Pauline was panting somewhat. Not exactly snorting, but coming very near to what you might call the borderland of the snort. Her eyes were hard and bright. Deeply moved. She picked up her bathing suit.
‘Push off, Bertie,’ she said.
I had been hoping for a quiet chat, in the course of which we would review the situation, touching on this point and on that, and strive to ascertain what to do for the best.
‘But listen …’
‘I want to change.’
‘Change what?’
‘Put on my swimming suit.’
I could not follow her.
‘Why?’
‘Because I am going to swim.’
‘Swim?’
‘Swim.’
I stared.
‘You aren’t going back to the yacht?’
‘I am going back to the yacht.’
‘But I wanted to talk about Chuffy.’
‘I never wish to hear his name mentioned again.’
It seemed time to be the wise old mediator.
‘Oh, come!’
‘Well?’
‘When I say “Oh, come!”’ I explained, ‘I mean surely you don’t intend to give the poor blighter the permanent air on account of a trifling lovers’ tiff?’
She looked at me in rather a peculiar manner.
‘Would you mind repeating that? Just the last three words.’
‘Trifling lovers’ tiff?’
She breathed heavily, and for a moment I experienced a return of that lions’ den sensation.
‘I wasn’t sure I had caught them correctly,’ she said.
‘I mean to say you get (a) a girl and (b) a bloke and stir up their generous natures, and the result is that each says lots of things she or he doesn’t mean.’
‘Oh? Well, let me tell you I meant every word I said. I told him I never wanted to speak to him again. I don’t. I told him I hated him. I do. I called him a pig. He is.’
‘Now, that’s rummy about Chuffy’s pigs. I had no notion he kept them.’
‘Why not? Birds of a feather.’
There seemed nothing much more to say about pigs.
‘Aren’t you a bit hard?’
‘Am I?’
‘And rather rough on Chuffy?’
‘Am I?’
‘You wouldn’t say his attitude was excusable?’
‘I would not.’
‘Must have been a shock for the poor old chap, I mean, barging in and finding you here.’
‘Bertie.’
‘Hallo?’
‘Ever been hit over the head with a chair?’
‘No.’
‘Well, you soon may be.’
I began to see she was in difficult mood.
‘Oh, well!’
‘Does that mean the same as “Oh, come!”?’
‘No. All I was driving at was that it seems a pity. Two loving hearts sundered for ever – bingo!’
‘Yes?’
‘Still, if that’s the way you feel, well, that’s the way you feel, what?’
‘Yes.’
‘We now come to this idea of swimming home. Potty, it strikes me as.’
‘There’s nothing to keep me here now, is there?’
‘No. But the midnight swim … You’re going to find it pretty cold.’
‘And wet. I don’t care.’
‘And how are you going to get aboard?’
‘I’ll get aboard. I can climb up by the thing they hang the anchor from. I’ve done it before. So will you remove yourself and let me change.’
I went out on to the landing. And presently she emerged in the bathing suit.
‘You needn’t see me out.’
‘Of course I will, if you’re really going.’
‘I’m going, all right.’
‘Well, if you must.’
Outside the front door the air seemed nippier than ever. The mere thought of plunging into the harbour gave me the shivers. But it had no effect on her. She slipped off into the darkness without a word, and I went upstairs to bed.
You might have thought that after garages and potting sheds the fact that I was in a bed would have resulted in instant slumber. But no. I couldn’t get off. The more I tried, the more I found the mind turning to what you might call the tragedy in which I had so recently participated. I don’t mind admitting that my heart ached for Chuffy. It also ached for Pauline. It ached for both of them.
I mean to say, consider the facts. Two thoroughly sound eggs, destined for each other, you might almost say, through all eternity, giving each other the bird like this for no reason whatever, really. Pitiful. Rotten. No good to man or beast. The more I thought of it, the sillier it seemed.
And yet there it was. Words had passed. Relations had been severed. The whole binge was irrevocably off.
There is only one thing for the sympathetic bystander to do on these occasions, and I realized now that it was madness not to have done it before going to bed and attempting sleep. I slid out from between the sheets and went downstairs.
The whisky bottle was in the cupboard. So was the siphon. So was the glass. I mixed myself a healing beaker and sat down. And, as I did so, I observed on the table a sheet of paper.
It was a note from Pauline Stoker.
Dear Bertie,
You were right about it being cold. I couldn’t face the swim. But there’s a boat down by the landing stage. I shall row to the yacht and set it adrift. I’ve come back to borrow your overcoat. I didn’t want to disturb you, so I climbed in through the window. I’m afraid you will have to sacrifice the coat, as of course I shall have to throw it overboard when I get to the yacht. Sorry.
P.S.
You notice the style? Curt. Staccato. Evidence of the wounded heart and the heavy mind. I felt sorrier for her than ever, but glad she probably wasn’t going to get a cold in the head. As for the coat, a careless shrug of the shoulders covered that. I did not grudge it her, though new and silk-lined. Only too pleased, about summed up my attitude in the matter.
I tore up the note and returned to my spot.
There is nothing like a strong w-and-s for calming the system. In about another quarter of an hour I was feeling so soothed that I could contemplate bed once more, this time confident that the betting was at least eight to three that a refreshing slumber would be my portion.
I rose accordingly, and was just about to ankle upstairs, when for the second time that night there was the dickens of a knocking on the front door.
I don’t know that you would call me an irascible man. I rather think not. Ask them about me at the Drones, and they will probably tell you that Bertram Wooster, wind and weather permitting, is as a general rule suavity itself. But, as I had been compelled to show Jeeves in the matter of the banjolele, I can be pushed too far. It was with drawn brow and cold eye that I now undid the chain. I was just about ready to give Sergeant Voules – for I assumed that it was he – the ticking-off of a lifetime.
‘Voules,’ I was preparing to say, ‘enough is enough. This police persecution must stop. It is monstrous and uncalled for. We are not in Russia, Voules. There are such things, I would have your remember, Voules, as strong letters to The Times.’
That, or something like it, is what I would have said to Sergeant Voules: and what caused me to refrain was not weakness or pity, but the fact that the man attached to the knocker wasn’t Voules at all. It was J. Washburn Stoker, and he was regarding me with a sort of hard-boiled fury which, but for the fact that I had just finished a life-giving snort and knew that his daughter Pauline was safely off the premises, would undoubtedly have tickled me up not a little.
As it was, I remained tranquil.
‘Yes?’ I said.
I had packed so much cold surprise and hauteur into the word that a lesser man might well have keeled over backwards as if hit by a bullet. J. W. Stoker took it without blinking. He pushed past me into the house, then turned and grabbed me by the shoulder.
‘Now, then!’ he said.
; I disengaged myself coldly. I had to wriggle out of my pyjama jacket to do so, but I managed it.
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Where’s my daughter?’
‘Your daughter Pauline?’
‘I have only one daughter.’
‘And you ask me where this one daughter is?’
‘I know where she is.’
‘Then why did you ask?’
‘She’s here.’
‘Then give me my pyjama jacket and tell her to come in,’ I said.
I’ve never actually seen a man grind his teeth, so I wouldn’t care to state definitely that this is what J. Washburn Stoker did at this juncture. He may have done. He may not have done. All I can say authoritatively is that the muscles stood out on his cheeks and his jaws began to work as if he were chewing gum. It was not a pleasant spectacle, but thanks to the fact that I had mixed that whisky and splash particularly strong so as to facilitate sleep I was enabled to endure it with fortitude and phlegm.
‘She’s in this house!’ he said, continuing to grind, if he was grinding.
‘What makes you think that?’
‘I’ll tell you what makes me think that. I went to her state-room half an hour ago, and it was empty.’
‘But why on earth should you suppose she’s come here?’
‘Because I know she’s infatuated with you.’
‘Not at all. She regards me as a sister.’
‘I am going to search this house.’
‘Charge right ahead.’
He dashed upstairs and I returned to my spot. Not the same spot. Another one. I felt that in the circumstances a repeat was justified. And presently my visitor, who had gone up like a lion, came down like a lamb. I suppose a parent who has barged into a comparative stranger’s cottage in the small hours in search of a missing daughter, feels more or less of a silly ass. I know I should, and apparently this Stoker did, for he shuffled a bit and I could see that a lot of the steam or motive force had gone out of him.
‘I owe you an apology, Mr Wooster.’
‘Don’t give it a thought.’
‘I took it for granted when I found Pauline gone –’
‘Dismiss the whole thing from your mind. Might have happened to anybody. Faults on both sides and so forth. You’ll have a certain something before you go?’
It seemed to me that it would be a prudent move to detain him on the premises for as long as possible, so as to give Pauline plenty of time to get back to the old boat. But he wouldn’t be tempted. His mind was evidently too occupied for spots.
‘It beats me where she can have gone,’ he said, and you would have been astounded at the mildness and even chummy pathos with which he spoke. It was as if Bertram had been some wise old friend to whom he was bringing his little troubles. The man seemed positively punctured. A child could have played with him.
I endeavoured to throw out a word of cheer.
‘I expect she’s gone for a swim.’
‘At this time of night?’
‘Girls do rummy things.’
‘And she’s a curious girl. This infatuation of hers for you, for instance.’
This seemed to me lacking in tact, and I would have frowned slightly, had I not remembered that I wished to disabuse him, if disabuse is what I’m driving at, of the idea that any such infatuation existed.
‘Correct this notion that Miss Stoker is under my fatal spell,’ I urged him. ‘She laughs herself sick at the sight of me.’
‘I did not get that impression this afternoon.’
‘Oh, that? Just brother and sister stuff. It shan’t occur again.’
‘It had better not,’ he said, returning for a moment to what I might call his earlier manner. ‘Well, I won’t keep you up, Mr Wooster. I apologize again for making a darned fool of myself.’
I did not quite slap him on the back, but I made a sort of backslapping gesture.
‘Not at all,’ I said. ‘Not at all. I wish I had a quid for every time I’ve made a darned fool of myself.’
And on these cordial terms we parted. He went down the garden path, and I, having waited up about ten minutes on the chance that somebody else might come paying a social call, drained my glass and popped up to bed.
Something attempted, something done, had earned a night’s repose, or as near as you can get to a night’s repose in a place full of Stokers and Paulines and Vouleses and Chuffys and Dobsons. It was not long before the weary eyelids closed and I was off.
It seems almost incredible, considering what the night life of Chuffnell Regis was like, but the next thing that woke me was not a girl leaping out from under the bed, her father bounding in with blood in his eye, or a police sergeant playing ragtime on the knocker, but actually the birds outside my window heralding in a new day.
Well, when I say heralding, it was about ten-thirty of a fine summer morning, and the sunshine streaming in through the window seemed to be calling to me to get up and see what I could do to an egg, a rasher, and the good old pot of coff.
I had a hasty bath and shave and trotted down to the kitchen, full of joie de vivre.
11
* * *
Sinister Behaviour of a Yacht-Owner
IT WAS NOT until I had finished breakfast and was playing the banjolele in the front garden that something seemed to whisper reproachfully in my ear that I had no right to be feeling as perky as this on what was so essentially the morning after. Dirty work had been perpetrated overnight. Tragedy had stalked through the home. Scarcely ten hours earlier I had been a witness of a scene which, if I were the man of fine fibre I liked to think myself, should have removed all the sunshine from my life. Two loving hearts, one of which I had been at school and Oxford with, had gone to the mat together in my presence and having chewed holes in one another, had parted in anger, never – according to present schedule – to meet again. And here I was, carefree and callous, playing ‘I Lift up my Finger and I Say Tweet-Tweet’ on the banjolele.
All wrong. I switched to ‘Body and Soul’, and a sober sadness came upon me.
Something, I felt, must be done. Steps must be taken and avenues explored.
But I could not conceal from myself that the situation was complex. Usually, in my experience, when one of my pals has broken off diplomatic relations with a girl or vice versa they have been staying in a country house together or at least living in London, where it wasn’t so dashed difficult to arrange a meeting and join their hands with a benevolent smile. But in this matter of Chuffy and Pauline Stoker, consider the facts. She was on the yacht, virtually in irons. He was at the Hall, three miles inland. And anybody who wanted to do any hand-joining had got to be a much more mobile force than I was. True, my standing with old Stoker had improved a bit overnight, but there had been no hint on his part of any disposition to give me the run of his yacht. I seemed to have about as much chance of getting in touch with Pauline and endeavouring to reason with her as if she had never come over from America at all.
Quite a prob., I mean to say, and I was still brooding on it when the garden gate clicked and I perceived Jeeves walking up the path.
‘Ah, Jeeves,’ I said.
My manner probably seemed to him a little distant, and I jolly well meant it to. What Pauline had told me about his loose and unconsidered remarks with reference to my mentality had piqued me considerably. It was not the first time he had said that sort of thing, and one has one’s feelings.
But if he sensed the hauteur, he affected to ignore it. His bearing continued placid and unmoved.
‘Good morning, sir.’
‘Have you come from the yacht?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Was Miss Stoker there?’
‘Yes, sir. She appeared at the breakfast table. I was somewhat surprised to see her. I had assumed that it was her intention to remain ashore and establish communication with his lordship.’
I laughed shortly.
‘They established communication, all right!’
‘Sir?’
I put down the banjolele and looked at him sternly.
‘A nice thing you let all and sundry in for last night!’ I said.
‘Sir?’
‘You can’t get out of it by saying “Sir?” Why on earth didn’t you stop Miss Stoker from swimming ashore yestreen?’
‘I could scarcely take the liberty, sir, of thwarting the young lady in an enterprise on which her heart was so plainly set.’
‘She says you urged her on with word and gesture.’
‘No, sir. I merely expressed sympathy with her stated aims.’
‘You said I would be delighted to put her up for the night.’
‘She had already decided to seek refuge in your house, sir. I did nothing more than hazard the opinion that you would do all that lay in your power to assist her.’
‘Well, do you know what the outcome was – the upshot, if I may use the term? I was pursued by the police.’
‘Indeed, sir?’
‘Yes. Naturally I couldn’t sleep in the house, with every nook and cranny bulging with blighted girls, so I withdrew to the garage. I had hardly been there ten minutes before Sergeant Voules arrived.’
‘I have not met Sergeant Voules, sir.’
‘With him Constable Dobson.’
‘I am acquainted with Constable Dobson. A nice young fellow. He is keeping company with Mary, the parlourmaid at the Hall. A red-haired girl, sir.’
‘Resist the urge to talk about the colour of parlourmaids’ hair, Jeeves,’ I said coldly. ‘It is not germane to the issue. Stick to the point. Which is that I spent a sleepless night, chased to and fro by the gendarmerie.’
‘I am sorry to hear that, sir.’
‘Eventually Chuffy arrived. Forming a totally erroneous diagnosis of the case, he insisted on helping me to me room, removing my boots, and putting me to bed. He was thus occupied when Miss Stoker strolled in, wearing my heliotrope pyjamas.’
‘Most disturbing, sir.’
‘It was. They had the dickens of a row, Jeeves.’
‘Indeed, sir?’
‘Eyes flashed, voices were raised. Eventually Chuffy fell downstairs and went moodily out into the night. And the point is – the nub of the thing is – what is to be done about it?’
The Jeeves Omnibus - Vol 1: Page 10
