He ceased, and, grabbing out, missed me by a hair’s breadth.
It was a moment for swift thinking, and it is at such moments, as I have already indicated, that Bertram Wooster is at his best. I suddenly remembered the recent misunderstanding with the Bassett, and with a flash of clear vision saw that this was where it was going to come in handy.
“You’ve got it all wrong, Tuppy,” I said, moving to the left. “True, I saw a lot of Angela, but my dealings with her were on a basis from start to finish of the purest and most wholesome camaraderie. I can prove it. During that sojourn in Cannes my affections were engaged elsewhere.”
“What?”
“Engaged elsewhere. My affections. During that sojourn.”
I had struck the right note. He stopped sidling. His clutching hand fell to his side.
“Is that true?”
“Quite official.”
“Who was she?”
“My dear Tuppy, does one bandy a woman’s name?”
“One does if one doesn’t want one’s ruddy head pulled off.”
I saw that it was a special case.
“Madeline Bassett,” I said.
“Who?”
“Madeline Bassett.”
He seemed stunned.
“You stand there and tell me you were in love with that Bassett disaster?”
“I wouldn’t call her ‘that Bassett disaster’, Tuppy. Not respectful.”
“Dash being respectful. I want the facts. You deliberately assert that you loved that weird Gawd-help-us?”
“I don’t see why you should call her a weird Gawd-help-us, either. A very charming and beautiful girl. Odd in some of her views perhaps--one does not quite see eye to eye with her in the matter of stars and rabbits--but not a weird Gawd-help-us.”
“Anyway, you stick to it that you were in love with her?”
“I do.”
“It sounds thin to me, Wooster, very thin.”
I saw that it would be necessary to apply the finishing touch.
“I must ask you to treat this as entirely confidential, Glossop, but I may as well inform you that it is not twenty-four hours since she turned me down.”
“Turned you down?”
“Like a bedspread. In this very garden.”
“Twenty-four hours?”
“Call it twenty-five. So you will readily see that I can’t be the chap, if any, who stole Angela from you at Cannes.”
And I was on the brink of adding that I wouldn’t touch Angela with a barge pole, when I remembered I had said it already and it hadn’t gone frightfully well. I desisted, therefore.
My manly frankness seemed to be producing good results. The homicidal glare was dying out of Tuppy’s eyes. He had the aspect of a hired assassin who had paused to think things over.
“I see,” he said, at length. “All right, then. Sorry you were troubled.”
“Don’t mention it, old man,” I responded courteously.
For the first time since the bushes had begun to pour forth Glossops, Bertram Wooster could be said to have breathed freely. I don’t say I actually came out from behind the bench, but I did let go of it, and with something of the relief which those three chaps in the Old Testament must have experienced after sliding out of the burning fiery furnace, I even groped tentatively for my cigarette case.
The next moment a sudden snort made me take my fingers off it as if it had bitten me. I was distressed to note in the old friend a return of the recent frenzy.
“What the hell did you mean by telling her that I used to be covered with ink when I was a kid?”
“My dear Tuppy----”
“I was almost finickingly careful about my personal cleanliness as a boy. You could have eaten your dinner off me.”
“Quite. But----”
“And all that stuff about having no soul. I’m crawling with soul. And being looked on as an outsider at the Drones----”
“But, my dear old chap, I explained that. It was all part of my ruse or scheme.”
“It was, was it? Well, in future do me a favour and leave me out of your foul ruses.”
“Just as you say, old boy.”
“All right, then. That’s understood.”
He relapsed into silence, standing with folded arms, staring before him rather like a strong, silent man in a novel when he’s just been given the bird by the girl and is thinking of looking in at the Rocky Mountains and bumping off a few bears. His manifest pippedness excited my compash, and I ventured a kindly word.
“I don’t suppose you know what au pied de la lettre means, Tuppy, but that’s how I don’t think you ought to take all that stuff Angela was saying just now too much.”
He seemed interested.
“What the devil,” he asked, “are you talking about?”
I saw that I should have to make myself clearer.
“Don’t take all that guff of hers too literally, old man. You know what girls are like.”
“I do,” he said, with another snort that came straight up from his insteps. “And I wish I’d never met one.”
“I mean to say, it’s obvious that she must have spotted you in those bushes and was simply talking to score off you. There you were, I mean, if you follow the psychology, and she saw you, and in that impulsive way girls have, she seized the opportunity of ribbing you a bit--just told you a few home truths, I mean to say.”
“Home truths?”
“That’s right.”
He snorted once more, causing me to feel rather like royalty receiving a twenty-one gun salute from the fleet. I can’t remember ever having met a better right-and-left-hand snorter.
“What do you mean, ‘home truths’? I’m not fat.”
“No, no.”
“And what’s wrong with the colour of my hair?”
“Quite in order, Tuppy, old man. The hair, I mean.”
“And I’m not a bit thin on the top.... What the dickens are you grinning about?”
“Not grinning. Just smiling slightly. I was conjuring up a sort of vision, if you know what I mean, of you as seen through Angela’s eyes. Fat in the middle and thin on the top. Rather funny.”
“You think it funny, do you?”
“Not a bit.”
“You’d better not.”
“Quite.”
It seemed to me that the conversation was becoming difficult again. I wished it could be terminated. And so it was. For at this moment something came shimmering through the laurels in the quiet evenfall, and I perceived that it was Angela.
She was looking sweet and saintlike, and she had a plate of sandwiches in her hand. Ham, I was to discover later.
“If you see Mr. Glossop anywhere, Bertie,” she said, her eyes resting dreamily on Tuppy’s facade, “I wish you would give him these. I’m so afraid he may be hungry, poor fellow. It’s nearly ten o’clock, and he hasn’t eaten a morsel since dinner. I’ll just leave them on this bench.”
She pushed off, and it seemed to me that I might as well go with her. Nothing to keep me here, I mean. We moved towards the house, and presently from behind us there sounded in the night the splintering crash of a well-kicked plate of ham sandwiches, accompanied by the muffled oaths of a strong man in his wrath.
“How still and peaceful everything is,” said Angela.
-16-
Sunshine was gilding the grounds of Brinkley Court and the ear detected a marked twittering of birds in the ivy outside the window when I woke next morning to a new day. But there was no corresponding sunshine in Bertram Wooster’s soul and no answering twitter in his heart as he sat up in bed, sipping his cup of strengthening tea. It could not be denied that to Bertram, reviewing the happenings of the previous night, the Tuppy-Angela situation seemed more or less to have slipped a cog. With every desire to look for the silver lining, I could not but feel that the rift between these two haughty spirits had now reached such impressive proportions that the task of bridging same would be beyond even my powers.
I am a shrewd observer, and there had been something in Tuppy’s manner as he booted that plate of ham sandwiches that seemed to tell me that he would not lightly forgive.
In these circs., I deemed it best to shelve their problem for the nonce and turn the mind to the matter of Gussie, which presented a brighter picture.
With regard to Gussie, everything was in train. Jeeves’s morbid scruples about lacing the chap’s orange juice had put me to a good deal of trouble, but I had surmounted every obstacle in the old Wooster way. I had secured an abundance of the necessary spirit, and it was now lying in its flask in the drawer of the dressing-table. I had also ascertained that the jug, duly filled, would be standing on a shelf in the butler’s pantry round about the hour of one. To remove it from that shelf, sneak it up to my room, and return it, laced, in good time for the midday meal would be a task calling, no doubt, for address, but in no sense an exacting one.
It was with something of the emotions of one preparing a treat for a deserving child that I finished my tea and rolled over for that extra spot of sleep which just makes all the difference when there is man’s work to be done and the brain must be kept clear for it.
And when I came downstairs an hour or so later, I knew how right I had been to formulate this scheme for Gussie’s bucking up. I ran into him on the lawn, and I could see at a glance that if ever there was a man who needed a snappy stimulant, it was he. All nature, as I have indicated, was smiling, but not Augustus Fink-Nottle. He was walking round in circles, muttering something about not proposing to detain us long, but on this auspicious occasion feeling compelled to say a few words.
“Ah, Gussie,” I said, arresting him as he was about to start another lap. “A lovely morning, is it not?”
Even if I had not been aware of it already, I could have divined from the abruptness with which he damned the lovely morning that he was not in merry mood. I addressed myself to the task of bringing the roses back to his cheeks.
“I’ve got good news for you, Gussie.”
He looked at me with a sudden sharp interest.
“Has Market Snodsbury Grammar School burned down?”
“Not that I know of.”
“Have mumps broken out? Is the place closed on account of measles?”
“No, no.”
“Then what do you mean you’ve got good news?”
I endeavoured to soothe.
“You mustn’t take it so hard, Gussie. Why worry about a laughably simple job like distributing prizes at a school?”
“Laughably simple, eh? Do you realize I’ve been sweating for days and haven’t been able to think of a thing to say yet, except that I won’t detain them long. You bet I won’t detain them long. I’ve been timing my speech, and it lasts five seconds. What the devil am I to say, Bertie? What do you say when you’re distributing prizes?”
I considered. Once, at my private school, I had won a prize for Scripture knowledge, so I suppose I ought to have been full of inside stuff. But memory eluded me.
Then something emerged from the mists.
“You say the race is not always to the swift.”
“Why?”
“Well, it’s a good gag. It generally gets a hand.”
“I mean, why isn’t it? Why isn’t the race to the swift?”
“Ah, there you have me. But the nibs say it isn’t.”
“But what does it mean?”
“I take it it’s supposed to console the chaps who haven’t won prizes.”
“What’s the good of that to me? I’m not worrying about them. It’s the ones that have won prizes that I’m worrying about, the little blighters who will come up on the platform. Suppose they make faces at me.”
“They won’t.”
“How do you know they won’t? It’s probably the first thing they’ll think of. And even if they don’t--Bertie, shall I tell you something?”
“What?”
“I’ve a good mind to take that tip of yours and have a drink.”
I smiled. He little knew, about summed up what I was thinking.
“Oh, you’ll be all right,” I said.
He became fevered again.
“How do you know I’ll be all right? I’m sure to blow up in my lines.”
“Tush!”
“Or drop a prize.”
“Tut!”
“Or something. I can feel it in my bones. As sure as I’m standing here, something is going to happen this afternoon which will make everybody laugh themselves sick at me. I can hear them now. Like hyenas.... Bertie!”
“Hullo?”
“Do you remember that kids’ school we went to before Eton?”
“Quite. It was there I won my Scripture prize.”
“Never mind about your Scripture prize. I’m not talking about your Scripture prize. Do you recollect the Bosher incident?”
I did, indeed. It was one of the high spots of my youth.
“Major-General Sir Wilfred Bosher came to distribute the prizes at that school,” proceeded Gussie in a dull, toneless voice. “He dropped a book. He stooped to pick it up. And, as he stooped, his trousers split up the back.”
“How we roared!”
Gussie’s face twisted.
“We did, little swine that we were. Instead of remaining silent and exhibiting a decent sympathy for a gallant officer at a peculiarly embarrassing moment, we howled and yelled with mirth. I loudest of any. That is what will happen to me this afternoon, Bertie. It will be a judgment on me for laughing like that at Major-General Sir Wilfred Bosher.”
“No, no, Gussie, old man. Your trousers won’t split.”
“How do you know they won’t? Better men than I have split their trousers. General Bosher was a D.S.O., with a fine record of service on the north-western frontier of India, and his trousers split. I shall be a mockery and a scorn. I know it. And you, fully cognizant of what I am in for, come babbling about good news. What news could possibly be good to me at this moment except the information that bubonic plague had broken out among the scholars of Market Snodsbury Grammar School, and that they were all confined to their beds with spots?”
The moment had come for me to speak. I laid a hand gently on his shoulder. He brushed it off. I laid it on again. He brushed it off once more. I was endeavouring to lay it on for the third time, when he moved aside and desired, with a certain petulance, to be informed if I thought I was a ruddy osteopath.
I found his manner trying, but one has to make allowances. I was telling myself that I should be seeing a very different Gussie after lunch.
“When I said I had good news, old man, I meant about Madeline Bassett.”
The febrile gleam died out of his eyes, to be replaced by a look of infinite sadness.
“You can’t have good news about her. I’ve dished myself there completely.”
“Not at all. I am convinced that if you take another whack at her, all will be well.”
And, keeping it snappy, I related what had passed between the Bassett and myself on the previous night.
“So all you have to do is play a return date, and you cannot fail to swing the voting. You are her dream man.”
He shook his head.
“No.”
“What?”
“No use.”
“What do you mean?”
“Not a bit of good trying.”
“But I tell you she said in so many words----”
“It doesn’t make any difference. She may have loved me once. Last night will have killed all that.”
“Of course it won’t.”
“It will. She despises me now.”
“Not a bit of it. She knows you simply got cold feet.”
“And I should get cold feet if I tried again. It’s no good, Bertie. I’m hopeless, and there’s an end of it. Fate made me the sort of chap who can’t say ‘bo’ to a goose.”
“It isn’t a question of saying ‘bo’ to a goose. The point doesn’t arise at all. It is simply a matter of----”
“I know, I know. But it’s no good. I can’t do it. The whole thing is off. I am not going to risk a repetition of last night’s fiasco. You talk in a light way of taking another whack at her, but you don’t know what it means. You have not been through the experience of starting to ask the girl you love to marry you and then suddenly finding yourself talking about the plumlike external gills of the newly-born newt. It’s not a thing you can do twice. No, I accept my destiny. It’s all over. And now, Bertie, like a good chap, shove off. I want to compose my speech. I can’t compose my speech with you mucking around. If you are going to continue to muck around, at least give me a couple of stories. The little hell hounds are sure to expect a story or two.”
“Do you know the one about----”
“No good. I don’t want any of your off-colour stuff from the Drones’ smoking-room. I need something clean. Something that will be a help to them in their after lives. Not that I care a damn about their after lives, except that I hope they’ll all choke.”
“I heard a story the other day. I can’t quite remember it, but it was about a chap who snored and disturbed the neighbours, and it ended, ‘It was his adenoids that adenoid them.’”
He made a weary gesture.
“You expect me to work that in, do you, into a speech to be delivered to an audience of boys, every one of whom is probably riddled with adenoids? Damn it, they’d rush the platform. Leave me, Bertie. Push off. That’s all I ask you to do. Push off.... Ladies and gentlemen,” said Gussie, in a low, soliloquizing sort of way, “I do not propose to detain this auspicious occasion long----”
It was a thoughtful Wooster who walked away and left him at it. More than ever I was congratulating myself on having had the sterling good sense to make all my arrangements so that I could press a button and set things moving at an instant’s notice.
Until now, you see, I had rather entertained a sort of hope that when I had revealed to him the Bassett’s mental attitude, Nature would have done the rest, bracing him up to such an extent that artificial stimulants would not be required. Because, naturally, a chap doesn’t want to have to sprint about country houses lugging jugs of orange juice, unless it is absolutely essential.
But now I saw that I must carry on as planned. The total absence of pep, ginger, and the right spirit which the man had displayed during these conversational exchanges convinced me that the strongest measures would be necessary. Immediately upon leaving him, therefore, I proceeded to the pantry, waited till the butler had removed himself elsewhere, and nipped in and secured the vital jug. A few moments later, after a wary passage of the stairs, I was in my room. And the first thing I saw there was Jeeves, fooling about with trousers.
He gave the jug a look which--wrongly, as it was to turn out--I diagnosed as censorious. I drew myself up a bit. I intended to have no rot from the fellow.
“Yes, Jeeves?”
“Sir?”
“You have the air of one about to make a remark, Jeeves.”
“Oh, no, sir. I note that you are in possession of Mr. Fink-Nottle’s orange juice. I was merely about to observe that in my opinion it would be injudicious to add spirit to it.”
“That is a remark, Jeeves, and it is precisely----”
“Because I have already attended to the matter, sir.”
“What?”
“Yes, sir. I decided, after all, to acquiesce in your wishes.”
I stared at the man, astounded. I was deeply moved. Well, I mean, wouldn’t any chap who had been going about thinking that the old feudal spirit was dead and then suddenly found it wasn’t have been deeply moved?
“Jeeves,” I said, “I am touched.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“Touched and gratified.”
“Thank you very much, sir.”
“But what caused this change of heart?”
“I chanced to encounter Mr. Fink-Nottle in the garden, sir, while you were still in bed, and we had a brief conversation.”
“And you came away feeling that he needed a bracer?”
“Very much so, sir. His attitude struck me as defeatist.”
I nodded.
“I felt the same. ‘Defeatist’ sums it up to a nicety. Did you tell him his attitude struck you as defeatist?”
“Yes, sir.”
“But it didn’t do any good?”
“No, sir.”
“Very well, then, Jeeves. We must act. How much gin did you put in the jug?”
“A liberal tumblerful, sir.”
“Would that be a normal dose for an adult defeatist, do you think?”
“I fancy it should prove adequate, sir.”
“I wonder. We must not spoil the ship for a ha’porth of tar. I think I’ll add just another fluid ounce or so.”
“I would not advocate it, sir. In the case of Lord Brancaster’s parrot----”
“You are falling into your old error, Jeeves, of thinking that Gussie is a parrot. Fight against this. I shall add the oz.”
“Very good, sir.”
“And, by the way, Jeeves, Mr. Fink-Nottle is in the market for bright, clean stories to use in his speech. Do you know any?”
“I know a story about two Irishmen, sir.”
“Pat and Mike?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Who were walking along Broadway?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Just what he wants. Any more?”
“No, sir.”
“Well, every little helps. You had better go and tell it to him.”
“Very good, sir.”
He passed from the room, and I unscrewed the flask and tilted into the jug a generous modicum of its contents. And scarcely had I done so, when there came to my ears the sound of footsteps without. I had only just time to shove the jug behind the photograph of Uncle Tom on the mantelpiece before the door opened and in came Gussie, curveting like a circus horse.
“What-ho, Bertie,” he said. “What-ho, what-ho, what-ho, and again what-ho. What a beautiful world this is, Bertie. One of the nicest I ever met.”
I stared at him, speechless. We Woosters are as quick as lightning, and I saw at once that something had happened.
I mean to say, I told you about him walking round in circles. I recorded what passed between us on the lawn. And if I portrayed the scene with anything like adequate skill, the picture you will have retained of this Fink-Nottle will have been that of a nervous wreck, sagging at the knees, green about the gills, and picking feverishly at the lapels of his coat in an ecstasy of craven fear. In a word, defeatist. Gussie, during that interview, had, in fine, exhibited all the earmarks of one licked to a custard.
Vastly different was the Gussie who stood before me now. Self-confidence seemed to ooze from the fellow’s every pore. His face was flushed, there was a jovial light in his eyes, the lips were parted in a swashbuckling smile. And when with a genial hand he sloshed me on the back before I could sidestep, it was as if I had been kicked by a mule.
“Well, Bertie,” he proceeded, as blithely as a linnet without a thing on his mind, “you will be glad to hear that you were right. Your theory has been tested and proved correct. I feel like a fighting cock.”
My brain ceased to reel. I saw all.
“Have you been having a drink?”
“I have. As you advised. Unpleasant stuff. Like medicine. Burns your throat, too, and makes one as thirsty as the dickens. How anyone can mop it up, as you do, for pleasure, beats me. Still, I would be the last to deny that it tunes up the system. I could bite a tiger.”
“What did you have?”
“Whisky. At least, that was the label on the decanter, and I have no reason to suppose that a woman like your aunt--staunch, true-blue, British--would deliberately deceive the public. If she labels her decanters Whisky, then I consider that we know where we are.”
“A whisky and soda, eh? You couldn’t have done better.”
“Soda?” said Gussie thoughtfully. “I knew there was something I had forgotten.”
“Didn’t you put any soda in it?”
“It never occurred to me. I just nipped into the dining-room and drank out of the decanter.”
“How much?”
“Oh, about ten swallows. Twelve, maybe. Or fourteen. Say sixteen medium-sized gulps. Gosh, I’m thirsty.”
He moved over to the wash-stand and drank deeply out of the water bottle. I cast a covert glance at Uncle Tom’s photograph behind his back. For the first time since it had come into my life, I was glad that it was so large. It hid its secret well. If Gussie had caught sight of that jug of orange juice, he would unquestionably have been on to it like a knife.
“Well, I’m glad you’re feeling braced,” I said.
He moved buoyantly from the wash-hand stand, and endeavoured to slosh me on the back again. Foiled by my nimble footwork, he staggered to the bed and sat down upon it.
“Braced? Did I say I could bite a tiger?”
“You did.”
“Make it two tigers. I could chew holes in a steel door. What an ass you must have thought me out there in the garden. I see now you were laughing in your sleeve.”
“No, no.”
“Yes,” insisted Gussie. “That very sleeve,” he said, pointing. “And I don’t blame you. I can’t imagine why I made all that fuss about a potty job like distributing prizes at a rotten little country grammar school. Can you imagine, Bertie?”
“No.”
“Exactly. Nor can I imagine. There’s simply nothing to it. I just shin up on the platform, drop a few gracious words, hand the little blighters their prizes, and hop down again, admired by all. Not a suggestion of split trousers from start to finish. I mean, why should anybody split his trousers? I can’t imagine. Can you imagine?”
“No.”
“Nor can I imagine. I shall be a riot. I know just the sort of stuff that’s needed--simple, manly, optimistic stuff straight from the shoulder. This shoulder,” said Gussie, tapping. “Why I was so nervous this morning I can’t imagine. For anything simpler than distributing a few footling books to a bunch of grimy-faced kids I can’t imagine. Still, for some reason I can’t imagine, I was feeling a little nervous, but now I feel fine, Bertie--fine, fine, fine--and I say this to you as an old friend. Because that’s what you are, old man, when all the smoke has cleared away--an old friend. I don’t think I’ve ever met an older friend. How long have you been an old friend of mine, Bertie?”
“Oh, years and years.”
“Imagine! Though, of course, there must have been a time when you were a new friend.... Hullo, the luncheon gong. Come on, old friend.”
And, rising from the bed like a performing flea, he made for the door.
I followed rather pensively. What had occurred was, of course, so much velvet, as you might say. I mean, I had wanted a braced Fink-Nottle-- indeed, all my plans had had a braced Fink-Nottle as their end and aim --but I found myself wondering a little whether the Fink-Nottle now sliding down the banister wasn’t, perhaps, a shade too braced. His demeanour seemed to me that of a man who might quite easily throw bread about at lunch.
Fortunately, however, the settled gloom of those round him exercised a restraining effect upon him at the table. It would have needed a far more plastered man to have been rollicking at such a gathering. I had told the Bassett that there were aching hearts in Brinkley Court, and it now looked probable that there would shortly be aching tummies. Anatole, I learned, had retired to his bed with a fit of the vapours, and the meal now before us had been cooked by the kitchen maid--as C3 a performer as ever wielded a skillet.
This, coming on top of their other troubles, induced in the company a pretty unanimous silence--a solemn stillness, as you might say--which even Gussie did not seem prepared to break. Except, therefore, for one short snatch of song on his part, nothing untoward marked the occasion, and presently we rose, with instructions from Aunt Dahlia to put on festal raiment and be at Market Snodsbury not later than 3.30. This leaving me ample time to smoke a gasper or two in a shady bower beside the lake, I did so, repairing to my room round about the hour of three.
Jeeves was on the job, adding the final polish to the old topper, and I was about to apprise him of the latest developments in the matter of Gussie, when he forestalled me by observing that the latter had only just concluded an agreeable visit to the Wooster bedchamber.
“I found Mr. Fink-Nottle seated here when I arrived to lay out your clothes, sir.”
“Indeed, Jeeves? Gussie was in here, was he?”
“Yes, sir. He left only a few moments ago. He is driving to the school with Mr. and Mrs. Travers in the large car.”
“Did you give him your story of the two Irishmen?”
“Yes, sir. He laughed heartily.”
“Good. Had you any other contributions for him?”
“I ventured to suggest that he might mention to the young gentlemen that education is a drawing out, not a putting in. The late Lord Brancaster was much addicted to presenting prizes at schools, and he invariably employed this dictum.”
“And how did he react to that?”
“He laughed heartily, sir.”
“This surprised you, no doubt? This practically incessant merriment, I mean.”
“Yes, sir.”
“You thought it odd in one who, when you last saw him, was well up in Group A of the defeatists.”
“Yes, sir.”
“There is a ready explanation, Jeeves. Since you last saw him, Gussie has been on a bender. He’s as tight as an owl.”
“Indeed, sir?”
“Absolutely. His nerve cracked under the strain, and he sneaked into the dining-room and started mopping the stuff up like a vacuum cleaner. Whisky would seem to be what he filled the radiator with. I gather that he used up most of the decanter. Golly, Jeeves, it’s lucky he didn’t get at that laced orange juice on top of that, what?”
“Extremely, sir.”
I eyed the jug. Uncle Tom’s photograph had fallen into the fender, and it was standing there right out in the open, where Gussie couldn’t have helped seeing it. Mercifully, it was empty now.
“It was a most prudent act on your part, if I may say so, sir, to dispose of the orange juice.”
I stared at the man.
“What? Didn’t you?”
“No, sir.”
“Jeeves, let us get this clear. Was it not you who threw away that o.j.?”
“No, sir. I assumed, when I entered the room and found the pitcher empty, that you had done so.”
We looked at each other, awed. Two minds with but a single thought.
“I very much fear, sir----”
“So do I, Jeeves.”
“It would seem almost certain----”
“Quite certain. Weigh the facts. Sift the evidence. The jug was standing on the mantelpiece, for all eyes to behold. Gussie had been complaining of thirst. You found him in here, laughing heartily. I think that there can be little doubt, Jeeves, that the entire contents of that jug are at this moment reposing on top of the existing cargo in that already brilliantly lit man’s interior. Disturbing, Jeeves.”
“Most disturbing, sir.”
“Let us face the position, forcing ourselves to be calm. You inserted in that jug--shall we say a tumblerful of the right stuff?”
“Fully a tumblerful, sir.”
“And I added of my plenty about the same amount.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And in two shakes of a duck’s tail Gussie, with all that lapping about inside him, will be distributing the prizes at Market Snodsbury Grammar School before an audience of all that is fairest and most refined in the county.”
“Yes, sir.”
“It seems to me, Jeeves, that the ceremony may be one fraught with considerable interest.”
“Yes, sir.”
“What, in your opinion, will the harvest be?”
“One finds it difficult to hazard a conjecture, sir.”
“You mean imagination boggles?”
“Yes, sir.”
I inspected my imagination. He was right. It boggled.
-17-
“And yet, Jeeves,” I said, twiddling a thoughtful steering wheel, “there is always the bright side.”
Some twenty minutes had elapsed, and having picked the honest fellow up outside the front door, I was driving in the two-seater to the picturesque town of Market Snodsbury. Since we had parted--he to go to his lair and fetch his hat, I to remain in my room and complete the formal costume--I had been doing some close thinking.
The results of this I now proceeded to hand on to him.
“However dark the prospect may be, Jeeves, however murkily the storm clouds may seem to gather, a keen eye can usually discern the blue bird. It is bad, no doubt, that Gussie should be going, some ten minutes from now, to distribute prizes in a state of advanced intoxication, but we must never forget that these things cut both ways.”
“You imply, sir----”
“Precisely. I am thinking of him in his capacity of wooer. All this ought to have put him in rare shape for offering his hand in marriage. I shall be vastly surprised if it won’t turn him into a sort of caveman. Have you ever seen James Cagney in the movies?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Something on those lines.”
I heard him cough, and sniped him with a sideways glance. He was wearing that informative look of his.
“Then you have not heard, sir?”
“Eh?”
“You are not aware that a marriage has been arranged and will shortly take place between Mr. Fink-Nottle and Miss Bassett?”
“What?”
“Yes, sir.”
“When did this happen?”
“Shortly after Mr. Fink-Nottle had left your room, sir.”
“Ah! In the post-orange-juice era?”
“Yes, sir.”
“But are you sure of your facts? How do you know?”
“My informant was Mr. Fink-Nottle himself, sir. He appeared anxious to confide in me. His story was somewhat incoherent, but I had no difficulty in apprehending its substance. Prefacing his remarks with the statement that this was a beautiful world, he laughed heartily and said that he had become formally engaged.”
“No details?”
“No, sir.”
“But one can picture the scene.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I mean, imagination doesn’t boggle.”
“No, sir.”
And it didn’t. I could see exactly what must have happened. Insert a liberal dose of mixed spirits in a normally abstemious man, and he becomes a force. He does not stand around, twiddling his fingers and stammering. He acts. I had no doubt that Gussie must have reached for the Bassett and clasped her to him like a stevedore handling a sack of coals. And one could readily envisage the effect of that sort of thing on a girl of romantic mind.
“Well, well, well, Jeeves.”
“Yes, sir.”
“This is splendid news.”
“Yes, sir.”
“You see now how right I was.”
“Yes, sir.”
“It must have been rather an eye-opener for you, watching me handle this case.”
“Yes, sir.”
“The simple, direct method never fails.”
“No, sir.”
“Whereas the elaborate does.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Right ho, Jeeves.”
We had arrived at the main entrance of Market Snodsbury Grammar School. I parked the car, and went in, well content. True, the Tuppy-Angela problem still remained unsolved and Aunt Dahlia’s five hundred quid seemed as far off as ever, but it was gratifying to feel that good old Gussie’s troubles were over, at any rate.
The Grammar School at Market Snodsbury had, I understood, been built somewhere in the year 1416, and, as with so many of these ancient foundations, there still seemed to brood over its Great Hall, where the afternoon’s festivities were to take place, not a little of the fug of the centuries. It was the hottest day of the summer, and though somebody had opened a tentative window or two, the atmosphere remained distinctive and individual.
In this hall the youth of Market Snodsbury had been eating its daily lunch for a matter of five hundred years, and the flavour lingered. The air was sort of heavy and languorous, if you know what I mean, with the scent of Young England and boiled beef and carrots.
Aunt Dahlia, who was sitting with a bevy of the local nibs in the second row, sighted me as I entered and waved to me to join her, but I was too smart for that. I wedged myself in among the standees at the back, leaning up against a chap who, from the aroma, might have been a corn chandler or something on that order. The essence of strategy on these occasions is to be as near the door as possible.
The hall was gaily decorated with flags and coloured paper, and the eye was further refreshed by the spectacle of a mixed drove of boys, parents, and what not, the former running a good deal to shiny faces and Eton collars, the latter stressing the black-satin note rather when female, and looking as if their coats were too tight, if male. And presently there was some applause--sporadic, Jeeves has since told me it was--and I saw Gussie being steered by a bearded bloke in a gown to a seat in the middle of the platform.
And I confess that as I beheld him and felt that there but for the grace of God went Bertram Wooster, a shudder ran through the frame. It all reminded me so vividly of the time I had addressed that girls’ school.
Of course, looking at it dispassionately, you may say that for horror and peril there is no comparison between an almost human audience like the one before me and a mob of small girls with pigtails down their backs, and this, I concede, is true. Nevertheless, the spectacle was enough to make me feel like a fellow watching a pal going over Niagara Falls in a barrel, and the thought of what I had escaped caused everything for a moment to go black and swim before my eyes.
When I was able to see clearly once more, I perceived that Gussie was now seated. He had his hands on his knees, with his elbows out at right angles, like a nigger minstrel of the old school about to ask Mr. Bones why a chicken crosses the road, and he was staring before him with a smile so fixed and pebble-beached that I should have thought that anybody could have guessed that there sat one in whom the old familiar juice was splashing up against the back of the front teeth.
In fact, I saw Aunt Dahlia, who, having assisted at so many hunting dinners in her time, is second to none as a judge of the symptoms, give a start and gaze long and earnestly. And she was just saying something to Uncle Tom on her left when the bearded bloke stepped to the footlights and started making a speech. From the fact that he spoke as if he had a hot potato in his mouth without getting the raspberry from the lads in the ringside seats, I deduced that he must be the head master.
With his arrival in the spotlight, a sort of perspiring resignation seemed to settle on the audience. Personally, I snuggled up against the chandler and let my attention wander. The speech was on the subject of the doings of the school during the past term, and this part of a prize-giving is always apt rather to fail to grip the visiting stranger. I mean, you know how it is. You’re told that J.B. Brewster has won an Exhibition for Classics at Cat’s, Cambridge, and you feel that it’s one of those stories where you can’t see how funny it is unless you really know the fellow. And the same applies to G. Bullett being awarded the Lady Jane Wix Scholarship at the Birmingham College of Veterinary Science.
In fact, I and the corn chandler, who was looking a bit fagged I thought, as if he had had a hard morning chandling the corn, were beginning to doze lightly when things suddenly brisked up, bringing Gussie into the picture for the first time.
“Today,” said the bearded bloke, “we are all happy to welcome as the guest of the afternoon Mr. Fitz-Wattle----”
At the beginning of the address, Gussie had subsided into a sort of daydream, with his mouth hanging open. About half-way through, faint signs of life had begun to show. And for the last few minutes he had been trying to cross one leg over the other and failing and having another shot and failing again. But only now did he exhibit any real animation. He sat up with a jerk.
“Fink-Nottle,” he said, opening his eyes.
“Fitz-Nottle.”
“Fink-Nottle.”
“I should say Fink-Nottle.”
“Of course you should, you silly ass,” said Gussie genially. “All right, get on with it.”
And closing his eyes, he began trying to cross his legs again.
I could see that this little spot of friction had rattled the bearded bloke a bit. He stood for a moment fumbling at the fungus with a hesitating hand. But they make these head masters of tough stuff. The weakness passed. He came back nicely and carried on.
“We are all happy, I say, to welcome as the guest of the afternoon Mr. Fink-Nottle, who has kindly consented to award the prizes. This task, as you know, is one that should have devolved upon that well-beloved and vigorous member of our board of governors, the Rev. William Plomer, and we are all, I am sure, very sorry that illness at the last moment should have prevented him from being here today. But, if I may borrow a familiar metaphor from the--if I may employ a homely metaphor familiar to you all--what we lose on the swings we gain on the roundabouts.”
He paused, and beamed rather freely, to show that this was comedy. I could have told the man it was no use. Not a ripple. The corn chandler leaned against me and muttered “Whoddidesay?” but that was all.
It’s always a nasty jar to wait for the laugh and find that the gag hasn’t got across. The bearded bloke was visibly discomposed. At that, however, I think he would have got by, had he not, at this juncture, unfortunately stirred Gussie up again.
“In other words, though deprived of Mr. Plomer, we have with us this afternoon Mr. Fink-Nottle. I am sure that Mr. Fink-Nottle’s name is one that needs no introduction to you. It is, I venture to assert, a name that is familiar to us all.”
“Not to you,” said Gussie.
And the next moment I saw what Jeeves had meant when he had described him as laughing heartily. “Heartily” was absolutely the mot juste. It sounded like a gas explosion.
“You didn’t seem to know it so dashed well, what, what?” said Gussie. And, reminded apparently by the word “what” of the word “Wattle,” he repeated the latter some sixteen times with a rising inflection.
“Wattle, Wattle, Wattle,” he concluded. “Right-ho. Push on.”
But the bearded bloke had shot his bolt. He stood there, licked at last; and, watching him closely, I could see that he was now at the crossroads. I could spot what he was thinking as clearly as if he had confided it to my personal ear. He wanted to sit down and call it a day, I mean, but the thought that gave him pause was that, if he did, he must then either uncork Gussie or take the Fink-Nottle speech as read and get straight on to the actual prize-giving.
It was a dashed tricky thing, of course, to have to decide on the spur of the moment. I was reading in the paper the other day about those birds who are trying to split the atom, the nub being that they haven’t the foggiest as to what will happen if they do. It may be all right. On the other hand, it may not be all right. And pretty silly a chap would feel, no doubt, if, having split the atom, he suddenly found the house going up in smoke and himself torn limb from limb.
So with the bearded bloke. Whether he was abreast of the inside facts in Gussie’s case, I don’t know, but it was obvious to him by this time that he had run into something pretty hot. Trial gallops had shown that Gussie had his own way of doing things. Those interruptions had been enough to prove to the perspicacious that here, seated on the platform at the big binge of the season, was one who, if pushed forward to make a speech, might let himself go in a rather epoch-making manner.
On the other hand, chain him up and put a green-baize cloth over him, and where were you? The proceeding would be over about half an hour too soon.
It was, as I say, a difficult problem to have to solve, and, left to himself, I don’t know what conclusion he would have come to. Personally, I think he would have played it safe. As it happened, however, the thing was taken out of his hands, for at this moment, Gussie, having stretched his arms and yawned a bit, switched on that pebble-beached smile again and tacked down to the edge of the platform.
“Speech,” he said affably.
He then stood with his thumbs in the armholes of his waistcoat, waiting for the applause to die down.
It was some time before this happened, for he had got a very fine hand indeed. I suppose it wasn’t often that the boys of Market Snodsbury Grammar School came across a man public-spirited enough to call their head master a silly ass, and they showed their appreciation in no uncertain manner. Gussie may have been one over the eight, but as far as the majority of those present were concerned he was sitting on top of the world.
“Boys,” said Gussie, “I mean ladies and gentlemen and boys, I do not detain you long, but I suppose on this occasion to feel compelled to say a few auspicious words; Ladies--and boys and gentlemen--we have all listened with interest to the remarks of our friend here who forgot to shave this morning--I don’t know his name, but then he didn’t know mine--Fitz-Wattle, I mean, absolutely absurd--which squares things up a bit--and we are all sorry that the Reverend What-ever-he-was-called should be dying of adenoids, but after all, here today, gone tomorrow, and all flesh is as grass, and what not, but that wasn’t what I wanted to say. What I wanted to say was this--and I say it confidently--without fear of contradiction--I say, in short, I am happy to be here on this auspicious occasion and I take much pleasure in kindly awarding the prizes, consisting of the handsome books you see laid out on that table. As Shakespeare says, there are sermons in books, stones in the running brooks, or, rather, the other way about, and there you have it in a nutshell.”
It went well, and I wasn’t surprised. I couldn’t quite follow some of it, but anybody could see that it was real ripe stuff, and I was amazed that even the course of treatment he had been taking could have rendered so normally tongue-tied a dumb brick as Gussie capable of it.
It just shows, what any member of Parliament will tell you, that if you want real oratory, the preliminary noggin is essential. Unless pie-eyed, you cannot hope to grip.
“Gentlemen,” said Gussie, “I mean ladies and gentlemen and, of course, boys, what a beautiful world this is. A beautiful world, full of happiness on every side. Let me tell you a little story. Two Irishmen, Pat and Mike, were walking along Broadway, and one said to the other, ‘Begorrah, the race is not always to the swift,’ and the other replied, ‘Faith and begob, education is a drawing out, not a putting in.’”
I must say it seemed to me the rottenest story I had ever heard, and I was surprised that Jeeves should have considered it worth while shoving into a speech. However, when I taxed him with this later, he said that Gussie had altered the plot a good deal, and I dare say that accounts for it.
At any rate, that was the conte as Gussie told it, and when I say that it got a very fair laugh, you will understand what a popular favourite he had become with the multitude. There might be a bearded bloke or so on the platform and a small section in the second row who were wishing the speaker would conclude his remarks and resume his seat, but the audience as a whole was for him solidly.
There was applause, and a voice cried: “Hear, hear!”
“Yes,” said Gussie, “it is a beautiful world. The sky is blue, the birds are singing, there is optimism everywhere. And why not, boys and ladies and gentlemen? I’m happy, you’re happy, we’re all happy, even the meanest Irishman that walks along Broadway. Though, as I say, there were two of them--Pat and Mike, one drawing out, the other putting in. I should like you boys, taking the time from me, to give three cheers for this beautiful world. All together now.”
Presently the dust settled down and the plaster stopped falling from the ceiling, and he went on.
“People who say it isn’t a beautiful world don’t know what they are talking about. Driving here in the car today to award the kind prizes, I was reluctantly compelled to tick off my host on this very point. Old Tom Travers. You will see him sitting there in the second row next to the large lady in beige.”
He pointed helpfully, and the hundred or so Market Snods-buryians who craned their necks in the direction indicated were able to observe Uncle Tom blushing prettily.
“I ticked him off properly, the poor fish. He expressed the opinion that the world was in a deplorable state. I said, ‘Don’t talk rot, old Tom Travers.’ ‘I am not accustomed to talk rot,’ he said. ‘Then, for a beginner,’ I said, ‘you do it dashed well.’ And I think you will admit, boys and ladies and gentlemen, that that was telling him.”
The audience seemed to agree with him. The point went big. The voice that had said, “Hear, hear” said “Hear, hear” again, and my corn chandler hammered the floor vigorously with a large-size walking stick.
“Well, boys,” resumed Gussie, having shot his cuffs and smirked horribly, “this is the end of the summer term, and many of you, no doubt, are leaving the school. And I don’t blame you, because there’s a froust in here you could cut with a knife. You are going out into the great world. Soon many of you will be walking along Broadway. And what I want to impress upon you is that, however much you may suffer from adenoids, you must all use every effort to prevent yourselves becoming pessimists and talking rot like old Tom Travers. There in the second row. The fellow with a face rather like a walnut.”
He paused to allow those wishing to do so to refresh themselves with another look at Uncle Tom, and I found myself musing in some little perplexity. Long association with the members of the Drones has put me pretty well in touch with the various ways in which an overdose of the blushful Hippocrene can take the individual, but I had never seen anyone react quite as Gussie was doing.
There was a snap about his work which I had never witnessed before, even in Barmy Fotheringay-Phipps on New Year’s Eve.
Jeeves, when I discussed the matter with him later, said it was something to do with inhibitions, if I caught the word correctly, and the suppression of, I think he said, the ego. What he meant, I gathered, was that, owing to the fact that Gussie had just completed a five years’ stretch of blameless seclusion among the newts, all the goofiness which ought to have been spread out thin over those five years and had been bottled up during that period came to the surface on this occasion in a lump--or, if you prefer to put it that way, like a tidal wave.
There may be something in this. Jeeves generally knows.
Anyway, be that as it may, I was dashed glad I had had the shrewdness to keep out of that second row. It might be unworthy of the prestige of a Wooster to squash in among the proletariat in the standing-room-only section, but at least, I felt, I was out of the danger zone. So thoroughly had Gussie got it up his nose by now that it seemed to me that had he sighted me he might have become personal about even an old school friend.
“If there’s one thing in the world I can’t stand,” proceeded Gussie, “it’s a pessimist. Be optimists, boys. You all know the difference between an optimist and a pessimist. An optimist is a man who--well, take the case of two Irishmen walking along Broadway. One is an optimist and one is a pessimist, just as one’s name is Pat and the other’s Mike.... Why, hullo, Bertie; I didn’t know you were here.”
Too late, I endeavoured to go to earth behind the chandler, only to discover that there was no chandler there. Some appointment, suddenly remembered--possibly a promise to his wife that he would be home to tea--had caused him to ooze away while my attention was elsewhere, leaving me right out in the open.
Between me and Gussie, who was now pointing in an offensive manner, there was nothing but a sea of interested faces looking up at me.
“Now, there,” boomed Gussie, continuing to point, “is an instance of what I mean. Boys and ladies and gentlemen, take a good look at that object standing up there at the back--morning coat, trousers as worn, quiet grey tie, and carnation in buttonhole--you can’t miss him. Bertie Wooster, that is, and as foul a pessimist as ever bit a tiger. I tell you I despise that man. And why do I despise him? Because, boys and ladies and gentlemen, he is a pessimist. His attitude is defeatist. When I told him I was going to address you this afternoon, he tried to dissuade me. And do you know why he tried to dissuade me? Because he said my trousers would split up the back.”
The cheers that greeted this were the loudest yet. Anything about splitting trousers went straight to the simple hearts of the young scholars of Market Snodsbury Grammar School. Two in the row in front of me turned purple, and a small lad with freckles seated beside them asked me for my autograph.
“Let me tell you a story about Bertie Wooster.”
A Wooster can stand a good deal, but he cannot stand having his name bandied in a public place. Picking my feet up softly, I was in the very process of executing a quiet sneak for the door, when I perceived that the bearded bloke had at last decided to apply the closure.
Why he hadn’t done so before is beyond me. Spell-bound, I take it. And, of course, when a chap is going like a breeze with the public, as Gussie had been, it’s not so dashed easy to chip in. However, the prospect of hearing another of Gussie’s anecdotes seemed to have done the trick. Rising rather as I had risen from my bench at the beginning of that painful scene with Tuppy in the twilight, he made a leap for the table, snatched up a book and came bearing down on the speaker.
He touched Gussie on the arm, and Gussie, turning sharply and seeing a large bloke with a beard apparently about to bean him with a book, sprang back in an attitude of self-defence.
“Perhaps, as time is getting on, Mr. Fink-Nottle, we had better----”
“Oh, ah,” said Gussie, getting the trend. He relaxed. “The prizes, eh? Of course, yes. Right-ho. Yes, might as well be shoving along with it. What’s this one?”
“Spelling and dictation--P.K. Purvis,” announced the bearded bloke.
“Spelling and dictation--P.K. Purvis,” echoed Gussie, as if he were calling coals. “Forward, P.K. Purvis.”
Now that the whistle had been blown on his speech, it seemed to me that there was no longer any need for the strategic retreat which I had been planning. I had no wish to tear myself away unless I had to. I mean, I had told Jeeves that this binge would be fraught with interest, and it was fraught with interest. There was a fascination about Gussie’s methods which gripped and made one reluctant to pass the thing up provided personal innuendoes were steered clear of. I decided, accordingly, to remain, and presently there was a musical squeaking and P.K. Purvis climbed the platform.
The spelling-and-dictation champ was about three foot six in his squeaking shoes, with a pink face and sandy hair. Gussie patted his hair. He seemed to have taken an immediate fancy to the lad.
“You P.K. Purvis?”
“Sir, yes, sir.”
“It’s a beautiful world, P.K. Purvis.”
“Sir, yes, sir.”
“Ah, you’ve noticed it, have you? Good. You married, by any chance?”
“Sir, no, sir.”
“Get married, P.K. Purvis,” said Gussie earnestly. “It’s the only life ... Well, here’s your book. Looks rather bilge to me from a glance at the title page, but, such as it is, here you are.”
P.K. Purvis squeaked off amidst sporadic applause, but one could not fail to note that the sporadic was followed by a rather strained silence. It was evident that Gussie was striking something of a new note in Market Snodsbury scholastic circles. Looks were exchanged between parent and parent. The bearded bloke had the air of one who has drained the bitter cup. As for Aunt Dahlia, her demeanour now told only too clearly that her last doubts had been resolved and her verdict was in. I saw her whisper to the Bassett, who sat on her right, and the Bassett nodded sadly and looked like a fairy about to shed a tear and add another star to the Milky Way.
Gussie, after the departure of P.K. Purvis, had fallen into a sort of daydream and was standing with his mouth open and his hands in his pockets. Becoming abruptly aware that a fat kid in knickerbockers was at his elbow, he started violently.
“Hullo!” he said, visibly shaken. “Who are you?”
“This,” said the bearded bloke, “is R.V. Smethurst.”
“What’s he doing here?” asked Gussie suspiciously.
“You are presenting him with the drawing prize, Mr. Fink-Nottle.”
This apparently struck Gussie as a reasonable explanation. His face cleared.
“That’s right, too,” he said.... “Well, here it is, cocky. You off?” he said, as the kid prepared to withdraw.
“Sir, yes, sir.”
“Wait, R.V. Smethurst. Not so fast. Before you go, there is a question I wish to ask you.”
But the beard bloke’s aim now seemed to be to rush the ceremonies a bit. He hustled R.V. Smethurst off stage rather like a chucker-out in a pub regretfully ejecting an old and respected customer, and starting paging G.G. Simmons. A moment later the latter was up and coming, and conceive my emotion when it was announced that the subject on which he had clicked was Scripture knowledge. One of us, I mean to say.
G.G. Simmons was an unpleasant, perky-looking stripling, mostly front teeth and spectacles, but I gave him a big hand. We Scripture-knowledge sharks stick together.
Gussie, I was sorry to see, didn’t like him. There was in his manner, as he regarded G.G. Simmons, none of the chumminess which had marked it during his interview with P.K. Purvis or, in a somewhat lesser degree, with R.V. Smethurst. He was cold and distant.
“Well, G.G. Simmons.”
“Sir, yes, sir.”
“What do you mean--sir, yes, sir? Dashed silly thing to say. So you’ve won the Scripture-knowledge prize, have you?”
“Sir, yes, sir.”
“Yes,” said Gussie, “you look just the sort of little tick who would. And yet,” he said, pausing and eyeing the child keenly, “how are we to know that this has all been open and above board? Let me test you, G.G. Simmons. What was What’s-His-Name--the chap who begat Thingummy? Can you answer me that, Simmons?”
“Sir, no, sir.”
Gussie turned to the bearded bloke.
“Fishy,” he said. “Very fishy. This boy appears to be totally lacking in Scripture knowledge.”
The bearded bloke passed a hand across his forehead.
“I can assure you, Mr. Fink-Nottle, that every care was taken to ensure a correct marking and that Simmons outdistanced his competitors by a wide margin.”
“Well, if you say so,” said Gussie doubtfully. “All right, G.G. Simmons, take your prize.”
“Sir, thank you, sir.”
“But let me tell you that there’s nothing to stick on side about in winning a prize for Scripture knowledge. Bertie Wooster----”
I don’t know when I’ve had a nastier shock. I had been going on the assumption that, now that they had stopped him making his speech, Gussie’s fangs had been drawn, as you might say. To duck my head down and resume my edging toward the door was with me the work of a moment.
“Bertie Wooster won the Scripture-knowledge prize at a kids’ school we were at together, and you know what he’s like. But, of course, Bertie frankly cheated. He succeeded in scrounging that Scripture-knowledge trophy over the heads of better men by means of some of the rawest and most brazen swindling methods ever witnessed even at a school where such things were common. If that man’s pockets, as he entered the examination-room, were not stuffed to bursting-point with lists of the kings of Judah----”
I heard no more. A moment later I was out in God’s air, fumbling with a fevered foot at the self-starter of the old car.
The engine raced. The clutch slid into position. I tooted and drove off.
My ganglions were still vibrating as I ran the car into the stables of Brinkley Court, and it was a much shaken Bertram who tottered up to his room to change into something loose. Having donned flannels, I lay down on the bed for a bit, and I suppose I must have dozed off, for the next thing I remember is finding Jeeves at my side.
