‘Can a fellow with a title give it up? I thought he was stuck with it.’
‘He couldn’t at one time, at least only by being guilty of treason, but they’ve changed the rules and apparently it’s quite the posh thing to do nowadays.’
‘Sounds silly.’
‘That’s the view Madeline takes.’
‘Did she say what put the idea into Spode’s fat head?
‘ ‘No, but I can see what did. He has made such a smash hit with his speeches down here that he’s saying to himself “Why am I sweating like this on behalf of somebody else? Why not go into business for myself?”. Who was it said someone was intoxicated with the exuberance of his own verbosity?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Jeeves would. It was Bernard Shaw or Mark Twain or Jack Dempsey or somebody. Anyway, that’s Spode. He’s all puffed up and feels he needs a wider scope. He sees himself holding the House of Commons spellbound.’
‘Why can’t he hold the House of Lords spellbound?’
‘It wouldn’t be the same thing. It would be like playing in the Market Snodsbury tennis tournament instead of electrifying one and all on the centre court at Wimbledon. I can see his point.’
‘I can’t.’
‘Nor can Madeline. She’s all worked up about it, and I can understand how she feels. No joke for a girl who thinks she’s going to be the Countess of Sidcup to have the fellow say “April fool, my little chickadee. What you’re going to be is Mrs. Spode”. If I had been told at Madeline’s age that Tom had been made a peer and I then learned that he was going to back out of it and I wouldn’t be able to call myself Lady Market Snodsbury after all, I’d have kicked like a mule. Titles to a girl are like catnip to a cat.’
‘Can nothing be done?’
‘The best plan would be for you to go to him and tell him how much we all admire him for being Lord Sidcup and what a pity it would be for him to go back to a ghastly name like Spode.’
‘What’s the next best plan?’
‘Ah, that wants thinking out.’
We fell into a thoughtful silence, on my part an uneasy one. I didn’t at this juncture fully appreciate the peril that lurked, but anything in the nature of a rift within the lute between Spode and Madeline was always calculated to make me purse the lips to some extent. I was still trying to hit on some plan which would be more to my taste than telling Spode what a pity it would be for him to stop being,the Earl of Sidcup and go back to a ghastly name like his, when my reverie was broken by the entry through the french window of the cat Augustus, for once awake and in full possession of his faculties, such as they were. No doubt in a misty dreamlike sort of way he had seen me when I was talking to Jeeves and had followed me on my departure, feeling, after those breakfasts of ours together, that association with me was pretty well bound to culminate in kippers. A vain hope, of course. The well-dressed man does not go around with kippered herrings in his pocket. But one of the lessons life teaches us is that cats will be cats.
As is my unvarying policy when closeted with one of these fauna, I made chirruping noises and bent down to tickle the back of the dumb chum’s left ear, but my heart was not in the tickling. The more I mused on the recent conversation, the less I liked what the aged relative had revealed. Telling Augustus that I would be back with him in a moment, I straightened myself and was about to ask her for further details, when I discovered that she was no longer in my midst. She must suddenly have decided to have another pop at L. P. Runkle and was presumably even now putting Tuppy’s case before him. Well, best of luck to her, of course, and nice to think she had a fine day for it, but I regretted her absence. When your mind is weighed down with matters of great pith and moment, it gives you a sort of sinking feeling to be alone. No doubt the boy who stood on the burning deck whence all but he had fled had this experience. However, I wasn’t alone for long. Scarcely had Augustus sprung on to my lap and started catching up with his sleep when the door opened and Spode came in.