‘But, dash it, the family weren’t so bad as all that.’
‘It is not a history of the family at all. Your uncle has written his reminiscences! He calls them “Recollections of a Long Life”!’
I began to understand. As I say. Uncle Willoughby had been somewhat on the tabasco side as a young man, and it began to look as if he might have turned out something pretty fruity if he had started recollecting his long life.
‘If half of what he has written is true,’ said Florence, ‘your uncle’s youth must have been perfectly appalling. The moment we began to read he plunged straight into a most scandalous story of how he and my father were thrown out of a music-hall in 1887!’
‘Why?’
‘I decline to tell you why.’
It must have been something pretty bad. It took a lot to make them chuck people out of music-halls in 1887.
‘Your uncle specifically states that father had drunk a quart and a half of champagne before beginning the evening,’ she went on. ‘The book is full of stories like that. There is a dreadful one about Lord Emsworth.’
‘Lord Emsworth? Not the one we know? Not the one at Blandlngs?’
A most respectable old Johnnie, don’t you know. Doesn’t do a thing nowadays but dig in the garden with a spud.
‘The very same. That is what makes the book so unspeakable. It is full of stories about people one knows who are the essence of propriety today, but who seem’ to have behaved, when they were in London in the eighties, in a manner that would not have been tolerated in the fo’c’sle of a whaler. Your uncle seems to remember everything disgraceful that happened to anybody when he was in his early twenties. There is a story about Sir Stanley Gervase-Gervase at Rosherville Gardens which is ghastly in its perfection of detail. It seems that Sir Stanley — but I can’t tell you!’
‘Have a dash!’
‘No!’
‘Oh, well, I shouldn’t worry. No publisher will print the book if it’s as bad as all that.’
‘On the contrary, your uncle told me that all negotiations are settled with Riggs and Ballinger, and he’s sending off the manuscript tomorrow for immediate publication. They make a special thing of that sort of book. They published Lady Carnaby’s ‘Memories of Eighty Interesting Years’.’
‘I read ’em!’
‘Well, then, when I tell you that Lady Carnaby’s Memories are simply not to be compared with your uncle’s Recollections, you will understand my state of mind. And father appears in nearly every story in the book I am horrified at the things he did when he was a young man! ‘
‘What’s to be done?’
‘The manuscript must be intercepted before it reaches Riggs and Ballinger, and destroyed!’
I sat up.
This sounded rather sporting.
‘How are you going to do it?’ I inquired.
‘How can I do it? Didn’t I tell you the parcel goes off tomorrow? I am going to the Murgatroyds’ dance tonight and shall not be back till Monday. You must do it. That is why I telegraphed to you.’
‘What!’
She gave me a look.
‘Do you mean to say you refuse to help me, Bertie?’
‘No; but — I say!’
‘It’s quite simple.’
‘But even if I — What I mean is — Of course, anything I can do — but — if you know what I mean –‘
‘You say you want to marry me, Bertie?’
‘Yes, of course; but still –‘
For a moment she looked exactly like her old father.
‘I will never marry you if those Recollections are published.’
‘But, Florence, old thing! ‘
‘I mean it. You may look on it as a test, Bertie. If you have the resource and courage to carry this thing through, I will take it as evidence that you are not the vapid and shiftless person most people think you. If you fail, I shall know that your Aunt Agatha was right when she called you a spineless invertebrate and advised me strongly not to marry you. It will be perfectly simple for you to intercept the manuscript, Bertie. It only requires a little resolution.’