Summer Moonshine by P. G. Wodehouse

  But now all this angry-father-with-horsewhip stuff had come up, and it was clear to him that those dreams he had had of a genial Sir Buckstone patting him on the shoulder and making large settlements must be written off as a total loss. His energies, he perceived, must now be devoted to consolidating the earlier deal. He was not devoid of sentiment and, given the choice, would much have preferred money with Jane attached to it to money that involved marriage with the Princess Dwornitzchek, but he was practical.

  Tonight, before going to bed, it was his intention to write a well-expressed letter to Jane, pointing out the hopelessness of it all and suggesting that, in view of her father's attitude, it were best to end it all. This would clean up the situation satisfactorily, leaving no loose ends, and now the task before him was to be watchful and wary in his speech. Passing his tongue nervously over his lips, he prayed that that tongue would not betray him.

  The door closed. The Princess came back to her seat. She was a large, sinuous woman, with a beautiful figure and a supple way of moving herself from spot to spot, and it was at moments like this, when she did that quick pad-pad across a room and sank into a chair, that she reminded the spectator most forcibly of a leopardess in its cage. Adrian, watching her, found his uneasiness increasing. He removed his finger from his tie and passed it along the inside of his collar.

  Thank God they've gone,' said the Princess. 'At last.'

  This opportunity to postpone, if only for a while, the stocktaking from which he shrank was very welcome to Adrian. An expert in this woman's moods, he could see that the one prevailing at the moment was not amiable. Something, he perceived, had upset her. Her bright, rather prominent hazel eyes were glowing unpleasantly, her face was hard and her manner had now come to resemble that of a leopardess which has just been deprived of a T-bone steak. It seemed to him that a little light conversation on neutral subjects might ease matters.

  'Who were they?'

  'Some people I met on the boat. They took me to the theatre last night.'

  'Oh, really? Which one?'

  'The Apollo.'

  'I forget what's on there.'

  'A play called The Angel in the House.' 'I've heard about that.'

  'What have you heard?'

  'Oh, just that it's a big success. They say it will run a year.'

  'Do they? I think it very unlikely.'

  'Isn't it good?'

  'No.'

  'It's by some new man, isn't it?'

  'It was written,' said the Princess, grinding her cigarette into the ash-tray with a vicious jab, 'by my stepson Joseph.'

  Adrian began to understand her emotion. He was aware of her views on her stepson Joseph, and he appreciated how galling it must be for a woman who for years has been looking on a young man as a prodigal to discover suddenly that the prodigal has made good. It was too late to withdraw his flattering prediction about the play, but he could at least show that his heart was in the right place by disparaging its author.

  'I don't like that fellow,' he said.

  The Princess looked up. While conceding that this was the right spirit, she was surprised. She had not supposed that he and the fellow were acquainted.

  'Oh?'

  'No,' said Adrian. 'I hope he bumped his head.'

  'What?'

  'On the door of my—'

  He broke off, appalled, biting the tongue which had just been about to add the word 'houseboat' and thus precipitate the exposure of all his cherished secrets. Champagne and roast duck, working on a mind enfeebled by too-long deprivation of those delicacies, had nearly led him into a fatal indiscretion.

  'Flat,' he said.

  'What on earth are you talking about?'

  'The door of my flat. I hoped he would bump his head on the door of my flat. Somebody brought him to a cocktail party at my flat, and the top of the door is rather low and he is rather tall, and I was hoping that he would have bumped his head. But,' concluded Adrian, as brightly as he could manage, 'he – er – didn't.'

  He produced a handkerchief and passed it across his forehead.

  'Cocktail party?' said the Princess Dwornitzchek.

  It did not need the metallic note in her voice to tell Adrian Peake that in eluding one pitfall, he had tumbled into another. He remembered now, too late, that when seeing his betrothed off to America, he had assured her that it was his intention during her absence, to lead the life of a recluse – going nowhere, seeing nobody – in a word, pining in solitude until her return. He found it necessary to employ the handkerchief again.

  'So you have been giving cocktail parties while I was away?'

  'Only that one.'

  'Lots of pretty girls, I suppose.'

  'No, no. Just a few men.'

  The sharp, discordant sound which proceeded from his companion's lips was technically a laugh, but it did not suggest merriment.

  'Men! I suppose what has really been happening, if I only knew, is that, the moment my back was turned, you started making love to every woman in sight.'

  'Heloise!'

  'Not that it's the least use asking you, of course. You're such a liar.'

  Adrian rose. For some time he had been experiencing a strong urge to be elsewhere, and these words seemed to offer a welcome cue for a dignified departure. His hostess's resemblance to a leopardess was now so vivid that the room seemed to have bars and an odd smell. Only the presence of a man in a peaked cap and a few bones lying about the floor were needed to complete the Regent's Park atmosphere.

  'I think I had better go,' he said in a quiet, pained voice.

  'Sit down.'

  'I am not prepared to remain and—'

  'Sit down.'

  'You have hurt me, Heloise. We meet again for the first time all these weeks, and you—'

  'Sit down!'

  He sat down.

  'You're simply wasting your time,' said the Princess Dwornitzchek, 'pretending to be wounded and injured. Do you think I don't know what you're like? I don't trust you an inch.'

  'Well, really!'

  'Not an inch. There's nothing that would please you more than to make a fool of me.'

  'I can only say that you seem to be in a very strange—'

  'Well, you won't get much chance after we're married, because we are going to live in the country.'

  'In the country!'

  'I shall be able to keep an eye on you there.'

  This seemed to Adrian, though one could scarcely have described him as sensitive, not a very nice spirit in which to begin a romantic life partnership, and he said so.

  'My motto,' explained the Princess, 'is "safety first", and I am certainly not going to have you running around loose in London. Yes, I thought it might be rather a shock. Have some whisky.'

  The advice struck Adrian as good. He crossed the room and became busy with the decanter. He helped himself liberally and drained half the glass at a draught.

  Her words had been a death blow to all his dreams and aspirations. He loathed the country. Only in the gay whirl of big cities could he fulfil and express himself. Over the glass, the remainder of whose contents he was now absorbing, he stared at her blankly. His thoughts were sombre thoughts and bitter. He had known that a man who marries an imperious and autocratic woman from sound commercial motives must be prepared to take the rough with the smooth, but he had never anticipated that the former would be quite so rough as this.

  'So you had better be getting measured for your little pair of leggings,' said the Princess with a facetiousness which he found jarring and in dubious taste.

  'But, Heloise, have you thought this all out?'

  Again his hostess laughed that sharp, discordant, disagreeable laugh.

  'You bet I've thought it out.'

  'I mean, have you considered what it will involve?'

  'What will it involve?'

  'Stagnation. The giving up of everything you enjoy. A brilliant woman like you, accustomed to being the centre of a circle of attractive, intelligent people in Mayfair
, you would hate it. You would be miserable. You couldn't stand it. How can you possibly contemplate burying yourself in the country, hundreds of miles from London?'

  'We shall not be hundreds of miles from London. The house I am going to buy is in Berkshire.'

  'Berkshire?'

  'A place called Walsingford Hall.'

  It was fortunate for the well-being of the Princess Dwornitzchek's drawing-room carpet that Adrian's glass had for some moments been empty, for at these words it leaped from his grasp like a live thing.

  'Walsingford Hall!'

  'You appear to know it.'

  'I – I've heard of it.'

  'From whom?'

  'I – er – met its daughter. . . . I met Miss Abbott.'

  'Where?'

  'At a house down in Sussex.'

  'Oh? So you went to stay at country houses as well as giving cocktail parties every night? Your life since I left England seems to have been one long round of gaiety.'

  Something of the emotions of a bull in the arena had begun to come to Adrian Peake. He found himself wondering whether any amount of money could make this sort of thing worth while. But the recollection of the roast duck – and, above all, of that superb soufflé – stiffened his resolution.

  'I didn't give cocktail parties every night,' he cried desperately. And I had to go to these people. I couldn't get out of it. It was a long-standing engagement. One has one's social obligations.'

  'Oh, certainly. And Imogen Abbott was there?'

  'Was that my fault?'

  'I'm not blaming you. What did she tell you about Walsingford Hall?'

  'She said it was revoltingly hideous.'

  'It is not at all hideous. I like it. And I intend to buy it. I am going down there the day after tomorrow to stay for a few days and settle things. Tomorrow I shall be busy with lawyers and people. I suppose you saw quite a lot of Miss Abbott after that house party?'

  'I never set eyes on her.'

  'You didn't miss much. A colourless girl.'

  'Very.'

  'Though some people think her pretty, I believe.'

  'In a way, perhaps.'

  'Well, I'm not worrying about her. Pretty or not pretty, she has one defect which would repel you. She is as poor as a church mouse.'

  'What?'

  'Didn't you know? I should have thought that was the first thing you would have found out. The Abbotts haven't had a penny since some ancestors of theirs spent all the family money rebuilding the Hall in the reign of Queen Victoria. Sir Buckstone has to take in paying guests to make both ends meet. My buying the house will be a godsend to the man.'

  Adrian passed his tongue over his lips. His eyes were round and glassy.

  'I suppose so,' he said. 'Yes, I suppose it will. Er – well—'

  'Are you going?'

  'I think I'll be going.'

  'Perhaps it is getting late. I'm glad we've had this little talk. Come and lunch here tomorrow. Good night.'

  'Good night,' said Adrian.

  He kissed her absently, and in the same distrait manner made his way down the stairs and allowed the butler to help him on with his coat. As he wandered through the streets to his flat, his mind was deeply occupied.

  What an escape! He felt like a man who has been snatched back from a precipice. He had never expected to think kindly of Sir Buckstone Abbott after learning of his views on penniless suitors and horsewhips, but he did so now. But for the attitude which that excellent man had seen fit to take up toward him, by this time, he told himself, he might have been committed beyond recall to an alliance with a girl whose father could make both ends meet only by filling his home with paying guests. The thought chilled him to the marrow.

  He could not help feeling a certain resentment toward Jane, the resentment of a man conscious of having been badly treated. It would be too much, perhaps, to say that he considered that he had been the victim of sharp practice, but he did think she might have made some laughing reference to the state of the family finances before allowing matters to proceed as far as they had gone. That remark of hers about lodgers could so easily have been amplified.

  Once, in the days of his childhood, a visiting aunt had told Adrian Peake that if he went and looked in the cupboard in her room, he would find a lovely surprise. And when he had trudged upstairs – thinking it would be half a crown; hoping that it might be ten shillings; speculating even, for this was an aunt with a fur coat and a motor-car, on the possibility of it being a pound note – all he had found was a rubber ball – a beastly painted rubber ball which would have been dear at sixpence.

  As he had felt then, so did he feel now. A little more candour, a little more openness at the outset, and what a lot of heartburning men would be saved in their dealings with women.

  He let himself into his flat and sat down to write that well-expressed letter to Jane. But scarcely had he dipped pen in ink when a frightful thought suddenly exploded in his mind, bringing him to his feet with every nerve in his body quivering.

  Tubby!

  He had completely overlooked the fact that Tubby was in residence at Walsingford Hall.

  The future unrolled itself before his eyes like a ghastly motion picture. Heloise had told him that she was going to the Hall the day after tomorrow. He saw her meeting Tubby, being informed by him that he, Adrian, had been living on the houseboat Mignonette, putting two and two together in that intelligent way of hers and, having brought the sum out at four, descending upon him with a demand for a full explanation.

  His stomach seemed to turn on itself, as if strong hands were twisting it. Once let these things occur, and it was the end. He could say good-bye to a life of ease and plenty. That despite her knowledge of his character – on tonight's showing, a rather unpleasantly intimate knowledge – he exercised over the Princess Dwornitzchek a powerful attraction, he was aware. But there were limits beyond which his spell would cease to operate and that limit would be reached and passed if she ever found out about Jane.

  There was, he saw, but one course before him – just one way of avoiding ruin and disaster. He must go down to Walsingford Parva on the morrow, get in touch with Tubby through the medium of the telephone – even in this crisis he did not contemplate calling in person at a house in which lurked Sir Buckstone Abbott and his hunting crop – and enjoin upon him secrecy and silence.

  Adrian Peake went to bed. It was only when he woke next morning that he remembered that he had not yet written that letter to Jane.

  He dealt with it after breakfast.

  CHAPTER 14

  TO say that the unexpected arrival of her brother Sam in the capacity of plasterer, desirous of plastering one of the guests beneath her roof, had upset Lady Abbott would be to use too forcible a verb. She was not a woman whom it was easy to upset, or even to disturb or ruffle. But, like some placid queen in whose realm civil war has broken out, she did react to the situation to the extent of feeling, in a dreamy sort of way, that, perhaps, something ought to be done about it. Not that she minded herself, but she could see that what had occurred was worrying her Buck and she hated him to be worried.

  About an hour after lunch on the day following the Princess Dwornitzchek's small and intimate dinner party, accordingly, she heaved the sort of slight sigh which a philosophical martyr at the stake would have heaved, and, with the spaniels, James and John, at her heels, set out for the houseboat Mignonette to have a word in season with the intruder, looking like a stately galleon leaving port accompanied by a brace of skiffs.

  The whole thing reflects great credit upon Lady Abbott, for she had never been an enthusiastic pedestrian. As a rule, if she wandered through the rose garden after breakfast and took a couple of turns up and down the terrace before dinner, she considered that she had done her bit as an athlete. Yet now she started off on the long half-mile hike down to the river without a thought of what the climb back up the hill was going to do to the muscles of her calves. Her great soul bore her on.

  She found Mr Bulpitt s
itting on the roof of the Mignonette. His rosy face and the sparkle of joie de vivre in his eyes suggested that he liked his new quarters. And so he did. It was the first time he had been on a houseboat, but he had settled down to the nautical life with the easy adaptability of a man whose circumstances had compelled him to spend a large part of his existence flitting through a series of American provincial hotels. His little knick-knacks were distributed cosily about the saloon, he had plenty of gum and it seemed to him that all the place needed now, to make it like home, was a Gideon Bible.

  It was not immediately that he observed his sister's approach, for his gaze was riveted on Walsingford Hall. Unlike Joe Vanringham, who had looked at that curious edifice as if it had been a shrine, and Adrian Peake, who had gazed at it as if it had been the Mint, he scrutinized Walsingford Hall with the eye of the general of a siege force contemplating a fortress which he has come to capture.

  The barking of James and John, who had never seen a man sitting on a roof before and suspected a Red plot, diverted his attention.

  'Why, hello, Alice,' he said. He climbed cautiously down and embraced her affectionately. The spaniels, reassured by the spectacle, wandered off to sniff at molehills. 'Mighty nice of you to come and see me. I was kind of beginning to think there might be hard feelings.'

  Lady Abbott disengaged herself; not angrily, for it was not in her nature to be angry with anyone, but with a certain austerity. She was not in sympathy with her brother. She thought of poor old Buck, and how worried he was, and the picture that rose before her eyes of him frowning and chewing his pipe as he paced the terrace made her resemble a very easy-going tigress whose cub has been attacked.

  'I've come to talk turkey, Sam.'

  Mr Bulpitt's manner became guarded.

  'Oh, yes?'

  'Sam, you've got to lay off.'

  Mr Bulpitt shook his head regretfully. He had feared this.

  'I can't, Alice. It's a matter of professional pride. Like the North-West Mounted Police.'

  A quarter of a century before, with the breezy vocabulary of the dressing-room at her disposal, Lady Abbott would undoubtedly have said something telling and effective about professional pride. But the wife of a Baronet, with the raised eyebrows of the country to consider, tends to lose the old pep as the years go by. So now she merely uttered a wordless exclamation.