‘Yes, he spoke no word of love. But he went on worshipping her, outwardly gay and cheerful, inwardly gnawed by a ceaseless pain. And then one night her brother Lionel, a wild young man who had unfortunately got into bad company, came to his rooms and told him that he had committed a very serious crime and was going to be arrested, and he asked Mervyn to save him by taking the blame himself. And, of course, Mervyn said he would.’
‘The silly ass! Why?’
‘For Cynthia’s sake. To save her brother from imprisonment and shame.’
‘But it meant going to chokey himself. I suppose he overlooked that?’
‘No. Mervyn fully realized what must happen. But he confessed to the crime and went to prison. When he came out, grey and broken, he found that Cynthia had married Sir Hector and he went out to the South Sea Islands and became a beachcomber. And time passed. And then one day Cynthia and her husband arrived at the island on their travels and stayed at Government House, and Mervyn saw her drive by, and she was just as beautiful as ever, and their eyes met, but she didn’t recognize him, because of course he had a beard and his face was changed because he had been living the pace that kills, trying to forget.’
I remembered a good one I had read somewhere about the pace that kills nowadays being the slow, casual walk across a busy street, but I felt that this was not the moment to spring it.
‘He found out that she was leaving next morning, and he had nothing to remember her by, so he broke into Government House in the night and took from her dressing-table the rose she had been wearing in her hair. And Cynthia found him taking it, and, of course, she was very upset when she recognized him.’
‘Oh, she recognized him this time? He’d shaved, had he?’
‘No, he still wore his beard, but she knew him when he spoke her name, and there was a very powerful scene in which he told her how he had always loved her and had come to steal her rose, and she told him that her brother had died and confessed on his death-bed that it was he who had been guilty of the crime for which Mervyn had gone to prison. And then Sir Hector came in.’
‘Good situation. Strong.’
‘And, of course, he thought Mervyn was a burglar, and he shot him, and Mervyn died with the rose in his hand. And, of course, the sound of the shot roused the house, and the Governor came running in and said: “Is anything missing?” And Cynthia in a low, almost inaudible voice said: “Only a rose.” That is the story of Mervyn Keene, Clubman.’
Well, it was difficult, of course, to know quite what comment to make. I said ‘Oh, ah!’ but I felt at the time that it could have been improved on. The fact is, I was feeling a bit stunned. I had always known in a sort of vague, general way that Mrs Bingo wrote the world’s worst tripe – Bingo generally changes the subject nervously if anyone mentions the little woman’s output – but I had never supposed her capable of bilge like this.
But the Bassett speedily took my mind off literary criticism. She had resumed her saucerlike stare, and the teardrop in the eye was now more noticeable than ever.
‘Oh, Bertie,’ she said, and her voice, like Cynthia’s, was low and almost inaudible, ‘I ought to have given you my photograph long ago. I blame myself. But I thought it would be too painful for you, too sad a reminder of all that you had lost. I see now that I was wrong. You found the strain too great to bear. At all costs you had to have it. So you stole into the house, like Mervyn Keene, and took it.’
‘What!’
‘Yes, Bertie. There need be no pretences between you and me. And don’t think I am angry. I am touched, more deeply touched than I can say, and oh, so, so sorry. How sad life is!’
I was with her there.
‘You betcher,’ I said.
‘You saw my friend Hilda Gudgeon. There is another tragedy. Her whole happiness has been ruined by a wretched quarrel with the man she loves, a man called Harold Anstruther. They were playing in the Mixed Doubles in a tennis tournament not long ago and – according to her – I don’t understand tennis very well – he insisted on hogging the game, as she calls it. I think she means that when the ball came near her and she was going to strike it, he rushed across and struck it himself, and this annoyed her very much. She complained to him, and he was very rude and said she was a rabbit and had better leave everything to him, and she broke off the engagement directly the game was finished. And now she is brokenhearted.’
I must say she didn’t sound very broken-hearted. Just as the Bassett said these words, there came from without the uproar of someone singing, and I identified the voice as that of the solid school friend. She was rendering that old number ‘Give yourself a pat on the back’, and the general effect was of an exhilarated foghorn. The next moment, she came leaping into the room, and I have never seen anything more radiant. If she hadn’t had the white, woolly dog in her arms, I wouldn’t have recognized the sombre female of so short a while ago.
‘Hi, Madeline,’ she cried. ‘What do you think I found on the breakfast-table? A grovelling letter from the boy friend, no less. He’s surrendered unconditionally. He says he must have been mad to call me a rabbit. He says he can never forgive himself, but can I forgive him. Well, I can answer that one. I’m going to forgive him the day after to-morrow. Not earlier, because we must have discipline.’
‘Oh, Hilda! How glad I am!’
‘I’m pretty pleased about it myself. Good old Harold! A king among men, but, of course, needs keeping in his place from time to time and has to be taught what’s what. But I mustn’t run on about Harold. What I came to tell you was that there’s a fellow outside in a car who says he wants to see you.’
‘To see me?’
‘So he says. Name of Pirbright.’
Madeline turned to me.
‘Why, it must be your friend Claude Pirbright, Bertie. I wonder what he wants. I’d better go and see.’ She threw a quick glance at the solid girl, and seeing that she had stepped through the french window, no doubt to give the gardener the devil about something, came to me and pressed my hand. ‘You must be brave, Bertie,’ she said in a low, roopy voice. ‘Some day another girl will come into your life and you will be happy. When we are both old and grey, we shall laugh together over all this . . . laugh, but I think with a tear behind the smile.’
She popped off, leaving me feeling sick. The solid girl, whom I had dimly heard telling the gardener he needn’t be afraid of breaking that spade by leaning on it, came back and immediately proceeded, in which I considered an offensively familiar manner, to give me a hearty slap on the back.
‘Well, Wooster, old bloke,’ she said.
‘Well, Gudgeon, old bird,’ I replied courteously.
‘Do you know, Wooster, I keep feeling there’s something familiar about your name? I must have heard Harold mention it. Do you know Harold Anstruther?’
I had recognized the name directly I heard Madeline Bassett utter it. Beefy Anstruther had been my partner at Rackets my last year at Oxford, when I had represented the establishment at that sport. I revealed this to the solid girl, and she slapped my back again.
‘I thought I wasn’t wrong. Harold speaks very highly of you, Wooster, old-timer, and I’ll tell you something. I have a lot of influence with Madeline, and I’ll exert it on your behalf. I’ll talk to her like a mother. Dash it all, we can’t have her marrying a pill like Gussie Fink-Nottle, when there’s a Rackets Blue on her waiting list. Courage, Wooster, old cock. Courage and patience. Come and have a bit of breakfast.’
‘Thanks awfully, no,’ I said, though I needed it sorely. ‘I must be getting along.’
‘Well, if you won’t, you won’t. But I will. I’m going to have the breakfast of a lifetime. I haven’t felt so roaring fit since I won the tennis singles at Roedean.’
I had braced myself for another slap on the back, but with a swift change of policy she prodded me in the ribs, depriving me of what little breath her frightful words had left inside me. At the thought of what might result from a girl of her dominating personality talking to
Madeline Bassett like a mother, I had wilted where I stood. It was with what are called leaden steps that I passed through the french window and made my way to the road. I was anxious to intercept Catsmeat when he drove out, so that I might learn from him the result of his interview.
And, of course, when he did drive out, he was hareing along at such a pace that it was impossible to draw myself to his attention. He vanished over the skyline as if he had been competing in some event at Brooklands, leaving me standing.
In sombre mood, bowed down with dark forebodings, I went off to get a bit of breakfast and catch a train back to King’s Deverill.
CHAPTER 18
The blokes who run the railway don’t make it easy for you to get from Wimbledon to King’s Deverill, feeling no doubt – and I suppose it’s a kindly thought – that that abode of thugs and ghouls is a place you’re better away from. You change twice before you get to Basingstoke and then change again and take the branch line. And once you’re on the branch line, it’s quicker to walk.
The first person I saw when I finally tottered out at journey’s end, feeling as if I had been glued to the cushioned seat since early boyhood and a bit surprised that I hadn’t put out tendrils like a Virginia creeper, was my cousin Thomas. He was buying motion-picture magazines at the bookstall.
‘Oh, hallo,’ I said. ‘So you got here all right?’
He eyed me coldly and said ‘Crumbs!’ a word of which he is far too fond. This Thos is one of those tough, hardboiled striplings, a sort of juvenile James Cagney with a touch of Edward G. Robinson. He has carroty hair and a cynical expression, and his manner is supercilious. You would think that anyone conscious of having a mother like my Aunt Agatha and knowing it could be proved against him, would be crushed and apologetic, but this is not the case. He swanks about the place as if he’d bought it, and in conversation with a cousin lacks tact and is apt to verge on the personal.
He became personal now, on the subject of my appearance, which I must confess was not spruce. Night travel in milk trains always tends to remove the gloss, and you can’t hobnob with beetles in bushes and remain dapper.
‘Crumbs!’ he said. ‘You look like something the cat brought in.’
You see what I mean? The wrong note. In no frame of mind to bandy words, I clouted the child moodily on the head and passed on. And as I emerged into the station yard, somebody yoo-hooed and I saw Corky sitting in her car.
‘Hallo, Bertie,’ she said. ‘Where did you spring from, moon of my delight?’ She looked about her in a wary and conspiratorial manner, as if she had been registering snakiness in a spy film. ‘Did you see what was in the station?’ she asked, lowering the voice.
‘I did.’
‘Jeeves delivered him as per memo last night. Uncle Sidney looked a little taken aback for a moment, and seemed as if he were on the point of saying some of the things he gave up saying when he took Orders, but everything has turned out for the best. He loves his game of chess, and it seems that Thomas is the undisputed champion of his school, brimming over with gambits and openings and things, so they get along fine. And I love him. What a sympathetic, sweet-natured boy he is, Bertie.’
I blinked.
‘You are speaking of my cousin Thomas?’
‘He’s so loyal. When I told him about the heel Dobbs arresting Sam Goldwyn, he simply boiled with generous indignation. He says he’s going to cosh him.’
‘To what him?’
‘It’s something people do to people in detective stories. You use a small but serviceable rubber bludgeon.’
‘He hasn’t got a small but serviceable rubber bludgeon.’
‘Yes, he has. He bought it in Seven Dials when he was staying at your flat. His original idea was to employ it on a boy called Stinker at Bramley-on-Sea, but it is now earmarked for Dobbs.’
‘Oh, my God!’
‘It will do Dobbs all the good in the world to be coshed. It may prove a turning-point in his life. I have a feeling that things are breaking just right these days and that very shortly an era of universal happiness will set in. Look at Catsmeat, if you want Exhibit A. Have you seen him?’
‘Not to speak to,’ I said, speaking in a distrait manner, for my mind was still occupied with Thos and his plans. The last thing you want, when the nervous system is in a state of hash, are your first cousins socking policemen with rubber bludgeons. ‘What about Catsmeat?’
‘I met him just now, and he was singing like a linnet all over the place. He had a note from Gertrude last night, and she says that, if and when she can elude her mother’s eye, she will elope with him. His cup of joy is full.’
‘I’m glad someone’s is.’
The sombreness of my tone caused her to look sharply at me, and her eyes widened as she saw the disorder of my outer crust.
‘Bertie! My lamb!’ she cried, visibly moved. ‘What have you been doing to yourself? You look like –’
‘Something the cat brought in?’
‘I was going to say something excavated from Tutankhamen’s tomb, but your guess is as good as mine. What’s been happening?’
I passed a weary hand over the brow.
‘Corky,’ I said, ‘I’ve been through hell.’
‘About the only place I thought you didn’t have to go through to get to King’s Deverill. And how were they all?’
‘I have a frightful story to relate.’
‘Did somebody cosh you?’
‘I’ve just come from Wimbledon.’
‘From Wimbledon? But Catsmeat was attending to the Wimbledon end. He told me all about it.’
‘He didn’t tell you all about it, because all about it is precisely what he doesn’t know. If you’ve only heard Catsmeat’s reminiscences, you simply aren’t within a million miles of being in possession of the facts. He barely scratched the surface of Wimbledon, whereas I . . . Would you care to have the ghastly details?’
She said she would love to, and I slipped them to her, and for once she listened attentively from start to finish, an agreeable deviation from her customary deaf-adder tactics. I found her a good audience. She was properly impressed when I spoke of Gussie’s letter, nor did she omit to draw the breath in sharply as I touched on the Gudgeon and the sinister affair of the studio portrait. The facts in connexion with the white, woolly dog also went over big.
‘Golly!’ she said, as I wore to a close. ‘You do live, don’t you, Bertie?’
I agreed that I lived, but expressed a doubt as to whether, the circumstances being what they were it was worthwhile continuing to do so. One was rather inclined, I said, to murmur ‘Death, where is thy sting?’ and turn the toes up.
‘The best one can say,’ I concluded, ‘is that one has obtained a brief respite, if respite is the word. And that only if Catsmeat was successful in dissuading the Bassett from her awful purpose. For all I know, she may be coming on the next train.’
‘No, she’s not. He headed her off.’
‘You had that straight from the horse’s mouth?’
‘Direct from his personal lips.’
I drew a deep breath. This certainly put a brighter aspect on the cloud wreck. In fact, it seemed to me that ‘Hallelujah!’ about summed it up, and I mentioned this.
I was concerned to note that she appeared a bit dubious.
‘Yes, I suppose “Hallelujah!” sums it up . . . to a certain extent. I mean you can make your mind easy about her coming here. She isn’t coming. But in the light of what you tell me about Mervyn Keene, Clubman, and the studio portrait, it’s a pity Catsmeat didn’t hit on some other method of heading her off. I do feel that.’
My heart stood still. I clutched at the windscreen for support, and what-whatted.
‘The great thing to remember, the thing to bear in mind and keep the attention fixed on, is that he meant well.’
My heart stood stiller. In your walks about London you will sometimes see bent, haggard figures that look as if they had recently been caught in some powerful machinery. They are t
hose of fellows who got mixed up with Catsmeat when he was meaning well.
‘What he told Miss Bassett was this. He said that on hearing that she was coming to the Hall you betrayed agitation and concern, and finally he got it out of you what the trouble was. Loving her hopelessly as you do, you shrank from the agony of having to see her day after day in Gussie’s society’
My heart, ceasing to stand still, gave a leap and tried to get out through my front teeth.
‘He told Madeline Bassett that?’ I quavered, shaking on my stem.
‘Yes, and implored her to stay away and not subject you to this anguish. He says he was terrific and wished one or two managers had been there to catch his work, and I think he must have been pretty good, because Miss Bassett cried buckets and said she quite understood and, of course, would cancel her visit, adding something in a low voice about the desire of the moth for the star and how sad life was. What did you say?’
I explained that I had not spoken, merely uttered one of those hollow groans, and she agreed that in the circs hollow groans were perhaps in order.
‘But, of course, it wasn’t easy for the poor angel to think of a good way of stopping her coming,’ she argued. ‘And the great thing was to stop her somehow.’
‘True.’
‘So, if I were you, I would try to look on the bright side. Count your blessings one by one, if you know what I mean.’
This is an appeal which, when addressed to Bertram Wooster, rarely falls on deaf ears. The stunned sensation which her words had induced did not actually leave me, but it diminished somewhat in intensity. I saw her point.
‘There is much in what you say,’ I agreed, rising on stepping-stones of my dead self to higher things, as I have mentioned is my custom. ‘The great thing, as you justly remark, was to stop the Bassett blowing in, and, if that has been accomplished, one does wrong to be fussy about the actual mechanism. And, after all, she was already firmly convinced of my unswerving devotion, so Catsmeat hasn’t really plunged me so very much deeper in the broth than I was before.’
The Mating Season Page 15