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

was Miss Peavey.

“Just some little thought⁠ ⁠…”

Psmith hesitated no longer. In a firm hand he wrote the words “Across the pale parabola of Joy⁠ ⁠…” added an unfaltering “Ralston McTodd,” and handed the book back.

“How strange,” sighed Miss Peavey.

“May I look?” said Baxter, moving quickly to her side.

“How strange!” repeated Miss Peavey. “To think that you should have chosen that line! There are several of your more mystic passages that I meant to ask you to explain, but particularly ‘Across the pale parabola of Joy’⁠ ⁠…”

“You find it difficult to understand?”

“A little, I confess.”

“Well, well,” said Psmith indulgently, “perhaps I did put a bit of topspin on that one.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“I say, perhaps it is a little obscure. We must have a long chat about it⁠—later on.”

“Why not now?” demanded the Efficient Baxter, flashing his spectacles.

“I am rather tired,” said Psmith with gentle reproach, “after my journey. Fatigued. We artists⁠ ⁠…”

“Of course,” said Miss Peavey, with an indignant glance at the secretary. “Mr. Baxter does not understand the sensitive poetic temperament.”

“A bit unspiritual, eh?” said Psmith tolerantly. “A trifle earthy? So I thought, so I thought. One of these strong, hard men of affairs, I shouldn’t wonder.”

“Shall we go and find Lord Emsworth, Mr. McTodd?” said Miss Peavey, dismissing the fermenting Baxter with a scornful look. “He wandered off just now. I suppose he is among his flowers. Flowers are very beautiful by night.”

“Indeed, yes,” said Psmith. “And also by day. When I am surrounded by flowers, a sort of divine peace floods over me, and the rough, harsh world seems far away. I feel soothed, tranquil. I sometimes think, Miss Peavey, that flowers must be the souls of little children who have died in their innocence.”

“What a beautiful thought, Mr. McTodd!” exclaimed Miss Peavey rapturously.

“Yes,” agreed Psmith. “Don’t pinch it. It’s copyright.”

The darkness swallowed them up. Lady Constance turned to the Efficient Baxter, who was brooding with furrowed brow.

“Charming, is he not?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“I said I thought Mr. McTodd was charming.”

“Oh, quite.”

“Completely unspoiled.”

“Oh, decidedly.”

“I am so glad that he was able to come after all. That telegram he sent this afternoon cancelling his visit seemed so curt and final.”

“So I thought it.”

“Almost as if he had taken offence at something and decided to have nothing to do with us.”

“Quite.”

Lady Constance shivered delicately. A cool breeze had sprung up. She drew her wrap more closely about her shapely shoulders, and began to walk to the house. Baxter did not accompany her. The moment she had gone he switched off the light and sat down, chin in hand. That massive brain was working hard.

VIII Confidences on the Lake I

“Miss Halliday,” announced the Efficient Baxter, removing another letter from its envelope and submitting it to a swift, keen scrutiny, “arrives at about three today. She is catching the twelve-fifty train.”

He placed the letter on the pile beside his plate; and, having decapitated an egg, peered sharply into its interior as if hoping to surprise guilty secrets. For it was the breakfast hour, and the members of the house party, scattered up and down the long table, were fortifying their tissues against another day. An agreeable scent of bacon floated over the scene like a benediction.

Lord Emsworth looked up from the seed catalogue in which he was immersed. For some time past his enjoyment of the meal had been marred by a vague sense of something missing, and now he knew what it was.

“Coffee!” he said, not violently, but in the voice of a good man oppressed. “I want coffee. Why have I no coffee? Constance, my dear, I should have coffee. Why have I none?”

“I’m sure I gave you some,” said Lady Constance, brightly presiding over the beverages at the other end of the table.

“Then where is it?” demanded his lordship clinchingly.

Baxter⁠—almost regretfully, it seemed⁠—gave the egg a clean bill of health, and turned in his able way to cope with this domestic problem.

“Your coffee is behind the catalogue you are reading, Lord Emsworth. You propped the catalogue against your cup.”

“Did I? Did I? Why, so I did! Bless my soul!” His lordship, relieved, took an invigorating sip. “What were you saying just then, my dear fellow?”

“I have had a letter from Miss Halliday,” said Baxter. “She writes that she is catching the twelve-fifty train at Paddington, which means that she should arrive at Market Blandings at about three.”

“Who,” asked Miss Peavey, in a low, thrilling voice, ceasing for a moment to peck at her plate of kedgeree, “is Miss Halliday?”

“The exact question I was about to ask myself,” said Lord Emsworth. “Baxter, my dear fellow, who is Miss Halliday?”

Baxter, with a stifled sigh, was about to refresh his employer’s memory, when Psmith anticipated him. Psmith had been consuming toast and marmalade with his customary languid grace and up till now had firmly checked all attempts to engage him in conversation.

“Miss Halliday,” he said, “is a very old and valued friend of mine. We two have, so to speak, pulled the gowans fine. I had been hoping to hear that she had been sighted on the horizon.”

The effect of these words on two of the company was somewhat remarkable. Baxter, hearing them, gave such a violent start that he spilled half the contents of his cup: and Freddie, who had been flitting like a butterfly among the dishes on the sideboard and had just decided to help himself to scrambled eggs, deposited a liberal spoonful on the carpet, where it was found and salvaged a moment later by Lady Constance’s spaniel.

Psmith did not observe these phenomena, for he had returned to his toast and marmalade. He thus missed encountering perhaps the keenest glance that had ever come through Rupert Baxter’s spectacles. It was not a protracted glance, but while it lasted it was like the ray from an oxyacetylene blowpipe.

“A friend of yours?” said Lord Emsworth. “Indeed? Of course, Baxter, I remember now. Miss Halliday is the young lady who is coming to catalogue the library.”

“What a delightful task!”