Pelham Wodehouse - Spring Fever

Joy, it has been well said, cometh in the morning. Whatever doubts and misgivings may have disturbed Terry in the darkness, they had vanished in the light of the new day. She was now able to appraise at their true value those babblings of Stanwood Cobbold which had seemed so sinister in the small hours. After what had passed between her and Mike in the library last night, it was ridiculous to suppose for an instant that he did not love her, and her alone. Stanwood Cobbold, in suggesting that his fancy might rove towards motion-picture stars, had shown that he simply had no grasp of his subject.

She found herself blaming Stanwood Cobbold. Nobody, of course, who enjoyed the pleasure of intimacy with him, expected him to talk anything but nonsense, but he need not, she felt, have descended to such utter nonsense as that of which he had been guilty last night. She had just decided that she would be rather cold to him on her return, when she saw that there would be no need to wait till then.

An hour's aimless rambling through London's sunlit streets had taken Terry to Berkeley Square, and she had paused to survey it and to think with regret how they had ruined this pleasant oasis with their beastly Air Ministries and blocks of flats, when she was aware of a bowed figure clumping slowly towards her on leaden feet. It was Stanwood in person, and so dejected was his aspect that all thought of being cold left her.

"Stanwood," she cried, and he looked up like one coming out of a trance.

"Hiya," he said hollowly.

He made no reference to the circumstances of their last meeting. Presumably he had not forgotten them, but more recent happenings had relegated them to the category of things that do not matter. He gazed at Terry dully, like a hippopotamus that has had bad news.

"Hello," he said. "What are you doing here?"

"Shorty and I broke out of the Big House and came in to have lunch. What are you?"

Stanwood's attention seemed to wander. A blank expression came into his eyes. It was necessary for Terry, in order to recall him to the present, to kick him on the ankle.

"Ouch!" said Stanwood. He passed a hand across his forehead. "What did you say?"

"I asked what you were doing in London."

A look of pain contorted the young man's face.

"I came to see Eileen."

"How is she?"

"I don't know. I haven't seen her."

"Oh? What train did you catch?"

"I came by car. Hired it at the inn. Terry, I'm feeling shot to pieces."

"Poor old Stanwood. Has something gone wrong?" Terry looked at her watch. "Hullo, I must be getting along. I'm meeting Shorty at Barribault's at half-past one. I'd ask you to join us, but I know he wants to be alone with me. He's feeling rather low today."

"I'll bet he's not feeling as low as I am. A worm would have to pin its ears back to get under me. I couldn't lunch, anyway. Simply couldn't swallow the stuff."

"Well, walk along with me, and tell me all about it. What's the trouble?"

"It started with this letter," said Stanwood, falling into step at her side. "This letter from Eileen that I found at the inn."

"Addressed to you?"

"Yay."

"You mean you registered at the inn under your own name?"

"Sure."

"God bless you, Stanwood! Not that it matters now, of course."

"Nothing matters now," said the stricken man.

It seemed to Terry ironical that on this day of days it should be her fate to associate with none but the crushed in spirit, and she found herself thinking wistfully of Mike. Mike might have his faults—her sister Adela by now had probably discovered dozens—but he was not depressing.

"Cheer up," she urged.

"Cheer up?" said Stanwood, with a hollow, rasping laugh. "Swell chance I've got of cheering up. For two pins I'd go and bump myself off."

They walked on in silence. Stanwood seemed to be enveloped in a murky cloud, and his gloom, for misery is catching, was communicating itself to Terry. In spite of herself, those doubts and misgivings were beginning to vex her once more. There was about Stanwood in his present mood something that chilled the spirit and encouraged morbidity of thought. It was as if she had had for a companion the Terry Cobbold in mittens and spectacles of whom she had spoken to Lord Shortlands, and that this mittened Terry Cobbold were whispering, as she had so often whispered, that no good ever comes of getting entangled with Greek gods.

"All alike," this Prudent Self seemed to be murmuring. "They're all alike, these good-looking young men. Remember how you felt about Geoffrey Harvest at the beginning. You thought him perfect. And what a flippertygibbet he turned out to be!"

She wrenched her mind free from these odious reflections. She refused to think of Geoffrey Harvest of abominable memory. Mike was not Geoffrey Harvest. She could trust Mike.

"Well, tell me about the letter," she said. "Why was it so shattering?"

"It was in answer to one I had written her, begging her for Pete's sake to tie a can to that crazy notion of hers about not marrying me because I've no money. I told you about that?"

"Yes, I remember."

"She said she still stuck to it."

"But didn't you expect her to? She wouldn't change her mind right away. I don't see why that letter should worry you. Why did it?"

"Because I read between the lines. There's more to it than meets the eye. Have a look at it," said Stanwood, and thrust a hand into his breast pocket. "You'll see what I mean."

There was nothing of Augustus Robb about Terry. She had no desire to read other people's letters even when invited to, and she was just about to say so when the hand emerged, brandishing before her face a large white envelope, and there floated to her nostrils a wave of scent.

There are certain scents which live up to the advertiser's slogan "Distinctively individual." That affected by Miss Eileen Stoker was one of these. It was a heavy, languorous, overpowering scent, probably answering to one of those boldly improper names which manufacturers of perfume think up with such deplorable readiness, a scent calculated to impress itself on the least retentive memory. It had impressed itself on Terry's memory the day before, when she had first made its acquaintance on Mike's sleeve. They had turned into Duke Street now, and Barribault's Hotel loomed up before them, a solid mass of stone and steel, but not so solid that it did not seem to sway drunkenly before Terry's eyes.

As if in a dream she heard Stanwood speaking.

"Remember what I was saying last night about the old army game? How I thought all that boloney about the money was just Eileen's way of easing me out because she was stuck on someone else? And remember what I told you about Mike and her at that party of mine? Remember me saying I thought he was making a play for her? Well, look. When I got to London, I called her, and she hung up before I'd had time to say a couple of words. And when I rushed around to her hotel, she wouldn't see me. And that's not the half of it. Listen. You've not heard anything yet. I was in the small bar at Barribault's just now, and Aloysius McGuffy told me that she and Mike were lunching there yesterday. What do you know about that?"

Terry forced herself to speak. Her voice sounded strange to her.

"There's no harm in people lunching together."

Stanwood was not prepared to accept this easy philosophy.

"Yes, there is."

"I used to lunch with you."

"That's not the same thing. There are lunches and lunches."

"It doesn't mean anything."

"Yes, it does. It means that they're that way."

"Why?" said Terry, fighting hard.

They had reached the sidewalk outsid,e Barribault's Hotel, and Stanwood halted. His face was earnest, and he emphasized his words with wide gestures.

"I look on that lunch as a what-d'you-call-it; a straw showing which way the wind is blowing. If it wasn't, why was Mike so cagey about it? Did he mention it to you? Of course he didn't. Nor to me. Not a yip out of him. Kept it right under his hat. And why? Because it was a—"