CHAPTER II
I
The brilliant sunshine which so enhanced the attractions of life at Blandings Castle had brought less pleasure to those of England's workers whose duties compelled them to remain in London. In his offices on top of the Regal Theatre in Shaftesbury Avenue, Mr. Mortimer Mason, the stout senior partner in the firm of Mason and Saxby, Theatrical Enterprises, Ltd., was of opinion that what the country really needed was one of those wedge-shaped depressions off the Coast of Iceland. Apart from making him feel like a gaffed salmon, Flaming July was ruining business. Only last night, to cut down expenses, he had had to dismiss some of the chorus from the show downstairs, and he hated dismissing chorus girls. He was a kind-hearted man and, having been in the profession himself in his time, knew what it meant to get one's notice in the middle of the summer.
There was a tap on the door. The human watchdog who guarded the outer offices entered.
"Well?" said Mortimer Mason wearily.
"Can you see Miss Brown, sir?"
"Which Miss Brown? Sue?"
"Yes, sir."
"Of course." In spite of the heat Mr. Mason brightened. "Is she outside?"
"Yes, sir."
"Then pour her in."
Mortimer Mason had always felt a fatherly fondness for this girl, Sue Brown. He liked her for her own sake, for her unvarying cheerfulness and the honest way she worked. But what endeared her more particularly to him was the fact that she was Dolly Henderson's daughter. London was full of elderly gentlemen who became pleasantly maudlin when they thought of Dolly Henderson and the dear old days when the heart was young and they had had waists. He heaved himself from his chair; then fell back again, filled with a sense of intolerable injury.
"My God!" he cried. "Don't look so cool."
The rebuke was not undeserved. On an afternoon when the asphalt is bubbling in the roadways and theatrical managers melting where they sit, no girl has a right to resemble a dewy rose plucked from some old-world garden. And that, Mr. Mason considered, was just what this girl was deliberately resembling. She was a tiny thing, mostly large eyes and a wide happy smile. She had a dancer's figure, and in every movement of her there was Youth.
"Sorry, Pa." She laughed, and Mr. Mason moaned faintly. Her laugh had reminded him, for his was a nature not without its poetical side, of ice tinkling in a jug of beer. "Try not looking at me."
"Well, Sue, what's on your mind? Come to tell me you're going to be married?"
"Not at the moment, I'm afraid."
"Hasn't that young man of yours got back from Biarritz yet?"
"He arrived this morning. I had a note during the matinée. I suppose he's outside now, waiting for me. Want to have a look at him?"
"Does it mean walking downstairs?" asked Mr. Mason guardedly.
"No. He'll be in his car. You can see him from the window."
Mr. Mason was equal to getting to the window. He peered down at the rakish sports-model two-seater in the little street below. Its occupant was lying on his spine, smoking a cigarette in a long holder and looking austerely at certain children of the neighbourhood whom he seemed to suspect of being about to scratch his paint.
"They're making fiancés very small this season," said Mr. Mason, concluding his inspection.
"He is small, isn't he? He's sensitive about it, poor darling. Still, I'm small, too, so that's all right."
"Fond of him?"
"Frightfully."
"Who is he, anyway? Yes, I know his name's Fish, and it doesn't mean a thing to me. Any money?"
"I believe he's got quite a lot, only his uncle keeps it all. Lord Emsworth. He's Ronnie's trustee or something."
"Emsworth? I knew his brother years ago." Mr. Mason chuckled reminiscently. "Old Gally! What a lad! I've got a scheme I'd like to interest old Gally in. I wonder where he is now."
"ThePrattlerthis week said he was down at Blandings Castle. That's Lord Emsworth's place in Shropshire. Ronnie's going down there this evening."
"Deserting you so soon?" Mortimer Mason shook his head. "I don't like this."
Sue laughed.
"Well, I don't," said Mr. Mason. "You be careful. These lads will all bear watching."
"Don't worry, Pa. He means to do right by our Nell."
"Well, don't say I didn't warn you. So old Gally is at Blandings, is he? I must remember that. I'd like to get in touch with him. And now, what was it you wanted to see me about?"
Sue became grave.
"I've come to ask you a favour."
"Go ahead. You know me."
"It's about those girls you're getting rid of."
Mr. Mason's genial face took on a managerial look.
"Got to get rid of them."
"I know. But one of them's Sally Field."
"Meaning what?"
"Well, Sally's awfully hard up, Pa. And what I came to ask," said Sue breathlessly, "was, will you keep her on and let me go instead?"
Utter amazement caused Mortimer Mason momentarily to forget the heat. He sat up, gaping.
"Do what?"
"Let me go instead."
"Let you go instead?"
"Yes."
"You're crazy."
"No, I'm not. Come on, Pa. Be a dear."
"Is she a great friend of yours?"
"Not particularly. I'm sorry for her."
"I won't do it."
"You must. She's down to her last bean."
"But I need you in the show."
"What nonsense! As if I made the slightest difference."
"You do. You've got—I don't know—" Mr. Mason twiddled his fingers—"something. Your mother used to have it. Did you know I was the second juvenile in the first company she was ever in?"
"Yes, you told me. And haven't you got on! There's enough of you now to make two second juveniles. Well, you will do it, won't you?"
Mr. Mason reflected.
"I suppose I'll have to, if you insist," he said at length. "If I don't you'll just hand your notice in anyway. I know you. You're a sportsman, Sue. Your mother was just the same. But are you sure you'll manage all right? I shan't be casting the new show till the end of August, but I may be able to fix you up somewhere if I look round."
"I don't see how you could look any rounder if you tried, you poor darling. Do you realize, Pa, that if you got up early every morning and did half an hour's Swedish exercises——"
"If you don't want to be murdered, stop!"
"It would do you all the good in the world, you know. Well, it's awfully sweet of you to bother about me, Pa, but you mustn't. You've got enough to worry you already. I shall be all right. Good-bye. You've been an angel about Sally. It'll save her life."
"If she's that cross-eyed girl at the end of the second row who's always out of step I'm not sure I want to save her life."
"Well, you're going to do it, anyway. Good-bye."
"Don't run away."
"I must. Ronnie's waiting. He's going to take me to tea somewhere. Up the river, I hope. Think how nice it will be there, under the trees, with the water rippling——"
"The only thing that stops me hitting you with this ruler," said Mr. Mason, "is the thought that I shall soon be getting out of this Turkish bath myself. I've a show opening at the Blackpool next week. Think how nice and cool it will be on the sands there, with the waves splashing——"
"—And you with your little spade and bucket, paddling! Oh, Pa, do send me a photograph. Well, I can't stand here all day chatting over your vacation plans. My poor darling Ronnie must be getting slowly fried."
II
The process of getting slowly fried, especially when you are chafing for a sight of the girl you love after six weeks of exile from her society, is never an agreeable one. After enduring it for some time the pink-faced young man with the long cigarette holder had left his seat in the car and had gone for shade and comparative coolness to the shelter of the stage entrance, where he now stood reading the notices on the call board. He read them moodily. The thought that, after having been away from Sue for all these weeks, he was now compelled to leave her again and go to Blandings Castle was weighing on Ronald Overbury Fish's mind sorely.
Mac, the guardian of the stage door, leaned out of his hutch. The matinée over, he had begun to experience that solemn joy which comes to camels approaching an oasis and stage-door men who will soon be at liberty to pop round the corner. He endeavoured to communicate his happiness to Ronnie.
"Won't be long now, Mr. Fish."
"Eh?"
"Won't be long now, sir."
"Ah," said Ronnie.
Mac was concerned at his companion's gloom. He liked smiling faces about him. Reflecting, he fancied he could diagnose its cause.
"I was sorry to hear about that, Mr. Fish."
"Eh?"
"I say I was sorry to hear about that, sir."
"About what?"
"About the Hot Spot, sir. That night club of yours. Busting up that way. Going West so prompt."
Ronnie Fish winced. He presumed the man meant well, but there are certain subjects one does not want mentioned. When you have contrived with infinite pains to wheedle a portion of your capital out of a reluctant trustee and have gone and started a night club with it and have seen that night club flash into the receiver's hands like some frail eggshell engulfed by a whirlpool, silence is best.
"Ah," he said briefly, to indicate this.
Mac had many admirable qualities, but not tact. He was the sort of man who would have tried to cheer Napoleon up by talking about the winter sports at Moscow.
"When I heard that you and Mr. Carmody was starting one of those places I said to the fireman, 'I give it two months,' I said. And it was six weeks, wasn't it, sir?"
"Seven."
"Six or seven. Immaterial which. Point is I'm usually pretty right. I said to the fireman, 'It takes brains to run a night club,' I said. 'Brains and a certain what-shall-I-say.' Won me half a crown, that did."
He searched in his mind for other topics to interest and amuse.
"Seen Mr. Carmody lately, sir?"
"No. I've been in Biarritz. He's down in Shropshire. He's got a job as secretary to an uncle of mine."
"And I shouldn't wonder," said Mac cordially, "if he wouldn't make a mess ofthat."
He began to feel that the conversation was now going with a swing.
"Used to see a lot of Mr. Carmody round here at one time."
The advance guard of the company appeared, in the shape of a flock of musicians. They passed out of the stage door, first a couple of thirsty-looking flutes, then a group of violins, finally an oboe by himself with a scowl on his face. Oboes are always savage in captivity.
"Yes, sir. Came here a lot, Mr. Carmody did. Asking for Miss Brown. Great friends those two was."
"Oh?" said Ronnie thickly.
"Used to make me laugh to see them together."
Ronnie appeared to swallow something large and jagged.
"Why?"
"Well, him so tall and her so small. But there," said Mac philosophically, "they say it's opposites that get on best. I know I weigh seventeen stone and my missus looks like a ninepenny rabbit, and yet we're as happy as can be."
Ronnie's interest in the poundage of the stage-door keeper's domestic circle was slight.
"Ah," he said.
Mac, having got onto the subject of Sue Brown, stayed there.
"You see the flowers arrived all right, sir."
"Eh?"
"The flowers you sent Miss Brown, sir," said Mac, indicating with a stubby thumb a bouquet on the shelf behind him. "I haven't given her them yet. Thought she'd rather have them after the performance."
It was a handsome bouquet, but Ronnie Fish stared at it with a sort of dumb horror. His pink face had grown pinker, and his eyes were glassy.
"Give me those flowers, Mac," he said in a strangled voice.
"Right, sir. Here you are, sir. Now you look just like a bridegroom, sir," said the stage-door keeper, chuckling the sort of chuckle that goes with seventeen stone and a fat head.
This thought had struck Ronnie, also. It was driven home a moment later by the displeasing behaviour of two of the chorus girls who came flitting past. Both looked at him in a way painful to a sensitive young man, and one of them giggled. Ronnie turned to the door.
"When Miss Brown comes, tell her I'm waiting outside in my car."
"Right, sir. You'll be in again, I suppose, sir?"
"No." The sombre expression deepened on Ronnie's face. "I've got to go down to Shropshire this evening."
"Be away long?"
"Yes. Quite a time."
"Sorry to hear that, sir. Well, good-bye, sir. Thank you, sir."
Ronnie, clutching the bouquet, walked with leaden steps to the two-seater. There was a card attached to the flowers. He read it, frowned darkly and threw the bouquet into the car.
Girls were passing now in shoals. They meant nothing to Ronnie Fish. He eyed them sourly, marvelling why the papers talked about "beauty choruses." And then, at last, there appeared one at the sight of whom his heart, parting from its moorings, began to behave like a jumping bean. It had reached his mouth when she ran up with both hands extended.
"Ronnie, you precious angel lambkin!"
"Sue!"
To a young man in love, however great the burden of sorrows beneath which he may be groaning, the spectacle of the only girl in the world, smiling up at him, seldom fails to bring a temporary balm. For the moment Ronnie's gloom ceased to be. He forgot that he had recently lost several hundred pounds in a disastrous commercial venture. He forgot that he was going off that evening to live in exile. He even forgot that this girl had just been sent a handsome bouquet by a ghastly bargee named P. Frobisher Pilbeam, belonging to the Junior Constitutional Club. These thoughts would return, but for the time being the one that occupied his mind to the exclusion of all others was the thought that after six long weeks of separation he was once more looking upon Sue Brown.
"I'm so sorry I kept you waiting, precious. I had to see Mr. Mason."
Ronnie started.
"What about?"
A student of the motion pictures, he knew what theatrical managers were.
"Just business."
"Did he ask you to lunch or anything?"
"No. He just fired me."
"Fired you!"
"Yes, I've lost my job," said Sue happily.
Ronnie quivered.
"I'll go and break his neck."
"No, you won't. It isn't his fault. It's the weather. They have to cut down expenses when there's a heat wave. It's all the fault of people like you for going abroad instead of staying in London and coming to the theatre." She saw the flowers and uttered a delightful squeal. "For me?"
A moment before, Ronnie had been all chivalrous concern—a knight prepared to battle to the death for his lady love. He now froze.
"Apparently," he said coldly.
"How do you mean, apparently?"
"I mean they are."
"You pet!"
"Leap in."
Ronnie's gloom was now dense and foglike once more. He gestured fiercely at the clustering children and trod on the self-starter. The car moved smoothly round the corner into Shaftesbury Avenue.
Opposite the Monico there was a traffic block, and he unloaded his soul.
"In re those blooms."
"They're lovely."
"Yes, but I didn't send them."
"You brought them. Much nicer."
"What I'm driving at," said Ronnie heavily, "is that they aren't from me at all. They're from a blighter named P. Frobisher Pilbeam."
Sue's smile had faded. She knew her Ronald's jealousy so well. It was the one thing about him which she could have wished changed.
"Oh?" she said dismally.
The crust of calm detachment from all human emotion, built up by years of Eton and Cambridge, cracked abruptly, and there peeped forth a primitive Ronald Overbury Fish.
"Who is this Pilbeam?" he demanded. "Pretty much the Boy Friend, I take it, what?"
"I've never even met him!"
"But he sends you flowers."
"I know he does," wailed Sue, mourning for a golden afternoon now probably spoiled beyond repair. "He keeps sending me his beastly flowers and writing me his beastly letters."
Ronnie gritted his teeth.
"And I tell you I've never set eyes on him in my life."
"You don't know who he is?"
"One of the girls told me that he used to edit that paper,Society Spice. I don't know what he does now."
"When he isn't sending you flowers, you mean?"
"I can't help him sending me flowers."
"I don't suppose you want to."
Sue's eyes flickered. Realizing, however, that her Ronnie in certain moods resembled a child of six, she made a pathetic attempt to lighten the atmosphere.
"It's not my fault if I get persecuted with loathsome addresses, is it? I suppose, when you go to the movies, you blame Lillian Gish for being pursued by the heavy."
Ronnie was not to be diverted.
"Sometimes I ask myself," he said darkly, "if you really care a hang for me."
"Oh, Ronnie!"
"Yes, I do—repeatedly. I look at you and I look at myself and that's what I ask myself. What on earth is there about me to make a girl like you fond of a fellow? I'm a failure. Can't even run a night club. No brains. No looks."
"You've got a lovely complexion."
"Too pink. Much too pink. And I'm so damned short."
"You're not a bit too short."
"I am. My Uncle Gally once told me I looked like the protoplasm of a minor jockey."
"He ought to have been ashamed of himself."
"Why the dickens," said Ronnie, laying bare his secret dreams, "I couldn't have been born a decent height, like Hugo...." He paused. His hand shook on the steering wheel. "That reminds me. That fellow Mac at the stage door was saying that you and Hugo used to be as thick as thieves. Always together, he said."
Sue sighed. Things were being difficult to-day.
"That was before I met you," she explained patiently, "I used to like dancing with him. He's a beautiful dancer. You surely don't suppose for a minute that I could ever be in love with Hugo."
"I don't see why not."
"Hugo!" Sue laughed. There was something about Hugo Carmody that always made her want to laugh.
"Well, I don't see why not. He's better looking than I am. Taller. Not so pink. Plays the saxophone."
"Will you stop being silly about Hugo!"
"Well, I fear that bird. He's my best pal, and I know his work. He's practically handsome. And lissom, to boot." A hideous thought smote Ronnie like a blow. "Did he ever—" he choked—"did he ever hold your hand?"
"Which hand?"
"Either hand."
"How can you suggest such a thing!" cried Sue, shocked.
"Well, will you swear there's nothing between him and you?"
"Of course there isn't."
"And nothing between this fellow Pilbeam and you?"
"Of course not."
"Ah!" said Ronnie. "Then I can go ahead as planned."
His was a mercurial temperament, and it had lifted him in an instant from the depths to the heights. The cloud had passed from his face, the look of Byronic despair from his eyes. He beamed.
"Do you know why I'm going down to Blandings to-night?" he asked.
"No. I only wish you weren't."
"Well, I'll tell you. I've got to get round my uncle."
"Do what?"
"Make myself solid with my Uncle Clarence. If you've ever had anything to do with trustees you'll know that the one thing they bar like poison is parting with money. And I've simply got to have another chunk of my capital, and a good big one, too. Without money, how on earth can I marry you? Let me get hold of funds, and we'll dash off to the registrar's the moment you say the word. So now you understand why I've got to get to Blandings at the earliest possible moment and stay there till further notice."
"Yes. I see. And you're a darling. Tell me about Blandings, Ronnie."
"How do you mean?"
"Well, what sort of a place is it? I want to imagine you there while you're away."
Ronnie pondered. He was not at his best as a word painter.
"Oh, you know the kind of thing. Parks and gardens and terraces and immemorial elms and all that. All the usual stuff."
"Any girls there?"
"My Cousin Millicent. She's my Uncle Lancelot's daughter. He's dead. The family want Millicent and me to get married."
"To each other, you mean? What a perfectly horrible idea."
"Oh, it's all right. We're both against the scheme."
"Well, that's some comfort. What other girls will there be at Blandings?"
"Only one that I know of. My mother met a female called Schoonmaker at Biarritz. American. Pots of money, I believe. One of those beastly tall girls. Looked like something left over from Dana Gibson. I couldn't stand her myself, but my mother was all for her, and I didn't at all like the way she seemed to be trying to shove her off onto me. You know—'Why don't you ring up Myra Schoonmaker, Ronnie? I'm sure she would like to go to the Casino to-night. And then you could dance afterward.' Sinister, it seemed to me."
"And she's going to Blandings? H'm!"
"There's nothing to 'h'm' about."
"I'm not so sure. Oh, well, I suppose your family are quite right. I suppose you ought really to marry some nice girl in your own set."
Ronnie uttered a wordless cry and in his emotion allowed the mudguard of the two-seater to glide so closely past an Austin Seven that Sue gave a frightened squeak and the Austin Seven went on its way thinking black thoughts.
"Do be careful, Ronnie, you old chump!"
"Well, what do you want to go saying things like that for? I get enough of that from the family without havingyoustart."
"Poor old Ronnie! I'm sorry. Still, you must admit that they'd be quite within their rights, objecting to me. I'm not so hot, you know. Only a chorus girl. Just one of the ensemble!"
Ronnie said something between his teeth that sounded like "Juk!" What he meant was, be her station never so humble, a pure, sweet girl is a fitting mate for the highest in the land.
"And my mother was a music-hall singer."
"A what?"
"A music-hall singer. What they used to call a 'serio.' You know—pink tights and rather risky songs."
This time Ronnie did not say, "Juk!" He merely swallowed painfully. The information had come as a shock to him. Somehow or other he had never thought of Sue as having encumbrances in the shape of relatives; and he could not hide from himself the fact that a pink-tighted serio might stir the Family up quite a little. He pictured something with peroxide hair who would call his Uncle Clarence "dearie."
"English, do you mean? On the halls here in London?"
"Yes. Her stage name was Dolly Henderson."
"Never heard of her."
"I dare say not. But she was the rage of London twenty years ago."
"I always thought you were American," said Ronnie, aggrieved. "I distinctly recollect Hugo, when he introduced us, telling me that you had just come over from New York."
"So I had. Father took me to America soon after Mother died."
"Oh, your mother is—er—no longer with us?"
"No."
"Too bad," said Ronnie, brightening.
"My father's name was Cotterleigh. He was in the Irish Guards."
"What!"
Ronnie's ecstatic cry seriously inconvenienced a traffic policeman in the exercise of his duties.
"But this is fine! This is the goods! It doesn't matter to me, of course, one way or the other. I'd love you just the same if your father had sold jellied eels. But think what an enormous difference this will make to my blasted family!"
"I doubt it."
"But it will. We must get him over at once and spring him on them. Or is he in London?"
Sue's brown eyes clouded.
"He's dead."
"Eh? Oh! Sorry!" said Ronnie.
He was dashed for a moment.
"Well, at least let me tell the family about him," he urged, recovering. "Let me dangle him before their eyes a bit."
"If you like. But they'll still object to me because I'm in the chorus."
Ronnie scowled. He thought of his mother, he thought of his Aunt Constance, and reason told him that her words were true.
"Dash all this rot people talk about chorus girls!" he said. "They seem to think that just because a girl works in the chorus she must be a sort of animated champagne vat——"
"Ugh!"
"—spending her life dancing on supper tables with tight stockbrokers——"
"And not a bad way of passing an evening," said Sue meditatively. "I must try it some time."
"—with the result that when it's a question of her marrying anybody, fellow's people look down their noses and kick like mules. It's happened in our family before. My Uncle Gally was in love with some girl on the stage back in the dark ages, and they formed a wedge and bust the thing up and shipped him off to South Africa or somewhere to forget her. And look at him! Drew three sober breaths in the year nineteen hundred and then decided that was enough. I expect I shall be the same. If I don't take to drink, cooped up at Blandings a hundred miles away from you, I shall be vastly surprised. It's all a lot of silly nonsense. I haven't any patience with it. I've a jolly good mind to go to Uncle Clarence to-night and simply tell him that I'm in love with you and intend to marry you and that if the family don't like it they can lump it."
"I wouldn't."
Ronnie simmered down.
"Perhaps you're right."
"I'm sure I am. If he hears about me he certainly won't give you your money; whereas, if he doesn't, he may. What sort of a man is he?"
"Uncle Clarence? Oh, a mild, dreamy old boy. Mad about gardening and all that. At the moment I hear he's wrapped up in his pig."
"That sounds cosy."
"I'd feel a lot easier in my mind, I can tell you, going down there to tackle him, if I were a pig. I'd expect a much warmer welcome."
"You were rather a pig just now, weren't you?"
Ronnie quivered. Remorse gnawed the throbbing heart beneath his beautifully cut waistcoat.
"I'm sorry. I'm frightfully sorry. The fact is, I'm so crazy about you I get jealous of everybody you meet. Do you know, Sue, if you ever let me down, I'd—I don't know what I'd do. Er—Sue!"
"Hullo?"
"Swear something."
"What?"
"Swear that while I'm at Blandings you won't go out with a soul. Not even to dance."
"Not even to dance?"
"No."
"All right."
"Especially this man Pilbeam."
"I thought you were going to say Hugo."
"I'm not worrying about Hugo. He's safe at Blandings."
"Hugo at Blandings?"
"Yes. He's secretarying for my Uncle Clarence. I made my mother get him the job when the Hot Spot conked."
"So you'll have himandMillicentandMiss Schoonmaker there to keep you company! How nice for you."
"Millicent!"
"It's all very well to say 'Millicent!' like that. If you ask me, I think she's a menace. She sounds coy and droopy. I can see her taking you for walks by moonlight under those immemorial elms and looking up at you with big dreamy eyes."
"Looking down at me, you mean. She's about a foot taller than I am. And, anyway, if you imagine there's a girl on earth who could extract so much as a kindly glance from me when I've got you to think about you're very much mistaken. I give you my honest word...."
He became lyrical. Sue, leaning back, listened contentedly. The cloud had been a threatening cloud, blackening the skies for a while, but it had passed. The afternoon was being golden, after all.
III
"By the way," said Ronnie, the flood of eloquence subsiding. "A thought occurs. Have you any notion where we're headed for?"
"Heaven!"
"I mean at the moment."
"I supposed you were taking me to tea somewhere."
"But where? We've got right out of the tea zone. What with one thing and another I've just been driving at random—to and fro, as it were—and we seem to have worked round to somewhere in the Swiss Cottage neighbourhood. We'd better switch back and set a course for the Carlton or some place. How do you feel about the Carlton?"
"All right."
"Or the Ritz?"
"Whichever you like."
"Or—gosh!"
"What's the matter?"
"Sue! I've got an idea."
"Beginner's luck."
"Why not go to Norfolk Street?"
"To your home?"
"Yes. There's nobody there, and our butler is a staunch bird—he'll get us tea and say nothing."
"I'd like to meet a staunch butler."
"Then shall we?"
"I'd love it. You can show me all your little treasures and belongings and the photographs of you as a small boy."
Ronnie shook his head. It irked him to discourage her pretty enthusiasm, but a man cannot afford to take risks.
"Not those. No love could stand up against the sight of me in a sailor suit at the age of ten. I don't mind," he said, making a concession, "letting you see the one of me and Hugo, taken just before the Public Schools Rackets Competition, my last year at school. We were the Eton pair."
"Did you win?"
"No. At a critical moment in the semifinal that ass Hugo foozled a shot a one-armed cripple ought to have taken with his eyes shut. It dished us."
"Awful!" said Sue. "Well, if I ever had any impulse to love Hugo that's killed it." She looked about her. "I don't know this aristocratic neighbourhood at all. How far is it to Norfolk Street?"
"Next turning."
"You're sure there's nobody in the house? None of the dear old family?"
"Not a soul."
He was right. Lady Constance Keeble was not actually in the house. At the moment when he spoke she had just closed the front door behind her. After waiting half an hour in the hope of her nephew's return she had left a note for him on the hall table and was going to Claridge's to get a cup of tea.
It was not until he had drawn up immediately opposite the house that Ronnie perceived what stood upon the steps. Having done so, he blanched visibly.
"Oh, my sainted aunt!" he said.
And seldom can the familiar phrase have been used with more appropriateness.
The sainted aunt was inspecting the two-seater and its contents with a frozen stare. Her eyebrows were two marks of interrogation. As she had told Millicent, she was old-fashioned, and when she saw her flesh and blood snuggled up to girls of attractive appearance in two-seaters she suspected the worst.
"Good-afternoon, Ronald."
"Er—hullo, Aunt Constance."
"Will you introduce me?"
There is no doubt that peril sharpens the intellect. His masters at school and his tutors at the university, having had to do with Ronald Overbury Fish almost entirely at times when his soul was at rest, had classed him among the less keen-witted of their charges. Had they seen him now in this crisis they would have pointed at him with pride. And, being the sportsmen and gentlemen that they were, they would have hastened to acknowledge that they had grossly underestimated his ingenuity and initiative.
For, after turning a rather pretty geranium tint and running a finger round the inside of his collar for an instant, as if he found it too tight, Ronnie Fish spoke the only two words in the language which could have averted disaster.
"Miss Schoonmaker," he said huskily.
Sue, at his side, gave a little gasp. These were unsuspected depths.
"Miss Schoonmaker!"
Lady Constance's resemblance to Apollyon straddling right across the way had vanished abruptly. Remorse came upon her that she should have wronged her blameless nephew with unfounded suspicion.
"Miss Schoonmaker, my aunt, Lady Constance Keeble," said Ronnie, going from strength to strength and speaking now quite easily and articulately.
Sue was not the girl to sit dumbly by and fail a partner in his hour of need. She smiled brightly.
"How do you do, Lady Constance?" she said. She smiled again, if possible even more brightly than before. "I feel I know you already. Lady Julia told me so much about you at Biarritz."
A momentary qualm lest, in the endeavour to achieve an easy cordiality, she had made her manner a shade too patronizing melted in the sunshine of the older woman's smile. Lady Constance had become charming, almost effusive. She had always hoped that Ronald and Millicent would make a match of it; but, failing that, this rich Miss Schoonmaker was certainly the next best thing. And driving chummily about London together like this must surely, she thought, mean something, even in these days when chummy driving is so prevalent between the sexes. At any rate, she hoped so.
"So here you are in London!"
"Yes."
"You did not stay long in Paris."
"No."
"When can you come down to Blandings?"
"Oh, very soon, I hope."
"I am going there this evening. I only ran up for the day. I want you to drive me back, Ronald."
Ronnie nodded silently. The crisis passed, a weakness had come upon him. He preferred not to speak, if speech could be avoided.
"Do try to come soon. The gardens are looking delightful. My brother will be so glad to see you. I was just on my way to Claridge's for a cup of tea. Won't you come too?"
"I'd love to," said Sue, "but I really must be getting on. Ronnie was taking me shopping."
"I thought you stayed in Paris to do your shopping."
"Not all of it."
"Well, I shall hope to see you soon."
"Oh, yes."
"At Blandings."
"Thank you so much. Ronnie, I think we ought to be getting along."
"Yes." Ronnie's mind was blurred, but he was clear on that point. "Yes, getting along. Pushing off."
"Well, I'm so delighted to have seen you. My sister told me so much about you in her letters. After you have put your luggage on the car, Ronald, will you come and pick me up at Claridge's?"
"Right ho."
"I would like to make an early start, if possible."
"Right ho."
"Well, good-bye for the present, then."
"Right ho."
"Good-bye, Lady Constance."
"Good-bye."
The two-seater moved off, and Ronnie, taking his right hand from the wheel as it turned the corner, groped for a handkerchief, found it, and passed it over his throbbing brow.
"So that was Aunt Constance!" said Sue.
Ronnie breathed deeply.
"Nice meeting one of whom I have heard so much."
Ronnie replaced his hand on the wheel and twiddled it feebly to avoid a dog. Reaction had made him limp.
Sue was gazing at him almost reverently.
"What genius, Ronnie! What ready wit! What presence of mind! If I hadn't heard it with my own ears I wouldn't have believed it. Why didn't you ever tell me you were one of those swift thinkers?"
"I didn't know it myself."
"Of course, I'm afraid it has complicated things a little."
"Eh?" Ronnie started. This aspect of the matter had not struck him. "How do you mean?"
"When I was a child they taught me a poem——"
Ronnie raised a suffering face to hers.
"Don't let's talk about your childhood now, old thing," he pleaded. "Feeling rather shaken. Any other time——"
"It's all right. I'm not wandering from the subject. I can only remember two lines of the poem. They were, 'Oh, what a tangled web we weave when first we practise to deceive.' You do see the web is a bit tangled, don't you, Ronnie, darling?"
"Eh? Why? Everything looks pretty smooth to me. Aunt Constance swallowed you without a yip."
"And when the real Miss Schoonmaker arrives at Blandings with her jewels and her twenty-four trunks?" said Sue gently.
The two-seater swerved madly across Grosvenor Street.
"Gosh!" said Ronnie.
Sue's eyes were sparkling.
"There's only one thing to do," she said. "Now you're in you'll have to go in deeper. You'll have to put her off."
"How?"
"Send her a wire saying she mustn't come to Blandings because scarlet fever or something has broken out."
"I couldn't."
"You must. Sign it in Lady Constance's name."
"But suppose——"
"Well, suppose they do find out? You won't be in any worse hole than you will be if she comes sailing up to the front door all ready to stay a couple of weeks. And she will unless you wire."
"That's true."
"What it means," said Sue, "is that instead of having plenty of time to get that money out of Lord Emsworth you'll have to work quick." She touched his arm. "Here's a post office," she said. "Go in and send that wire before you weaken."
Ronnie stopped the car.
"You will have to do the most rapid bit of trustee touching in the history of the world, I should think," said Sue reflectively. "Do you think you can manage it?"
"I'll have a jolly good prod."
"Remember what it means."
"I'll do that all right. The only trouble is that in the matter of biting Uncle Clarence's ear I've nothing to rely on but my natural charm. And as far as I've been able to make out," said Ronnie, "he hasn't noticed yet that I have any."
He strode into the post office, thinking deeply.