Pelham Wodehouse - Spring Fever

"The sturdy oak, not the sapling."

"Exactly. I plugged your reliable qualities, and she quite agreed. 'Your pa hasn't got Mr. Spink's fascination and polish,' she said. 'He isn't so much the gentleman as Mr. Spink. But he's steady.'"

"Ha!"

"So carry on and fear nothing, is my advice. Don't give a thought to Spink's fascination and polish. It's the soul that counts, and that's where you have the bulge on him. I think you're Our Five Horse Special and Captain Coe's Final Selection. You'll romp home, darling."

Lord Shortlands, though not insensible to this pep talk, was unable to bring himself to rejoice wholeheartedly. The sort of life he had been living for the last few years makes a man a realist.

"Not if I can't get that two hundred."

"Yes, we shall have to look into that."

The telephone rang, and Lord Shortlands went to it more confidently this time, like one who feels that the danger is past.

"It's for you."

"Mike Cardinal?"

"Yes. He says did you get his letter."

"Yes, I did. Tell him I won't."

"Won't?"

"Won't."

"Won't what?"

"Just won't. He'll understand."

"Yes," said Lord Shortlands into the instrument, mystified but dutifully obeying instructions, "she says she did, but she won't. Eh? I'll ask her. He wants to know if you're still doing your hair the same way."

"Yes."

"She says yes. Eh? Yes, I'll tell her. Good-bye. He says very sensible of you, because it makes you look like a Botticelli angel. What won't you do?" asked Lord Shortlands, who still found the phrase perplexing.

Terry laughed.

"Marry him."

"Does he want to marry you?"

"He keeps saying so."

Lord Shortlands looked as like a conscientious father with his child's welfare at heart as it was possible for him to do.

"You ought to marry."

"I suppose so."

"Think what it would mean. Liberty. Freedom. You would never have to see that moat again."

"Adela wants me to marry Cosmo Blair."

"Don't do it."

"I won't."

"That's the spirit. I mean to say, dash it, it's all very well wanting to get away from the moat, but you can pay too high a price."

"I feel like that, too. Besides, he's going to marry Clare."

"Good God! Does he know it?"

"Not yet. But he will."

Lord Shortlands reflected.

"By George, I believe you're right. She bit my head off just now because I called him a potbellied perisher. Even at the time it struck me as significant. Well, I'm glad there's no danger as far as you're concerned."

"None whatever. I can't stand that superior manner of his. He talks to me as if I were a child."

"He talks to me as if I were a bally fathead," said Lord Shortlands, who, being one, was sensitive about it. "Well, tell me about this fellow Cardinal. When did you meet him?"

"Do you remember Tony bringing a school friend of his here for the summer holidays about eight years ago?"

"How can I possibly remember all Tony's repulsive friends?"

"This one wasn't repulsive. Dazzlingly good-looking. I met him again when I was lunching with Stanwood Cobbold one day. They knew each other in America."

"He's American, is he?"

"Yes. He was at school with Tony, but he comes from California. He came up and asked me if I remembered him."

"And did you?"

"Vividly. So he sat down and joined us, and after lunch Stanwood went off to write to his girl and Mike immediately proposed to me over the coffee cups."

"Quick work."

"So I pointed out to him. He then said he had loved me from the first moment we met, but had been too shy to speak."

"He doesn't sound shy."

"I suppose he's got over it."

"What is he?"

"A Greek god, Shorty. No less."

"I mean, what does he do?"

"He's a motion-picture agent in Hollywood. Motion-picture agents are the people who fix up the stars with engagements at the studios. They get ten per cent of the salaries."

Lord Shortlands' eyes widened. He had read all about motion-picture stars' salaries.

"Good heavens. He must make a fortune."

"Well, he's only a junior partner, but I suppose he does pretty well."

Lord Shortlands gulped emotionally.

"I'd have grabbed him."

"Well, I didn't."

"Don't you like him?"

"Yes, I do. Very much. But I'm not going to marry* him."

"Why not?"

"There's a reason."

"What reason?"

"Oh, just a reason. But don't let's talk about me any more. Let's talk about you—you and your two hundred pounds."

Lord Shortlands would have preferred to continue the probe into his daughter's reasons for being unwilling to marry a rich and good-looking young man, whom she admitted to liking, but it was plain that she considered the subject closed. And he was always ready to talk about his two hundred pounds.

"That still remains the insuperable obstacle. I don't see how I can raise it."

"Have you tried Desborough?"

"I keep starting to pave the way, but he always vanishes like a homing rabbit. The impression he gives me is that he sees it coming."

"Well, he'll be here at any moment to look at that stamp album Clare found. And he can't vanish like a rabbit this time, because he's got lumbago again."

"That's true."

"Tackle him firmly. Don't pave the way. Use shock tactics. Oh, hullo, Desborough."

A small, slight, pince-nezed man in the middle forties, who looked like the second vice-president of something, had entered. He came in slowly, for he was supporting himself with a walking stick, but his manner was eager. When there were stamps about, Desborough Topping always resembled a second vice-president on the verge of discovering some leakage in the monthly accounts.

"Hello, Terry. Say, where's this . . . Ah," he said, sighting the album and becoming lost to all external things.

The eyes of Lord Shortlands and his daughter met in a significant glance. "Do it now," said Terry's. "Quite. Certainly. Oh, rather," said Lord Short-lands'. He advanced to the table and laid a gentle hand on his son-in-law's shoulder.

"Some interesting stamps here, eh?" he said affectionately. "Desborough, old chap, can you lend me two hundred pounds?"

The invalid started, as any man might on rinding so substantial a touch coming out of a blue sky.

"Two hundred pounds?"

"It would be a great convenience."

"Why don't you ask Adela?"

"I did. But she wouldn't."

Desborough Topping was looking like a stag at bay.

"Well, you know me. I'd give you the shirt off my back."

Lord Shortlands disclaimed any desire for the shirt off his son-in-law's back. What he wanted, he stressed once more, was not haberdashery but two hundred pounds.

"Well, look. Here's the trouble. Adela and I have a joint account."

It was the end. A man cannot go on struggling against Fate beyond a certain point. Lord Shortlands turned and walked to the window, where he gave the moat a look compared with which all previous looks had been loving and appreciative.

"This whole matter of joint accounts for married couples—" he was beginning, speaking warmly, for the subject was one on which he held strong views, when his observations were interrupted. The door had opened again, and his eldest daughter was coming in.

Lady Adela Topping, some fifteen years younger than her husband, was tall and handsome and built rather on the lines of Catherine of Russia, whom she resembled also in force of character and that imperiousness of outlook which makes a woman disinclined to stand any nonsense. And that she had recently been confronted with nonsense of some nature was plainly shown in her demeanour now. She was visibly annoyed; so visibly that if Desborough Topping had not become immersed in the stamp album once more and so missed the tilt of her chin and the flash of her eye, he would have curled up in a ball and rolled under the sofa.