Читать книгу The Code of the Woosters / Фамильная честь Вустеров - Пелам Гренвилл Вудхаус, Pelham Grenville Wodehouse - Страница 4

I had described Roderick Spode to the butler as a man with an eye that could open an oyster at sixty paces, and it was an eye of this nature that he was directing at me now. I saw that I had been mistaken in supposing him to be seven feet in height. Eight, at least. Also the slowly working jaw muscles.

I hoped he was not going to say “Ha!” but he did. And that concluded the dialogue sequence for the moment. Then, still keeping his eyes glued on me, he shouted: “Sir Atkyn!” There was a distant sound of Eh-yes-here-I-am-what-is-it-ing. “Come here, please. I have something to show you.” Old Bassett appeared in the window, adjusting his pince-nez.

“Look!” said Spode. “Would you have thought such a thing possible?”

Old Bassett was goggling at me with a sort of stunned amazement.

“Good God! It’s the bag-snatcher!”

“Yes. Isn’t it incredible?”

“It’s unbelievable. Why, damn it, I’s persecution. Fellow follows me everywhere. Never a free moment. How did you catch him?”

“I was walking along the drive, and I saw a furtive figure slink in at the window. I hurried up, and covered him with my gun. Just in time. He had already begun to loot the place.”

“Well, I’m most obliged to you, Roderick. But what I can’t understand is the chap’s pertinacity. But no. Well, he will be sorry he did.”

“I suppose this is too serious a case for you to deal with summarily?”

“I can issue a warrant for his arrest. Bring him along to the library, and I’ll do it now. The case will have to go to the Assizes.”

“What will he get, how do you think?”

“Not easy to say. But certainly not less than—”

“Hoy!” I said. I had intended to speak in a quiet, reasonable voice—to explain that I was on these premises as an invited guest, but for some reason the word came out like a thunder. Spode said: “Don’t shout like that! ”

“Nearly broke my ear-drum,” grumbled old Bassett.

“But listen!” I yelled. “Will you listen!”

A certain amount of confused argument then ensued, and in the middle of it all, the door opened and somebody said “Goodness gracious!”

I looked round. Those parted lips… those saucer-like eyes… that slender figure… Madeline Bassett came in. “Goodness gracious!” she repeated. She was definitely the sort of girl who puts her hands over a husband’s eyes, as he is crawling in to breakfast with a morning head, and says: “Guess who!”

I once stayed at the residence of a newly married pal of mine, and his bride had had carved in large letters over the fireplace in the drawing room, where it was impossible to miss it, the legend: “Two Lovers Built This Nest.” Whether Madeline Bassett, on entering the marital state, would do the same, I could not say, but it seemed most probable. She was looking at us with a sort of pretty, wide-eyed wonder. “What is all the noise about?” she said. “Why, Bertie! When did you get here?”

“Oh, hallo. I’ve just arrived.”

“Did you have a nice journey?”

“Oh, rather, thanks.”

“You must be quite exhausted.”

“Oh, no, thanks, rather not.”

“Well, tea will be ready soon. I see you’ve met Daddy.”

“And Mr. Spode.”

“And Mr. Spode. I don’t know where Augustus is, but he’s sure to be in to tea.”

Old Bassett had been listening to these courtesies with a dazed expression on the face. To him, Bertram was a creature of the underworld who stole bags and umbrellas and, what made it worse, didn’t even steal them well.

“You don’t mean you know this man?” he said. Madeline Bassett laughed the tinkling, silvery laugh.

“Why, Daddy, you’re too absurd. Of course I know him. Bertie Wooster is an old, old, a very dear old friend of mine. I told you he was coming here today.”

“This isn’t your friend Mr. Wooster?”

“Of course.”

“But he snatches bags.”

“Umbrellas,” prompted Spode.

“And umbrellas,” assented old Bassett. “And makes daylight raids on antique shops.”

“Daddy!” said Madeline

“He does, I tell you. I’ve caught him at it,” Old Bassett said

“I’ve caught him at it,” said Spode.

“We’ve both caught him at it,” said old Bassett. “All over London. Wherever you go in London, there you will find this fellow stealing bags and umbrellas. And now in the heart of Gloucestershire[58].”

“Nonsense!” said Madeline. I saw that it was time to put an end to all this rot.

“Of course it’s nonsense,” I thundered. “The whole thing is one of those laughable misunderstandings.”

I must say I was expecting that my explanation would have gone better than it did. But old Bassett, like so many of these police court magistrates, was a difficult man to convince. He kept interrupting and asking questions, and looking at me as he asked them. You know what I mean—questions beginning with “Just one moment—” and “You say—” and “Then you are asking us to believe—” Offensive, very.

However, I managed to get him straight on the umbrella, and he conceded that he might have judged me unjustly about that.

“But how about the bags?”

“There weren’t any bags. ”

“I certainly sentenced you for something at Bosher Street[59]. I remember it vividly”

“I pinched a policeman’s helmet.”

“That’s just as bad as snatching bags.”

Roderick Spode intervened unexpectedly. He had been standing by, thoughtfully listening to my statements.

“No,” he said, “I don’t think you can go so far as that. When I was at Oxford, I once stole a policeman’s helmet myself.”

I was astounded. It just showed, as I often say, that there is good in the worst of us. But old Bassett said,

“Well, how about that affair at the antique shop? Hey? Didn’t we catch him in the act of running off with my cow-creamer? What has he got to say to that?”

Spode nodded.

“The bloke at the shop had given it to me to look at,” I said shortly. “He advised me to take it outside, where the light was better.”

“You were rushing out.”

“I trod on the cat.”

“What cat?”

“It lives there, I suppose.”

“Hm! I saw no cat. Did you see a cat, Roderick?”

“No, no cat.”

“Ha! But what were you doing with that cow-creamer? You say you were looking at it. You are asking us to believe that you were merely looking at it. Why? What was your motive? What possible interest could it have for a man like you?”

“Exactly,” said Spode. “The very question I was going to ask myself.”

“You say the proprietor of the shop handed it to you. But I say that you snatched it up and were running away. And now Mr. Spode catches you here, with the thing in your hands. How do you explain that? What’s your answer to that? Hey?”

“Why, Daddy!” said Madeline. “Naturally your silver would be the first thing Bertie would want to look at. Of course, he is interested in it. Bertie is Mr. Travers’s nephew.”

“What!”

“Didn’t you know that? Your uncle has a wonderful collection, hasn’t he, Bertie? I suppose he has often spoken to you of Daddy’s.”

There was a pause. Old Bassett was breathing heavily. I didn’t like the look of him at all. He glanced from me to the cow-creamer, and from the cow-creamer to me, then back from me to the cow-creamer again.

“Oh!” he said. Just that. Nothing more. But it was enough.

“I say,” I said, “could I send a telegram?”

“You can telephone it from the library,” said Madeline. “I’ll take you there.”

She conducted me to the instrument and left me, saying that she would be waiting in the hall when I had finished. I established connection with the post office, and after a brief conversation with what appeared to be the village idiot, telephoned as follows:

Mrs Travers, 47, Charles Street[60], Berkeley Square, London.

I paused for a moment, then proceeded thus:

Deeply regret quite impossible carry out assignment you know what. Atmosphere one of keenest suspicion and any sort of action instantly fatal[61]. You ought to have seen old Bassett’s eye just now on learning of blood relationship of myself and Uncle Tom. Sorry and all that, but nothing doing.

Love. Bertie

I then went down to the hall to join Madeline Bassett. She was standing by the barometer, which would have been pointing to “Stormy” instead of “Set Fair”. She turned and gazed at me with a tender goggle which sent a thrill of dread creeping down the spine.

“Oh, Bertie,” she said, in a low voice like beer trickling out of a jug, “you ought not to be here!”

My recent interview with old Bassett and Roderick Spode had rather set me thinking along those lines myself. But I hadn’t time to explain that this was no idle social visit, and that if Gussie hadn’t been sending out SOSs I wouldn’t have dreamed of coming here. She went on, looking at me as if I were a rabbit which she was expecting shortly to turn into a gnome.

“Why did you come? Oh, I know what you are going to say. You felt that you had to see me again, just once. You could not resist the urge to take away with you one last memory, which you could cherish down the lonely years. Oh, Bertie, you remind me of Rudel[62].”

The name was new to me. “Rudel?”

“The Seigneur Geoffrey Rudel, Prince of Blay-en-Saintonge[63].”

I shook my head. “Never met him, I’m afraid. Pal of yours?”

“He lived in the Middle Ages. He was a great poet. And he fell in love with the wife of the Lord of Tripoli[64].”

I stirred uneasily.

“For years he loved her, and at last he could resist no longer. He took ship to Tripoli, and his servants carried him ashore. ”

“Not feeling so good?” I said. “Rough crossing?[65]”

“He was dying. Of love.”

“Oh, ah.”

“They bore him into the Lady Melisande’s[66] presence on a litter, and he had just strength enough to reach out and touch her hand. Then he died.”

She paused, and heaved a sigh. A silence ensued.

“Terrific,” I said, feeling I had to say something. She sighed again.

“You see now why I said you reminded me of Rudel. Like him, you came to take one last glimpse of the woman you loved. It was dear of you, Bertie, and I shall never forget it. It will always remain with me as a fragrant memory, like a flower pressed between the leaves of an old album. But was it wise? Should you not have been strong? Would it not have been better to have ended it all cleanly, that day when we said goodbye at Brinkley Court, and not to have reopened the wound? We had met, and you have loved me, and I had had to tell you that my heart was another’s. That should have been our farewell.”

“Absolutely,” I said. I mean to say, all that was perfectly clear, as far as it went. If her heart really was another’s, fine. Nobody more pleased than Bertram. “But I had a communication from Gussie, more or less indicating that you and he were…”

She looked at me like someone who has just solved the crossword puzzle.

“So that was why you came! You thought that there might still be hope? Oh, Bertie, I’m sorry… sorry… so sorry.”

Her eyes were about the size of soup plates.

“No, Bertie, really there is no hope, none. You must not build dream castles. It can only cause you pain. I love Augustus. He is my man.”

“And you haven’t quarreled?”

“Of course not.”

“Then what did he mean by saying ‘Serious rift Madeline and self’?”

“Oh, that?” She laughed another tinkling, silvery one. “That was nothing. It was all too perfectly silly and ridiculous. Just the little misunderstanding. I thought I had found him flirting with my cousin Stephanie, and I was silly and jealous. But he explained everything this morning. He was only taking a fly out of her eye.”

“So everything’s all right, is it?”

“Everything. I have never loved Augustus more than I do now.”

“Haven’t you?”

“Each moment I am with him, his wonderful nature seems to open before me like some lovely flower.”

“Does it?”

“Every day I find myself discovering some new facet of his extraordinary character. For instance… you have seen him quite lately, have you not?”

“Oh, rather. I gave him a dinner only the night before last.”

“I wonder if you noticed any difference in him?”

I threw my mind back to the binge. As far as I could recollect, Gussie had been the same freak I had always known.

“Difference? No, I don’t think so. Of course, at that dinner I hadn’t the chance to observe him very closely—subject his character to the final analysis, if you know what I mean. He sat next to me, and we talked of this and that, but you know how it is when you’re a host—you have all sorts of things to divert your attention, keeping an eye on the waiters, trying to make the conversation general… a hundred little duties. But he seemed to me much the same. What sort of difference?”

“An improvement, if such a thing were possible. Have you not sometimes felt in the past, Bertie, that, if Augustus had a fault, it was a tendency to be a little timid?”

I saw what she meant.

“Oh, ah, yes, of course, definitely.” I remembered something Jeeves had once called Gussie. “A sensitive plant, eh?”

“Exactly. You know Shelley[67], Bertie.”

“Oh, am I?”

“That is what I have always thought him—a sensitive plant, hardly fit for the rough and tumble of life. But recently—in this last week, in fact—he has shown, together with that wonderful dreamy sweetness of his, a force of character which I had not suspected that he possessed. He seems completely to have lost his diffidence.”

“By Lord, yes,” I said, remembering. “That’s right. Do you know, he actually made a speech at that dinner of mine, and a most admirable one.”

“Why, only this morning,” she said, “he spoke to Roderick Spode quite sharply.”

“He did?”

“Yes. They were arguing about something, and Augustus told him to go and stop talking nonsense.”

“Well, well!” I said. Naturally, I didn’t believe it for a moment. That wasn’t possible.

I saw what had happened, of course. She was trying to make her boyfriend stronger and braver, like all girls. I’ve noticed the same thing in young wives. Women never know when to stop on these occasions.

I remembered Mrs Bingo Little once telling me, shortly after their marriage, that Bingo said poetic things to her about sunsets—his best friends being perfectly well aware, of course, that the old man never noticed a sunset in his life and that, if he did by a chance, the only thing he would say about it would be that it reminded him of a slice of roast beef, cooked just right. However, you can’t call a girl a liar; so I said: “Well, well!”

“It was the one thing that was needed to make him perfect. Sometimes, Bertie, I ask myself if I am worthy of so rare a soul.”

“Oh, of course you are,” I said heartily.

“It’s sweet of you to say so.”

“Not a bit. You two fit like pork and beans. Anyone could see that it was a what-do-you-call-it… ideal union. I’ve known Gussie since we were kids together, and when I met you, I said: ‘That’s the girl for him!’ When is the wedding to be?”

“On the twenty-third.”

“I’d make it earlier.”

“You think so?”

“Definitely. Get it over and done with. You can’t be married too soon to a chap like Gussie. Great chap. Splendid chap. Never met a chap I respected more. Gussie. One of the best.”

She reached out and grabbed my hand and pressed it. Unpleasant, of course, but what to do. “Ah, Bertie! Always the soul of generosity!”

“No, no, rather not. Just saying what I think.”

“It makes me so happy to feel that… all this… So many men in your position might have become embittered.”

“Silly asses.”

“But you are too fine for that. You can still say these wonderful things about him.”

“Oh, rather.”

“Dear Bertie!”

And on this cheery note we parted. I headed for the drawing room and got a cup of tea. She did not take tea, being on a diet. And I had reached the drawing room, and was about to open the door, when from the other side there came a voice. And what it was saying was: “So do not talk rot[68], Spode!”

There was no possibility of mistake as to whose voice it was. Nor was there any possibility of mistake about what he had said. The words were precisely as I have stated, and to say that I was surprised would be to put it too weakly. I saw now that it was possible that there might be something, after all, in that wild story of Madeline Bassett’s. I mean to say, an Augustus Fink-Nottle who told Roderick Spode not to talk rot was an Augustus Fink-Nottle who might have told him to go and stop talking nonsense. I entered the room, marvelling. Sir Watkyn Bassett, Roderick Spode and Gussie were present. Gussie sighted me as I entered, and waved what seemed to me a patronizing hand.

“Ah, Bertie. So here you are.”

“Yes.”

“Come in, come in and have a drink.”

“Thanks.”

“Did you bring that book I asked you to?”

“Awfully sorry. I forgot.”

“Well, of all the asses that ever lived, you certainly are the worst.”

And he called for another potted-meat sandwich. All sense of bien-être[69] was destroyed by Gussie”s peculiar manner—he looked as if he had bought the place. It was a relief when the gang had finally drifted away, leaving us alone. There were mysteries here which I wanted to probe.

I thought it best, however, to begin by taking a second opinion on the position of affairs between himself and Madeline.

“I saw Madeline just now,” I said. “She tells me that you are sweethearts still. Correct?”

“Quite correct. There was a little temporary coolness about my taking a fly out of Stephanie Byng’s eye, and I got a bit panicked and wired you to come down. However, no need for that now. I was strong, and everything is all right. Still, stay a day or two, of course, as you’re here.”

“Thanks.”

“No doubt you will be glad to see your aunt. She arrives tonight, I understand.”

“You aren’t talking about my Aunt Dahlia?”

“Of course I’m talking about your Aunt Dahlia.”

“You mean Aunt Dahlia is coming here tonight?”

“Exactly.”

This was nasty news. This sudden decision to follow me to Totleigh Towers could mean only one thing: that Aunt Dahlia had become mistrustful of my will to win, and had felt it best to come and stand over me and see that I did not shirk the appointed task.

“Tell me,” continued Gussie, “what sort of voice is she in these days? I ask, because if she is going to make those hunting noises of hers at me during her visit, I shall be compelled to tick her off[70] pretty sharply. I had enough of that sort of thing when I was staying at Brinkley.”

“What’s happened to you, Gussie?” I asked.

“Eh?”

“Since when have you been like this?”

“I don’t understand you.”

“Well, you are saying you’re going to tick Aunt Dahlia off. And you are telling Spode not to talk rot. By the way, what was he talking rot about?”

“I forgot. He talks so much rot.”

“I wouldn’t have the nerve to tell Spode not to talk rot,” I said frankly.

“Well, to tell you the truth, Bertie,” said Gussie, “neither would I, a week ago.”

“What happened a week ago?”

“I had a spiritual rebirth. Thanks to Jeeves. There’s a chap, Bertie!”

“Ah!”

“We are as little children, frightened of the dark, and Jeeves is the wise nurse who takes us by the hand and—”

“Switches the light on?”

“Precisely. Would you care to hear about it?”

“Of course.”

I settled myself in my chair. Gussie stood silent for a moment. He took off his spectacles and polished them.

“A week ago, Bertie,” he began, “my affairs had reached a crisis. I discovered that I would have to make a speech at the wedding breakfast.”

“Well, naturally.”

“I know, but for some reason I had not foreseen it, and the news came as a blow. And shall I tell you why I was so overcome by stark horror at the idea of making a speech at the wedding breakfast? It was because Roderick Spode and Sir Watkyn Bassett would be in the audience. Do you know Sir Watkyn intimately?”

“Not very. He once fined me five quid at his police court.”

“Well, he is a hard nut, and he strongly objects to having me as a son-in-law. He would have liked Madeline to marry Spode—who, I may mention, has loved her since she was a baby.”

“Oh, yes?” I said, courteously concealing my astonishment that anyone except a boob like himself could love this girl.

“Yes. But apart from the fact that she wanted to marry me, he didn’t want to marry her. He looks upon himself as a Man of Destiny[71], you see, and feels that marriage would interfere with his mission.”

“What do you mean, his mission? Is he someone special?”

“Don’t you ever read the papers? Roderick Spode is the founder and head of the Saviours of Britain, a Fascist organization better known as the Black Shorts. His general idea is to make himself a Dictator.”

“Well, what! A Dictator! I’m dashed! I thought he was something of that sort. That chin… Those eyes… And that moustache. By the way, when you say ‘shorts’, you mean ‘shirts’, of course.”

“No. By the time Spode formed his association, there were no shirts left. He and his adherents wear black shorts.”

“How perfectly foul.”