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

“From some darned paper?” she asked wearily.

“No, m’lady. I fancy he is not connected with the press.”

There was something in Wrench’s manner that perplexed Lady Wetherby, something almost human, as if Wrench were on the point of coming alive. She did not guess it, but the explanation was that Bill, quite unwittingly, had impressed Wrench. There was that about Bill that reminded the butler of London and dignified receptions at the house of the Dowager Duchess of Waveney. It was deep calling to deep.

“Where is he?”

“I have shown him into the drawing room, m’lady.”

Lady Wetherby went downstairs and found a large young man awaiting her, looking nervous.

Bill was feeling nervous. A sense of the ridiculousness of his mission had come upon him. After all, he asked himself, what on earth had he got to say? A presentiment had come upon him that he was about to look a perfect ass. At the sight of Lady Wetherby his nervousness began to diminish. Lady Wetherby was not a formidable person. In spite of her momentary peevishness, she brought with her an atmosphere of geniality and camaraderie.

“It’s about your monkey,” he said, coming to the point at once.

Lady Wetherby brightened.

“Oh! Have you seen it?”

He was glad that she put it like that.

“Yes. It came round our way last night.”

“Where is that?”

“I am staying at a farm near here, a place they call Flack’s. The monkey got into one of the rooms.”

“Yes?”

“And then⁠—er⁠—then it got out again, don’t you know.”

Lady Wetherby looked disappointed.

“So it may be anywhere now?” she said.

In the interests of truth, Bill thought it best to leave this question unanswered.

“Well, it’s very good of you to have bothered to come out and tell me,” said Lady Wetherby. “It gives us a clue, at any rate. Thank you. At least we know now in which direction it went.”

There was a pause. Bill gathered that the other was looking on the interview as terminated, and that she was expecting him to go, and he had not begun to say what he wanted to say. He tried to think of a way of introducing the subject of Claire that should not seem too abrupt.

“Er⁠—” he said.

“Well,” said Lady Wetherby simultaneously.

“I beg your pardon.”

“You have the floor,” said Lady Wetherby. “Shoot!”

It was not what she had intended to say. For months she had been trying to get out of the habit of saying that sort of thing, but she still suffered relapses. Only the other day she had told Wrench to check some domestic problem or other with his hat, and he had nearly given notice. But if she had been intending to put Bill at his ease she could not have said anything better.

“You have a Miss Fenwick staying with you, haven’t you?” he said.

Lady, Weatherby beamed.

“Do you know Claire?”

“Yes, rather!”

“She’s my best friend. We used to be in the same company when I was in England.”

“So she has told me.”

“She was my bridesmaid when I married Lord Wetherby.”

“Yes.”

Lady Wetherby was feeling perfectly happy now, and when Lady Wetherby felt happy she always became garrulous. She was one of those people who are incapable of looking on anybody as a stranger after five minutes’ acquaintance. Already she had begun to regard Bill as an old friend.

“Those were great days,” she said cheerfully. “None of us had a beau, and Algie was the hardest-up of the whole bunch. After we were married we went to the Savoy for the wedding breakfast, and when it was over and the waiter came with the check Algie said he was sorry, but he had had a bad week at Lincoln and hadn’t the price on him. He tried to touch me, but I passed. Then he had a go at the best man, but the best man had nothing in the world but one suit of clothes and a spare collar. Claire was broke, too, so the end of it was that the best man had to sneak out and pawn my watch and the wedding-ring.”

The room rang with her reminiscent laughter, Bill supplying a bass accompaniment. Bill was delighted. He had never hoped that it would be granted to him to become so rapidly intimate with Claire’s hostess. Why, he had only to keep the conversation in this chummy vein for a little while longer and she would give him the run of the house.

“Miss Fenwick isn’t in now, I suppose?” he asked.

“No, Claire’s out with Dudley Pickering. You don’t know him, do you?”

“No.”

“She’s engaged to him.”

It is an ironical fact that Lady Wetherby was by nature one of the firmest believers in existence in the policy of breaking things gently to people. She had a big, soft heart and she hated hurting her fellows. As a rule, when she had bad news to impart to anyone, she administered the blow so gradually and with such mystery as to the actual facts that the victim, having passed through the various stages of imagined horrors, was genuinely relieved when she actually came to the point to find that all that had happened was that he had lost all his money. But now in perfect innocence, thinking only to pass along an interesting bit of information, she had crushed Bill as effectively as if she had used a club for that purpose.

“I’m tickled to death about it,” she went on, as it were, over her hearer’s prostrate body. “It was I who brought them together, you know. I wrote telling Claire to come out here on the Atlantic, knowing that Dudley was sailing on that boat. I had a hunch they would hit it off together. Dudley fell for her right away, and she must have fallen for him, for they had only known each other for about a couple of weeks when they came and told me they were engaged. It happened last Sunday.”

“Last Sunday!”

It had seemed to Bill a moment before that he would never again be capable of speech, but this statement dragged the