‘Thank you-but I really don’t know that there’s a great deal to complain of. I’ve got you, that’s the chief thing, and food and fire of sorts, and a roof over my head. What more could any man want?-Besides, I should hate to have missed Bunter’s speech and Mrs Ruddle’s conversation-and even Miss Twitterton’s parsnip wine adds a distinct flavour to life. I might, perhaps, have preferred rather more hot water and less oil about my person. Not that there is anything essentially effeminate about paraffin-but I disapprove on principle of perfumes for men.’
‘It’s a nice, clean smell.’ said his wife, soothingly, ‘much more original than all the powders of the merchant. And I expect Bunter will manage to get it off you.’
‘I hope so,’ said Peter. He remembered that it had once been said of ‘ce blond cadet de famille ducale anglaise’ said, too, by a lady who had every opportunity of judging-that ‘il prenait son lit en Grand Monarque et s’y demenait en Grand Turc.’ The Fates, it seemed, had determined to strip him of every vanity save one. Let them. He could fight this battle naked. He laughed suddenly.
‘Enfin, du courage! Embrasse-moi, cherie. Je trouverai quandmeme le moyen de te faire plaisir. Hein? tu veux? dis donc!
‘Je veux bien.’
‘Dearest!’
‘Oh, Peter!’
‘I’m sorry-did I hurt you?’
‘No. Yes. Kiss me again.’
It was at some point during the next five minutes that Peter was heard to murmur, ‘Not faint Canaries but ambrosial’; and it is symptomatic of Harriet’s state of mind that at the time she vaguely connected the faint canaries with the shabby tigers-only tracing the quotation to its source some ten days later.
Bunter came downstairs. In one hand he held a small and steaming jug, and in the other a case of razors and a spongebag. A bath-towel and a pair of pyjamas hung from his arm, together with a silk dressing-gown.
“The fire in the bedroom is drawing satisfactorily. I have contrived to heat a small quantity of water for your ladyship’s use.’
His master looked apprehensively. ‘But what to me, my love, but what to me?’
Bunter made no verbal reply, but his glance in the direction of the kitchen was eloquent. Peter looked thoughtfully at his own finger-nails and shuddered. ‘Lady,’ said he, ‘get you to bed and leave me to my destiny.’
The wood upon the hearth was flaring cheerfully, and the water, what there was of it, was boiling. The two brass candlesticks bore their flaming ministers bravely, one on either side of the mirror. The big four-poster, with its patchwork quilt of faded blues and scarlets and its chip’- hangings dimmed by age and laundering, had, against the pale, plastered walls, a dignified air as though of exiled royalty. Harriet, warm and powdered and free at last from the smell of soot, paused with the hair-brush in her hand to wonder what was happening to Peter. She slipped across the chill dark of the dressing-room, opened the farther door, and listened. From somewhere far below came an ominous clank of iron, followed by a loud yelp and a burst of half-suffocated laughter.
‘Poor darling!’ said Harriet.
She put out the bedroom candles. The sheets, worn thin by age, were of fine linen, and somewhere in the room there was a scent of lavender… Jordan river… A branch broke and fell upon the hearth in a shower of sparks, and the tall shadows danced across the ceiling.
The door-latch clicked, and her husband sidled apologetically through. His air of chastened triumph made her chuckle, though her blood was thumping erratically and something seemed to have happened to her breath. He dropped on his knees beside her.
‘Sweetheart,’ he said, his voice shaken between passion and laughter, ‘take your bridegroom. Quite clean and not the least paraffiny, but dreadfully damp and cold. Scrubbed like a puppy under the scullery pump!’
Dear Peter!’(‘… en Grand Monarque…’)
‘I think,’ he went on, rapidly and almost indistinguishably, ‘I think Bunter was enjoying himself. I have set him to clean the black beetles out of the copper. What does it matter?
What does anything matter? We are here. Laugh, lover, laugh. This is the end of the journey and the beginning of all delight.’
Mr Mervyn Bunter, having chased away the beetles, filled the copper and laid the fire ready for lighting, wrapped himself up in two great-coats and a rug and disposed himself comfortably in a couple of arm-chairs. But he did not sleep at once. Though not precisely anxious, he was filled with a kindly concern. He had (with what exertions!) brought his favourite up to the tape and must leave him now to make the running, but no respect for the proprieties could prevent his sympathetic imagination from following the cherished creature every step of the way. With a slight sigh he drew the candle towards him, took out a fountain-pen and a writing-pad, and began a letter to his mother. The performance of this filial duty might, he thought, serve to calm his mind.
‘Dear Mother,-I write from an “unknown destination-’
‘What was that you called me?’
‘Oh, Peter-how absurd! I wasn’t thinking.’
‘What did you call me?’
‘My lord!’
‘The last two words in the language I ever expected to get a kick out of. One never values a thing till one’s earned it, does one? Listen, heart’s lady-before I’ve done I mean to be king and emperor.’
It is not part of the historian’s duty to indulge in what a critic has called ‘interesting revelations of the marriage-bed’. It is enough that the dutiful Mervyn Bunter at length set aside his writing materials, blew out the candle and composed his limbs to rest; and that, of the sleepers beneath that ancient roof, he that had the hardest and coldest couch enjoyed the quietest slumbers.
Chapter IV. Household Gods
Sir, he made a chimney in my father’s house,
and the bricks are alive to this day to testify it.
– William Shakespeare: II Henry VI: IV
Lady Peter Wimsey propped herself cautiously on one elbow and contemplated her sleeping lord. With the mocking eyes hidden and the confident mouth relaxed, his big bony nose and tumbled hair gave him a gawky, fledgling look, like a schoolboy. And the hair itself was almost as light as tow-it was ridiculous that anything male should be as fair as that. No doubt when it was damped and sleeked down for the day his head would go back to its normal barley-corn colour. Last night, after Bunter’s ruthless pumping, it had affected her much as the murdered Lorenzo’s glove affected Isabella, and she had had to rub it dry with a towel before cradling it where, in the country phrase, it ‘belonged to be’.
Bunter? She spared him a stray thought from a mind drugged with sleep and the pleasure that comes with sleep. Bunter was up and about; she could faintly hear doors opening and shutting and furniture being moved down below. What an amazing muddle it had all been! But he would miraculously put everything right-wonderful Bunter-and leave one free to live and not bother one’s head. One vaguely hoped Bunter had not spent the whole night chasing black beetles, but for the moment what was left of one’s mind was concentrated on Peter-being anxious not to wake him, rather hoping he would soon wake up of his own accord, and wondering what he would say when he did. If his first words were French one would at least feel certain that he retained an agreeable impression of the night’s proceedings; on the whole, however, English would be preferable, as showing that he remembered quite distinctly who one was.
As though this disturbing thought had broken his sleep, he stirred at that moment, and, without opening his eyes, felt for her with his hand and pulled her down against him. And his first word was neither French nor English, but a long interrogative ‘M’mmm?’