Pelham Wodehouse - Spring Fever

He finished his coffee and refilled his cup. Desborough Topping, who had been fortifying himself with scrambled eggs, rose and helped himself to ham from the sideboard.

"Young Cobbold just left," he said, returning to the table.

"Oh?"

"Yes. Hurried through his breakfast. Said he had to get in to London early."

"Oh?"

"Probably wanted to have that eye of his seen to."

Lord Shortlands was not a quick-witted man, but even he could see that he must know nothing of Mike's eye.

"What eye?"

"He has a black eye."

"How did he get that?"

"AR, that's what I'd like to know, but he didn't tell me. I said to him That's a nasty eye you've got,' and he said 'Into each life some nasty eye must fall.' Evasive."

"Perhaps he bumped into something."

"Maybe."

Desborough Topping applied himself to his ham in silence for a space.

"But what?"

"What?"

"That's what I said—What? What could he have bumped into?"

Lord Shortlands tried to think of some of the things with which a man's eye could collide.

"A door?"

"Then why not say so?"

"I don't know."

"Nor me. Mysterious."

"Most."

"There's a lot of things going on in this house that want explaining. Did you hear a crash in the night?"

"A crash?"

"It woke me up."

Lord Shortlands was in a condition when he would have found any breakfast-table conversation trying, but he found this one particularly so.

"No. I—ah—heard nothing."

"Well, there was a crash. Around two in the morning. A sort of crashing sound, as if something had—er—crashed. I heard it distinctly. And that's not the only thing I'd like to have explained. Look," said Desborough Topping, peering keenly through his pince-nez like Scotland Yard on the trail, "what do you make of that guy that calls himself Rossiter?"

Lord Shortlands licked his lips. This is a phrase that usually denotes joy. In this instance, it did not. He prayed for something to break up this tete-a-tete, and his prayer was answered. The voice of Cosmo Blair, raised in song, sounded from without. The door opened, and Clare entered, followed by the eminent playwright.

"Ah, my dear Shortlands."

"Good morning, Father."

"Good morning," said Lord Shortlands, feeling like the man who, having got rid of one devil, was immediately occupied by seven others, worse than the first. When he had prayed for something to interrupt his chat with Desborough Topping, he had not been thinking of Cosmo Blair.

His spirits drooped still further. Those of Cosmo Blair, on the other hand, appeared to be soaring. Lord Shortlands had never seen the fellow so effervescent.

"Did you hear a crash last night?" asked Desborough Topping.

"I am in no mood to talk of crashes, my dear Topping," said Cosmo Blair. "This, my dear Topping and my dear Shortlands, is the happiest day of my life." He advanced to the table, and rested his hands on the cloth. "My lords, ladies and gentlemen, pray silence. Charge your coffee cups and drink to the health of the young couple."

"Cosmo and I are engaged, Father," said Clare in her direct way.

"My God!" said Lord Shortlands. "I mean, are you?"

Cosmo Blair placed a reassuring hand on his shoulder.

"I think I know what is in your mind, my dear Shortlands. You fear that you are about to lose a daughter. Have no anxiety. You are merely gaining a son."

"We're going to live at the castle," explained Clare.

"So that's all right," said Cosmo Blair. He was a kindly man at heart, and it gave him pleasure to relieve his future father-in-law's apprehensions. "We shall both be with you."

There came upon Lord Shortlands an urgent desire to get away from it all. Cosmo Blair's society often had this effect on him. He yearned for Terry. A moment before, he had been thinking of having a third cup of coffee, but now he decided to lose no time in going to her room, where he presumed her to be breakfasting. Terry was always the best medicine for a bruised soul.

He rose, accordingly, and Desborough Topping cocked a surprised eye at him.

"Finished?"

"Yes."

"Not going to eat anything?"

"No appetite."

"Too bad."

"A liver pill, my dear Shortlands," said Cosmo Blair. "That's what you want. Take it in a little water."

"Oh, by the way, Father," said Clare, "Adela would like a word with you later on."

Lord Shortlands started.

"Adela? What about?"

"She didn't say. I just poked my head in at her door and said Cosmo and I were engaged, and she told me to tell you."

It was a pensive Lord Shortlands who made his way to Terry's room. The news that he was to have Cosmo Blair with him for apparently the rest of his life had shaken him deeply, but not more so than the announcement that Adela wanted a word with him. It too often happened that, when his eldest daughter had a word with him, that word stretched itself into several thousand words, all unpleasant, and in his present low state of mind he felt unequal to anything but the kindest and gentlest treatment.

But he quickly recovered his poise. On occasions like this what a man needs above all else is a clean conscience, and his, on examination, proved to be as clean as a whistle. Except for wanting to marry her cook, introducing impostors into her home and inciting ex-burglars to break open her safe, of all of which peccadilloes she was of course ignorant, he had done absolutely nothing to invite Adela's censure. If Adela wanted a word with him, he told himself, it was no doubt on some trifling matter of purely domestic interest.

As he knocked on Terry's door, he was conscious of that moral strength which comes to fathers on whom their daughters have not got the goods.

Desborough Topping, meanwhile, had finished his ham and had gone up to see his wife, his dutiful habit at this time of day. He found her propped up among the pillows with a bed table across her knees, and was pleased to note that she seemed in excellent humour.

"Good morning, honey."

"Good morning, dear. Have you seen Clare?"

"Just left her. You mean this engagement of hers? She was telling me about that. You're pleased, I guess."

"Delighted. I like Cosmo so much."

"Got the stuff, too."

"Yes. And isn't it extraordinary that the two things should have happened almost at the same time?"

"Eh?"

"Don't you know? Terry's engaged to Stanwood Cobbold."

"You don't say!"

"Yes. It's .really wonderful. He seems so nice, and of course Mr. Cobbold has millions."

"Yes, old Ellery's well fixed. When did it happen?"

"I heard about it early this morning."

"Funny he didn't say anything to me about it. He came in and rushed through his breakfast and dashed off. So they're engaged, are they? He looks as if he'd been having a barroom scrap instead of getting engaged. Got a peach of a black eye. I'd like to know who gave him that."

An austere look came into Lady Adela's face.

"I can tell you. It was Father."

"Father?"

"'He was disgracefully intoxicated last night. I went to his room this morning, and it was littered with bottles."

Desborough Topping was visibly impressed. He had never supposed his father-in-law capable of such spirited behaviour. He also learned with surprise that he packed so spectacular a punch.

"Gee!" he said feelingly. "I'm glad he didn't take it into his head to haul off and sock me. I thought he looked a little peaked this morning. Well, say, he must have been pretty bad. I was discussing Cobbold's eye with him, just now, and he'd forgotten all about it."

"I will refresh his memory," said Lady Adela coldly. "But that wasn't Stanwood Cobbold that Father hit. It was a friend of his, a Mr. Cardinal. Mr. Rossiter is really Stanwood Cobbold."

Desborough Topping sat down on the bed. His air was that of one who is being tried too high.