Elsie Bean’s face clouded. She tossed her head, plainly stirred.
‘Harold’s a mess,’ she said, with the frankness which comes naturally to those reared in the bracing air of Bottleton East. ‘He’s an obstinate, pig-headed, fat-headed, flatfooted copper. I’ve no patience.’
‘He still refuses to send in his papers?’
‘R.’
A pang of pity shot through Pongo. Nothing that he had seen of Constable Potter had tended to build up in his mind the picture of a sort of demon lover for whom women might excusably go wailing through the woods, but he knew that his little friend was deeply attached to this uniformed perisher and his heart bled for her. He was broad-minded enough to be able to appreciate that if you are enamoured of a fat-headed copper and obstacles crop up in the way of your union with him, you mourn just as much as if he were Gregory Peck or Clark Gable.
‘He came round tonight after supper, and we talked for an hour and a half, but nothing I could say would move him.’
‘No dice, eh? Too bad.’
‘It’s that sister of his. She won’t let him call his soul his own. I don’t know what’s to come of it, I’m sure.’
A pearly tear appeared at the corner of Elsie Bean’s eye, and she sniffed in an overwrought way. Pongo patted her head. It was the least a man of sensibility could do.
‘I wouldn’t despair,’ he said. ‘These things seem sticky at the moment, but they generally iron out straight in the end. Give him time, and you’ll find he’ll be guided by the voice of love.’
Elsie Bean, having sniffed again, became calmer. There was good stuff in this girl.
‘What would guide him a lot better,’ she said, ‘would be being bopped on the nose.’
‘Bopped on the nose?’
‘R.’
Of the broad, general principle of bopping Constable Potter on the nose Pongo was, of course, a warm adherent. It was a thing that he felt should be done early and often. But he was unable to see how it could pay dividends in the present circumstances.
‘I don’t quite follow.’
‘That would knock some sense into him. Harold’s nervous.’
‘Nervous?’ said Pongo incredulously. He had detected no such basic weakness in the flatty under advisement. A man of iron, he would have said.
‘That’s why he got himself shifted to the country from London, where he used to be. He found it too hot being a rozzer in London. He had some unpleasant experiences with blokes giving him shiners when he was pinching them, and it shook him. He come here for peace and quiet. So if he found it was too hot being a rozzer here as well, he wouldn’t want to be a rozzer anywhere. He’d give his month’s notice, and we’d all be happy.’
Pongo saw her point. He could scarcely have done otherwise, for it had been admirably put.
‘True,’ he said. ‘You speak sooth, Bean.’
‘If only someone would bop him on the nose, he wouldn’t hesitate not for a moment. You wouldn’t bop him on the nose, would you?’
‘No, I would not bop him on the nose.’
‘Or squash in his helmet when he wasn’t looking?’
Pongo was sorry for the idealistic girl, but he felt it due to himself to discourage this line of thought from the outset.
‘A man like Harold is always looking,’ he said. ‘No, I wish you luck, young Bean, and I shall follow your future career with considerable interest, but don’t count on me for anything more than heartfelt sympathy. Still, I fully concur in your view that what you require is an up and coming ally, who will drive home to Harold the risks of the profession, .thus causing him to see the light, and I strongly recommend featuring your brother Bert in the part. It’s a pity he doesn’t come out till September. What’s he in for?’
‘Resisting of the police in the execution of their duty. He sloshed a slop on the napper with a blunt instrument.’
‘There you are, then. The People’s Choice. Tails up, my dear old housemaid. Provided, of course, that his sojourn in the coop has not weakened Bert as a force, you should be hearing the warbling of the blue bird by early October at the latest. Meanwhile, switching lightly to another topic, what on earth are you doing here at this time of night?’
‘I came to get some whisky.’
All the host in Pongo sprang to life. He blushed for his remissness.
‘I’m frightfully sorry,’ he said, reaching for the decanter. ‘Ought to have offered you a spot ages ago. Can’t imagine what I am thinking of.’
‘For Harold,’ Elsie Bean explained. ‘He’s lurking in the garden. He chucked a stone at my window, and when I popped my head out he asked me in a hoarse whisper to bring him a drop of something. And I remembered Jane always took the whisky in here last thing before bed. Lurking in the garden!’ she proceeded with bitterness. ‘What’s he lurking in gardens for? Doing some sort of copper’s job, I suppose. If he’d give up being a copper, he could stay in bed like other folks. I’ve no patience.’
She sniffed, and Pongo, fearing another pearly tear, hastened to apply first aid.
‘There, there,’ he said. ‘You mustn’t let it get you down. Right will prevail. Have a cigarette?’
‘Thanks.’
‘Turkish this side, Virginian that,’ said Pongo.
He had taken one himself a few moments before, and he proceeded now to light hers from his own. And it was while their faces were in the close juxtaposition necessitated by this process that Bill Oakshott entered the room.
Whether one is justified in describing Bill Oakshott and Pongo Twistleton as great minds is perhaps a question open to debate. But they had exhibited tonight the quality which is supposed to be characteristic of great minds, that of thinking alike. Pongo, yearning for a snootful, had suddenly remembered the decanter in the drawing-room, and so had Bill.
Ever since his meeting that afternoon with Lord Ickenham, Bill Oakshott’s emotions had been rather similar to those which he would have experienced, had he in the course of a country walk discovered that his coat tails had become attached to the rear end of the Scotch express en route from London to Edinburgh. Like most of those who found themselves associated with the effervescent peer when he was off the chain and starting to go places, he was conscious of a feeling of breathlessness, shot through with a lively apprehension as to what was coming next. This had induced sleeplessness. Sleeplessness had induced thirst. And with thirst had come the recollection of the decanter in the drawing-room.
With Bill, as with Pongo, to think was to act, and only in a minor detail of technique had their procedure differed. Pongo, not knowing whether the bally things creaked or not, had descended the stairs mincingly, like Agag, while Bill, more familiar with the terrain, had taken them three at a time, like a buffalo making for a water hole. He arrived, accordingly, somewhat touched in the wind, and the affectionate scene that met his eyes as he crossed the threshold took away what remained of his breath completely. Elsie Bean, entering the room, had said ‘Coo!’ Bill for the moment was unable to utter at all. He merely stood and goggled, shocked to the core.
The theory which Lord Ickenham had advanced in extenuation of Pongo’s recent kissing of this girl whose nose he was now so nearly touching with his own had not satisfied Bill Oakshott. It might have been as the kindly peer had said, a mere mannerism, but Bill thought not. The impression he had received on the previous afternoon had been of a licentious clubman operating on all twelve cylinders, and that was the impression he received now. And at the thought that it was in the hands of an all-in Lothario like this that Hermione Bostock had placed her life’s happiness his sensitive soul quivered like a jelly. The outlook, to Bill’s mind, was bad.
Pongo was the first to break an awkward silence.
‘Oh, hullo,’ he said.
‘Oh, hullo, sir,’ said Elsie Bean.
‘Oh, hullo,’ said Bill.
His manner, as he spoke, was distrait. He was trying to decide whether the fact of Pongo not being, as he had at one time supposed, off his
onion improved the general aspect of affairs or merely rendered it darker and sadder. It was plain now that Elsie Bean had been mistaken on the previous day when she had asserted that the other had said ‘Coo! I think I’ll go to London,’ and had driven thither. He had merely, it appeared, taken a short spin somewhere in his Buffy-Porson, which was quite a reasonable thing to do on a fine afternoon. But was this good or bad? Bill had said in his haste that loony libertines are worse than sane ones, but now he was not so sure. It might be a close thing, but were you not entitled to shudder even more strongly at a libertine who was responsible for his actions than at one who was not?
On one point, however, his mind was clear. It was his intention, as soon as they were alone together, to buttonhole this squire of dames and talk to him like an elder brother — as, for instance, one could imagine Brabazon-Plank major talking to Brabazon-Plank minor.
The opportunity of doing this came earlier than those familiar with Elsie Bean and her regrettable tendency to be a mixer would have anticipated. It is true that all her instincts urged the gregarious little soul to stick around and get the conversation going, but though sometimes failing to see eye to eye with Emily Post she was not without a certain rudimentary regard for the proprieties, and her social sense told her that this would not be the done thing. When a housemaid in curling pins and a kimono finds herself in a drawing-room at one in the morning with her employer and a male guest, she should as soon as possible make a decorous exit. This is in Chapter One of all the etiquette books.
So with a courteous ‘Well, good night, all,’ she now withdrew. And it was not very long after the door had closed that Pongo, who had become conscious of a feeling of uneasiness, as if he were sitting in a draught, was able to perceive what it was that was causing this. He was being looked at askance.
The rather delicate enterprise of looking askance at an old boyhood friend is one that different men embark on in different ways. Bill’s method — for while he was solid on the point that it was about time that a fearless critic came along and pointed out to Pongo some of the aspects in which his behaviour deviated from the ideal, he found it difficult to overcome his natural shyness — was to turn bright vermilion and allow his eyes to protrude like a snail’s. He also cleared his throat three times.
Finally he spoke. ‘Pongo.’
‘Hullo?’
Bill cleared his throat again.
‘Pongo.’
‘On the spot.’
Bill took a turn up and down the room. It was not easy to think of a good opening sentence, and when you are talking like an elder brother to libertines the opening sentence is extremely important, if not vital. He cleared his throat once more.
‘Pongo.’
‘Still here, old man.’
Bill cleared his throat for the fifth time, and having replied rather testily in the negative to Pongo’s query as to whether he had swallowed a gnat or something, resumed his pacing. This brought his shin into collision with a small chair which was lurking in the shadows, and the sharp agony enabled him to overcome his diffidence.
‘Pongo,’ he said, and his voice was crisp and firm, ‘I haven’t mentioned it before, because the subject didn’t seem to come up somehow, but when I returned from Brazil the day before yesterday, I was told that you were engaged to my cousin Hermione.’
‘That’s right.’
‘Congratulations.’
‘Thanks.’
‘I hope you will be very happy.’
‘You betcher.’
‘And I hope — here’s the nub — that you will make her happy.’
‘Oh, rather.’
‘Well, will you? You say you will, but I’m dashed if I see how it’s going to be done, if you spend your whole time hobnobbing with housemaids.’
‘Eh?’
‘You heard.’
‘Hobnobbing with housemaids?’
‘Hobnobbing with housemaids.’
The charge was one which few men would have been able to hear unmoved. Its effect on Pongo was to make him mix himself another whisky and soda. Grasping this, like King Arthur brandishing his sword Excalibur, he confronted his accuser intrepidly and began a spirited speech for the defence.
It was inaccurate, he pointed out, to say that he spent his whole time hobnobbing with housemaids. Indeed, he doubted if he could justly be said to hobnob with them at all. It all depended on what you meant by the expression. To offer a housemaid a cigarette is not hobbing. Nor, when you light it for her, does that constitute nobbing. If you happen — by the merest chance — to be in a drawing-room at one in the morning with a housemaid, you naturally do the civil thing, behaving like a well-bred English gentleman and putting her at her ease.
You chat. You pass the time of day. You offer her a gasper. And when she has got her hooks on it, you light it for her. That, at least, was Pongo’s creed, and he believed it would have been the creed of Sir Galahad and the Chevalier Bayard, if he had got the name correctly, neither of whom had to the best of his knowledge ever been called hobnobbers. He concluded by saying that it was a pity that some people, whose identity he did not specify, had minds like sinks and, by the most fortunate of chances remembering a good one at just the right moment, added that to the pure all things were pure.
It was a powerful harangue, and it is not surprising that for an instant Bill Oakshott seemed to falter before it, like some sturdy oak swayed by the storm. But by dint of thinking of the righteousness of his cause and clearing his throat again, he recovered the quiet strength which had marked his manner at the outset.
‘All that,’ he said coldly, ‘would go a lot stronger with me, if I hadn’t seen you kissing Elsie Bean yesterday.’
Pongo stared.
‘Kissing Elsie Bean?’
‘Kissing Elsie Bean.’
‘I never kissed Elsie Bean.’
‘Yes, you did kiss Elsie Bean. On the front steps.’
Pongo clapped a hand to his forehead.
‘Good Lord, yes, so I did. Yes, you’re perfectly right. I did, didn’t I? It all comes back to me. But only like a brother.’
‘Like a brother, my foot.’
‘Like a brother,’ insisted Pongo, as if he had spent his whole life watching brothers kiss housemaids. ‘And if you knew the circumstances —‘
Bill raised a hand. He was in no mood to listen, to any tale of diseased motives. He drew a step nearer and stared bleakly at Pongo, as if the latter had been an alligator of the Brazilian swamps whom he was endeavouring to quell with the power of the human eye.
‘Twistleton!’
‘I wish you wouldn’t call me Twistleton.’
‘I will call you Twistleton, blast you. And this is what I want to say to you, Twistleton, by way of a friendly warning which you will do well to bear in mind, if you don’t want your head pulled off at the roots and your insides ripped from your body —‘
‘My dear chap!’
‘— With my naked hands. Cut it out.’
‘Cut what out?’
‘You know what. This Don Juan stuff. This butterfly stuff. This way you’ve got of flitting from flower to flower and sipping. Lay off it, Twistleton. Give it a miss. Curb that impulse. Kiss fewer housemaids. Try to remember that you are engaged to be married to a sweet girl who loves and trusts you.’
‘But —’
Pongo, about to speak, paused. Bill had raised his hand again.
The gesture of raising the hand is one which is generally more effective in costume dramas, where it always suffices to quell the fiercest crowd, than in real life: and what made it so potent now was probably the size of the hand. To Pongo’s excited imagination it seemed as large as a ham, and he could not overlook the fact that it was in perfect proportion with the rest of his companion’s huge body; a body which even the most casual eye would have recognized as being composed mostly of rippling muscle. Taking all this into consideration, he decided to remain silent, and Bill proceeded.
‘I suppose you’re wonderin
g what business it is of mine?’
‘No, no. Any time you’re passing —‘
‘Well, I’ll tell you,’ said Bill, departing from a lifetime’s habit of reticence. ‘I’ve loved Hermione myself for years and years.’
‘No, really?’
‘Yes. Years and years and years. I’ve never mentioned it to her.’
‘No?’
‘No. So she knows nothing about it.’
‘Quite. She wouldn’t, would she?’
‘And loving her like this I feel that it is my job to watch over her like a —‘
‘Governess?’
‘Not governess. Elder brother. To watch over her like an elder brother and protect her and see that no smooth bird comes along and treats her as the plaything of an idle hour.’
This surprised Pongo. The idea of anyone treating Hermione Bostock as the plaything of an idle hour was new to him.
‘But —‘ he began again, and once more Bill raised his hand, bigger and better than ever. In a dreamlike way, Pongo found himself wondering what size he took in gloves.
‘As the plaything of an idle hour,’ repeated Bill. ‘I don’t object to her marrying another man —‘
‘Broad-minded.’
‘At least, I do — it’s agony — but what I mean is, it’s up to her, and if she feels like marrying another man, right ho! So long as it makes her happy. All I want is her happiness.’
‘Very creditable.’
‘But get this, Twistleton,’ continued Bill, and Pongo, meeting his eye, was reminded of that of the headmaster of his private school, with whom some fifteen years previously he had had a painful interview arising from his practice of bringing white mice into the classroom. ‘This is what I want to drive into your nut. If I found that that other man was playing fast and loose with her, two-timing her, Twistleton, breaking her gentle heart by going and whooping it up round the corner, I would strangle him like a —’
He paused, snapping his fingers.
‘Dog?’ said Pongo, to help him out.