‘A bathroom?’ asked Harriet hopefully.
‘Well, no, m’lady, not a bathroom,’ replied Mrs Ruddle, as though that were too much to expect, ’but everythink else is quite modem as you’ll find-only requirin’ to be pumped up night and morning in the scullery.’
‘Oh, I see,’ said Harriet. ’How nice.’ She peered from the lattice. ‘I wonder if they’ve brought in the suitcases.’
‘I’ll run and see this minnit,’ said Mrs Ruddle, gathering all Mr Noakes’s toilet apparatus dexterously into her apron as she passed the dressing-table and whisking his nightgear in after it, ‘and I’ll ’ave it all up before you can look round.’
It was Bunter, however, who brought the luggage. He looked, Harriet thought, a little worn, and she smiled deprecatingly at him. ‘Thank you, Bunter. I’m afraid this is making a lot of work for you. Is his lordship-?’
‘His lordship is with the young man they call Bert, clearing out the woodshed to put the car away, my lady.’ He looked at her and his heart was melted. ‘He is singing songs in the French language, which I have observed to be a token of high spirits with his lordship. It has occurred to me, my lady, that if you and his lordship would kindly overlook any temporary deficiencies in the arrangements, the room adjacent to this might be suitably utilised as a dressing-room for his lordship’s use, so as to leave more accommodation here for your ladyship. Allow me.’
He opened the wardrobe door, inspected Mr Noakes’s garments hanging within, shook his head over them, removed them from the hooks and carried them away over his arm. In five minutes, he had cleared the chest of drawers of all its contents and, in five minutes more, had re-lined all the drawers with sheets of the Morning Post, which he produced from his coat-pocket. From the other pocket he drew out two new candles, which he set in the two empty sticks that flanked the mirror. He took away Mr Noakes’s chunk of yellow soap, his towels and the ewer, and presently returned with fresh towels and water, a virgin tablet of soap wrapped in cellophane, a small kettle and a spirit-lamp, observing, as he applied a match to the spirit, that Mrs Ruddle had placed a ten-pint kettle on the oil-stove, which in his opinion, would take half an hour to boil, and would there be anything further at the moment, as he rather thought they were having a little difficulty with the sittingroom fire and he would like to get his lordship’s suitcase unpacked before going down to give an eye to it.
Under the circumstances, Harriet made no attempt to change her dress. The room, though spacious and beautiful in its half-timbered style, was cold. She wondered whether all things considered, Peter would not have been happier in the Hotel Gigantic somewhere-or-other on the Continent. She hoped that, after his struggles with the woodshed, he would find a good, roaring fire to greet him and be able to eat his belated meal in comfort.
Peter Wimsey rather hoped so, too. It took a long time to clear the woodshed, which contained not very much wood but an infinite quantity of things like dilapidated mangles and wheelbarrows, together with the remains of an old pony-trap, several disused grates, and a galvanised iron boiler with a hole in it. But he had his doubts about the weather, and was indisposed to allow Mrs Merdle (the ninth Daimler of that name) to stand out all night. When he thought of his lady’s expressed preference for haystacks, he sang songs in the French language; but from time to time he stopped singing and wondered whether, after all, she might not have been happier at the Hotel Gigantic somewhere-or-other on the Continent.
The church clock down in the village was chiming the three-quarters before eleven when he finally coaxed Mrs Merdle into her new quarters and re-entered the house, brushing the cobwebs from his hands. As he passed the threshold a thick cloud of smoke caught him by the throat and choked him. Pressing on, nevertheless, he arrived at the door of the kitchen, where a first hasty glance convinced him that the house was on fire. Recoiling into the sittingroom, he found himself enveloped in a kind of London fog, through which he dimly descried dark forms struggling about the hearth like genies of the mist. He said ‘Hallo!’ and was instantly seized by a fit of coughing. Out of the thick rolls of smoke came a figure that he vaguely remembered promising to love and cherish at some earlier period in the day. Her eyes were streaming and her progress blind. He extended an arm, and they coughed convulsively together.
‘Oh, Peter!’ said Harriet. ‘I think all the chimneys are bewitched.’
The windows in the sittingroom had been opened and the draught brought fresh smoke billowing out into the passage. With it came Bunter, staggering but still in possession of his faculties, and flung wide both the front door and the back. Harriet reeled out into the sweet cold air of the porch and sat down on a seat to recover herself. When she could see and breathe again, she made her way back to the sittingroom, only to meet Peter coming out of the kitchen in his shirt-sleeves.
‘It’s no go,’ said his lordship. ‘No can do. Those chimneys are blocked. I’ve been inside both of them and you can’t see a single star and there’s about fifteen bushels of soot in the kitchen chimney-ledges, because I felt it.’ (As indeed his right arm bore witness.) ‘I shouldn’t think they’d been swept for twenty years.’
‘They ain’t been swep’ in my memory,’ said Mrs Ruddle, ‘and I’ve lived in that cottage eleven year come next Christmas quarter-day.’
‘Then it’s time they were,’ said Peter, briskly. ‘Send for the sweep tomorrow, Bunter. Heat up some of the turtle soup on the oil-stove and give us the foie gras, the quails in aspic and a bottle of hock in the kitchen.’
‘Certainly, my lord.’
‘And I want a wash. Did I see a kettle in the kitchen?’
‘Yes, m’lord,’ quavered Mrs Ruddle. ‘Oh, yes-a beautiful kittle as ’ot as ’ot. And if I was jest to put the bed down before the Beetrice in the settin’-room and git the clean sheets on-’
Peter fled with the kettle into the scullery, whither his bride pursued him. ‘Peter, I’m past apologising for my ideal home.’
‘Apologise if you dare-and embrace me at your peril. I am as black as Belloc’s scorpion. He is a most unpleasant brute to find in bed at night.’
‘Among the clean sheets. And, Peter-oh, Peter! the ballad was right. It is a goosefeather bed!’
Chapter III. Jordan River
– John Donne: An Epithalamion on the Marriage of Lady Elizabeth and Count Palatine.
Peter, dispensing soup and pate and quails from a curious harlequin assortment of Mr Noakes’s crockery, had said to Bunter: ‘We’ll do our own waiting. For God’s sake get yourself some grub and make Mrs Ruddle fix you up something to sleep on. My egotism has reached an acute stage tonight, but there’s no need for you to pander to it.’