'Then I needn't have come up at all!'
'I wouldn't say that. If Ronnie's so apt to go off the deep end at the slightest provocation, we can't be too much on the safe side. Even distant civility might have hotted him up.'
Sue considered this.
'That's true,' she agreed.
'Better to be perfect strangers.'
'Yes.' Sue gave a little frown. 'How beastly it's all going to be, though.'
'That's all right. I shan't mind.'
'I wasn't thinking about you. It seems so rotten, deceiving Ronnie.'
'You've got to get used to that. Secret of a happy and successful married life. I thought you meant that it would be rather agony you and me just giving each other a distant bow when they introduced us and then shunning one another coldly. And it does seem darned silly, what? I mean, we were very close to each other once. Can one altogether forget those happy days ?'
'I can. And so must you. For goodness sake, Monty, don't let's have any of what Gally calls that touch of Auld Lang Syne.'
'No, no. Quite.'
'I don't want Ronnie driven off his head.' 'Far from it.'
'Well, do remember to be careful.' 'Oh, I will. Rely on me.'
'Thanks, Monty darling .. . What's the matter?' asked Sue, as her host gave a sudden start.
A waiter had brought up a silver dish and uncovered it with the air of one doing a conjuring trick. Monty inspected it with the proper seriousness.
'Oh, nothing,' he said as the waiter retired. 'Just that "Monty darling." It brought back the old days.'
' For goodness sake forget the old days!'
' Oh, quite. I will. Oh, rather. Most certainly. But it made me feel how rum life was. Life is rummy, you know. You can't get away from that.'
'I suppose it is.'
'Take a simple instance. Here are you and I, face to face across this table, lunching together like the dickens, precisely as in the dear old days, and all the time you are contemplating getting hitched up to R. Fish, while I am heart and soul in favour of an early union with Gertrude Butterwick.'
"What!'
'Butterwick. B for blister, U for ukelele . ..' 'Yes, I heard. But do you mean you're engaged, too, Monty?' 'Well, yes and no. Not absolutely. And yet not absolutely not. I am, as it were, on appro.' 'Can't she make up her mind?'
'Oh, her mind's made up all right. Oh, yes, yes, yes, indeed there's no doubt about good old Gertrude's mind, bless her. She loves me like billy-o. But there are wheels within wheels.'
' What do you mean ?'
'It's an expression. It signifies ... well, by Jove, now you bring up the point,' said Monty frankly, 'I'm dashed if I know just what it does signify. Wheels within wheels. Why wheels? What wheels? Still, there it is. I suppose the idea is to suggest that everything's pretty averagely complicated.'
'I understand what it means, of course. But why do you say it about yourself?'
'Because there's a snag sticking up in the course of true love. A very sizeable, jagged snag. Her blighted father, to wit, J. G. Butterwick, of Butterwick, Price, and Mandelbaum, export and import merchants.'
He swallowed a roast potato emotionally. Sue was touched. She had never ceased to congratulate herself on her sagacity in breaking off her engagement to this young man, but she was very fond of him.
'Oh, Monty, I'm so sorry. Poor darling. Doesn't he like you ?' Monty weighed this.
'Well, I wouldn't say that exactly. On two separate occasions he has said good morning to me, and once, round about Christmas time, I received a distinct impression that he was within an ace of offering me a cigar. But he's a queer bird. Years of exporting and importing have warped his mind a bit, with the result that for some reason I can't pretend to understand he appears to look on me as a sort of waster. The first thing he did when I ankled in and told him that subject to his approval 1 was about to marry his daughter was to ask me how I earned my living.' 'That must have been rather a shock.'
'It was. And a still worse one was when he went on to add that unless I got a job of some kind and held it down for a solid year, to show him that I wasn't a sort of waster, those wedding bells would never ring out.'
' You poor lamb. How perfectly awful!'
'Ghastly. I reeled. I stared. I couldn't believe the fellow was serious. When I found he was, I raced off to Gertrude and told her to jam her hat on and come round to the nearest registrar's. Only to discover, Sue, that she was one of those old-fashioned girls who won't dream of doing the dirty on Father. Solid middle-class stock, you understand. Backbone of England, and all that. So, elopements being off, I had no alternative but to fall in with the man's extraordinary scheme. I got my Uncle Gregory to place me with the Mammoth Publishing Company in the capacity of assistant editor of Tiny Tots. And if only I could have contrived to remain an assistant editor, I should be there now. But my boss went off on a holiday, silly ass, leaving me in charge of the sheet and in a well-meant attempt to ginger the bally thing up a bit I made rather a bloomer in the Uncle Woggly department. The result being that a couple of days ago they formed a hollow square and drummed me out. And now I'm starting all over again at Blandings.'
'I see. I couldn't understand why you wanted to be Lord Emsworth's secretary. I was afraid you must have lost all your money.'
'Oh, no. I've got my money all right. And what,' demanded Monty, swinging an arm in a passionate gesture and hitting a waiter on the chest and saying 'Oh, sorry!' 'does money amount to? What is money? Fairy gold. That's what it is. Dead Sea fruit. Because it doesn't help me a damn towards scooping in Gertrude.'
'Is she an awfully nice girl?'
'An angel, Sue. No question about that. Quite the angel, absolutely.'
'Well, I do hope you will come out all right, Monty dear.' 'Thanks, old thing.'
'And I'm glad you didn't pine for me. I've felt guilty at times.'
'Oh, I pined. Oh, yes, certainly I pined. But you know how it is. One perks up and sees fresh faces. Tell me, Sue,' said Monty anxiously. 'I ought to be able to hold down that secretary job for a year, oughtn't I? I mean, people don't fire secretaries much, do they?'
'If Hugo could keep the place, I should think you ought to be able to. How are you on pigs ?' 'Pigs?'
'Lord Emsworth ...'
' Of course, yes, I remember now, Hugo told me. The old boy has gone porcine, has he not ? You mean you would advise me to suck up to his pig, this what's-its-name of Blandings, to omit no word or act to conciliate it? Thanks for the tip. I'll bear it in mind.' He beamed affectionately at her across the table, and went so far as to take her hand in his. 'You've cheered me up, young Sue. You always did, I remember. You've got one of those sunny temperaments which look on the bright side and never fail to spot the blue bird. As you say, if a chap like Hugo could hold the job, it ought to be a snip for a man of my gifts, especially if I show myself pig-conscious. I anticipate a pleasant and successful year, with a wedding at the end of it. By which time, I take it, you will be an old married woman. When do you and Ronnie plan to leap off the dock?'
'As soon as ever Lord Emsworth lets him have his money. He wants to buy a partnership in a motor business.' 'Any opposish from the family?'
'Well, I don't think Lady Constance is frightfully pleased about it all.'
'Possibly it slipped out by some chance that you had been in the chorus?' 'It was mentioned.'
'Ah, that would account for it. But she's biting the bullet all right?'
'She seems resigned.' 'Then all is well.'
‘I suppose so. And yet.. . Monty, do you ever get a feeling that something unpleasant is going to happen ?'
‘I got it two days ago, when my Lord Tilbury reached for the slack of my trousers and started to heave me out.'
'I've got it. I was saying so to Ronnie, and he told me not to be morbid.'
'Ronnie knows words like "morbid", does he? Two syllables and everything.' 'Monty, what is Ronnie's mother really like?' Monty rubbed his chin. 'Haven't you met her yet?' 'No. She's been
over in Biarritz.' 'But is returning?' 'I suppose so.'
"Myes. Post-haste, I should imagine. 'Myes!' 'For goodness sake, don't say '"Myes". You're making my flesh creep. Is she such a terror ?'
Monty scratched his right cheekbone.
'Well, I'll tell you. Many people would say she was a genial soul.'
'That's what Ronnie said.'
'The jovial hunting type. Lady Di. Bluff goodwill, the jolly smile for everyone, and slabs of soup at Christmas time for the deserving villagers. But I don't know. I'm not so sure. I'll tell you this much. When I was a kid I was far more scared of her than I was of Lady Constance.'
'Why?'
'Ah, there you have me. But I was. Still, don't let me take the joy out of your life. For all we know, she may at this very moment be practising "O Perfect Love" on the harmonium. And now, I don't want to hurry you, but the sands are running out a bit. My train goes at two forty-five.. .'
'What?'
'Two-four-five, pip emma.'
' You aren't going to Blandings today. .. by the two forty-five?' 'That's right.'
'But I'm going back on the two forty-five.' 'Well, that's fine. We'll travel together.' 'But we mustn't travel together.'
'Why not? Nobody's going to see us, and we can be as distant as the dickens on arrival. Pleasant chit-chat as far as Market Blandings, and cold aloofness from there on, is the programme as I see it. It's silly to overdo this perfect stranger business.'
Sue, thinking it over, was inclined to agree with him. She had had one solitary railway journey that day, and was not indisposed for pleasant company on the way back.
'And if you think, young Susan,' said Monty, who, though chivalrous, could stand up for his rights, 'that I intend to wait on and travel by something that stops and shunts at every station, you err. It's a four hours' journey even by express. We'll just nip round to my flat and pick up my things. ..'
'And miss the train. No, thank you. I can't take any chances. I'll meet you at the station.'
'Just as you like,' said Monty agreeably. ‘I was only thinking that if you came to my flat. I could show you sixteen photographs of Gertrude.'
'You can describe them to me on the journey.'
'I will,' said Monty. 'Waiter, laddishiong.'
It was as the hands of the big clock at Paddington station were pointing to two-forty that Lady Julia Fish made her way through the crowd on the platform, her progress rendered impressive by the fact that her maid, two porters, and a boy who mistakenly supposed that he had found a customer for his oranges and nut-chocolate revolved about her like satellites around a sun.
Towards the turmoil in her immediate neighbourhood she displayed her usual good-humoured disdain. Where others ran she sauntered. Composedly she allowed one porter to open the door of an empty compartment, the other to place therein her bag, papers, novels, and magazines. She dismissed the maid, tipped the porters, and, settling herself in a corner seat, surveyed the bustle and stir without in an indulgent manner.
The ceremony of getting the two forty-five express off was now working up to a crescendo. Porters flitted to and fro. Guards shouted and poised green flags. The platform rang with the feet of belated travellers. And the train had just given a sort of shiver and began to move out of the station, when the door of the compartment was wrenched open and something that seemed to have six legs shot in, tripped over her, and collapsed into the seat opposite. It was a perspiring young man of the popinjay type, whose face though twisted, was not so twisted that she was unable to recognize 56 in him that Montague Bodkin who had once been so frequent a visitor at the home of her ancestors.
Monty had run it fine. What with hunting for a mislaid cigarette-case and getting held up in a traffic block in Praed Street, he had contrived this spectacular entry only by dint of sprinting the length of the platform at a rate of speed which he had not achieved since his university days.
But though warm and out of breath, he was still the preux chevalier who knew that when you have just barked the skin of a member of the other sex apologies must be made.
'It is quite all right, Mr Bodkin,' said Lady Julia as he made them. 'I am sorry I was in your way.'
Monty started violently.
'Gosh!' he exclaimed.
'1 beg your pardon.'
'I mean - er - hullo, Lady Julia!'
'Hullo, Mr Bodkin.'
' Phew!' said Monty, dabbing agitatedly at his forehead with the handkerchief which so perfectly matched his tie and socks.
H is distress was not caused entirely - or even to any great extent - by the reflection that he had just taken an inch of skin off the daughter of a hundred earls. That, no doubt, was regrettable, but what was really exercising his mind was the thought that Sue being presumably on the train and having presumably observed his rush down the platform would be coming along at any moment to see if he got aboard all right. It seemed to him that it was going to require all his address to handle the situation which her advent would create.
'Fancy running into you,' he said dismally.
'"Over me" would be a better way of putting it. I felt like some unfortunate Hindu beneath the wheels of Juggernaut. And where are you bound for, Mr Bodkin?'
'Eh? Oh, Market Blandings.'
'You are going to stay with your uncle at Matchingham?'
'Oh, no. I'm booked for the Castle. Lord Emsworth has taken me on as his secretary.'
'But how very odd. I thought you were working with the Mammoth Publishing Company.'
'I've resigned.'
'Resigned?'
'Resigned,' said Monty firmly. He was not going to reveal his Moscow to this woman. 'What made you resign?'
'Oh, various things. There are wheels within wheels.'
'How cosy!' said Lady Julia.
Monty decided to change the subject.
'I hear everything's much about the same at Blandings.'
'Who told you that?'
'Fellow named Carmody, who has been secretarying there. He said everything was much about the same.'
'What a very unobservant young man he must be! Didn't he mention that there had been an earthquake there, an upheaval, a social cataclysm?'
'I beg your. . . What was that?'
'Prepare yourself for a shock, Mr Bodkin. Ronnie is at Blandings, and with him a chorus-girl of the name of Brown, whom he proposes to marry.'
A little uncertain as to the judicious line to take, Monty decided to be astounded.
'No!'
'I assure you.' 'A chorus-girl?'
'Named Sue Brown. You don't know her, by any chance?' 'No. Oh, no. No.'
‘I thought possibly you might.' Lady Julia looked out of the window at the flying countryside. 'Very trying for a parent. Don't you think so, Mr Bodkin?'
'Oh, most.'
'Still, I suppose it might have been worse. There is rather a consoling ring about that simple name. I mean, Sue Brown doesn't sound like a girl who will bring breach of promise actions when the thing is broken off.'
'Broken off!'
'It might so easily have been Suzanne de Brune.' ' But - er - are you thinking of breaking it off?' 'Why, of course. You seem very concerned. Or is this joy ?' 'No -1 -er - It just occurred to me that it might be a bit difficult. I mean, Ronnie's a pretty determined sort of chap.'
'He inherits it from his mother,' said Lady Julia. It was during the silence which followed this remark that Sue entered the compartment.
At the moment of her arrival Monty was staring out of the window and Lady Julia had leaned back in her seat. There was nothing, accordingly, to indicate any connexion between the two, and Sue was just about to address to her old friend a cordial word of congratulation on his abilities as a sprinter, when the sound of the opening door caused him to turn. And so blank, so icy was the stare of non-recognition which she encountered that she sank bewildered on the cushions with all the sensations of one who, after being cut by the county, walks into a brick wall.
It was not long, however, before e
nlightenment came. Monty was a young man who believed in taking no chances.
'Nice and green the country's looking, Lady Julia,' he observed. 'Isn't it, Lady Julia?'
His companion gave it a glance.
'Very, considering there has been no rain for such a long time.' 'I should think Ronnie must be enjoying it at Blandings, Lady Julia.'
'I beg your pardon?'
'I say,' said Monty, spacing his words carefully, 'that your son Ronnie must be enjoying the green of the countryside at Blandings Castle. He likes it green,' explained Monty. And with another frigid stare at Sue he leaned back and puffed his cheeks out.
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