Busman’s Honeymoon

Chapter I. New-Wedded Lord

Mr Mervyn Bunter, patiently seated in the Daimler on the far side of Regent’s Park, reflected that time was getting on. Packed in eiderdowns in the back of the car was a case containing two and a half dozen of vintage port, and he was anxious about it. Great speed would render the wine undrinkable for a fortnight; excessive speed would render it undrinkable for six months. He was anxious about the arrangements-or the lack of them-at Talboys. He hoped everything would be found in good order when they arrive-otherwise, his lady and gentleman might get nothing to eat till goodness knew when. True, he had brought ample supplies from Fortnum’s, but suppose there were no knives or forks or plates available? He wished he could have gone ahead, as originally instructed, to see to things. Not but what his lordship was always ready to put up with what couldn’t be helped; but it was unsuitable that his lordship should be called on to put up with anything-besides, the lady was still, to some extent, an unknown factor. What his lordship had had to put up with from her during the past five or six years, only his lordship knew, but Mr Bunter could guess.

True, the lady seemed now to be in a very satisfactory way of amendment; but it was yet to be ascertained what her conduct would be under the strain of trivial inconvenience. Mr Bunter was professionally accustomed to judge human beings by their behaviour, not in great crises, but in the minor adjustments of daily life. He had seen one lady threatened with dismissal from his lordship’s service (including all emoluments and the enjoyment of an appartement meublé, Ave. Kleber) for having, in his presence, unreasonably lost her temper with a lady’s maid; but wives were not subject to peremptory dismissal. Mr Bunter was anxious also about how things were going at the Dowager’s; he did not really believe that anything could be suitably organised or carried out without his assistance. He was unspeakably relieved to see the taxi arrive and to assure himself that there was no newspaper man perched on the spare wheel, or lurking in a following vehicle.

‘Here we are, Bunter. All serene? Good man. I’ll drive. Sure you won’t be cold, Harriet?’

Mr Bunter tucked a rug about the bride’s knees.

‘Your lordship will bear in mind that we are conveying the port?’

‘I will go as gingerly as if it were a baby in arms. What’s the matter with the rug?’

‘A few grains of cereal, my lord. I have taken the liberty of removing approximately a pound and three-quarter from among the hand-luggage, together with a quantity of assorted footgear.’

“That must have been Lord Saint-George,’ said Harriet.

‘Presumably so, my lady.’

‘My lady’-she had never really thought it possible that Bunter would accept the situation. Everybody else, perhaps but not Bunter. Yet apparently he did. And that being so, the incredible must have happened. She must be actually married to Peter Wimsey. She sat looking at Peter, as the car twisted smoothly in and out of the traffic. The high, beaked profile and the long hands laid on the wheel had been familiar to her for a long time now; but they were suddenly the face and hands of a stranger. (Peter’s hands, holding the keys of hell and heaven… that was the novelist’s habit, of thinking of everything in terms of literary allusions.

‘Peter!’

‘My dear?’

‘I was just wondering whether I should recognise your voice-your face seems to have got rather remote, somehow.’

She saw the corner of his long mouth twitch. ‘Not quite the same person?’

‘No.’

‘Don’t worry,’ he said, imperturbably, ‘it’ll be all right on the night’ Too much experience to be surprised, and too much honesty to pretend not to understand.

She remembered what had happened four days earlier. He had brought her home after the theatre, and they were standing before the fire, when she had said something-quite casually, laughing at him. He had turned and said, suddenly and huskily:

‘Tu m’enivres!’

Language and voice together had been like a lightning-flash, showing up past and future in a single crack of fire that hurt your eyes and was followed by a darkness like thick, black velvet… When his lips had reluctantly freed themselves, he had said: ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to wake the whole zoo. But I’m glad, my God! to know it’s there-and no shabby tigers; either.’

‘Did you think mine would be a shabby tiger?’

‘I thought it might, perhaps, be a little daunted.’

‘Well, it isn’t. It seems to be an entirely new tiger. I never had one before-only kindness to animals.’

‘My lady gave me a tiger,

A sleek and splendid tiger,

A striped and shining tiger.

All under the leaves of life.’

Nobody else, thought Harriet, had apparently suspected the tiger-except of course, old Paul Delagardie, whose ironic eyes saw everything.

Peter’s final comment had been: ‘I have now completely given myself away. No English vocabulary. No other Englishwoman. And that is the most I can say for myself.’

Gradually, they were shaking off the clustering lights of London. The car gathered speed. Peter looked back over his shoulder.

‘Not waking the baby, are we, Bunter?’

‘The vibration is at present negligible, my lord.’

That led memory farther back.

‘This question of children, Harriet. Do you feel strongly about it?’

‘Well, I’m not quite sure. I’m not marrying you for the sake of having them, if that’s what you mean.’

‘Thank Heaven! He does not wish to regard himself, nor yet to be regarded, in that agricultural light…You don’t particularly care about children?’

‘Not children, in the lump. But I think it’s just possible that I might some day come to want-’

‘Your own?’

‘No-yours.’

‘Oh!’ he had said, unexpectedly disconcerted. ‘I see. That’s rather-Have you ever considered what kind of a father I should make?’

‘I know quite well. Casual, apologetic, reluctant, and adorable.’

‘If I was reluctant, Harriet, it would only be because I have a profound distrust of myself. Our family’s been going a pretty long time. There’s Saint-George, who has no character, and his sister, with no vitality-to say nothing of the next heir after Saint-George and myself, who is a third cousin and completely gaga. And if you think about my own compound of what Uncle Paul calls nerves and nose-’

‘I am reminded of what Clare Clairemont said to Byron: "I shall always remember the gentleness of your manners and the wild originality of your countenance."’

‘No, Harriet-I mean that.’

‘Your brother married his own cousin. Your sister married a commoner and her children are all right. You wouldn’t be doing it all yourself, you know-I’m common enough. What’s wrong with me?’

‘Nothing, Harriet. That’s true. By God, that’s true. The fact is, I’m a coward about responsibility and always have been. My dear-if you want it and are ready to take the risk-’

‘I don’t believe it’s such a risk as all that.’

‘Very well. I leave it to you. If you will and when you will. When I asked you, I rather expected you to say. No.’

‘But you had a horrible fear I might say, “Yes, of course!”‘

‘Well, perhaps. I didn’t expect what you did say. It’s embarrassing to be taken seriously-as a person.’

‘But, Peter, putting aside my own feelings and your morbid visions of twin gorgons or nine-headed hydras or whatever it is you look forward to-would you like children?’

She had been amused by the conflict in his self-conscious face. ‘Egotistical idiot that I am,’ he had said finally, ‘yes. Yes. I should. Heaven knows why. Why does one? To prove one can do it? For the fun of boasting about “my boy at Eton”? Or because-?’

‘Peter! When Mr Murbles drew up that monstrous great long will for you, after we were engaged-’

‘Oh, Harriet!’

‘How did you leave your property? I mean, the real estate?’

‘All right,’ he said, with a groan, ‘the murder’s out. Entailed-I admit it. But Murbles expects that every man-damn it, don’t laugh like that, I couldn’t argue the point with Murbles-and every contingency was provided for.’

A town, with a wide stone bridge, and lights reflected in the river-taking memory no further back than that morning. The Dowager’s closed car, with the Dowager discreetly seated beside the chauffeur; herself in cloth of gold and a soft fur cloak, and Peter, absurdly upright in morning dress, with a gardenia in his lapel, balancing a silk hat on his knee. ‘Well, Harriet, we’ve passed the Rubicon. Any qualms?’

‘No more than when we went up the Cherwell that night and moored on the far bank, and you asked the same question.’

‘Thank God! Stick to it, sweetheart. Only one more river.’

‘And that’s the river of Jordan.’

‘If I kiss you now I shall lose my head and something irreparable will happen to this accursed hat. Let us be very strange and well bred-as if we were not married at all.’

One more river.

‘Are we getting anywhere near?’

‘Yes-this is Great Pagford, where we used to live. Look! that’s our old house with the three steps up to the door-there’s a doctor there still, you can see the surgery lamp… After two miles you take the right hand turn for Pagford Parva, and sharp left by a big barn and straight on up the lane.

When she was quite small, Dr Vane had had a dogcart-just like doctors in old-fashioned books. She had gone along this road, ever so many times, sitting beside him, sometimes allowed to pretend to hold the reins. Later on, it had been a car-a small and noisy one, very unlike this smooth, long-bonneted monster. The doctor had had to start on his rounds in good time, so as to leave a margin for break-downs. The second car had been more reliable-a pre-war Ford. She had learnt to drive that one. If her father had lived, he would be getting on for seventy-his strange new son-in-law would have been calling him ‘sir’. An odd way, this, to be coming home, and not home. This was Paggleham, where the old woman lived who had such terrible rheumatism in her hands-old Mrs, Mrs, Mrs Warner, that was it-she must have gone long ago.

‘That’s the barn, Peter.’

‘Right you are. Is that the house?’

The house where the Batesons had lived-a dear old couple, a pleasantly tottering Darby and Joan pair, always ready to welcome little Miss Vane and give her strawberries and seedy-cake. Yes-the house-a huddle of black gables, with two piled chimney-stacks blotting out the stars. One would open the door and step straight in, through the sanded entry into the big kitchen with its wooden settles and its great oak rafters, hung with home-cured hams. Only, Darby and Joan were dead by now, and Noakes (she vaguely remembered him-a hard-faced, grasping man who hired out bicycles) would be waiting to receive them. But-there was no light in any of the windows at Talboys. ‘We’re a bit late,’ said Harriet, nervously; ‘he may have given us up.’

‘Then we shall firmly hand ourselves back to him,’ said Peter cheerfully. ‘People like you and me are not so easily got rid of. I told him, any time after eight o’clock. This looks like the gate.’

Bunter climbed out and approached the gate in eloquent silence. He had known it; he had felt it in his bones; the arrangements had fallen through. At whatever cost, even if he had had to strangle pressmen with his bare hands, he ought to have come ahead to see to things. In the glare of the headlights a patch of white paper showed clearly on the top bar of the gate; he looked suspiciously at it, removed, with careful fingers, the tin-tack that secured it to the wood and brought it, still without a word, to his master.

‘NO BREAD AND MILK’ (it said) ‘TILL FURTHER NOTISE’.

‘Hmm!’ said Peter. ‘The occupier, I gather, has already taken his departure. This has been up for several days, by the look of it.’

‘He’s got to be there to let us in,’ said Harriet.

‘He’s probably deputed somebody else. He didn’t write this himself-he can spell “notice” in his letter to us. The “somebody” is a little lacking in thought not to realise that we might want bread and milk. However, we can remedy the matter.’

He reversed the paper, wrote in pencil on the back ‘bread and milk, please’, and restored it to Bunter, who tin-tacked it back and gloomily opened the gate. The car moved slowly past him, up a short and muddy approach on either side of which were flower-beds, carefully tended and filled with chrysanthemums and dahlias, while behind them rose the dark outlines of some sheltering bushes.

‘A load of gravel would have done them no harm,’ observed Bunter to himself, as he picked a disdainful way through the mud. When he reached the door-massive and uncompromising, within an oaken porch having seats on either side-his lordship was already performing a brisk fantasia upon the horn. There was no reply; nothing stirred in the house; no candle darted its beams; no casement was thrown open; no shrill voice demanded to know their business; only, in the near distance, a dog barked irritably.

Mr Bunter, gloomily self-restrained, grasped the heavy knocker and let its summons thunder through the night. The dog barked again. He tried the handle, but the door was fast.

‘Oh, dear!’ said Harriet. This, she felt, was her fault. Her idea in the first place. Her house. Her honeymoon. Her-and this was the incalculable factor in the thing-her husband. (A repressive word that, when you came to think of it, compounded of a grumble and a thump.) The man in possession. The man with rights, including the right not to be made a fool of by his belonging! The dashboard light was switched off, and she could not see his face; but she felt his body turn and his left arm move along the back of the seat as he leaned to call across her: ‘Try the back!’-and something in his assured tone reminded her that he had been brought up in the country and knew well enough that farm-houses were more readily assailable in the rear. ‘If you can’t find anybody there, make for the place where the dog is.’

He tootled on the horn again, the dog responded with a volley of yelps, and the shadowy bulk that was Bunter moved round the side of the building.

‘That,’ continued Peter, with satisfaction, and throwing his hat into the back of he car,’ will keep him busy for quite a bit. We shall now give one another that attention which for the last thirty-six hours, has been squandered on trivialities… Da mihi basia mille, deinde centum… Do you realise, woman, that I’ve done it?… that I’ve got you?… that you can’t get rid of me now, short of death or divorce?… et tot millia millies Quot sunt sidera caelo… Forget Bunter. I don’t care a rap whether he goes for the dog or the dog goes for him.’

‘Poor Bunter!’

‘Yes, poor devil! No wedding bells for Bunter… Not fair, is it? All the kicks for him and all the kisses for me… Stick to it, old son! Wake Duncan with thy knocking. But there’s no hurry for the next few minutes.’

The fusillade of knocks had begun again, and the dog was growing hysterical.

‘Somebody must come some time,’ said Harriet, still with a sense of guilt that no embraces could stifle, ‘because, if not-’

‘If not… Last night you slept in a goose-feather bed. and all that. But the goose-feather bed and the new-wedded lord are inseparable only in ballads. Would you rather wed with the feathers or bed with the goose-I mean the gander? Or would you make shift with the lord in the cold open field?’

‘He wouldn’t be stranded in a cold open field if I hadn’t been so idiotic about St George’s, Hanover Square.’

‘No-and if I hadn’t refused Helen’s ten villas on the Riviera!… Hurray! Somebody’s throttled the hound-that’s a step in the right direction… Cheer up! The night is yet young, and we may even find a goose-feather bed in the village pub-or in the last resort sleep under a haystack. I believe, if I’d had nothing but a haystack to offer you, you’d have married me years ago.’

‘I shouldn’t be surprised.’

‘Damnation! Think what I’ve missed.’

‘Me too. At this moment I could have been tramping at your heels with five babies and a black eye, and saying to a sympathetic bobby, “You leave ’im be-’e’s my man, ain’t I ’e?-’E’ve a right to knock me abaht”.’

‘You seem,’ said her husband, reprovingly, ‘to regret the black eye more than the five babies.’

‘Naturally. You’ll never give me the black eye.’

‘Nothing so easily healed. I’m afraid. Harriet-I wonder what sort of shot I’m going to make at being decent to you.’

‘My dear Peter-’

‘Yes, I know. But I’ve never-now I come to think of it inflicted myself on anyone for very long together. Except Bunter, of course. Have you consulted Bunter? Do you think he would give me a good character?’

‘It sounds to me,’ said Harriet, ‘as though Bunter had picked up a girl friend.’

The footsteps of two people were, in fact, approaching from behind the house. Somebody was expostulating with Bunter in high-pitched tones:

‘I’ll believe it w’en I sees it, and not before. Mr Noakes is at Broxford, I tell you, and has been ever since last Wednesday night as ever is, and he ain’t never said nothing to me nor nobody, not about sellin’ no ’ouse nor about no lords nor ladies neither.’

The speaker, now emerging into the blaze of the headlights, was a hard-faced angular lady of uncertain age, dressed in a mackintosh, a knitted shawl, and a man’s cap secured rakishly to her head with knobbed and shiny hatpins. Neither the size of the car, the polish of its chromium plating nor the brilliance of its lamps appeared to impress her, for advancing with a snort to Harriet’s side she said, belligerently:

‘Now then, ’oo are you and wot d’you want, kicking up all this noise? Let’s ’ave a look at yer!’

‘By all means,’ said Peter. He switched on the dashboard light. His yellow hair and his eye-glass seemed to produce an unfortunate impression.

‘H’mph!’ said the lady. ‘Film-actors, by the look of yer. And’ (with a withering glance at Harriet’s furs) ‘no better than you should be, I’ll be bound.’

‘We are very sorry to have disturbed you,’ began Peter, ‘Mrs-er-’

‘Ruddle is my name,’ said the lady of the cap. ‘Mrs Ruddle, and a respectable married woman with a grown son of her own. He’s a-coming over from the cottage now with his gun, as soon as he’s put his trousis on, which he had just took ’em off to go to bed in good time, ’aving to be up early to ’is work. Now then! Mr Noakes is over at Broxford, same as I was sayin’ to this other chap of yours, and you can’t get nothing out of me, for it ain’t no business of mine, except that I obliges ’im in the cleaning way.’

‘Ruddle?’ said Harriet. ‘Didn’t he work at one time for Mr Vickey at Five Elms?’

‘Yes, ’e did,’ said Mrs Ruddle, quickly, ‘but that’s fifteen year agone. I lost Ruddle last Michaelmas five year, and a good ’usband ’e was, when he was himself, that is. ’Ow do you come to know Ruddle?’

‘I’m Dr Vane’s daughter, that used to live at Great Pagford. Don’t you remember him. I know your name, and I think I remember your face. But you didn’t live here then. The Batesons had the farm, and there was a woman called Sweeting at the cottage who kept pigs and had a niece who wasn’t quite right in the head.’

‘Lor’ now!’ cried Mrs Ruddle. ‘To think o’ that! Dr Vane’s daughter, is you, miss? Now I come to look at you, you ’av got a look of ’er. But it’s gettin’ on for seventeen years since you and the doctor left Pagford. I did ’ear as ’e’d passed away, and sorry I was-’e was a wonderful clever doctor, was your dad, miss-I ’ad ’im for my Bert, and I’m sure it’s a mercy I did, ’im comin’ into the world wrong end up as you might say, which is a sad trial for a woman. And how are you, miss, after all this time? We did ’ear as you’d been in trouble with the perlice, but as I said to Bert, you can’t believe the stuff they puts into them papers.’

‘It was quite true, Mrs Ruddle-but they’d got hold of the wrong person.’

‘Just like ’em!’ said Mrs Ruddle. ‘There’s that Joe Sellon. I Tried to make out as my Bert ’ad been stealin’ Aggie Twitterton’s ’ens. “’Ens,” I said. “You’ll be making out next as ‘e took that there pocket-book of Mr Noakes’s, wot ’e made all the fuss about. You look for your ’ens in George Withers’s back kitchen.” I says, and sure enough, there they was. “Call yourself a perliceman,” I ses. “I’d make a better perliceman than you any day, Joe Sellon.” That’s what I ses to ’im. I’d never believe nothing none of them perlicemen said, not if I was to be paid for it, so don’t you think it, miss. I’m sure I’m very pleased to see you miss, looking so well, but if you and the gentleman was wanting Mr Noakes-’

‘We did want him, but I expect you can help us. This is my husband and we’ve bought Talboys and we arranged with Mr Noakes to come here for our honeymoon.’

‘You don’t say!’ ejaculated Mrs Ruddle. ‘I’m sure I congratulate you, miss-mum, and sir.’ She wiped a bony hand on the mackintosh and extended it to bride and groom in turn. ‘’Oneymoon-well, there!-it won’t take me a minnit to put on clean sheets, which is all laying aired and ready at the cottage, so if you’ll let me ’ave the keys-’

‘But,’ said Peter, ‘that’s just the trouble. We haven’t got the keys. Mr Noakes said he’d make all the preparations and be here to let us in.’

‘Ho!’ said Mrs Ruddle. ‘Well, ’e never told me nothing about it. Off to Broxford ’e was, by the ten o’clock bus Wednesday night, and never said nothing to nobody, not to mention leave me my week’s money.’

‘But,’ said Harriet, ‘if you do his cleaning, haven’t you got a key to the house?’

‘No, I have not,’ replied Mrs Ruddle. ‘You don’t ketch ’im givin’ me no keys. Afraid I’ll pinch sommink, I suppose. Not that ’e leaves much as ’ud be worth pinchin’. But there you are, that’s ’im all over. And burglar-proof bolts on all the winders. Many’s the time I’ve said to Bert, supposin’ the ’ouse was to go on fire with ’im away an’ no keys nearer than Pagford.’

‘Pagford?’ said Peter. ‘I thought you said he was at Broxford.’

‘So ’e is-sleeps over the wireless business. But you’d ’ave a job ter get him, I reckon, ’im being’ a bit deaf and the bell ringin’ inter the shop. Your best way’ll be ter run over ter Pagford an’ git Aggie Twitterton.’

‘The lady who keeps hens?’

‘That’s ’er. You mind the little cottage down by the river, miss-mum, I should say-where old Blunt useter live?

Well, that’s it, an’ she’s got a key to the ’ouse-comes over ter see ter things w’en ’e’s away, though, come ter think of it, I ain’t seen ’er this last week. Maybe she’s poorly, because, come ter think of it, if ’e knowed you was coming it’s Aggie Twitterton ’e’d a-told about it.’

‘I expect that’s it,’ said Harriet. ‘Perhaps she meant to let you know, and got ill and couldn’t see to it. We’ll go over. Thank you very much. Do you think she could let us have a loaf of bread and some butter?’

‘Bless you, miss-mum-I can do that. I got a nice loafer bread, ’ardly touched, and ’arf a pound er butter at ’ome this minnit. And,’ said Mrs Ruddle, not for an instant losing her grasp upon essentials, ‘the clean sheets, like I was sayin’. I’ll run and fetch them directly, and it won’t take no time to get straight w’en you and your good gentleman comes back with the keys. Excuse me, mum, wot might your married name be?’

‘Lady Peter Wimsey,’ said Harriet, feeling not at all sure that it was her name.

‘I never!’ said Mrs Ruddle. ‘That’s wot ’e said’-she jerked her head at Bunter-‘but I didn’t pay no ’eed to ’im. Begging your pardon, mum, but there’s some of these commercial fellers ’ud say anythink, wouldn’t they, sir?’

‘Oh, we all have to pay heed to Bunter,’ said Wimsey. ‘He’s the only really reliable person in the party. Now, Mrs Ruddle, we’ll run over to get the keys from Miss Twitterton and be back in twenty minutes. Bunter, you’d better stay here and give Mrs Ruddle a hand with the things. Is there room to turn?’

‘Very good, my lord. No, my lord. I fancy there is not room to turn. I will open the gate for your lordship. Allow me, my lord. Your lordship’s hat.’

‘Give it to me,’ said Harriet, Peter’s hands being occupied with the ignition switch and the self-starter.

‘Yes, my lady. Thank you, my lady.’

‘After which,’ said Peter, when they had reversed through the gate and were once again headed for Great Pagford, ‘Bunter will proceed to make it quite plain to Mrs Ruddle-in case she hasn’t grasped the idea-that Lord and Lady Peter Wimsey are my lord and lady. Poor old Bunter! Never have his feelings been so harrowed. Film-actors, by the look of you! No better than you should be! These commercial fellers will say anythink!’

‘Oh, Peter! I wish I could have married Bunter. I do love him so.’

‘Bride’s Wedding-Night Confession; Titled Clubman Slays Valet and Self. I’m glad you take to Bunter-I owe him a lot… Do you know anything about this Twitterton woman we’re going to see?’

‘No-but I’ve an idea there was an elderly labourer of that name in Pagford Parva who used to beat his wife or something. They weren’t Dad’s patients. It’s funny, even if she’s ill, that she shouldn’t have sent Mrs Ruddle a message.’

‘Dashed funny. I’ve got my own ideas about Mr Noakes. Simcox-’

‘Simcox? Oh, the agent, yes?’

‘He was surprised to find the place going so cheap. It’s true it was only the house and a couple of fields-Noakes seems to have sold part of the property. I paid Noakes last Monday, and the cheque was cleared in London on Thursday, I shouldn’t wonder if another bit of clearing was done at the same time.’

‘What?’

‘Friend Noakes. It doesn’t affect our purchase of the house-the title is all right and there’s no mortgage; I made sure of that. The fact that there was no mortgage cuts both ways. If he was in difficulties, you’d expect a mortgage; but if he was in great difficulties, he might have kept the property free for a quick sale. He kept a bicycle shop in your day. Was he ever in difficulties with that?’

‘I don’t know. I think he sold it and the man who bought it said he’d been cheated. Noakes was supposed to be pretty sharp over a bargain.’

‘Yes. He got Talboys dirt cheap, I fancy, from what Simcox said. Got some kind of squeeze on the old people and put the brokers in. I’ve an idea he was fond of buying and selling things as a speculation.’

‘He used to be spoken of as a warm man. Always up to something.’

‘All sorts of little enterprises, h’m? Picking things up cheap on the chance of patching ’em up for resale at a profit-that sort?’

‘Rather that sort.’

‘Um. Sometimes it works, sometimes not. There’s a London tenant of mine who started twenty years ago with a few second-hand oddments in a cellar. I’ve just built him a very handsome block of flats with sunshine balconies and vita-glass and things. He’ll do very well with them. But then he’s a Jew, and knows exactly what he’s doing. I shall get my money back and so will he. He’s got the knack of making money turn over. We’ll have him to dinner one day and he’ll tell you how he did it. He started in the War, with the double handicap of a slight deformity and a German name, but before he dies he’ll be a damn’ sight richer than I am.’

Harriet asked a question or two, which her husband answered, but in so abstracted a tone that she realized he was giving only about a quarter of his mind to the virtuous Jew of London and none of it to herself. He was probably mulling over the mysterious behaviour of Mr Noakes. She was quite accustomed to his sudden withdrawals into the recesses of his own mind, and did not resent them. She had known him stop short in the middle of a proposal of marriage to her because some chance sight or sound had offered him a new piece to fit into a criminal jig-saw. His meditations did not last long, for within five minutes they were running into Great Pagford, and he was obliged to rouse himself to ask his companion the way to Miss Twitterton’s cottage.