“I do. You look like one of the chorus of male guests at Abernethy Towers in Act 2 of a touring musical comedy.”
“You do not admire this jacket?”
“I do not.”
“You did at Cannes.”
“Well, this isn’t Cannes.”
“But, dash it----”
“Oh, never mind. Let it go. If you want to give my butler a laugh, what does it matter? What does anything matter now?”
There was a death-where-is-thy-sting-fullness about her manner which I found distasteful. It isn’t often that I score off Jeeves in the devastating fashion just described, and when I do I like to see happy, smiling faces about me.
“Tails up, Aunt Dahlia,” I urged buoyantly.
“Tails up be dashed,” was her sombre response. “I’ve just been talking to Tom.”
“Telling him?”
“No, listening to him. I haven’t had the nerve to tell him yet.”
“Is he still upset about that income-tax money?”
“Upset is right. He says that Civilisation is in the melting-pot and that all thinking men can read the writing on the wall.”
“What wall?”
“Old Testament, ass. Belshazzar’s feast.”
“Oh, that, yes. I’ve often wondered how that gag was worked. With mirrors, I expect.”
“I wish I could use mirrors to break it to Tom about this baccarat business.”
I had a word of comfort to offer here. I had been turning the thing over in my mind since our last meeting, and I thought I saw where she had got twisted. Where she made her error, it seemed to me, was in feeling she had got to tell Uncle Tom. To my way of thinking, the matter was one on which it would be better to continue to exercise a quiet reserve.
“I don’t see why you need mention that you lost that money at baccarat.”
“What do you suggest, then? Letting Milady’s Boudoir join Civilisation in the melting-pot. Because that is what it will infallibly do unless I get a cheque by next week. The printers have been showing a nasty spirit for months.”
“You don’t follow. Listen. It’s an understood thing, I take it, that Uncle Tom foots the Boudoir bills. If the bally sheet has been turning the corner for two years, he must have got used to forking out by this time. Well, simply ask him for the money to pay the printers.”
“I did. Just before I went to Cannes.”
“Wouldn’t he give it to you?”
“Certainly he gave it to me. He brassed up like an officer and a gentleman. That was the money I lost at baccarat.”
“Oh? I didn’t know that.”
“There isn’t much you do know.”
A nephew’s love made me overlook the slur.
“Tut!” I said.
“What did you say?”
“I said ‘Tut!’”
“Say it once again, and I’ll biff you where you stand. I’ve enough to endure without being tutted at.”
“Quite.”
“Any tutting that’s required, I’ll attend to myself. And the same applies to clicking the tongue, if you were thinking of doing that.”
“Far from it.”
“Good.”
I stood awhile in thought. I was concerned to the core. My heart, if you remember, had already bled once for Aunt Dahlia this evening. It now bled again. I knew how deeply attached she was to this paper of hers. Seeing it go down the drain would be for her like watching a loved child sink for the third time in some pond or mere.
And there was no question that, unless carefully prepared for the touch, Uncle Tom would see a hundred Milady’s Boudoirs go phut rather than take the rap.
Then I saw how the thing could be handled. This aunt, I perceived, must fall into line with my other clients. Tuppy Glossop was knocking off dinner to melt Angela. Gussie Fink-Nottle was knocking off dinner to impress the Bassett. Aunt Dahlia must knock off dinner to soften Uncle Tom. For the beauty of this scheme of mine was that there was no limit to the number of entrants. Come one, come all, the more the merrier, and satisfaction guaranteed in every case.
“I’ve got it,” I said. “There is only one course to pursue. Eat less meat.”
She looked at me in a pleading sort of way. I wouldn’t swear that her eyes were wet with unshed tears, but I rather think they were, certainly she clasped her hands in piteous appeal.
“Must you drivel, Bertie? Won’t you stop it just this once? Just for tonight, to please Aunt Dahlia?”
“I’m not drivelling.”
“I dare say that to a man of your high standards it doesn’t come under the head of drivel, but----”
I saw what had happened. I hadn’t made myself quite clear.
“It’s all right,” I said. “Have no misgivings. This is the real Tabasco. When I said ‘Eat less meat’, what I meant was that you must refuse your oats at dinner tonight. Just sit there, looking blistered, and wave away each course as it comes with a weary gesture of resignation. You see what will happen. Uncle Tom will notice your loss of appetite, and I am prepared to bet that at the conclusion of the meal he will come to you and say ‘Dahlia, darling’--I take it he calls you ‘Dahlia’--‘Dahlia darling,’ he will say, ‘I noticed at dinner tonight that you were a bit off your feed. Is anything the matter, Dahlia, darling?’ ‘Why, yes, Tom, darling,’ you will reply. ‘It is kind of you to ask, darling. The fact is, darling, I am terribly worried.’ ‘My darling,’ he will say----”
Aunt Dahlia interrupted at this point to observe that these Traverses seemed to be a pretty soppy couple of blighters, to judge by their dialogue. She also wished to know when I was going to get to the point.
I gave her a look.
“‘My darling,’ he will say tenderly, ‘is there anything I can do?’ To which your reply will be that there jolly well is--viz. reach for his cheque-book and start writing.”
I was watching her closely as I spoke, and was pleased to note respect suddenly dawn in her eyes.
“But, Bertie, this is positively bright.”
“I told you Jeeves wasn’t the only fellow with brain.”
“I believe it would work.”
“It’s bound to work. I’ve recommended it to Tuppy.”
“Young Glossop?”
“In order to soften Angela.”
“Splendid!”
“And to Gussie Fink-Nottle, who wants to make a hit with the Bassett.”
“Well, well, well! What a busy little brain it is.”
“Always working, Aunt Dahlia, always working.”
“You’re not the chump I took you for, Bertie.”
“When did you ever take me for a chump?”
“Oh, some time last summer. I forget what gave me the idea. Yes, Bertie, this scheme is bright. I suppose, as a matter of fact, Jeeves suggested it.”
“Jeeves did not suggest it. I resent these implications. Jeeves had nothing to do with it whatsoever.”
“Well, all right, no need to get excited about it. Yes, I think it will work. Tom’s devoted to me.”
“Who wouldn’t be?”
“I’ll do it.”
And then the rest of the party trickled in, and we toddled down to dinner.
Conditions being as they were at Brinkley Court--I mean to say, the place being loaded down above the Plimsoll mark with aching hearts and standing room only as regarded tortured souls--I hadn’t expected the evening meal to be particularly effervescent. Nor was it. Silent. Sombre. The whole thing more than a bit like Christmas dinner on Devil’s Island.
I was glad when it was over.
What with having, on top of her other troubles, to rein herself back from the trough, Aunt Dahlia was a total loss as far as anything in the shape of brilliant badinage was concerned. The fact that he was fifty quid in the red and expecting Civilisation to take a toss at any moment had caused Uncle Tom, who always looked a bit like a pterodactyl with a secret sorrow, to take on a deeper melancholy. The Bassett was a silent bread crumbler. Angela might have been hewn from the living rock. Tuppy had the air of a condemned murderer refusing to make the usual hearty breakfast before tooling off to the execution shed.
And as for Gussie Fink-Nottle, many an experienced undertaker would have been deceived by his appearance and started embalming him on sight.
This was the first glimpse I had had of Gussie since we parted at my flat, and I must say his demeanour disappointed me. I had been expecting something a great deal more sparkling.
At my flat, on the occasion alluded to, he had, if you recall, practically given me a signed guarantee that all he needed to touch him off was a rural setting. Yet in this aspect now I could detect no indication whatsoever that he was about to round into mid-season form. He still looked like a cat in an adage, and it did not take me long to realise that my very first act on escaping from this morgue must be to draw him aside and give him a pep talk.
If ever a chap wanted the clarion note, it looked as if it was this Fink-Nottle.
In the general exodus of mourners, however, I lost sight of him, and, owing to the fact that Aunt Dahlia roped me in for a game of backgammon, it was not immediately that I was able to institute a search. But after we had been playing for a while, the butler came in and asked her if she would speak to Anatole, so I managed to get away. And some ten minutes later, having failed to find scent in the house, I started to throw out the drag-net through the grounds, and flushed him in the rose garden.
He was smelling a rose at the moment in a limp sort of way, but removed the beak as I approached.
“Well, Gussie,” I said.
I had beamed genially upon him as I spoke, such being my customary policy on meeting an old pal; but instead of beaming back genially, he gave me a most unpleasant look. His attitude perplexed me. It was as if he were not glad to see Bertram. For a moment he stood letting this unpleasant look play upon me, as it were, and then he spoke.
“You and your ‘Well, Gussie’!”
He said this between clenched teeth, always an unmatey thing to do, and I found myself more fogged than ever.
“How do you mean--me and my ‘Well, Gussie’?”
“I like your nerve, coming bounding about the place, saying ‘Well, Gussie.’ That’s about all the ‘Well, Gussie’ I shall require from you, Wooster. And it’s no good looking like that. You know what I mean. That damned prize-giving! It was a dastardly act to crawl out as you did and shove it off on to me. I will not mince my words. It was the act of a hound and a stinker.”
Now, though, as I have shown, I had devoted most of the time on the journey down to meditating upon the case of Angela and Tuppy, I had not neglected to give a thought or two to what I was going to say when I encountered Gussie. I had foreseen that there might be some little temporary unpleasantness when we met, and when a difficult interview is in the offing Bertram Wooster likes to have his story ready.
So now I was able to reply with a manly, disarming frankness. The sudden introduction of the topic had given me a bit of a jolt, it is true, for in the stress of recent happenings I had rather let that prize-giving business slide to the back of my mind; but I had speedily recovered and, as I say, was able to reply with a manly d.f.
“But, my dear chap,” I said, “I took it for granted that you would understand that that was all part of my schemes.”
He said something about my schemes which I did not catch.
“Absolutely. ‘Crawling out’ is entirely the wrong way to put it. You don’t suppose I didn’t want to distribute those prizes, do you? Left to myself, there is nothing I would find a greater treat. But I saw that the square, generous thing to do was to step aside and let you take it on, so I did so. I felt that your need was greater than mine. You don’t mean to say you aren’t looking forward to it?”
He uttered a coarse expression which I wouldn’t have thought he would have known. It just shows that you can bury yourself in the country and still somehow acquire a vocabulary. No doubt one picks up things from the neighbours--the vicar, the local doctor, the man who brings the milk, and so on.
“But, dash it,” I said, “can’t you see what this is going to do for you? It will send your stock up with a jump. There you will be, up on that platform, a romantic, impressive figure, the star of the whole proceedings, the what-d’you-call-it of all eyes. Madeline Bassett will be all over you. She will see you in a totally new light.”
“She will, will she?”
“Certainly she will. Augustus Fink-Nottle, the newts’ friend, she knows. She is acquainted with Augustus Fink-Nottle, the dogs’ chiropodist. But Augustus Fink-Nottle, the orator--that’ll knock her sideways, or I know nothing of the female heart. Girls go potty over a public man. If ever anyone did anyone else a kindness, it was I when I gave this extraordinary attractive assignment to you.”
He seemed impressed by my eloquence. Couldn’t have helped himself, of course. The fire faded from behind his horn-rimmed spectacles, and in its place appeared the old fish-like goggle.
“’Myes,” he said meditatively. “Have you ever made a speech, Bertie?”
“Dozens of times. It’s pie. Nothing to it. Why, I once addressed a girls’ school.”
“You weren’t nervous?”
“Not a bit.”
“How did you go?”
“They hung on my lips. I held them in the hollow of my hand.”
“They didn’t throw eggs, or anything?”
“Not a thing.”
He expelled a deep breath, and for a space stood staring in silence at a passing slug.
“Well,” he said, at length, “it may be all right. Possibly I am letting the thing prey on my mind too much. I may be wrong in supposing it the fate that is worse than death. But I’ll tell you this much: the prospect of that prize-giving on the thirty-first of this month has been turning my existence into a nightmare. I haven’t been able to sleep or think or eat ... By the way, that reminds me. You never explained that cipher telegram about the sausages and ham.”
“It wasn’t a cipher telegram. I wanted you to go light on the food, so that she would realize you were in love.”
He laughed hollowly.
“I see. Well, I’ve been doing that, all right.”
“Yes, I was noticing at dinner. Splendid.”
“I don’t see what’s splendid about it. It’s not going to get me anywhere. I shall never be able to ask her to marry me. I couldn’t find nerve to do that if I lived on wafer biscuits for the rest of my life.”
“But, dash it, Gussie. In these romantic surroundings. I should have thought the whispering trees alone----”
“I don’t care what you would have thought. I can’t do it.”
“Oh, come!”
“I can’t. She seems so aloof, so remote.”
“She doesn’t.”
“Yes, she does. Especially when you see her sideways. Have you seen her sideways, Bertie? That cold, pure profile. It just takes all the heart out of one.”
“It doesn’t.”
“I tell you it does. I catch sight of it, and the words freeze on my lips.”
He spoke with a sort of dull despair, and so manifest was his lack of ginger and the spirit that wins to success that for an instant, I confess, I felt a bit stymied. It seemed hopeless to go on trying to steam up such a human jellyfish. Then I saw the way. With that extraordinary quickness of mine, I realized exactly what must be done if this Fink-Nottle was to be enabled to push his nose past the judges’ box.
“She must be softened up,” I said.
“Be what?”
“Softened up. Sweetened. Worked on. Preliminary spadework must be put in. Here, Gussie, is the procedure I propose to adopt: I shall now return to the house and lug this Bassett out for a stroll. I shall talk to her of hearts that yearn, intimating that there is one actually on the premises. I shall pitch it strong, sparing no effort. You, meanwhile, will lurk on the outskirts, and in about a quarter of an hour you will come along and carry on from there. By that time, her emotions having been stirred, you ought to be able to do the rest on your head. It will be like leaping on to a moving bus.”
I remember when I was a kid at school having to learn a poem of sorts about a fellow named Pig-something--a sculptor he would have been, no doubt--who made a statue of a girl, and what should happen one morning but that the bally thing suddenly came to life. A pretty nasty shock for the chap, of course, but the point I’m working round to is that there were a couple of lines that went, if I remember correctly:
_She starts. She moves. She seems to feel
The stir of life along her keel._
And what I’m driving at is that you couldn’t get a better description of what happened to Gussie as I spoke these heartening words. His brow cleared, his eyes brightened, he lost that fishy look, and he gazed at the slug, which was still on the long, long trail with something approaching bonhomie. A marked improvement.
“I see what you mean. You will sort of pave the way, as it were.”
“That’s right. Spadework.”
“It’s a terrific idea, Bertie. It will make all the difference.”
“Quite. But don’t forget that after that it will be up to you. You will have to haul up your slacks and give her the old oil, or my efforts will have been in vain.”
Something of his former Gawd-help-us-ness seemed to return to him. He gasped a bit.
“That’s true. What the dickens shall I say?”
I restrained my impatience with an effort. The man had been at school with me.
“Dash it, there are hundreds of things you can say. Talk about the sunset.”
“The sunset?”
“Certainly. Half the married men you meet began by talking about the sunset.”
“But what can I say about the sunset?”
“Well, Jeeves got off a good one the other day. I met him airing the dog in the park one evening, and he said, ‘Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight, sir, and all the air a solemn stillness holds.’ You might use that.”
“What sort of landscape?”
“Glimmering. G for ‘gastritis,’ l for ‘lizard’----”
“Oh, glimmering? Yes, that’s not bad. Glimmering landscape ... solemn stillness.... Yes, I call that pretty good.”
“You could then say that you have often thought that the stars are God’s daisy chain.”
“But I haven’t.”
“I dare say not. But she has. Hand her that one, and I don’t see how she can help feeling that you’re a twin soul.”
“God’s daisy chain?”
“God’s daisy chain. And then you go on about how twilight always makes you sad. I know you’re going to say it doesn’t, but on this occasion it has jolly well got to.”
“Why?”
“That’s just what she will ask, and you will then have got her going. Because you will reply that it is because yours is such a lonely life. It wouldn’t be a bad idea to give her a brief description of a typical home evening at your Lincolnshire residence, showing how you pace the meadows with a heavy tread.”
“I generally sit indoors and listen to the wireless.”
“No, you don’t. You pace the meadows with a heavy tread, wishing that you had someone to love you. And then you speak of the day when she came into your life.”
“Like a fairy princess.”
“Absolutely,” I said with approval. I hadn’t expected such a hot one from such a quarter. “Like a fairy princess. Nice work, Gussie.”
“And then?”
“Well, after that it’s easy. You say you have something you want to say to her, and then you snap into it. I don’t see how it can fail. If I were you, I should do it in this rose garden. It is well established that there is no sounder move than to steer the adored object into rose gardens in the gloaming. And you had better have a couple of quick ones first.”
“Quick ones?”
“Snifters.”
“Drinks, do you mean? But I don’t drink.”
“What?”
“I’ve never touched a drop in my life.”
This made me a bit dubious, I must confess. On these occasions it is generally conceded that a moderate skinful is of the essence.
However, if the facts were as he had stated, I supposed there was nothing to be done about it.
“Well, you’ll have to make out as best you can on ginger pop.”
“I always drink orange juice.”
“Orange juice, then. Tell me, Gussie, to settle a bet, do you really like that muck?”
“Very much.”
“Then there is no more to be said. Now, let’s just have a run through, to see that you’ve got the lay-out straight. Start off with the glimmering landscape.”
“Stars God’s daisy chain.”
“Twilight makes you feel sad.”
“Because mine lonely life.”
“Describe life.”
“Talk about the day I met her.”
“Add fairy-princess gag. Say there’s something you want to say to her. Heave a couple of sighs. Grab her hand. And give her the works. Right.”
And confident that he had grasped the scenario and that everything might now be expected to proceed through the proper channels, I picked up the feet and hastened back to the house.
It was not until I had reached the drawing-room and was enabled to take a square look at the Bassett that I found the debonair gaiety with which I had embarked on this affair beginning to wane a trifle. Beholding her at close range like this, I suddenly became cognisant of what I was in for. The thought of strolling with this rummy specimen undeniably gave me a most unpleasant sinking feeling. I could not but remember how often, when in her company at Cannes, I had gazed dumbly at her, wishing that some kindly motorist in a racing car would ease the situation by coming along and ramming her amidships. As I have already made abundantly clear, this girl was not one of my most congenial buddies.
However, a Wooster’s word is his bond. Woosters may quail, but they do not edge out. Only the keenest ear could have detected the tremor in the voice as I asked her if she would care to come out for half an hour.
“Lovely evening,” I said.
“Yes, lovely, isn’t it?”
“Lovely. Reminds me of Cannes.”
“How lovely the evenings were there!”
“Lovely,” I said.
“Lovely,” said the Bassett.
“Lovely,” I agreed.
That completed the weather and news bulletin for the French Riviera. Another minute, and we were out in the great open spaces, she cooing a bit about the scenery, and self replying, “Oh, rather, quite,” and wondering how best to approach the matter in hand.
-10-
How different it all would have been, I could not but reflect, if this girl had been the sort of girl one chirrups cheerily to over the telephone and takes for spins in the old two-seater. In that case, I would simply have said, “Listen,” and she would have said, “What?” and I would have said, “You know Gussie Fink-Nottle,” and she would have said, “Yes,” and I would have said, “He loves you,” and she would have said either, “What, that mutt? Well, thank heaven for one good laugh today,” or else, in more passionate vein, “Hot dog! Tell me more.”
I mean to say, in either event the whole thing over and done with in under a minute.
But with the Bassett something less snappy and a good deal more glutinous was obviously indicated. What with all this daylight-saving stuff, we had hit the great open spaces at a moment when twilight had not yet begun to cheese it in favour of the shades of night. There was a fag-end of sunset still functioning. Stars were beginning to peep out, bats were fooling round, the garden was full of the aroma of those niffy white flowers which only start to put in their heavy work at the end of the day--in short, the glimmering landscape was fading on the sight and all the air held a solemn stillness, and it was plain that this was having the worst effect on her. Her eyes were enlarged, and her whole map a good deal too suggestive of the soul’s awakening for comfort.
Her aspect was that of a girl who was expecting something fairly fruity from Bertram.
In these circs., conversation inevitably flagged a bit. I am never at my best when the situation seems to call for a certain soupiness, and I’ve heard other members of the Drones say the same thing about themselves. I remember Pongo Twistleton telling me that he was out in a gondola with a girl by moonlight once, and the only time he spoke was to tell her that old story about the chap who was so good at swimming that they made him a traffic cop in Venice.
Fell rather flat, he assured me, and it wasn’t much later when the girl said she thought it was getting a little chilly and how about pushing back to the hotel.
So now, as I say, the talk rather hung fire. It had been all very well for me to promise Gussie that I would cut loose to this girl about aching hearts, but you want a cue for that sort of thing. And when, toddling along, we reached the edge of the lake and she finally spoke, conceive my chagrin when I discovered that what she was talking about was stars.
Not a bit of good to me.
“Oh, look,” she said. She was a confirmed Oh-looker. I had noticed this at Cannes, where she had drawn my attention in this manner on various occasions to such diverse objects as a French actress, a Provençal filling station, the sunset over the Estorels, Michael Arlen, a man selling coloured spectacles, the deep velvet blue of the Mediterranean, and the late mayor of New York in a striped one-piece bathing suit. “Oh, look at that sweet little star up there all by itself.”
I saw the one she meant, a little chap operating in a detached sort of way above a spinney.
“Yes,” I said.
“I wonder if it feels lonely.”
“Oh, I shouldn’t think so.”
“A fairy must have been crying.”
“Eh?”
“Don’t you remember? ‘Every time a fairy sheds a tear, a wee bit star is born in the Milky Way.’ Have you ever thought that, Mr. Wooster?”
I never had. Most improbable, I considered, and it didn’t seem to me to check up with her statement that the stars were God’s daisy chain. I mean, you can’t have it both ways.
However, I was in no mood to dissect and criticize. I saw that I had been wrong in supposing that the stars were not germane to the issue. Quite a decent cue they had provided, and I leaped on it Promptly: “Talking of shedding tears----”
But she was now on the subject of rabbits, several of which were messing about in the park to our right.
“Oh, look. The little bunnies!”
“Talking of shedding tears----”
“Don’t you love this time of the evening, Mr. Wooster, when the sun has gone to bed and all the bunnies come out to have their little suppers? When I was a child, I used to think that rabbits were gnomes, and that if I held my breath and stayed quite still, I should see the fairy queen.”
Indicating with a reserved gesture that this was just the sort of loony thing I should have expected her to think as a child, I returned to the point.
“Talking of shedding tears,” I said firmly, “it may interest you to know that there is an aching heart in Brinkley Court.”
This held her. She cheesed the rabbit theme. Her face, which had been aglow with what I supposed was a pretty animation, clouded. She unshipped a sigh that sounded like the wind going out of a rubber duck.
“Ah, yes. Life is very sad, isn’t it?”
“It is for some people. This aching heart, for instance.”
“Those wistful eyes of hers! Drenched irises. And they used to dance like elves of delight. And all through a foolish misunderstanding about a shark. What a tragedy misunderstandings are. That pretty romance broken and over just because Mr. Glossop would insist that it was a flatfish.”
I saw that she had got the wires crossed.
“I’m not talking about Angela.”
“But her heart is aching.”
“I know it’s aching. But so is somebody else’s.”
She looked at me, perplexed.
“Somebody else? Mr. Glossop’s, you mean?”
“No, I don’t.”
“Mrs. Travers’s?”
The exquisite code of politeness of the Woosters prevented me clipping her one on the ear-hole, but I would have given a shilling to be able to do it. There seemed to me something deliberately fat-headed in the way she persisted in missing the gist.
“No, not Aunt Dahlia’s, either.”
“I’m sure she is dreadfully upset.”
“Quite. But this heart I’m talking about isn’t aching because of Tuppy’s row with Angela. It’s aching for a different reason altogether. I mean to say--dash it, you know why hearts ache!”
She seemed to shimmy a bit. Her voice, when she spoke, was whispery: “You mean--for love?”
“Absolutely. Right on the bull’s-eye. For love.”
“Oh, Mr. Wooster!”
“I take it you believe in love at first sight?”
“I do, indeed.”
“Well, that’s what happened to this aching heart. It fell in love at first sight, and ever since it’s been eating itself out, as I believe the expression is.”
There was a silence. She had turned away and was watching a duck out on the lake. It was tucking into weeds, a thing I’ve never been able to understand anyone wanting to do. Though I suppose, if you face it squarely, they’re no worse than spinach. She stood drinking it in for a bit, and then it suddenly stood on its head and disappeared, and this seemed to break the spell.
“Oh, Mr. Wooster!” she said again, and from the tone of her voice, I could see that I had got her going.
“For you, I mean to say,” I proceeded, starting to put in the fancy touches. I dare say you have noticed on these occasions that the difficulty is to plant the main idea, to get the general outline of the thing well fixed. The rest is mere detail work. I don’t say I became glib at this juncture, but I certainly became a dashed glibber than I had been.
“It’s having the dickens of a time. Can’t eat, can’t sleep--all for love of you. And what makes it all so particularly rotten is that it--this aching heart--can’t bring itself up to the scratch and tell you the position of affairs, because your profile has gone and given it cold feet. Just as it is about to speak, it catches sight of you sideways, and words fail it. Silly, of course, but there it is.”
I heard her give a gulp, and I saw that her eyes had become moistish. Drenched irises, if you care to put it that way.
“Lend you a handkerchief?”
“No, thank you. I’m quite all right.”
It was more than I could say for myself. My efforts had left me weak. I don’t know if you suffer in the same way, but with me the act of talking anything in the nature of real mashed potatoes always induces a sort of prickly sensation and a hideous feeling of shame, together with a marked starting of the pores.
I remember at my Aunt Agatha’s place in Hertfordshire once being put on the spot and forced to enact the role of King Edward III saying goodbye to that girl of his, Fair Rosamund, at some sort of pageant in aid of the Distressed Daughters of the Clergy. It involved some rather warmish medieval dialogue, I recall, racy of the days when they called a spade a spade, and by the time the whistle blew, I’ll bet no Daughter of the Clergy was half as distressed as I was. Not a dry stitch.
My reaction now was very similar. It was a highly liquid Bertram who, hearing his vis-à-vis give a couple of hiccups and start to speak bent an attentive ear.
“Please don’t say any more, Mr. Wooster.”
Well, I wasn’t going to, of course.
“I understand.”
I was glad to hear this.
“Yes, I understand. I won’t be so silly as to pretend not to know what you mean. I suspected this at Cannes, when you used to stand and stare at me without speaking a word, but with whole volumes in your eyes.”
If Angela’s shark had bitten me in the leg, I couldn’t have leaped more convulsively. So tensely had I been concentrating on Gussie’s interests that it hadn’t so much as crossed my mind that another and an unfortunate construction could be placed on those words of mine. The persp., already bedewing my brow, became a regular Niagara.
My whole fate hung upon a woman’s word. I mean to say, I couldn’t back out. If a girl thinks a man is proposing to her, and on that understanding books him up, he can’t explain to her that she has got hold of entirely the wrong end of the stick and that he hadn’t the smallest intention of suggesting anything of the kind. He must simply let it ride. And the thought of being engaged to a girl who talked openly about fairies being born because stars blew their noses, or whatever it was, frankly appalled me.
She was carrying on with her remarks, and as I listened I clenched my fists till I shouldn’t wonder if the knuckles didn’t stand out white under the strain. It seemed as if she would never get to the nub.
“Yes, all through those days at Cannes I could see what you were trying to say. A girl always knows. And then you followed me down here, and there was that same dumb, yearning look in your eyes when we met this evening. And then you were so insistent that I should come out and walk with you in the twilight. And now you stammer out those halting words. No, this does not come as a surprise. But I am sorry----”
The word was like one of Jeeves’s pick-me-ups. Just as if a glassful of meat sauce, red pepper, and the yolk of an egg--though, as I say, I am convinced that these are not the sole ingredients--had been shot into me, I expanded like some lovely flower blossoming in the sunshine. It was all right, after all. My guardian angel had not been asleep at the switch.
“--but I am afraid it is impossible.”
She paused.
“Impossible,” she repeated.
I had been so busy feeling saved from the scaffold that I didn’t get on to it for a moment that an early reply was desired.
“Oh, right ho,” I said hastily.
“I’m sorry.”
“Quite all right.”
“Sorrier than I can say.”
“Don’t give it another thought.”
“We can still be friends.”
“Oh, rather.”
“Then shall we just say no more about it; keep what has happened as a tender little secret between ourselves?”
“Absolutely.”
“We will. Like something lovely and fragrant laid away in lavender.”
“In lavender--right.”
There was a longish pause. She was gazing at me in a divinely pitying sort of way, much as if I had been a snail she had happened accidentally to bring her short French vamp down on, and I longed to tell her that it was all right, and that Bertram, so far from being the victim of despair, had never felt fizzier in his life. But, of course, one can’t do that sort of thing. I simply said nothing, and stood there looking brave.
“I wish I could,” she murmured.
“Could?” I said, for my attensh had been wandering.
“Feel towards you as you would like me to feel.”
“Oh, ah.”
“But I can’t. I’m sorry.”
“Absolutely O.K. Faults on both sides, no doubt.”
“Because I am fond of you, Mr.--no, I think I must call you Bertie. May I?”
“Oh, rather.”
“Because we are real friends.”
“Quite.”
“I do like you, Bertie. And if things were different--I wonder----”
“Eh?”
“After all, we are real friends.... We have this common memory.... You have a right to know.... I don’t want you to think----Life is such a muddle, isn’t it?”
To many men, no doubt, these broken utterances would have appeared mere drooling and would have been dismissed as such. But the Woosters are quicker-witted than the ordinary and can read between the lines. I suddenly divined what it was that she was trying to get off the chest.
“You mean there’s someone else?”
She nodded.
“You’re in love with some other bloke?”
She nodded.
“Engaged, what?”
This time she shook the pumpkin.
“No, not engaged.”
Well, that was something, of course. Nevertheless, from the way she spoke, it certainly looked as if poor old Gussie might as well scratch his name off the entry list, and I didn’t at all like the prospect of having to break the bad news to him. I had studied the man closely, and it was my conviction that this would about be his finish.
Gussie, you see, wasn’t like some of my pals--the name of Bingo Little is one that springs to the lips--who, if turned down by a girl, would simply say, “Well, bung-oh!” and toddle off quite happily to find another. He was so manifestly a bird who, having failed to score in the first chukker, would turn the thing up and spend the rest of his life brooding over his newts and growing long grey whiskers, like one of those chaps you read about in novels, who live in the great white house you can just see over there through the trees and shut themselves off from the world and have pained faces.
“I’m afraid he doesn’t care for me in that way. At least, he has said nothing. You understand that I am only telling you this because----”
“Oh, rather.”
“It’s odd that you should have asked me if I believed in love at first sight.” She half closed her eyes. “‘Who ever loved that loved not at first sight?’” she said in a rummy voice that brought back to me--I don’t know why--the picture of my Aunt Agatha, as Boadicea, reciting at that pageant I was speaking of. “It’s a silly little story. I was staying with some friends in the country, and I had gone for a walk with my dog, and the poor wee mite got a nasty thorn in his little foot and I didn’t know what to do. And then suddenly this man came along----”
Harking back once again to that pageant, in sketching out for you my emotions on that occasion, I showed you only the darker side of the picture. There was, I should now mention, a splendid aftermath when, having climbed out of my suit of chain mail and sneaked off to the local pub, I entered the saloon bar and requested mine host to start pouring. A moment later, a tankard of their special home-brewed was in my hand, and the ecstasy of that first gollup is still green in my memory. The recollection of the agony through which I had passed was just what was needed to make it perfect.
It was the same now. When I realized, listening to her words, that she must be referring to Gussie--I mean to say, there couldn’t have been a whole platoon of men taking thorns out of her dog that day; the animal wasn’t a pin-cushion--and became aware that Gussie, who an instant before had, to all appearances, gone so far back in the betting as not to be worth a quotation, was the big winner after all, a positive thrill permeated the frame and there escaped my lips a “Wow!” so crisp and hearty that the Bassett leaped a liberal inch and a half from terra firma.
“I beg your pardon?” she said.
I waved a jaunty hand.
“Nothing,” I said. “Nothing. Just remembered there’s a letter I have to write tonight without fail. If you don’t mind, I think I’ll be going in. Here,” I said, “comes Gussie Fink-Nottle. He will look after you.”
And, as I spoke, Gussie came sidling out from behind a tree.
I passed away and left them to it. As regards these two, everything was beyond a question absolutely in order. All Gussie had to do was keep his head down and not press. Already, I felt, as I legged it back to the house, the happy ending must have begun to function. I mean to say, when you leave a girl and a man, each of whom has admitted in set terms that she and he loves him and her, in close juxtaposition in the twilight, there doesn’t seem much more to do but start pricing fish slices.
Something attempted, something done, seemed to me to have earned two-penn’orth of wassail in the smoking-room.
I proceeded thither.
-11-
The makings were neatly laid out on a side-table, and to pour into a glass an inch or so of the raw spirit and shoosh some soda-water on top of it was with me the work of a moment. This done, I retired to an arm-chair and put my feet up, sipping the mixture with carefree enjoyment, rather like Caesar having one in his tent the day he overcame the Nervii.
As I let the mind dwell on what must even now be taking place in that peaceful garden, I felt bucked and uplifted. Though never for an instant faltering in my opinion that Augustus Fink-Nottle was Nature’s final word in cloth-headed guffins, I liked the man, wished him well, and could not have felt more deeply involved in the success of his wooing if I, and not he, had been under the ether.
The thought that by this time he might quite easily have completed the preliminary pourparlers and be deep in an informal discussion of honeymoon plans was very pleasant to me.
Of course, considering the sort of girl Madeline Bassett was--stars and rabbits and all that, I mean--you might say that a sober sadness would have been more fitting. But in these matters you have got to realize that tastes differ. The impulse of right-thinking men might be to run a mile when they saw the Bassett, but for some reason she appealed to the deeps in Gussie, so that was that.
I had reached this point in my meditations, when I was aroused by the sound of the door opening. Somebody came in and started moving like a leopard toward the side-table and, lowering the feet, I perceived that it was Tuppy Glossop.
The sight of him gave me a momentary twinge of remorse, reminding me, as it did, that in the excitement of getting Gussie fixed up I had rather forgotten about this other client. It is often that way when you’re trying to run two cases at once.
However, Gussie now being off my mind, I was prepared to devote my whole attention to the Glossop problem.
I had been much pleased by the way he had carried out the task assigned him at the dinner-table. No easy one, I can assure you, for the browsing and sluicing had been of the highest quality, and there had been one dish in particular--I allude to the nonnettes de poulet Agnès Sorel--which might well have broken down the most iron resolution. But he had passed it up like a professional fasting man, and I was proud of him.
“Oh, hullo, Tuppy,” I said, “I wanted to see you.”
He turned, snifter in hand, and it was easy to see that his privations had tried him sorely. He was looking like a wolf on the steppes of Russia which has seen its peasant shin up a high tree.
“Yes?” he said, rather unpleasantly. “Well, here I am.”
“Well?”
“How do you mean----well?”
“Make your report.”
“What report?”
“Have you nothing to tell me about Angela?”
“Only that she’s a blister.”
I was concerned.
“Hasn’t she come clustering round you yet?”
“She has not.”
“Very odd.”
“Why odd?”
“She must have noted your lack of appetite.”
He barked raspingly, as if he were having trouble with the tonsils of the soul.
“Lack of appetite! I’m as hollow as the Grand Canyon.”
“Courage, Tuppy! Think of Gandhi.”
“What about Gandhi?”
“He hasn’t had a square meal for years.”
“Nor have I. Or I could swear I hadn’t. Gandhi, my left foot.”
I saw that it might be best to let the Gandhi motif slide. I went back to where we had started.
“She’s probably looking for you now.”
“Who is? Angela?”
“Yes. She must have noticed your supreme sacrifice.”
“I don’t suppose she noticed it at all, the little fathead. I’ll bet it didn’t register in any way whatsoever.”
“Come, Tuppy,” I urged, “this is morbid. Don’t take this gloomy view. She must at least have spotted that you refused those nonnettes de poulet Agnès Sorel. It was a sensational renunciation and stuck out like a sore thumb. And the cèpes à la Rossini----”
A hoarse cry broke from his twisted lips:
“Will you stop it, Bertie! Do you think I am made of marble? Isn’t it bad enough to have sat watching one of Anatole’s supremest dinners flit by, course after course, without having you making a song about it? Don’t remind me of those nonnettes. I can’t stand it.”
I endeavoured to hearten and console.
“Be brave, Tuppy. Fix your thoughts on that cold steak-and-kidney pie in the larder. As the Good Book says, it cometh in the morning.”
“Yes, in the morning. And it’s now about half-past nine at night. You would bring that pie up, wouldn’t you? Just when I was trying to keep my mind off it.”
I saw what he meant. Hours must pass before he could dig into that pie. I dropped the subject, and we sat for a pretty good time in silence. Then he rose and began to pace the room in an overwrought sort of way, like a zoo lion who has heard the dinner-gong go and is hoping the keeper won’t forget him in the general distribution. I averted my gaze tactfully, but I could hear him kicking chairs and things. It was plain that the man’s soul was in travail and his blood pressure high.
Presently he returned to his seat, and I saw that he was looking at me intently. There was that about his demeanour that led me to think that he had something to communicate.
Nor was I wrong. He tapped me significantly on the knee and spoke:
“Bertie.”
“Hullo?”
“Shall I tell you something?”
“Certainly, old bird,” I said cordially. “I was just beginning to feel that the scene could do with a bit more dialogue.”
“This business of Angela and me.”
“Yes?”
“I’ve been putting in a lot of solid thinking about it.”
“Oh, yes?”
“I have analysed the situation pitilessly, and one thing stands out as clear as dammit. There has been dirty work afoot.”
“I don’t get you.”
“All right. Let me review the facts. Up to the time she went to Cannes Angela loved me. She was all over me. I was the blue-eyed boy in every sense of the term. You’ll admit that?”
“Indisputably.”
“And directly she came back we had this bust-up.”
“Quite.”
“About nothing.”
“Oh, dash it, old man, nothing? You were a bit tactless, what, about her shark.”
“I was frank and candid about her shark. And that’s my point. Do you seriously believe that a trifling disagreement about sharks would make a girl hand a man his hat, if her heart were really his?”
“Certainly.”
It beats me why he couldn’t see it. But then poor old Tuppy has never been very hot on the finer shades. He’s one of those large, tough, football-playing blokes who lack the more delicate sensibilities, as I’ve heard Jeeves call them. Excellent at blocking a punt or walking across an opponent’s face in cleated boots, but not so good when it comes to understanding the highly-strung female temperament. It simply wouldn’t occur to him that a girl might be prepared to give up her life’s happiness rather than waive her shark.
“Rot! It was just a pretext.”
“What was?”
“This shark business. She wanted to get rid of me, and grabbed at the first excuse.”
“No, no.”
“I tell you she did.”
“But what on earth would she want to get rid of you for?”
“Exactly. That’s the very question I asked myself. And here’s the answer: Because she has fallen in love with somebody else. It sticks out a mile. There’s no other possible solution. She goes to Cannes all for me, she comes back all off me. Obviously during those two months, she must have transferred her affections to some foul blister she met out there.”
“No, no.”
“Don’t keep saying ‘No, no’. She must have done. Well, I’ll tell you one thing, and you can take this as official. If ever I find this slimy, slithery snake in the grass, he had better make all the necessary arrangements at his favourite nursing-home without delay, because I am going to be very rough with him. I propose, if and when found, to take him by his beastly neck, shake him till he froths, and pull him inside out and make him swallow himself.”
With which words he biffed off; and I, having given him a minute or two to get out of the way, rose and made for the drawing-room. The tendency of females to roost in drawing-rooms after dinner being well marked, I expected to find Angela there. It was my intention to have a word with Angela.
To Tuppy’s theory that some insinuating bird had stolen the girl’s heart from him at Cannes I had given, as I have indicated, little credence, considering it the mere unbalanced apple sauce of a bereaved man. It was, of course, the shark, and nothing but the shark, that had caused love’s young dream to go temporarily off the boil, and I was convinced that a word or two with the cousin at this juncture would set everything right.
For, frankly, I thought it incredible that a girl of her natural sweetness and tender-heartedness should not have been moved to her foundations by what she had seen at dinner that night. Even Seppings, Aunt Dahlia’s butler, a cold, unemotional man, had gasped and practically reeled when Tuppy waved aside those nonnettes de poulet Agnès Sorel, while the footman, standing by with the potatoes, had stared like one seeing a vision. I simply refused to consider the possibility of the significance of the thing having been lost on a nice girl like Angela. I fully expected to find her in the drawing-room with her heart bleeding freely, all ripe for an immediate reconciliation.
In the drawing-room, however, when I entered, only Aunt Dahlia met the eye. It seemed to me that she gave me rather a jaundiced look as I hove in sight, but this, having so recently beheld Tuppy in his agony, I attributed to the fact that she, like him, had been going light on the menu. You can’t expect an empty aunt to beam like a full aunt.
“Oh, it’s you, is it?” she said.
Well, it was, of course.
“Where’s Angela?” I asked.
“Gone to bed.”
“Already?”
“She said she had a headache.”
“H’m.”
I wasn’t so sure that I liked the sound of that so much. A girl who has observed the sundered lover sensationally off his feed does not go to bed with headaches if love has been reborn in her heart. She sticks around and gives him the swift, remorseful glance from beneath the drooping eyelashes and generally endeavours to convey to him that, if he wants to get together across a round table and try to find a formula, she is all for it too. Yes, I am bound to say I found that going-to-bed stuff a bit disquieting.
“Gone to bed, eh?” I murmured musingly.
“What did you want her for?”
“I thought she might like a stroll and a chat.”
“Are you going for a stroll?” said Aunt Dahlia, with a sudden show of interest. “Where?”
“Oh, hither and thither.”
“Then I wonder if you would mind doing something for me.”
“Give it a name.”
“It won’t take you long. You know that path that runs past the greenhouses into the kitchen garden. If you go along it, you come to a pond.”
“That’s right.”
“Well, will you get a good, stout piece of rope or cord and go down that path till you come to the pond----”
“To the pond. Right.”
“--and look about you till you find a nice, heavy stone. Or a fairly large brick would do.”
“I see,” I said, though I didn’t, being still fogged. “Stone or brick. Yes. And then?”
“Then,” said the relative, “I want you, like a good boy, to fasten the rope to the brick and tie it around your damned neck and jump into the pond and drown yourself. In a few days I will send and have you fished up and buried because I shall need to dance on your grave.”
I was more fogged than ever. And not only fogged--wounded and resentful. I remember reading a book where a girl “suddenly fled from the room, afraid to stay for fear dreadful things would come tumbling from her lips; determined that she would not remain another day in this house to be insulted and misunderstood.” I felt much about the same.
Then I reminded myself that one has got to make allowances for a woman with only about half a spoonful of soup inside her, and I checked the red-hot crack that rose to the lips.
“What,” I said gently, “is this all about? You seem pipped with Bertram.”
“Pipped!”
“Noticeably pipped. Why this ill-concealed animus?”
A sudden flame shot from her eyes, singeing my hair.
“Who was the ass, who was the chump, who was the dithering idiot who talked me, against my better judgment, into going without my dinner? I might have guessed----”
I saw that I had divined correctly the cause of her strange mood.
“It’s all right, Aunt Dahlia. I know just how you’re feeling. A bit on the hollow side, what? But the agony will pass. If I were you, I’d sneak down and raid the larder after the household have gone to bed. I am told there’s a pretty good steak-and-kidney pie there which will repay inspection. Have faith, Aunt Dahlia,” I urged. “Pretty soon Uncle Tom will be along, full of sympathy and anxious inquiries.”
“Will he? Do you know where he is now?”
“I haven’t seen him.”
“He is in the study with his face buried in his hands, muttering about civilization and melting pots.”
“Eh? Why?”
“Because it has just been my painful duty to inform him that Anatole has given notice.”
I own that I reeled.
“What?”
“Given notice. As the result of that drivelling scheme of yours. What did you expect a sensitive, temperamental French cook to do, if you went about urging everybody to refuse all food? I hear that when the first two courses came back to the kitchen practically untouched, his feelings were so hurt that he cried like a child. And when the rest of the dinner followed, he came to the conclusion that the whole thing was a studied and calculated insult, and decided to hand in his portfolio.”
“Golly!”
“You may well say ‘Golly!’ Anatole, God’s gift to the gastric juices, gone like the dew off the petal of a rose, all through your idiocy. Perhaps you understand now why I want you to go and jump in that pond. I might have known that some hideous disaster would strike this house like a thunderbolt if once you wriggled your way into it and started trying to be clever.”
Harsh words, of course, as from aunt to nephew, but I bore her no resentment. No doubt, if you looked at it from a certain angle, Bertram might be considered to have made something of a floater.
“I am sorry.”
“What’s the good of being sorry?”
“I acted for what I deemed the best.”
“Another time try acting for the worst. Then we may possibly escape with a mere flesh wound.”
“Uncle Tom’s not feeling too bucked about it all, you say?”
“He’s groaning like a lost soul. And any chance I ever had of getting that money out of him has gone.”
I stroked the chin thoughtfully. There was, I had to admit, reason in what she said. None knew better than I how terrible a blow the passing of Anatole would be to Uncle Tom.
I have stated earlier in this chronicle that this curious object of the seashore with whom Aunt Dahlia has linked her lot is a bloke who habitually looks like a pterodactyl that has suffered, and the reason he does so is that all those years he spent in making millions in the Far East put his digestion on the blink, and the only cook that has ever been discovered capable of pushing food into him without starting something like Old Home Week in Moscow under the third waistcoat button is this uniquely gifted Anatole. Deprived of Anatole’s services, all he was likely to give the wife of his b. was a dirty look. Yes, unquestionably, things seemed to have struck a somewhat rocky patch, and I must admit that I found myself, at moment of going to press, a little destitute of constructive ideas.
Confident, however, that these would come ere long, I kept the stiff upper lip.
“Bad,” I conceded. “Quite bad, beyond a doubt. Certainly a nasty jar for one and all. But have no fear, Aunt Dahlia, I will fix everything.”
I have alluded earlier to the difficulty of staggering when you’re sitting down, showing that it is a feat of which I, personally, am not capable. Aunt Dahlia, to my amazement, now did it apparently without an effort. She was well wedged into a deep arm-chair, but, nevertheless, she staggered like billy-o. A sort of spasm of horror and apprehension contorted her face.
“If you dare to try any more of your lunatic schemes----”
I saw that it would be fruitless to try to reason with her. Quite plainly, she was not in the vein. Contenting myself, accordingly, with a gesture of loving sympathy, I left the room. Whether she did or did not throw a handsomely bound volume of the Works of Alfred, Lord Tennyson, at me, I am not in a position to say. I had seen it lying on the table beside her, and as I closed the door I remember receiving the impression that some blunt instrument had crashed against the woodwork, but I was feeling too pre-occupied to note and observe.
I blame myself for not having taken into consideration the possible effects of a sudden abstinence on the part of virtually the whole strength of the company on one of Anatole’s impulsive Provençal temperament. These Gauls, I should have remembered, can’t take it. Their tendency to fly off the handle at the slightest provocation is well known. No doubt the man had put his whole soul into those nonnettes de poulet, and to see them come homing back to him must have gashed him like a knife.
However, spilt milk blows nobody any good, and it is useless to dwell upon it. The task now confronting Bertram was to put matters right, and I was pacing the lawn, pondering to this end, when I suddenly heard a groan so lost-soulish that I thought it must have proceeded from Uncle Tom, escaped from captivity and come to groan in the garden.
Looking about me, however, I could discern no uncles. Puzzled, I was about to resume my meditations, when the sound came again. And peering into the shadows I observed a dim form seated on one of the rustic benches which so liberally dotted this pleasance and another dim form standing beside same. A second and more penetrating glance and I had assembled the facts.
These dim forms were, in the order named, Gussie Fink-Nottle and Jeeves. And what Gussie was doing, groaning all over the place like this, was more than I could understand.
Because, I mean to say, there was no possibility of error. He wasn’t singing. As I approached, he gave an encore, and it was beyond question a groan. Moreover, I could now see him clearly, and his whole aspect was definitely sand-bagged.
“Good evening, sir,” said Jeeves. “Mr. Fink-Nottle is not feeling well.”
Nor was I. Gussie had begun to make a low, bubbling noise, and I could no longer disguise it from myself that something must have gone seriously wrong with the works. I mean, I know marriage is a pretty solemn business and the realization that he is in for it frequently churns a chap up a bit, but I had never come across a case of a newly-engaged man taking it on the chin so completely as this.
Gussie looked up. His eye was dull. He clutched the thatch.
“Goodbye, Bertie,” he said, rising.
I seemed to spot an error.
“You mean ‘Hullo,’ don’t you?”
“No, I don’t. I mean goodbye. I’m off.”
“Off where?”
“To the kitchen garden. To drown myself.”
“Don’t be an ass.”
“I’m not an ass.... Am I an ass, Jeeves?”
“Possibly a little injudicious, sir.”
“Drowning myself, you mean?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You think, on the whole, not drown myself?”
“I should not advocate it, sir.”
“Very well, Jeeves. I accept your ruling. After all, it would be unpleasant for Mrs. Travers to find a swollen body floating in her pond.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And she has been very kind to me.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And you have been very kind to me, Jeeves.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“So have you, Bertie. Very kind. Everybody has been very kind to me. Very, very kind. Very kind indeed. I have no complaints to make. All right, I’ll go for a walk instead.”
I followed him with bulging eyes as he tottered off into the dark.
“Jeeves,” I said, and I am free to admit that in my emotion I bleated like a lamb drawing itself to the attention of the parent sheep, “what the dickens is all this?”
“Mr. Fink-Nottle is not quite himself, sir. He has passed through a trying experience.”
I endeavoured to put together a brief synopsis of previous events.
“I left him out here with Miss Bassett.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I had softened her up.”
“Yes, sir.”
“He knew exactly what he had to do. I had coached him thoroughly in lines and business.”
“Yes, sir. So Mr. Fink-Nottle informed me.”
“Well, then----”
“I regret to say, sir, that there was a slight hitch.”
