Leave it to Psmith (25 page)

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ he mumbled. ‘He’s just giving it me, you know, don’t you know.’

‘Did you simply go to him and ask him for it?’

‘Well – er – well, yes. That was about the strength of it.’

‘And he didn’t object?’

‘No. He seemed rather pleased.’

‘Pleased!’ Eve found breathing difficult. She was feeling rather like a man who suddenly discovers that the hole in his back yard which he has been passing nonchalantly for months is a goldmine. If the operation of extracting money from Mr Keeble was not only easy but also agreeable to the victim . . . She became aware of a sudden imperative need for Freddie’s absence. She wanted to think this thing over.

‘Well, then,’ said Freddie, ‘coming back to it, will you?’

‘What?’ said Eve, distrait.

‘Marry me, you know. What I mean to say is, I worship the very ground you walk on, and all that sort of rot . . . I mean, and all that. And now that you realise that I’m going to get this couple of thousand . . . and the bookie’s business . . . and what not, I mean to say . . .’

‘Freddie,’ said Eve tensely, expressing her harassed nerves in a voice that came hotly through clenched teeth, ‘go away!’

‘Eh?’

‘I don’t want to marry you, and I’m sick of having to keep on telling you so. Will you please go away and leave me alone?’ She stopped. Her sense of fairness told her that she was working off on her hapless suitor venom which should have been expended on herself. ‘I’m sorry, Freddie,’ she said, softening; ‘I didn’t mean to be such a beast as that. I know you’re awfully fond of me, but really, really I can’t marry you. You don’t want to marry a girl who doesn’t love you, do you?’

‘Yes, I do,’ said Freddie stoutly. ‘If it’s you, I mean. Love is a tiny seed that coldness can wither, but if tended and nurtured in the fostering warmth of an honest heart . . .’

‘But, Freddie.’

‘Blossoms into a flower,’ concluded Freddie rapidly. ‘What I mean to say is, love would come after marriage.’

‘Nonsense!’

‘Well, that’s the way it happened in “A Society Mating”.’

‘Freddie,’ said Eve, ‘I really don’t want to talk any more. Will you be a dear and just go away? I’ve got a lot of thinking to do.’

‘Oh, thinking?’ said Freddie, impressed. ‘Right ho!’

‘Thank you so much.’

‘Oh – er – not at all. Well, pip-pip.’

‘Good-bye.’

‘See you later, what?’

‘Of course, of course.’

‘Fine! Well, toodle-oo!’

And the Hon. Freddie, not ill-pleased – for it seemed to him that at long last he detected signs of melting in the party of the second part – swivelled round on his long legs and started for home.

§ 3

The little town of Market Blandings was a peaceful sight as it slept in the sun. For the first time since Freddie had left her, Eve became conscious of a certain tranquillity as she entered the old grey High Street, which was the centre of the place’s life and thought. Market Blandings had a comforting air of having been exactly the same for centuries. Troubles might vex the generations it housed, but they did not worry that lichened church with its sturdy four-square tower, nor those red-roofed shops, nor the age-old inns whose second storeys bulged so comfortably out over the pavements. As Eve walked in slow meditation towards the ‘Emsworth Arms’, the intensely respectable hostelry which was her objective, archways met her gaze, opening with a picturesque unexpectedness to show heartening glimpses of ancient nooks all cool and green. There was about the High Street of Market Blandings a suggestion of a slumbering cathedral close. Nothing was modern in it except the moving-picture house – and even that called itself an Electric Theatre, and was ivy-covered and surmounted by stone gables.

On second thoughts, that statement is too sweeping. There was one other modern building in the High Street – Jno. Banks, Hairdresser, to wit, and Eve was just coming abreast of Mr Banks’s emporium now.

In any ordinary surroundings these premises would have been a tolerably attractive sight, but in Market Blandings they were almost an eyesore; and Eve, finding herself at the door, was jarred out of her reverie as if she had heard a false note in a solemn anthem. She was on the point of hurrying past, when the door opened and a short, solid figure came out. And at the sight of this short, solid figure Eve stopped abruptly.

It was with the object of getting his grizzled locks clipped in preparation for the County Ball that Joseph Keeble had come to Mr Banks’s shop as soon as he had finished lunch. As he emerged now into the High Street he was wondering why he had permitted Mr Banks to finish off the job with a heliotrope-scented hair-wash. It seemed to Mr Keeble that the air was heavy with heliotrope, and it came to him suddenly that heliotrope was a scent which he always found particularly objectionable.

Ordinarily Joseph Keeble was accustomed to show an iron front to hairdressers who tried to inflict lotions upon him; and the reason his vigilance had relaxed under the ministrations of Jno. Banks was that the second post, which arrived at the castle at the luncheon hour, had brought him a plaintive letter from his stepdaughter Phyllis – the second he had had from her since the one which had caused him to tackle his masterful wife in the smoking-room. Immediately after the conclusion of his business deal with the Hon. Freddie, he had written to Phyllis in a vein of optimism rendered glowing by Freddie’s promises, assuring her that at any moment he would be in a position to send her the three thousand pounds which she required to clinch the purchase of that dream-farm in Lincolnshire. To this she had replied with thanks. And after that there had been a lapse of days and still he had not made good. Phyllis was becoming worried, and said so in six closely-written pages.

Mr Keeble, as he sat in the barber’s chair going over this letter in his mind, had groaned in spirit, while Jno. Banks with gleaming eyes did practically what he liked with the heliotrope bottle. Not for the first time since the formation of their partnership, Joseph Keeble was tormented with doubts as to his wisdom in entrusting a commission so delicate as the purloining of his wife’s diamond necklace to one of his nephew Freddie’s known feebleness of intellect. Here, he told himself unhappily, was a job of work which would have tested the combined abilities of a syndicate consisting of Charles Peace and the James Brothers, and he had put it in the hands of a young man who in all his life had only once shown genuine inspiration and initiative – on the occasion when he had parted his hair in the middle at a time when all the other members of the Bachelors’ Club were brushing it straight back. The more Mr Keeble thought of Freddie’s chances, the slimmer they appeared. By the time Jno. Banks had released him from the spotted apron he was thoroughly pessimistic, and as he passed out of the door, ‘so perfumed that the winds were love-sick with him’, his estimate of his colleague’s abilities was reduced to a point where he began to doubt whether the stealing of a mere milk-can was not beyond his scope. So deeply immersed was he in these gloomy thoughts that Eve had to call his name twice before he came out of them.

‘Miss Halliday?’ he said apologetically. ‘I beg your pardon. I was thinking.’

Eve, though they had hardly exchanged a word since her arrival at the castle, had taken a liking to Mr Keeble; and she felt in consequence none of the embarrassment which might have handicapped her in the discussion of an extremely delicate matter with another man. By nature direct and straightforward, she came to the point at once.

‘Can you spare me a moment or two, Mr Keeble?’ she said. She glanced at the clock on the church tower and saw that she had ample time before her own appointment. ‘I want to talk to you about Phyllis.’

Mr Keeble jerked his head back in astonishment, and the world became noisome with heliotrope. It was as if the Voice of Conscience had suddenly addressed him.

‘Phyllis!’ he gasped, and the letter crackled in his breastpocket.

‘Your stepdaughter Phyllis.’

‘Do you know her?’

‘She was my best friend at school. I had tea with her just before I came to the castle.’

‘Extraordinary!’ said Mr Keeble.

A customer in quest of a shave thrust himself between them and went into the shop. They moved away a few paces.

‘Of course if you say it is none of my business . . .’

‘My dear young lady . . .’

‘Well, it
is
my business, because she’s my friend,’ said Eve firmly. ‘Mr Keeble, Phyllis told me she had written to you about buying that farm. Why don’t you help her?’

The afternoon was warm, but not warm enough to account for the moistness of Mr Keeble’s brow. He drew out a large handkerchief and mopped his forehead. A hunted look was in his eyes. The hand which was not occupied with the handkerchief had sought his pocket and was busy rattling keys.

‘I want to help her. I would do anything in the world to help her.’

‘Then why don’t you?’

‘I – I am curiously situated.’

‘Yes, Phyllis told me something about that. I can see that it is a difficult position for you. But, Mr Keeble, surely, surely if you can manage to give Freddie Threepwood two thousand pounds to start a bookmaker’s business . . .’

Her words were cut short by a strangled cry from her companion. Sheer panic was in his eyes now, and in his heart an overwhelming regret that he had ever been fool enough to dabble in crime in the company of a mere animated talking-machine like his nephew Freddie. This girl knew! And if she knew, how many others knew? The young imbecile had probably babbled his hideous secret into the ears of every human being in the place who would listen to him.

‘He told you!’ he stammered. ‘He t-told you!’

‘Yes. Just now.’

‘Goosh!’ muttered Mr Keeble brokenly.

Eve stared at him in surprise. She could not understand this emotion. The handkerchief, after a busy session, was lowered now, and he was looking at her imploringly.

‘You haven’t told anyone?’ he croaked hoarsely.

‘Of course not. I said I had only heard of it just now.’

‘You wouldn’t tell anyone?’

‘Why should I?’

Mr Keeble’s breath, which had seemed to him for a moment gone for ever, began to return timidly. Relief for a space held him dumb. What nonsense, he reflected, these newspapers and people talked about the modern girl. It was this very broad-mindedness of hers, to which they objected so absurdly, that made her a creature of such charm. She might behave in certain ways in a fashion that would have shocked her grandmother, but how comforting it was to find her calm and unmoved in the contemplation of another’s crime. His heart warmed to Eve.

‘You’re wonderful!’ he said.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Of course,’ argued Mr Keeble, ‘it isn’t really stealing.’

‘What!’

‘I shall buy my wife another necklace.’

‘You will – what?’

‘So everything will be all right. Constance will be perfectly happy, and Phyllis will have her money, and . . .’

Something in Eve’s astonished gaze seemed to smite Mr Keeble.

‘Don’t you
know
?’ he broke off.

‘Know? Know what?’

Mr Keeble perceived that he had wronged Freddie. The young ass had been a fool even to mention the money to this girl, but he had at least, it seemed, stopped short of disclosing the entire plot. An oyster-like reserve came upon him.

‘Nothing, nothing,’ he said hastily. ‘Forget what I was going to say. Well, I must be going, I must be going.’

Eve clutched wildly at his retreating sleeve. Unintelligible though his words had been, one sentence had come home to her, the one about Phyllis having her money. It was no time for half-measures. She grabbed him.

‘Mr Keeble,’ she cried urgently. ‘I don’t know what you mean, but you were just going to say something which sounded . . . Mr Keeble, do trust me. I’m Phyllis’s best friend, and if you’ve thought out any way of helping her I wish you would tell me. . . . You must tell me. I might be able to help . . .’

Mr Keeble, as she began her broken speech, had been endeavouring with deprecatory tugs to disengage his coat from her grasp. But now he ceased to struggle. Those doubts of Freddie’s efficiency, which had troubled him in Jno. Banks’s chair, still lingered. His opinion that Freddie was but a broken reed had not changed. Indeed, it had grown. He looked at Eve. He looked at her searchingly. Into her pleading eyes he directed a stare that sought to probe her soul, and saw there honesty, sympathy, and – better still – intelligence. He might have stood and gazed into Freddie’s fishy eyes for weeks without discovering a tithe of such intelligence. His mind was made up. This girl was an ally. A girl of dash and vigour. A girl worth a thousand Freddies – not, however, reflected Mr Keeble, that that was saying much. He hesitated no longer.

‘It’s like this,’ said Mr Keeble.

§ 4

The information, authoritatively conveyed to him during breakfast by Lady Constance, that he was scheduled that night to read select passages from Ralston McTodd’s
Songs of Squalor
to the entire house-party assembled in the big drawing-room, had come as a complete surprise to Psmith, and to his fellow-guests – such of them as were young and of the soulless sex – as a shock from which they found it hard to rally. True, they had before now gathered in a vague sort of way that he was one of those literary fellows, but so normal and engaging had they found his whole manner and appearance that it had never occurred to them that he concealed anything up his sleeve as lethal as
Songs of Squalor.
Among these members of the younger set the consensus of opinion was that it was a bit thick, and that at such a price even the lavish hospitality of Blandings was scarcely worth having. Only those who had visited the castle before during the era of her ladyship’s flirtation with Art could have been described as resigned. These stout hearts argued that while this latest blister was probably going to be pretty bad, he could hardly be worse than the chappie who had lectured on Theosophy last November, and must almost of necessity be better than the bird who during the Shiffley race-week had attempted in a two-hour discourse to convert them to vegetarianism.