“Indeed, sir?”
“Well, how about it? Do you grasp the psychology? Does it make sense? Only a few hours ago he was engaged to Miss Bassett.”
“Gentlemen who have been discarded by one young lady are often apt to attach themselves without delay to another, sir. It is what is known as a gesture.”
I began to grasp.
“I see what you mean. Defiant stuff.”
“Yes, sir.”
“A sort of ‘Oh, right-ho, please yourself, but if you don’t want me, there are plenty who do.'”
“Precisely, sir. My Cousin George—-“
“Never mind about your Cousin George, Jeeves.”
“Very good, sir.”
“Keep him for the long winter evenings, what?”
“Just as you wish, sir.”
“And, anyway, I bet your Cousin George wasn’t a shrinking, non-goose-bo-ing jellyfish like Gussie. That is what astounds me, Jeeves–that it should be Gussie who has been putting in all this heavy gesture-making stuff.”
“You must remember, sir, that Mr. Fink-Nottle is in a somewhat inflamed cerebral condition.”
“That’s true. A bit above par at the moment, as it were?”
“Exactly, sir.”
“Well, I’ll tell you one thing–he’ll be in a jolly sight more inflamed cerebral condition if Tuppy gets hold of him…. What’s the time?”
“Just on eight o’clock, sir.”
“Then Tuppy has been chasing him for two hours and a half. We must save the unfortunate blighter, Jeeves.”
“Yes, sir.”
“A human life is a human life, what?”
“Exceedingly true, sir.”
“The first thing, then, is to find him. After that we can discuss plans and schemes. Go forth, Jeeves, and scour the neighbourhood.”
“It will not be necessary, sir. If you will glance behind you, you will see Mr. Fink-Nottle coming out from beneath your bed.”
And, by Jove, he was absolutely right.
There was Gussie, emerging as stated. He was covered with fluff and looked like a tortoise popping forth for a bit of a breather.
“Gussie!” I said.
“Jeeves,” said Gussie.
“Sir?” said Jeeves.
“Is that door locked, Jeeves?”
“No, sir, but I will attend to the matter immediately.”
Gussie sat down on the bed, and I thought for a moment that he was going to be in the mode by burying his face in his hands. However, he merely brushed a dead spider from his brow.
“Have you locked the door, Jeeves?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Because you can never tell that that ghastly Glossop may not take it into his head to come—-“
The word “back” froze on his lips. He hadn’t got any further than a _b_-ish sound, when the handle of the door began to twist and rattle. He sprang from the bed, and for an instant stood looking exactly like a picture my Aunt Agatha has in her dining-room–The Stag at Bay–Landseer. Then he made a dive for the cupboard and was inside it before one really got on to it that he had started leaping. I have seen fellows late for the 9.15 move less nippily.
I shot a glance at Jeeves. He allowed his right eyebrow to flicker slightly, which is as near as he ever gets to a display of the emotions.
“Hullo?” I yipped.
“Let me in, blast you!” responded Tuppy’s voice from without. “Who locked this door?”
I consulted Jeeves once more in the language of the eyebrow. He raised one of his. I raised one of mine. He raised his other. I raised my other. Then we both raised both. Finally, there seeming no other policy to pursue, I flung wide the gates and Tuppy came shooting in.
“Now what?” I said, as nonchalantly as I could manage.
“Why was the door locked?” demanded Tuppy.
I was in pretty good eyebrow-raising form by now, so I gave him a touch of it.
“Is one to have no privacy, Glossop?” I said coldly. “I instructed Jeeves to lock the door because I was about to disrobe.”
“A likely story!” said Tuppy, and I’m not sure he didn’t add “Forsooth!” “You needn’t try to make me believe that you’re afraid people are going to run excursion trains to see you in your underwear. You locked that door because you’ve got the snake Fink-Nottle concealed in here. I suspected it the moment I’d left, and I decided to come back and investigate. I’m going to search this room from end to end. I believe he’s in that cupboard…. What’s in this cupboard?”
“Just clothes,” I said, having another stab at the nonchalant, though extremely dubious as to whether it would come off. “The usual wardrobe of the English gentleman paying a country-house visit.”
“You’re lying!”
Well, I wouldn’t have been if he had only waited a minute before speaking, because the words were hardly out of his mouth before Gussie was out of the cupboard. I have commented on the speed with which he had gone in. It was as nothing to the speed with which he emerged. There was a sort of whir and blur, and he was no longer with us.
I think Tuppy was surprised. In fact, I’m sure he was. Despite the confidence with which he had stated his view that the cupboard contained Fink-Nottles, it plainly disconcerted him to have the chap fizzing out at him like this. He gargled sharply, and jumped back about five feet. The next moment, however, he had recovered his poise and was galloping down the corridor in pursuit. It only needed Aunt Dahlia after them, shouting “Yoicks!” or whatever is customary on these occasions, to complete the resemblance to a brisk run with the Quorn.
I sank into a handy chair. I am not a man whom it is easy to discourage, but it seemed to me that things had at last begun to get too complex for Bertram.
“Jeeves,” I said, “all this is a bit thick.”
“Yes, sir.”
“The head rather swims.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I think you had better leave me, Jeeves. I shall need to devote the very closest thought to the situation which has arisen.”
“Very good, sir.”
The door closed. I lit a cigarette and began to ponder.
-19-
Most chaps in my position, I imagine, would have pondered all the rest of the evening without getting a bite, but we Woosters have an uncanny knack of going straight to the heart of things, and I don’t suppose it was much more than ten minutes after I had started pondering before I saw what had to be done.
What was needed to straighten matters out, I perceived, was a heart-to- heart talk with Angela. She had caused all the trouble by her mutton- headed behaviour in saying “Yes” instead of “No” when Gussie, in the grip of mixed drinks and cerebral excitement, had suggested teaming up. She must obviously be properly ticked off and made to return him to store. A quarter of an hour later, I had tracked her down to the summer-house in which she was taking a cooler and was seating myself by her side.
“Angela,” I said, and if my voice was stern, well, whose wouldn’t have been, “this is all perfect drivel.”
She seemed to come out of a reverie. She looked at me inquiringly.
“I’m sorry, Bertie, I didn’t hear. What were you talking drivel about?”
“I was not talking drivel.”
“Oh, sorry, I thought you said you were.”
“Is it likely that I would come out here in order to talk drivel?”
“Very likely.”
I thought it best to haul off and approach the matter from another angle.
“I’ve just been seeing Tuppy.”
“Oh?”
“And Gussie Fink-Nottle.”
“Oh, yes?”
“It appears that you have gone and got engaged to the latter.”
“Quite right.”
“Well, that’s what I meant when I said it was all perfect drivel. You can’t possibly love a chap like Gussie.”
“Why not?”
“You simply can’t.”
Well, I mean to say, of course she couldn’t. Nobody could love a freak like Gussie except a similar freak like the Bassett. The shot wasn’t on the board. A splendid chap, of course, in many ways–courteous, amiable, and just the fellow to tell you what to do till the doctor came, if you had a sick newt on your hands–but quite obviously not of Mendelssohn’s March timber. I have no doubt that you could have flung bricks by the hour in England’s most densely populated districts without endangering the safety of a single girl capable of becoming Mrs. Augustus Fink-Nottle without an anaesthetic.
I put this to her, and she was forced to admit the justice of it.
“All right, then. Perhaps I don’t.”
“Then what,” I said keenly, “did you want to go and get engaged to him for, you unreasonable young fathead?”
“I thought it would be fun.”
“Fun!”
“And so it has been. I’ve had a lot of fun out of it. You should have seen Tuppy’s face when I told him.”
A sudden bright light shone upon me.
“Ha! A gesture!”
“What?”
“You got engaged to Gussie just to score off Tuppy?”
“I did.”
“Well, then, that was what I was saying. It was a gesture.”
“Yes, I suppose you could call it that.”
“And I’ll tell you something else I’ll call it–viz. a dashed low trick. I’m surprised at you, young Angela.”
“I don’t see why.”
I curled the lip about half an inch. “Being a female, you wouldn’t. You gentler sexes are like that. You pull off the rawest stuff without a pang. You pride yourselves on it. Look at Jael, the wife of Heber.”
“Where did you ever hear of Jael, the wife of Heber?”
“Possibly you are not aware that I once won a Scripture-knowledge prize at school?”
“Oh, yes. I remember Augustus mentioning it in his speech.”
“Quite,” I said, a little hurriedly. I had no wish to be reminded of Augustus’s speech. “Well, as I say, look at Jael, the wife of Heber. Dug spikes into the guest’s coconut while he was asleep, and then went swanking about the place like a Girl Guide. No wonder they say, ‘Oh, woman, woman!'”
“Who?”
“The chaps who do. Coo, what a sex! But you aren’t proposing to keep this up, of course?”
“Keep what up?”
“This rot of being engaged to Gussie.”
“I certainly am.”
“Just to make Tuppy look silly.”
“Do you think he looks silly?”
“I do.”
“So he ought to.”
I began to get the idea that I wasn’t making real headway. I remember when I won that Scripture-knowledge prize, having to go into the facts about Balaam’s ass. I can’t quite recall what they were, but I still retain a sort of general impression of something digging its feet in and putting its ears back and refusing to co-operate; and it seemed to me that this was what Angela was doing now. She and Balaam’s ass were, so to speak, sisters under the skin. There’s a word beginning with r—-“re” something—-“recal” something–No, it’s gone. But what I am driving at is that is what this Angela was showing herself.
“Silly young geezer,” I said.
She pinkened.
“I’m not a silly young geezer.”
“You are a silly young geezer. And, what’s more, you know it.”
“I don’t know anything of the kind.”
“Here you are, wrecking Tuppy’s life, wrecking Gussie’s life, all for the sake of a cheap score.”
“Well, it’s no business of yours.”
I sat on this promptly:
“No business of mine when I see two lives I used to go to school with wrecked? Ha! Besides, you know you’re potty about Tuppy.”
“I’m not!”
“Is that so? If I had a quid for every time I’ve seen you gaze at him with the lovelight in your eyes—-“
She gazed at me, but without the lovelight.
“Oh, for goodness sake, go away and boil your head, Bertie!”
I drew myself up.
“That,” I replied, with dignity, “is just what I am going to go away and boil. At least, I mean, I shall now leave you. I have said my say.”
“Good.”
“But permit me to add—-“
“I won’t.”
“Very good,” I said coldly. “In that case, tinkerty tonk.”
And I meant it to sting.
“Moody” and “discouraged” were about the two adjectives you would have selected to describe me as I left the summer-house. It would be idle to deny that I had expected better results from this little chat.
I was surprised at Angela. Odd how you never realize that every girl is at heart a vicious specimen until something goes wrong with her love affair. This cousin and I had been meeting freely since the days when I wore sailor suits and she hadn’t any front teeth, yet only now was I beginning to get on to her hidden depths. A simple, jolly, kindly young pimple she had always struck me as–the sort you could more or less rely on not to hurt a fly. But here she was now laughing heartlessly–at least, I seemed to remember hearing her laugh heartlessly–like something cold and callous out of a sophisticated talkie, and fairly spitting on her hands in her determination to bring Tuppy’s grey hairs in sorrow to the grave.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again–girls are rummy. Old Pop Kipling never said a truer word than when he made that crack about the f. of the s. being more d. than the m.
It seemed to me in the circs. that there was but one thing to do–that is head for the dining-room and take a slash at the cold collation of which Jeeves had spoken. I felt in urgent need of sustenance, for the recent interview had pulled me down a bit. There is no gainsaying the fact that this naked-emotion stuff reduces a chap’s vitality and puts him in the vein for a good whack at the beef and ham.
To the dining-room, accordingly, I repaired, and had barely crossed the threshold when I perceived Aunt Dahlia at the sideboard, tucking into salmon mayonnaise.
The spectacle drew from me a quick “Oh, ah,” for I was somewhat embarrassed. The last time this relative and I had enjoyed a _tete-a-tete,_ it will be remembered, she had sketched out plans for drowning me in the kitchen-garden pond, and I was not quite sure what my present standing with her was.
I was relieved to find her in genial mood. Nothing could have exceeded the cordiality with which she waved her fork.
“Hallo, Bertie, you old ass,” was her very matey greeting. “I thought I shouldn’t find you far away from the food. Try some of this salmon. Excellent.”
“Anatole’s?” I queried.
“No. He’s still in bed. But the kitchen maid has struck an inspired streak. It suddenly seems to have come home to her that she isn’t catering for a covey of buzzards in the Sahara Desert, and she has put out something quite fit for human consumption. There is good in the girl, after all, and I hope she enjoys herself at the dance.”
I ladled out a portion of salmon, and we fell into pleasant conversation, chatting of this servants’ ball at the Stretchley-Budds and speculating idly, I recall, as to what Seppings, the butler, would look like, doing the rumba.
It was not till I had cleaned up the first platter and was embarking on a second that the subject of Gussie came up. Considering what had passed at Market Snodsbury that afternoon, it was one which I had been expecting her to touch on earlier. When she did touch on it, I could see that she had not yet been informed of Angela’s engagement.
“I say, Bertie,” she said, meditatively chewing fruit salad. “This Spink-Bottle.”
“Nottle.”
“Bottle,” insisted the aunt firmly. “After that exhibition of his this afternoon, Bottle, and nothing but Bottle, is how I shall always think of him. However, what I was going to say was that, if you see him, I wish you would tell him that he has made an old woman very, very happy. Except for the time when the curate tripped over a loose shoelace and fell down the pulpit steps, I don’t think I have ever had a more wonderful moment than when good old Bottle suddenly started ticking Tom off from the platform. In fact, I thought his whole performance in the most perfect taste.”
I could not but demur.
“Those references to myself—-“
“Those were what I liked next best. I thought they were fine. Is it true that you cheated when you won that Scripture-knowledge prize?”
“Certainly not. My victory was the outcome of the most strenuous and unremitting efforts.”
“And how about this pessimism we hear of? Are you a pessimist, Bertie?”
I could have told her that what was occurring in this house was rapidly making me one, but I said no, I wasn’t.
“That’s right. Never be a pessimist. Everything is for the best in this best of all possible worlds. It’s a long lane that has no turning. It s always darkest before the dawn. Have patience and all will come right. The sun will shine, although the day’s a grey one…. Try some of this salad.”
I followed her advice, but even as I plied the spoon my thoughts were elsewhere. I was perplexed. It may have been the fact that I had recently been hobnobbing with so many bowed-down hearts that made this cheeriness of hers seem so bizarre, but bizarre was certainly what I found it.
“I thought you might have been a trifle peeved,” I said.
“Peeved?”
“By Gussie’s manoeuvres on the platform this afternoon. I confess that I had rather expected the tapping foot and the drawn brow.”
“Nonsense. What was there to be peeved about? I took the whole thing as a great compliment, proud to feel that any drink from my cellars could have produced such a majestic jag. It restores one’s faith in post-war whisky. Besides, I couldn’t be peeved at anything tonight. I am like a little child clapping its hands and dancing in the sunshine. For though it has been some time getting a move on, Bertie, the sun has at last broken through the clouds. Ring out those joy bells. Anatole has withdrawn his notice.”
“What? Oh, very hearty congratulations.”
“Thanks. Yes, I worked on him like a beaver after I got back this afternoon, and finally, vowing he would ne’er consent, he consented. He stays on, praises be, and the way I look at it now is that God’s in His heaven and all’s right with—-“
She broke off. The door had opened, and we were plus a butler.
“Hullo, Seppings,” said Aunt Dahlia. “I thought you had gone.”
“Not yet, madam.”
“Well, I hope you will all have a good time.”
“Thank you, madam.”
“Was there something you wanted to see me about?”
“Yes, madam. It is with reference to Monsieur Anatole. Is it by your wish, madam, that Mr. Fink-Nottle is making faces at Monsieur Anatole through the skylight of his bedroom?”
-20-
There was one of those long silences. Pregnant, I believe, is what they’re generally called. Aunt looked at butler. Butler looked at aunt. I looked at both of them. An eerie stillness seemed to envelop the room like a linseed poultice. I happened to be biting on a slice of apple in my fruit salad at the moment, and it sounded as if Carnera had jumped off the top of the Eiffel Tower on to a cucumber frame.
Aunt Dahlia steadied herself against the sideboard, and spoke in a low, husky voice:
“Faces?”
“Yes, madam.”
“Through the skylight?”
“Yes, madam.”
“You mean he’s sitting on the roof?”
“Yes, madam. It has upset Monsieur Anatole very much.”
I suppose it was that word “upset” that touched Aunt Dahlia off. Experience had taught her what happened when Anatole got upset. I had always known her as a woman who was quite active on her pins, but I had never suspected her of being capable of the magnificent burst of speed which she now showed. Pausing merely to get a rich hunting-field expletive off her chest, she was out of the room and making for the stairs before I could swallow a sliver of–I think–banana. And feeling, as I had felt when I got that telegram of hers about Angela and Tuppy, that my place was by her side, I put down my plate and hastened after her, Seppings following at a loping gallop.
I say that my place was by her side, but it was not so dashed easy to get there, for she was setting a cracking pace. At the top of the first flight she must have led by a matter of half a dozen lengths, and was still shaking off my challenge when she rounded into the second. At the next landing, however, the gruelling going appeared to tell on her, for she slackened off a trifle and showed symptoms of roaring, and by the time we were in the straight we were running practically neck and neck. Our entry into Anatole’s room was as close a finish as you could have wished to see.
Result:
1. _Aunt Dahlia._
2. _Bertram._
3. _Seppings._
_Won by a short head. Half a staircase separated second and third._
The first thing that met the eye on entering was Anatole. This wizard of the cooking-stove is a tubby little man with a moustache of the outsize or soup-strainer type, and you can generally take a line through it as to the state of his emotions. When all is well, it turns up at the ends like a sergeant-major’s. When the soul is bruised, it droops.
It was drooping now, striking a sinister note. And if any shadow of doubt had remained as to how he was feeling, the way he was carrying on would have dispelled it. He was standing by the bed in pink pyjamas, waving his fists at the skylight. Through the glass, Gussie was staring down. His eyes were bulging and his mouth was open, giving him so striking a resemblance to some rare fish in an aquarium that one’s primary impulse was to offer him an ant’s egg.
Watching this fist-waving cook and this goggling guest, I must say that my sympathies were completely with the former. I considered him thoroughly justified in waving all the fists he wanted to.
Review the facts, I mean to say. There he had been, lying in bed, thinking idly of whatever French cooks do think about when in bed, and he had suddenly become aware of that frightful face at the window. A thing to jar the most phlegmatic. I know I should hate to be lying in bed and have Gussie popping up like that. A chap’s bedroom–you can’t get away from it–is his castle, and he has every right to look askance if gargoyles come glaring in at him.
While I stood musing thus, Aunt Dahlia, in her practical way, was coming straight to the point:
“What’s all this?”
Anatole did a sort of Swedish exercise, starting at the base of the spine, carrying on through the shoulder-blades and finishing up among the back hair.
Then he told her.
In the chats I have had with this wonder man, I have always found his English fluent, but a bit on the mixed side. If you remember, he was with Mrs. Bingo Little for a time before coming to Brinkley, and no doubt he picked up a good deal from Bingo. Before that, he had been a couple of years with an American family at Nice and had studied under their chauffeur, one of the Maloneys of Brooklyn. So, what with Bingo and what with Maloney, he is, as I say, fluent but a bit mixed.
He spoke, in part, as follows:
“Hot dog! You ask me what is it? Listen. Make some attention a little. Me, I have hit the hay, but I do not sleep so good, and presently I wake and up I look, and there is one who make faces against me through the dashed window. Is that a pretty affair? Is that convenient? If you think I like it, you jolly well mistake yourself. I am so mad as a wet hen. And why not? I am somebody, isn’t it? This is a bedroom, what-what, not a house for some apes? Then for what do blighters sit on my window so cool as a few cucumbers, making some faces?”
“Quite,” I said. Dashed reasonable, was my verdict.
He threw another look up at Gussie, and did Exercise 2–the one where you clutch the moustache, give it a tug and then start catching flies.
“Wait yet a little. I am not finish. I say I see this type on my window, making a few faces. But what then? Does he buzz off when I shout a cry, and leave me peaceable? Not on your life. He remain planted there, not giving any damns, and sit regarding me like a cat watching a duck. He make faces against me and again he make faces against me, and the more I command that he should get to hell out of here, the more he do not get to hell out of here. He cry something towards me, and I demand what is his desire, but he do not explain. Oh, no, that arrives never. He does but shrug his head. What damn silliness! Is this amusing for me? You think I like it? I am not content with such folly. I think the poor mutt’s loony. _Je me fiche de ce type infect. C’est idiot de faire comme ca l’oiseau…. Allez-vous-en, louffier_…. Tell the boob to go away. He is mad as some March hatters.”
I must say I thought he was making out a jolly good case, and evidently Aunt Dahlia felt the same. She laid a quivering hand on his shoulder.
“I will, Monsieur Anatole, I will,” she said, and I couldn’t have believed that robust voice capable of sinking to such an absolute coo. More like a turtle dove calling to its mate than anything else. “It’s quite all right.”
She had said the wrong thing. He did Exercise 3.
“All right? _Nom d’un nom d’un nom_! The hell you say it’s all right! Of what use to pull stuff like that? Wait one half-moment. Not yet quite so quick, my old sport. It is by no means all right. See yet again a little. It is some very different dishes of fish. I can take a few smooths with a rough, it is true, but I do not find it agreeable when one play larks against me on my windows. That cannot do. A nice thing, no. I am a serious man. I do not wish a few larks on my windows. I enjoy larks on my windows worse as any. It is very little all right. If such rannygazoo is to arrive, I do not remain any longer in this house no more. I buzz off and do not stay planted.”
Sinister words, I had to admit, and I was not surprised that Aunt Dahlia, hearing them, should have uttered a cry like the wail of a master of hounds seeing a fox shot. Anatole had begun to wave his fists again at Gussie, and she now joined him. Seppings, who was puffing respectfully in the background, didn’t actually wave his fists, but he gave Gussie a pretty austere look. It was plain to the thoughtful observer that this Fink-Nottle, in getting on to that skylight, had done a mistaken thing. He couldn’t have been more unpopular in the home of G.G. Simmons.
“Go away, you crazy loon!” cried Aunt Dahlia, in that ringing voice of hers which had once caused nervous members of the Quorn to lose stirrups and take tosses from the saddle.
Gussie’s reply was to waggle his eyebrows. I could read the message he was trying to convey.
“I think he means,” I said–reasonable old Bertram, always trying to throw oil on the troubled w’s—-“that if he does he will fall down the side of the house and break his neck.”
“Well, why not?” said Aunt Dahlia.
I could see her point, of course, but it seemed to me that there might be a nearer solution. This skylight happened to be the only window in the house which Uncle Tom had not festooned with his bally bars. I suppose he felt that if a burglar had the nerve to climb up as far as this, he deserved what was coming to him.
“If you opened the skylight, he could jump in.”
The idea got across.
“Seppings, how does this skylight open?”
“With a pole, madam.”
“Then get a pole. Get two poles. Ten.”
And presently Gussie was mixing with the company, Like one of those chaps you read about in the papers, the wretched man seemed deeply conscious of his position.
I must say Aunt Dahlia’s bearing and demeanour did nothing to assist toward a restored composure. Of the amiability which she had exhibited when discussing this unhappy chump’s activities with me over the fruit salad, no trace remained, and I was not surprised that speech more or less froze on the Fink-Nottle lips. It isn’t often that Aunt Dahlia, normally as genial a bird as ever encouraged a gaggle of hounds to get their noses down to it, lets her angry passions rise, but when she does, strong men climb trees and pull them up after them.
“Well?” she said.
In answer to this, all that Gussie could produce was a sort of strangled hiccough.
“Well?”
Aunt Dahlia’s face grew darker. Hunting, if indulged in regularly over a period of years, is a pastime that seldom fails to lend a fairly deepish tinge to the patient’s complexion, and her best friends could not have denied that even at normal times the relative’s map tended a little toward the crushed strawberry. But never had I seen it take on so pronounced a richness as now. She looked like a tomato struggling for self-expression.
“Well?”
Gussie tried hard. And for a moment it seemed as if something was going to come through. But in the end it turned out nothing more than a sort of death-rattle.
“Oh, take him away, Bertie, and put ice on his head,” said Aunt Dahlia, giving the thing up. And she turned to tackle what looked like the rather man’s size job of soothing Anatole, who was now carrying on a muttered conversation with himself in a rapid sort of way.
Seeming to feel that the situation was one to which he could not do justice in Bingo-cum-Maloney Anglo-American, he had fallen back on his native tongue. Words like “_marmiton de Domange,” “pignouf,” “hurluberlu_” and “_roustisseur_” were fluttering from him like bats out of a barn. Lost on me, of course, because, though I sweated a bit at the Gallic language during that Cannes visit, I’m still more or less in the Esker-vous-avez stage. I regretted this, for they sounded good.
I assisted Gussie down the stairs. A cooler thinker than Aunt Dahlia, I had already guessed the hidden springs and motives which had led him to the roof. Where she had seen only a cockeyed reveller indulging himself in a drunken prank or whimsy, I had spotted the hunted fawn.
“Was Tuppy after you?” I asked sympathetically.
What I believe is called a _frisson_ shook him.
“He nearly got me on the top landing. I shinned out through a passage window and scrambled along a sort of ledge.”
“That baffled him, what?”
“Yes. But then I found I had stuck. The roof sloped down in all directions. I couldn’t go back. I had to go on, crawling along this ledge. And then I found myself looking down the skylight. Who was that chap?”
“That was Anatole, Aunt Dahlia’s chef.”
“French?”
“To the core.”
“That explains why I couldn’t make him understand. What asses these Frenchmen are. They don’t seem able to grasp the simplest thing. You’d have thought if a chap saw a chap on a skylight, the chap would realize the chap wanted to be let in. But no, he just stood there.”
“Waving a few fists.”
“Yes. Silly idiot. Still, here I am.”
“Here you are, yes–for the moment.”
“Eh?”
“I was thinking that Tuppy is probably lurking somewhere.”
He leaped like a lamb in springtime.
“What shall I do?”
I considered this.
“Sneak back to your room and barricade the door. That is the manly policy.”
“Suppose that’s where he’s lurking?”
“In that case, move elsewhere.”
But on arrival at the room, it transpired that Tuppy, if anywhere, was infesting some other portion of the house. Gussie shot in, and I heard the key turn. And feeling that there was no more that I could do in that quarter, I returned to the dining-room for further fruit salad and a quiet think. And I had barely filled my plate when the door opened and Aunt Dahlia came in. She sank into a chair, looking a bit shopworn.
“Give me a drink, Bertie.”
“What sort?”
“Any sort, so long as it’s strong.”
Approach Bertram Wooster along these lines, and you catch him at his best. St. Bernard dogs doing the square thing by Alpine travellers could not have bustled about more assiduously. I filled the order, and for some moments nothing was to be heard but the sloshing sound of an aunt restoring her tissues.
“Shove it down, Aunt Dahlia,” I said sympathetically. “These things take it out of one, don’t they? You’ve had a toughish time, no doubt, soothing Anatole,” I proceeded, helping myself to anchovy paste on toast. “Everything pretty smooth now, I trust?”
She gazed at me in a long, lingering sort of way, her brow wrinkled as if in thought.
“Attila,” she said at length. “That’s the name. Attila, the Hun.”
“Eh?”
“I was trying to think who you reminded me of. Somebody who went about strewing ruin and desolation and breaking up homes which, until he came along, had been happy and peaceful. Attila is the man. It’s amazing.” she said, drinking me in once more. “To look at you, one would think you were just an ordinary sort of amiable idiot–certifiable, perhaps, but quite harmless. Yet, in reality, you are worse a scourge than the Black Death. I tell you, Bertie, when I contemplate you I seem to come up against all the underlying sorrow and horror of life with such a thud that I feel as if I had walked into a lamp post.”
Pained and surprised, I would have spoken, but the stuff I had thought was anchovy paste had turned out to be something far more gooey and adhesive. It seemed to wrap itself round the tongue and impede utterance like a gag. And while I was still endeavouring to clear the vocal cords for action, she went on:
“Do you realize what you started when you sent that Spink-Bottle man down here? As regards his getting blotto and turning the prize-giving ceremonies at Market Snodsbury Grammar School into a sort of two-reel comic film, I will say nothing, for frankly I enjoyed it. But when he comes leering at Anatole through skylights, just after I had with infinite pains and tact induced him to withdraw his notice, and makes him so temperamental that he won’t hear of staying on after tomorrow—-“
The paste stuff gave way. I was able to speak:
“What?”
“Yes, Anatole goes tomorrow, and I suppose poor old Tom will have indigestion for the rest of his life. And that is not all. I have just seen Angela, and she tells me she is engaged to this Bottle.”
“Temporarily, yes,” I had to admit.
“Temporarily be blowed. She’s definitely engaged to him and talks with a sort of hideous coolness of getting married in October. So there it is. If the prophet Job were to walk into the room at this moment, I could sit swapping hard-luck stories with him till bedtime. Not that Job was in my class.”
“He had boils.”
“Well, what are boils?”
“Dashed painful, I understand.”
“Nonsense. I’d take all the boils on the market in exchange for my troubles. Can’t you realize the position? I’ve lost the best cook to England. My husband, poor soul, will probably die of dyspepsia. And my only daughter, for whom I had dreamed such a wonderful future, is engaged to be married to an inebriated newt fancier. And you talk about boils!”
I corrected her on a small point:
“I don’t absolutely talk about boils. I merely mentioned that Job had them. Yes, I agree with you, Aunt Dahlia, that things are not looking too oojah-cum-spiff at the moment, but be of good cheer. A Wooster is seldom baffled for more than the nonce.”
“You rather expect to be coming along shortly with another of your schemes?”
“At any minute.”
She sighed resignedly.
“I thought as much. Well, it needed but this. I don’t see how things could possibly be worse than they are, but no doubt you will succeed in making them so. Your genius and insight will find the way. Carry on, Bertie. Yes, carry on. I am past caring now. I shall even find a faint interest in seeing into what darker and profounder abysses of hell you can plunge this home. Go to it, lad…. What’s that stuff you’re eating?”
“I find it a little difficult to classify. Some sort of paste on toast. Rather like glue flavoured with beef extract.”
“Gimme,” said Aunt Dahlia listlessly.
“Be careful how you chew,” I advised. “It sticketh closer than a brother…. Yes, Jeeves?”
The man had materialized on the carpet. Absolutely noiseless, as usual.
“A note for you, sir.”
“A note for me, Jeeves?”
“A note for you, sir.”
“From whom, Jeeves?”
“From Miss Bassett, sir.”
“From whom, Jeeves?”
“From Miss Bassett, sir.”
“From Miss Bassett, Jeeves?”
“From Miss Bassett, sir.”
At this point, Aunt Dahlia, who had taken one nibble at her whatever-it-was-on-toast and laid it down, begged us–a little fretfully, I thought–for heaven’s sake to cut out the cross-talk vaudeville stuff, as she had enough to bear already without having to listen to us doing our imitation of the Two Macs. Always willing to oblige, I dismissed Jeeves with a nod, and he flickered for a moment and was gone. Many a spectre would have been less slippy.
“But what,” I mused, toying with the envelope, “can this female be writing to me about?”
“Why not open the damn thing and see?”
“A very excellent idea,” I said, and did so.
“And if you are interested in my movements,” proceeded Aunt Dahlia, heading for the door, “I propose to go to my room, do some Yogi deep breathing, and try to forget.”
“Quite,” I said absently, skimming p. l. And then, as I turned over, a sharp howl broke from my lips, causing Aunt Dahlia to shy like a startled mustang.
“Don’t do it!” she exclaimed, quivering in every limb.
“Yes, but dash it—-“
“What a pest you are, you miserable object,” she sighed. “I remember years ago, when you were in your cradle, being left alone with you one day and you nearly swallowed your rubber comforter and started turning purple. And I, ass that I was, took it out and saved your life. Let me tell you, young Bertie, it will go very hard with you if you ever swallow a rubber comforter again when only I am by to aid.”
“But, dash it!” I cried. “Do you know what’s happened? Madeline Bassett says she’s going to marry me!”
“I hope it keeps fine for you,” said the relative, and passed from the room looking like something out of an Edgar Allan Poe story.
-21-
I don’t suppose I was looking so dashed unlike something out of an Edgar Allan Poe story myself, for, as you can readily imagine, the news item which I have just recorded had got in amongst me properly. If the Bassett, in the belief that the Wooster heart had long been hers and was waiting ready to be scooped in on demand, had decided to take up her option, I should, as a man of honour and sensibility, have no choice but to come across and kick in. The matter was obviously not one that could be straightened out with a curt _nolle prosequi_. All the evidence, therefore, seemed to point to the fact that the doom had come upon me and, what was more, had come to stay.
And yet, though it would be idle to pretend that my grip on the situation was quite the grip I would have liked it to be, I did not despair of arriving at a solution. A lesser man, caught in this awful snare, would no doubt have thrown in the towel at once and ceased to struggle; but the whole point about the Woosters is that they are not lesser men.
By way of a start, I read the note again. Not that I had any hope that a second perusal would enable me to place a different construction on its contents, but it helped to fill in while the brain was limbering up. I then, to assist thought, had another go at the fruit salad, and in addition ate a slice of sponge cake. And it was as I passed on to the cheese that the machinery started working. I saw what had to be done.
To the question which had been exercising the mind–viz., can Bertram cope?–I was now able to reply with a confident “Absolutely.”
The great wheeze on these occasions of dirty work at the crossroads is not to lose your head but to keep cool and try to find the ringleaders. Once find the ringleaders, and you know where you are.
The ringleader here was plainly the Bassett. It was she who had started the whole imbroglio by chucking Gussie, and it was clear that before anything could be done to solve and clarify, she must be induced to revise her views and take him on again. This would put Angela back into circulation, and that would cause Tuppy to simmer down a bit, and then we could begin to get somewhere.
I decided that as soon as I had had another morsel of cheese I would seek this Bassett out and be pretty eloquent.
And at this moment in she came. I might have foreseen that she would be turning up shortly. I mean to say, hearts may ache, but if they know that there is a cold collation set out in the dining-room, they are pretty sure to come popping in sooner or later.
Her eyes, as she entered the room, were fixed on the salmon mayonnaise, and she would no doubt have made a bee-line for it and started getting hers, had I not, in the emotion of seeing her, dropped a glass of the best with which I was endeavouring to bring about a calmer frame of mind. The noise caused her to turn, and for an instant embarrassment supervened. A slight flush mantled the cheek, and the eyes popped a bit.
“Oh!” she said.
I have always found that there is nothing that helps to ease you over one of these awkward moments like a spot of stage business. Find something to do with your hands, and it’s half the battle. I grabbed a plate and hastened forward.
“A touch of salmon?”
“Thank you.”
“With a suspicion of salad?”
“If you please.”
“And to drink? Name the poison.”
“I think I would like a little orange juice.”
She gave a gulp. Not at the orange juice, I don’t mean, because she hadn’t got it yet, but at all the tender associations those two words provoked. It was as if someone had mentioned spaghetti to the relict of an Italian organ-grinder. Her face flushed a deeper shade, she registered anguish, and I saw that it was no longer within the sphere of practical politics to try to confine the conversation to neutral topics like cold boiled salmon.
So did she, I imagine, for when I, as a preliminary to getting down to brass tacks, said “Er,” she said “Er,” too, simultaneously, the brace of “Ers” clashing in mid-air.
“I’m sorry.”
“I beg your pardon.”
“You were saying—-“
“You were saying—-“
“No, please go on.”
“Oh, right-ho.”
I straightened the tie, my habit when in this girl’s society, and had at it:
“With reference to yours of even date—-“
She flushed again, and took a rather strained forkful of salmon.
“You got my note?”
“Yes, I got your note.”
“I gave it to Jeeves to give it to you.”
“Yes, he gave it to me. That’s how I got it.”
There was another silence. And as she was plainly shrinking from talking turkey, I was reluctantly compelled to do so. I mean, somebody had got to. Too dashed silly, a male and female in our position simply standing eating salmon and cheese at one another without a word.
“Yes, I got it all right.”
“I see. You got it.”
“Yes, I got it. I’ve just been reading it. And what I was rather wanting to ask you, if we happened to run into each other, was–well, what about it?”
“What about it?”
“That’s what I say: What about it?”
“But it was quite clear.”
“Oh, quite. Perfectly clear. Very well expressed and all that. But–I mean–Well, I mean, deeply sensible of the honour, and so forth–but—- Well, dash it!”
She had polished off her salmon, and now put the plate down.
“Fruit salad?”
“No, thank you.”
“Spot of pie?”
“No, thanks.”
“One of those glue things on toast?”
“No, thank you.”
She took a cheese straw. I found a cold egg which I had overlooked. Then I said “I mean to say” just as she said “I think I know”, and there was another collision.
“I beg your pardon.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Do go on.”
“No, you go on.”
I waved my cold egg courteously, to indicate that she had the floor, and she started again:
“I think I know what you are trying to say. You are surprised.”
“Yes.”
“You are thinking of—-“
“Exactly.”
“–Mr. Fink-Nottle.”
“The very man.”
“You find what I have done hard to understand.”
“Absolutely.”
“I don’t wonder.”
“I do.”
“And yet it is quite simple.”
She took another cheese straw. She seemed to like cheese straws.
“Quite simple, really. I want to make you happy.”
“Dashed decent of you.”
“I am going to devote the rest of my life to making you happy.”
“A very matey scheme.”
“I can at least do that. But–may I be quite frank with you, Bertie?”
“Oh, rather.”
“Then I must tell you this. I am fond of you. I will marry you. I will do my best to make you a good wife. But my affection for you can never be the flamelike passion I felt for Augustus.”
“Just the very point I was working round to. There, as you say, is the snag. Why not chuck the whole idea of hitching up with me? Wash it out altogether. I mean, if you love old Gussie—-“
“No longer.”
“Oh, come.”
“No. What happened this afternoon has killed my love. A smear of ugliness has been drawn across a thing of beauty, and I can never feel towards him as I did.”
I saw what she meant, of course. Gussie had bunged his heart at her feet; she had picked it up, and, almost immediately after doing so, had discovered that he had been stewed to the eyebrows all the time. The shock must have been severe. No girl likes to feel that a chap has got to be thoroughly plastered before he can ask her to marry him. It wounds the pride.
Nevertheless, I persevered.
“But have you considered,” I said, “that you may have got a wrong line on Gussie’s performance this afternoon? Admitted that all the evidence points to a more sinister theory, what price him simply having got a touch of the sun? Chaps do get touches of the sun, you know, especially when the weather’s hot.”
She looked at me, and I saw that she was putting in a bit of the old drenched-irises stuff.
“It was like you to say that, Bertie. I respect you for it.”
“Oh, no.”
“Yes. You have a splendid, chivalrous soul.”
“Not a bit.”
“Yes, you have. You remind me of Cyrano.”
“Who?”
“Cyrano de Bergerac.”
“The chap with the nose?”
“Yes.”
I can’t say I was any too pleased. I felt the old beak furtively. It was a bit on the prominent side, perhaps, but, dash it, not in the Cyrano class. It began to look as if the next thing this girl would do would be to compare me to Schnozzle Durante.
“He loved, but pleaded another’s cause.”
“Oh, I see what you mean now.”
“I like you for that, Bertie. It was fine of you–fine and big. But it is no use. There are things which kill love. I can never forget Augustus, but my love for him is dead. I will be your wife.”
Well, one has to be civil.
“Right ho,” I said. “Thanks awfully.”
Then the dialogue sort of poofed out once more, and we stood eating cheese straws and cold eggs respectively in silence. There seemed to exist some little uncertainty as to what the next move was.
Fortunately, before embarrassment could do much more supervening, Angela came in, and this broke up the meeting. Then Bassett announced our engagement, and Angela kissed her and said she hoped she would be very, very happy, and the Bassett kissed her and said she hoped she would be very, very happy with Gussie, and Angela said she was sure she would, because Augustus was such a dear, and the Bassett kissed her again, and Angela kissed her again and, in a word, the whole thing got so bally feminine that I was glad to edge away.
I would have been glad to do so, of course, in any case, for if even there was a moment when it was up to Bertram to think, and think hard, this moment was that moment.
It was, it seemed to me, the end. Not even on the occasion, some years earlier, when I had inadvertently become betrothed to Tuppy’s frightful Cousin Honoria, had I experienced a deeper sense of being waist high in the gumbo and about to sink without trace. I wandered out into the garden, smoking a tortured gasper, with the iron well embedded in the soul. And I had fallen into a sort of trance, trying to picture what it would be like having the Bassett on the premises for the rest of my life and at the same time, if you follow me, trying not to picture what it would be like, when I charged into something which might have been a tree, but was not–being, in point of fact, Jeeves.
“I beg your pardon, sir,” he said. “I should have moved to one side.”
I did not reply. I stood looking at him in silence. For the sight of him had opened up a new line of thought.
This Jeeves, now, I reflected. I had formed the opinion that he had lost his grip and was no longer the force he had been, but was it not possible, I asked myself, that I might be mistaken? Start him off exploring avenues and might he not discover one through which I would be enabled to sneak off to safety, leaving no hard feelings behind? I found myself answering that it was quite on the cards that he might.
After all, his head still bulged out at the back as of old. One noted in the eyes the same intelligent glitter.
Mind you, after what had passed between us in the matter of that white mess-jacket with the brass buttons, I was not prepared absolutely to hand over to the man. I would, of course, merely take him into consultation. But, recalling some of his earlier triumphs–the Sipperley Case, the Episode of My Aunt Agatha and the Dog McIntosh, and the smoothly handled Affair of Uncle George and The Barmaid’s Niece were a few that sprang to my mind–I felt justified at least in offering him the opportunity of coming to the aid of the young master in his hour of peril.
But before proceeding further, there was one thing that had got to be understood between us, and understood clearly.
“Jeeves,” I said, “a word with you.”
“Sir?”
“I am up against it a bit, Jeeves.”
“I am sorry to hear that, sir. Can I be of any assistance?”
“Quite possibly you can, if you have not lost your grip. Tell me frankly, Jeeves, are you in pretty good shape mentally?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Still eating plenty of fish?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Then it may be all right. But there is just one point before I begin. In the past, when you have contrived to extricate self or some pal from some little difficulty, you have frequently shown a disposition to take advantage of my gratitude to gain some private end. Those purple socks, for instance. Also the plus fours and the Old Etonian spats. Choosing your moment with subtle cunning, you came to me when I was weakened by relief and got me to get rid of them. And what I am saying now is that if you are successful on the present occasion there must be no rot of that description about that mess-jacket of mine.”
“Very good, sir.”
“You will not come to me when all is over and ask me to jettison the jacket?”
“Certainly not, sir.”
“On that understanding then, I will carry on. Jeeves, I’m engaged.”
“I hope you will be very happy, sir.”
“Don’t be an ass. I’m engaged to Miss Bassett.”
“Indeed, sir? I was not aware—-“
“Nor was I. It came as a complete surprise. However, there it is. The official intimation was in that note you brought me.”
“Odd, sir.”
“What is?”
“Odd, sir, that the contents of that note should have been as you describe. It seemed to me that Miss Bassett, when she handed me the communication, was far from being in a happy frame of mind.”
“She is far from being in a happy frame of mind. You don’t suppose she really wants to marry me, do you? Pshaw, Jeeves! Can’t you see that this is simply another of those bally gestures which are rapidly rendering Brinkley Court a hell for man and beast? Dash all gestures, is my view.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, what’s to be done?”
“You feel that Miss Bassett, despite what has occurred, still retains a fondness for Mr. Fink-Nottle, sir?”
“She’s pining for him.”
“In that case, sir, surely the best plan would be to bring about a reconciliation between them.”
“How? You see. You stand silent and twiddle the fingers. You are stumped.”
“No, sir. If I twiddled my fingers, it was merely to assist thought.”
“Then continue twiddling.”
“It will not be necessary, sir.”
“You don’t mean you’ve got a bite already?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You astound me, Jeeves. Let’s have it.”
“The device which I have in mind is one that I have already mentioned to you, sir.”
“When did you ever mention any device to me?”
“If you will throw your mind back to the evening of our arrival, sir. You were good enough to inquire of me if I had any plan to put forward with a view to bringing Miss Angela and Mr. Glossop together, and I ventured to suggest—-“
“Good Lord! Not the old fire-alarm thing?”
“Precisely, sir.”
“You’re still sticking to that?”
“Yes, sir.”
It shows how much the ghastly blow I had received had shaken me when I say that, instead of dismissing the proposal with a curt “Tchah!” or anything like that, I found myself speculating as to whether there might not be something in it, after all.
When he had first mooted this fire-alarm scheme of his, I had sat upon it, if you remember, with the maximum of promptitude and vigour. “Rotten” was the adjective I had employed to describe it, and you may recall that I mused a bit sadly, considering the idea conclusive proof of the general breakdown of a once fine mind. But now it somehow began to look as if it might have possibilities. The fact of the matter was that I had about reached the stage where I was prepared to try anything once, however goofy.
“Just run through that wheeze again, Jeeves,” I said thoughtfully. “I remember thinking it cuckoo, but it may be that I missed some of the finer shades.”
“Your criticism of it at the time, sir, was that it was too elaborate, but I do not think it is so in reality. As I see it, sir, the occupants of the house, hearing the fire bell ring, will suppose that a conflagration has broken out.”
I nodded. One could follow the train of thought.
“Yes, that seems reasonable.”
“Whereupon Mr. Glossop will hasten to save Miss Angela, while Mr. Fink-Nottle performs the same office for Miss Bassett.”
“Is that based on psychology?”
“Yes, sir. Possibly you may recollect that it was an axiom of the late Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s fictional detective, Sherlock Holmes, that the instinct of everyone, upon an alarm of fire, is to save the object dearest to them.”
“It seems to me that there is a grave danger of seeing Tuppy come out carrying a steak-and-kidney pie, but resume, Jeeves, resume. You think that this would clean everything up?”
“The relations of the two young couples could scarcely continue distant after such an occurrence, sir.”
“Perhaps you’re right. But, dash it, if we go ringing fire bells in the night watches, shan’t we scare half the domestic staff into fits? There is one of the housemaids–Jane, I believe–who already skips like the high hills if I so much as come on her unexpectedly round a corner.”
“A neurotic girl, sir, I agree. I have noticed her. But by acting promptly we should avoid such a contingency. The entire staff, with the exception of Monsieur Anatole, will be at the ball at Kingham Manor tonight.”
“Of course. That just shows the condition this thing has reduced me to. Forget my own name next. Well, then, let’s just try to envisage. Bong goes the bell. Gussie rushes and grabs the Bassett…. Wait. Why shouldn’t she simply walk downstairs?”
“You are overlooking the effect of sudden alarm on the feminine temperament, sir.”
“That’s true.”
“Miss Bassett’s impulse, I would imagine, sir, would be to leap from her window.”
“Well, that’s worse. We don’t want her spread out in a sort of _puree_ on the lawn. It seems to me that the flaw in this scheme of yours, Jeeves, is that it’s going to litter the garden with mangled corpses.”
“No, sir. You will recall that Mr. Travers’s fear of burglars has caused him to have stout bars fixed to all the windows.”
“Of course, yes. Well, it sounds all right,” I said, though still a bit doubtfully. “Quite possibly it may come off. But I have a feeling that it will slip up somewhere. However, I am in no position to cavil at even a 100 to 1 shot. I will adopt this policy of yours, Jeeves, though, as I say, with misgivings. At what hour would you suggest bonging the bell?”
“Not before midnight, sir.”
“That is to say, some time after midnight.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Right-ho, then. At 12.30 on the dot, I will bong.”
“Very good, sir.”
-22-
I Don’t know why it is, but there’s something about the rural districts after dark that always has a rummy effect on me. In London I can stay out till all hours and come home with the milk without a tremor, but put me in the garden of a country house after the strength of the company has gone to roost and the place is shut up, and a sort of goose-fleshy feeling steals over me. The night wind stirs the tree-tops, twigs crack, bushes rustle, and before I know where I am, the morale has gone phut and I’m expecting the family ghost to come sneaking up behind me, making groaning noises. Dashed unpleasant, the whole thing, and if you think it improves matters to know that you are shortly about to ring the loudest fire bell in England and start an all-hands-to-the-pumps panic in that quiet, darkened house, you err.
I knew all about the Brinkley Court fire bell. The dickens of a row it makes. Uncle Tom, in addition to not liking burglars, is a bloke who has always objected to the idea of being cooked in his sleep, so when he bought the place he saw to it that the fire bell should be something that might give you heart failure, but which you couldn’t possibly mistake for the drowsy chirping of a sparrow in the ivy.
When I was a kid and spent my holidays at Brinkley, we used to have fire drills after closing time, and many is the night I’ve had it jerk me out of the dreamless like the Last Trump.
I confess that the recollection of what this bell could do when it buckled down to it gave me pause as I stood that night at 12.30 p.m. prompt beside the outhouse where it was located. The sight of the rope against the whitewashed wall and the thought of the bloodsome uproar which was about to smash the peace of the night into hash served to deepen that rummy feeling to which I have alluded.
Moreover, now that I had had time to meditate upon it, I was more than ever defeatist about this scheme of Jeeves’s.
Jeeves seemed to take it for granted that Gussie and Tuppy, faced with a hideous fate, would have no thought beyond saving the Bassett and Angela.
I could not bring myself to share his sunny confidence.
I mean to say, I know how moments when they’re faced with a hideous fate affect chaps. I remember Freddie Widgeon, one of the most chivalrous birds in the Drones, telling me how there was an alarm of fire once at a seaside hotel where he was staying and, so far from rushing about saving women, he was down the escape within ten seconds of the kick-off, his mind concerned with but one thing–viz., the personal well-being of F. Widgeon.
As far as any idea of doing the delicately nurtured a bit of good went, he tells me, he was prepared to stand underneath and catch them in blankets, but no more.
Why, then, should this not be so with Augustus Fink-Nottle and Hildebrand Glossop?
Such were my thoughts as I stood toying with the rope, and I believe I should have turned the whole thing up, had it not been that at this juncture there floated into my mind a picture of the Bassett hearing that bell for the first time. Coming as a wholly new experience, it would probably startle her into a decline.
And so agreeable was this reflection that I waited no longer, but seized the rope, braced the feet and snapped into it.
Well, as I say, I hadn’t been expecting that bell to hush things up to any great extent. Nor did it. The last time I had heard it, I had been in my room on the other side of the house, and even so it had hoiked me out of bed as if something had exploded under me. Standing close to it like this, I got the full force and meaning of the thing, and I’ve never heard anything like it in my puff.
I rather enjoy a bit of noise, as a general rule. I remember Cats-meat Potter-Pirbright bringing a police rattle into the Drones one night and loosing it off behind my chair, and I just lay back and closed my eyes with a pleasant smile, like someone in a box at the opera. And the same applies to the time when my Aunt Agatha’s son, young Thos., put a match to the parcel of Guy Fawkes Day fireworks to see what would happen.
But the Brinkley Court fire bell was too much for me. I gave about half a dozen tugs, and then, feeling that enough was enough, sauntered round to the front lawn to ascertain what solid results had been achieved.
Brinkley Court had given of its best. A glance told me that we were playing to capacity. The eye, roving to and fro, noted here Uncle Tom in a purple dressing gown, there Aunt Dahlia in the old blue and yellow. It also fell upon Anatole, Tuppy, Gussie, Angela, the Bassett and Jeeves, in the order named. There they all were, present and correct.
But–and this was what caused me immediate concern–I could detect no sign whatever that there had been any rescue work going on.
What I had been hoping, of course, was to see Tuppy bending solicitously over Angela in one corner, while Gussie fanned the Bassett with a towel in the other. Instead of which, the Bassett was one of the group which included Aunt Dahlia and Uncle Tom and seemed to be busy trying to make Anatole see the bright side, while Angela and Gussie were, respectively, leaning against the sundial with a peeved look and sitting on the grass rubbing a barked shin. Tuppy was walking up and down the path, all by himself.
A disturbing picture, you will admit. It was with a rather imperious gesture that I summoned Jeeves to my side.
“Well, Jeeves?”
“Sir?”
I eyed him sternly. “Sir?” forsooth!
“It’s no good saying ‘Sir?’ Jeeves. Look round you. See for yourself. Your scheme has proved a bust.”
“Certainly it would appear that matters have not arranged themselves quite as we anticipated, sir.”
“We?”
“As I had anticipated, sir.”
“That’s more like it. Didn’t I tell you it would be a flop?”
“I remember that you did seem dubious, sir.”
“Dubious is no word for it, Jeeves. I hadn’t a scrap of faith in the idea from the start. When you first mooted it, I said it was rotten, and I was right. I’m not blaming you, Jeeves. It is not your fault that you have sprained your brain. But after this–forgive me if I hurt your feelings, Jeeves—-I shall know better than to allow you to handle any but the simplest and most elementary problems. It is best to be candid about this, don’t you think? Kindest to be frank and straightforward?”
“Certainly, sir.”
“I mean, the surgeon’s knife, what?”
“Precisely, sir.”
“I consider—-“
“If you will pardon me for interrupting you, sir, I fancy Mrs. Travers is endeavouring to attract your attention.”
And at this moment a ringing “Hoy!” which could have proceeded only from the relative in question, assured me that his view was correct.
“Just step this way a moment, Attila, if you don’t mind,” boomed that well-known–and under certain conditions, well-loved–voice, and I moved over.
I was not feeling unmixedly at my ease. For the first time it was beginning to steal upon me that I had not prepared a really good story in support of my questionable behaviour in ringing fire bells at such an hour, and I have known Aunt Dahlia to express herself with a hearty freedom upon far smaller provocation.
She exhibited, however, no signs of violence. More a sort of frozen calm, if you know what I mean. You could see that she was a woman who had suffered.
“Well, Bertie, dear,” she said, “here we all are.”
“Quite,” I replied guardedly.
“Nobody missing, is there?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Splendid. So much healthier for us out in the open like this than frowsting in bed. I had just dropped off when you did your bell-ringing act. For it was you, my sweet child, who rang that bell, was knot?”
“I did ring the bell, yes.”
“Any particular reason, or just a whim?”
“I thought there was a fire.”
“What gave you that impression, dear?”
“I thought I saw flames.”
“Where, darling? Tell Aunt Dahlia.”
“In one of the windows.”
“I see. So we have all been dragged out of bed and scared rigid because you have been seeing things.”
Here Uncle Tom made a noise like a cork coming out of a bottle, and Anatole, whose moustache had hit a new low, said something about “some apes” and, if I am not mistaken, a “_rogommier_”–whatever that is.
“I admit I was mistaken. I am sorry.”
“Don’t apologize, ducky. Can’t you see how pleased we all are? What were you doing out here, anyway?”
“Just taking a stroll.”
“I see. And are you proposing to continue your stroll?”
“No, I think I’ll go in now.”
“That’s fine. Because I was thinking of going in, too, and I don’t believe I could sleep knowing you were out here giving rein to that powerful imagination of yours. The next thing that would happen would be that you would think you saw a pink elephant sitting on the drawing-room window-sill and start throwing bricks at it…. Well, come on, Tom, the entertainment seems to be over…. But wait. The newt king wishes a word with us…. Yes, Mr. Fink-Nottle?”
Gussie, as he joined our little group, seemed upset about something.
“I say!”
“Say on, Augustus.”
“I say, what are we going to do?”
“Speaking for myself, I intend to return to bed.”
“But the door’s shut.”
“What door?”
“The front door. Somebody must have shut it.”
“Then I shall open it.”
“But it won’t open.”
“Then I shall try another door.”
“But all the other doors are shut.”
“What? Who shut them?”
“I don’t know.”
I advanced a theory!
“The wind?”
Aunt Dahlia’s eyes met mine.
“Don’t try me too high,” she begged. “Not now, precious.” And, indeed, even as I spoke, it did strike me that the night was pretty still.
Uncle Tom said we must get in through a window. Aunt Dahlia sighed a bit.
“How? Could Lloyd George do it, could Winston do it, could Baldwin do it? No. Not since you had those bars of yours put on.”
“Well, well, well. God bless my soul, ring the bell, then.”
“The fire bell?”
“The door bell.”
“To what end, Thomas? There’s nobody in the house. The servants are all at Kingham.”
“But, confound it all, we can’t stop out here all night.”
“Can’t we? You just watch us. There is nothing–literally nothing–which a country house party can’t do with Attila here operating on the premises. Seppings presumably took the back-door key with him. We must just amuse ourselves till he comes back.”
Tuppy made a suggestion:
“Why not take out one of the cars and drive over to Kingham and get the key from Seppings?”
It went well. No question about that. For the first time, a smile lit up Aunt Dahlia’s drawn face. Uncle Tom grunted approvingly. Anatole said something in Provencal that sounded complimentary. And I thought I detected even on Angela’s map a slight softening.
“A very excellent idea,” said Aunt Dahlia. “One of the best. Nip round to the garage at once.”
After Tuppy had gone, some extremely flattering things were said about his intelligence and resource, and there was a disposition to draw rather invidious comparisons between him and Bertram. Painful for me, of course, but the ordeal didn’t last long, for it couldn’t have been more than five minutes before he was with us again.
Tuppy seemed perturbed.
“I say, it’s all off.”
“Why?”
“The garage is locked.”
“Unlock it.”
“I haven’t the key.”
“Shout, then, and wake Waterbury.”
“Who’s Waterbury?”
“The chauffeur, ass. He sleeps over the garage.”
“But he’s gone to the dance at Kingham.”
It was the final wallop. Until this moment, Aunt Dahlia had been able to preserve her frozen calm. The dam now burst. The years rolled away from her, and she was once more the Dahlia Wooster of the old yoicks-and-tantivy days–the emotional, free-speaking girl who had so often risen in her stirrups to yell derogatory personalities at people who were heading hounds.
“Curse all dancing chauffeurs! What on earth does a chauffeur want to dance for? I mistrusted that man from the start. Something told me he was a dancer. Well, this finishes it. We’re out here till breakfast-time. If those blasted servants come back before eight o’clock, I shall be vastly surprised. You won’t get Seppings away from a dance till you throw him out. I know him. The jazz’ll go to his head, and he’ll stand clapping and demanding encores till his hands blister. Damn all dancing butlers! What is Brinkley Court? A respectable English country house or a crimson dancing school? One might as well be living in the middle of the Russian Ballet. Well, all right. If we must stay out here, we must. We shall all be frozen stiff, except”–here she directed at me not one of her friendliest glances—-“except dear old Attila, who is, I observe, well and warmly clad. We will resign ourselves to the prospect of freezing to death like the Babes in the Wood, merely expressing a dying wish that our old pal Attila will see that we are covered with leaves. No doubt he will also toll that fire bell of his as a mark of respect–And what might you want, my good man?”
She broke off, and stood glaring at Jeeves. During the latter portion of her address, he had been standing by in a respectful manner, endeavouring to catch the speaker’s eye.
“If I might make a suggestion, madam.”
I am not saying that in the course of our long association I have always found myself able to view Jeeves with approval. There are aspects of his character which have frequently caused coldnesses to arise between us. He is one of those fellows who, if you give them a thingummy, take a what-d’you-call-it. His work is often raw, and he has been known to allude to me as “mentally negligible”. More than once, as I have shown, it has been my painful task to squelch in him a tendency to get uppish and treat the young master as a serf or peon.
These are grave defects.
But one thing I have never failed to hand the man. He is magnetic. There is about him something that seems to soothe and hypnotize. To the best of my knowledge, he has never encountered a charging rhinoceros, but should this contingency occur, I have no doubt that the animal, meeting his eye, would check itself in mid-stride, roll over and lie purring with its legs in the air.
At any rate he calmed down Aunt Dahlia, the nearest thing to a charging rhinoceros, in under five seconds. He just stood there looking respectful, and though I didn’t time the thing–not having a stop-watch on me–I should say it wasn’t more than three seconds and a quarter before her whole manner underwent an astounding change for the better. She melted before one’s eyes.
“Jeeves! You haven’t got an idea?”
“Yes, madam.”
“That great brain of yours has really clicked as ever in the hour of need?”
“Yes, madam.”
“Jeeves,” said Aunt Dahlia in a shaking voice, “I am sorry I spoke so abruptly. I was not myself. I might have known that you would not come simply trying to make conversation. Tell us this idea of yours, Jeeves. Join our little group of thinkers and let us hear what you have to say. Make yourself at home, Jeeves, and give us the good word. Can you really get us out of this mess?”
“Yes, madam, if one of the gentlemen would be willing to ride a bicycle.”
“A bicycle?”
“There is a bicycle in the gardener’s shed in the kitchen garden, madam. Possibly one of the gentlemen might feel disposed to ride over to Kingham Manor and procure the back-door key from Mr. Seppings.”
“Splendid, Jeeves!”
“Thank you, madam.”
“Wonderful!”
“Thank you, madam.”
“Attila!” said Aunt Dahlia, turning and speaking in a quiet, authoritative manner.
I had been expecting it. From the very moment those ill-judged words had passed the fellow’s lips, I had had a presentiment that a determined effort would be made to elect me as the goat, and I braced myself to resist and obstruct.
And as I was about to do so, while I was in the very act of summoning up all my eloquence to protest that I didn’t know how to ride a bike and couldn’t possibly learn in the brief time at my disposal, I’m dashed if the man didn’t go and nip me in the bud.
“Yes, madam, Mr. Wooster would perform the task admirably. He is an expert cyclist. He has often boasted to me of his triumphs on the wheel.”
I hadn’t. I hadn’t done anything of the sort. It’s simply monstrous how one’s words get twisted. All I had ever done was to mention to him–casually, just as an interesting item of information, one day in New York when we were watching the six-day bicycle race–that at the age of fourteen, while spending my holidays with a vicar of sorts who had been told off to teach me Latin, I had won the Choir Boys’ Handicap at the local school treat.
A different thing from boasting of one’s triumphs on the wheel.
I mean, he was a man of the world and must have known that the form of school treats is never of the hottest. And, if I’m not mistaken, I had specifically told him that on the occasion referred to I had received half a lap start and that Willie Punting, the odds-on favourite to whom the race was expected to be a gift, had been forced to retire, owing to having pinched his elder brother’s machine without asking the elder brother, and the elder brother coming along just as the pistol went and giving him one on the side of the head and taking it away from him, thus rendering him a scratched-at-the-post non-starter. Yet, from the way he talked, you would have thought I was one of those chaps in sweaters with medals all over them, whose photographs bob up from time to time in the illustrated press on the occasion of their having ridden from Hyde Park Corner to Glasgow in three seconds under the hour, or whatever it is.
And as if this were not bad enough, Tuppy had to shove his oar in.
“That’s right,” said Tuppy. “Bertie has always been a great cyclist. I remember at Oxford he used to take all his clothes off on bump-supper nights and ride around the quad, singing comic songs. Jolly fast he used to go too.”
“Then he can go jolly fast now,” said Aunt Dahlia with animation. “He can’t go too fast for me. He may also sing comic songs, if he likes…. And if you wish to take your clothes off, Bertie, my lamb, by all means do so. But whether clothed or in the nude, whether singing comic songs or not singing comic songs, get a move on.”
I found speech:
“But I haven’t ridden for years.”
“Then it’s high time you began again.”
“I’ve probably forgotten how to ride.”
“You’ll soon get the knack after you’ve taken a toss or two. Trial and error. The only way.”
“But it’s miles to Kingham.”
“So the sooner you’re off, the better.”
“But—-“
“Bertie, dear.”
“But, dash it—-“
“Bertie, darling.”
“Yes, but dash it—-“
“Bertie, my sweet.”
And so it was arranged. Presently I was moving sombrely off through the darkness, Jeeves at my side, Aunt Dahlia calling after me something about trying to imagine myself the man who brought the good news from Ghent to Aix. The first I had heard of the chap.
“So, Jeeves,” I said, as we reached the shed, and my voice was cold and bitter, “this is what your great scheme has accomplished! Tuppy, Angela, Gussie and the Bassett not on speaking terms, and self faced with an eight-mile ride—-“
“Nine, I believe, sir.”
“–a nine-mile ride, and another nine-mile ride back.”
“I am sorry, sir.”
“No good being sorry now. Where is this foul bone-shaker?”
“I will bring it out, sir.”
He did so. I eyed it sourly.
“Where’s the lamp?”
“I fear there is no lamp, sir.”
“No lamp?”
“No, sir.”
“But I may come a fearful stinker without a lamp. Suppose I barge into something.”
I broke off and eyed him frigidly.
“You smile, Jeeves. The thought amuses you?”
“I beg your pardon, sir. I was thinking of a tale my Uncle Cyril used to