“I gathered from Mr. Fink-Nottle’s remarks, sir, that something very much on those lines was what occurred. Eventually, after a trying night, he found his way to Mr. Sipperley’s residence, where he was able to secure lodging and a change of costume in the morning.”
I nestled against the pillows, the brow a bit drawn. It is all very well to try to do old school friends a spot of good, but I could not but feel that in espousing the cause of a lunkhead capable of mucking things up as Gussie had done, I had taken on a contract almost too big for human consumption. It seemed to me that what Gussie needed was not so much the advice of a seasoned man of the world as a padded cell in Colney Hatch and a couple of good keepers to see that he did not set the place on fire.
Indeed, for an instant I had half a mind to withdraw from the case and hand it back to Jeeves. But the pride of the Woosters restrained me. When we Woosters put our hands to the plough, we do not readily sheathe the sword. Besides, after that business of the mess-jacket, anything resembling weakness would have been fatal.
“I suppose you realize, Jeeves,” I said, for though one dislikes to rub it in, these things have to be pointed out, “that all this was your fault?”
“Sir?”
“It’s no good saying ‘Sir?’ You know it was. If you had not insisted on his going to that dance--a mad project, as I spotted from the first--this would not have happened.”
“Yes, sir, but I confess I did not anticipate----”
“Always anticipate everything, Jeeves,” I said, a little sternly. “It is the only way. Even if you had allowed him to wear a Pierrot costume, things would not have panned out as they did. A Pierrot costume has pockets. However,” I went on more kindly, “we need not go into that now. If all this has shown you what comes of going about the place in scarlet tights, that is something gained. Gussie waits without, you say?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Then shoot him in, and I will see what I can do for him.”
-6-
Gussie, on arrival, proved to be still showing traces of his grim experience. The face was pale, the eyes gooseberry-like, the ears drooping, and the whole aspect that of a man who has passed through the furnace and been caught in the machinery. I hitched myself up a bit higher on the pillows and gazed at him narrowly. It was a moment, I could see, when first aid was required, and I prepared to get down to cases.
“Well, Gussie.”
“Hullo, Bertie.”
“What ho.”
“What ho.”
These civilities concluded, I felt that the moment had come to touch delicately on the past.
“I hear you’ve been through it a bit.”
“Yes.”
“Thanks to Jeeves.”
“It wasn’t Jeeves’s fault.”
“Entirely Jeeves’s fault.”
“I don’t see that. I forgot my money and latchkey----”
“And now you’d better forget Jeeves. For you will be interested to hear, Gussie,” I said, deeming it best to put him in touch with the position of affairs right away, “that he is no longer handling your little problem.”
This seemed to slip it across him properly. The jaws fell, the ears drooped more limply. He had been looking like a dead fish. He now looked like a deader fish, one of last year’s, cast up on some lonely beach and left there at the mercy of the wind and tides.
“What!”
“Yes.”
“You don’t mean that Jeeves isn’t going to----”
“No.”
“But, dash it----”
I was kind, but firm.
“You will be much better off without him. Surely your terrible experiences of that awful night have told you that Jeeves needs a rest. The keenest of thinkers strikes a bad patch occasionally. That is what has happened to Jeeves. I have seen it coming on for some time. He has lost his form. He wants his plugs decarbonized. No doubt this is a shock to you. I suppose you came here this morning to seek his advice?”
“Of course I did.”
“On what point?”
“Madeline Bassett has gone to stay with these people in the country, and I want to know what he thinks I ought to do.”
“Well, as I say, Jeeves is off the case.”
“But, Bertie, dash it----”
“Jeeves,” I said with a certain asperity, “is no longer on the case. I am now in sole charge.”
“But what on earth can you do?”
I curbed my resentment. We Woosters are fair-minded. We can make allowances for men who have been parading London all night in scarlet tights.
“That,” I said quietly, “we shall see. Sit down and let us confer. I am bound to say the thing seems quite simple to me. You say this girl has gone to visit friends in the country. It would appear obvious that you must go there too, and flock round her like a poultice. Elementary.”
“But I can’t plant myself on a lot of perfect strangers.”
“Don’t you know these people?”
“Of course I don’t. I don’t know anybody.”
I pursed the lips. This did seem to complicate matters somewhat.
“All that I know is that their name is Travers, and it’s a place called Brinkley Court down in Worcestershire.”
I unpursed my lips.
“Gussie,” I said, smiling paternally, “it was a lucky day for you when Bertram Wooster interested himself in your affairs. As I foresaw from the start, I can fix everything. This afternoon you shall go to Brinkley Court, an honoured guest.”
He quivered like a mousse. I suppose it must always be rather a thrilling experience for the novice to watch me taking hold.
“But, Bertie, you don’t mean you know these Traverses?”
“They are my Aunt Dahlia.”
“My gosh!”
“You see now,” I pointed out, “how lucky you were to get me behind you. You go to Jeeves, and what does he do? He dresses you up in scarlet tights and one of the foulest false beards of my experience, and sends you off to fancy-dress balls. Result, agony of spirit and no progress. I then take over and put you on the right lines. Could Jeeves have got you into Brinkley Court? Not a chance. Aunt Dahlia isn’t his aunt. I merely mention these things.”
“By Jove, Bertie, I don’t know how to thank you.”
“My dear chap!”
“But, I say.”
“Now what?”
“What do I do when I get there?”
“If you knew Brinkley Court, you would not ask that question. In those romantic surroundings you can’t miss. Great lovers through the ages have fixed up the preliminary formalities at Brinkley. The place is simply ill with atmosphere. You will stroll with the girl in the shady walks. You will sit with her on the shady lawns. You will row on the lake with her. And gradually you will find yourself working up to a point where----”
“By Jove, I believe you’re right.”
“Of course, I’m right. I’ve got engaged three times at Brinkley. No business resulted, but the fact remains. And I went there without the foggiest idea of indulging in the tender pash. I hadn’t the slightest intention of proposing to anybody. Yet no sooner had I entered those romantic grounds than I found myself reaching out for the nearest girl in sight and slapping my soul down in front of her. It’s something in the air.”
“I see exactly what you mean. That’s just what I want to be able to do--work up to it. And in London--curse the place--everything’s in such a rush that you don’t get a chance.”
“Quite. You see a girl alone for about five minutes a day, and if you want to ask her to be your wife, you’ve got to charge into it as if you were trying to grab the gold ring on a merry-go-round.”
“That’s right. London rattles one. I shall be a different man altogether in the country. What a bit of luck this Travers woman turning out to be your aunt.”
“I don’t know what you mean, turning out to be my aunt. She has been my aunt all along.”
“I mean, how extraordinary that it should be your aunt that Madeline’s going to stay with.”
“Not at all. She and my Cousin Angela are close friends. At Cannes she was with us all the time.”
“Oh, you met Madeline at Cannes, did you? By Jove, Bertie,” said the poor lizard devoutly, “I wish I could have seen her at Cannes. How wonderful she must have looked in beach pyjamas! Oh, Bertie----”
“Quite,” I said, a little distantly. Even when restored by one of Jeeves’s depth bombs, one doesn’t want this sort of thing after a hard night. I touched the bell and, when Jeeves appeared, requested him to bring me telegraph form and pencil. I then wrote a well-worded communication to Aunt Dahlia, informing her that I was sending my friend, Augustus Fink-Nottle, down to Brinkley today to enjoy her hospitality, and handed it to Gussie.
“Push that in at the first post office you pass,” I said. “She will find it waiting for her on her return.”
Gussie popped along, flapping the telegram and looking like a close-up of Joan Crawford, and I turned to Jeeves and gave him a précis of my operations.
“Simple, you observe, Jeeves. Nothing elaborate.”
“No, sir.”
“Nothing far-fetched. Nothing strained or bizarre. Just Nature’s remedy.”
“Yes, sir.”
“This is the attack as it should have been delivered. What do you call it when two people of opposite sexes are bunged together in close association in a secluded spot, meeting each other every day and seeing a lot of each other?”
“Is ‘propinquity’ the word you wish, sir?”
“It is. I stake everything on propinquity, Jeeves. Propinquity, in my opinion, is what will do the trick. At the moment, as you are aware, Gussie is a mere jelly when in the presence. But ask yourself how he will feel in a week or so, after he and she have been helping themselves to sausages out of the same dish day after day at the breakfast sideboard. Cutting the same ham, ladling out communal kidneys and bacon--why----”
I broke off abruptly. I had had one of my ideas.
“Golly, Jeeves!”
“Sir?”
“Here’s an instance of how you have to think of everything. You heard me mention sausages, kidneys and bacon and ham.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, there must be nothing of that. Fatal. The wrong note entirely. Give me that telegraph form and pencil. I must warn Gussie without delay. What he’s got to do is to create in this girl’s mind the impression that he is pining away for love of her. This cannot be done by wolfing sausages.”
“No, sir.”
“Very well, then.”
And, taking form and p., I drafted the following:
_Fink-Nottle
Brinkley Court,
Market Snodsbury
Worcestershire
Lay off the sausages. Avoid the ham.
Bertie._
“Send that off, Jeeves, instanter.”
“Very good, sir.”
I sank back on the pillows.
“Well, Jeeves,” I said, “you see how I am taking hold. You notice the grip I am getting on this case. No doubt you realize now that it would pay you to study my methods.”
“No doubt, sir.”
“And even now you aren’t on to the full depths of the extraordinary sagacity I’ve shown. Do you know what brought Aunt Dahlia up here this morning? She came to tell me I’d got to distribute the prizes at some beastly seminary she’s a governor of down at Market Snodsbury.”
“Indeed, sir? I fear you will scarcely find that a congenial task.”
“Ah, but I’m not going to do it. I’m going to shove it off on to Gussie.”
“Sir?”
“I propose, Jeeves, to wire to Aunt Dahlia saying that I can’t get down, and suggesting that she unleashes him on these young Borstal inmates of hers in my stead.”
“But if Mr. Fink-Nottle should decline, sir?”
“Decline? Can you see him declining? Just conjure up the picture in your mind, Jeeves. Scene, the drawing-room at Brinkley; Gussie wedged into a corner, with Aunt Dahlia standing over him making hunting noises. I put it to you, Jeeves, can you see him declining?”
“Not readily, sir. I agree. Mrs. Travers is a forceful personality.”
“He won’t have a hope of declining. His only way out would be to slide off. And he can’t slide off, because he wants to be with Miss Bassett. No, Gussie will have to toe the line, and I shall be saved from a job at which I confess the soul shuddered. Getting up on a platform and delivering a short, manly speech to a lot of foul school-kids! Golly, Jeeves. I’ve been through that sort of thing once, what? You remember that time at the girls’ school?”
“Very vividly, sir.”
“What an ass I made of myself!”
“Certainly I have seen you to better advantage, sir.”
“I think you might bring me just one more of those dynamite specials of yours, Jeeves. This narrow squeak has made me come over all faint.”
I suppose it must have taken Aunt Dahlia three hours or so to get back to Brinkley, because it wasn’t till well after lunch that her telegram arrived. It read like a telegram that had been dispatched in a white-hot surge of emotion some two minutes after she had read mine.
As follows:
Am taking legal advice to ascertain whether strangling an idiot nephew counts as murder. If it doesn’t look out for yourself. Consider your conduct frozen limit. What do you mean by planting your loathsome friends on me like this? Do you think Brinkley Court is a leper colony or what is it? Who is this Spink-Bottle? Love. Travers.
I had expected some such initial reaction. I replied in temperate vein:
Not Bottle. Nottle. Regards. Bertie.
Almost immediately after she had dispatched the above heart cry, Gussie must have arrived, for it wasn’t twenty minutes later when I received the following:
Cipher telegram signed by you has reached me here. Runs “Lay off the sausages. Avoid the ham.” Wire key immediately. Fink-Nottle.
I replied:
Also kidneys. Cheerio. Bertie.
I had staked all on Gussie making a favourable impression on his hostess, basing my confidence on the fact that he was one of those timid, obsequious, teacup-passing, thin-bread-and-butter-offering yes-men whom women of my Aunt Dahlia’s type nearly always like at first sight. That I had not overrated my acumen was proved by her next in order, which, I was pleased to note, assayed a markedly larger percentage of the milk of human kindness.
As follows:
_Well, this friend of yours has got here, and I must say that for a friend of yours he seems less sub-human than I had expected. A bit of a pop-eyed bleater, but on the whole clean and civil, and certainly most informative about newts. Am considering arranging series of lectures for him in neighbourhood. All the same I like your nerve using my house as a summer-hotel resort and shall have much to say to you on subject when you come down. Expect you thirtieth. Bring spats. Love. Travers._
To this I riposted:
On consulting engagement book find impossible come Brinkley Court. Deeply regret. Toodle-oo. Bertie.
Hers in reply stuck a sinister note:
_Oh, so it’s like that, is it? You and your engagement book, indeed. Deeply regret my foot. Let me tell you, my lad, that you will regret it a jolly sight more deeply if you don’t come down. If you imagine for one moment that you are going to get out of distributing those prizes, you are very much mistaken. Deeply regret Brinkley Court hundred miles from London, as unable hit you with a brick. Love. Travers._
I then put my fortune to the test, to win or lose it all. It was not a moment for petty economies. I let myself go regardless of expense:
No, but dash it, listen. Honestly, you don’t want me. Get Fink-Nottle distribute prizes. A born distributor, who will do you credit. Confidently anticipate Augustus Fink-Nottle as Master of Revels on thirty-first inst. would make genuine sensation. Do not miss this great chance, which may never occur again. Tinkerty-tonk. Bertie.
There was an hour of breathless suspense, and then the joyful tidings arrived:
Well, all right. Something in what you say, I suppose. Consider you treacherous worm and contemptible, spineless cowardly custard, but have booked Spink-Bottle. Stay where you are, then, and I hope you get run over by an omnibus. Love. Travers.
The relief, as you may well imagine, was stupendous. A great weight seemed to have rolled off my mind. It was as if somebody had been pouring Jeeves’s pick-me-ups into me through a funnel. I sang as I dressed for dinner that night. At the Drones I was so gay and cheery that there were several complaints. And when I got home and turned into the old bed, I fell asleep like a little child within five minutes of inserting the person between the sheets. It seemed to me that the whole distressing affair might now be considered definitely closed.
Conceive my astonishment, therefore, when waking on the morrow and sitting up to dig into the morning tea-cup, I beheld on the tray another telegram.
My heart sank. Could Aunt Dahlia have slept on it and changed her mind? Could Gussie, unable to face the ordeal confronting him, have legged it during the night down a water-pipe? With these speculations racing through the bean, I tore open the envelope And as I noted contents I uttered a startled yip.
“Sir?” said Jeeves, pausing at the door.
I read the thing again. Yes, I had got the gist all right. No, I had not been deceived in the substance.
“Jeeves,” I said, “do you know what?”
“No, sir.”
“You know my cousin Angela?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You know young Tuppy Glossop?”
“Yes, sir.”
“They’ve broken off their engagement.”
“I am sorry to hear that, sir.”
“I have here a communication from Aunt Dahlia, specifically stating this. I wonder what the row was about.”
“I could not say, sir.”
“Of course you couldn’t. Don’t be an ass, Jeeves.”
“No, sir.”
I brooded. I was deeply moved.
“Well, this means that we shall have to go down to Brinkley today. Aunt Dahlia is obviously all of a twitter, and my place is by her side. You had better pack this morning, and catch that 12.45 train with the luggage. I have a lunch engagement, so will follow in the car.”
“Very good, sir.”
I brooded some more.
“I must say this has come as a great shock to me, Jeeves.”
“No doubt, sir.”
“A very great shock. Angela and Tuppy.... Tut, tut! Why, they seemed like the paper on the wall. Life is full of sadness, Jeeves.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Still, there it is.”
“Undoubtedly, sir.”
“Right ho, then. Switch on the bath.”
“Very good, sir.”
-7-
I meditated pretty freely as I drove down to Brinkley in the old two-seater that afternoon. The news of this rift or rupture of Angela’s and Tuppy’s had disturbed me greatly.
The projected match, you see, was one on which I had always looked with kindly approval. Too often, when a chap of your acquaintance is planning to marry a girl you know, you find yourself knitting the brow a bit and chewing the lower lip dubiously, feeling that he or she, or both, should be warned while there is yet time.
But I have never felt anything of this nature about Tuppy and Angela. Tuppy, when not making an ass of himself, is a soundish sort of egg. So is Angela a soundish sort of egg. And, as far as being in love was concerned, it had always seemed to me that you wouldn’t have been far out in describing them as two hearts that beat as one.
True, they had had their little tiffs, notably on the occasion when Tuppy--with what he said was fearless honesty and I considered thorough goofiness--had told Angela that her new hat made her look like a Pekingese. But in every romance you have to budget for the occasional dust-up, and after that incident I had supposed that he had learned his lesson and that from then on life would be one grand, sweet song.
And now this wholly unforeseen severing of diplomatic relations had popped up through a trap.
I gave the thing the cream of the Wooster brain all the way down, but it continued to beat me what could have caused the outbreak of hostilities, and I bunged my foot sedulously on the accelerator in order to get to Aunt Dahlia with the greatest possible speed and learn the inside history straight from the horse’s mouth. And what with all six cylinders hitting nicely, I made good time and found myself closeted with the relative shortly before the hour of the evening cocktail.
She seemed glad to see me. In fact, she actually said she was glad to see me--a statement no other aunt on the list would have committed herself to, the customary reaction of these near and dear ones to the spectacle of Bertram arriving for a visit being a sort of sick horror.
“Decent of you to rally round, Bertie,” she said.
“My place was by your side, Aunt Dahlia,” I responded.
I could see at a g. that the unfortunate affair had got in amongst her in no uncertain manner. Her usually cheerful map was clouded, and the genial smile conspic. by its a. I pressed her hand sympathetically, to indicate that my heart bled for her.
“Bad show this, my dear old flesh and blood,” I said. “I’m afraid you’ve been having a sticky time. You must be worried.”
She snorted emotionally. She looked like an aunt who has just bitten into a bad oyster.
“Worried is right. I haven’t had a peaceful moment since I got back from Cannes. Ever since I put my foot across this blasted threshold,” said Aunt Dahlia, returning for the nonce to the hearty argot of the hunting field, “everything’s been at sixes and sevens. First there was that mix-up about the prize-giving.”
She paused at this point and gave me a look. “I had been meaning to speak freely to you about your behaviour in that matter, Bertie,” she said. “I had some good things all stored up. But, as you’ve rallied round like this, I suppose I shall have to let you off. And, anyway, it is probably all for the best that you evaded your obligations in that sickeningly craven way. I have an idea that this Spink-Bottle of yours is going to be good. If only he can keep off newts.”
“Has he been talking about newts?”
“He has. Fixing me with a glittering eye, like the Ancient Mariner. But if that was the worst I had to bear, I wouldn’t mind. What I’m worrying about is what Tom says when he starts talking.”
“Uncle Tom?”
“I wish there was something else you could call him except ‘Uncle Tom’,” said Aunt Dahlia a little testily. “Every time you do it, I expect to see him turn black and start playing the banjo. Yes, Uncle Tom, if you must have it. I shall have to tell him soon about losing all that money at baccarat, and, when I do, he will go up like a rocket.”
“Still, no doubt Time, the great healer----”
“Time, the great healer, be blowed. I’ve got to get a cheque for five hundred pounds out of him for Milady’s Boudoir by August the third at the latest.”
I was concerned. Apart from a nephew’s natural interest in an aunt’s refined weekly paper, I had always had a soft spot in my heart for Milady’s Boudoir ever since I contributed that article to it on What the Well-Dressed Man is Wearing. Sentimental, possibly, but we old journalists do have these feelings.
“Is the Boudoir on the rocks?”
“It will be if Tom doesn’t cough up. It needs help till it has turned the corner.”
“But wasn’t it turning the corner two years ago?”
“It was. And it’s still at it. Till you’ve run a weekly paper for women, you don’t know what corners are.”
“And you think the chances of getting into uncle--into my uncle by marriage’s ribs are slight?”
“I’ll tell you, Bertie. Up till now, when these subsidies were required, I have always been able to come to Tom in the gay, confident spirit of an only child touching an indulgent father for chocolate cream. But he’s just had a demand from the income-tax people for an additional fifty-eight pounds, one and threepence, and all he’s been talking about since I got back has been ruin and the sinister trend of socialistic legislation and what will become of us all.”
I could readily believe it. This Tom has a peculiarity I’ve noticed in other very oofy men. Nick him for the paltriest sum, and he lets out a squawk you can hear at Land’s End. He has the stuff in gobs, but he hates giving up.
“If it wasn’t for Anatole’s cooking, I doubt if he would bother to carry on. Thank God for Anatole, I say.”
I bowed my head reverently.
“Good old Anatole,” I said.
“Amen,” said Aunt Dahlia.
Then the look of holy ecstasy, which is always the result of letting the mind dwell, however briefly, on Anatole’s cooking, died out of her face.
“But don’t let me wander from the subject,” she resumed. “I was telling you of the way hell’s foundations have been quivering since I got home. First the prize-giving, then Tom, and now, on top of everything else, this infernal quarrel between Angela and young Glossop.”
I nodded gravely. “I was frightfully sorry to hear of that. Terrible shock. What was the row about?”
“Sharks.”
“Eh?”
“Sharks. Or, rather, one individual shark. The brute that went for the poor child when she was aquaplaning at Cannes. You remember Angela’s shark?”
Certainly I remembered Angela’s shark. A man of sensibility does not forget about a cousin nearly being chewed by monsters of the deep. The episode was still green in my memory.
In a nutshell, what had occurred was this: You know how you aquaplane. A motor-boat nips on ahead, trailing a rope. You stand on a board, holding the rope, and the boat tows you along. And every now and then you lose your grip on the rope and plunge into the sea and have to swim to your board again.
A silly process it has always seemed to me, though many find it diverting.
Well, on the occasion referred to, Angela had just regained her board after taking a toss, when a great beastly shark came along and cannoned into it, flinging her into the salty once more. It took her quite a bit of time to get on again and make the motor-boat chap realize what was up and haul her to safety, and during that interval you can readily picture her embarrassment.
According to Angela, the finny denizen kept snapping at her ankles virtually without cessation, so that by the time help arrived, she was feeling more like a salted almond at a public dinner than anything human. Very shaken the poor child had been, I recall, and had talked of nothing else for weeks.
“I remember the whole incident vividly,” I said. “But how did that start the trouble?”
“She was telling him the story last night.”
“Well?”
“Her eyes shining and her little hands clasped in girlish excitement.”
“No doubt.”
“And instead of giving her the understanding and sympathy to which she was entitled, what do you think this blasted Glossop did? He sat listening like a lump of dough, as if she had been talking about the weather, and when she had finished, he took his cigarette holder out of his mouth and said, ‘I expect it was only a floating log’!”
“He didn’t!”
“He did. And when Angela described how the thing had jumped and snapped at her, he took his cigarette holder out of his mouth again, and said, ‘Ah! Probably a flatfish. Quite harmless. No doubt it was just trying to play.’ Well, I mean! What would you have done if you had been Angela? She has pride, sensibility, all the natural feelings of a good woman. She told him he was an ass and a fool and an idiot, and didn’t know what he was talking about.”
I must say I saw the girl’s viewpoint. It’s only about once in a lifetime that anything sensational ever happens to one, and when it does, you don’t want people taking all the colour out of it. I remember at school having to read that stuff where that chap, Othello, tells the girl what a hell of a time he’d been having among the cannibals and what not. Well, imagine his feelings if, after he had described some particularly sticky passage with a cannibal chief and was waiting for the awestruck “Oh-h! Not really?”, she had said that the whole thing had no doubt been greatly exaggerated and that the man had probably really been a prominent local vegetarian.
Yes, I saw Angela’s point of view.
“But don’t tell me that when he saw how shirty she was about it, the chump didn’t back down?”
“He didn’t. He argued. And one thing led to another until, by easy stages, they had arrived at the point where she was saying that she didn’t know if he was aware of it, but if he didn’t knock off starchy foods and do exercises every morning, he would be getting as fat as a pig, and he was talking about this modern habit of girls putting make-up on their faces, of which he had always disapproved. This continued for a while, and then there was a loud pop and the air was full of mangled fragments of their engagement. I’m distracted about it. Thank goodness you’ve come, Bertie.”
“Nothing could have kept me away,” I replied, touched. “I felt you needed me.”
“Yes.”
“Quite.”
“Or, rather,” she said, “not you, of course, but Jeeves. The minute all this happened, I thought of him. The situation obviously cries out for Jeeves. If ever in the whole history of human affairs there was a moment when that lofty brain was required about the home, this is it.”
I think, if I had been standing up, I would have staggered. In fact, I’m pretty sure I would. But it isn’t so dashed easy to stagger when you’re sitting in an arm-chair. Only my face, therefore, showed how deeply I had been stung by these words.
Until she spoke them, I had been all sweetness and light--the sympathetic nephew prepared to strain every nerve to do his bit. I now froze, and the face became hard and set.
“Jeeves!” I said, between clenched teeth.
“Oom beroofen,” said Aunt Dahlia.
I saw that she had got the wrong angle.
“I was not sneezing. I was saying ‘Jeeves!’”
“And well you may. What a man! I’m going to put the whole thing up to him. There’s nobody like Jeeves.”
My frigidity became more marked.
“I venture to take issue with you, Aunt Dahlia.”
“You take what?”
“Issue.”
“You do, do you?”
“I emphatically do. Jeeves is hopeless.”
“What?”
“Quite hopeless. He has lost his grip completely. Only a couple of days ago I was compelled to take him off a case because his handling of it was so footling. And, anyway, I resent this assumption, if assumption is the word I want, that Jeeves is the only fellow with brain. I object to the way everybody puts things up to him without consulting me and letting me have a stab at them first.”
She seemed about to speak, but I checked her with a gesture.
“It is true that in the past I have sometimes seen fit to seek Jeeves’s advice. It is possible that in the future I may seek it again. But I claim the right to have a pop at these problems, as they arise, in person, without having everybody behave as if Jeeves was the only onion in the hash. I sometimes feel that Jeeves, though admittedly not unsuccessful in the past, has been lucky rather than gifted.”
“Have you and Jeeves had a row?”
“Nothing of the kind.”
“You seem to have it in for him.”
“Not at all.”
And yet I must admit that there was a modicum of truth in what she said. I had been feeling pretty austere about the man all day, and I’ll tell you why.
You remember that he caught that 12.45 train with the luggage, while I remained on in order to keep a luncheon engagement. Well, just before I started out to the tryst, I was pottering about the flat, and suddenly--I don’t know what put the suspicion into my head, possibly the fellow’s manner had been furtive--something seemed to whisper to me to go and have a look in the wardrobe.
And it was as I had suspected. There was the mess-jacket still on its hanger. The hound hadn’t packed it.
Well, as anybody at the Drones will tell you, Bertram Wooster is a pretty hard chap to outgeneral. I shoved the thing in a brown-paper parcel and put it in the back of the car, and it was on a chair in the hall now. But that didn’t alter the fact that Jeeves had attempted to do the dirty on me, and I suppose a certain what-d’you-call-it had crept into my manner during the above remarks.
“There has been no breach,” I said. “You might describe it as a passing coolness, but no more. We did not happen to see eye to eye with regard to my white mess-jacket with the brass buttons and I was compelled to assert my personality. But----”
“Well, it doesn’t matter, anyway. The thing that matters is that you are talking piffle, you poor fish. Jeeves lost his grip? Absurd. Why, I saw him for a moment when he arrived, and his eyes were absolutely glittering with intelligence. I said to myself ‘Trust Jeeves,’ and I intend to.”
“You would be far better advised to let me see what I can accomplish, Aunt Dahlia.”
“For heaven’s sake, don’t you start butting in. You’ll only make matters worse.”
“On the contrary, it may interest you to know that while driving here I concentrated deeply on this trouble of Angela’s and was successful in formulating a plan, based on the psychology of the individual, which I am proposing to put into effect at an early moment.”
“Oh, my God!”
“My knowledge of human nature tells me it will work.”
“Bertie,” said Aunt Dahlia, and her manner struck me as febrile, “lay off, lay off! For pity’s sake, lay off. I know these plans of yours. I suppose you want to shove Angela into the lake and push young Glossop in after her to save her life, or something like that.”
“Nothing of the kind.”
“It’s the sort of thing you would do.”
“My scheme is far more subtle. Let me outline it for you.”
“No, thanks.”
“I say to myself----”
“But not to me.”
“Do listen for a second.”
“I won’t.”
“Right ho, then. I am dumb.”
“And have been from a child.”
I perceived that little good could result from continuing the discussion. I waved a hand and shrugged a shoulder.
“Very well, Aunt Dahlia,” I said, with dignity, “if you don’t want to be in on the ground floor, that is your affair. But you are missing an intellectual treat. And, anyway, no matter how much you may behave like the deaf adder of Scripture which, as you are doubtless aware, the more one piped, the less it danced, or words to that effect, I shall carry on as planned. I am extremely fond of Angela, and I shall spare no effort to bring the sunshine back into her heart.”
“Bertie, you abysmal chump, I appeal to you once more. Will you please lay off? You’ll only make things ten times as bad as they are already.”
I remember reading in one of those historical novels once about a chap--a buck he would have been, no doubt, or a macaroni or some such bird as that--who, when people said the wrong thing, merely laughed down from lazy eyelids and flicked a speck of dust from the irreproachable Mechlin lace at his wrists. This was practically what I did now. At least, I straightened my tie and smiled one of those inscrutable smiles of mine. I then withdrew and went out for a saunter in the garden.
And the first chap I ran into was young Tuppy. His brow was furrowed, and he was moodily bunging stones at a flowerpot.
-8-
I think I have told you before about young Tuppy Glossop. He was the fellow, if you remember, who, callously ignoring the fact that we had been friends since boyhood, betted me one night at the Drones that I could swing myself across the swimming bath by the rings--a childish feat for one of my lissomeness--and then, having seen me well on the way, looped back the last ring, thus rendering it necessary for me to drop into the deep end in formal evening costume.
To say that I had not resented this foul deed, which seemed to me deserving of the title of the crime of the century, would be paltering with the truth. I had resented it profoundly, chafing not a little at the time and continuing to chafe for some weeks.
But you know how it is with these things. The wound heals. The agony abates.
I am not saying, mind you, that had the opportunity presented itself of dropping a wet sponge on Tuppy from some high spot or of putting an eel in his bed or finding some other form of self-expression of a like nature, I would not have embraced it eagerly; but that let me out. I mean to say, grievously injured though I had been, it gave me no pleasure to feel that the fellow’s bally life was being ruined by the loss of a girl whom, despite all that had passed, I was convinced he still loved like the dickens.
On the contrary, I was heart and soul in favour of healing the breach and rendering everything hotsy-totsy once more between these two young sundered blighters. You will have gleaned that from my remarks to Aunt Dahlia, and if you had been present at this moment and had seen the kindly commiserating look I gave Tuppy, you would have gleaned it still more.
It was one of those searching, melting looks, and was accompanied by the hearty clasp of the right hand and the gentle laying of the left on the collar-bone.
“Well, Tuppy, old man,” I said. “How are you, old man?”
My commiseration deepened as I spoke the words, for there had been no lighting up of the eye, no answering pressure of the palm, no sign whatever, in short, of any disposition on his part to do Spring dances at the sight of an old friend. The man seemed sandbagged. Melancholy, as I remember Jeeves saying once about Pongo Twistleton when he was trying to knock off smoking, had marked him for her own. Not that I was surprised, of course. In the circs., no doubt, a certain moodiness was only natural.
I released the hand, ceased to knead the shoulder, and, producing the old case, offered him a cigarette.
He took it dully.
“Are you here, Bertie?” he asked.
“Yes, I’m here.”
“Just passing through, or come to stay?”
I thought for a moment. I might have told him that I had arrived at Brinkley Court with the express intention of bringing Angela and himself together once more, of knitting up the severed threads, and so on and so forth; and for perhaps half the time required for the lighting of a gasper I had almost decided to do so. Then, I reflected, better, on the whole, perhaps not. To broadcast the fact that I proposed to take him and Angela and play on them as on a couple of stringed instruments might have been injudicious. Chaps don’t always like being played on as on a stringed instrument.
“It all depends,” I said. “I may remain. I may push on. My plans are uncertain.”
He nodded listlessly, rather in the manner of a man who did not give a damn what I did, and stood gazing out over the sunlit garden. In build and appearance, Tuppy somewhat resembles a bulldog, and his aspect now was that of one of these fine animals who has just been refused a slice of cake. It was not difficult for a man of my discernment to read what was in his mind, and it occasioned me no surprise, therefore, when his next words had to do with the subject marked with a cross on the agenda paper.
“You’ve heard of this business of mine, I suppose? Me and Angela?”
“I have, indeed, Tuppy, old man.”
“We’ve bust up.”
“I know. Some little friction, I gather, in re Angela’s shark.”
“Yes. I said it must have been a flatfish.”
“So my informant told me.”
“Who did you hear it from?”
“Aunt Dahlia.”
“I suppose she cursed me properly?”
“Oh, no.”
“Beyond referring to you in one passage as ‘this blasted Glossop’, she was, I thought, singularly temperate in her language for a woman who at one time hunted regularly with the Quorn. All the same, I could see, if you don’t mind me saying so, old man, that she felt you might have behaved with a little more tact.”
“Tact!”
“And I must admit I rather agreed with her. Was it nice, Tuppy, was it quite kind to take the bloom off Angela’s shark like that? You must remember that Angela’s shark is very dear to her. Could you not see what a sock on the jaw it would be for the poor child to hear it described by the man to whom she had given her heart as a flatfish?”
I saw that he was struggling with some powerful emotion.
“And what about my side of the thing?” he demanded, in a voice choked with feeling.
“Your side?”
“You don’t suppose,” said Tuppy, with rising vehemence, “that I would have exposed this dashed synthetic shark for the flatfish it undoubtedly was if there had not been causes that led up to it. What induced me to speak as I did was the fact that Angela, the little squirt, had just been most offensive, and I seized the opportunity to get a bit of my own back.”
“Offensive?”
“Exceedingly offensive. Purely on the strength of my having let fall some casual remark--simply by way of saying something and keeping the conversation going--to the effect that I wondered what Anatole was going to give us for dinner, she said that I was too material and ought not always to be thinking of food. Material, my elbow! As a matter of fact, I’m particularly spiritual.”
“Quite.”
“I don’t see any harm in wondering what Anatole was going to give us for dinner. Do you?”
“Of course not. A mere ordinary tribute of respect to a great artist.”
“Exactly.”
“All the same----”
“Well?”
“I was only going to say that it seems a pity that the frail craft of love should come a stinker like this when a few manly words of contrition----”
He stared at me.
“You aren’t suggesting that I should climb down?”
“It would be the fine, big thing, old egg.”
“I wouldn’t dream of climbing down.”
“But, Tuppy----”
“No. I wouldn’t do it.”
“But you love her, don’t you?”
This touched the spot. He quivered noticeably, and his mouth twisted. Quite the tortured soul.
“I’m not saying I don’t love the little blighter,” he said, obviously moved. “I love her passionately. But that doesn’t alter the fact that I consider that what she needs most in this world is a swift kick in the pants.”
A Wooster could scarcely pass this. “Tuppy, old man!”
“It’s no good saying ‘Tuppy, old man’.”
“Well, I do say ‘Tuppy, old man’. Your tone shocks me. One raises the eyebrows. Where is the fine, old, chivalrous spirit of the Glossops.”
“That’s all right about the fine, old, chivalrous spirit of the Glossops. Where is the sweet, gentle, womanly spirit of the Angelas? Telling a fellow he was getting a double chin!”
“Did she do that?”
“She did.”
“Oh, well, girls will be girls. Forget it, Tuppy. Go to her and make it up.”
He shook his head.
“No. It is too late. Remarks have been passed about my tummy which it is impossible to overlook.”
“But, Tummy--Tuppy, I mean--be fair. You once told her her new hat made her look like a Pekingese.”
“It did make her look like a Pekingese. That was not vulgar abuse. It was sound, constructive criticism, with no motive behind it but the kindly desire to keep her from making an exhibition of herself in public. Wantonly to accuse a man of puffing when he goes up a flight of stairs is something very different.”
I began to see that the situation would require all my address and ingenuity. If the wedding bells were ever to ring out in the little church of Market Snodsbury, Bertram had plainly got to put in some shrewdish work. I had gathered, during my conversation with Aunt Dahlia, that there had been a certain amount of frank speech between the two contracting parties, but I had not realized till now that matters had gone so far.
The pathos of the thing gave me the pip. Tuppy had admitted in so many words that love still animated the Glossop bosom, and I was convinced that, even after all that occurred, Angela had not ceased to love him. At the moment, no doubt, she might be wishing that she could hit him with a bottle, but deep down in her I was prepared to bet that there still lingered all the old affection and tenderness. Only injured pride was keeping these two apart, and I felt that if Tuppy would make the first move, all would be well.
I had another whack at it.
“She’s broken-hearted about this rift, Tuppy.”
“How do you know? Have you seen her?”
“No, but I’ll bet she is.”
“She doesn’t look it.”
“Wearing the mask, no doubt. Jeeves does that when I assert my authority.”
“She wrinkles her nose at me as if I were a drain that had got out of order.”
“Merely the mask. I feel convinced she loves you still, and that a kindly word from you is all that is required.”
I could see that this had moved him. He plainly wavered. He did a sort of twiddly on the turf with his foot. And, when he spoke, one spotted the tremolo in the voice:
“You really think that?”
“Absolutely.”
“H’m.”
“If you were to go to her----”
He shook his head.
“I can’t do that. It would be fatal. Bing, instantly, would go my prestige. I know girls. Grovel, and the best of them get uppish.” He mused. “The only way to work the thing would be by tipping her off in some indirect way that I am prepared to open negotiations. Should I sigh a bit when we meet, do you think?”
“She would think you were puffing.”
“That’s true.”
I lit another cigarette and gave my mind to the matter. And first crack out of the box, as is so often the way with the Woosters, I got an idea. I remembered the counsel I had given Gussie in the matter of the sausages and ham.
“I’ve got it, Tuppy. There is one infallible method of indicating to a girl that you love her, and it works just as well when you’ve had a row and want to make it up. Don’t eat any dinner tonight. You can see how impressive that would be. She knows how devoted you are to food.”
He started violently.
“I am not devoted to food!”
“No, no.”
“I am not devoted to food at all.”
“Quite. All I meant----”
“This rot about me being devoted to food,” said Tuppy warmly, “has got to stop. I am young and healthy and have a good appetite, but that’s not the same as being devoted to food. I admire Anatole as a master of his craft, and am always willing to consider anything he may put before me, but when you say I am devoted to food----”
“Quite, quite. All I meant was that if she sees you push away your dinner untasted, she will realize that your heart is aching, and will probably be the first to suggest blowing the all clear.”
Tuppy was frowning thoughtfully.
“Push my dinner away, eh?”
“Yes.”
“Push away a dinner cooked by Anatole?”
“Yes.”
“Push it away untasted?”
“Yes.”
“Let us get this straight. Tonight, at dinner, when the butler offers me a ris de veau à la financiere, or whatever it may be, hot from Anatole’s hands, you wish me to push it away untasted?”
“Yes.”
He chewed his lip. One could sense the struggle going on within. And then suddenly a sort of glow came into his face. The old martyrs probably used to look like that.
“All right.”
“You’ll do it?”
“I will.”
“Fine.”
“Of course, it will be agony.”
I pointed out the silver lining.
“Only for the moment. You could slip down tonight, after everyone is in bed, and raid the larder.”
He brightened.
“That’s right. I could, couldn’t I?”
“I expect there would be something cold there.”
“There is something cold there,” said Tuppy, with growing cheerfulness. “A steak-and-kidney pie. We had it for lunch today. One of Anatole’s ripest. The thing I admire about that man,” said Tuppy reverently, “the thing that I admire so enormously about Anatole is that, though a Frenchman, he does not, like so many of these chefs, confine himself exclusively to French dishes, but is always willing and ready to weigh in with some good old simple English fare such as this steak-and-kidney pie to which I have alluded. A masterly pie, Bertie, and it wasn’t more than half finished. It will do me nicely.”
“And at dinner you will push, as arranged?”
“Absolutely as arranged.”
“Fine.”
“It’s an excellent idea. One of Jeeves’s best. You can tell him from me, when you see him, that I’m much obliged.”
The cigarette fell from my fingers. It was as though somebody had slapped Bertram Wooster across the face with a wet dish-rag.
“You aren’t suggesting that you think this scheme I have been sketching out is Jeeves’s?”
“Of course it is. It’s no good trying to kid me, Bertie. You wouldn’t have thought of a wheeze like that in a million years.”
There was a pause. I drew myself up to my full height; then, seeing that he wasn’t looking at me, lowered myself again.
“Come, Glossop,” I said coldly, “we had better be going. It is time we were dressing for dinner.”
-9-
Tuppy’s fatheaded words were still rankling in my bosom as I went up to my room. They continued rankling as I shed the form-fitting, and had not ceased to rankle when, clad in the old dressing-gown, I made my way along the corridor to the salle de bain.
It is not too much to say that I was piqued to the tonsils.
I mean to say, one does not court praise. The adulation of the multitude means very little to one. But, all the same, when one has taken the trouble to whack out a highly juicy scheme to benefit an in-the-soup friend in his hour of travail, it’s pretty foul to find him giving the credit to one’s personal attendant, particularly if that personal attendant is a man who goes about the place not packing mess-jackets.
But after I had been splashing about in the porcelain for a bit, composure began to return. I have always found that in moments of heart-bowed-downness there is nothing that calms the bruised spirit like a good go at the soap and water. I don’t say I actually sang in the tub, but there were times when it was a mere spin of the coin whether I would do so or not.
The spiritual anguish induced by that tactless speech had become noticeably lessened.
The discovery of a toy duck in the soap dish, presumably the property of some former juvenile visitor, contributed not a little to this new and happier frame of mind. What with one thing and another, I hadn’t played with toy ducks in my bath for years, and I found the novel experience most invigorating. For the benefit of those interested, I may mention that if you shove the thing under the surface with the sponge and then let it go, it shoots out of the water in a manner calculated to divert the most careworn. Ten minutes of this and I was enabled to return to the bedchamber much more the old merry Bertram.
Jeeves was there, laying out the dinner disguise. He greeted the young master with his customary suavity.
“Good evening, sir.”
I responded in the same affable key.
“Good evening, Jeeves.”
“I trust you had a pleasant drive, sir.”
“Very pleasant, thank you, Jeeves. Hand me a sock or two, will you?”
He did so, and I commenced to don.
“Well, Jeeves,” I said, reaching for the underlinen, “here we are again at Brinkley Court in the county of Worcestershire.”
“Yes, sir.”
“A nice mess things seem to have gone and got themselves into in this rustic joint.”
“Yes, sir.”
“The rift between Tuppy Glossop and my cousin Angela would appear to be serious.”
“Yes, sir. Opinion in the servants’ hall is inclined to take a grave view of the situation.”
“And the thought that springs to your mind, no doubt, is that I shall have my work cut out to fix things up?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You are wrong, Jeeves. I have the thing well in hand.”
“You surprise me, sir.”
“I thought I should. Yes, Jeeves, I pondered on the matter most of the way down here, and with the happiest results. I have just been in conference with Mr. Glossop, and everything is taped out.”
“Indeed, sir? Might I inquire----”
“You know my methods, Jeeves. Apply them. Have you,” I asked, slipping into the shirt and starting to adjust the cravat, “been gnawing on the thing at all?”
“Oh, yes, sir. I have always been much attached to Miss Angela, and I felt that it would afford me great pleasure were I to be able to be of service to her.”
“A laudable sentiment. But I suppose you drew blank?”
“No, sir. I was rewarded with an idea.”
“What was it?”
“It occurred to me that a reconciliation might be effected between Mr. Glossop and Miss Angela by appealing to that instinct which prompts gentlemen in time of peril to hasten to the rescue of----”
I had to let go of the cravat in order to raise a hand. I was shocked.
“Don’t tell me you were contemplating descending to that old he-saved-her-from-drowning gag? I am surprised, Jeeves. Surprised and pained. When I was discussing the matter with Aunt Dahlia on my arrival, she said in a sniffy sort of way that she supposed I was going to shove my Cousin Angela into the lake and push Tuppy in to haul her out, and I let her see pretty clearly that I considered the suggestion an insult to my intelligence. And now, if your words have the meaning I read into them, you are mooting precisely the same drivelling scheme. Really, Jeeves!”
“No, sir. Not that. But the thought did cross my mind, as I walked in the grounds and passed the building where the fire-bell hangs, that a sudden alarm of fire in the night might result in Mr. Glossop endeavouring to assist Miss Angela to safety.”
I shivered.
“Rotten, Jeeves.”
“Well, sir----”
“No good. Not a bit like it.”
“I fancy, sir----”
“No, Jeeves. No more. Enough has been said. Let us drop the subj.”
I finished tying the tie in silence. My emotions were too deep for speech. I knew, of course, that this man had for the time being lost his grip, but I had never suspected that he had gone absolutely to pieces like this. Remembering some of the swift ones he had pulled in the past, I shrank with horror from the spectacle of his present ineptitude. Or is it ineptness? I mean this frightful disposition of his to stick straws in his hair and talk like a perfect ass. It was the old, old story, I supposed. A man’s brain whizzes along for years exceeding the speed limit, and something suddenly goes wrong with the steering-gear and it skids and comes a smeller in the ditch.
“A bit elaborate,” I said, trying to put the thing in as kindly a light as possible. “Your old failing. You can see that it’s a bit elaborate?”
“Possibly the plan I suggested might be considered open to that criticism, sir, but faute de mieux----”
“I don’t get you, Jeeves.”
“A French expression, sir, signifying ‘for want of anything better’.”
A moment before, I had been feeling for this wreck of a once fine thinker nothing but a gentle pity. These words jarred the Wooster pride, inducing asperity.
“I understand perfectly well what faute de mieux means, Jeeves. I did not recently spend two months among our Gallic neighbours for nothing. Besides, I remember that one from school. What caused my bewilderment was that you should be employing the expression, well knowing that there is no bally faute de mieux about it at all. Where do you get that faute-de-mieux stuff? Didn’t I tell you I had everything taped out?”
“Yes, sir, but----”
“What do you mean--but?”
“Well, sir----”
“Push on, Jeeves. I am ready, even anxious, to hear your views.”
“Well, sir, if I may take the liberty of reminding you of it, your plans in the past have not always been uniformly successful.”
There was a silence--rather a throbbing one--during which I put on my waistcoat in a marked manner. Not till I had got the buckle at the back satisfactorily adjusted did I speak.
“It is true, Jeeves,” I said formally, “that once or twice in the past I may have missed the bus. This, however, I attribute purely to bad luck.”
“Indeed, sir?”
“On the present occasion I shall not fail, and I’ll tell you why I shall not fail. Because my scheme is rooted in human nature.”
“Indeed, sir?”
“It is simple. Not elaborate. And, furthermore, based on the psychology of the individual.”
“Indeed, sir?”
“Jeeves,” I said, “don’t keep saying ‘Indeed, sir?’ No doubt nothing is further from your mind than to convey such a suggestion, but you have a way of stressing the ‘in’ and then coming down with a thud on the ‘deed’ which makes it virtually tantamount to ‘Oh, yeah?’ Correct this, Jeeves.”
“Very good, sir.”
“I tell you I have everything nicely lined up. Would you care to hear what steps I have taken?”
“Very much, sir.”
“Then listen. Tonight at dinner I have recommended Tuppy to lay off the food.”
“Sir?”
“Tut, Jeeves, surely you can follow the idea, even though it is one that would never have occurred to yourself. Have you forgotten that telegram I sent to Gussie Fink-Nottle, steering him away from the sausages and ham? This is the same thing. Pushing the food away untasted is a universally recognized sign of love. It cannot fail to bring home the gravy. You must see that?”
“Well, sir----”
I frowned.
“I don’t want to seem always to be criticizing your methods of voice production, Jeeves,” I said, “but I must inform you that that ‘Well, sir’ of yours is in many respects fully as unpleasant as your ‘Indeed, sir?’ Like the latter, it seems to be tinged with a definite scepticism. It suggests a lack of faith in my vision. The impression I retain after hearing you shoot it at me a couple of times is that you consider me to be talking through the back of my neck, and that only a feudal sense of what is fitting restrains you from substituting for it the words ‘Says you!’”
“Oh, no, sir.”
“Well, that’s what it sounds like. Why don’t you think this scheme will work?”
“I fear Miss Angela will merely attribute Mr. Glossop’s abstinence to indigestion, sir.”
I hadn’t thought of that, and I must confess it shook me for a moment. Then I recovered myself. I saw what was at the bottom of all this. Mortified by the consciousness of his own ineptness--or ineptitude--the fellow was simply trying to hamper and obstruct. I decided to knock the stuffing out of him without further preamble.
“Oh?” I said. “You do, do you? Well, be that as it may, it doesn’t alter the fact that you’ve put out the wrong coat. Be so good, Jeeves,” I said, indicating with a gesture the gent’s ordinary dinner jacket or smoking, as we call it on the Côte d’Azur, which was suspended from the hanger on the knob of the wardrobe, “as to shove that bally black thing in the cupboard and bring out my white mess-jacket with the brass buttons.”
He looked at me in a meaning manner. And when I say a meaning manner, I mean there was a respectful but at the same time uppish glint in his eye and a sort of muscular spasm flickered across his face which wasn’t quite a quiet smile and yet wasn’t quite not a quiet smile. Also the soft cough.
“I regret to say, sir, that I inadvertently omitted to pack the garment to which you refer.”
The vision of that parcel in the hall seemed to rise before my eyes, and I exchanged a merry wink with it. I may even have hummed a bar or two. I’m not quite sure.
“I know you did, Jeeves,” I said, laughing down from lazy eyelids and nicking a speck of dust from the irreproachable Mechlin lace at my wrists. “But I didn’t. You will find it on a chair in the hall in a brown-paper parcel.”
The information that his low manoeuvres had been rendered null and void and that the thing was on the strength after all, must have been the nastiest of jars, but there was no play of expression on his finely chiselled to indicate it. There very seldom is on Jeeves’s f-c. In moments of discomfort, as I had told Tuppy, he wears a mask, preserving throughout the quiet stolidity of a stuffed moose.
“You might just slide down and fetch it, will you?”
“Very good, sir.”
“Right ho, Jeeves.”
And presently I was sauntering towards the drawing-room with the good old j. nestling snugly abaft the shoulder blades.
And Dahlia was in the drawing-room. She glanced up at my entrance.
“Hullo, eyesore,” she said. “What do you think you’re made up as?”
