Leave it to Psmith by Pelham Grenville Wodehouse (big screen ebook reader .TXT) 📕

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What strikes the visitor to London most forcibly, as he enters the heart of that city’s fashionable shopping district, is the almost entire absence of ostentation in the shop-windows, the studied avoidance of garish display. About the front of the premises of Messrs. Thorpe & Briscoe, for instance, who sell coal in Dover Street, there is as a rule nothing whatever to attract fascinated attention. You might give the place a glance as you passed, but you would certainly not pause and stand staring at it as at the Sistine Chapel or the Taj Mahal. Yet at ten-thirty on the morning after Eve Halliday had taken tea with her friend Phyllis Jackson in West Kensington, Psmith, lounging gracefully in the smoking-room window of the Drones Club, which is immediately opposite the Thorpe & Briscoe establishment, had been gazing at it fixedly for a full five minutes. One would have said that the spectacle enthralled him. He seemed unable to take his eyes off it.

There is always a reason for the most apparently inexplicable happenings. It is the practice of Thorpe (or Briscoe) during the months of summer to run out an awning over the shop. A quiet, genteel awning, of course, nothing to offend the eye—but an awning which offers a quite adequate protection against those sudden showers which are such a delightfully piquant feature of the English summer: one of which had just begun to sprinkle the West End of London with a good deal of heartiness and vigour. And under this awning, peering plaintively out at the rain, Eve Halliday, on her way to the Ada Clarkson Employment Bureau, had taken refuge. It was she who had so enchained Psmith’s interest. It was his considered opinion that she improved the Thorpe & Briscoe frontage by about ninety-five per cent.

Pleased and gratified as Psmith was to have something nice to look at out of the smoking-room window, he was also somewhat puzzled. This girl seemed to him to radiate an atmosphere of wealth. Starting at farthest south and proceeding northward, she began in a gleam of patent-leather shoes. Fawn stockings, obviously expensive, led up to a black crêpe frock. And then, just as the eye was beginning to feel that there could be nothing more, it was stunned by a supreme hat of soft, dull satin with a black bird of Paradise feather falling down over the left shoulder. Even to the masculine eye, which is notoriously to seek in these matters, a whale of a hat. And yet this sumptuously upholstered young woman had been marooned by a shower of rain beneath the awning of Messrs. Thorpe & Briscoe. Why, Psmith asked himself, was this? Even, he argued, if Charles the chauffeur had been given the day off or was driving her father the millionaire to the City to attend to his vast interests, she could surely afford a cab-fare? We, who are familiar with the state of Eve’s finances, can understand her inability to take cabs, but Psmith was frankly perplexed.

Being, however, both ready-witted and chivalrous, he perceived that this was no time for idle speculation. His not to reason why; his obvious duty was to take steps to assist Beauty in distress. He left the window of the smoking-room, and, having made his way with a smooth dignity to the club’s cloak-room, proceeded to submit a row of umbrellas to a close inspection. He was not easy to satisfy. Two which he went so far as to pull out of the rack he returned with a shake of the head. Quite good umbrellas, but not fit for this special service. At length, however, he found a beauty, and a gentle smile flickered across his solemn face. He put up his monocle and gazed searchingly at this umbrella. It seemed to answer every test. He was well pleased with it.

“Whose,” he inquired of the attendant, “is this?”

“Belongs to the Honourable Mr. Walderwick, sir.”

“Ah!” said Psmith tolerantly.

He tucked the umbrella under his arm and went out.

*       *       *       *       *

Meanwhile Eve Halliday, lightening up the sombre austerity of Messrs. Thorpe & Briscoe’s shop-front, continued to think hard thoughts of the English climate and to inspect the sky in the hope of detecting a spot of blue. She was engaged in this cheerless occupation when at her side a voice spoke.

“Excuse me!”

A hatless young man was standing beside her, holding an umbrella. He was a striking-looking young man, very tall, very thin, and very well dressed. In his right eye there was a monocle, and through this he looked down at her with a grave friendliness. He said nothing further, but, taking her fingers, clasped them round the handle of the umbrella, which he had obligingly opened, and then with a courteous bow proceeded to dash with long strides across the road, disappearing through the doorway of a gloomy building which, from the number of men who had gone in and out during her vigil, she had set down as a club of some sort.

A good many surprising things had happened to Eve since first she had come to live in London, but nothing quite so surprising as this. For several minutes she stood where she was without moving, staring round-eyed at the building opposite. The episode was, however, apparently ended. The young man did not reappear. He did not even show himself at the window. The club had swallowed him up. And eventually Eve, deciding that this was not the sort of day on which to refuse umbrellas even if they dropped inexplicably from heaven, stepped out from under the awning, laughing helplessly, and started to resume her interrupted journey to Miss Clarkson’s.

*       *       *       *       *

The offices of the Ada Clarkson International Employment Bureau (“Promptitude—Courtesy—Intelligence”) are at the top of Shaftesbury Avenue, a little way past the Palace Theatre. Eve, closing the umbrella, which had prevented even a spot of rain falling on her hat, climbed the short stair leading to the door and tapped on the window marked “Enquiries.”

“Can I see Miss Clarkson?”

“What name, please?” responded Enquiries promptly and with intelligent courtesy.

“Miss Halliday.”

Brief interlude, involving business with speaking-tube.

“Will you go into the private office, please,” said Enquiries a moment later, in a voice which now added respect to the other advertised qualities, for she had had time to observe and digest the hat.

Eve passed in through the general waiting-room with its magazine-covered table, and tapped at the door beyond marked “Private.”

“Eve, dear!” exclaimed Miss Clarkson the moment she had entered, “I don’t know how to tell you, but I have been looking through my books and I have nothing, simply nothing. There is not a single place that you could possibly take. What is to be done?”

“That’s all right, Clarkie.”

“But . . .”

“I didn’t come to talk business. I came to ask after Cynthia. How is she?”

Miss Clarkson sighed.

“Poor child, she is still in a dreadful state, and no wonder. No news at all from her husband. He has simply deserted her.”

“Poor darling! Can’t I see her?”

“Not at present. I have persuaded her to go down to Brighton for a day or two. I think the sea air will pick her up. So much better than mooning about in a London hotel. She is leaving on the eleven o’clock train. I gave her your love, and she was most grateful that you should have remembered your old friendship and be sorry for her in her affliction.”

“Well, I can write to her. Where is she staying?”

“I don’t know her Brighton address, but no doubt the Cadogan Hotel would forward letters. I think she would be glad to hear from you, dear.”

Eve looked sadly at the framed testimonials which decorated the wall. She was not often melancholy, but it was such a beast of a day and all her friends seemed to be having such a bad time.

“Oh, Clarkie,” she said, “what a lot of trouble there is in the world!”

“Yes, yes!” sighed Miss Clarkson, a specialist on this subject.

“All the horses you back finish sixth and all the girls you like best come croppers. Poor little Phyllis! weren’t you sorry for her?”

“But her husband, surely, is most devoted?”

“Yes, but she’s frightfully hard up, and you remember how opulent she used to be at school. Of course, it must sound funny hearing me pitying people for having no money. But somehow other people’s hard-upness always seems so much worse than mine. Especially poor old Phyl’s, because she really isn’t fit to stand it. I’ve been used to being absolutely broke all my life. Poor dear father always seemed to be writing an article against time, with creditors scratching earnestly at the door.” Eve laughed, but her eyes were misty. “He was a brick, wasn’t he? I mean, sending me to a first-class school like Wayland House when he often hadn’t enough money to buy tobacco, poor angel. I expect he wasn’t always up to time with fees, was he?”

“Well, my dear, of course I was only an assistant mistress at Wayland House and had nothing to do with the financial side, but I did hear sometimes. . .”

“Poor darling father! Do you know, one of my earliest recollections—I couldn’t have been more than ten—is of a ring at the front-door bell and father diving like a seal under the sofa and poking his head out and imploring me in a hoarse voice to hold the fort. I went to the door and found an indignant man with a blue paper. I prattled so prettily and innocently that he not only went away quite contentedly but actually patted me on the head and gave me a penny. And when the door had shut father crawled out from under the sofa and gave me twopence, making threepence in all—a good morning’s work. I bought father a diamond ring with it at a shop down the street, I remember. At least I thought it was a diamond. They may have swindled me, for I was very young.”

“You have had a hard life, dear.”

“Yes, but hasn’t it been a lark! I’ve loved every minute of it. Besides, you can’t call me really one of the submerged tenth. Uncle Thomas left me a hundred and fifty pounds a year, and mercifully I’m not allowed to touch the capital. If only there were no hats or safety bets in the world, I should be smugly opulent. . . . But I mustn’t keep you any longer, Clarkie dear. I expect the waiting-room is full of dukes who want cooks and cooks who want dukes, all fidgeting and wondering how much longer you’re going to keep them. Good-bye, darling.”

And, having kissed Miss Clarkson fondly and straightened her hat, which the other’s motherly embrace had disarranged,