Busman’s Honeymoon (6 page)

  Harriet asked a question or two, which her husband answered, but in so abstracted a tone that she realized he was giving only about a quarter of his mind to the virtuous Jew of London and none of it to herself. He was probably mulling over the mysterious behaviour of Mr Noakes. She was quite accustomed to his sudden withdrawals into the recesses of his own mind, and did not resent them. She had known him stop short in the middle of a proposal of marriage to her because some chance sight or sound had offered him a new piece to fit into a criminal jig-saw. His meditations did not last long, for within five minutes they were running into Great Pagford, and he was obliged to rouse himself to ask his companion the way to Miss Twitterton’s cottage.

  But for the Bride-bed, what were fit,

  That hath not been talk’d of yet.

  DRAYTON:
Eighth Nimphall.

  The cottage, which had three yellow brick sides and a red-brick front, like the uglier kind of doll’s house, stood rather isolated from the town, so that it was perhaps not unreasonable in Miss Twitterton to interrogate her visitors in sharp and agitated tones from an upper window, as to their intentions and
bona fides,
before cautiously opening the door to them. She revealed herself as a small, fair and flustered spinster in her forties, wrapped in a pink flannel dressing-gown, and having in one hand a candle and in the other a large dinner-bell. She could not understand what it was all about. Uncle William had said nothing to her. She did not even know he was away. He never went away without letting her know. He would never have sold the house without telling her. She kept the door on the chain while repeating these asseverations, holding the dinner-bell ready to ring in case the odd-looking person in the eye-glass should become violent and oblige her to summon assistance. Eventually, Peter produced Mr Noakes’s last letter from his pocket-book (where he had thoughtfully placed it before starting, in case of any difference of opinion about the arrangements) and passed it in through the partly opened door. Miss Twitterton took it gingerly, as though it were a bomb, shut the door promptly in Peter’s face, and retired with the candle into the front room to examine the document at her leisure. Apparently the perusal was satisfactory, for at the end of it she returned, opened the door wide and begged her visitors to enter.

  ‘I beg your pardon,’ said Miss Twitterton, leading the way into a sitting-room furnished with a suite in green velvet and walnut veneer, and a surprising variety of knickknacks, ‘for receiving you like this—do please sit down. Lady Peter—I do hope you will both forgive my attire—dear me!—but my house is a little lonely and it’s only a
short
time ago since my
hen-roost
was robbed—and really, the whole thing is so
inexplicable.
I scarcely know what to think—it really is
most
upsetting—so
peculiar
of uncle—and what you must be thinking of both of us I cannot
imagine.
’

  ‘Only that it’s a great shame to knock you up at this time of night,’ said Peter.

  ‘It’s only a quarter to ten,’ replied Miss Twitterton, with a deprecating glance at a little china clock in the shape of a pansy. ‘Nothing, of
course,
to you—but you know we keep early hours in the country. I have to be up at five to feed my birds, so I’m rather an
early bird
myself—except on choir-practice nights, you know—Wednesday, such an awkward day for me with Thursday market-day, but then it’s more convenient for the dear Vicar. But, of
course,
if I’d had the
smallest
idea that Uncle William would do such an
extraordinary
thing, I’d have come over and been there to let you in. If you could wait five—or perhaps
ten
—minutes while I made a more suitable toilet, I could come now—as I see you have your beautiful
car,
perhaps—’

  ‘Please don’t bother, Miss Twitterton,’ said Harriet, a little alarmed at the prospect. ‘We have plenty of supplies with us, and Mrs Ruddle and our man can look after us quite well for tonight. If you could just let us have the keys—’

  ‘The keys—yes, of course. So
dreadful
for you not being able to get in, and really such a cold night for the time of year—what Uncle William can have been
thinking
of—and did he say—dear me! his letter upset me so I hardly knew what I was reading—your honeymoon didn’t you say? how terrible for you—and I do hope at any rate you’ve had supper? No
supper!
—I simply can’t
understand
how Uncle could—but you
will
take a little bit of cake and a glass of my home-made wine?’

  ‘Oh, really, we mustn’t trouble you—’ began Harriet, but Miss Twitterton was already hunting in a cupboard. Behind her back, Peter put his hands to his face in a mute gesture of horrified resignation.

  ‘There!’ said Miss Twitterton, triumphantly. ‘I’m sure you will feel better for a little refreshment. My parsnip wine is really
extra
good this year. Dr Jellyfield always takes a glass when he comes—which isn’t very often, I’m pleased to say, because my health is always
remarkably
good.’

  ‘That will not prevent me from drinking to it,’ said Peter disposing of the parsnip wine with a celerity which might have been due to eagerness but, to Harriet, rather suggested a reluctance to let the draught linger on the palate. ‘May I pour out a glass for yourself?’

  ‘How kind of you!’ cried Miss Twitterton. ‘Well—it’s
rather
late at night—but I really
ought
to drink to your wedded happiness, oughtn’t I?—
Not
too much. Lord Peter, please. The dear Vicar always says my parsnip wine is not
nearly
so innocent as it looks—dear me!—But you will take just a little more, won’t you? A gentleman always has a stronger head than a lady.

  ‘Thanks so much,’ said Peter, meekly, ‘but you must remember I’ve got to drive my wife back to Paggleham.’

  ‘
One
more I’m
sure
won’t do any harm.—Well, just half a glass, then—there! Now of course, you want the keys. I’ll run upstairs for them at once—I know I mustn’t keep you—I won’t be a
minute,
Lady Peter, so
please
have another slice of cake—it’s home-made—I do all my own baking, and Uncle’s too—whatever can have come over him I can’t
think.
’

  Miss Twitterton ran out, leaving the pair to gaze at one another in the light of the candle.

  ‘Peter, my poor, long-suffering, heroic lamb—pour it into the aspidistra.’

  Wimsey lifted his eyebrows at the plant. ‘It looks rather unwell already, Harriet. I think my constitution is the better of the two. Here goes. But you might kiss me to take the taste away.... Our hostess has a certain refinement (I think that’s the word) about her which I had not expected. She got your title right first shot, which is unusual. Her life has had some smatch of honour in it. Who was her father?’

  ‘I think he was a cowman.’

  ‘Then he married above his station. His wife, presumably, was a Miss Noakes.’

  ‘It comes back to me that she was a village schoolmistress over at some place near Broxford.’

  ‘That explains it ... Miss Twitterton is coming down. At this point we rise up, buckle the belt of the old leather coat, grab the gent’s soft hat and make the motions of imminent departure.’

  ‘The keys,’ said Miss Twitterton, arriving breathless with a second candle. ‘The big one is the
back
door, but you’ll find that bolted. The little one is the front door—it’s a
patent, burglar-proof
lock—you may find it a
little
difficult if you don’t know the way it works. Perhaps, after all, I ought to come over and show you—’

  ‘Not a bit of it. Miss Twitterton. I know these locks quite well. Really. Thank you ever so much. Good night. And many apologies.’

  ‘
I
must apologise for Uncle. I really
cannot
understand his treating you in this cavalier way. I
do
hope you’ll find everything all right. Mrs Ruddle is
not
very intelligent.’

  Harriet assured Miss Twitterton that Bunter would see to everything, and they succeeded at length in extricating themselves. Their return to Talboys was remarkable only for Peter’s observing that unforgettable was the epithet for Miss Twitterton’s parsnip wine and that if one was going to be sick on one’s wedding night one might just as well have done it between Southampton and Le Havre.

  Bunter and Mrs Ruddle had by now been joined by the dilatory Bert (with his ‘trousis’ but without his gun); yet even thus supported, Mrs Ruddle had a chastened appearance. The door being opened, and Bunter having produced an electric torch, the party stepped into a wide stone passage strongly permeated by an odour of dry-rot and beer. On the right, a door led into a vast, low-ceilinged, stone-paved kitchen, its rafters black with time, its enormous, old fashioned range clean and garnished under the engulfing chimney-breast. On the whitewashed hearth stood a small oil cooking-stove and before it an arm-chair whose seat sagged with age and use. The deal table held the remains of two boiled eggs, the heel of a stale loaf, and a piece of cheese together with a cup which had contained cocoa, and a half-burnt candle in a bedroom candlestick.

  ‘There!’ exclaimed Mrs Ruddle. ‘If Mr Noakes ’ad let me know, I’d a-cleaned all them things away. That’ll be ’is supper wot ’e ’ad afore ’e caught the ten o’clock. But me not knowing and ’avin’ no key, you see, I couldn’t. But it won’ take me a minnit, m’lady, now we
are
here. Mr Noakes took all ’is meals in ’ere, but you’ll find it comfortabler in the settin’-room, m’lady, if you’ll come this way—it’s a much brighter room, like, and furnished beautiful, as you’ll see m’lord.’ Here Mrs Ruddle dropped something like a curtsy.

  The sitting-room was, indeed, ‘brighter’ than the kitchen. Two ancient oak-settles, flanking the chimney-piece at right angles, and an old-fashioned American eight-day clock on the inner wall, were all that remained of the old farmhouse furniture that Harriet remembered. The flame of the kitchen candle, which Mrs Ruddle had lit, danced flickeringly over a suite of Edwardian chairs with crimson upholstery, a top-heavy sideboard, a round mahogany table with wax fruit on it, a bamboo what-not with mirrors and little shelves sprouting from it in all directions, a row of aspidistras in pots in the window-ledge, with strange hanging plants above them in wire baskets, a large radio cabinet, over which hung an unnaturally distorted cactus in a brass Benares bowl, mirrors with roses painted on the glass, a chesterfield sofa upholstered in electric blue plush, two carpets of violently coloured and mutually intolerant patterns juxtaposed to hide the black oak floor-boards—a collection of objects, in fact, suggesting that Mr Noakes had furnished his house out of auction-sale bargains that he had not been able to resell, together with a few remnants of genuine old stuff and a little borrowing from the stock-in-trade of the wireless business. They were allowed every opportunity to inspect his collection of bric-à-brac, for Mrs Ruddle made the round of the room, candle in hand, to point out all its beauties.

  ‘Fine!’ said Peter, cutting short Mrs Ruddle’s panegyric on the radio cabinet (‘which you can hear it lovely right over at the cottage if the wind sets that way’). ‘Now, what we want at the moment, Mrs Ruddle, is fire and food. If you’ll get some more candles and let your Bert help Bunter to bring in the provisions out of the back of the car, then we can get the fires lit—’

  ‘Fires?’ said Mrs Ruddle m doubtful accents. ‘Well, there, sir—m’lord I should say—I ain’t sure as there’s a mite of coal in the place. Mr Noakes, ’e ain’t ’ad no fires this long time. Said these ’ere great chimbleys ate up too much of the ’eat. Oil-stoves, that’s wot Mr Noakes ’ad, for cookin’ an’ for settin’ over of an evenin’. I don’t reckollect w’en there was fires ’ere last—except that young couple we ’ad ’ere August four year, we’n we had sich a cold summer—and they couldn’t get the chimbley to go. Thought there must be a bird’s nest in it or somethink, but Mr Noakes said ’e wasn’t goin’ to spend good money ’aving they chimbleys cleared. Coal, now. There ain’t none in the oil-shed, that I do know—without there might be a bit in the wash-us—but it’ll have been there a long time,’ she concluded dubiously, as though its qualities might have been lost by keeping.

  ‘I might fetch up a bucket or so of coal from the cottage, mum,’ suggested Bert.

  ‘So you might, Bert,’ agreed his mother. ‘My Bert’s got a wonderful ’ead. So you might. And a bit o’ kindlin’ with it. You can cut across the back way—and, ’ere, Bert—jest shet that cellar door as you goes by—sech a perishin’ draught as it do send up. And, Bert, I declare if I ain’t forgot the sugar—you’ll find a packet in the cupboard you could put in your pocket. There’ll be tea in the kitchen, but Mr Noakes never took no sugar, only the gran, and that ain’t right for ’er ladyship.’

  By this time, the resourceful Bunter had ransacked the kitchen for candles, which he was putting in a couple of tall brass candlesticks (part of Mr Noakes’s more acceptable possessions) which stood on the sideboard, carefully scraping the guttered wax from the sockets with a penknife with the air of one to whom neatness and order came first even in a crisis.

  ‘And if your ladyship will come this way,’ said Mrs Ruddle, darting to a door in the panelling, ‘I’ll show you the bedrooms. Beautiful rooms they is, but only the one of ’em in use, of course, except for summer visitors. Mind the stair, m’lady, but there—I’m forgettin’ you knows the ’ouse. I’ll jest pop the bed again the fire, w’en we get it lit, though damp it cannot be, ’avin’ been in use till last Wednesday and the sheets is aired beautiful, though linen, which, if folks don’t suffer from the rheumatics, most ladies and gentlemen is partial to. I ’opes as you don’t mind them old fourposters, miss—mum—m’lady. Mr Noakes did want to sell them, but the gentleman as come down to look at there said as ’ow they wasn’t wot ’e called original owing to bein’ mended on account of the worm and wouldn’t give Mr Noakes the price ’e put on ’em. Nasty old things I call ’em—w’en Ruddle and me was to be wedded I says to ’im, “Brass knobs,” I ses, “or nothink”—and, being’ wishful to please, brass knobs it was, beautiful.’

  ‘How lovely,’ said Harriet, as they passed through a deserted bedroom, with the four-poster stripped naked and the rugs rolled together and emitting a powerful odour of mothballs.

  ‘That it is, m’lady,’ said Mrs Ruddle. ‘Not but what some o’ the visitors likes these old-fashioned things—quaint, they calls ’em—and the curtains you will find in good order if wanted, Miss Twitterton and me doin’ of ’em up careful at the end of the summer, and I do assure you, m’lady, if you and your good gentleman—your good lord, m’lady—was a-wantin’ a bit of ’elp in the ’ouse you will find Bert an’ me allus ready to oblige, as I was a-sayin’ only jest now to Mr Bunter. Yes, m’lady, thank you. Now, this’—Mrs Ruddle opened the farther door—‘is Mr Noakes’s own room, as you may see, and all ready to okkerpy, barrin’ ’is odds-and-ends, which it won’t take me a minnit to put aside.’