Madame Eulalie’s Rare PlumsCollier’s Weekly, May 4, 1929
The Story Thus Far:
IN BLANDINGS CASTLE, England, lives Clarence, ninth Earl of Emsworth, whose chief interest is the Empress of Blandings, his prize pig.
With Lord Emsworth live his sister, Lady Constance Keeble; his niece, Millicent; his brother, the Honorable Galahad Threepwood, now writing his Reminiscences to the dismay of many respectable men whom he knew in their young and wild days; and his secretary, Hugo Carmody, secretly engaged to Millicent. Lady Constance wants Millicent to marry her cousin Ronnie Fish, and tells her Hugo is entangled with a chorus girl, Sue Brown, but Hugo convinces Millicent this is not true.
Ronnie and his mother, Lady Julia, have been at Biarritz where they met Myra Schoonmaker, a wealthy American girl, whom Lady Julia invites to visit soon at Blandings.
Ronnie takes Sue, to whom he is secretly engaged, to tea at the London house where they find Lady Constance. Ronnie introduces Sue as Miss Schoonmaker. They escape as soon as possible and wire Miss Schoonmaker in Lady Constance’s name not to come to Blandings because of an epidemic there.
At Blandings Ronnie steals the Empress and hides her in a disused cottage, planning later to “find” her, thus gaining his uncle’s undying gratitude and a share of his own capital which he needs to marry Sue and which his uncle holds as trustee. Hugo is sent to London to get a detective from Argus Inquiry Agency, Ltd., Mgr. P. Frobisher Pilbeam (an admirer of Sue’s whom she has avoided meeting), to find the pig. Pilbeam refuses to take the case, Hugo calls Sue from Pilbeam’s office and persuades her to go with him to Mario’s for dinner and dancing. Ronnie, suspicious of Hugo’s trip to London, is on his way to call on Sue.
V
LEOPOLD’S justly famous band, its cheeks puffed out and its eyeballs rolling, was playing a popular melody with lots of stomp in it, and for the first time since she had accepted Hugo’s invitation to the dance, Sue, gliding round the floor, was conscious of a spiritual calm. Her conscience, quieted by the moaning of the saxophone, seemed to have retired from business. It realized, no doubt, the futility of trying to pretend that there was anything wrong in a girl enjoying this delightful exercise.
How absurd, she felt, Ronnie’s objections were. It was, considered Sue, becoming analytical, as if she were to make a tremendous fuss because he played tennis and golf with girls. Dancing was just a game like those two pastimes, and it so happened that you had to have a man with you or you couldn’t play it. To get all jealous and throaty just because one went out dancing was simply ridiculous.
On the other hand, placid though her conscience now was, she had to admit that it was a relief to feel that he would never know of this little outing.
Men were such children when they were in love. Sue found herself sighing over the opposite sex’s eccentricities. If they were only sensible, how simple life would be. It amazed her that Ronnie could ever have any possible doubt, however she might spend her leisure hours, that her heart belonged to him alone. She marveled that he should suppose for a moment that even if she danced all night and every night with every other man in the world it would make any difference in her feelings toward him.
ALL the same, holding the peculiar views he did, he must undoubtedly be humored.
“You won’t breathe a word to Ronnie about our coming here, will you, Hugo?” she said, repeating an injunction which had been her opening speech on arriving at the restaurant.
“Not a syllable.”
“I can trust you?”
“Implicitly. Telegraphic address, Discretion, Market Blandings.”
“Ronnie’s funny, you see.”
“One long scream.”
“I mean, he wouldn’t understand.”
“No. Great surprise it was to me,” said Hugo, doing complicated things with his feet, “to hear that you and the old leper had decided to team up; you could have knocked me down with a feather. Odd he never confided in his boyhood friend.”
“Well, it wouldn’t do for it to get about.”
“Are you suggesting that Hugo Carmody is a babbler?”
“You do like gossiping. You know you do.”
“I know nothing of the sort,” said Hugo with dignity. “If I were asked to give my opinion, I should say that I was essentially a strong, silent man.”
He made a complete circle of the floor in that capacity. His taciturnity surprised Sue.
“What’s the matter?” she asked.
“Dudgeon,” said Hugo.
“What?”
“I’m sulking. That remark of yours rankles. That totally unfounded accusation that I cannot keep a secret. It may interest you to know that I, too, am secretly engaged and have never so much as mentioned it to a soul.”
“Hugo!”
“Yes. Betrothed. And so at long last came a day when Love wound his silken fetters about Hugo Carmody.”
“Who’s the unfortunate girl?”
“There is no unfortunate girl. The lucky girl . . . was that your foot?”
“Yes.”
“Sorry. I haven’t got the hang of these new steps yet. The lucky girl, I was saying, is Miss Millicent Threepwood.”
As if stunned by the momentousness of the announcement, the band stopped playing: and, chancing to be immediately opposite their table, the man who never revealed secrets led his partner to her table. She was gazing at him ecstatically.
“You don’t mean that?”
“I do mean that. What did you think I meant?”
“I never heard anything so wonderful in my life!”
“Good news?”
“I’m simply delighted.”
“I’m pleased, too,” said Hugo.
“I’ve been trying not to admit it to myself, but I was very scared about Millicent. Ronnie told me the family wanted him and her to marry, and you never know what may happen when families throw their weight about. And now it’s all right!”
“Quite all right.”
The music had started again, but Sue remained in her seat.
“Not?” said Hugo, astonished.
“Not just yet. I want to talk. You don’t realize what this means to me. Besides, your dancing’s gone off, Hugo. You’re not the man you were.”
“I NEED practice.” He lit a cigarette and tapped a philosophical vein of thought, eying the gyrating couples meditatively. “It’s the way they’re always introducing new steps that bothers the man who has been living out in the woods. I have become a rusty rustic.”
“I didn’t mean you were bad. Only you used to be such a marvel. Dancing with you was like floating on a pink cloud above an ocean of bliss.”
“A very accurate description, I should imagine,” agreed Hugo. “But don’t blame me. Blame these Amalgamated Professors of the Dance, or whatever they call themselves—the birds who get together every couple of weeks or so to decide how they can make things more difficult. Amazing thing that they won’t leave well alone.”
“You must have change.”
“I disagree with you,” said Hugo. “No other walk in life is afflicted by a gang of thugs who are perpetually altering the rules of the game. When you learn to golf, the professional doesn’t tell you to bring the club up slowly and keep the head steady and roll the forearms and bend the left knee and raise the left heel and keep your eye on the ball and not sway back and a few more things, and then, after you’ve sweated yourself to the bone learning all that, suddenly add: ‘Of course, you understand that this is merely intended to see you through till about three weeks from next Thursday. After that the Supreme Grand Council of Consolidated Divot-Shifters will scrap these methods and invent an entirely new set!’ ”
“Is this more dudgeon?”
“No. Not dudgeon.”
“It sounds like dudgeon. I believe your little feelings are hurt because I said your dancing wasn’t as good as it used to be.”
“Not at all. We welcome criticism.”
“Well, get your mind off it and tell me all about you and Millicent and . . .”
“When I was about five,” resumed Hugo, removing his cigarette from the holder and inserting another, “I attended my first dancing-school. I’m a bit shaky on some of the incidents of the days when I was trailing clouds of glory, but I do remember that dancing-school. At great trouble and expense I was taught to throw up a rubber ball with my left hand and catch it with my right, keeping the small of the back rigid and generally behaving in a graceful and attractive manner. It doesn’t sound a likely sort of thing to learn at a dancing-school, but I swear to you that that’s what the curriculum was. Now, the point I am making . . .”
“Did you fall in love with Millicent right away, or was it gradual?”
“The point I am making is this. I became very good at throwing and catching that rubber ball. I dislike boasting, but I stood out conspicuously among a pretty hot bunch. People would nudge each other and say ‘Who is he?’ behind their hands. I don’t suppose, when I was feeling right, I missed the rubber ball more than once in twenty goes. But what good does it do me now? Absolutely none. Long before I got a chance of exhibiting my accomplishment in public and having beautiful women fawn on me for my skill, the Society of Amalgamated Professors of the Dance decided that the Rubber-Ball Glide, or whatever it was called, was out of date.”
“Is she very pretty?”
“And what I say is that all this chopping and changing handicaps a chap. I am perfectly prepared at this moment to step out on that floor and heave a rubber ball about, but it simply isn’t being done nowadays. People wouldn’t understand what I was driving at. In other words, all the time and money and trouble that I spent on mastering the Rubber-Ball Shimmy is a dead loss. I tell you, if the Amalgamated Professors want to make people cynics, they’re going the right way to work.”
“I wish you would tell me all about Millicent.”
“IN a moment. Dancing, they taught me at school, dates back to the early Egyptians, who ascribed the invention to the god Thoth. The Phrygian Corybantes danced in honor of somebody whose name I’ve forgotten, and every time the festival of Rhea Silvia came round the ancient Roman hoofers were there with their hair in a braid. But what was good enough for the god Thoth isn’t good enough for these blighted Amalgamated Professors! Oh, no! And it’s been the same all through the ages. I don’t suppose there has been a moment in history when some poor, well-meaning devil, with ambition at one end of him and two left feet at the other, wasn’t getting it in the neck.”
“And all this,” said Sue, “because you trod on my foot for just one half-second.”
“Hugo Carmody dislikes to tread on women’s feet, even for half a second. He has his pride. Ever heard of Father Mariana?”
“No.”
“Mariana, George. Born twelve hundred and something. Educated privately and at Leipzig University. Hobbies: fishing, illuminating vellum and mangling the wurzel. You must have heard of old Pop Mariana?”
“I haven’t and I don’t want to. I want to hear about Millicent.”
“It was the opinion of Father Mariana that dancing was a deadly sin. He was particularly down, I may mention, on the saraband. He said the saraband did more harm than the plague. I know just how he felt. I’ll bet he had worked like a dog at twenty-five pazazas the complete course of twelve lessons, guaranteed to teach the fandango; and, just when his instructor had finally told him that he was fit to do it at the next Saturday Night Social, along came the Amalgamated Brothers with their newfangled saraband, and where was Pop? Leaning against the wall with the other foot-and-mouth diseasers, trying to pretend dancing bored him. Did I hear you say you wanted a few facts about Millicent?”
“You did.”
“Sweetest girl on earth.”
“Really?”
“Absolutely. It’s well known. All over Shropshire.”
“And she really loves you?”
“Between you and me,” said Hugo confidentially. “I don’t wonder you speak in that amazed tone. If you saw her, you’d be still more surprised. I am a man who thinks before he speaks. I weigh my words. And I tell you solemnly that that girl is too good for me.”
“But you’re a sweet darling precious pet.”
“I KNOW I’m a sweet darling precious pet. Nevertheless I still maintain that she is too good for me. She is the nearest thing to an angel that ever came glimmering through the laurels in the quiet evenfall in the garden by the turrets of the old manorial hall.”
“Hugo! I’d no idea you were so poetical.”
“Enough to make a chap poetical, loving a girl like that.”
“And you really do love her?”
Hugo took a feverish gulp of champagne and rolled his eyeballs as if he had been a member of Leopold’s justly famous band.
“Madly. Devotedly. And when I think how I have deceived her my soul sickens.”
“Have you deceived her?”
“Not yet. But I’m going to in about five minutes. I put in a phone call to Blandings just now, and when I get through I shall tell her I’m speaking from my hotel bedroom, where I am on the point of going to bed. You see,” said Hugo confidentially, “Millicent, though practically perfect in every other respect, is one of those girls who might misunderstand this little night out of mine, did it but come to her ears. Speaking of which, you ought to see them. Like alabaster shells.”
“I know what you mean. Ronnie’s like that.”
Hugo stared.
“Ronnie?”
“Yes.”
“You mean to sit there and tell me that Ronnie’s ears are like alabaster shells?”
“No, I meant that he would be furious if he knew that I had come out dancing. And, oh, I do love dancing so,” sighed Sue.
“He must never know!”
“No. That’s why I asked you just now not to tell him.”
“I won’t. Secrecy and silence. Thank goodness there’s nobody who could tell Millicent, even if they wanted to. Ah! this must be the bringer of glad tidings, come to say my call is through. All set?” he asked the page-boy who had threaded his way through the crowd to their table.
“Yes, sir.”
Hugo rose.
“Amuse yourself somehow till I return.”
“I shan’t be dull,” said Sue.
She watched him disappear, then leaned back in her seat, watching the dancers. Her eyes were bright, and Hugo’s news had brought a flush to her cheeks.
Percy Pilbeam, who had been hovering in the background, hoping for such an opportunity ever since his arrival at the restaurant, thought he had never seen her looking prettier. He edged between the tables and took Hugo’s vacated chair. There are men who, approaching a member of the other sex, wait for permission before sitting down, and men who sit down without permission. Pilbeam was one of the latter.
“Good evening,” he said.
She turned, and was aware of a nasty-looking little man at her elbow. He seemed to have materialized from nowhere.
“May I introduce myself, Miss Brown?” said this blot. “My name is Pilbeam.”
At the same moment, there appeared in the doorway and stood there raking the restaurant with burning eyes the flannel-suited figure of Ronald Overbury Fish.
RONNIE FISH’S estimate of the time necessary for reaching London from Blandings Castle in a sports-model two-seater had been thrown out of gear by two mishaps. Halfway down the drive the car had developed some mysterious engine-trouble, which had necessitated taking it back to the stables and having it overhauled by Lord Emsworth’s chauffeur. It was not until nearly an hour later that he had been able to resume his journey, and a blowout near Oxford had delayed him still further. He arrived at Sue’s flat just as Sue and Hugo were entering Mario’s.
Ringing Sue’s front-door bell produced no result. Ronnie regretted that in the stress of all the other matters that occupied his mind he had forgotten to send her a telegram. He was about to creep away and have a bite of dinner at the Drones Club—a prospect which pleased him not at all, for the Drones at dinner-time was always full of hearty eggs who talked much too loud for a worried man’s nerves and might even go so far as to throw bread at him, when, descending the stairs into the hall, he came upon Bashford, the porter.
Bashford, who knew Ronnie well, said “Ullo, Mr. Fish,” and Ronnie said “Hello, Bashford,” and Bashford said the weather seemed to keep up, and Ronnie said, “Yes, that’s right, it does,” and it was at this point that the porter uttered these memorable, and, as events proved, epoch-making words:
“If you’re looking for Miss Brown, Mr. Fish, I’ve an idea she’s gone to a place called Mario’s.”
He poured further details into Ronnie’s throbbing ear. Mr. Carmody had rung up on the phone, might have been ar-parse four, and he, Bashford, not listening but happening to hear, had thought he had caught something said about this place Mario’s. . . .
By the time Ronald Overbury Fish pushed through the swinging-door that guards the revelry at Mario’s from the gaze of the passer-by, he was perplexed in the extreme. He felt hot all over, then cold all over, then hot again, and the waiter who stopped him on the threshold of the dining-room to inform him that evening dress was indispensable on the dancing-floor and that flannel suits must go up to the balcony, was running a risk which would have caused his insurance company to purse its lips and shake its head.
Fortunately for him, Ronnie did not hear. He was scanning the crowd before him in an effort to find Sue.
“Plenty of room in the balcony, sir,” urged the waiter, continuing to play with fire.
This time Ronnie did become dimly aware that somebody was addressing him and he was about to turn and give the man one look, when halfway down a grove of black coats and gayly colored frocks, he suddenly saw what he was searching for. The next moment he was pushing a path through the throng, treading on the toes of brave men and causing fair women to murmur bitterly that this sort of thing ought to be prevented by the management.
Five yards from Sue’s table, Ronnie Fish would have said that his cup was full and could not possibly be made any fuller. But when he had covered another two and pushed aside a fat man who was standing in the fairway, he realized his mistake. It was not Hugo who was Sue’s companion, but a reptilian-looking squirt with narrow eyes and his hair done in ridges. And, as he saw him, something seemed to go off in Ronnie’s brain like a released spring.
Ronnie reached the table. Pilbeam at the moment was saying that he had wanted for a long time to meet Sue. He hoped she had got his flowers all right.
It was perhaps a natural desire to look at anything but this odious and thrusting individual who had forced his society upon her that caused Sue to raise her eyes.
Raising them she met Ronnie’s. And, as she saw him, her conscience, which she had supposedly lulled for the night, sprang to life more vociferous than ever. It had but been crouching, the better to spring.
“Ronnie!”
She started up. Pilbeam also rose. The waiter with the glasses pressed the edge of his tray against Ronnie’s elbow in a firm but respectful manner and told him that on the dancing floor evening dress was indispensable. Gentlemen in flannel suits, however, would find ample accommodation in the balcony.
Ronnie did not speak. And it would have been better if Sue had not done so. For, at this crisis, some subconscious instinct, of the kind which is always waiting to undo us at critical moments, suggested to her dazed mind that when two men who do not know each other are standing side by side in a restaurant one ought to introduce them.
“Mr. Fish, Mr. Pilbeam,” murmured Sue.
ONLY the ringing of the bell that heralds the first round of a heavy-weight championship fight could have produced more instant and violent results. Through Ronnie’s flannel-clad body a sort of galvanic shock seemed to pass. Pilbeam! He had come expecting Hugo, and Hugo would have been bad enough. But Pilbeam! The man she had said she didn’t even know. The man she hadn’t met. The man whose gifts of flowers she had professed to resent. In person! In the flesh! Hobnobbing with her in a restaurant! By Gad, he meant to say! By George! Good Gosh!
His fists clenched. Eton was forgotten, Cambridge not even a memory. He inhaled so sharply that a man at the next table who was eating a mousse of chicken stabbed himself in the chin with his fork. He turned on Pilbeam with a hungry look. And at this moment, the waiter, raising his voice a little, for he was beginning to think that Ronnie’s hearing was slightly affected, mentioned as an interesting piece of information that the management of Mario’s preferred to reserve the dancing-floor exclusively for clients in evening dress. But there was a bright side. Gentlemen in flannel suits could be accommodated in the balcony.
It was the waiter who saved Percy Pilbeam. With all the force of a generous nature, sorely tried, Ronnie plugged the waiter in the stomach with his elbow. There was a crash which even Leopold’s band could not drown. The man who had stabbed himself with the fork had his meal still further spoiled by the fact that it suddenly began to rain glass. And, as regards the other occupants of the restaurant, the word “sensation” about sums up the situation.
Ronnie and the management of Mario’s now formed two sharply contrasted schools of thought. To Ronnie the only thing that seemed to matter was this Pilbeam—this creeping, slinking, cuckoo-in-the-nest Pilbeam, the Lothario who had lowered all speed records in underhand villainy by breaking up his home before he had got one. He concentrated all his faculties to the task of getting round the table, to the other side of which the object of his dislike had prudently withdrawn, and showing him in no uncertain manner where he got off.
To the management, on the other hand, the vital issue was all this broken glassware. The waiter had risen from the floor, but the glasses were still there, and scarcely one of them was in a condition ever to be used again for the refreshment of Mario’s customers. The head waiter, swooping down on the fray like some god in the Iliad descending from a cloud, was endeavoring to place this point of view before Ronnie. Assisting him with word and gesture were two inferior waiters—Waiter A, and Waiter B.
RONNIE was in no mood for abstract debate. He hit the head waiter in the abdomen, Waiter A in the ribs, and was just about to dispose of Waiter B when his activities were hampered by the sudden arrival of reinforcements. From all parts of the room other waiters had assembled—to name but a few, Waiter C, D, E, F, G and H—and he found himself hard pressed. It seemed to him that he had dropped into a Waiters’ Convention. As far as the eye could reach, the arena was crammed with waiters, and more coming.
Pilbeam had disappeared altogether, and so busy was Ronnie now that he did not even miss him. He had reached that condition of mind which the old Vikings used to call berserk and which among modern Malays is termed running amok.
Ronnie Fish in the course of his life had had many ambitions. As a child, he had yearned some day to become an engine-driver. At school, it had seemed to him that the most attractive career the world had to offer was that of the professional cricketer. Later, he had hoped to run a prosperous night-club. But now, in his twenty-sixth year, all these desires were cast aside and forgotten. The only thing in life that seemed really worth while was to massacre waiters; and to this task he addressed himself with all the energy and strength at his disposal.
Matters now began to move briskly. Waiter C who rashly clutched the sleeve of Ronnie’s coat, reeled back with a hand pressed to his right eye. Waiter D, a married man, contented himself with standing on the outskirts and talking Italian. But Waiter E, made of sterner stuff, hit Ronnie rather hard with a dish containing omelette aux champignons: and it was as the latter reeled beneath this buffet that there suddenly appeared in the forefront of the battle a figure wearing a gay uniform and almost completely concealed behind a vast mustache, waxed at the ends. It was the commissionaire from the street-door: and anybody who has ever been bounced from a restaurant knows that commissionaires are heavy metal.
This one, whose name was McTeague, and who had spent many lively years in the army before retiring to take up his present duties, had a grim face made of some hard kind of wood and the muscles of a village blacksmith. A man of action rather than words, he clove his way through the press in silence. Only when he reached the center of the maelstrom did he speak. This was when Ronnie, leaping onto a chair the better to perform the operation, hit him on the nose. On receipt of this blow, he uttered the brief monosyllable ‘Ho!’ and then, without more delay, scooped Ronnie into an embrace of steel and bore him towards the door, through which was now moving a long, large, leisurely policeman.
IT WAS some few minutes later that Hugo Carmody, emerging from the telephone booth on the lower floor where the cocktail bar is, sauntered back into the dancing-room and was interested to find waiters massaging bruised limbs, other waiters replacing fallen tables, and Leopold’s band playing in a sort of hushed undertone like a band that has seen strange things.
“Hullo!” said Hugo. “Anything up?”
He eyed Sue inquiringly. She looked to him like a girl who had had some sort of a shock. Not, or his eyes deceived him, at all her old bright self.
“What’s up?” he asked.
“Take me home, Hugo!”
Hugo stared.
“Home? Already? With the night yet young?”
“Oh, Hugo, take me home, quick.”
“Just as you say,” assented Hugo agreeably. He was now pretty certain that something was up. “One second to settle the bill, and then homeward ho. And on the way you shall tell me all about it. For I jolly well know,” said Hugo, who prided himself on his keenness of observation, “that something is—or has been—up.”
The law of Great Britain is a remorseless machine which, once set in motion, ignores first causes and takes into account only results. It will not accept shattered dreams as an excuse for shattering glassware; nor will you get far by pleading a broken heart in extenuation of your behavior in breaking waiters.
Haled on the morrow before the awful majesty of Justice at Bosher Street Police Court and charged with disorderly conduct in a public place, to wit, Mario’s Restaurant, and resisting an officer, to wit, P. C. Murgatroyd, in the execution of his duties, Ronald Fish made no impassioned speeches. He did not raise clenched fists aloft and call upon Heaven to witness that he was a good man wronged. Experience, dearly bought in the days of his residence at the University, had taught him that when the law gripped you with its talons the only thing to do was to give a false name, say nothing and hope for the best. Shortly before noon, accordingly, on the day following the painful scene just described, Edwin Jones, of 7 Nasturtium Villas, Cricklewood, poorer by the sum of five pounds, was being conveyed in a swift taxicab to his friend Hugo Carmody’s hotel, there to piece together his broken life and try to make a new start.
On the part of the man Jones himself during the ride there was a disposition towards silence. He gazed before him bleakly and gnawed his lower lip. Hugo Carmody, on the other hand, was inclined to be rather jubilant. It seemed to Hugo that, after a rocky start, things had panned out pretty well.
“A nice, smooth job,” he said approvingly. “I was scanning the beak’s face closely during the summing up and I couldn’t help fearing for a moment that it was going to be a case of fourteen days without the option. As it is, here you are, a free man, and no chance of your name being in the papers. A moral victory, I call it.”
Ronnie released his lower lip in order to bare his teeth in a bitter sneer.
“She promised me she wouldn’t go out with a soul.”
“Ah, but with a merry twinkle in her eye, no doubt? I mean to say, you can’t expect a girl nowadays to treat a promise like that seriously. I mean, dash it, be reasonable!”
“And with that little worm, of all people!”
Hugo cleared his throat. He was conscious of a slight embarrassment. He had not wished to touch on this aspect of the affair, but Ronnie’s last words gave a Carmody and a gentleman no choice.
“As a matter of fact, Ronnie, old man,” he said, “you are wrong in supposing that she went to Mario’s with the above Pilbeam. She went with me. Blameless Hugo, what. I mean, more like a brother than anything.”
Ronnie declined to be comforted.
“I don’t believe you.”
“My dear chap!”
“I suppose you think you’re damned clever, trying to smooth things over. She was at Mario’s with Pilbeam.”
“I took her there.”
“You may have taken her. But she was dining with Pilbeam.”
“Nothing of the kind.”
“Do you think I can’t believe my own eyes? It’s no use your saying anything, Hugo; I’m through with her. She’s let me down. Less than a week I’ve been away,” said Ronnie, his voice trembling, “and she lets me down. Well, it serves me right for being such a fool as to think she ever cared a curse for me.”
HE RELAPSED into silence. And Hugo, after turning over in his mind a few specimen remarks, decided not to make them. The cab drew up before the hotel, and Ronnie, getting out, uttered a wordless exclamation.
“No, let me,” said Hugo considerately. A bit rough on a man, he felt, after coughing up five quid to the hell-hounds of the Law, to be expected to pay the cab. He produced money and turned to the driver. It was some moments before he turned back again, for the driver, by the rules of the taxi-chauffeurs’ Union, kept his petty cash tucked into his underclothing. When he did so, he was considerably astonished to find that Ronnie, while his back was turned, had, in some unaccountable manner, become Sue. The changeling was staring unhappily at him from the exact spot where he had left his old friend.
“Hullo!” he said.
“Ronnie’s gone,” said Sue.
“Gone?”
“Yes. He walked off as quick as he could round the corner when he saw me. He . . .” Sue’s voice broke. “He didn’t say a word.”
“How did you get here?” asked Hugo. There were other matters, of course, to be discussed later, but he felt he must get this point cleared up first.
“I thought you would bring him back to your hotel, and I thought that if I could see him I could . . . say something.”
Hugo was alarmed.
“Come inside,” he urged quickly. “Come and have a cocktail or a cup of tea and a bun or something. I say,” he said, as he led the way into the hotel lobby and found two seats in a distant corner, “I’m frightfully sorry about all this. I can’t help feeling it’s my fault.”
“Oh, no.”
“If I hadn’t asked you to dinner . . .”
“It isn’t that that’s the trouble. Ronnie might have been a little cross for a minute or two if he had found you and me together, but he would soon have got over it. It was finding me with that horrid little man Pilbeam. You see, I told him—and it was quite true—that I didn’t know him.”
“Yes, so he was saying to me in the cab.”
“Did he— What did he say?”
“Well, he plainly resented the Pilbeam, I’m afraid. His manner, when touching on the Pilbeam, was austere. I tried to drive into his head that that was just an accidental meeting and that you had come to Mario’s with me, but he would have none of it. I fear, old thing, there’s nothing to be done but leave the whole binge to Time, the Great Healer.”
A PAGE-BOY was making a tour of the lobby. He seemed to be seeking a Mr. Gargery.
“If only I could get hold of him and make him listen. I haven’t been given a chance to explain.”
“You think you could explain, even if given a chance?”
“I could try. Surely he couldn’t help seeing that I really loved him, if we had a real talk?”
“And the trouble is, you’re here and he’ll be back at Blandings in a few hours. Difficult,” said Hugo, shaking his head. “Complex.”
“Mr. Carmody,” chanted the page-boy coming nearer. “Mr. Carmody.”
“Hi!” cried Hugo.
“Mr. Carmody? Wanted on the telephone, sir.”
Hugo’s face became devout and saint-like.
“Awfully sorry to leave you for an instant,” he said, “but do you mind if I rush? It must be Millicent. She’s the only person who knows I’m here.”
He sped away, and Sue, watching him, found herself choking with sudden tears. It seemed to emphasize her forlornness so, this untimely evidence of another love-story that had not gone awry. She seemed to be listening to that telephone conversation, hearing Hugo’s delighted yelps as the voice of the girl he loved floated to him over the wire. She pulled herself together. Beastly of her to be jealous of Hugo just because he was happy. . . .
Sue sat up abruptly. She had had an idea.
It was a breath-taking idea, but simple. It called for courage, for audacity, for a reckless disregard of consequences, but nevertheless it was simple.
“Hugo,” she cried, as that lucky young man returned and dropped into the chair at her side. “Hugo, listen!”
“I say,” said Hugo, “that was Millicent on the phone.”
“Was it? How nice. Listen, Hugo. . . .”
“Speaking from Blandings.”
“Yes. But . . .”
“And she has broken off the engagement!”
“What!”
“Broken off the bally engagement,” repeated Hugo. He signaled urgently to a passing waiter. “Get me a brandy-and-soda, will you?” he said. His face was pale and set.
“Brandy-and-soda, sir?”
“Yes,” said Hugo. “Stiffish.”
Annotations to this novel in book form are on this site.
Printer’s errors corrected above:
Magazine, p. 16d, had “keep your eye on the ball and not away back”; corrected to “sway back” as in UK magazine and UK and US books.
Magazine, p. 54b, had “the bell that heralds the first sound of a heavy-weight championship fight”; corrected to “round” as in both books.
Magazine, p. 56a, had “She looked like a girl who had had some sort of a shock”; corrected to “has had” as in UK magazine and both books.
Magazine, p. 56b, had “going to be case of fourteen days”; corrected to “be a case” as in UK magazine and both books.
Magazine, p. 56b, had “Blameless Hugo, what I mean, more like a brother than anything”; corrected to “Blameless Hugo, what. I mean, more like a brother than anything” as in UK magazine and both books.