Uneasy Money, P. G. Wodehouse [little bear else holmelund minarik txt] 📗

him a car was something to dissect, something with an interior that was interesting to explore and fascinating to talk about. He revealed the internal mechanism of his Pickering Giant in a way that was almost indecent. He laid bare its vital organs and lectured on them. He spoke freely of things that a modest automobile hides from view. Claire listened with a radiant display of interest, but she had her doubts as to whether any amount of money would make it worthwhile to undergo this sort of thing for life. She was still in this hesitant frame of mind when she entered Riegelheimer’s Restaurant, and it perturbed her that she could not come to some definite decision on Mr. Pickering, for those subtle signs which every woman can recognize and interpret told her that the latter, having paved the way by talking machinery for a week, was about to boil over and speak of higher things. At the very next opportunity she was certain he intended to propose.

The presence of Lady Wetherby acted as a temporary check on the development of the situation, but after they had been seated at their table a short time the lights of the restaurant were suddenly lowered, a colored spotlight became manifest near the roof, and classical music made itself heard from the fiddles in the orchestra. You could tell it was classical, because the banjo players were leaning back and chewing gum; and in New York restaurants only death or a classical specialty can stop banjoists. There was a spatter of applause and Lady Wetherby removed her sandals.

“This,” she explained to Claire, “is where I do my stunt. Watch it. I invented the steps myself. Classical stuff. It’s called the Dream of Psyche.”

It was difficult for one who knew her as Claire did to associate Polly Wetherby with anything classical. On the road, in England, when they had been fellow members of the number two company of The Heavenly Waltz, Polly had been remarkable chiefly for a fund of humorous anecdote and a gift, amounting almost to genius, for doing battle with militant landladies. And renewing their intimacy after a hiatus of a little less than a year, Claire had found her unchanged. The moment before the music started Lady Wetherby, ever a warm patron of sport, had been arguing forcefully in favor of the view⁠—opposed, it seemed, by a bunch of boneheaded boobs on certain of the daily papers⁠—that the Tennessee Bearcat, though eclipsed by showier rivals over the ten-round route, would be lightweight champion of the world tomorrow if he could only succeed in luring his most prominent rival into the ring for a forty-five-round contest. Claire found herself wondering how her friend could possibly shake off this mood and prepare herself at a moment’s notice to give an artistic rendition of the Dream of Psyche.

As a matter of fact, Lady Wetherby did not. Perhaps it was the association of ideas, but it seemed to Claire that the Dream of Psyche, as interpreted in terms of the dance by her friend, was far less like a Dream of Psyche than a troubled nightmare of the Tennessee Bearcat, fallen asleep while brooding on how he should induce the lightweight champion to fight him to a finish. As the performance proceeded she could well believe that it was Polly Wetherby who had invented the steps.

It was a truculent affair, this Dream of Psyche. It was not so much dancing as shadow boxing. It began mildly enough to the accompaniment of pizzicato strains from the orchestra⁠—Psyche in her training quarters. Rallentando⁠—Psyche punching the bag. Diminuendo⁠—Psyche using the medicine ball. Presto⁠—Psyche doing road work. Forte⁠—The night of the fight. And then things began to move to a climax. With the fiddles working themselves to the bone and the piano bounding under its persecutor’s blows, Lady Wetherby ducked, sidestepped, rushed and sprang, moving her arms in a manner that may have been classical Greek, but to the untrained eye looked much more like the last round of an open-air bout at Ebbet’s Field.

It was halfway through the exhibition, when you could smell the sawdust and hear the seconds shouting advice under the ropes, that Claire, who never having seen anything in her life like this extraordinary performance had been staring spellbound, awoke to the realization that Dudley Pickering was proposing to her. It required a woman’s intuition to divine this fact, for Mr. Pickering was not coherent. He did not go straight to the point. He rambled. But Claire understood, and it came to her that this thing had taken her before she was ready. In a brief while she would have to give an answer of some sort, and she had not clearly decided what answer she meant to give.

Then while he was still skirting his subject, before he had wandered to what he really wished to say, the music stopped, the applause broke out again, and Lady Wetherby returned to the table like a pugilist seeking his corner at the end of a round. Her face was flushed and she was breathing hard.

“They pay me money for that!” she observed genially. “Can you beat it!”

The spell was broken. Mr. Pickering sank back in his chair in a punctured manner. And Claire, making monosyllabic replies to her friend’s remarks, was able to bend her mind to the task of finding out how she stood on this important Pickering issue. That he would return to the attack as soon as possible she knew; and next time she must have her attitude clearly defined one way or the other.

Lady Wetherby, having got the Dance of Psyche out of her system and replaced it with a glass of iced coffee, was inclined for conversation.

“Algie called me up on the phone this evening, Claire.”

“Yes?”

Claire was examining Mr. Pickering with furtive side glances. He was not handsome, nor, on the other hand, was he repulsive. Undistinguished was the adjective that would have described him. He was inclined to stoutness, but not unpardonably so;