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

“What I like about the English rural districts,” he went on, “is that when the authorities have finished building a place they stop. Somewhere about the reign of Henry the Eighth, I imagine that the master-mason gave the final house a pat with his trowel and said, ‘Well, boys, that’s Market Blandings.’ To which his assistants no doubt assented with many a hearty ‘Grammercy!’ and ‘I’fackins!’ these being expletives to which they were much addicted. And they went away and left it, and nobody has touched it since. And I, for one, thoroughly approve. I think it makes the place soothing. Don’t you?”

“Yes.”

As far as the darkness would permit, Psmith subjected Eve to an inquiring glance through his monocle. This was a strange new mood in which he had found her. Hitherto, though she had always endeared herself to him by permitting him the major portion of the dialogue, they had usually split conversations on at least a seventy-five⁠—twenty-five basis. And though it gratified Psmith to be allowed to deliver a monologue when talking with most people, he found Eve more companionable when in a slightly chattier vein.

“Are you coming in to hear me read?” he asked.

“No.”

It was a change from “Yes,” but that was the best that could be said of it. A good deal of discouragement was always required to damp Psmith, but he could not help feeling a slight diminution of buoyancy. However, he kept on trying.

“You show your usual sterling good sense,” he said approvingly. “A scalier method of passing the scented summer night could hardly be hit upon.” He abandoned the topic of the reading. It did not grip. That was manifest. It lacked appeal. “I went to Market Blandings this afternoon, too,” he said. “Comrade Baxter informed me that you had gone thither, so I went after you. Not being able to find you, I turned in for half an hour at the local moving-picture palace. They were showing Episode Eleven of a serial. It concluded with the heroine, kidnapped by Indians, stretched on the sacrificial altar with the high-priest making passes at her with a knife. The hero meanwhile had started to climb a rather nasty precipice on his way to the rescue. The final picture was a closeup of his fingers slipping slowly off a rock. Episode Twelve next week.”

Eve looked out into the night without speaking.

“I’m afraid it won’t end happily,” said Psmith with a sigh. “I think he’ll save her.”

Eve turned on him with a menacing abruptness.

“Shall I tell you why I went to Market Blandings this afternoon?” she said.

“Do,” said Psmith cordially. “It is not for me to criticise, but as a matter of fact I was rather wondering when you were going to begin telling me all about your adventures. I have been monopolising the conversation.”

“I went to meet Cynthia.”

Psmith’s monocle fell out of his eye and swung jerkily on its cord. He was not easily disconcerted, but this unexpected piece of information, coming on top of her peculiar manner, undoubtedly jarred him. He foresaw difficulties, and once again found himself thinking hard thoughts of this confounded female who kept bobbing up when least expected. How simple life would have been, he mused wistfully, had Ralston McTodd only had the good sense to remain a bachelor.

“Oh, Cynthia?” he said.

“Yes, Cynthia,” said Eve. The inconvenient Mrs. McTodd possessed a Christian name admirably adapted for being hissed between clenched teeth, and Eve hissed it in this fashion now. It became evident to Psmith that the dear girl was in a condition of hardly suppressed fury and that trouble was coming his way. He braced himself to meet it.

“Directly after we had that talk on the lake, the day I arrived,” continued Eve tersely, “I wrote to Cynthia, telling her to come here at once and meet me at the Emsworth Arms⁠ ⁠…”

“In the High Street,” said Psmith. “I know it. Good beer.”

“What!”

“I said they sell good beer⁠ ⁠…”

“Never mind about the beer,” cried Eve.

“No, no. I merely mentioned it in passing.”

“At lunch today I got a letter from her saying that she would be there this afternoon. So I hurried off. I wanted⁠—” Eve laughed a hollow, mirthless laugh of a calibre which even the Hon. Freddie Threepwood would have found beyond his powers, and he was a specialist⁠—“I wanted to try to bring you two together. I thought that if I could see her and have a talk with her that you might become reconciled.”

Psmith, though obsessed with a disquieting feeling that he was fighting in the last ditch, pulled himself together sufficiently to pat her hand as it lay beside him on the wall like some white and fragile flower.

“That was like you,” he murmured. “That was an act worthy of your great heart. But I fear that the rift between Cynthia and myself has reached such dimensions⁠ ⁠…”

Eve drew her hand away. She swung round, and the battery of her indignant gaze raked him furiously.

“I saw Cynthia,” she said, “and she told me that her husband was in Paris.”

“Now, how in the world,” said Psmith, struggling bravely but with a growing sense that they were coming over the plate a bit too fast for him, “how in the world did she get an idea like that?”

“Do you really want to know?”

“I do, indeed.”

“Then I’ll tell you. She got the idea because she had had a letter from him, begging her to join him there. She had just finished telling me this, when I caught sight of you from the inn window, walking along the High Street. I pointed you out to Cynthia, and she said she had never seen you before in her life.”

“Women soon forget,” sighed Psmith.

“The only excuse I can find for you,” stormed Eve in a vibrant undertone necessitated by the fact that somebody had just emerged from the castle door and they no longer had the terrace to themselves, “is that you’re mad. When I think of all you said to