kitchen, Elsie?’
Elsie Bean elevated her small nose.
‘You can go to the kitchen, if you like. Not me. Your sister’s there, calling on cook.’
‘Ho!’ Constable Potter stood for a moment in thought. The conflicting claims of tea and a loved one’s society were plainly warring within him. One is sorry to report that the former prevailed. ‘Well, I think I’ll mooch along and have a cup,’ he said, and mooched, as foreshadowed.
Elsie Bean looked after his retreating blue back with a frown.
‘You and your sister!’ she said.
The note of acerbity in her voice was so manifest that Pongo could not help but be intrigued. Here, he told himself, or he was very much mistaken, was a housemaid with a secret sorrow. He stopped mopping his forehead and cocked an enquiring eye at Elsie Bean.
‘Don’t you like his sister?’
‘No, I don’t.’
‘Well, if there’s any sort of family resemblance, I can fully comprehend,’ said Pongo. With Constable Potter’s departure Ashenden Manor seemed to him to have become a sweeter, better place. ‘Why don’t you like his sister? What’s the matter with her?’
Elsie Bean was a friendly little soul who, though repeatedly encouraged to do so by her employers, had never succeeded in achieving that demure aloofness which is the hallmark of the well-trained maid. Too often in her dealings with the ruling classes, in circumstances where a distant ‘Yes, sir,’ or ‘No, madam,’ would have been more suitable, you would find her becoming expansive and conversational. And on the present occasion she regarded herself as a hostess.
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