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

kindhearted girl, and it irked her to have to be continually acting as a black frost in Freddie’s garden of dreams. There appeared, however, to be but two ways out of the thing: either she must accept him or he must stop proposing. The first of these alternatives she resolutely declined to consider, and, as far as was ascertainable from his actions, Freddie declined just as resolutely to consider the second. The result was that solitary interviews between them were seldom wholly free from embarrassing developments.

They walked for a while in silence. Then:

“You’re dashed hard on a fellow,” said Freddie.

“How’s your putting coming on?” asked Eve.

“Eh?”

“Your putting. You told me you had so much trouble with it.”

She was not looking at him, for she had developed a habit of not looking at him on these occasions; but she assumed that the odd sound which greeted her remark was a hollow, mirthless laugh.

“My putting!”

“Well, you told me yourself it’s the most important part of golf.”

“Golf! Do you think I have time to worry about golf these days?”

“Oh, how splendid, Freddie! Are you really doing some work of some kind? It’s quite time, you know. Think how pleased your father will be.”

“I say,” said Freddie, “I do think you might marry a chap.”

“I suppose I shall some day,” said Eve, “if I meet the right one.”

“No, no!” said Freddie despairingly. She was not usually so dense as this. He had always looked on her as a dashed clever girl. “I mean me.”

Eve sighed. She had hoped to avert the inevitable.

“Oh, Freddie!” she exclaimed, exasperated. She was still sorry for him, but she could not help being irritated. It was such a splendid afternoon and she had been feeling so happy. And now he had spoiled everything. It always took her at least half an hour to get over the nervous strain of refusing his proposals.

“I love you, dash it!” said Freddie.

“Well, do stop loving me,” said Eve. “I’m an awful girl, really. I’d make you miserable.”

“Happiest man in the world,” corrected Freddie devoutly.

“I’ve got a frightful temper.”

“You’re an angel.”

Eve’s exasperation increased. She always had a curious fear that one of these days, if he went on proposing, she might say “Yes” by mistake. She wished that there was some way known to science of stopping him once and for all. And in her desperation she thought of a line of argument which she had not yet employed.

“It’s so absurd, Freddie,” she said. “Really, it is. Apart from the fact that I don’t want to marry you, how can you marry anyone⁠—anyone, I mean, who hasn’t plenty of money?”

“Wouldn’t dream of marrying for money.”

“No, of course not, but⁠ ⁠…”

“Cupid,” said Freddie woodenly, “pines and sickens in a gilded cage.”

Eve had not expected to be surprised by anything her companion might say, it being her experience that he possessed a vocabulary of about forty-three words and a sum-total of ideas that hardly ran into two figures; but this poetic remark took her back.

“What!”

Freddie repeated the observation. When it had been flashed on the screen as a spoken subtitle in the six-reel wonder film, “Love or Mammon” (Beatrice Comely and Brian Fraser), he had approved and made a note of it.

“Oh!” said Eve, and was silent. As Miss Peavey would have put it, it held her for a while. “What I meant,” she went on after a moment, “was that you can’t possibly marry a girl without money unless you’ve some money of your own.”

“I say, dash it!” A strange note of jubilation had come into the wooer’s voice. “I say, is that really all that stands between us? Because⁠ ⁠…”

“No, it isn’t!”

“Because, look here, I’m going to have quite a good deal of money at any moment. It’s more or less of a secret, you know⁠—in fact a pretty deadish secret⁠—so keep it dark, but Uncle Joe is going to give me a couple of thousand quid. He promised me. Two thousand of the crispest. Absolutely!”

“Uncle Joe?”

“You know. Old Keeble. He’s going to give me a couple of thousand quid, and then I’m going to buy a partnership in a bookie’s business and simply coin money. Stands to reason, I mean. You can’t help making your bally fortune. Look at all the mugs who are losing money all the time at the races. It’s the bookies that get the stuff. A pal of mine who was up at Oxford with me is in a bookie’s office, and they’re going to let me in if I⁠ ⁠…”

The momentous nature of his information had caused Eve to deviate now from her policy of keeping her eyes off Freddie when in emotional vein. And, if she had desired to check his lecture on finance, she could have chosen no better method than to look at him; for, meeting her gaze, Freddie immediately lost the thread of his discourse and stood yammering. A direct hit from Eve’s eyes always affected him in this way.

“Mr. Keeble is going to give you two thousand pounds!”

A wave of mortification swept over Eve. If there was one thing on which she prided herself, it was the belief that she was a loyal friend, a staunch pal; and now for the first time she found herself facing the unpleasant truth that she had been neglecting Phyllis Jackson’s interests in the most abominable way ever since she had come to Blandings. She had definitely promised Phyllis that she would tackle this stepfather of hers and shame him with burning words into yielding up the three thousand pounds which Phyllis needed so desperately for her Lincolnshire farm. And what had she done? Nothing.

Eve was honest to the core, even in her dealings with herself. A less conscientious girl might have argued that she had had no opportunity of a private interview with Mr. Keeble. She scorned to soothe herself with this specious plea. If she had given her mind to it she could have brought about a dozen private interviews, and she knew it. No. She had allowed the pleasant