Busman’s Honeymoon Read Online Free PDF Page A

I remember it!). Wedding (Archbp’s licence) on the 8th October and let Helen think what she likes till last moment—also newspapers. Harriet very much relieved. Peter adds, anyway, honeymoon in hotels disgusting—own roof (especially if Elizabethan) much more suited to English gentleman. Fierce bustle about wedding-dress—Worth’s—period gown in stiff gold brocade, long sleeves, square neck, off-the-face head-dress, no jewels except my long earrings that belonged to great-aunt Delagardie. ( N.B. Publisher must have come well up to scratch on new book.) H. to be married from her College (rather nice, I think) tremendous wirings and swearings to secrecy. Bunter to go ahead and see that all is in order at Talboys.
     
       2 October.— We have had to cancel Bunter. He is being dogged by pressmen. Found one forcing his way into Peter’s flat via service lift. B. narrowly escaped summons for assault. P. said, better take Talboys (including drains) on trust. Payment completed, and Noakes says he will have everything ready—quite accustomed to letting house for summer holidays, so it should be all right.... Helen agitated because no invitations yet sent out for 16th. Told her I believed 16th not yet officially settled. Helen asked, Why the delay? Had Peter got cold feet, or was that girl playing him up again? ... I suggested, wedding their own affair, both being well over age.... They are taking no servants but Bunter, who is a host in himself, and can do all they want with local help. I fancy Harriet rather shrinks from starting off at once with a strange staff, and Peter wants to spare her. And Town maids are always a perfect nuisance in the country. If Harriet can once establish herself with Bunter she will have no further trouble with domestics!
     
       4 October.— Went round to Peter’s flat to advise about settings for some stones he picked up in Italy. While there registered post brought large, flat envelope—Harriet’s writing. Wondered what it was she wanted to send and not bring. (Inquisitive me!) Watched Peter open it, while pretending to examine zircon (such a lovely colour!). He flushed up in that absurd way he has when anybody says anything rather personal to him, and stood staring at the thing till I got quite wound up, and said, ‘What is it?’ He said, in an odd sort of voice, ‘The bride’s gift to the bridegroom.’ It had been worrying me for some time how she’d grapple with that, because there isn’t an awful lot, really, one can give a very well-off man, unless one is frightfully well off oneself, and the wrong thing is worse than nothing, but all the same, nobody really wants to be kindly told that they can’t bring a better gift than their sweet selves—very pretty but so patronising and Lord of Burleigh—and after all, we all have human instincts, and giving people things is one of them. So I dashed up to look, and it was a letter written on a single sheet in a very beautiful seventeenth-century hand. Peter said, ‘The funny thing is that the catalogue was sent to me in Rome, and I wired for this, and was ridiculously angry to learn it had been sold.’ I said, ‘But you don’t collect manuscripts.’ And he said, ‘No, but I wanted this for Harriet.’ And he turned it over, and I could read the signature, ‘John Donne’, and that explained a lot, because of course Peter has always been queer about Donne. It seems it’s a very beautiful letter from D. to a parishioner—Lady Somebody—about Divine and human love. I was trying to read it, only I never can make out that old-fashioned kind of writing (wonder what Helen will make of it—no doubt she’ll think a gold cigarette-lighter would have been much more suitable)—when I found Peter had got on the phone, and was saying, ‘Listen, dear heart,’ in a voice I’d never heard him use in his life. So I shot out of the room, and ran slap into Bunter, just coming in from the hall-door. Afraid Peter is getting out of hand,