Esmond Haddock stared.
‘Hallo!’ he said, adding another three hallos from force of habit.
You might have thought that a fellow in Catsmeat’s position, faced with the prospect of going up the river for a calendar month, would have been too perturbed to have time for hugging girls, and it would scarcely have surprised me if he had extricated himself from Gertrude Winkworth’s embrace with a ‘Yes, yes, quite, but some other time, what?’ Not so, however. To clasp her to his bosom was with him the work of a moment, and you could see that he was regarding this as the important part of the evening’s proceedings, giving him little scope for attending to Justices of the Peace.
‘Oh, Gertrude!’ he said. ‘Be with you in a minute,’ he added to Esmond. ‘Oh, Gertrude!’ he proceeded, once more addressing his remarks to the lovely burden. And, precisely as Constable Dobbs had done in a similar situation, he covered her upturned face with burning kisses.
‘Eeek!’ said the aunts, speaking as one aunt.
I didn’t blame them for being fogged and unable to follow the run of the scenario. It is unusual for a niece to behave towards a visiting valet as their niece Gertrude was behaving as of even date, and if they squeaked like mice, I maintain they had every right to do so. Theirs had been a sheltered life, and this was all new stuff to them.
Esmond, too, seemed a bit not abreast.
‘What’s all this?’ he said, a remark which would have proceeded more fittingly from the lips of Constable Dobbs. In fact, I saw the officer shoot a sharp look at him, as if stung by this infringement of copyright.
Corky came forward and slipped her arm through his. It was plain that she felt the time had come for a frank, manly explanation.
‘It’s my brother Catsmeat, Esmond.’
‘What is?’
‘This is.’
‘What, that?’
‘Yes. He came here as a valet for love of Gertrude, and a darned good third-reel situation, if you ask me.’
Esmond wrinkled his brow. He looked rather as he had done when discussing that story of mine with me on the night of my arrival.
‘Let’s go into this,’ he said. ‘Let’s thresh it out. This character is not Meadowes?’
‘No.’
‘He’s not a valet?’
‘No.’
‘But he is your brother Catsmeat?’
‘Yes.’
Esmond’s face cleared.
‘Now I’ve got it,’ he said. ‘Now it’s all straight. How are you, Catsmeat?’
‘I’m fine,’ said Catsmeat.
‘That’s good,’ said Esmond heartily. ‘That’s splendid.’
He paused, and started. I suppose the baying that arose at this point from the pack of aunts, together with the fact that he had just tripped over his spurs, had given him the momentary illusion that he was in the hunting field, for a ‘Yoicks’ trembled on his lips and he raised an arm as if about to give his horse one on the spot where it would do most good.
The aunts were a bit on the incoherent side, but gradually what you might call a message emerged from their utterances. They were trying to impress on Esmond that the fact that the accused was Corky’s brother Catsmeat merely deepened the blackness of his crime and that he was to carry on and administer the sentence as planned.
Their observations would have gone stronger with Esmond if he had been listening to them. But he wasn’t. His attention was riveted on Catsmeat and Gertrude, who had seized the opportunity afforded by the lull in the proceedings to exchange a series of burning kisses.
‘Are you and Gertrude going to get married?’ he asked.
‘Yes,’ said Catsmeat.
‘Yes,’ said Gertrude.
‘No,’ said the aunts.
‘Please,’ said Esmond, raising a hand. ‘What’s the procedure?’ he asked, once more addressing himself to Catsmeat.
Catsmeat said he thought the best scheme would be for them to nip up to London right away and put the thing through on the morrow. He had the licence all ready and waiting, he explained, and he saw no difficulties ahead that a good registry office couldn’t solve. Esmond said he agreed with him, and suggested that they should borrow his car, and Catsmeat said that was awfully good of him, and Esmond said Not at all. ‘Please,’ he added to the aunts, who were now shrieking like Banshees.
It was at this point that Constable Dobbs thrust himself forward.
‘Hoy,’ said Constable Dobbs.
Esmond proved fully equal to the situation.
‘I see what you’re driving at, Dobbs. You very naturally wish to make a pinch. But consider, Dobbs how slender is the evidence which you can bring forward to support your charge. You say you chased a man in a green beard and a check suit up a tree. But the visibility was very poor, and you admit yourself that you were being struck by thunderbolts all the time, which must have distracted your attention, so it is more than probable that you were mistaken. I put it to you, Dobbs, that when you thought you saw a man in a green beard and a check suit, it may quite easily have been a clean-shaven man in something quiet and blue?’
He paused for a reply, and one could divine that the officer was thinking it over.
The thing that poisons life for a country policeman, the thing that makes him pick at the coverlet and brings him out in rashes, is the ever-present fear that one of these days he may talk out of turn and get in wrong with a Justice of the Peace. He knows what happens when you get in wrong with Justices of the Peace. They lay for you. They bide their time. And sooner or later they catch you bending, and the next thing you know you’ve drawn a strong rebuke from the Bench. And if there is one experience the young copper wishes to avoid, it is being in the witness-box and having the Bench look coldly at him and say something beginning with ‘Then are we to understand, officer . . . ?’ and culminating in the legal equivalent of the raspberry or Bronx cheer. And it was evident to him that defiance of Esmond on the present occasion must inevitably lead to that.
‘I put it to you, Dobbs,’ said Esmond.
Constable Dobbs sighed. There is, I suppose, no spiritual agony so keen as that of the rozzer who has made a cop and seen it turn blue on him. But he bowed to the inev.
‘Perhaps you’re right, sir.’
‘Of course I’m right,’ said Esmond heartily. ‘I knew you would see it when it was pointed out to you. We don’t want any miscarriages of justice, what?’
‘No, sir.’
‘I should say not. If there’s one thing that gives me the pip, it’s a miscarriage of justice. Catsmeat, you are dismissed without a stain on your character.’
Catsmeat said that was fine, and Esmond said he thought he would be pleased.
‘I suppose you and Gertrude aren’t going to hang around, spending a lot of time packing?’
‘No, we thought we’d leg it instanter.’
‘Exactly what I would suggest.’
‘If Gertrude wants clothes,’ said Corky, ‘she can get them at my apartment.’
‘Splendid,’ said Esmond. ‘Then the quickest way to the garage is along there.’
He indicated the french windows, which, the night being balmy, had been left open. He slapped Catsmeat on the back, and shook Gertrude by the hand, and they trickled out.
Constable Dobbs, watching them recede, heaved another sigh, and Esmond slapped his back, too.
‘I know just how you’re feeling, Dobbsy,’ he said. ‘But when you think it over, I’m sure that you’ll be glad you haven’t been instrumental in throwing a spanner into the happiness of two young hearts in springtime. If I were you, I’d pop off to the kitchen and have a word with Queenie. There must be much that you want to discuss.’
Constable Dobbs’s was not a face that lent itself readily to any great display of emotion. It looked as if it had been carved out of some hard kind of wood by a sculptor who had studied at a Correspondence School and had got to about Lesson Three. But at this suggestion it definitely brightened.
‘You’re right, sir,�
�� he said, and with a brief ‘Goodnight, all’ vanished in the direction indicated, his air that of a policeman who is feeling that life, while greyish in spots, is not without its compensations.
‘So that’s that,’ said Esmond.
‘That’s that,’ said Corky. ‘I think your aunts are trying to attract your attention, angel.’
All through the preceding scene, though pressure of other matter prevented me mentioning it, the aunts had been extremely vocal. Indeed, it would not be putting it too strongly to say that they had been kicking up the hell of a row. And this row must have penetrated to the upper regions of the house, for at this moment the door suddenly opened, revealing Dame Daphne Winkworth. She wore a pink dressing-gown, and had the appearance of a woman who has been taking aspirins and bathing her temples with eau-de-Cologne.
‘Really!’ she said. She spoke with a goodish bit of asperity, and one couldn’t fairly blame her. When you go up to your bedroom with a headache, you don’t want to be dragged down again half an hour later by disturbances from below. ‘Will someone be so kind as to tell me what is the reason for this uproar?’
Four simultaneous aunts were so kind. The fact that they all spoke together might have rendered their remarks hard to follow, had not the subject matter been identical. Gertrude, they said, had just eloped with Miss Pirbright’s brother, and Esmond had not only expressed his approval of the move but had actually offered the young couple his car.
‘There!’ they said, as the sound of an engine gathering speed and the cheery toot-toot of a klaxon made themselves heard in the silent night, pointing up their statement.
Dame Daphne blinked as if she had been struck on the mazard with a wet dishcloth. She turned on the young squire menacingly, and one could understand her peevishness. There are few things more sickening for a mother than to learn that her only child has eloped with a man whom she has always regarded as a blot on the species. Not surprising if it spoils her day.
‘Esmond! Is this true?’
The voice in which she spoke would have had me clambering up the wall and seeking refuge on the chandelier, had she been addressing me, but Esmond Haddock did not wilt. The man seemed fearless. He was like the central figure in one of those circus posters which show an intrepid bozo in a military uniform facing with death-defying determination twelve murderous, man-eating monarchs of the jungle.
‘Quite true,’ he replied. ‘And I really cannot have any discussion and argument about it. I acted as I deemed best, and the subject is closed. Silence, Aunt Daphne. Less of it, Aunt Emmel-ine. Quiet, Aunt Charlotte. Desist, Aunt Harriet. Aunty Myrtle, put a sock in it. Really, the way you’re going on, one would scarcely suppose that I was the master of the house and the head of the family and that my word was law. I don’t know if you happen to know it, but in Turkey all this insubordinate stuff, these attempts to dictate to the master of the house and the head of the family, would have led long before this to you being strangled with bowstrings and bunged into the Bosporus. Aunt Daphne, you have been warned. One more yip out of you, Aunt Myrtle, and I stop your pocket-money. Now, then,’ said Esmond Haddock, having obtained silence, ‘let me give you the strength of this. The reason I abetted young Gertrude in her matrimonial plans was that the man she loves is a good egg. I have this on the authority of his sister Corky, who speaks extremely well of him. And, by the way, before I forget, his sister Corky and I are going to be married ourselves. Correct?’
‘In every detail,’ said Corky.
She was gazing at him with shining eyes. One got the feeling that if she had had a table with a photograph on it, she would have been singing ‘My Hero’.
‘Come, come,’ said Esmond kindly, as the yells of the personnel died away, ‘no need to be upset about it. It won’t affect you dear old souls. You will go on living here, if you call it living, just as you have always done. All that’ll happen is that you will be short one Haddock. I propose to accompany my wife to Hollywood. And when she’s through with her contract there, we shall set up a shack in some rural spot and grow pigs and cows and things. I think that covers everything, doesn’t it?’
Corky said she thought it did.
‘Right,’ said Esmond. ‘Then how about a short stroll in the moonlight?’
He led her lovingly through the french windows, kissing her en route and I edged to the door and made my way upstairs to my room. I could have stayed on and chatted with the aunts, if I had wanted to, but I didn’t feel in the mood.
CHAPTER 27
My first act on reaching the sleeping quarters was to take pencil and paper and sit down and make out a balance sheet. As follows:
Sundered Hearts Reunited Hearts
(1) Esmond (1) Esmond
(2)Corky (2) Corky
(3) Gussie (3) Gussie
(4) Madeline (4) Madeline
(5) Officer Dobbs (5) Officer Dobbs
(6) Queenie (6) Queenie
(7) Catsmeat (7) Catsmeat
(8) Gertrude (8) Gertrude
It came out exactly square. Not a single loose end left over. With a not unmanly sigh, for if there is one thing that is the dish of the decent-minded man, it is seeing misunderstandings between loving hearts cleared up, especially in the springtime, I laid down the writing materials and was preparing to turn in for the night, when Jeeves came shimmering in.
‘Oh, hallo, Jeeves,’ I said, greeting him cordially. ‘I was rather wondering if you would show up. A big night, what?’
‘Extremely, sir.’
I showed him the balance sheet.
‘No flaws in that, I think?’
‘None, sir.’
‘Gratifying, what?’
‘Most gratifying, sir.’
‘And, as always, due to your unremitting efforts.’
‘It is very kind of you to say so, sir.’
‘Not at all, Jeeves. We chalk up one more of your triumphs on the slate. I will admit that for an instant during the proceedings, when you gave Gussie that alibi, I experienced a momentary doubt as to whether you were on the right lines, feeling that you were but landing Catsmeat in the bouillon. But calmer reflection told me what you were up to. You felt that if Catsmeat stood in peril of receiving an exemplary sentence, Gertrude Winkworth would forget all that had passed and would cluster round him, her gentle heart melted by his distress. Am I right?’
‘Quite right, sir. The poet Scott –’
‘Pigeon-hole the poet Scott for a moment, or I shall be losing the thread of my remarks.’
‘Very good, sir.’
‘But I know what you mean. Oh, Woman in our hours of ease, what?’
‘Precisely, sir. Uncertain, coy and hard to please. When –’
‘ – pain and anguish wring the brow, a ministering angel thou and so on and so forth. You can’t stump me on the poet Scott. That is one more of the things I used to recite in the old days. First “Charge of Light Brigade” or “Ben Battle”: then, in response to gales of applause, the poet Scott as an encore. But to return to what I was saying . . . There, as I suspected would be the case, Jeeves, I can’t remember what I was saying. I warned you what would happen if you steered the conversation to the poet Scott.’
‘You were speaking of the reconciliation between Miss Wink-worth and Mr Pirbright, sir.’
‘Of course. Well, I was about to say that having studied the psychology of the individual you foresaw what would occur. And you knew that Catsmeat wouldn’t be in any real peril. Esmond Haddock was not going to jug the brother of the woman he loved.’
‘Exactly, sir.’
‘You can’t get engaged to a girl with one hand and send her brother up for thirty days with the other.’
‘No, sir.’
‘And your subtle mind also spotted that this would lead to Esmond Haddock defying his aunts. I thought the intrepid Haddock was splendidly firm, didn’t you?’
‘Unquestionably, sir.’
‘It’s nice to think that he and Corky are now headed for the centre aisle.’ I
paused, and looked at him sharply. You sighed, Jeeves.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Why did you sigh?’
‘I was thinking of Master Thomas, sir. The announcement of Miss Pirbright’s betrothal came as a severe blow to him.’
I refused to allow my spirits to be lowered by any such side issues.
‘Waste no time commiserating with young Thos, Jeeves. His is a resilient nature, and the agony will pass. He may have lost Corky, but there’s always Betty Grable and Dorothy Lamour and Jennifer Jones.’
‘I understand those ladies are married, sir.’
‘That won’t affect Thos. He’ll be getting their autographs, just the same. I see a bright future ahead of him. Or, rather,’ I said, correcting myself, ‘fairly bright. There is that interview with his mother to be got over first.’
‘It has already occurred, sir.’
I goggled at the man.
‘What do you mean?’
‘My primary motive in intruding upon you at this late hour, sir, was to inform you that her ladyship is downstairs.’
I quivered from brilliantine to shoe sole.
‘Aunt Agatha?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Downstairs?’
‘Yes, sir. In the drawing-room. Her ladyship arrived some few moments ago. It appears that Master Thomas, unwilling to occasion her anxiety, wrote her a letter informing her that he was safe and well, and unfortunately the postmark “King’s Deverill” on the envelope –’
‘Oh, my gosh! She came racing down?’
‘Yes, sir.’
And –?’
A somewhat painful scene took place between mother and son, in the course of which Master Thomas happened to –’
‘Mention me?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘He blew the gaff?’
‘Yes, sir. And I was wondering whether in these circumstances you might not consider it advisable to take an immediate departure down the waterpipe. I understand there is an excellent milk train at two fifty-four. Her ladyship is expressing a desire to see you, sir.’
It would be deceiving my public to say that for an instant I did not quail. I quailed, as a matter of fact, like billy-o. And then, suddenly, it was as if strength had descended upon me.
The Mating Season Page 23