Mr Clyde-Browne read the letter with delight. 'He's done it. By golly, he's done it,' he whooped.
'Of course he has,' said Mrs Clyde-Browne, 'I always knew he was gifted.'
Mr Clyde-Browne stopped whooping. 'Not him...'he began and decided to say no more.
Chapter 7
But Peregrine's future was being decided by more subtle influences than those of the military Doctor. Mr Glodstone had spent the holidays in search, as he put it, 'of some damned woman' to marry. The dung is one doesn't want to marry beneath one,' he confided to Major Fetherington over several nightcaps of whisky in his rooms.
'Absolutely,' said the Major, whose wife had died of boredom ten years before. 'Still, if there's lead in your pencil, you've got to make your mark somewhere.'
Glodstone glanced at him dubiously. The Major's metaphor was too coarse for his romantic imagination. 'Perhaps, but love's got to be there too. I mean, only a cad would marry a girl he didn't love, don't you think?'
'Suppose so,' said the Major, enjoying the whisky too much to argue from his own experience. 'Still, a fellow's got to think of the future. Knew a chap once, must have been eighty if he was a day, keen tennis-player in his time, married a woman he happened to be sitting next to in the Centre Court at Wimbledon. Splendid match. Died in her arms a fortnight later desperately in love. Never can tell till you try.'
Glodstone considered the moral of this example and found it hardly illuminating. 'That sort of thing doesn't happen to me,' he said and put the cap back on the whisky bottle.
The trouble with you,' said the Major, 'is that you've got champagne tastes and a beer income. My advice is to lower your sights. Still, you never know. Chance has a funny way of arranging things.'
For once Mr Slymne would have shared Glodstone's unspoken disagreement. He was leaving as little as possible to chance. Having discovered Glodstone's wildly romantic streak, he was determined to exploit it, but there were still problems to cope with. The first concerned Sports Day. La Comtesse de Montcon might put in an appearance, and if the wretched woman turned out to be as formidable as the conversation he had overheard in the house-room suggested, all his preparations would be wasted. Glodstone would hardly go to the aid of a woman who was manifestly capable of looking after herself. No, it was vital that the image in Glodstone's imagination should be that of a poor, defenceless, or to be exact, a rich defenceless sylph-like creature with an innocence beyond belief. Slymne had a shrewd idea that La Comtesse was more robust. Any mother who could send her son to Groxbourne had to be. Slymne checked his dossier and found that Tambon had said 'The countess is a real old cow,' and was reassured. He also surreptitiously took a look at the Visiting Parents' Book in the Bursar's office and found no evidence that La Comtesse had ever visited the school.
But to be on the safe side, he used a geography lesson to ask all those boys whose mothers were coming to Sports Day to put up their hands. Wanderby didn't. Having dealt with that problem, Slymne concentrated on the next one; how to phrase his letter to Glodstone. In the end he decided on the direct approach. It would appeal to Glodstone's gallantry more effectively than anything too subtle. On the other hand; there had to be more definite instructions as well. Slymne penned the letter, tracing La Comtesse's handwriting again and again for practice, and then on a weekend visit to London, spent the night in a hotel room making a number of direct-dialled calls to France. By the time he returned to Groxbourne, he was ready to provide the instructions. Only one uncertainty remained. Glodstone might have made arrangements for his summer holidays already. In which case, the timing of the letter would be vital. And Wanderby's own movements in the holidays might prove awkward too. Again Slymne made use of a geography lesson to find out where the boy was spending the summer.
