RIGHT
HO JEEVES
PART
8
-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."
"You
mean, something went wrong?"
"Yes,
sir."
I could
not fathom. The brain seemed to be tottering on its throne.
"But
how could anything go wrong? She loves him, Jeeves."
"Indeed,
sir?"
"She
definitely told me so. All he had to do was propose."
"Yes
sir."
"Well,
didn't he?"
"No,
sir."
"Then
what the dickens did he talk about?"
"Newts,
sir."
"Newts?"
"Yes,
sir."
"Newts?"
"Yes,
sir."
"But
why did he want to talk about newts?"
"He
did not want to talk about newts, sir. As I gather from Mr. Fink-Nottle,
nothing could have been more alien to his plans."
I simply
couldn't grasp the trend.
"But
you can't force a man to talk about newts."
"Mr.
Fink-Nottle was the victim of a sudden unfortunate spasm of nervousness, sir.
Upon finding himself alone with the young lady, he admits to having lost his
morale. In such circumstances, gentlemen frequently talk at random, saying the
first thing that chances to enter their heads. This, in Mr. Fink-Nottle's case,
would seem to have been the newt, its treatment in sickness and in
health."
The scales
fell from my eyes. I understood. I had had the same sort of thing happen to me
in moments of crisis. I remember once detaining a dentist with the drill at one
of my lower bicuspids and holding him up for nearly ten minutes with a story
about a Scotchman, an Irishman, and a Jew. Purely automatic. The more he tried
to jab, the more I said "Hoots, mon," "Begorrah," and
"Oy, oy". When one loses one's nerve, one simply babbles.
I could
put myself in Gussie's place. I could envisage the scene. There he and the
Bassett were, alone together in the evening stillness. No doubt, as I had
advised, he had shot the works about sunsets and fairy princesses, and so
forth, and then had arrived at the point where he had to say that bit about
having something to say to her. At this, I take it, she lowered her eyes and
said, "Oh, yes?"
He then, I
should imagine, said it was something very important; to which her response
would, one assumes, have been something on the lines of "Really?" or
"Indeed?" or possibly just the sharp intake of the breath. And then
their eyes met, just as mine met the dentist's, and something suddenly seemed
to catch him in the pit of the stomach and everything went black and he heard
his voice starting to drool about newts. Yes, I could follow the psychology.
Nevertheless,
I found myself blaming Gussie. On discovering that he was stressing the newt
note in this manner, he ought, of course, to have tuned out, even if it had
meant sitting there saying nothing. No matter how much of a twitter he was in,
he should have had sense enough to see that he was throwing a spanner into the
works. No girl, when she has been led to expect that a man is about to pour
forth his soul in a fervour of passion, likes to find him suddenly shelving the
whole topic in favour of an address on aquatic Salamandridae.
"Bad,
Jeeves."
"Yes,
sir."
"And
how long did this nuisance continue?"
"For
some not inconsiderable time, I gather, sir. According to Mr. Fink-Nottle, he
supplied Miss Bassett with very full and complete information not only with
respect to the common newt, but also the crested and palmated varieties. He
described to her how newts, during the breeding season, live in the water,
subsisting upon tadpoles, insect larvae, and crustaceans; how, later, they make
their way to the land and eat slugs and worms; and how the newly born newt has
three pairs of long, plumlike, external gills. And he was just observing that
newts differ from salamanders in the shape of the tail, which is compressed,
and that a marked sexual dimorphism prevails in most species, when the young
lady rose and said that she thought she would go back to the house."
"And
then——"
"She
went, sir."
I stood
musing. More and more, it was beginning to be borne in upon me what a
particularly difficult chap Gussie was to help. He seemed to so marked an
extent to lack snap and finish. With infinite toil, you manoeuvred him into a
position where all he had to do was charge ahead, and he didn't charge ahead, but
went off sideways, missing the objective completely.
"Difficult,
Jeeves."
"Yes,
sir."
In happier
circs., of course, I would have canvassed his views on the matter. But after
what had occurred in connection with that mess-jacket, my lips were sealed.
"Well,
I must think it over."
"Yes,
sir."
"Burnish
the brain a bit and endeavour to find the way out."
"Yes,
sir."
"Well,
good night, Jeeves."
"Good
night, sir."
He
shimmered off, leaving a pensive Bertram Wooster standing motionless in the
shadows. It seemed to me that it was hard to know what to do for the best.
To be continued
