‘It can’t be.’
‘Why not? ‘
‘Nobody could have a name like Magnolia.’
‘They could if they came from South Carolina, as she did. In the southern states of America you can’t throw a brick without hitting a Magnolia. But I was telling you about this business of standing for Parliament. First, of course, you have to get the nomination.’
‘How did you manage that?’
‘My fiancee fixed it. She knows one of the Cabinet ministers, and he pulled strings. A man named Filmer.’
‘Not A. B. Filmer?’
‘That’s right. Is he a friend of yours? ‘
‘I wouldn’t say exactly a friend. I came to know him slightly owing to being chased with him on to the roof of a sort of summerhouse by an angry swan. This drew us rather close together for the moment, but we never became really chummy.’
‘Where was this?’
‘On an island on the lake at my Aunt Agatha’s place at Steeple Bumpleigh. Living at Steeple Bumpleigh, you’ve probably been there.’
He looked at me with a wild surmise, much as those soldiers Jeeves has told me about looked on each other when on a peak in Darien, wherever that is.
‘Is Lady Worpledon your aunt?’
‘And how.’
‘She’s never mentioned it.’
‘She wouldn’t. Her impulse would be to hush it up.’
‘Then, good Lord, she must be your cousin.’
‘No, my aunt. You can’t be both.’
‘I mean Florence. Florence Craye, my fiancee.’
It was a shock, I don’t mind telling you, and if I hadn’t been seated I would probably have reeled. Though I ought not to have been so surprised. Florence was one of those girls who are always getting engaged to someone, first teaming up with Stilton Cheesewright, then me, and finally Percy Gorringe, who was dramatizing her novel Spindrift. The play, by the way, had recently been presented to the public at the Duke of York’s theatre and had laid an instantaneous egg, coming off on the following Saturday. One of the critics said he had perhaps seen it at a disadvantage because when he saw it the curtain was up. I had wondered a good deal what effect this had had on Florence’s haughty spirit
. ‘You’re engaged to Florence?’ I yipped, looking at him with a wild surmise.
‘Yes. Didn’t you know?’
‘Nobody tells me anything. Engaged to Florence, eh? Well, well.’
A less tactful man than Bertram Wooster might have gone on to add ‘oh, tough luck I ‘ or something along those lines, for there was no question but that the unhappy man was properly up against it, but if there’s one thing the Woosters have in heaping measure, it is tact. I merely gripped his hand, gave it a shake and wished him happiness. He thanked me for this.
‘You’re lucky,’ I said, wearing the mask.
‘Don’t I know it!’
‘She’s a charming girl,’ I said, still wearing as above.
‘That just describes her.’
‘Intellectual, too.’
‘Distinctly. Writes novels.’
‘Always at it.’
‘Did you read Spindrift?’
‘Couldn’t put it down,’ I said, cunningly not revealing that I hadn’t been able to take it up. ‘Did you see the play?’
‘Twice. Too bad it didn’t run. Gorringe’s adaptation was the work of an ass.’
‘I spotted him as an ass the first time I saw him.’
‘It’s a pity Florence didn’t.’
‘Yes. By the way, what became of Gorringe? When last heard of, she was engaged to him.’
‘She broke it off.’
‘Very wise of her. He had long side-whiskers.’
‘She considered him responsible for the failure of the play and told him so.’
‘She would.’
‘What do you mean she would?’
‘Her nature is so frank, honest and forthright.’
‘It is, isn’t it.’
‘She speaks her mind.’
‘Invariably.’
‘It’s an admirable trait.’
‘Oh, most.’
‘You can’t get away with much with a girl like Florence.’
‘No.’
We fell into a silence. He was twiddling his fingers and a sort of what-d’you-call-it had come into his manner, as if he wanted to say something but was having trouble in getting it out. I remembered encountering a similar diffidence in the Rev. Stinker Pinker when he was trying to nerve himself to ask me to come to Totleigh Towers, and you find the same thing in dogs when they put a paw on your knee and look up into your face but don’t utter, though making it clear that there is a subject on which they are anxious to touch.