He was absolutely correct. No sooner had I crossed the threshold than I saw Chuffy, gazing upon me.
“Ah!” he said, “Here you are at last!”
I gave him a sympathetic smile.
“Here I am, yes. And I have heard all. Jeeves told me. Too bad, too bad. I did not think, old man, when I bestowed a brotherly kiss on Pauline Stoker by way of congratulating her on your engagement, that it would make all this trouble.”
“Brotherly? Hm!”
“Essentially brotherly.”
A struggle was going on in the old boy’s bosom. Then he became calmer.
“Well, all right,” he said. “But in future if you want sisters, seek them elsewhere.”
“Just so. Then you still intend to marry this Pauline?
“Intend to marry her? Of course I intend to marry her. I’d look a silly ass not marrying a girl like that, wouldn’t I?”
“But Stoker is not going to buy the Hall, is he?”
“Bertie,” he said, “don’t remind me of a time when I must have been absolutely stupid. I can’t imagine how I ever felt like that. My views have changed. I don’t care now if I haven’t a bean and she’s got millions.”
“Fine.”
“What does money matter?”
“Quite.”
“I mean, love’s love.”
“You never spoke a truer word. If I were you, I’d write her a letter embodying those views.”
“I will. And, by Lord!”
“What?”
“Jeeves shall take it to her. I should have told you that Stoker wanted Jeeves to leave me and enter his service. Now I am all for it. Jeeves shall go to him.”
“I see what you mean. Under the Stoker banner, he will be free to come and go.”
“Exactly.”
“He can take a letter from you to her and then one from her to you and then one from you to her and then one from her to you and then one from you to her and then one—”
“Yes, yes. You’ve got the idea. And in the course of this correspondence we can fix up some scheme for meeting. Have you any idea how long it takes to organize a wedding?”
“I’m not sure. I believe, if you get a special license, you can do it like a flash.”
“I’ll get a special license. I feel a new man. I’ll go and tell Jeeves at once. He can be on that yacht this evening.”
At this point he suddenly stopped.
“I suppose she really does love me?”
“Dash it, old man, didn’t she say so?”
“She said so, yes. Yes, she said so. But can you believe what a girl says?”
“My dear chap!”
“Well, she may have been fooling me.”
“Stop it, laddie.”
He had left me. It had been a strenuous day. I felt restless.
“I shall dine out, Brinkley,” I said.
This man had been sent down by the agency in London, and I want to say he wasn’t the fellow I’d have selected if I had had time to make a choice in person. Not at all the man of my dreams. A melancholy blighter, with a long, thin, face and deep eyes. I had been trying to establish cordial relations ever since he had arrived, but with no success. Outwardly he was all respectfulness, but inwardly you could see that he was a man who was dreaming about the Social Revolution and looked on Bertram as a tyrant and an oppressor.
“Yes, Brinkley, I shall dine out.”
He said nothing, merely looking at me.
I went round to the garage and got the car out. It was only a matter of thirty miles or so to Bristol, and I got there to watch a musical comedy. I was feeling rested and refreshed when I started back home.
As I opened the door of my room, I dropped the candle. Pauline Stoker in my heliotrope pyjamas was sitting on my bed.
7
A Visitor for Bertie
The attitude of fellows towards finding girls in their bedroom after midnight varies. Some like it. Some don’t. I didn’t.
“What—What—What—?”
“It’s all right.”
“All right?”
“Quite all right.”
“Oh?” I said. I stooped to pick up the candle, and the next moment I had uttered a cry.
“Don’t make such a noise!”
“But there’s a corpse on the floor.”
“There isn’t.”
“There is, I tell you. I was looking about for the candle, and my fingers touched something cold and still and wet.”
“Oh, that’s my swimming suit.”
“Your swimming suit?”
“Well, do you think I came ashore by aeroplane?”
“You swam here from the yacht?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“About half an hour ago.”
“Why?” I asked.
“You know, Bertie, steps should be taken about you.”
“Eh?”
“You ought to be in some sort of a home.”
“I am,” I replied coldly and rather cleverly. “My own. But what are you doing in it?”
She did not answer.
“Why did you want to kiss me in front of father? I can quite understand now why Sir Roderick told father that you ought to be under restraint.”
“The incident to which you allude is readily explained. I thought he was Chuffy.”
“Thought who was Chuffy?”
“Your father.”
“I don’t see what you mean,” she replied coldly.
I explained.
“The idea was to let Chuffy observe you in my embrace. To force him act speedily.”
“That was very sweet of you.”
“We Woosters are sweet, exceedingly sweet, when a pal’s happiness is spoken about.”
“I can see now why I accepted you that night in New York,” she said meditatively. “If I wasn’t so crazy about Marmaduke, I could easily marry you, Bertie.”
“No, no,” I said, with some alarm. “Don’t dream of it. I mean to say—”
“Oh, it’s all right. I’m not going to. I’m going to marry Marmaduke; that’s why I’m here.”
“And now,” I said, “we’ve come right back to it. You say you swam ashore from the yacht? Why? You came here. Why?”
“Because I wanted somewhere to go till I could get clothes, of course. I can’t go to the Hall in a swimming suit.”
“Oh, you swam ashore to get to Chuffy?”
“Of course. Father was keeping me a prisoner on board the yacht, and this evening Jeeves arrived with an early letter from Marmaduke. Oh! I cried six pints when I read it. It was beautiful. It throbbed with poetry.”
“It did?”
“Yes.”
“This