My mind went back to that time at Oxford, when I had gone in for rowing and had drawn him as a coach. If what he had said to Uncle Percy had been even remotely in the same class as his remarks on that occasion with reference to my stomach, I could see that relations must inevitably have got pretty strained, and my heart sank as I visualized the scene.
‘He said father was shackling the police and that it was men like him, grossly lacking in any sense of civic duty, who were the cause of the ever-growing crime wave. He said that father was a menace to the community and would be directly responsible if half the population of Steeple Bumpleigh were murdered in their beds.’
‘You don’t think he spoke laughingly?’
‘No, I do not think he spoke laughingly.’
‘With a twinkle in his eye, I mean.’
‘There was not the slightest suggestion of any twinkle in his eye.’
‘You might have missed it. It’s a dark night.’
‘Please do not be utterly absurd, Bertie. I have sufficient intelligence, I hope, to be able to recognize a vile exhibition of bad temper when I see it. His tone was most offensive. “And you,” he said, looking at father as if he were some sort of insect, “call yourself a Justice of the Peace. Faugh!”’
‘Fore? Like at golf?’
‘F-a-u-g-h.’
‘Oh, ah.’
I was beginning to be almost sorry for Uncle Percy, as far as it is possible to be sorry for a man like that. I mean, there was no getting away from it that it hadn’t been a big evening for the poor old bloke. First, Boko with his ‘My dear Worplesdon’; then Edwin with his hockey stick; and now Stilton with his ‘Faughs’. One of those nights you look back to with a shudder.
‘His behaviour was a revelation to me. It laid bare a brutal, inhuman side of his character, of the existence of which I had never till then had a suspicion. There was something positively horrible in the fury he exhibited, when he realized that he was not to be allowed to arrest the man. He was like some malignant wild beast deprived of its prey.’
It was plain that Stilton’s stock was in or approaching the cellar, and I did what I could to stop the slump.
‘Still, it showed zeal, what?’
‘Tchah!’
‘And zeal, after all, when you come right down to it, is what he draws his weekly envelope for.’
‘Don’t talk to me about zeal. It was revolting. And when I said that father was quite right, he turned on me like a tiger.’
Although by this time, as you may well imagine, I was rocking on my base and becoming more and more a prey to alarm and despondency, I couldn’t help admiring Stilton for his intrepid courage. Circumstances had so arranged themselves as to extract most of the stuffing from what had been a closeish boyhood friendship, but I had to respect a man capable of turning on Florence like a tiger. I would hardly have thought Attila the Hun could have done it, even if at the peak of his form.
All the same, I wished he hadn’t. Oh, I was saying to myself, that the voice of Prudence had whispered in his ear. It was so vital to my interests that the mutual love of these two should continue unimpaired, and already much of the gilt, I feared, must have been rubbed off the gingerbread of their romance. Love is a sensitive plant, which needs cherishing and fostering. This cannot be done by turning on girls like tigers.
‘I told him that modern enlightened thought held that imprisonment merely brutalizes the criminal.’
‘And what did he say to that?’
‘“Oh, yes?”‘
‘Ah, he agreed with you.’
‘He did nothing of the kind. He spoke in a most unpleasant, sneering voice. “It does, does it?” he said. And I said ‘Yes, it does.” He then said something about modern enlightened thought which I cannot repeat.’
I wondered what this had been. Evidently something red hot, for it was clear that it still rankled like a boil on the back of the neck. Her fists, I saw, were clenched, and she had started to tap her foot on the ground – sure indications that the soul is fed to the eye teeth. Florence is one of those girls who look on modern enlightened thought as a sort of personal buddy, and receive with an ill grace cracks at its expense.
I groaned in spirit. The way things were shaping, I was expecting her to say next that she had broken off the engagement.
And that was just what she did say.
‘Of course, I broke off the engagement instantly.’
In spite of the fact that, as I say, I had practically known it was coming, I skipped like the high hills.
‘You broke off the engagement?’
‘Yes.’
‘Oh, I say, you shouldn’t have done that.’
‘Why not?’
‘Sterling chap like Stilton.’
‘He is nothing of the kind.’
‘You ought to forget those cruel words he spoke. You should make allowances.’
‘I don’t understand you.’
‘Well, look at it from the poor old buster’s point of view. Stilton, you must bear in mind, entered the police force hoping for rapid advancement.’
‘Well?’
‘Well, of course, the men up top don’t advance a young rozzer rapidly unless he comes through with something so spectacular as to make them draw in their breath with an awed “Lord love a duck!” For weeks, months perhaps, he has been chafing like a caged eagle at the frightful law-abidingness of this place, hoping vainly for even a collarless dog or a decent drunk and disorderly that he could get his teeth into, and the sudden arrival of a burglar must have seemed to him manna from heaven. Here, he must have said to himself, was where at last he made his presence felt. And just as he was hitching up his sleeves and preparing to take his big opportunity, Uncle Percy goes and puts him on the leash. It was enough to upset any cop. Naturally he forgot himself and spoke with a generous strength. But he never means what he says in moments of heat. You should have heard him once at Oxford, talking to me about sticking out my stomach while toiling at the oar. You would have thought he loathed my stomach and its contents. Yet only a few hours later we were dining vis-à-vis at the Clarendon – clear soup, turbot and a saddle of mutton, I remember – and he was amiability itself. You’ll find it’s just the same now. I’ll bet remorse is already gnawing him, and nobody is sorrier than he for having said nasty things about modern enlightened thought. He loves you devotedly. This is official. I happen to know. So what I would suggest is that you go to him and tell him that all is forgotten and forgiven. Only thus can you avoid making a bloomer, the memory of which will haunt you through the years. If you give Stilton the bum’s rush, you’ll kick yourself practically incessantly for the rest of your life. The whitest man I know.’
I paused, partly for breath and partly because I felt I had said enough. I stood there, waiting for her reply, wishing I had a throat lozenge to suck.
Well, I don’t know what reaction I had expected on her part – possibly the drooping of the head and the silent tear, as the truth of my words filtered through her system; possibly some verbal statement to the effect that I had spoken a mouthful. What I had definitely not expected was that she would kiss me, and with a heartiness that nearly dropped me in my tracks.
‘Bertie, you are extraordinary!’ She laughed, a thing I couldn’t have done, if handsomely paid. ‘So quixotic. It is what I love in you. Nobody hearing you would dream that it is your dearest wish to marry me yourself.’
I tried to utter, but could not. The tongue had got all tangled up with the uvula, and the brain seemed paralysed. I was feeling the same stunned feeling which, I imagine, Chichester Clam must have felt as the door of the potting shed slammed and he heard Boko starting to yodel without – a nightmare sensation of being but a helpless pawn in the hands of Fate.
She passed an arm through mine, and began to explain, like a governess instructing a backward pupil in the rudiments of simple arithmetic.
‘Do you think I have not understood? My dear Bertie, I am not blind. When I broke off our engagement, I
naturally supposed that you would forget – or perhaps that you would be angry and resentful and think hard, bitter thoughts of me. To-night, I realized how wrong I had been. It was that brooch you gave me that opened my eyes to your real feelings. There was no need for you to have given me a birthday present at all, unless you wanted me to know that you still cared. And to give me one so absurdly expensive . . . Of course, I knew at once what you were trying to tell me. It all fitted in so clearly with the other things you had said. About your reading Spinoza, for instance. You had lost me, as you thought, but you still went on studying good literature for my sake. And I found you in that book shop buying my novel. I can’t tell you how it touched me. And as the result of that chance meeting you could not keep yourself from coming to Steeple Bumpleigh, so that you might be near me once more. And to-night, you crept out, to stand beneath my window in the starlight . . . No, let us have no more misunderstandings. I am thankful that I should have seen the meaning of your shy overtures in time, and that I should have had the real D’Arcy Cheesewright revealed to me before it was too late. I will be your wife, Bertie.’
There didn’t seem much to say to this except ‘Oh, thanks.’ I said it, and the interview terminated. She kissed me again, expressed her preference for a quiet wedding, with just a few relations and intimate friends, and beetled off.
CHAPTER 19
It was not immediately that I, too, departed. The hour was late, and my bed awaited me chez Boko, but for a considerable time I remained rooted to the spot, staring dazedly into the darkness. Winged creatures of the night came bumping into the old face and bumping off again, while others used the back stretches of my neck as a skating rink, but I did not even raise a hand to interfere with their revels. This awful thing that had come upon me had practically turned me into a pillar of salt. I doubt if the moth, or whatever it was that was doing Swedish exercises in and around my left ear, had the remotest notion that it had parked itself on the person of a once vivacious young clubman. A tree, it probably thought, or possibly even the living rock.
Presently, however, life returned to the rigid limbs, and I started to plod my weary way down the drive and out of the gate, eventually reaching Boko’s door. It was open, and I heaved myself through. There was a light along the passage, and heading for it I won through to the sitting-room.
Boko was in an armchair, with his feet on the mantelpiece and his hand clasping a glass. The sight of another glass and a syphon and decanter drew me to the table like a magnet. The sloshing of the liquid seemed to rouse mine host from a reverie, causing him for the first time to become aware of my presence.
‘Help yourself,’ he said.
‘Thanks, old man.’
‘Though I’m surprised you have the heart to drink, after what has occurred to-night.’
He spoke coldly, and there was a distinct aloofness in his manner as he reached out and refilled his glass. He eyed me for a moment as if I had been a caterpillar in some salad of which he was about to partake, and resumed.
‘I saw Nobby.’
‘Oh, yes?’
‘As I anticipated, she cried buckets.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘So you should be. Yours was the hand that wrenched those pearly drops from her eyes.’
‘Oh, dash it!’
‘It’s no good saying “Oh, dash it!” You have a conscience, I presume? Then it must have informed you that you were directly responsible for the downpour. Well, well, if anybody had told me that Bertie Wooster would let me down—’
‘You said that before.’
‘And I shall go on saying it. Even unto seventy times seven. One doesn’t dismiss a thing like that with a single careless comment. When your whole faith in human nature has been shattered, you are entitled to repeat yourself a bit.’
He laughed a short, mirthless laugh, very rasping and hard on the ears. Then, as if dismissing an unpleasant subject for the time being, he drained his snootful and turned to the matter of my belated return, saying that he had expected me back hours ago.
‘When I took you for an after dinner stroll, I didn’t think you were going to stay out practically till the arrival of the morning milk. You will have to change these dissolute city ways, if you wish to fit in with the life of a decent English village.’
‘I am a bit later than I had anticipated.’
‘What kept you?’
‘Well, for one thing, I was being biffed over the nut by Edwin with a hockey stick. That took time.’
‘What?’
‘Yes.’
‘He socked you with a hockey stick?’
‘Right on the bean.’
‘Ah!’ said Boko, and seemed to brighten quite a good deal. ‘Fine little chap, Edwin. Good stuff in that boy. Got nice ideas.’
The circs being what they were, this absence of the sympathetic note distressed me, filling me with what I have heard Jeeves describe as thoughts that lie too deep for tears. A man in my position wants his friends to rally round him.
‘Don’t gibe and scoff,’ I begged. ‘I want sympathy, Boko – sympathy and advice. Do you know what?’
‘What?’
‘I’m engaged to Florence.’
‘What, again? What’s become of Stilton?’
‘I will tell you the whole ghastly story.’
I suppose the poignant note in my voice stirred his better nature, for he listened gravely and with evidences of human feeling as I related my tragedy. When I had concluded, he shivered and reached out for the decanter, his whole aspect that of a man who needed one quick.
‘There but for the grace of God,’ he said, in alow voice, ‘goes George Webster Fittleworth!’
I pointed out that he was missing the nub.
‘Yes, that’s all very well, Boko, and I am sure you have my heartiest congratulations, but the basic fact with which we have to deal is that there actually does go Bertram Wooster. Have you nothing to suggest?’
‘Is any man safe?’ he continued, still musing. ‘I did think that the black spot had finally passed into Stilton’s possession.’
‘So did I.’
‘It’s a shame it hasn’t, because he really loves that girl, Bertie. No doubt you have been feeling a decent pity for Stilton, but I assure you it was wasted. He loves her. And when a man with a head as fat as that loves, it is for ever. You and I would say that it was impossible that anyone should really want to marry this frightful girl, but it is a fact. Did she make you read “Types of Ethical Theory”?’
‘Yes.’
‘Me, too. It was that that first awoke me to a sense of my peril. But when she slipped it to Stilton, he ate it alive. I don’t suppose he understood a word of it, but I repeat, he ate it alive. Theirs would have been an ideal match. Too bad it has blown a fuse. Of course, if Stilton would resign from the Force, a way could readily be paved to an understanding. It’s that that is at the root of the trouble.’
Once more, I saw that the nub had eluded him.
‘It’s not Stilton I’m worrying about, Boko, old man, it’s me. I view Stilton with a benevolent eye, and would be glad to see him happily mated, but the really vital question is Where does Bertram get off? How do we extricate poor old Wooster?’
‘You really want to be extricated?’
‘My dear chap!’
‘She would be a good influence in your life, remember. Steadying. Educative.’
‘Would you torture me, Boko?’
‘Well, how did you extricate yourself, when you were engaged to her last time?’
‘It’s a long story.’
‘Then for goodness’ sake don’t start it now. All I meant was, could the same technique be employed in the present crisis?’
‘I’m afraid not. There was something she wanted me to do for her, and I failed to do it and she gave me the air. These circs could not arise again.’
‘I see. Well, it’s a pity you can’t use the method I did. The Fittleworth System. Simple but efficacious. That would solve all you
r difficulties.’
‘Why can’t I use it?’
‘Because you don’t know what it is.’
‘You could tell me.’
He shook his head.
‘No, Bertie, not after the extraordinary attitude you have seen fit to take up with regard to my proposals for sweetening your Uncle Percy. The Fittleworth Method – tried and tested, I may say, and proved infallible – can be imparted only to the deserving. It is not a secret I would care to share with any except real friends who are as true as steel.’
‘I’m as true as steel, Boko.’
‘No, Bertie, you are not as true as steel, or anything like it. You may have shown that by your behaviour to-night. A real eye-opener it has been, causing me to revise my estimate of your friendship from the bottom up. Of course, if you were to reconsider your refusal to chip in on this scheme of Jeeves’s and consent, after all, to play your allotted part, I should be delighted to . . . But what’s the use of talking about it? You have declined, and that’s that. I know your iron will. When you come to a decision, it stays come to.’
I didn’t know so much about that. It is true, of course, that I have a will of iron, but it can be switched off if the circumstances seem to demand it. The strong man always knows when to yield and make concessions. I have frequently found myself doing so in my relation with Jeeves.
‘You absolutely guarantee this secret method?’ I asked earnestly.
‘I can only tell you that it produced immediate and gratifying results in my own case. One moment, I was engaged to Florence; the next, I wasn’t. As quick as that. It was more like magic than anything I can think of.’
‘And you’ll tell it me, if I promise to tick Uncle Percy off?’
‘I’ll tell it you after you’ve ticked him off.’
‘Why not now?’
‘Just a whim. It’s not that I don’t trust you, Bertie. It’s not that I think that, having learned the Fittleworth secret, you would change your mind about carrying out your end of the contract. But it would be a temptation, and I don’t want your pure soul to be sullied by it.’