First Aid for Dora - (2)

“Matter?”
    “Why,” I said, “are you looking at me like a fish with lung-trouble?”
    “Was I?” He took a sip of coffee with an overdone carelessness. “Matter of fact, old son, I was rather interested. I see you’ve had a letter from my aunt.”
    “What?”
    I had picked up the last envelope. It was addressed in a strong female hand, strange to me. I now tore it open. It was even as Ukridge had said. Dated the previous day and headed “Heath House, Wimbledon Common,” the letter ran as follows:—
    “Dear Sir,—I shall be happy to see you if you will call at this address the day after to-morrow (Friday) at four-thirty.—Yours faithfully, Julia Ukridge.”
    I could make nothing of this. My morning mail, whether pleasant or the reverse, whether bringing a bill from a tradesman or a cheque from an editor, had had till now the uniform quality of being plain, straightforward, and easy to understand; but this communication baffled me. How Ukridge’s aunt had become aware of my existence, and why a call from me should ameliorate her lot, were problems beyond my unravelling, and I brooded over it as an Egyptologist might over some newly-discovered hieroglyphic.
    “What does she say?” enquired Ukridge.
    “She wants me to call at half-past four to-morrow afternoon.”
    “Splendid!” cried Ukridge. “I knew she would bite.”
    “What on earth are you talking about?”
    Ukridge reached across the table and patted me affectionately on the shoulder. The movement involved the upsetting of a full cup of coffee, but I suppose he meant well. He sank back again in his chair and adjusted his pince-nez in order to get a better view of me. I seemed to fill him with honest joy, and he suddenly burst into a spirited eulogy, rather like some minstrel of old delivering an ex-tempore boost of his chieftain and employer.
    “Laddie,” said Ukridge, “if there’s one thing about you that I’ve always admired it’s your readiness to help a pal. One of the most admirable qualities a bloke can possess, and nobody has it to a greater extent than you. You’re practically unique in that way. I’ve had men come up to me and ask me about you. ‘What sort of a chap is he?’ they say. ‘One of the very best,’ I reply. ‘A fellow you can rely on. A man who would die rather than let you down. A bloke who would go through fire and water to do a pal a good turn. A bird with a heart of gold and a nature as true as steel.’”
    “Yes, I’m a splendid fellow,” I agreed, slightly perplexed by this panegyric. “Get on.”
    “I am getting on, old horse,” said Ukridge with faint reproach. “What I’m trying to say is that I knew you would be delighted to tackle this little job for me. It wasn’t necessary to ask you. I knew.”
    A grim foreboding of an awful doom crept over me, as it had done so often before in my association with Ukridge.
    “Will you kindly tell me what damned thing you’ve let me in for now?”
    Ukridge deprecated my warmth with a wave of his fork. He spoke soothingly and with a winning persuasiveness. He practically cooed.
    “It’s nothing, laddie. Practically nothing. Just a simple little act of kindness which you will thank me for putting in your way. It’s like this. As I ought to have foreseen from the first, that ass Tuppy proved a broken reed. In that matter of Dora, you know. Got no result whatever. He went to see my aunt the day before yesterday, and asked her to take Dora on again, and she gave him the miss-in-balk. I’m not surprised. I never had any confidence in Tuppy. It was a mistake ever sending him. It’s no good trying frontal attack in a delicate business like this. What you need is strategy. You want to think what is the enemy’s weak side and then attack from that angle. Now, what is my aunt’s weak side, laddie? Her weak side, what is it? Now think. Reflect, old horse.”
    “From the sound of her voice, the only time I ever got near her, I should say she hadn’t one.”
    “That’s where you make your error, old son. Butter her up about her beastly novels, and a child could eat out of her hand. When Tuppy let me down I just lit a pipe and had a good think. And then suddenly I got it. I went to a pal of mine, a thorough sportsman—you don’t know him. I must introduce you some day—and he wrote my aunt a letter from you, asking if you could come and interview her for Womans Sphere. It’s a weekly paper, which I happen to know she takes in regularly. Now, listen, laddie. Don’t interrupt for a moment. I want you to get the devilish shrewdness of this. You go and interview her, and she’s all over you. Tickled to death. Of course, you’ll have to do a good deal of Young Disciple stuff, but you won’t mind that. After you’ve soft-soaped her till she’s purring like a dynamo, you get up to go. ‘Well,’ you say, ‘this has been the proudest occasion of my life, meeting one whose work I have so long admired.’ And she says, ‘The pleasure is mine, old horse.’ And you slop over each other a bit more. Then you say sort of casually, as if it had just occurred to you, ‘Oh, by the way, I believe my cousin—or sister——No, better make it cousin—I believe my cousin, Miss Dora Mason, is your secretary, isn’t she?’ ‘She isn’t any such dam’ thing,’ replies my aunt. ‘I sacked her three days ago.’ That’s your cue, laddie. Your face falls, you register concern, you’re frightfully cut up. You start in to ask her to let Dora come back. And you’re such pals by this time that she can refuse you nothing. And there you are! My dear old son, you can take it from me that if you only keep your head and do the Young Disciple stuff properly the thing can’t fail. It’s an iron-clad scheme. There isn’t a flaw in it.”
    “There is one.”
    “I think you’re wrong. I’ve gone over the thing very carefully. What is it?”
    “The flaw is that I’m not going anywhere near your infernal aunt. So you can trot back to your forger chum and tell him he’s wasted a good sheet of letter-paper.”
    A pair of pince-nez tinkled into a plate. Two pained eyes blinked at me across the table. Stanley Featherstonehaugh Ukridge was wounded to the quick.
    “You don’t mean to say you’re backing out?” he said, in a low, quivering voice.
    “I never was in.”
    “Laddie,” said Ukridge, weightily, resting an elbow on his last slice of bacon, “I want to ask you one question. Just one simple question. Have you ever let me down? Has there been one occasion in our long friendship when I have relied upon you and been deceived? Not one!”
    “Everything’s got to have a beginning. I’m starting now.”
    “But think of her. Dora! Poor little Dora. Think of poor little Dora.”
    “If this business teaches her to keep away from you, it will be a blessing in the end.”
    “But, laddie——”
    I suppose there is some fatal weakness in my character, or else the brand of bacon which Bowles cooked possessed a peculiarly mellowing quality. All I know is that, after being adamant for a good ten minutes, I finished breakfast committed to a task from which my soul revolted. After all, as Ukridge said, it was rough on the girl. Chivalry is chivalry. We must strive to lend a helping hand as we go through this world of ours, and all that sort of thing. Four o’clock on the following afternoon found me entering a cab and giving the driver the address of Heath House, Wimbledon Common.
    My emotions on entering Heath House were such as I would have felt had I been keeping a tryst with a dentist who by some strange freak happened also to be a duke. From the moment when a butler of super-Bowles dignity opened the door and, after regarding me with ill-concealed dislike, started to conduct me down a long hall, I was in the grip of both fear and humility. Heath House is one of the stately homes of Wimbledon; how beautiful they stand, as the poet says: and after the humble drabness of Ebury Street it frankly overawed me. Its keynote was an extreme neatness which seemed to sneer at my squashy collar and reproach my baggy trouser-leg. The farther I penetrated over the polished floor, the more vividly was it brought home to me that I was one of the submerged tenth and could have done with a hair-cut. I had not been aware when I left home that my hair was unusually long, but now I seemed to be festooned by a matted and offensive growth. A patch on my left shoe which had had a rather comfortable look in Ebury Street stood out like a blot on the landscape. No, I was not at my ease; and when I reflected that in a few moments I was to meet Ukridge’s aunt, that legendary figure, face to face, a sort of wistful admiration filled me for the beauty of the nature of one who would go through all this to help a girl he had never even met. There was no doubt about it—the facts spoke for themselves—I was one of the finest fellows I had ever known. Nevertheless, there was no getting away from it, my trousers did bag at the knee.
    “Mr. Corcoran,” announced the butler, opening the drawing-room door. He spoke with just that intonation of voice that seemed to disclaim all responsibility. If I had an appointment, he intimated, it was his duty, however repulsive, to show me in; but, that done, he disociated himself entirely from the whole affair.
    There were two women and six Pekingese dogs in the room. The Pekes I had met before, during their brief undergraduate days at Ukridge’s dog college, but they did not appear to recognise me. The occasion when they had lunched at my expense seemed to have passed from their minds. One by one they came up, sniffed, and then moved away as if my bouquet had disappointed them. They gave the impression that they saw eye to eye with the butler in his estimate of the young visitor. I was left to face the two women.
    Of these—reading from right to left—one was a tall, angular, hawk-faced female with a stony eye. The other, to whom I gave but a passing glance at the moment, was small, and so it seemed to me, pleasant-looking. She had bright hair faintly powdered with grey, and mild eyes of a china blue. She reminded me of the better class of cat. I took her to be some casual caller who had looked in for a cup of tea. It was the hawk on whom I riveted my attention. She was looking at me with a piercing and unpleasant stare, and I thought how exactly she resembled the picture I had formed of her in my mind from Ukridge’s conversation.
    “Miss Ukridge?” I said, sliding on a rug towards her and feeling like some novice whose manager, against his personal wishes, has fixed him up with a match with the heavyweight champion.
    “I am Miss Ukridge,” said the other woman. “Miss Watterson, Mr. Corcoran.”
    It was a shock, but, the moment of surprise over, I began to feel something approaching mental comfort for the first time since I had entered this house of slippery rugs and supercilious butlers. Somehow I had got the impression from Ukridge that his aunt was a sort of stage aunt, all stiff satin and raised eyebrows. This half-portion with the mild blue eyes I felt that I could tackle. It passed my comprehension why Ukridge should ever have found her intimidating.
    “I hope you will not mind if we have our little talk before Miss Watterson,” she said with a charming smile. “She has come to arrange the details of the Pen and Ink Club dance which we are giving shortly. She will keep quite quiet and not interrupt. You don’t mind?”
    “Not at all, not at all,” I said in my attractive way. It is not exaggerating to say that at this moment I felt debonair. “Not at all, not at all. Oh, not at all.”
    “Won’t you sit down?”
    “Thank you, thank you.”
    The hawk moved over to the window, leaving us to ourselves.
    “Now we are quite cosy,” said Ukridge’s aunt.
    “Yes, yes,” I agreed. Dash it, I liked this woman.
    “Tell me, Mr. Corcoran,” said Ukridge’s aunt, “are you on the staff of Woman’s Sphere? It is one of my favourite papers. I read it every week.”
    “The outside staff.”
    “What do you mean by the outside staff?”
    “Well, I don’t actually work in the office, but the editor gives me occasional jobs.”
    “I see. Who is the editor now?”
    I began to feel slightly less debonair. She was just making conversation, of course, to put me at my ease, but I wished she would stop asking me these questions. I searched desperately in my mind for a name—any name—but as usual on these occasions every name in the English language had passed from me.
    “Of course. I remember now,” said Ukridge’s aunt, to my profound relief. “It’s Mr. Jevons, isn’t it? I met him one night at dinner.”
    “Jevons,” I burbled. “That’s right. Jevons.”
    “A tall man with a light moustache.”
    “Well, fairly tall,” I said, judicially.
    “And he sent you here to interview me?”
    “Yes.”
    “Well, which of my novels do you wish me to talk about?”
    I relaxed with a delightful sense of relief. I felt on solid ground at last. And then it suddenly came to me that Ukridge in his woollen-headed way had omitted to mention the name of a single one of this woman’s books.
    “Er—oh, all of them,” I said hurriedly.
    “I see. My general literary work.”
    “Exactly,” I said. My feeling towards her now was one of positive affection.
    She leaned back in her chair with her finger-tips together, a pretty look of meditation on her face.
    “Do you think it would interest the readers of Woman’s Sphere to know which novel of mine is my own favourite?”
    “I am sure it would.”
    “Of course,” said Ukridge’s aunt, “it is not easy for an author to answer a question like that. You see, one has moods in which first one book and then another appeals to one.”
    “Quite,” I replied. “Quite.”
    “Which of my books do you like best, Mr. Corcoran?”
    There swept over me the trapped feeling one gets in nightmares. From six baskets the six Pekingese stared at me unwinkingly.
    “Er—oh, all of them,” I heard a croaking voice reply. My voice, presumably, though I did not recognise it.
    “How delightful!” said Ukridge’s aunt. “Now, I really do call that delightful. One or two of the critics have said that my work was uneven. It is so nice to meet someone who doesn’t agree with them. Personally, I think my favourite is The Heart of Adelaide.”
    I nodded my approval of this sound choice. The muscles which had humped themselves stiffly on my back began to crawl back into place again. I found it possible to breathe.
    “Yes,” I said, frowning thoughtfully, “I suppose The Heart of Adelaide is the best thing you have written. It has such human appeal,” I added, playing it safe.
    “Have you read it, Mr. Corcoran?”
    “Oh yes.”
    “And you really enjoyed it?”
    “Tremendously.”
    “You don’t think it is a fair criticism to say that it is a little broad in parts?”
    “Most unfair.” I began to see my way. I do not know why, but I had been assuming that her novels must be the sort you find in seaside libraries. Evidently they belonged to the other class of female novels, the sort which libraries ban. “Of course,” I said, “it is written honestly, fearlessly, and shows life as it is. But broad? No, no!”
    “That scene in the conservatory?”
    “Best thing in the book,” I said stoutly.
    A pleased smile played about her mouth. Ukridge had been right. Praise her work, and a child could eat out of her hand. I found myself wishing that I had really read the thing, so that I could have gone into more detail and made her still happier.
    “I’m so glad you like it,” she said. “Really, it is most encouraging.”
    “Oh, no,” I murmured modestly.
    “Oh, but it is. Because I have only just started to write it, you see. I finished chapter one this morning.”
    She was still smiling so engagingly that for a moment the full horror of these words did not penetrate my consciousness.
    “The Heart of Adelaide is my next novel. The scene in the conservatory, which you like so much, comes towards the middle of it. I was not expecting to reach it till about the end of next month. How odd that you should know all about it!”
    I had got it now all right, and it was like sitting down on the empty space where there should have been a chair. Somehow the fact that she was so pleasant about it all served to deepen my discomfiture. In the course of an active life I have frequently felt a fool, but never such a fool as I felt then. The fearful woman had been playing with me, leading me on, watching me entangle myself like a fly on fly-paper. And suddenly I perceived that I had erred in thinking of her eyes as mild. A hard gleam had come into them. They were like a couple of blue gimlets. She looked like a cat that had caught a mouse, and it was revealed to me in one sickening age-long instant why Ukridge went in fear of her. There was that about her which would have intimidated the Sheik.
    “It seems so odd, too,” she tinkled on, “that you should have come to interview me for Woman’s Sphere. Because they published an interview with me only the week before last. I thought it so strange that I rang up my friend Miss Watterson, who is the editress, and asked her if there had not been some mistake. And she said she had never heard of you. Have you ever heard of Mr. Corcoran, Muriel?”
    “Never,” said the hawk, fixing me with a revolted eye.
    “How strange!” said Ukridge’s aunt. “But then the whole thing is so strange. Oh, must you go, Mr. Corcoran?”
    My mind was in a slightly chaotic condition, but on that one point it was crystal-clear. Yes, I must go. Through the door if I could find it—failing that, through the window. And anybody who tried to stop me would do well to have a care.
    “You will remember me to Mr. Jevons when you see him, won’t you?” said Ukridge’s aunt.
    I was fumbling at the handle.
    “And, Mr. Corcoran.” She was still smiling amiably, but there had come into her voice a note like that which it had had on a certain memorable occasion when summoning Ukridge to his doom from the unseen interior of his Sheep’s Cray Cottage. “Will you please tell my nephew Stanley that I should be glad if he would send no more of his friends to see me. Good afternoon.”
    I suppose that at some point in the proceedings my hostess must have rung a bell, for out in the passage I found my old chum, the butler. With the uncanny telepathy of his species he appeared aware that I was leaving under what might be called a cloud, for his manner had taken on a warder-like grimness. His hand looked as if it was itching to grasp me by the shoulder, and when we reached the front door he eyed the pavement wistfully, as if thinking what splendid spot it would be for me to hit with a thud.
    “Nice day,” I said, with the feverish instinct to babble which comes to strong men in their agony.
    He scorned to reply, and as I tottered down the sunlit street I was conscious of his gaze following me.
    “A very vicious specimen,” I could fancy him saying. “And mainly due to my prudence and foresight that he hasn’t got away with the spoons.”
    It was a warm afternoon, but to such an extent had the recent happenings churned up my emotions that I walked the whole way back to Ebury Street with a rapidity which caused more languid pedestrians to regard me with a pitying contempt. Reaching my sitting-room in an advanced state of solubility and fatigue, I found Ukridge stretched upon the sofa.
    “Hallo, laddie!” said Ukridge, reaching out a hand for the cooling drink that lay on the floor beside him. “I was wondering when you would show up. I wanted to tell you that it won’t be necessary for you to go and see my aunt after all. It appears that Dora has a hundred quid tucked away in a bank, and she’s been offered a partnership by a woman she knows who runs one of these typewriting places. I advised her to close with it. So she’s all right.”
    He quaffed deeply of the bowl and breathed a contented sigh. There was a silence.
    “When did you hear of this?” I asked at length.
    “Yesterday afternoon,” said Ukridge. “I meant to pop round and tell you, but somehow it slipped my mind.”
    CHAPTER V