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

of her former shyness. Even though she was an old friend of Cynthia’s, there did seem something insufferably officious in this meddling. And when she saw the look of pain on her companion’s face, she regretted that she had spoken. Naturally, she thought, he was offended.

In supposing that Psmith was offended she was mistaken. Internally he was glowing with a renewed admiration for all those beautiful qualities in her which he had detected, before they had ever met, at several yards’ range across the street from the window of the Drones Club smoking-room. His look of pain was due to the fact that, having now had time to grapple with the problem, he had decided to dispose of this Cynthia once and for all. He proposed to eliminate her for ever from his life. And the elimination of even such a comparative stranger seemed to him to call for a pained look. So he assumed one.

“That,” he said gravely, “would, I fear, be impossible. It is like you to suggest it, and I cannot tell you how much I appreciate the kindness which has made you interest yourself in my troubles, but it is too late for any reconciliation. Cynthia and I are divorced.”

For a moment the temptation had come to him to kill the woman off with some wasting sickness, but this he resisted as tending towards possible future complications. He was resolved, however, that there should be no question of bringing them together again.

He was disturbed to find Eve staring at him in amazement.

“Divorced? But how can you be divorced? It’s only a few days since you and she were in London together.”

Psmith ceased to wonder that Mr. McTodd had had trouble with his wife. The woman was a perfect pest.

“I used the term in a spiritual rather than a legal sense,” he replied. “True, there has been no actual decree, but we are separated beyond hope of reunion.” He saw the distress in Eve’s eyes and hurried on. “There are things,” he said, “which it is impossible for a man to overlook, however broad-minded he may be. Love, Miss Halliday, is a delicate plant. It needs tending, nursing, assiduous fostering. This cannot be done by throwing the breakfast bacon at a husband’s head.”

“What!” Eve’s astonishment was such that the word came out in a startled squeak.

“In the dish,” said Psmith sadly.

Eve’s blue eyes opened wide.

“Cynthia did that!”

“On more than one occasion. Her temper in the mornings was terrible. I have known her lift the cat over two chairs and a settee with a single kick. And all because there were no mushrooms.”

“But⁠—but I can’t believe it!”

“Come over to Canada,” said Psmith, “and I will show you the cat.”

“Cynthia did that!⁠—Cynthia⁠—why, she was always the gentlest little creature.”

“At school, you mean?”

“Yes.”

“That,” said Psmith, “would, I suppose, be before she had taken to drink.”

“Taken to drink!”

Psmith was feeling happier. A passing thought did come to him that all this was perhaps a trifle rough on the absent Cynthia, but he mastered the unmanly weakness. It was necessary that Cynthia should suffer in the good cause. Already he had begun to detect in Eve’s eyes the faint dawnings of an angelic pity, and pity is recognised by all the best authorities as one of the most valuable emotions which your wooer can awaken.

“Drink!” Eve repeated, with a little shudder.

“We lived in one of the dry provinces of Canada, and, as so often happens, that started the trouble. From the moment when she installed a private still her downfall was swift. I have seen her, under the influence of home-brew, rage through the house like a devastating cyclone⁠ ⁠… I hate speaking like this of one who was your friend,” said Psmith, in a low, vibrating voice. “I would not tell these things to anyone but you. The world, of course, supposes that the entire blame for the collapse of our home was mine. I took care that it should be so. The opinion of the world matters little to me. But with you it is different. I should not like you to think badly of me, Miss Halliday. I do not make friends easily⁠—I am a lonely man⁠—but somehow it has seemed to me since we met that you and I might be friends.”

Eve stretched her hand out impulsively.

“Why, of course!”

Psmith took her hand and held it far longer than was strictly speaking necessary.

“Thank you,” he said. “Thank you.”

He turned the nose of the boat to the shore, and rowed slowly back.

“I have suffered,” said Psmith gravely, as he helped her ashore. “But, if you will be my friend, I think that I may forget.”

They walked in silence up the winding path to the castle.

VI

To Psmith five minutes later, as he sat in his room smoking a cigarette and looking dreamily out at the distant hills, there entered the Hon. Frederick Threepwood, who, having closed the door behind him, tottered to the bed and uttered a deep and discordant groan. Psmith, his mind thus rudely wrenched from pleasant meditations, turned and regarded the gloomy youth with disfavour.

“At any other time, Comrade Threepwood,” he said politely but with firmness, “certainly. But not now. I am not in the vein.”

“What?” said the Hon. Freddie vacantly.

“I say that at any other time I shall be delighted to listen to your farmyard imitations, but not now. At the moment I am deep in thoughts of my own, and I may say frankly that I regard you as more or less of an excrescence. I want solitude, solitude. I am in a beautiful reverie, and your presence jars upon me somewhat profoundly.”

The Hon. Freddie ruined the symmetry of his hair by passing his fingers feverishly through it.

“Don’t talk so much! I never met a fellow like you for talking.” Having rumpled his hair to the left, he went through it again and rumpled it to the right. “I say, do you know what? You’ve jolly well got to clear out of here quick!” He got up