Leave it to Psmith (12 page)

You would not have suspected Lord Emsworth, from a casual glance, of having within him the ability to move rapidly; but it is a fact that he was out of the smoking-room and skimming down the front steps of the club before Mr McTodd’s jaw, which had fallen at the spectacle of his host bounding out of his horizon of vision like a jack-rabbit, had time to hitch itself up again. A moment later, Mr McTodd, happening to direct his gaze out of the window, saw him whiz across the road and vanish into the florist’s shop.

It was at this juncture that Psmith, having finished his lunch, came downstairs to enjoy a quiet cup of coffee. The room was rather crowded, and the chair which Lord Emsworth had vacated offered a wide invitation. He made his way to it.

‘Is this chair occupied?’ he inquired politely. So politely that Mr McTodd’s reply sounded by contrast even more violent than it might otherwise have done.

‘No, it isn’t!’ snapped Mr McTodd.

Psmith seated himself. He was feeling agreeably disposed to conversation.

‘Lord Emsworth has left you then?’ he said.

‘Is he a friend of yours?’ inquired Mr McTodd in a voice that suggested that he was perfectly willing to accept a proxy as a target for his wrath.

‘I know him by sight. Nothing more.’

‘Blast him!’ muttered Mr McTodd with indescribable virulence.

Psmith eyed him inquiringly.

‘Correct me if I am wrong,’ he said, ‘but I seem to detect in your manner a certain half-veiled annoyance. Is anything the matter?’

Mr McTodd barked bitterly.

‘Oh, no. Nothing’s the matter. Nothing whatever, except that that old beaver – ’ – here he wronged Lord Emsworth, who, whatever his faults, was not a bearded man – ‘that old beaver invited me to lunch, talked all the time about his infernal flowers, never let me get a word in edgeways, hadn’t the common civility to offer me a cigar, and now has gone off without a word of apology and buried himself in that shop over the way. I’ve never been so insulted in my life!’ raved Mr McTodd.

‘Scarcely the perfect host,’ admitted Psmith.

‘And if he thinks,’ said Mr McTodd, rising, ‘that I’m going to go and stay with him at his beastly castle after this, he’s mistaken. I’m supposed to go down there with him this evening. And perhaps the old fossil thinks I will! After this!’ A horrid laugh rolled up from Mr McTodd’s interior. ‘Likely! I see myself! After being insulted like this . . . Would
you?
he demanded.

Psmith gave the matter thought.

‘I am inclined to think no.’

‘And so am I damned well inclined to think no!’ cried Mr McTodd. ‘I’m going away now, this very minute. And if that old total loss ever comes back, you can tell him he’s seen the last of me.’

And Ralston McTodd, his blood boiling with justifiable indignation and pique to a degree dangerous on such a warm day, stalked off towards the door with a hard, set face. Through the door he stalked to the cloak-room for his hat and cane; then, his lips moving silently, he stalked through the hall, stalked down the steps, and passed from the scene, stalking furiously round the corner in quest of a tobacconist’s. At the moment of his disappearance, the Earl of Emsworth had just begun to give the sympathetic florist a limpid character-sketch of Angus McAllister.

Psmith shook his head sadly. These clashings of human temperament were very lamentable. They disturbed the after-luncheon repose of the man of sensibility. He ordered coffee, and endeavoured to forget the painful scene by thinking of Eve Halliday.

§ 5

The florist who had settled down to ply his trade opposite the Senior Conservative Club was a delightful fellow, thoroughly sound on the hollyhock question and so informative in the matter of delphiniums, achilleas, coreopsis, eryngiums, geums, lupines, bergamot and early phloxes that Lord Emsworth gave himself up whole-heartedly to the feast of reason and the flow of soul; and it was only some fifteen minutes later that he remembered that he had left a guest languishing in the lower smoking-room and that this guest might be thinking him a trifle remiss in the observance of the sacred duties of hospitality.

‘Bless my soul, yes!’ said his lordship, coming out from under the influence with a start.

Even then he could not bring himself to dash abruptly from the shop. Twice he reached the door and twice pottered back to sniff at flowers and say something he had forgotten to mention about the Stronger Growing Clematis. Finally, however, with one last, longing, lingering look behind, he tore himself away and trotted back across the road.

Arrived in the lower smoking-room, he stood in the doorway for a moment, peering. The place had been a blur to him when he had left it, but he remembered that he had been sitting in the middle window and, as there were only two seats by the window, that tall, dark young man in one of them must be the guest he had deserted. That he could be a changeling never occurred to Lord Emsworth. So pleasantly had the time passed in the shop across the way that he had the impression that he had only been gone a couple of minutes or so. He made his way to where the young man sat. A vague idea came into his head that the other had grown a bit in his absence, but it passed.

‘My dear fellow,’ he said genially, as he slid into the other chair, ‘I really must apologise.’

It was plain to Psmith that the other was under a misapprehension, and a really nice-minded young man would no doubt have put the matter right at once. The fact that it never for a single instant occurred to Psmith to do so was due, no doubt, to some innate defect in his character. He was essentially a young man who took life as it came, and the more inconsequently it came the better he liked it. Presently, he reflected, it would become necessary for him to make some excuse and steal quietly out of the other’s life; but meanwhile the situation seemed to him to present entertaining possibilities.

‘Not at all,’ he replied graciously. ‘Not at all.’

‘I was afraid for a moment,’ said Lord Emsworth, ‘that you might – quite naturally – be offended.’

‘Absurd!’

‘Shouldn’t have left you like that. Shocking bad manners. But, my dear fellow, I simply had to pop across the street.’

‘Most decidedly,’ said Psmith. ‘Always pop across streets. It is the secret of a happy and successful life.’

Lord Emsworth looked at him a little perplexedly, and wondered if he had caught the last remark correctly. But his mind had never been designed for the purpose of dwelling closely on problems for any length of time, and he let it go.

‘Beautiful roses that man has,’ he observed. ‘Really an extraordinarily fine display.’

‘Indeed?’ said Psmith.

‘Nothing to touch mine, though. I wish, my dear fellow, you could have been down at Blandings at the beginning of the month. My roses were at their best then. It’s too bad you weren’t there to see them.’

‘The fault no doubt was mine,’ said Psmith.

‘Of course you weren’t in England then.’

‘Ah! That explains it.’

‘Still, I shall have plenty of flowers to show you when you are at Blandings. I expect,’ said Lord Emsworth, at last showing a host-like disposition to give his guest a belated innings, ‘I expect you’ll write one of your poems about my gardens, eh?’

Psmith was conscious of a feeling of distinct gratification. Weeks of toil among the herrings of Billingsgate had left him with a sort of haunting fear that even in private life there clung to him the miasma of the fish market. Yet here was a perfectly unprejudiced observer looking squarely at him and mistaking him for a poet – showing that in spite of all he had gone through there must still be something notably spiritual and unfishy about his outward appearance.

‘Very possibly,’ he said. ‘Very possibly.’

‘I suppose you get ideas for your poetry from all sorts of things,’ said Lord Emsworth, nobly resisting the temptation to collar the conversation again. He was feeling extremely friendly towards this poet fellow. It was deuced civil of him not to be put out and huffy at being left alone in the smoking-room.

‘From practically everything,’ said Psmith, ‘except fish.’

‘Fish?’

‘I have never written a poem about fish.’

‘No?’ said Lord Emsworth, again feeling that a pin had worked loose in the machinery of the conversation.

‘I was once offered a princely sum,’ went on Psmith, now floating happily along on the tide of his native exuberance, ‘to write a ballad for the
Fishmonger’s Gazette
entitled, “Herbert the Turbot”. But I was firm. I declined.’

‘Indeed?’ said Lord Emsworth.

‘One has one’s self-respect,’ said Psmith.

‘Oh, decidedly,’ said Lord Emsworth.

‘It was painful, of course. The editor broke down completely when he realised that my refusal was final. However, I sent him on with a letter of introduction to John Drinkwater, who, I believe, turned him out quite a good little effort on the theme.’

At this moment, when Lord Emsworth was feeling a trifle dizzy, and Psmith, on whom conversation always acted as a mental stimulus, was on the point of plunging even deeper into the agreeable depths of light persiflage, a waiter approached.

‘A lady to see you, your lordship.’

‘Eh? Ah, yes, of course, of course. I was expecting her. It is a Miss—what is the name? Holliday? Halliday. It is a Miss Halli-day,’ he said in explanation to Psmith, ‘who is coming down to Blandings to catalogue the library. My secretary, Baxter, told her to call here and see me. If you will excuse me for a moment, my dear fellow?’

‘Certainly.’

As Lord Emsworth disappeared, it occurred to Psmith that the moment had arrived for him to get his hat and steal softly out of the other’s life for ever. Only so could confusion and embarrassing explanations be avoided. And it was Psmith’s guiding rule in life always to avoid explanations. It might, he felt, cause Lord Emsworth a momentary pang when he returned to the smoking-room and found that he was a poet short, but what is that in these modern days when poets are so plentiful that it is almost impossible to fling a brick in any public place without damaging some stern young singer. Psmith’s view of the matter was that, if Lord Emsworth was bent on associating with poets, there was bound to be another one along in a minute. He was on the point, therefore, of rising, when the laziness induced by a good lunch decided him to remain in his comfortable chair for a few minutes longer. He was in one of those moods of rare tranquillity which it is rash to break.

He lit another cigarette, and his thoughts, as they had done after the departure of Mr McTodd, turned dreamily in the direction of the girl he had met at Miss Clarkson’s Employment Bureau. He mused upon her with a gentle melancholy. Sad, he felt, that two obviously kindred spirits like himself and her should meet in the whirl of London life, only to separate again – presumably for ever – simply because the etiquette governing those who are created male and female forbids a man to cement a chance acquaintanceship by ascertaining the lady’s name and address, asking her to lunch, and swearing eternal friendship. He sighed as he gazed thoughtfully out of the lower smoking-room window. As he had indicated in his conversation with Mr Walderwick, those blue eyes and that cheerful, friendly face had made a deep impression on him. Who was she? Where did she live? And was he ever to see her again?

He was. Even as he asked himself the question, two figures came down the steps of the club, and paused. One was Lord Emsworth, without his hat. The other – and Psmith’s usually orderly heart gave a spasmodic bound at the sight of her – was the very girl who was occupying his thoughts. There she stood, as blue-eyed, as fair-haired, as indescribably jolly and charming as ever.

Psmith rose from his chair with a vehemence almost equal to that recently displayed by Mr McTodd. It was his intention to add himself immediately to the group. He raced across the room in a manner that drew censorious glances from the local greybeards, many of whom had half a mind to write to the committee about it.

But when he reached the open air the pavement at the foot of the club steps was empty. The girl was just vanishing round the corner into the Strand, and of Lord Emsworth there was no sign whatever.

By this time, however, Psmith had acquired a useful working knowledge of his lordship’s habits, and he knew where to look. He crossed the street and headed for the florist’s shop.

‘Ah, my dear fellow,’ said his lordship amiably, suspending his conversation with the proprietor on the subject of delphiniums, ‘must you be off? Don’t forget that our train leaves Paddington at five sharp. You take your ticket for Market Blandings.’

Psmith had come into the shop merely with the intention of asking his lordship if he happened to know Miss Halliday’s address, but these words opened out such a vista of attractive possibilities that he had abandoned this tame programme immediately. He remembered now that among Mr McTodd’s remarks on things in general had been one to the effect that he had received an invitation to visit Blandings Castle – of which invitation he did not propose to avail himself; and he argued that if he had acted as substitute for Mr McTodd at the club, he might well continue the kindly work by officiating for him at Blandings. Looking at the matter altruistically, he would prevent his kind host much disappointment by taking this course; and, looking at it from a more personal viewpoint, only by going to Blandings could he renew his acquaintance with this girl. Psmith had never been one of those who hang back diffidently when Adventure calls, and he did not hang back now.

‘At five sharp,’ he said. ‘I will be there.’

‘Capital, my dear fellow,’ said his lordship.

‘Does Miss Halliday travel with us?’

‘Eh? No, she is coming down in a day or two.’

‘I shall look forward to meeting her,’ said Psmith.

He turned to the door, and Lord Emsworth with a farewell beam resumed his conversation with the florist.