The Prince and Betty

The Prince and Betty

P. G. Wodehouse

5.0
Comment(s)
532
View
30
Chapters

A pretty girl in a blue dress came out of the house, and began to walk slowly across the terrace to where Elsa Keith sat with Marvin Rossiter in the shade of the big sycamore. Elsa and Marvin had become engaged some few days before, and were generally to be found at this time sitting together in some shaded spot in the grounds of the Keith's Long Island home.

Chapter 1 The Cable Prom Mervo

A pretty girl in a blue dress came out of the house, and began to walk slowly across the terrace to where Elsa Keith sat with Marvin Rossiter in the shade of the big sycamore. Elsa and Marvin had become engaged some few days before, and were generally to be found at this time sitting together in some shaded spot in the grounds of the Keith's Long Island home.

"What's troubling Betty, I wonder," said Elsa. "She looks worried."

Marvin turned his head.

"Is that your friend, Miss Silver?"

"That's Betty. We were at college together. I want you to like Betty."

"Then I will. When did she arrive?"

"Last night. She's here for a month. What's the matter, Betty? This is Marvin. I want you to like Marvin."

Betty Silver smiled. Her face, in repose, was rather wistful, but it lighted up when she smiled, and an unsuspected dimple came into being on her chin.

"Of course I shall," she said.

Her big gray eyes seemed to search Marvin's for an instant and Marvin had, almost subconsciously, a comfortable feeling that he had been tested and found worthy.

"What were you scowling at so ferociously, Betty?" asked Elsa.

"Was I scowling? I hope you didn't think it was at you. Oh, Elsa, I'm miserable! I shall have to leave this heavenly place."

"Betty!"

"At once. And I was meaning to have the most lovely time. See what has come!"

She held out some flimsy sheets of paper.

"A cable!" said Elsa.

"Great Scott! it looks like the scenario of a four-act play," said Marvin. "That's not all one cable, surely? Whoever sent it must be a millionaire."

"He is. It's from my stepfather. Read it out, Elsa. I want Mr. Rossiter to hear it. He may be able to tell me where Mervo is. Did you ever hear of Mervo, Mr. Rossiter?"

"Never. What is it?"

"It's a place where my stepfather is, and where I've got to go. I do call it hard. Go on, Elsa."

Elsa, who had been skimming the document with raised eyebrows, now read it out in its spacious entirety.

On receipt of this come instantly Mervo without moment

delay vital importance presence urgently required come

wherever you are cancel engagements urgent necessity hustle

have advised bank allow you draw any money you need expenses

have booked stateroom Mauretania sailing Wednesday don't fail

catch arrive Fishguard Monday train London sleep London catch

first train Tuesday Dover now mind first train no taking root

in London and spending a week shopping mid-day boat Dover

Calais arrive Paris Tuesday evening Dine Paris catch train de

luxe nine-fifteen Tuesday night for Marseilles have engaged

sleeping coupe now mind Tuesday night no cutting loose around

Paris stores you can do all that later on just now you want to

get here right quick arrive Marseilles Wednesday morning boat

Mervo Wednesday night will meet you Mervo now do you follow

all that because if not cable at once and say which part of

journey you don't understand now mind special points to be

remembered firstly come instantly secondly no cutting loose

around London Paris stores see.

SCOBELL.

"_Well!_" said Elsa, breathless.

"By George!" said Marvin. "He certainly seems to want you badly enough. He hasn't spared expense. He has put in about everything you could put into a cable."

"Except why he wants me," said Betty.

"Yes," said Elsa. "Why does he want you? And in such a desperate hurry, too!"

Marvin was re-reading the message.

"It isn't a mere invitation," he said. "There's no come-right-along-you'll-like-this-place-it's-fine about it. He seems to look on your company more as a necessity than a luxury. It's a sort of imperious C.Q.D."

"That's what makes it so strange. We have hardly met for years. Why, he didn't even know where I was. The cable was sent to the bank and forwarded on. And I don't know where he is!"

"Which brings us back," said Marvin, "to mysterious Mervo. Let us reason inductively. If you get to the place by taking a boat from Marseilles, it can't be far from the French coast. I should say at a venture that Mervo is an island in the Mediterranean. And a small island for if it had been a big one we should have heard of it."

"Marvin!" cried Elsa, her face beaming with proud affection. "How clever you are!"

"A mere gift," he said modestly. "I have been like that from a boy." He got up from his chair. "Isn't there an encyclopaedia in the library, Elsa?"

"Yes, but it's an old edition."

"It will probably touch on Mervo. I'll go and fetch it."

As he crossed the terrace, Elsa turned quickly to Betty.

"Well?" she said.

Betty smiled at her.

"He's a dear. Are you very happy, Elsa?"

Elsa's eyes danced. She drew in her breath softly. Betty looked at her in silence for a moment. The wistful expression was back on her face.

"Elsa," she said, suddenly. "What is it like? How does it feel, knowing that there's someone who is fonder of you than anything--?"

Elsa closed her eyes.

"It's like eating berries and cream in a new dress by moonlight on a summer night while somebody plays the violin far away in the distance so that you can just hear it," she said.

Her eyes opened again.

"And it's like coming along on a winter evening and seeing the windows lit up and knowing you've reached home."

Betty was clenching her hands, and breathing quickly.

"And it's like--"

"Elsa, don't! I can't bear it!"

"Betty! What's the matter?"

Betty smiled again, but painfully.

"It's stupid of me. I'm just jealous, that's all. I haven't got a Marvin, you see. You have."

"Well, there are plenty who would like to be your Marvin."

Betty's face grew cold.

"There are plenty who would like to be Benjamin Scobell's son-in-law," she said.

"Betty!" Elsa's voice was serious. "We've been friends for a good long time, so you'll let me say something, won't you? I think you're getting just the least bit hard. Now turn and rend me," she added good-humoredly.

"I'm not going to rend you," said Betty. "You're perfectly right. I am getting hard. How can I help it? Do you know how many men have asked me to marry them since I saw you last? Five."

"Betty!"

"And not one of them cared the slightest bit about me."

"But, Betty, dear, that's just what I mean. Why should you say that? How can you know?"

"How do I know? Well, I do know. Instinct, I suppose. The instinct of self-preservation which nature gives hunted animals. I can't think of a single man in the world--except your Marvin, of course--who wouldn't do anything for money." She stopped. "Well, yes, one."

Elsa leaned forward eagerly.

"Who, Betty?"

"You don't know him."

"But what's his name?"

Betty hesitated.

"Well, if I am on the witness-stand--Maude."

"Maude? I thought you said a man?"

"It's his name. John Maude."

"But, Betty! Why didn't you tell me before? This is tremendously interesting."

Betty laughed shortly.

"Not so very, really. I only met him two or three times, and I haven't seen him for years, and I don't suppose I shall ever see him again. He was a friend of Alice Beecher's brother, who was at Harvard. Alice took me over to meet her brother, and Mr. Maude was there. That's all."

Elsa was plainly disappointed.

"But how do you know, then--? What makes you think that he--?"

"Instinct, again, I suppose. I do know."

"And you've never met him since?"

Betty shook her head. Elsa relapsed into silence. She had a sense of pathos.

At the further end of the terrace Marvin Rossiter appeared, carrying a large volume.

"Here we are," he said. "Scared it up at the first attempt. Now then."

He sat down, and opened the book.

"You don't want to hear all about how Jason went there in search of the Golden Fleece, and how Ulysses is supposed to have taken it in on his round-trip? You want something more modern. Well, it's an island in the Mediterranean, as I said, and I'm surprised that you've never heard of it, Elsa, because it's celebrated in its way. It's the smallest independent state in the world. Smaller than Monaco, even. Here are some facts. Its population when this encyclopaedia was printed--there may be more now--was eleven thousand and sixteen. It was ruled over up to 1886 by a prince. But in that year the populace appear to have said to themselves, 'When in the course of human events....' Anyway, they fired the prince, and the place is now a republic. So that's where you're going, Miss Silver. I don't know if it's any consolation to you, but the island, according to this gentleman, is celebrated for the unspoilt beauty of its scenery. He also gives a list of the fish that can be caught there. It takes up about three lines."

"But what can my stepfather be doing there? I last heard of him in London. Well, I suppose I shall have to go."

"I suppose you will," said Elsa mournfully. "But, oh, Betty, what a shame!"

Continue Reading

Other books by P. G. Wodehouse

More

You'll also like

The Billionaire's Medicine: His Silent Obsession

The Billionaire's Medicine: His Silent Obsession

Sutton Horsley
5.0

My stepmother sold me like a piece of inventory to a man known for breaking people just to plug the financial crater my father left behind. I was delivered to the Morton estate in the middle of a freezing storm, stripped of my phone, and told that if I didn't make myself useful, my senile grandfather would be evicted from his care facility by noon. The master of the house, Adonis Morton IV, was a monster living in a silent mausoleum, driven to the brink of madness by a sensory condition that turned every sound into a physical assault. When I was forced into his suite to serve him, he didn't see a human being; he saw a source of agony. In a fit of animalistic rage, he pinned me to the wall and nearly strangled me to death just for the sound of a shattering teacup. I only survived by using my grandfather’s secret herbal blends and pressure-point therapy to force his overactive nervous system into a drugged sleep. But saving him was my greatest mistake. Instead of letting me go, Adonis moved me into a guest suite connected to his own bedroom by a hidden door. He didn't just want me as a servant; he needed me as a human white-noise machine to drown out the demons in his head. The nightmare deepened when he took the promissory note that defined my freedom and tore it into confetti. By destroying the debt, he destroyed my exit strategy. He replaced my maid’s uniform with a silver silk dress that clung to my skin but did nothing to hide the dark, ugly bruises his fingers had left on my neck. He branded me as his "primary care associate," a title that was nothing more than a gilded cage. I felt a sickening sense of injustice as he forced me to sign a contract that banned me from contacting other men and required me to sleep wherever he slept. He looked at me with a possessive heat, calling me his "medication" rather than a woman. My family had sold my body, but Adonis Morton was intent on owning my very presence, using my grandfather’s medical bills as a leash to keep me within twenty feet of him at all times. Standing in a neglected greenhouse with mud staining my expensive silk, I realized I was no longer a victim waiting for rescue. If I was going to be his medication, I would learn how to be his cure—or his undoing. I began clearing the weeds with a cold, calculated frenzy, determined to turn this prison into my laboratory. He thinks he has trapped a helpless girl, but I am going to pry open the cracks in his stone walls until his entire world comes crashing down.

The Billionaire's Cold And Bitter Betrayal

The Billionaire's Cold And Bitter Betrayal

Clara Bennett
5.0

I had just survived a private jet crash, my body a map of violet bruises and my lungs still burning from the smoke. I woke up in a sterile hospital room, gasping for my husband's name, only to realize I was completely alone. While I was bleeding in a ditch, my husband, Adam, was on the news smiling at a ribbon-cutting ceremony. When I tracked him down at the hospital's VIP wing, I didn't find a grieving husband. I found him tenderly cradling his ex-girlfriend, Casie, in his arms, his face lit with a protective warmth he had never shown me as he carried her into the maternity ward. The betrayal went deeper than I could have imagined. Adam admitted the affair started on our third anniversary-the night he claimed he was stuck in London for a merger. Back at the manor, his mother had already filled our planned nursery with pink boutique bags for Casie's "little princess." When I demanded a divorce, Adam didn't flinch. He sneered that I was "gutter trash" from a foster home and that I'd be begging on the streets within a week. To trap me, he froze my bank accounts, cancelled my flight, and even called the police to report me for "theft" of company property. I realized then that I wasn't his partner; I was a charity case he had plucked from obscurity to manage his life. To the Hortons, I was just a servant who happened to sleep in the master bedroom, a "resilient" woman meant to endure his abuse in silence while the whole world laughed at the joke that was my marriage. Adam thought stripping me of his money would make me crawl back to him. He was wrong. I walked into his executive suite during his biggest deal of the year and poured a mug of sludge over his original ten-million-dollar contracts. Then, right in front of his board and his mistress, I stripped off every designer thread he had ever paid for until I was standing in nothing but my own silk camisole. "You can keep the clothes, Adam. They're as hollow as you are." I grabbed my passport, turned my back on his billions, and walked out of that glass tower barefoot, bleeding, and finally free.

Marrying My Runaway Groom's Powerful Father

Marrying My Runaway Groom's Powerful Father

Temple Madison
4.5

I was sitting in the Presidential Suite of The Pierre, wearing a Vera Wang gown worth more than most people earn in a decade. It was supposed to be the wedding of the century, the final move to merge two of Manhattan's most powerful empires. Then my phone buzzed. It was an Instagram Story from my fiancé, Jameson. He was at Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris with a caption that read: "Fuck the chains. Chasing freedom." He hadn't just gotten cold feet; he had abandoned me at the altar to run across the world. My father didn't come in to comfort me. He burst through the door roaring about a lost acquisition deal, telling me the Holland Group would strip our family for parts if the ceremony didn't happen by noon. My stepmother wailed about us becoming the laughingstock of the Upper East Side. The Holland PR director even suggested I fake a "panic attack" to make myself look weak and sympathetic to save their stock price. Then Jameson’s sleazy cousin, Pierce, walked in with a lopsided grin, offering to "step in" and marry me just to get his hands on my assets. I looked at them and realized I wasn't a daughter or a bride to anyone in that room. I was a failed asset, a bouncing check, a girl whose own father told her to go to Paris and "beg" the man who had just publicly humiliated her. The girl who wanted to be loved died in that mirror. I realized that if I was going to be sold to save a merger, I was going to sell myself to the one who actually controlled the money. I marched past my parents and walked straight into the VIP holding room. I looked the most powerful man in the room—Jameson’s cold, ruthless uncle, Fletcher Holland—dead in the eye and threw the iPad on the table. "Jameson is gone," I said, my voice as hard as stone. "Marry me instead."

Chapters
Read Now
Download Book