Leave it to Psmith (15 page)

‘How wonderful that you were able to come – after all!’

Again this ‘after all’ motive creeping into the theme. . . .

‘You know Miss Peavey’s work, of course?’ said Lady Constance, smiling pleasantly on her two celebrities.

‘Who does not?’ said Psmith courteously.

‘Oh,
do
you?’ said Miss Peavey, gratification causing her slender body to perform a sort of ladylike shimmy down its whole length. ‘I scarcely hoped that you would know my name. My Canadian sales have not been large.’

‘Quite large enough,’ said Psmith. ‘I mean, of course,’ he added with a paternal smile, ‘that, while your delicate art may not have a universal appeal in a young country, it is intensely appreciated by a small and select body of the intelligentsia.’

And if that was not the stuff to give them, he reflected with not a little complacency, he was dashed.

‘Your own wonderful poems,’ replied Miss Peavey, ‘are, of course, known the whole world over. Oh, Mr McTodd, you can hardly appreciate how I feel, meeting you. It is like the realisation of some golden dream of childhood. It is like . . .’

Here the Hon. Freddie Threepwood remarked suddenly that he was going to pop into the house for a whisky and soda. As he had not previously spoken, his observation had something of the effect of a voice from the tomb. The daylight was ebbing fast now, and in the shadows he had contrived to pass out of sight as well as out of mind. Miss Peavey started like an abruptly awakened somnambulist, and Psmith was at last able to release his hand, which he had begun to look on as gone beyond his control for ever. Until this fortunate interruption there had seemed no reason why Miss Peavey should not have continued to hold it till bedtime.

Freddie’s departure had the effect of breaking a spell. Lord Emsworth, who had been standing perfectly still with vacant eyes, like a dog listening to a noise a long way off, came to life with a jerk.

‘I’m going to have a look at my flowers,’ he announced.

‘Don’t be silly, Clarence,’ said his sister. ‘It’s much too dark to see flowers.’

‘I could smell ’em,’ retorted his lordship argumentatively.

It seemed as if the party must break up, for already his lordship had begun to potter off, when a new-comer arrived to solidify it again.

‘Ah, Baxter, my dear fellow,’ said Lord Emsworth. ‘Here we are, you see.’

‘Mr Baxter,’ said Lady Constance, ‘I want you to meet Mr McTodd.’

‘Mr McTodd!’ said the new arrival, on a note of surprise.

‘Yes, he found himself able to come after all.’

Ah!’ said the Efficient Baxter.

It occurred to Psmith as a passing thought, to which he gave no more than a momentary attention, that this spectacled and capable-looking man was gazing at him, as they shook hands, with a curious intensity. But possibly, he reflected, this was merely a species of optical illusion due to the other’s spectacles. Baxter, staring through his spectacles, often gave people the impression of possessing an eye that could pierce six inches of harveyised steel and stick out on the other side. Having registered in his consciousness the fact that he had been stared at keenly by this stranger, Psmith thought no more of the matter.

In thus lightly dismissing the Baxterian stare, Psmith had acted injudiciously. He should have examined it more closely and made an effort to analyse it, for it was by no means without its message. It was a stare of suspicion. Vague suspicion as yet, but nevertheless suspicion. Rupert Baxter was one of those men whose chief characteristic is a disposition to suspect their fellows. He did not suspect them of this or that definite crime: he simply suspected them. He had not yet definitely accused Psmith in his mind of any specific tort or malfeasance. He merely had a nebulous feeling that he would bear watching.

Miss Peavey now fluttered again into the centre of things. On the arrival of Baxter she had withdrawn for a moment into the background, but she was not the woman to stay there long. She came forward holding out a small oblong book, which, with a languishing firmness, she pressed into Psmith’s hands.

‘Could I persuade you, Mr McTodd,’ said Miss Peavey pleadingly, ‘to write some little thought in my autograph-book and sign it? I have a fountain-pen.’

Light flooded the arbour. The Efficient Baxter, who knew where everything was, had found and pressed the switch. He did this not so much to oblige Miss Peavey as to enable him to obtain a clearer view of the visitor. With each minute that passed the Efficient Baxter was finding himself more and more doubtful in his mind about this visitor.

‘There!’ said Miss Peavey, welcoming the illumination.

Psmith tapped his chin thoughtfully with the fountain-pen. He felt that he should have foreseen this emergency earlier. If ever there was a woman who was bound to have an autograph-book, that woman was Miss Peavey.

‘Just some little thought . . .’

Psmith hesitated no longer. In a firm hand he wrote the words ‘Across the pale parabola of Joy . . .’ added an unfaltering ‘Ralston McTodd’, and handed the book back.

‘How strange,’ sighed Miss Peavey.

‘May I look?’ said Baxter, moving quickly to her side.

‘How strange!’ repeated Miss Peavey. ‘To think that you should have chosen that line! There are several of your more mystic passages that I meant to ask you to explain, but particularly “Across the pale parabola of Joy . . .’

‘You find it difficult to understand?’

A little, I confess.’

‘Well, well,’ said Psmith indulgently, ‘perhaps I did put a bit of top-spin on that one.’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘I say, perhaps it is a little obscure. We must have a long chat about it – later on.’

‘Why not now?’ demanded the Efficient Baxter, flashing his spectacles.

‘I am rather tired,’ said Psmith with gentle reproach, ‘after my journey. Fatigued. We artists . . .’

‘Of course,’ said Miss Peavey, with an indignant glance at the secretary. ‘Mr Baxter does not understand the sensitive poetic temperament.’

‘A bit unspiritual, eh?’ said Psmith tolerantly. ‘A trifle earthy? So I thought, so I thought. One of these strong, hard men of affairs, I shouldn’t wonder.’

‘Shall we go and find Lord Emsworth, Mr McTodd?’ said Miss Peavey, dismissing the fermenting Baxter with a scornful look. ‘He wandered off just now. I suppose he is among his flowers. Flowers are very beautiful by night.’

‘Indeed, yes,’ said Psmith. And also by day. When I am surrounded by flowers, a sort of divine peace floods over me, and the rough, harsh world seems far away. I feel soothed, tranquil. I sometimes think, Miss Peavey, that flowers must be the souls of little children who have died in their innocence.’

‘What a beautiful thought, Mr McTodd!’ exclaimed Miss Peavey rapturously.

‘Yes,’ agreed Psmith. ‘Don’t pinch it. It’s copyright.’

The darkness swallowed them up. Lady Constance turned to the Efficient Baxter, who was brooding with furrowed brow.

‘Charming, is he not?’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘I said I thought Mr McTodd was charming.’

‘Oh, quite.’

‘Completely unspoiled.’

‘Oh, decidedly.’

‘I am so glad that he was able to come after all. That telegram he sent this afternoon cancelling his visit seemed so curt and final.’

‘So I thought it.’

‘Almost as if he had taken offence at something and decided to have nothing to do with us.’

‘Quite.’

Lady Constance shivered delicately. A cool breeze had sprung up. She drew her wrap more closely about her shapely shoulders, and began to walk to the house. Baxter did not accompany her. The moment she had gone he switched off the light and sat down, chin in hand. That massive brain was working hard.

§ 1

‘
M
ISS
Halliday,’ announced the Efficient Baxter, removing another letter from its envelope and submitting it to a swift, keen scrutiny, ‘arrives at about three to-day. She is catching the twelve-fifty train.’

He placed the letter on the pile beside his plate; and, having decapitated an egg, peered sharply into its interior as if hoping to surprise guilty secrets. For it was the breakfast hour, and the members of the house party, scattered up and down the long table, were fortifying their tissues against another day. An agreeable scent of bacon floated over the scene like a benediction.

Lord Emsworth looked up from the seed catalogue in which he was immersed. For some time past his enjoyment of the meal had been marred by a vague sense of something missing, and now he knew what it was.

‘Coffee!’ he said, not violently, but in the voice of a good man oppressed. ‘I want coffee. Why have I no coffee? Constance, my dear, I should have coffee. Why have I none?’

‘I’m sure I gave you some,’ said Lady Constance, brightly presiding over the beverages at the other end of the table.

‘Then where is it?’ demanded his lordship clinchingly.

Baxter – almost regretfully, it seemed – gave the egg a clean bill of health, and turned in his able way to cope with this domestic problem.

‘Your coffee is behind the catalogue you are reading, Lord Emsworth. You propped the catalogue against your cup.’

‘Did I? Did I? Why, so I did! Bless my soul!’ His lordship, relieved, took an invigorating sip. ‘What were you saying just then, my dear fellow?’

‘I have had a letter from Miss Halliday,’ said Baxter. ‘She writes that she is catching the twelve-fifty train at Paddington, which means that she should arrive at Market Blandings at about three.’

‘Who,’ asked Miss Peavey, in a low, thrilling voice, ceasing for a moment to peck at her plate of kedgeree, ‘is Miss Halliday?’

‘The exact question I was about to ask myself,’ said Lord Emsworth. ‘Baxter, my dear fellow, who is Miss Halliday?’

Baxter, with a stifled sigh, was about to refresh his employer’s memory, when Psmith anticipated him. Psmith had been consuming toast and marmalade with his customary languid grace and up till now had firmly checked all attempts to engage him in conversation.

‘Miss Halliday,’ he said, ‘is a very old and valued friend of mine. We two have, so to speak, pulled the gowans fine. I had been hoping to hear that she had been sighted on the horizon.’

The effect of these words on two of the company was somewhat remarkable. Baxter, hearing them, gave such a violent start that he spilled half the contents of his cup: and Freddie, who had been flitting like a butterfly among the dishes on the sideboard and had just decided to help himself to scrambled eggs, deposited a liberal spoonful on the carpet, where it was found and salvaged a moment later by Lady Constance’s spaniel.

Psmith did not observe these phenomena, for he had returned to his toast and marmalade. He thus missed encountering perhaps the keenest glance that had ever come through Rupert Baxter’s spectacles. It was not a protracted glance, but while it lasted it was like the ray from an oxy-acetylene blowpipe.

‘A friend of yours?’ said Lord Emsworth. ‘Indeed? Of course, Baxter, I remember now. Miss Halliday is the young lady who is coming to catalogue the library.’

‘What a delightful task!’ cooed Miss Peavey ‘To live among the stored-up thoughts of dead and gone genius!’

‘You had better go down and meet her, my dear fellow,’ said Lord Emsworth. ‘At the station, you know,’ he continued, clarifying his meaning. ‘She will be glad to see you.’

‘I was about to suggest it myself,’ said Psmith.

‘Though why the library needs cataloguing,’ said his lordship, returning to a problem which still vexed his soul when he had leisure to give a thought to it, ‘I can’t . . . However . . .’

He finished his coffee and rose from the table. A stray shaft of sunlight had fallen provocatively on his bald head, and sunshine always made him restive.

‘Are you going to your flowers, Lord Emsworth?’ asked Miss Peavey.

‘Eh? What? Yes. Oh, yes. Going to have a look at those lobelias.’

‘I will accompany you, if I may,’ said Psmith.

‘Eh? Why, certainly, certainly.’

‘I have always held,’ said Psmith, ‘that there is no finer tonic than a good look at a lobelia immediately after breakfast. Doctors, I believe, recommend it.’

‘Oh, I say,’ said Freddie hastily, as he reached the door, ‘can I have a couple of words with you a bit later on?’

‘A thousand if you wish it,’ said Psmith. ‘You will find me somewhere out there in the great open spaces where men are men.’

He included the entire company in a benevolent smile, and left the room.

‘How charming he is!’ sighed Miss Peavey. ‘Don’t you think so, Mr Baxter?’

The Efficient Baxter seemed for a moment to find some difficulty in replying.

‘Oh, very,’ he said, but not heartily.

‘And such a
soul
! It shines on that wonderful brow of his, doesn’t it?’

‘He has a good forehead,’ said Lady Constance. ‘But I wish he wouldn’t wear his hair so short. Somehow it makes him seem unlike a poet.’

Freddie, alarmed, swallowed a mouthful of scrambled egg.

‘Oh, he’s a poet all right,’ he said hastily.

‘Well, really, Freddie,’ said Lady Constance, piqued, ‘I think we hardly need
you
to tell us that.’

‘No, no, of course. But what I mean is, in spite of his wearing his hair short, you know.’

‘I ventured to speak to him of that yesterday,’ said Miss Peavey, ‘and he said he rather expected to be wearing it even shorter very soon.’

‘Freddie!’ cried Lady Constance with asperity. ‘What
are
you doing?’

A brown lake of tea was filling the portion of the tablecloth immediately opposite the Hon. Frederick Threepwood. Like the Efficient Baxter a few minutes before, sudden emotion had caused him to upset his cup.