Money in the Bank (25 page)

Jeff winced.

"She used to call me Jeff." Lord Uffenham mused.

"I knew a girl in 1907 that they used to call Jeff. Her name was Jefferson."

"And did you alienate her affections by sending her a telegram addressed to Smith?"

The conversation had worked round to just the point where Lord Uffenham wanted it. The sternness of his manner became more marked.

"No, young feller, I did not. If you wish to know, I alienated her affections by treating her with the distant respect of a man brushing flies off a sleeping Venus. I was a mere callow youth at the time, and I had the insane idea that what women appreciated was being looked up to as if they were goddesses. This Jefferson was in the chorus at the Gaiety, and she didn't understand that sort of thing. Shortly after I had taken her out in a punt on the river one summer afternoon, it was brought to my attention that she was going about London saying I was a muff."

"A what?"

"A muff. An expression of that period signifying a young feller deficient in spirit and enterprise. What Mrs. Molloy would describe as a boob, a sap, or possibly a wet smack."

This implied intimacy with the most dangerous of her sex startled Jeff.

"Are you seeing much of Mrs. Molloy these days?"

"Quite a good deal."

"I wouldn't confide in her too extensively."

"How d'yer mean?"

"Well, about those diamonds, for instance."

" My dear feller! Of course not. As if I should dream of doing such a thing. When it comes to keeping a secret, I'm like the silent tomb. Yes," said Lord Uffenham, resuming his reminiscences, "she was going about telling everybody I was a muff. It appeared that she had been expecting something radically different from my scrupulously  correct  behaviour.   That  episode  taught  me a lesson which I have never forgotten. It is a lesson which I have striven to pass on to you. But have you learned it? No. After all I said, in spite of the fact that I pleaded with you—yes, dash it, with tears in my eyes—to grab Anne and hug her till her ribs squeaked, you appear to have been muddling along with that idiotic Troubadour stuff of yours and, as I foresaw, getting nowhere. She was in here just now reiterating that she loved Lionel Green. Disheartening, I call it. Enough to make a man feel he'll never lend anyone a helping hand again." Jeff smiled wanly.

"You are not quite up to the minute with your information. Since you saw her, there has been a rather abrupt change in the position of affairs. Troubadour Ordinaries have taken a sharp drop, and there has been a corresponding rise in Catch-As-Catch-Can Preferred."

"Hey?"

"I took your advice." "You kissed her?"

"I did."

"Splendid. So everything's all right?"

"Terrific. Except that she won't speak to me."

"It worked out like that, did it?"

"That was how it worked out."

Lord Uffenham laid a soothing hand on Jeff's knee. At least, though it nearly broke the bone, Jeff assumed that it was intended to soothe.

"Don't you worry, my boy. She'll come round."

"You think so?"

"Sure of it."

"No need for me to commit suicide?"

"Not the slightest."

"Fine," said Jeff. "I was just going to ask if you could lend me half a brick and a bit of string, so that I could drown myself in the pond."

The sudden jerking of Lord Uffenham's glass, nearly spilling some of its precious content, showed that the word had touched a chord.

"Pond! That reminds me. Did she tell you about the pond?"

"No, she did not tell me about the pond. Even now," said Jeff, "you appear not to have grasped the inwardness of what I have been saying. You seem to be under the impression that she and I are on excellent terms and conduct long conversations on any subject that happens to crop up—as it might be ponds. This is quite erroneous. Such talking as takes place between us is done almost exclusively by me. I occasionally extract an 'Oh?' from her, and glad to get it, but for the most part she confines herself to freezing looks. Just try to form in your mind the picture of a female Trappist monk on one of her more taciturn mornings, and you won't waste valuable time enquiring if she has been telling me about the pond. Arising from this, why should she tell me about the pond? Assuming that our relations were such as to permit her to bring herself to tell me about the pond, what would she have told me about it? And what pond?"

Lord Uffenham had made a discovery which others had made before him. He imparted it to his companion.

"Young man, you talk too bloody much."

Jeff was wounded.

"It's all very well to say that, but when I substitute action for words, look where it gets me. I think I'll borrow that brick, after all, just to be on the safe side."

"If you'll let me get a word in edgeways---"

"Certainly, certainly. You would speak of ponds?"

"You know the pond here?"

"Of course. One of Nature's beauty spots. What with its sloping banks, carpeted with verdure, its lily pads---"

"Walter!"

"Jeff."

"I mean Jeff, dammit. May I ask you one simple question?"

"Proceed."

"That mouth of yours. Does it shut? It does? Then shut it, blast yer. Lord-love-a-duck, anyone would think you were one of those ghastly fellers in Shakespeare that do soliloquies. About this pond. I was telling Anne it was quite possible that I might have hidden the diamonds in it. And do you know what she said?"

"'Did she say anything?"

"Of course she did."

" This must have been a long time ago."

" She said she would get Lionel Green to look there."

"Absurd."

"So I told her."

"Lionel Green may possibly have improved in his habits since the days of school to the extent of going into the bathroom and locking the door and splashing the water about with his hand, or more probably the bath brush, but you would never get him into a pond. And, if by some miracle you did, he would never find anything. Though, mind you, I would love to see him paddling in a pond—standing, as it were, with reluctant feet where the brook and river meet. My idea would be to loll on the bank and make funny cracks about September morn."

"Walter!"

"Hullo?"

"You're talking again."

"I'm sorry."

"You say Anne won't speak to you. I don't suppose you give her a chance. Of all the garrulous, gabby ... However, I won't go into that now. You must search that pond."

"I'll do it tonight."

"In the dark?"

"There's a moon. Can you lend me a bathing costume?"

"Haven't got one."

"I'll borrow Shepperson's. I know he has one, because I've seen him dancing in it before breakfast. You're sure the stuff is there?"

"Not sure, no. I've had too many disappointments to be sure of anything nowadays. But, as I was telling Anne, the word 'pond' suddenly came flashing into my mind. I thought it significant. It means something."

"For one thing, a cold in the head for me."

"Don't falter, Walter."

"Who's faltering? And my name isn't Walter. I'm up and doing, with a heart for any fate. As a matter of fact, the whole scheme fits in perfectly with my plans. If I find the diamonds, I'll throw them ashore to you, and then I can just go ahead and be drowning myself."

"I don't like to hear you talk like that."

"You don't like to hear me talk at all."

"I've already told you that she'll come round."

"She won't."

"She will."

"She won't. You're basing your theory on your own experience, and it doesn't apply to the case in hand. I dare say girls used to come round in 1911, and possibly even in 1912, but Anne is different."

"No girl is different."

"Yes, she is, if she isn't the same. I offended her past forgiveness. I shocked her to the foundations of her being."

"You didn't."

"I did, I tell you. I was there."

Lord Uffenham bestowed another bone-crushing buffet on his young friend's knee.

"Don't you worry, my boy. I know Anne, and I assure you she will come round. Lord-love-a-duck, don't you think girls like being kissed?"

"By the right man."

"Well, that's what you are. You're just the chap I'd have picked for her. Don't have a moment's uneasiness. I'm the one that ought to be feeling uneasy.'

"You? Why?"

A solemn look had come into Lord Uffenham's face. "Because, if we don't find those diamonds, I shall have to make the supreme sacrifice."

"What do you mean?"

"Perfectly simple. Anne's little bit of money was my sacred trust, wasn't it? If I've gone and lost it, I shall have to do something about it, shan't I? See that she's all right, and all that sort of thing? Of course, I shall. As a man of honour, I have no alternative. But I don't mind telling you that I shudder at the prospect."

"The prospect of what?"

"Marrying Mrs. Cork."

His association with George, Viscount Uffenham, brief though it had been, had left Jeff with the feeling that nothing the latter could say or do would be able to surprise him, but at these words he saw that he had been mistaken. He stared blankly. Lord Uffenham was sitting bolt upright, looking noble.

"What was that you said? You're going to marry Mrs. Cork?"

"If we don't find the diamonds. Can't let Anne lose by my well-meaning, but possibly mistaken, handling of her money. It's a case of ... dash it, what's that expression? It's on the tip of my tongue."

"Noblesse oblige?"

"That's right.
Noblesse oblige.
Thank you, Jeff."

"Not at all."

"Yerss, that's how matters stand. So when you search that pond, my boy, search it well. Leave no stone unturned."

"But do you think Mrs. Cork would marry you?"

Lord Uffenham raised his eyebrows. The question seemed to amuse him.

"Go and see about that bathing suit," he said.

For some moments after Jeff had left him, Lord Uffenham continued to sit motionless, still with that look of nobility on his face. Gradually, however, this faded away, and became replaced by one of nervousness and apprehension. He was envisaging Mrs. Cork in the role of a life-partner, and the picture which rose before his eyes was not one that exhilarated him.

By the end of five minutes, his thoughts had become so sombre that it was a relief to him when the door opened and he was no longer alone with them. Expecting Jeff, he found that his visitor was Anne. She came in with flushed face and gleaming eyes, leading him to hope that Jeff had met her in the passage and kissed her again. It was a thing which he felt could not be done too often.

Apparently, however, it was not this that had provoked that flush and caused her eyes to gleam. She delivered her news without delay.

"Uncle George."

"Hullo, my dear?"

"I've broken my engagement."

"Hey?"

"I've broken my engagement. I'm not going to marry Lionel. I suppose you're pleased."

Nothing, not even tidings of the gladdest joy, could have made a man of Lord Uffenham's build leap from his chair, but he rose with what for him was an almost unexampled celerity, holding out his arms like the good old father in ,a melodrama welcoming his long-lost daughter.

"Pleased? I'm delighted. When did this happen?"

"Just now."

"You've really handed him the mitten, have yer? Come to yer senses at last, hey? Well, well, well, well, well! Splendid. Capital. Excellent. Jeff," cried Lord Uffenham, as the door opened once more. " Great news, my dear feller! News that'll send yer singing about the house. She's broken her dashed engagement to that herring-gutted window-cleaner of hers."

Jeff halted abruptly, tingling from head to foot.

"What!"

"Yerss."

"Is this true?"

"Just told me so herself. Isn't it wonderful?"

"Terrific."

"Now what about that advice I gave yer?"

"I take back all my criticisms."

"Didn't I tell yer---"

"You certainly did."

"And wasn't I right?"

"You definitely were."

"I'm always right about women."

"You've studied them."

"Since early manhood."

"Now we know why that Jefferson tragedy in 1907 was sent. It was to enable you in your declining years "

"What d'yer mean, declining years?"

"I should have said in the prime of your life. It was to enable you in the prime of your life to bring aid and comfort to a deserving junior. We learn in suffering what we teach in song."

"Jeff!"

"Hullo?"

"You're talking too much again."

"I'm sorry."

"Fight against this tendency, my boy. It's your only fault."

"Would you say that?"

"I would. Except for that disposition of yours to collar the conversation and not give anyone else the chance to say a dashed word, you're a very fine young feller and there's nobody I'd sooner see my niece married to."

"It's awfully good of you to say so."

"Not at all. The thought of her wasting herself on a chap who goes about with his head on one side and his hand on his hip, telling people to take the table out of the dining-room because it doesn't harmonise with the wallpaper, was agony to me. She'll be all right now. You're just the husband for her."

"I'll try to make her happy."

"She'll be as happy as the day is long."

"And I can't tell you how grateful I am to you. Bur for you..."

Anne had been listening with set, haughty face to the proceedings of this mutual admiration society. She had not spoken before, because it had been difficult to find a point at which to cut in on the spate of verbiage, but at the word "you" Jeff had paused and was regarding his friend and helper with a worshipping eye, as if searching for phrases which would express the emotions surging in his bosom.   She took advantage of the lull.

"May I say something?"

"Do," said Lord Uffenham cordially.

"Do," said Jeff, even more cordially.

"It's just this," said Anne, ignoring him and addressing her uncle. "I wouldn't marry Mr. Miller, if he was the last man on earth."

It was a line on which many a heroine of many a play had taken her exit, laughing hysterically. Anne did not laugh hysterically, but she left the room, and closed the door behind her with a bang.