Service with a Smile (4 page)

‘She
does not like curates?’

‘That’s
the idea one gets.’

‘Odd.
She doesn’t like me, either. Very hard to please, that woman. What’s wrong with
curates?’

‘Well,
they’re all pretty hard up. Bill hasn’t a bean.’

‘I
begin to see. Humble suitor. Curious how prejudiced so many people are against
humble suitors. My own case is one in point. When I was courting your Aunt
Jane, her parents took the bleakest view of the situation, and weren’t their
faces red when one day I suddenly became that noblest of created beings, an
Earl, a hell of a fellow with four christian names and a coronet hanging on a
peg in the downstairs cupboard. Her father, scorning me because I was a
soda-jerker at the time, frequently, I believe, alluded to me as “that bum”,
but it was very different when I presented myself at his Park Avenue residence
with a coronet on the back of my head and a volume of Debrett under my arm. He
gave me his blessing and a cigar. No chance of Bill Bailey becoming an earl, I
suppose?’

‘Not
unless he murders about fifty-seven uncles and cousins.’

‘Which
a curate, of course, would hesitate to do. So what was Connie’s procedure?’

‘She
lugged the poor wench off to Blandings, and she’s been there ever since,
practically in durance vile, her every movement watched. But this Myra seems
to be a sensible, level-headed girl, because, learning from her spies that Lady
C. was to go to Shrewsbury for a hair-do and wouldn’t be around till dinner
time, she phoned Bill that she would be free that day and would nip up to
London and marry him. She told him to meet her at the Milton Street registry
office, where the project could be put through speedily and at small expense.’

‘I see.
Very shrewd. I often think these runaway marriages are best. No fuss and
feathers. After all, who wants a lot of bishops cluttering up the place? I
often say, when you’ve seen one bishop, you’ve seen them all.’ Lord Ickenham
paused. ‘Well,’ he said, looking at his watch. ‘I suppose it’s about time we
were getting along. Don’t want to be late.’

Pongo
started. To his sensitive ears this sounded extremely like the beginning of one
of their pleasant and instructive afternoons. In just such a tone of voice had
his relative a few years earlier suggested that they might look in at the dog
races, for there was, he said, no better way of studying the soul of the people
than to mingle with them in their simple pastimes.

‘We?
You aren’t coming?’

‘Of
course I’m coming. Two witnesses are always better than one, and little Myra —’

‘I can’t
guarantee that she’s little.’

‘And
Myra, whatever her size, would never forgive me if I were not there to hold her
hand when the firing squad assembles.’

Pongo
chewed his lower lip, this way and that dividing the swift mind.

‘Well,
all right. But no larks.’

‘My
dear boy! As if I should dream of being frivolous on such a sacred occasion. Of
course, if I find this Bill Bailey of yours unworthy of her, I shall put a
stopper on the proceedings, as any man of sensibility would. What sort of a
chap is he? Pale and fragile, I suppose, with a touch of consumption and a
tendency to recite the collect for the day in a high tenor voice?’

‘Pale
and fragile, my foot. He boxed three years for Oxford.’

‘He
did?’

‘And
went through the opposition like a dose of salts.’

‘Then
all should be well. I expect I shall take the fellow to my bosom.’

His
expectation was fulfilled. The Rev Cuthbert Bailey met with his instant
approval. He liked his curates substantial, and Bill proved to be definitely the
large economy size, the sort of curate whom one could picture giving the local
backslider the choice between seeing the light or getting plugged in the eye.
Amplifying his earlier remarks, Pongo on the journey to Milton Street had told
his uncle that in the parish of Bottleton East, where he had recently held a
cure of souls, Bill Bailey had been universally respected, and Lord Ickenham
could readily appreciate why. He himself would have treated with the utmost
respect any young man so obviously capable of a sweat left hook followed by a
snappy right to the button. A captious critic might have felt on seeing the Rev
Cuthbert that it would have been more suitable for one in holy orders to have
looked a little less like the logical contender for the world’s heavyweight
championship, but it was impossible to regard his rugged features and bulging
shoulders without an immediate feeling of awe. Impossible, too, not to like his
manifest honesty and simplicity. It seemed to Lord Ickenham that in probing
beneath the forbidding exterior to the gentle soul it hid his little Myra had
done the smart thing.

They
fell into pleasant conversation, but after the first few exchanges it was plain
to Lord Ickenham that the young man of God was becoming extremely nervous. Nor was
the reason for this difficult to divine. Some twenty minutes had elapsed, and
there were still no signs of the bride-to-be, and nothing so surely saps the
morale of a bridegroom on his wedding day as the failure of the party of the
second part to put in an appearance at the tryst.

Ten
minutes later, Bill Bailey rose, his homely features registering anguish.

‘She
isn’t coming?’

Lord
Ickenham tried to comfort him with the quite erroneous statement that it was
early yet. Pongo, also anxious to be helpful, said he would go out and cock an
eye up and down the street to see if there were any signs of her. His departure
from the room synchronized with a hollow groan from the suffering young man.

‘I must
have put her off!’

Lord
Ickenham raised a sympathetic but puzzled eyebrow.

‘I don’t
think I understand you. Put her off? How?’

‘By the
way I spoke on the phone. You see, I was a bit doubtful of this idea of hers.
It didn’t seem right somehow that she should be taking this terrifically
important step without thinking it over. I mean, I’ve so little to offer her. I
thought we ought to wait till I get a vicarage.’

‘I
follow you now. You had scruples?’

‘Yes.’

‘Did
you tell her so?’

‘No,
but she must have noticed something odd in my voice, because she asked me if I
wasn’t pleased.’

‘To
which you replied —?’

‘“Oh,
rather!”‘

Lord
Ickenham shook his head.

‘You
should have done better than that. Or did you say “Oh, ra-a-a-ther!”,
emphasizing it and dragging it out, as it were? Joyously, if you know what I
mean, with a sort of lilt in the voice?’

‘I’m
afraid I didn’t. You see —’

‘I
know. You had scruples. That’s the curate in you coming out. You must fight
against this tendency. You don’t suppose Young Lochinvar had scruples, do you?
You know the poem about Young Lochinvar?’

‘Oh,
yes. I used to recite it as a kid.’

‘I,
too, and to solid applause, though there were critics who considered that I was
better at “It wath the schcooner Hesperuth that thailed the thtormy thea”. I
was rather short on front teeth in those days. But despite these scruples you
came to this marriage depot.’

‘Yes.’

‘And
the impression you have given me is that your one desire is to have the
registrar start doing his stuff.’

‘Yes.’

‘You
overcame your scruples?’

‘Yes.’

‘I
quite understand. I’ve done the same thing myself. I suppose if the scruples I’ve
overcome in my time were laid end to end, they would reach from London to
Glasgow. Ah, Pongo,’ said Lord Ickenham, as his nephew appeared in the doorway.
‘Anything to report?’

‘Not a
thing. Not a single female as far as the eye could reach. I’ll tell you what
occurred to me, Bill, as I was scanning the horizon.’

‘Probably
the very thing that has just occurred to me,’ said Lord Ickenham. ‘You were
thinking that Lady Constance must have changed her mind about going to
Shrewsbury for that hair-do.’

‘That’s
right. And with her on the premises, the popsy — ‘

Bill’s
rugged features registered displeasure.

‘I wish
you wouldn’t call her a popsy.’

‘With
her on the premises, your ball of worsted would naturally be unable to make her
getaway. You’ll probably receive a letter tomorrow explaining the situation and
making arrangements for the next fixture.’

‘Yes,
that must be it,’ said Bill, brightening a little. ‘Though you’d have thought
she would have wired,’ he added, sinking into the depths again.

Lord
Ickenham patted his burly shoulder paternally.

‘My
dear chap! How could she? The Market Blandings post office is two miles from
the castle and, as Pongo says, her every movement is watched. She’ll be lucky
if she gets so much as a letter through the lines without having it steamed
open and intercepted. If I were you, I wouldn’t worry for a moment.’

‘I’ll
try not to,’ said Bill, heaving a sigh that shook the room. ‘Well, anyway,
there’s no sense in hanging around here. This place gives me the creeps. Thanks
for coming along, Pongo. Thanks for coming along, Lord Ickenham. Sorry your
time was wasted.’

‘My
dear fellow, time is never wasted when it is passed in pleasant company.’

‘No.
No. There’s that, of course. Well, I’ll be off.’

As the
door closed behind him, Lord Ickenham sighed, not so vigorously as Bill had
done but with a wealth of compassion. He mourned in spirit for the young
cleric.

‘Too
bad,’ he said. ‘It is always difficult for a bridegroom to key himself up to
going through the wedding ceremony, an ordeal that taxes the stoutest, and when
he’s done it and the bride doesn’t meet him half way, the iron enters into the
soul pretty deeply. And no knowing when the vigilance of the authorities will
be relaxed again, I suppose, if ever. You don’t make prison breaks easily when
Connie is holding the jailer’s keys.’

Pongo
nodded. He, too, mourned in spirit for his stricken friend.

‘No,’
he said. ‘I’m afraid Bill’s in a spot. And what makes the situation stickier is
that Archie Gilpin’s at Blandings.’

‘Who?’

‘The
Duke of Dunstable’s nephew.’

‘Ricky Gilpin’s
brother?’

‘That’s
right. You ever met him?’

‘Never.
I know Dunstable, of course, and I know Ricky, but this Archibald is a sealed
book to me. Who told you he was at Blandings?’

‘He
did. In person. I ran into him yesterday and he said he was off there on the
afternoon train. Pretty sinister, it seemed to me.’

‘Why is
that?’

‘Well,
dash it, there he’ll be closeted with the girl, and who knows she won’t decide
to switch from Bill to him? He’s a very good-looking bloke. Which you can’t say
Bill is.’

‘No, I
would call Bill’s an interesting rather than a beautiful face. He reminds me a
little of one of my colleagues on the Wyoming ranch where I held a salaried
position in my younger days as a cow-puncher, of whom another of my colleagues,
a gifted phrasemaker, said that he had a face that would stop a clock. No doubt
Bill has stopped dozens. But surely the little Myra I used to wrap in a bath
towel and dandle on my knee can’t have grown up into the sort of girl who
attaches all that importance to looks.’

‘You
never know. Girls do go for the finely-chiselled. And apart from his looks, he’s
an artist, and there’s something about artists that seems to act on the other
sex like catnip on cats. What’s more, I happen to know, because I met a fellow
who knows a chap who knows her, that Archie’s girl has just broken their
engagement.’

‘Indeed?’

‘A girl
called Millicent Rigby. Archie works on one of those papers Lord Tilbury runs
at the Mammoth Publishing Company, and she’s Tilbury’s secretary. This fellow
told me that the chap had told him that he had had it direct from the Rigby
wench that she had handed Archie the black spot. You see what that means?’

‘Not
altogether.’

‘Use
your bean, Uncle Fred. You know what you do when your girl gives you the push.
You dash off and propose to another girl, just to show her she isn’t the only
onion in the stew.’

Lord
Ickenham nodded. It was many years since he had acted in the manner described,
but he, too, had lived in Arcady.

‘Ah,
youth, youth!’ he was saying to himself, and he shuddered a little as he
recalled the fearful female down Greenwich Village way, all beads and bangles
and matted hair, at whose sandaled feet he had laid his heart the second time Pongo’s
Aunt Jane had severed relations with him.

‘Yes, I
follow you now. This does make Archibald a menace, and one cannot but feel a
certain anxiety for Bill. Where can I find him, by the way?’

‘He’s
staying with me at my fiat. Why?’

‘I was
thinking I might look in on him from time to time and try to cheer him up. Take
him to the dog races, perhaps.’