Pelham Wodehouse - Spring Fever

"Terry!"

"Yes?"

"Did you notice anything?"

"How do you mean?"

"About that viper. The man Spink. Did you see a sort of gleam in his eye?"

"No."

"I did. A distinct gleam. As if he had got something up his sleeve. You heard what he said? Mrs. Punter's back."

"Yes."

"Horrible gloating way he said it. I suppose he's been smarming round her ever since she arrived. That's where he scores, being a butler. No barriers between him and the cook. There he is, right on the spot, able to fuss over her to his heart's content. Probably told her she must be feeling tired after her journey, and insisted on her having a drop of sherry. Just the sort of little attention that wins a woman's heart. Not that it matters much now," said Lord Shortlands heavily. "If you aren't going to marry this young Cardinal, I'm dished, anyway."

Terry sighed. At lunch and during the return in the train and subsequently while she was writing that note, the fifth earl had gone into the matter of her broken engagement rather fully, and it seemed that the topic was to come up again.

"I'm sorry," she said.

"I still can't understand why you're giving the chap the push."

"I explained."

"Well, I don't see it. Why shouldn't he lunch with this woman? Old friends, apparently."

"I told you. It was the way he looked at her."

"Pooh!"

"And after what I went through with Geoffrey—"

"Pooh, pooh!"

A single "Pooh!" is trying enough to a girl whose heart is feeling as if it had been split in half, but Terry, by clenching her fists and biting her lip, had contrived to endure it. The double dose was too much for her.

"Oh, for goodness sake do let's stop talking about it, Shorty."

Lord Shortlands heaved himself out of his chair. He could make allowances for a daughter's grief, but her tone had hurt him.

"I shall go for a stroll," he said.

"Yes, do. Much better than sitting here, waiting."

At the thought of what he was waiting for, Lord Shortlands shivered.

"I shall go for a stroll around the moat. The moat!" he said broodingly. "Might drown myself in it," he went on, brightening a little at the thought. But the animation induced by this reflection soon waned. "I wonder where Adela's got to."

"She's probably gardening."

"Well, this suspense is awful. I'm in such a state of mind that I almost hope I'll run into her," said Lord Shortlands, and went out, and a few moments later Terry was aroused from her thoughts by the entry of Stanwood Cob-bold. Stanwood was looking tense and grave, as became a man whose heart was broken. To him, as to Terry, that glilmpse of Mike and Eileen Stoker at the door of Barribault's Hotel had come as a shattering blow, withering hopes and destroying dreams.

"Oh, there you are," he said sepulchrally. "Spink gave me your note."

"What! But it was meant for Mike."

"Sure, I know. But Spink got mixed. You can't blame him. He's just been fired, he tells me, and I guess it's preying on his mind. So you've given Mike the razz?"

"Yes."

"Quite right," said Stanwood warmly. "Show him where he gets off. Later on, when I'm feeling sort of brighter, I'm going to write Eileen a letter, telling her where she gets off. Who was that female in the Bible whose work was always so raw?"

"Delilah?"

"Jezebel," said Stanwood, remembering. "I've heard Augustus Robb mention her. That's how I shall begin. 'Jezebel!' I shall begin. That'll make her sit up. And there's a Scarlet Woman of Babylon that Augustus sometimes wisecracks about. I shall work her in, too. The great question now is, Do I or do I not poke Mike in the snoot?"

"No!"

"Maybe you're right," said Stanwood.

He relapsed into a brooding silence. Terry was wishing that he would go away and leave her to her misery, but as it was evident that he was determined to remain and talk, she sought in her mind for something to talk about which would not make her feel as if jagged knives were being thrust through her heart.

"Have you seen Adela?" she asked.

"Her Nibs? No. Why?" said Stanwood, in sudden alarm. "Is she looking for me?"

"Not that I know of."

"Thank God! If I never meet that dame again, it'll be soon enough for me. Why did you ask if I'd seen her?"

"I don't know."

"Well, I wish you wouldn't. You gave me goose prickles. Some party, that, last night."

"Yes. I never knew you had such ready resource."

"Eh?"

"'It's all right, ma'am. We're engaged.'"

"Oh, that? Well, I had to say something."

"I suppose so."

"And it worked. Gosh!" said Stanwood, starting. It was plain that an idea of some kind had agitated the brain behind that brow of bone. "Golly! You've given me a thought there. Look! Why shouldn't we?"

"Why shouldn't we what?"

"Be engaged."

Terry gasped.

"You mean really?"

"Sure."

"Are you choosing this moment to ask me to marry you?"

"You betcher, and I'll tell you why. You want to show Mike where he gets off. I want to show Eileen where she gets off. You're feeling licked to a splinter. I'm feeling licked to a splinter. Let's merge."

"Oh, Stanwood!" said Terry, and began to laugh.

Stanwood eyed her askance. He did not like this mirth. Her laughter was musical, but he soon began to entertain the idea that there was something of hysteria in it, and at the thought of being alone with a hysterical girl his stout soul wilted. He was none too sure of the procedure. Did you burn feathers under their noses? Or just slap them on the back?

"Hey!" he cried. "Pipe down!"

"I can't. It's too funny."

Stanwood began to be conscious of a certain pique. He had offered this girl a good man's—well, not love, perhaps, but at any rate affection, and he could see no reason why a good man's affection should be given the horse's laugh. His manner became stiff.

"I can't see what's so darned funny about it."

And Terry, suddenly sobered, found that she, too, was unable to do so.

"I'm sorry I laughed," she said. "But you startled me. You'll admit you were a little sudden. Are you really serious?"

"Sure."

Terry was looking at Stanwood, thoughtfully, weighing him up. She liked him, she told herself. She had always liked him. He made her feel motherly. And he was a man you could trust. She could think of many worse things that the future could hold than marriage with Stanwood Cobbold. To marry Stanwood would be to put into snug harbour out of the storm. Perhaps this was what Fate had designed for her from the start, a quiet, unromantic union with no nonsense about it, solidly based on friendship.

It would mean, too, that she would be able to leave the castle, to go out into the wide world where there might be a chance of forgetting, and she realized now how vitally this mattered to her. I can't do it, she had been saying to herself in a hopeless, trapped way. I can't go on living all alone in this awful place where everything will always remind me of Mike. She saw that she was being offered release from prison.

"If it's the money end you're worrying about," said Stanwood, "that's all right. Father will cough up, when he hears it's you I'm marrying."

"I'm not worrying about that, my pet," said Terry. "I'm worrying about you and what you're letting yourself in for."

"If it's okay by you, it's okay by me."

"Sure?"

"Sure."

"Quite sure?"

"Absolutely sure. You betcher. Why not?"

"I'm afraid I shall always love Mike," said Terry, with a little choke in her voice.

"And I shall always love Eileen, darn her gizzard. But what does it matter? Don't talk to me about love," said Stanwood, plainly contemptuous of the divine emotion. "Love's a mess. Look at all the bimbos you see that start out thinking they're crazy about each other. For the first couple of months they can't quit holding hands and feeding each other with their spoons, and after that they're off to the lawyer to fix up the divorce so quick you can't see them for dust. To hell with love. Feed it to the birds. I want no piece of it."