Chapter IV: Part 4

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.”

“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.

-12-

I don’t know if it has happened to you at all, but a thing I’ve noticed with myself is that, when I’m confronted by a problem which seems for the moment to stump and baffle, a good sleep will often bring the solution in the morning.

It was so on the present occasion.

The nibs who study these matters claim, I believe, that this has got something to do with the subconscious mind, and very possibly they may be right. I wouldn’t have said off-hand that I had a subconscious mind, but I suppose I must without knowing it, and no doubt it was there, sweating away diligently at the old stand, all the while the corporeal Wooster was getting his eight hours.

For directly I opened my eyes on the morrow, I saw daylight. Well, I don’t mean that exactly, because naturally I did. What I mean is that I found I had the thing all mapped out. The good old subconscious m. had delivered the goods, and I perceived exactly what steps must be taken in order to put Augustus Fink-Nottle among the practising Romeos.

I should like you, if you can spare me a moment of your valuable time, to throw your mind back to that conversation he and I had had in the garden on the previous evening. Not the glimmering landscape bit, I don’t mean that, but the concluding passages of it. Having done so, you will recall that when he informed me that he never touched alcoholic liquor, I shook the head a bit, feeling that this must inevitably weaken him as a force where proposing to girls was concerned.

And events had shown that my fears were well founded.

Put to the test, with nothing but orange juice inside him, he had proved a complete bust. In a situation calling for words of molten passion of a nature calculated to go through Madeline Bassett like a red-hot gimlet through half a pound of butter, he had said not a syllable that could bring a blush to the cheek of modesty, merely delivering a well-phrased but, in the circumstances, quite misplaced lecture on newts.

A romantic girl is not to be won by such tactics. Obviously, before attempting to proceed further, Augustus Fink-Nottle must be induced to throw off the shackling inhibitions of the past and fuel up. It must be a primed, confident Fink-Nottle who squared up to the Bassett for Round No. 2.

Only so could the _Morning Post_ make its ten bob, or whatever it is, for printing the announcement of the forthcoming nuptials.

Having arrived at this conclusion I found the rest easy, and by the time Jeeves brought me my tea I had evolved a plan complete in every detail. This I was about to place before him--indeed, I had got as far as the preliminary “I say, Jeeves”--when we were interrupted by the arrival of Tuppy.

He came listlessly into the room, and I was pained to observe that a night’s rest had effected no improvement in the unhappy wreck’s appearance. Indeed, I should have said, if anything, that he was looking rather more moth-eaten than when I had seen him last. If you can visualize a bulldog which has just been kicked in the ribs and had its dinner sneaked by the cat, you will have Hildebrand Glossop as he now stood before me.

“Stap my vitals, Tuppy, old corpse,” I said, concerned, “you’re looking pretty blue round the rims.”

Jeeves slid from the presence in that tactful, eel-like way of his, and I motioned the remains to take a seat.

“What’s the matter?” I said.

He came to anchor on the bed, and for awhile sat picking at the coverlet in silence.

“I’ve been through hell, Bertie.”

“Through where?”

“Hell.”

“Oh, hell? And what took you there?”

Once more he became silent, staring before him with sombre eyes. Following his gaze, I saw that he was looking at an enlarged photograph of my Uncle Tom in some sort of Masonic uniform which stood on the mantelpiece. I’ve tried to reason with Aunt Dahlia about this photograph for years, placing before her two alternative suggestions: (a) To burn the beastly thing; or (b) if she must preserve it, to shove me in another room when I come to stay. But she declines to accede. She says it’s good for me. A useful discipline, she maintains, teaching me that there is a darker side to life and that we were not put into this world for pleasure only.

“Turn it to the wall, if it hurts you, Tuppy,” I said gently.

“Eh?”

“That photograph of Uncle Tom as the bandmaster.”

“I didn’t come here to talk about photographs. I came for sympathy.”

“And you shall have it. What’s the trouble? Worrying about Angela, I suppose? Well, have no fear. I have another well-laid plan for encompassing that young shrimp. I’ll guarantee that she will be weeping on your neck before yonder sun has set.”

He barked sharply.

“A fat chance!”

“Tup, Tushy!”

“Eh?”

“I mean ‘Tush, Tuppy.’ I tell you I will do it. I was just going to describe this plan of mine to Jeeves when you came in. Care to hear it?”

“I don’t want to hear any of your beastly plans. Plans are no good. She’s gone and fallen in love with this other bloke, and now hates my gizzard.”

“Rot.”

“It isn’t rot.”

“I tell you, Tuppy, as one who can read the female heart, that this Angela loves you still.”

“Well, it didn’t look much like it in the larder last night.”

“Oh, you went to the larder last night?”

“I did.”

“And Angela was there?”

“She was. And your aunt. Also your uncle.”

I saw that I should require foot-notes. All this was new stuff to me. I had stayed at Brinkley Court quite a lot in my time, but I had no idea the larder was such a social vortex. More like a snack bar on a race-course than anything else, it seemed to have become.

“Tell me the whole story in your own words,” I said, “omitting no detail, however apparently slight, for one never knows how important the most trivial detail may be.”

He inspected the photograph for a moment with growing gloom.

“All right,” he said. “This is what happened. You know my views about that steak-and-kidney pie.”

“Quite.”

“Well, round about one a.m. I thought the time was ripe. I stole from my room and went downstairs. The pie seemed to beckon me.”

I nodded. I knew how pies do.

“I got to the larder. I fished it out. I set it on the table. I found knife and fork. I collected salt, mustard, and pepper. There were some cold potatoes. I added those. And I was about to pitch in when I heard a sound behind me, and there was your aunt at the door. In a blue-and-yellow dressing gown.”

“Embarrassing.”

“Most.”

“I suppose you didn’t know where to look.”

“I looked at Angela.”

“She came in with my aunt?”

“No. With your uncle, a minute or two later. He was wearing mauve pyjamas and carried a pistol. Have you ever seen your uncle in pyjamas and a pistol?”

“Never.”

“You haven’t missed much.”

“Tell me, Tuppy,” I asked, for I was anxious to ascertain this, “about Angela. Was there any momentary softening in her gaze as she fixed it on you?”

“She didn’t fix it on me. She fixed it on the pie.”

“Did she say anything?”

“Not right away. Your uncle was the first to speak. He said to your aunt, ‘God bless my soul, Dahlia, what are you doing here?’ To which she replied, ‘Well, if it comes to that, my merry somnambulist, what are you?’ Your uncle then said that he thought there must be burglars in the house, as he had heard noises.”

I nodded again. I could follow the trend. Ever since the scullery window was found open the year Shining Light was disqualified in the Cesarewitch for boring, Uncle Tom has had a marked complex about burglars. I can still recall my emotions when, paying my first visit after he had bars put on all the windows and attempting to thrust the head out in order to get a sniff of country air, I nearly fractured my skull on a sort of iron grille, as worn by the tougher kinds of mediaeval prison.

“‘What sort of noises?’ said your aunt. ‘Funny noises,’ said your uncle. Whereupon Angela--with a nasty, steely tinkle in her voice, the little buzzard--observed, ‘I expect it was Mr. Glossop eating.’ And then she did give me a look. It was the sort of wondering, revolted look a very spiritual woman would give a fat man gulping soup in a restaurant. The kind of look that makes a fellow feel he’s forty-six round the waist and has great rolls of superfluous flesh pouring down over the back of his collar. And, still speaking in the same unpleasant tone, she added, ‘I ought to have told you, father, that Mr. Glossop always likes to have a good meal three or four times during the night. It helps to keep him going till breakfast. He has the most amazing appetite. See, he has practically finished a large steak-and-kidney pie already’.”

As he spoke these words, a feverish animation swept over Tuppy. His eyes glittered with a strange light, and he thumped the bed violently with his fist, nearly catching me a juicy one on the leg.

“That was what hurt, Bertie. That was what stung. I hadn’t so much as started on that pie. But that’s a woman all over.”

“The eternal feminine.”

“She continued her remarks. ‘You’ve no idea,’ she said, ‘how Mr. Glossop loves food. He just lives for it. He always eats six or seven meals a day, and then starts in again after bedtime. I think it’s rather wonderful.’ Your aunt seemed interested, and said it reminded her of a boa constrictor. Angela said, didn’t she mean a python? And then they argued as to which of the two it was. Your uncle, meanwhile, poking about with that damned pistol of his till human life wasn’t safe in the vicinity. And the pie lying there on the table, and me unable to touch it. You begin to understand why I said I had been through hell.”

“Quite. Can’t have been at all pleasant.”

“Presently your aunt and Angela settled their discussion, deciding that Angela was right and that it was a python that I reminded them of. And shortly after that we all pushed back to bed, Angela warning me in a motherly voice not to take the stairs too quickly. After seven or eight solid meals, she said, a man of my build ought to be very careful, because of the danger of apoplectic fits. She said it was the same with dogs. When they became very fat and overfed, you had to see that they didn’t hurry upstairs, as it made them puff and pant, and that was bad for their hearts. She asked your aunt if she remembered the late spaniel, Ambrose; and your aunt said, ‘Poor old Ambrose, you couldn’t keep him away from the garbage pail’; and Angela said, ‘Exactly, so do please be careful, Mr. Glossop.’ And you tell me she loves me still!”

I did my best to encourage.

“Girlish banter, what?”

“Girlish banter be dashed. She’s right off me. Once her ideal, I am now less than the dust beneath her chariot wheels. She became infatuated with this chap, whoever he was, at Cannes, and now she can’t stand the sight of me.”

I raised my eyebrows.

“My dear Tuppy, you are not showing your usual good sense in this Angela-chap-at-Cannes matter. If you will forgive me saying so, you have got an _idée fixe_.”

“A what?”

“An _idée fixe_. You know. One of those things fellows get. Like Uncle Tom’s delusion that everybody who is known even slightly to the police is lurking in the garden, waiting for a chance to break into the house. You keep talking about this chap at Cannes, and there never was a chap at Cannes, and I’ll tell you why I’m so sure about this. During those two months on the Riviera, it so happens that Angela and I were practically inseparable. If there had been somebody nosing round her, I should have spotted it in a second.”

He started. I could see that this had impressed him.

“Oh, she was with you all the time at Cannes, was she?”

“I don’t suppose she said two words to anybody else, except, of course, idle conv. at the crowded dinner table or a chance remark in a throng at the Casino.”

“I see. You mean that anything in the shape of mixed bathing and moonlight strolls she conducted solely in your company?”

“That’s right. It was quite a joke in the hotel.”

“You must have enjoyed that.”

“Oh, rather. I’ve always been devoted to Angela.”

“Oh, yes?”

“When we were kids, she used to call herself my little sweetheart.”

“She did?”

“Absolutely.”

“I see.”

He sat plunged in thought, while I, glad to have set his mind at rest, proceeded with my tea. And presently there came the banging of a gong from the hall below, and he started like a war horse at the sound of the bugle.

“Breakfast!” he said, and was off to a flying start, leaving me to brood and ponder. And the more I brooded and pondered, the more did it seem to me that everything now looked pretty smooth. Tuppy, I could see, despite that painful scene in the larder, still loved Angela with all the old fervour.

This meant that I could rely on that plan to which I had referred to bring home the bacon. And as I had found the way to straighten out the Gussie-Bassett difficulty, there seemed nothing more to worry about.

It was with an uplifted heart that I addressed Jeeves as he came in to remove the tea tray.

-13-

“Jeeves,” I said.

“Sir?”

“I’ve just been having a chat with young Tuppy, Jeeves. Did you happen to notice that he wasn’t looking very roguish this morning?”

“Yes, sir. It seemed to me that Mr. Glossop’s face was sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought.”

“Quite. He met my cousin Angela in the larder last night, and a rather painful interview ensued.”

“I am sorry, sir.”

“Not half so sorry as he was. She found him closeted with a steak-and-kidney pie, and appears to have been a bit caustic about fat men who lived for food alone.”

“Most disturbing, sir.”

“Very. In fact, many people would say that things had gone so far between these two nothing now could bridge the chasm. A girl who could make cracks about human pythons who ate nine or ten meals a day and ought to be careful not to hurry upstairs because of the danger of apoplectic fits is a girl, many people would say, in whose heart love is dead. Wouldn’t people say that, Jeeves?”

“Undeniably, sir.”

“They would be wrong.”

“You think so, sir?”

“I am convinced of it. I know these females. You can’t go by what they say.”

“You feel that Miss Angela’s strictures should not be taken too much _au pied de la lettre_, sir?”

“Eh?”

“In English, we should say ‘literally’.”

“Literally. That’s exactly what I mean. You know what girls are. A tiff occurs, and they shoot their heads off. But underneath it all the old love still remains. Am I correct?”

“Quite correct, sir. The poet Scott----”

“Right ho, Jeeves.”

“Very good, sir.”

“And in order to bring that old love whizzing to the surface once more, all that is required is the proper treatment.”

“By ‘proper treatment,’ sir, you mean----”

“Clever handling, Jeeves. A spot of the good old snaky work. I see what must be done to jerk my Cousin Angela back to normalcy. I’ll tell you, shall I?”

“If you would be so kind, sir.”

I lit a cigarette, and eyed him keenly through the smoke. He waited respectfully for me to unleash the words of wisdom. I must say for Jeeves that--till, as he is so apt to do, he starts shoving his oar in and cavilling and obstructing--he makes a very good audience. I don’t know if he is actually agog, but he looks agog, and that’s the great thing.

“Suppose you were strolling through the illimitable jungle, Jeeves, and happened to meet a tiger cub.”

“The contingency is a remote one, sir.”

“Never mind. Let us suppose it.”

“Very good, sir.”

“Let us now suppose that you sloshed that tiger cub, and let us suppose further that word reached its mother that it was being put upon. What would you expect the attitude of that mother to be? In what frame of mind do you consider that that tigress would approach you?”

“I should anticipate a certain show of annoyance, sir.”

“And rightly. Due to what is known as the maternal instinct, what?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Very good, Jeeves. We will now suppose that there has recently been some little coolness between this tiger cub and this tigress. For some days, let us say, they have not been on speaking terms. Do you think that that would make any difference to the vim with which the latter would leap to the former’s aid?”

“No, sir.”

“Exactly. Here, then, in brief, is my plan, Jeeves. I am going to draw my Cousin Angela aside to a secluded spot and roast Tuppy properly.”

“Roast, sir?”

“Knock. Slam. Tick-off. Abuse. Denounce. I shall be very terse about Tuppy, giving it as my opinion that in all essentials he is more like a wart hog than an ex-member of a fine old English public school. What will ensue? Hearing him attacked, my Cousin Angela’s womanly heart will be as sick as mud. The maternal tigress in her will awake. No matter what differences they may have had, she will remember only that he is the man she loves, and will leap to his defence. And from that to falling into his arms and burying the dead past will be but a step. How do you react to that?”