Busman’s Honeymoon by Dorothy L. Sayers Read Free Book Online

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