saw a lot of Angela, but my dealings with her were on a basis from start
to finish of the purest and most wholesome camaraderie. I can prove it.
During that sojourn in Cannes my affections were engaged elsewhere."
"What?"
"Engaged elsewhere. My affections. During that sojourn."
I had struck the right note. He stopped sidling. His clutching hand fell
to his side.
"Is that true?"
"Quite official."
"Who was she?"
"My dear Tuppy, does one bandy a woman's name?"
"One does if one doesn't want one's ruddy head pulled off."
I saw that it was a special case.
"Madeline Bassett," I said.
"Who?"
"Madeline Bassett."
He seemed stunned.
"You stand there and tell me you were in love with that Bassett
disaster?"
"I wouldn't call her 'that Bassett disaster', Tuppy. Not respectful."
"Dash being respectful. I want the facts. You deliberately assert that
you loved that weird Gawd-help-us?"
"I don't see why you should call her a weird Gawd-help-us, either. A very
charming and beautiful girl. Odd in some of her views perhaps - one does
not quite see eye to eye with her in the matter of stars and rabbits - but
not a weird Gawd-help-us."
"Anyway, you stick to it that you were in love with her?"
"I do."
"It sounds thin to me, Wooster, very thin."
I saw that it would be necessary to apply the finishing touch.
"I must ask you to treat this as entirely confidential, Glossop, but I
may as well inform you that it is not twenty-four hours since she turned
me down."
"Turned you down?"
"Like a bedspread. In this very garden."
"Twenty-four hours?"
"Call it twenty-five. So you will readily see that I can't be the chap,
if any, who stole Angela from you at Cannes."
And I was on the brink of adding that I wouldn't touch Angela with a
barge pole, when I remembered I had said it already and it hadn't gone
frightfully well. I desisted, therefore.
My manly frankness seemed to be producing good results. The homicidal
glare was dying out of Tuppy's eyes. He had the aspect of a hired
assassin who had paused to think things over.
"I see," he said, at length. "All right, then. Sorry you were troubled."
"Don't mention it, old man," I responded courteously.
For the first time since the bushes had begun to pour forth Glossops,
Bertram Wooster could be said to have breathed freely. I don't say I
actually came out from behind the bench, but I did let go of it, and with
something of the relief which those three chaps in the Old Testament must
have experienced after sliding out of the burning fiery furnace, I even
groped tentatively for my cigarette case.
The next moment a sudden snort made me take my fingers off it as if it
had bitten me. I was distressed to note in the old friend a return of the
recent frenzy.
"What the hell did you mean by telling her that I used to be covered with
ink when I was a kid?"
"My dear Tuppy - - "
"I was almost finickingly careful about my personal cleanliness as a boy.
You could have eaten your dinner off me."
"Quite. But - - "
"And all that stuff about having no soul. I'm crawling with soul. And
being looked on as an outsider at the Drones - - "
"But, my dear old chap, I explained that. It was all part of my ruse or
scheme."
"It was, was it? Well, in future do me a favour and leave me out of your
foul ruses."
"Just as you say, old boy."
"All right, then. That's understood."
He relapsed into silence, standing with folded arms, staring before him
rather like a strong, silent man in a novel when he's just been given the
bird by the girl and is thinking of looking in at the Rocky Mountains and
bumping off a few bears. His manifest pippedness excited my compash, and
I ventured a kindly word.
"I don't suppose you know what _au pied de la lettre_ means, Tuppy, but
that's how I don't think you ought to take all that stuff Angela was
saying just now too much."
He seemed interested.
"What the devil," he asked, "are you talking about?"
I saw that I should have to make myself clearer.
"Don't take all that guff of hers too literally, old man. You know what
girls are like."
"I do," he said, with another snort that came straight up from his
insteps. "And I wish I'd never met one."
"I mean to say, it's obvious that she must have spotted you in those
bushes and was simply talking to score off you. There you were, I mean,
if you follow the psychology, and she saw you, and in that impulsive way
girls have, she seized the opportunity of ribbing you a bit - just told
you a few home truths, I mean to say."
"Home truths?"
"That's right."
He snorted once more, causing me to feel rather like royalty receiving a
twenty-one gun salute from the fleet. I can't remember ever having met a
better right-and-left-hand snorter.
"What do you mean, 'home truths'? I'm not fat."
"No, no."
"And what's wrong with the colour of my hair?"
"Quite in order, Tuppy, old man. The hair, I mean."
"And I'm not a bit thin on the top.... What the dickens are you grinning
about?"
"Not grinning. Just smiling slightly. I was conjuring up a sort of
vision, if you know what I mean, of you as seen through Angela's eyes.
Fat in the middle and thin on the top. Rather funny."
"You think it funny, do you?"
"Not a bit."
"You'd better not."
"Quite."
It seemed to me that the conversation was becoming difficult again. I
wished it could be terminated. And so it was. For at this moment
something came shimmering through the laurels in the quiet evenfall, and
I perceived that it was Angela.
She was looking sweet and saintlike, and she had a plate of sandwiches in
her hand. Ham, I was to discover later.
"If you see Mr. Glossop anywhere, Bertie," she said, her eyes resting
dreamily on Tuppy's facade, "I wish you would give him these. I'm so
afraid he may be hungry, poor fellow. It's nearly ten o'clock, and he
hasn't eaten a morsel since dinner. I'll just leave them on this bench."
She pushed off, and it seemed to me that I might as well go with her.
Nothing to keep me here, I mean. We moved towards the house, and
presently from behind us there sounded in the night the splintering crash
of a well-kicked plate of ham sandwiches, accompanied by the muffled
oaths of a strong man in his wrath.
"How still and peaceful everything is," said Angela.
-16-
Sunshine was gilding the grounds of Brinkley Court and the ear detected a
marked twittering of birds in the ivy outside the window when I woke next
morning to a new day. But there was no corresponding sunshine in Bertram
Wooster's soul and no answering twitter in his heart as he sat up in bed,
sipping his cup of strengthening tea. It could not be denied that to
Bertram, reviewing the happenings of the previous night, the Tuppy-Angela
situation seemed more or less to have slipped a cog. With every desire to
look for the silver lining, I could not but feel that the rift between
these two haughty spirits had now reached such impressive proportions
that the task of bridging same would be beyond even my powers.
I am a shrewd observer, and there had been something in Tuppy's manner as
he booted that plate of ham sandwiches that seemed to tell me that he
would not lightly forgive.
In these circs., I deemed it best to shelve their problem for the nonce
and turn the mind to the matter of Gussie, which presented a brighter
picture.
With regard to Gussie, everything was in train. Jeeves's morbid scruples
about lacing the chap's orange juice had put me to a good deal of
trouble, but I had surmounted every obstacle in the old Wooster way. I
had secured an abundance of the necessary spirit, and it was now lying in
its flask in the drawer of the dressing-table. I had also ascertained
that the jug, duly filled, would be standing on a shelf in the butler's
pantry round about the hour of one. To remove it from that shelf, sneak
it up to my room, and return it, laced, in good time for the midday meal
would be a task calling, no doubt, for address, but in no sense an
exacting one.
It was with something of the emotions of one preparing a treat for a
deserving child that I finished my tea and rolled over for that extra
spot of sleep which just makes all the difference when there is man's
work to be done and the brain must be kept clear for it.
And when I came downstairs an hour or so later, I knew how right I had
been to formulate this scheme for Gussie's bucking up. I ran into him on
the lawn, and I could see at a glance that if ever there was a man who
needed a snappy stimulant, it was he. All nature, as I have indicated,
was smiling, but not Augustus Fink-Nottle. He was walking round in
circles, muttering something about not proposing to detain us long, but
on this auspicious occasion feeling compelled to say a few words.
"Ah, Gussie," I said, arresting him as he was about to start another lap.
"A lovely morning, is it not?"
Even if I had not been aware of it already, I could have divined from the
abruptness with which he damned the lovely morning that he was not in
merry mood. I addressed myself to the task of bringing the roses back to
his cheeks.
"I've got good news for you, Gussie."
He looked at me with a sudden sharp interest.
"Has Market Snodsbury Grammar School burned down?"
"Not that I know of."
"Have mumps broken out? Is the place closed on account of measles?"
"No, no."
"Then what do you mean you've got good news?"
I endeavoured to soothe.
"You mustn't take it so hard, Gussie. Why worry about a laughably simple
job like distributing prizes at a school?"
"Laughably simple, eh? Do you realize I've been sweating for days and
haven't been able to think of a thing to say yet, except that I won't
detain them long. You bet I won't detain them long. I've been timing my
speech, and it lasts five seconds. What the devil am I to say, Bertie?
What do you say when you're distributing prizes?"
I considered. Once, at my private school, I had won a prize for Scripture
knowledge, so I suppose I ought to have been full of inside stuff. But
memory eluded me.
Then something emerged from the mists.
"You say the race is not always to the swift."
"Why?"
"Well, it's a good gag. It generally gets a hand."
"I mean, why isn't it? Why isn't the race to the swift?"
"Ah, there you have me. But the nibs say it isn't."
"But what does it mean?"
"I take it it's supposed to console the chaps who haven't won prizes."
"What's the good of that to me? I'm not worrying about them. It's the
ones that have won prizes that I'm worrying about, the little blighters
who will come up on the platform. Suppose they make faces at me."
"They won't."
"How do you know they won't? It's probably the first thing they'll think
of. And even if they don't - Bertie, shall I tell you something?"
"What?"
"I've a good mind to take that tip of yours and have a drink."
I smiled. He little knew, about summed up what I was thinking.
"Oh, you'll be all right," I said.
He became fevered again.
"How do you know I'll be all right? I'm sure to blow up in my lines."
"Tush!"
"Or drop a prize."
"Tut!"
"Or something. I can feel it in my bones. As sure as I'm standing here,
something is going to happen this afternoon which will make everybody
laugh themselves sick at me. I can hear them now. Like hyenas....
Bertie!"
"Hullo?"
"Do you remember that kids' school we went to before Eton?"
"Quite. It was there I won my Scripture prize."
"Never mind about your Scripture prize. I'm not talking about your
Scripture prize. Do you recollect the Bosher incident?"
I did, indeed. It was one of the high spots of my youth.
"Major-General Sir Wilfred Bosher came to distribute the prizes at that
school," proceeded Gussie in a dull, toneless voice. "He dropped a book.
He stooped to pick it up. And, as he stooped, his trousers split up the
back."
"How we roared!"
Gussie's face twisted.
"We did, little swine that we were. Instead of remaining silent and
exhibiting a decent sympathy for a gallant officer at a peculiarly
embarrassing moment, we howled and yelled with mirth. I loudest of any.
That is what will happen to me this afternoon, Bertie. It will be a
judgment on me for laughing like that at Major-General Sir Wilfred
Bosher."
"No, no, Gussie, old man. Your trousers won't split."
"How do you know they won't? Better men than I have split their trousers.
General Bosher was a D.S.O., with a fine record of service on the
north-western frontier of India, and his trousers split. I shall be a
mockery and a scorn. I know it. And you, fully cognizant of what I am in
for, come babbling about good news. What news could possibly be good to me
at this moment except the information that bubonic plague had broken out
among the scholars of Market Snodsbury Grammar School, and that they were
all confined to their beds with spots?"
The moment had come for me to speak. I laid a hand gently on his
shoulder. He brushed it off. I laid it on again. He brushed it off once
more. I was endeavouring to lay it on for the third time, when he moved
aside and desired, with a certain petulance, to be informed if I thought
I was a ruddy osteopath.
I found his manner trying, but one has to make allowances. I was telling
myself that I should be seeing a very different Gussie after lunch.
"When I said I had good news, old man, I meant about Madeline Bassett."
The febrile gleam died out of his eyes, to be replaced by a look of
infinite sadness.
"You can't have good news about her. I've dished myself there completely."
"Not at all. I am convinced that if you take another whack at her, all
will be well."
And, keeping it snappy, I related what had passed between the Bassett and
myself on the previous night.
"So all you have to do is play a return date, and you cannot fail to
swing the voting. You are her dream man."
He shook his head.
"No."
"What?"
"No use."
"What do you mean?"
"Not a bit of good trying."
"But I tell you she said in so many words - - "
"It doesn't make any difference. She may have loved me once. Last night
will have killed all that."
"Of course it won't."
"It will. She despises me now."
"Not a bit of it. She knows you simply got cold feet."
"And I should get cold feet if I tried again. It's no good, Bertie. I'm
hopeless, and there's an end of it. Fate made me the sort of chap who
can't say 'bo' to a goose."
"It isn't a question of saying 'bo' to a goose. The point doesn't arise
at all. It is simply a matter of - - "
"I know, I know. But it's no good. I can't do it. The whole thing is off.
I am not going to risk a repetition of last night's fiasco. You talk in a
light way of taking another whack at her, but you don't know what it
means. You have not been through the experience of starting to ask the
girl you love to marry you and then suddenly finding yourself talking
about the plumlike external gills of the newly-born newt. It's not a
thing you can do twice. No, I accept my destiny. It's all over. And now,
Bertie, like a good chap, shove off. I want to compose my speech. I can't
compose my speech with you mucking around. If you are going to continue
to muck around, at least give me a couple of stories. The little hell
hounds are sure to expect a story or two."
"Do you know the one about - - "
"No good. I don't want any of your off-colour stuff from the Drones'
smoking-room. I need something clean. Something that will be a help to
them in their after lives. Not that I care a damn about their after
lives, except that I hope they'll all choke."
"I heard a story the other day. I can't quite remember it, but it was
about a chap who snored and disturbed the neighbours, and it ended, 'It
was his adenoids that adenoid them.'"
He made a weary gesture.
"You expect me to work that in, do you, into a speech to be delivered to
an audience of boys, every one of whom is probably riddled with adenoids?
Damn it, they'd rush the platform. Leave me, Bertie. Push off. That's all
I ask you to do. Push off.... Ladies and gentlemen," said Gussie, in a
low, soliloquizing sort of way, "I do not propose to detain this
auspicious occasion long - - "
It was a thoughtful Wooster who walked away and left him at it. More than
ever I was congratulating myself on having had the sterling good sense to
make all my arrangements so that I could press a button and set things
moving at an instant's notice.
Until now, you see, I had rather entertained a sort of hope that when I
had revealed to him the Bassett's mental attitude, Nature would have done
the rest, bracing him up to such an extent that artificial stimulants
would not be required. Because, naturally, a chap doesn't want to have to
sprint about country houses lugging jugs of orange juice, unless it is
absolutely essential.
But now I saw that I must carry on as planned. The total absence of pep,
ginger, and the right spirit which the man had displayed during these
conversational exchanges convinced me that the strongest measures would
be necessary. Immediately upon leaving him, therefore, I proceeded to the
pantry, waited till the butler had removed himself elsewhere, and nipped
in and secured the vital jug. A few moments later, after a wary passage
of the stairs, I was in my room. And the first thing I saw there was
Jeeves, fooling about with trousers.
He gave the jug a look which - wrongly, as it was to turn out - I diagnosed
as censorious. I drew myself up a bit. I intended to have no rot from the
fellow.
"Yes, Jeeves?"
"Sir?"
"You have the air of one about to make a remark, Jeeves."
"Oh, no, sir. I note that you are in possession of Mr. Fink-Nottle's
orange juice. I was merely about to observe that in my opinion it would
be injudicious to add spirit to it."
"That is a remark, Jeeves, and it is precisely - - "
"Because I have already attended to the matter, sir."
"What?"
"Yes, sir. I decided, after all, to acquiesce in your wishes."
I stared at the man, astounded. I was deeply moved. Well, I mean,
wouldn't any chap who had been going about thinking that the old feudal
spirit was dead and then suddenly found it wasn't have been deeply moved?
"Jeeves," I said, "I am touched."
"Thank you, sir."
"Touched and gratified."
"Thank you very much, sir."
"But what caused this change of heart?"
"I chanced to encounter Mr. Fink-Nottle in the garden, sir, while you
were still in bed, and we had a brief conversation."
"And you came away feeling that he needed a bracer?"
"Very much so, sir. His attitude struck me as defeatist."
I nodded.
"I felt the same. 'Defeatist' sums it up to a nicety. Did you tell him
his attitude struck you as defeatist?"
"Yes, sir."
"But it didn't do any good?"
"No, sir."
"Very well, then, Jeeves. We must act. How much gin did you put in the
jug?"
"A liberal tumblerful, sir."
"Would that be a normal dose for an adult defeatist, do you think?"
"I fancy it should prove adequate, sir."
"I wonder. We must not spoil the ship for a ha'porth of tar. I think I'll
add just another fluid ounce or so."
"I would not advocate it, sir. In the case of Lord Brancaster's
parrot - - "
"You are falling into your old error, Jeeves, of thinking that Gussie is
a parrot. Fight against this. I shall add the oz."
"Very good, sir."
"And, by the way, Jeeves, Mr. Fink-Nottle is in the market for bright,
clean stories to use in his speech. Do you know any?"
"I know a story about two Irishmen, sir."
"Pat and Mike?"
"Yes, sir."
"Who were walking along Broadway?"
"Yes, sir."
"Just what he wants. Any more?"
"No, sir."
"Well, every little helps. You had better go and tell it to him."
"Very good, sir."
He passed from the room, and I unscrewed the flask and tilted into the
jug a generous modicum of its contents. And scarcely had I done so, when
there came to my ears the sound of footsteps without. I had only just
time to shove the jug behind the photograph of Uncle Tom on the
mantelpiece before the door opened and in came Gussie, curveting like a
circus horse.
"What-ho, Bertie," he said. "What-ho, what-ho, what-ho, and again
what-ho. What a beautiful world this is, Bertie. One of the nicest I
ever met."
I stared at him, speechless. We Woosters are as quick as lightning, and I
saw at once that something had happened.
I mean to say, I told you about him walking round in circles. I recorded
what passed between us on the lawn. And if I portrayed the scene with
anything like adequate skill, the picture you will have retained of this
Fink-Nottle will have been that of a nervous wreck, sagging at the knees,
green about the gills, and picking feverishly at the lapels of his coat
in an ecstasy of craven fear. In a word, defeatist. Gussie, during that
interview, had, in fine, exhibited all the earmarks of one licked to a
custard.
Vastly different was the Gussie who stood before me now. Self-confidence
seemed to ooze from the fellow's every pore. His face was flushed, there
was a jovial light in his eyes, the lips were parted in a swashbuckling
smile. And when with a genial hand he sloshed me on the back before I
could sidestep, it was as if I had been kicked by a mule.
"Well, Bertie," he proceeded, as blithely as a linnet without a thing on
his mind, "you will be glad to hear that you were right. Your theory has
been tested and proved correct. I feel like a fighting cock."
My brain ceased to reel. I saw all.
"Have you been having a drink?"
"I have. As you advised. Unpleasant stuff. Like medicine. Burns your
throat, too, and makes one as thirsty as the dickens. How anyone can mop
it up, as you do, for pleasure, beats me. Still, I would be the last to
deny that it tunes up the system. I could bite a tiger."
"What did you have?"
"Whisky. At least, that was the label on the decanter, and I have no
reason to suppose that a woman like your aunt - staunch, true-blue,
British - would deliberately deceive the public. If she labels her
decanters Whisky, then I consider that we know where we are."
"A whisky and soda, eh? You couldn't have done better."
"Soda?" said Gussie thoughtfully. "I knew there was something I had
forgotten."
"Didn't you put any soda in it?"
"It never occurred to me. I just nipped into the dining-room and drank
out of the decanter."
"How much?"
"Oh, about ten swallows. Twelve, maybe. Or fourteen. Say sixteen
medium-sized gulps. Gosh, I'm thirsty."
He moved over to the wash-stand and drank deeply out of the water bottle.
I cast a covert glance at Uncle Tom's photograph behind his back. For the
first time since it had come into my life, I was glad that it was so
large. It hid its secret well. If Gussie had caught sight of that jug of
orange juice, he would unquestionably have been on to it like a knife.
"Well, I'm glad you're feeling braced," I said.
He moved buoyantly from the wash-hand stand, and endeavoured to slosh me
on the back again. Foiled by my nimble footwork, he staggered to the bed
and sat down upon it.
"Braced? Did I say I could bite a tiger?"
"You did."
"Make it two tigers. I could chew holes in a steel door. What an ass you
must have thought me out there in the garden. I see now you were laughing
in your sleeve."
"No, no."
"Yes," insisted Gussie. "That very sleeve," he said, pointing. "And I
don't blame you. I can't imagine why I made all that fuss about a potty
job like distributing prizes at a rotten little country grammar school.
Can you imagine, Bertie?"
"Exactly. Nor can I imagine. There's simply nothing to it. I just shin up
on the platform, drop a few gracious words, hand the little blighters
their prizes, and hop down again, admired by all. Not a suggestion of
split trousers from start to finish. I mean, why should anybody split his
trousers? I can't imagine. Can you imagine?"
"No."
"Nor can I imagine. I shall be a riot. I know just the sort of stuff
that's needed - simple, manly, optimistic stuff straight from the
shoulder. This shoulder," said Gussie, tapping. "Why I was so nervous
this morning I can't imagine. For anything simpler than distributing a
few footling books to a bunch of grimy-faced kids I can't imagine. Still,
for some reason I can't imagine, I was feeling a little nervous, but now
I feel fine, Bertie - fine, fine, fine - and I say this to you as an old
friend. Because that's what you are, old man, when all the smoke has
cleared away - an old friend. I don't think I've ever met an older friend.
How long have you been an old friend of mine, Bertie?"
"Oh, years and years."
"Imagine! Though, of course, there must have been a time when you were a
new friend.... Hullo, the luncheon gong. Come on, old friend."
And, rising from the bed like a performing flea, he made for the door.
I followed rather pensively. What had occurred was, of course, so much
velvet, as you might say. I mean, I had wanted a braced Fink-Nottle -
indeed, all my plans had had a braced Fink-Nottle as their end and aim
- but I found myself wondering a little whether the Fink-Nottle now
sliding down the banister wasn't, perhaps, a shade too braced. His
demeanour seemed to me that of a man who might quite easily throw bread
about at lunch.
Fortunately, however, the settled gloom of those round him exercised a
restraining effect upon him at the table. It would have needed a far more
plastered man to have been rollicking at such a gathering. I had told the
Bassett that there were aching hearts in Brinkley Court, and it now
looked probable that there would shortly be aching tummies. Anatole, I
learned, had retired to his bed with a fit of the vapours, and the meal
now before us had been cooked by the kitchen maid - as C3 a performer as
ever wielded a skillet.
This, coming on top of their other troubles, induced in the company a
pretty unanimous silence - a solemn stillness, as you might say - which
even Gussie did not seem prepared to break. Except, therefore, for one
short snatch of song on his part, nothing untoward marked the occasion,
and presently we rose, with instructions from Aunt Dahlia to put on
festal raiment and be at Market Snodsbury not later than 3.30. This
leaving me ample time to smoke a gasper or two in a shady bower beside
the lake, I did so, repairing to my room round about the hour of three.
Jeeves was on the job, adding the final polish to the old topper, and I
was about to apprise him of the latest developments in the matter of
Gussie, when he forestalled me by observing that the latter had only just
concluded an agreeable visit to the Wooster bedchamber.
"I found Mr. Fink-Nottle seated here when I arrived to lay out your
clothes, sir."
"Indeed, Jeeves? Gussie was in here, was he?"
"Yes, sir. He left only a few moments ago. He is driving to the school
with Mr. and Mrs. Travers in the large car."
"Did you give him your story of the two Irishmen?"
"Yes, sir. He laughed heartily."
"Good. Had you any other contributions for him?"
"I ventured to suggest that he might mention to the young gentlemen that
education is a drawing out, not a putting in. The late Lord Brancaster
was much addicted to presenting prizes at schools, and he invariably
employed this dictum."
"And how did he react to that?"
"He laughed heartily, sir."
"This surprised you, no doubt? This practically incessant merriment, I
mean."
"Yes, sir."
"You thought it odd in one who, when you last saw him, was well up in
Group A of the defeatists."
"Yes, sir."
"There is a ready explanation, Jeeves. Since you last saw him, Gussie has
been on a bender. He's as tight as an owl."
"Indeed, sir?"
"Absolutely. His nerve cracked under the strain, and he sneaked into the
dining-room and started mopping the stuff up like a vacuum cleaner.
Whisky would seem to be what he filled the radiator with. I gather that
he used up most of the decanter. Golly, Jeeves, it's lucky he didn't get
at that laced orange juice on top of that, what?"
"Extremely, sir."
I eyed the jug. Uncle Tom's photograph had fallen into the fender, and it
was standing there right out in the open, where Gussie couldn't have
helped seeing it. Mercifully, it was empty now.
"It was a most prudent act on your part, if I may say so, sir, to dispose
of the orange juice."
I stared at the man.
"What? Didn't you?"
"No, sir."
"Jeeves, let us get this clear. Was it not you who threw away that o.j.?"
"No, sir. I assumed, when I entered the room and found the pitcher empty,
that you had done so."
We looked at each other, awed. Two minds with but a single thought.
"I very much fear, sir - - "
"So do I, Jeeves."
"It would seem almost certain - - "
"Quite certain. Weigh the facts. Sift the evidence. The jug was standing
on the mantelpiece, for all eyes to behold. Gussie had been complaining
of thirst. You found him in here, laughing heartily. I think that there
can be little doubt, Jeeves, that the entire contents of that jug are at
this moment reposing on top of the existing cargo in that already
brilliantly lit man's interior. Disturbing, Jeeves."
"Most disturbing, sir."
"Let us face the position, forcing ourselves to be calm. You inserted in
that jug - shall we say a tumblerful of the right stuff?"
"Fully a tumblerful, sir."
"And I added of my plenty about the same amount."
"Yes, sir."
"And in two shakes of a duck's tail Gussie, with all that lapping about
inside him, will be distributing the prizes at Market Snodsbury Grammar
School before an audience of all that is fairest and most refined in the
county."
"Yes, sir."
"It seems to me, Jeeves, that the ceremony may be one fraught with
considerable interest."
"Yes, sir."
"What, in your opinion, will the harvest be?"
"One finds it difficult to hazard a conjecture, sir."
"You mean imagination boggles?"
"Yes, sir."
I inspected my imagination. He was right. It boggled.
-17-
"And yet, Jeeves," I said, twiddling a thoughtful steering wheel, "there
is always the bright side."
Some twenty minutes had elapsed, and having picked the honest fellow up
outside the front door, I was driving in the two-seater to the
picturesque town of Market Snodsbury. Since we had parted - he to go to
his lair and fetch his hat, I to remain in my room and complete the
formal costume - I had been doing some close thinking.
The results of this I now proceeded to hand on to him.
"However dark the prospect may be, Jeeves, however murkily the storm
clouds may seem to gather, a keen eye can usually discern the blue bird.
It is bad, no doubt, that Gussie should be going, some ten minutes from
now, to distribute prizes in a state of advanced intoxication, but we
must never forget that these things cut both ways."
"You imply, sir - - "
"Precisely. I am thinking of him in his capacity of wooer. All this ought
to have put him in rare shape for offering his hand in marriage. I shall
be vastly surprised if it won't turn him into a sort of caveman. Have you
ever seen James Cagney in the movies?"
"Yes, sir."
"Something on those lines."
I heard him cough, and sniped him with a sideways glance. He was wearing
that informative look of his.
"Then you have not heard, sir?"
"Eh?"
"You are not aware that a marriage has been arranged and will shortly
take place between Mr. Fink-Nottle and Miss Bassett?"
"What?"
"Yes, sir."
"When did this happen?"
"Shortly after Mr. Fink-Nottle had left your room, sir."
"Ah! In the post-orange-juice era?"
"Yes, sir."
"But are you sure of your facts? How do you know?"
"My informant was Mr. Fink-Nottle himself, sir. He appeared anxious to
confide in me. His story was somewhat incoherent, but I had no difficulty
in apprehending its substance. Prefacing his remarks with the statement
that this was a beautiful world, he laughed heartily and said that he had
become formally engaged."
"No details?"
"No, sir."
"But one can picture the scene."
"Yes, sir."
"I mean, imagination doesn't boggle."
"No, sir."
And it didn't. I could see exactly what must have happened. Insert a
liberal dose of mixed spirits in a normally abstemious man, and he
becomes a force. He does not stand around, twiddling his fingers and
stammering. He acts. I had no doubt that Gussie must have reached for the
Bassett and clasped her to him like a stevedore handling a sack of coals.
And one could readily envisage the effect of that sort of thing on a girl
of romantic mind.
"Well, well, well, Jeeves."
"Yes, sir."
"This is splendid news."
"Yes, sir."
"You see now how right I was."
"Yes, sir."
"It must have been rather an eye-opener for you, watching me handle this
case."
"Yes, sir."
"The simple, direct method never fails."
"No, sir."
"Whereas the elaborate does."
"Yes, sir."
"Right ho, Jeeves."
We had arrived at the main entrance of Market Snodsbury Grammar School. I
parked the car, and went in, well content. True, the Tuppy-Angela problem
still remained unsolved and Aunt Dahlia's five hundred quid seemed as far
off as ever, but it was gratifying to feel that good old Gussie's
troubles were over, at any rate.
The Grammar School at Market Snodsbury had, I understood, been built
somewhere in the year 1416, and, as with so many of these ancient
foundations, there still seemed to brood over its Great Hall, where the
afternoon's festivities were to take place, not a little of the fug of
the centuries. It was the hottest day of the summer, and though somebody
had opened a tentative window or two, the atmosphere remained distinctive
and individual.
In this hall the youth of Market Snodsbury had been eating its daily
lunch for a matter of five hundred years, and the flavour lingered. The
air was sort of heavy and languorous, if you know what I mean, with the
scent of Young England and boiled beef and carrots.
Aunt Dahlia, who was sitting with a bevy of the local nibs in the second
row, sighted me as I entered and waved to me to join her, but I was too
smart for that. I wedged myself in among the standees at the back,
leaning up against a chap who, from the aroma, might have been a corn
chandler or something on that order. The essence of strategy on these
occasions is to be as near the door as possible.
The hall was gaily decorated with flags and coloured paper, and the eye
was further refreshed by the spectacle of a mixed drove of boys, parents,
and what not, the former running a good deal to shiny faces and Eton
collars, the latter stressing the black-satin note rather when female,
and looking as if their coats were too tight, if male. And presently
there was some applause - sporadic, Jeeves has since told me it was - and I
saw Gussie being steered by a bearded bloke in a gown to a seat in the
middle of the platform.
And I confess that as I beheld him and felt that there but for the grace
of God went Bertram Wooster, a shudder ran through the frame. It all
reminded me so vividly of the time I had addressed that girls' school.
Of course, looking at it dispassionately, you may say that for horror and
peril there is no comparison between an almost human audience like the
one before me and a mob of small girls with pigtails down their backs,
and this, I concede, is true. Nevertheless, the spectacle was enough to
make me feel like a fellow watching a pal going over Niagara Falls in a
barrel, and the thought of what I had escaped caused everything for a
moment to go black and swim before my eyes.
When I was able to see clearly once more, I perceived that Gussie was now
seated. He had his hands on his knees, with his elbows out at right
angles, like a nigger minstrel of the old school about to ask Mr. Bones
why a chicken crosses the road, and he was staring before him with a
smile so fixed and pebble-beached that I should have thought that anybody
could have guessed that there sat one in whom the old familiar juice was
plashing up against the back of the front teeth.
In fact, I saw Aunt Dahlia, who, having assisted at so many hunting
dinners in her time, is second to none as a judge of the symptoms, give a
start and gaze long and earnestly. And she was just saying something to
Uncle Tom on her left when the bearded bloke stepped to the footlights
and started making a speech. From the fact that he spoke as if he had a
hot potato in his mouth without getting the raspberry from the lads in
the ringside seats, I deduced that he must be the head master.
With his arrival in the spotlight, a sort of perspiring resignation
seemed to settle on the audience. Personally, I snuggled up against the
chandler and let my attention wander. The speech was on the subject of
the doings of the school during the past term, and this part of a
prize-giving is always apt rather to fail to grip the visiting stranger.
I mean, you know how it is. You're told that J.B. Brewster has won an
Exhibition for Classics at Cat's, Cambridge, and you feel that it's one
of those stories where you can't see how funny it is unless you really
know the fellow. And the same applies to G. Bullett being awarded the
Lady Jane Wix Scholarship at the Birmingham College of Veterinary
Science.
In fact, I and the corn chandler, who was looking a bit fagged I thought,
as if he had had a hard morning chandling the corn, were beginning to
doze lightly when things suddenly brisked up, bringing Gussie into the
picture for the first time.
"Today," said the bearded bloke, "we are all happy to welcome as the
guest of the afternoon Mr. Fitz-Wattle - - "
At the beginning of the address, Gussie had subsided into a sort of
daydream, with his mouth hanging open. About half-way through, faint
signs of life had begun to show. And for the last few minutes he had been
trying to cross one leg over the other and failing and having another
shot and failing again. But only now did he exhibit any real animation.
He sat up with a jerk.
"Fink-Nottle," he said, opening his eyes.
"Fitz-Nottle."
"Fink-Nottle."
"I should say Fink-Nottle."
"Of course you should, you silly ass," said Gussie genially. "All right,
get on with it."
And closing his eyes, he began trying to cross his legs again.
I could see that this little spot of friction had rattled the bearded
bloke a bit. He stood for a moment fumbling at the fungus with a
hesitating hand. But they make these head masters of tough stuff. The
weakness passed. He came back nicely and carried on.
"We are all happy, I say, to welcome as the guest of the afternoon Mr.
Fink-Nottle, who has kindly consented to award the prizes. This task, as
you know, is one that should have devolved upon that well-beloved and
vigorous member of our board of governors, the Rev. William Plomer, and
we are all, I am sure, very sorry that illness at the last moment should
have prevented him from being here today. But, if I may borrow a familiar
metaphor from the - if I may employ a homely metaphor familiar to you
all - what we lose on the swings we gain on the roundabouts."
He paused, and beamed rather freely, to show that this was comedy. I
could have told the man it was no use. Not a ripple. The corn chandler
leaned against me and muttered "Whoddidesay?" but that was all.
It's always a nasty jar to wait for the laugh and find that the gag
hasn't got across. The bearded bloke was visibly discomposed. At that,
however, I think he would have got by, had he not, at this juncture,