LEAVE IT TO PSMITH (21)
By:
June 4, 2019
Leave It to Psmith (1923) is the last and most rewarding of four novels featuring the dandy, wit, and would-be adventurer Ronald Eustace Psmith, one of P.G. Wodehouse‘s most popular characters. (“One can date exactly,” Evelyn Waugh claimed, in reference to Psmith’s debut in the 1909 novel Mike, “the first moment when Wodehouse was touched by the sacred flame.”) Leave It to Psmith‘s copyright enters the public domain in 2019; HiLoBooks is pleased to serialize this terrific book here at HILOBROW. Enjoy!
Although the hands of the station clock pointed to several minutes past nine, it was still apparently early evening when the train drew up at the platform of Market Blandings and discharged its distinguished passengers. The sun, taken in as usual by the never-failing practical joke of the Daylight Saving Act, had only just set, and a golden afterglow lingered on the fields as the car which had met the train purred over the two miles of country road that separated the little town from the Castle. As they passed in between the great stone gateposts and shot up the winding drive, the soft murmur of the engines seemed to deepen rather than break the soothing stillness. The air was fragrant with indescribable English scents. Somewhere in the distance sheep-bells tinkled; rabbits, waggling white tails, bolted across the path; and once a herd of agitated deer made a brief appearance among the trees.
The only thing that disturbed the magic hush was the fluting voice of Lord Emsworth, on whom the spectacle of his beloved property had acted as an immediate stimulant. Unlike his son Freddie, who sat silent in his corner wrestling with his hopes and fears, Lord Emsworth had plunged into a perfect Niagara of speech the moment the car entered the park. In a high tenor voice and with wide, excited gestures, he pointed out to Psmith a number of interesting objects by the wayside — oaks with a history and rhododendrons with a past; his conversation as they drew near the Castle and came in sight of the flower-beds taking on an almost lyrical note and becoming a sort of anthem of gladness, through which, like some theme in the minor, ran a series of opprobrious observations on the subject of Angus McAllister.
On arrival Psmith found himself shaking hands with a strikingly handsome woman in whom, though her manner was friendliness itself, he could detect a marked suggestion of the formidable. Æsthetically, he admired Lady Constance’s appearance, but he could not conceal from himself that in the peculiar circumstances he would have preferred something rather more fragile and drooping. Lady Constance conveyed the impression that anybody who had the choice between stealing anything from her and stirring up a nest of hornets with a walking-stick would do well to choose the hornets.
‘How do you do, Mr. McTodd?’ said Lady Constance, with great amiability. ‘I am so glad you were able to come, after all.’
Psmith wondered what she meant by ‘after all,’ but there were so many things about his present situation calculated to tax the mind that he had no desire to probe slight verbal ambiguities.
‘We are quite a small party at present,’ continued Lady Constance, ‘but we are expecting a number of people quite soon. For the moment Aileen and you are our only guests. Oh, I am sorry, I should have … Mr. McTodd, Miss Peavey.’
The slim and willowy female who during this brief conversation had been waiting in an attitude of suspended animation, gazing at Psmith with large, wistful eyes, stepped forward. She clasped Psmith’s hand in hers, held it, and in a low, soft voice, like thick cream made audible, uttered one reverent word: —
‘Maitre!’
‘I beg your pardon?’ said Psmith. A young man capable of bearing himself with calm and dignity in most circumstances, however trying, he found his poise wobbling under the impact of Miss Aileen Peavey.
Miss Peavey often had this effect on the less soulful type of man, especially in the mornings, when such men are not at their strongest and best. When she came into the breakfast-room of a country house, brave men who had been up a bit late the night before quailed and tried to hide behind newspapers. She was the sort of woman who tells a man who is propping his eyes open with his fingers and endeavouring to correct a headache with strong tea, that she was up at six watching the dew fade off the grass and didn’t he think that those wisps of morning mist were the elves’ bridal-veils.
‘Master!’ said Miss Peavey, obligingly translating.
There did not seem to be any immediate come-back to a remark like this, so Psmith contented himself with beaming genially at her through his monocle; and Miss Peavey came to bat again.
‘How wonderful that you were able to come — after all!’
‘You know Miss Peavey’s work, of course?’ said Lady Constance, smiling pleasantly on her two celebrities.
‘Who does not?’ said Psmith, courteously.
‘Oh, do you?’ said Miss Peavey, gratification causing her slender body to perform a sort of lady-like shimmy down its whole length. ‘I scarcely hoped that you would know my name. My Canadian sales have not been large.’
‘Quite large enough,’ said Psmith. ‘I mean, of course,’ he added, with a paternal smile, ‘that, while your delicate art may not have a universal appeal in a young country, it is intensely appreciated by a small and select body of the intelligentsia.’
And if that was not the stuff to give them, he reflected with not a little complacency, he was dashed.
‘Your own wonderful poems,’ replied Miss Peavey, ‘are, of course, known the whole world over. Oh, Mr. McTodd, you can hardly appreciate how I feel, meeting you. It is like the realization of some golden dream of childhood. It is like …’
Here the Hon. Freddie Threepwood remarked suddenly that he was going to pop into the house for a whisky-and-soda. As he had not previously spoken, his observation had something of the quality of a voice from the tomb.
Miss Peavey started like an abruptly awakened somnambulist, and Psmith was at last able to release his hand, which he had begun to look on as gone beyond his control for ever.
Freddie’s departure had the effect of breaking a spell. Lord Emsworth, who had been standing perfectly still with vacant eyes, came to life with a jerk.
‘I’m going to have a look at my flowers,’ he announced.
‘Don’t be silly, Clarence,’ said his sister. ‘It’s much too dark to see flowers.’
‘I could smell ’em,’ retorted his lordship, argumentatively.
It seemed as if the party must break up, for already his lordship had begun to potter off, when a new comer arrived to solidify it again.
‘Ah, Baxter, my dear fellow,’ said Lord Emsworth. ‘Here we are, you see.’
‘Mr. Baxter,’ said Lady Constance, ‘I want you to meet Mr. McTodd.’
‘Mr. McTodd!’ said the new arrival, on a note of surprise.
‘Yes, he found himself able to come, after all.’
‘Ah!’ said the Efficient Baxter.
It occurred to Psmith as a passing thought, to which he gave no more than a momentary attention, that this spectacled and capable looking man was gazing at him, as they shook hands, with a curious intensity. But possibly, he reflected, this was merely a species of optical illusion due to the other’s spectacles. Baxter, staring through his spectacles, often gave people the impression of possessing an eye that could pierce six inches of Harveyized steel and stick out on the other side. Having registered in his consciousness the fact that he had been stared at keenly by this stranger, Psmith thought no more of the matter.
In thus lightly dismissing the Baxterian stare Psmith had acted injudiciously. He should have examined it more closely and made an effort to analyze it, for it was by no means without its message. It was a stare of suspicion. Vague suspicion as yet, but nevertheless suspicion. Rupert Baxter was one of those men whose chief characteristic is a disposition to suspect their fellows. He did not suspect them of this or that definite crime; he simply suspected them. He had not yet definitely accused Psmith in his mind of any specific tort or malfeasance. He merely had a nebulous feeling that he would bear watching.
Miss Peavey now fluttered again into the center of things. On the arrival of Baxter she had withdrawn for a moment into the background, but she was not the woman to stay there long. She came forward, holding out a small oblong book, which with a languishing firmness she pressed into Psmith’s hands.
‘Could I persuade you, Mr. McTodd,’ said Miss Peavey pleadingly, ‘to write some little thought in my autograph book and sign it? I have a fountain pen.’
Light flooded the arbor. The Efficient Baxter, who knew where everything was, had found and pressed the switch. He did this not so much to oblige Miss Peavey as to enable him to obtain a clearer view of the visitor. With each minute that passed the Efficient Baxter was finding himself more and more doubtful in his mind about this visitor.
‘There!’ said Miss Peavey, welcoming the illumination.
Psmith tapped his chin thoughtfully with the fountain pen. He felt that he should have foreseen this emergency earlier. If ever there was a woman who was bound to have an autograph book, that woman was Miss Peavey.
‘Just some little thought — — ‘
Psmith hesitated no longer. In a firm hand he wrote the words ‘Across the pale parabola of joy’ — added an unfaltering ‘Ralston McTodd,’ and handed the book back.
‘How strange!’ sighed Miss Peavey.
‘May I look?’ said Baxter, moving quickly to her side.
‘How strange!’ repeated Miss Peavey. ‘To think that you should have chosen that line! There are several of your more mystic passages that I meant to ask you to explain, but particularly ‘Across the pale parabola of joy.’ ’
‘You find it difficult to understand?’
‘A little, I confess.’
‘Well, well,’ said Psmith indulgently, ‘perhaps I did put a bit of top spin on that one.’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘I say, perhaps it is a little obscure. We must have a long chat about it — later on.’
‘Why not now?’ demanded the Efficient Baxter, flashing his spectacles.
‘I am rather tired,’ said Psmith with gentle reproach, ‘after my journey. Fatigued. We writers — — ‘
‘Of course,’ said Miss Peavey with an indignant glance at the secretary. ‘Mr. Baxter does not understand the sensitive poetic temperament.’
‘A bit earthy, eh?’ said Psmith tolerantly. ‘A trifle unspiritual? So I thought, so I thought. One of these strong, hard men of affairs, I shouldn’t wonder.’
‘Shall we go and find Lord Emsworth, Mr. McTodd?’ said Miss Peavey, dismissing the fermenting Baxter with a scornful look. ‘He wandered off just now. I suppose he is among his flowers. Flowers are very beautiful by night.’
‘Indeed, yes,’ said Psmith. ‘And also by day. When I am surrounded by flowers a sort of divine peace floods over me, and the rough, harsh world seems far away. I feel soothed, tranquil. I sometimes think, Miss Peavey, that flowers must be the souls of little children who have died in their innocence.’
‘What a beautiful thought, Mr. McTodd!’ exclaimed Miss Peavey.
‘Yes,’ agreed Psmith. ‘Don’t pinch it. It’s copyright.’
The darkness swallowed them up. Lady Constance turned to the Efficient Baxter, who was brooding with furrowed brow.
‘Charming, is he not?’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘I said I thought Mr. McTodd was charming.’
‘Oh, quite!’
‘Completely unspoiled.’
‘Oh, decidedly!’
‘I am so glad that he was able to come, after all. That telegram he sent this afternoon canceling his visit seemed so curt.’
‘So I thought it.’
‘Almost as if he had taken offense at something and decided to have nothing to do with us.’
‘Quite!’
Lady Constance shivered delicately. A cool breeze had sprung up. She drew her wrap more closely about her shapely shoulders and began to walk to the house. Baxter did not accompany her. The moment she had gone he switched off the light and sat down, chin in hand. That massive brain was working hard.
SERIALIZED BY HILOBOOKS: Jack London’s The Scarlet Plague | Rudyard Kipling’s With the Night Mail (and “As Easy as A.B.C.”) | Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Poison Belt | H. Rider Haggard’s When the World Shook | Edward Shanks’ The People of the Ruins | William Hope Hodgson’s The Night Land | J.D. Beresford’s Goslings | E.V. Odle’s The Clockwork Man | Cicely Hamilton’s Theodore Savage | Muriel Jaeger’s The Man With Six Senses | Jack London’s “The Red One” | Philip Francis Nowlan’s Armageddon 2419 A.D. | Homer Eon Flint’s The Devolutionist | W.E.B. DuBois’s “The Comet” | Edgar Rice Burroughs’s The Moon Men | Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s Herland | Sax Rohmer’s “The Zayat Kiss” | Eimar O’Duffy’s King Goshawk and the Birds | Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Lost Prince | Morley Roberts’s The Fugitives | Helen MacInnes’s The Unconquerable | Geoffrey Household’s Watcher in the Shadows | William Haggard’s The High Wire | Hammond Innes’s Air Bridge | James Branch Cabell’s Jurgen | John Buchan’s “No Man’s Land” | John Russell’s “The Fourth Man” | E.M. Forster’s “The Machine Stops” | John Buchan’s Huntingtower | Arthur Conan Doyle’s When the World Screamed | Victor Bridges’ A Rogue By Compulsion | Jack London’s The Iron Heel | H. De Vere Stacpoole’s The Man Who Lost Himself | P.G. Wodehouse’s Leave It to Psmith | Richard Connell’s “The Most Dangerous Game” | Houdini and Lovecraft’s “Imprisoned with the Pharaohs” | Arthur Conan Doyle’s “The Sussex Vampire”.
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