Leave It to Psmith, P. G. Wodehouse [novels to read .txt] 📗

you know Lord Emsworth’s second son, Freddie Threepwood?”

“Of course.”

“Well, he’s the drawback. He wants to marry me, and I certainly don’t want to marry him. And what I’ve been wondering is whether a nice easy job like that, which would tide me over beautifully till September, is attractive enough to make up for the nuisance of having to be always squelching poor Freddie. I ought to have thought of it right at the beginning, of course, when he wrote and told me to apply for the position, but I was so delighted at the idea of regular work that it didn’t occur to me. Then I began to wonder. He’s such a persevering young man. He proposes early and often.”

“Where did you meet Freddie?”

“At a theatre party. About two months ago. He was living in London then, but he suddenly disappeared and I had a heartbroken letter from him, saying that he had been running up debts and things and his father had snatched him away to live at Blandings, which apparently is Freddie’s idea of the Inferno. The world seems full of hardhearted relatives.”

“Oh, Lord Emsworth isn’t really hardhearted. You will love him. He’s so dreamy and absentminded. He potters about the garden all the time. I don’t think you’ll like Aunt Constance much. But I suppose you won’t see a great deal of her.”

“Whom shall I see much of⁠—except Freddie, of course?”

“Mr. Baxter, Lord Emsworth’s secretary, I expect. I don’t like him at all. He’s a sort of spectacled caveman.”

“He doesn’t sound attractive. But you say the place is nice?”

“It’s gorgeous. I should go, if I were you, Eve.”

“Well, I had intended not to. But now you’ve told me about Mr. Keeble and Aunt Constance, I’ve changed my mind. I’ll have to look in at Clarkie’s office tomorrow and tell her I’m fixed up and shan’t need her help. I’m going to take your sad case in hand, darling. I shall go to Blandings, and I will dog your stepfather’s footsteps.⁠ ⁠… Well, I must be going. Come and see me to the front door, or I’ll be losing my way in the miles of stately corridors.⁠ ⁠… I suppose I mayn’t smash that china dog before I go? Oh, well, I just thought I’d ask.”

Out in the hall the little maid-of-all-work bobbed up and intercepted them.

“I forgot to tell you, mum, a gentleman called. I told him you was out.”

“Quite right, Jane.”

“Said his name was Smith, ’m.”

Phyllis gave a cry of dismay.

“Oh, no! What a shame! I particularly wanted you to meet him, Eve. I wish I’d known.”

“Smith?” said Eve. “The name seems familiar. Why were you so anxious for me to meet him?”

“He’s Mike’s best friend. Mike worships him. He’s the son of the Mr. Smith I was telling you about⁠—the one Mike was at school and Cambridge with. He’s a perfect darling, Eve, and you would love him. He’s just your sort. I do wish we had known. And now you’re going to Blandings for goodness knows how long, and you won’t be able to see him.”

“What a pity,” said Eve, politely uninterested.

“I’m so sorry for him.”

“Why?”

“He’s in the fish business.”

“Ugh!”

“Well, he hates it, poor dear. But he was left stranded like all the rest of us after the crash, and he was put into the business by an uncle who is a sort of fish magnate.”

“Well, why does he stay there, if he dislikes it so much?” said Eve with indignation. The helpless type of man was her pet aversion. “I hate a man who’s got no enterprise.”

“I don’t think you could call him unenterprising. He never struck me like that.⁠ ⁠… You simply must meet him when you come back to London.”

“All right,” said Eve indifferently. “Just as you like. I might put business in his way. I’m very fond of fish.”

III Eve Borrows an Umbrella

What strikes the visitor to London most forcibly, as he enters the heart of that city’s fashionable shopping district, is the almost entire absence of ostentation in the shopwindows, the studied avoidance of garish display. About the front of the premises of Messrs. Thorpe & Briscoe, for instance, who sell coal in Dover Street, there is as a rule nothing whatever to attract fascinated attention. You might give the place a glance as you passed, but you would certainly not pause and stand staring at it as at the Sistine Chapel or the Taj Mahal. Yet at ten-thirty on the morning after Eve Halliday had taken tea with her friend Phyllis Jackson in West Kensington, Psmith, lounging gracefully in the smoking-room window of the Drones Club, which is immediately opposite the Thorpe & Briscoe establishment, had been gazing at it fixedly for a full five minutes. One would have said that the spectacle enthralled him. He seemed unable to take his eyes off it.

There is always a reason for the most apparently inexplicable happenings. It is the practice of Thorpe (or Briscoe) during the months of summer to run out an awning over the shop. A quiet, genteel awning, of course, nothing to offend the eye⁠—but an awning which offers a quite adequate protection against those sudden showers which are such a delightfully piquant feature of the English summer: one of which had just begun to sprinkle the West End of London with a good deal of heartiness and vigour. And under this awning, peering plaintively out at the rain, Eve Halliday, on her way to the Ada Clarkson Employment Bureau, had taken refuge. It was she who had so enchained Psmith’s interest. It was his considered opinion that she improved the Thorpe & Briscoe frontage by about ninety-five percent.

Pleased and gratified as Psmith was to have something nice to look at out of the smoking-room window, he was also somewhat puzzled. This girl seemed to him to radiate an atmosphere of wealth. Starting at farthest south and proceeding northward, she began in a gleam of patent-leather shoes. Fawn stockings, obviously expensive, led up to a black crêpe frock. And then, just as the