Chapter V: Part 5

“The idea is an ingenious one, sir.”

“We Woosters are ingenious, Jeeves, exceedingly ingenious.”

“Yes, sir.”

“As a matter of fact, I am not speaking without a knowledge of the form book. I have tested this theory.”

“Indeed, sir?”

“Yes, in person. And it works. I was standing on the Eden rock at Antibes last month, idly watching the bathers disport themselves in the water, and a girl I knew slightly pointed at a male diver and asked me if I didn’t think his legs were about the silliest-looking pair of props ever issued to human being. I replied that I did, indeed, and for the space of perhaps two minutes was extraordinarily witty and satirical about this bird’s underpinning. At the end of that period, I suddenly felt as if I had been caught up in the tail of a cyclone.

“Beginning with a _critique_ of my own limbs, which she said, justly enough, were nothing to write home about, this girl went on to dissect my manners, morals, intellect, general physique, and method of eating asparagus with such acerbity that by the time she had finished the best you could say of Bertram was that, so far as was known, he had never actually committed murder or set fire to an orphan asylum. Subsequent investigation proved that she was engaged to the fellow with the legs and had had a slight disagreement with him the evening before on the subject of whether she should or should not have made an original call of two spades, having seven, but without the ace. That night I saw them dining together with every indication of relish, their differences made up and the lovelight once more in their eyes. That shows you, Jeeves.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I expect precisely similar results from my Cousin Angela when I start roasting Tuppy. By lunchtime, I should imagine, the engagement will be on again and the diamond-and-platinum ring glittering as of yore on her third finger. Or is it the fourth?”

“Scarcely by luncheon time, sir. Miss Angela’s maid informs me that Miss Angela drove off in her car early this morning with the intention of spending the day with friends in the vicinity.”

“Well, within half an hour of whatever time she comes back, then. These are mere straws, Jeeves. Do not let us chop them.”

“No, sir.”

“The point is that, as far as Tuppy and Angela are concerned, we may say with confidence that everything will shortly be hotsy-totsy once more. And what an agreeable thought that is, Jeeves.”

“Very true, sir.”

“If there is one thing that gives me the pip, it is two loving hearts being estranged.”

“I can readily appreciate the fact, sir.”

I placed the stub of my gasper in the ash tray and lit another, to indicate that that completed Chap. I.

“Right ho, then. So much for the western front. We now turn to the eastern.”

“Sir?”

“I speak in parables, Jeeves. What I mean is, we now approach the matter of Gussie and Miss Bassett.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Here, Jeeves, more direct methods are required. In handling the case of Augustus Fink-Nottle, we must keep always in mind the fact that we are dealing with a poop.”

“A sensitive plant would, perhaps, be a kinder expression, sir.”

“No, Jeeves, a poop. And with poops one has to employ the strong, forceful, straightforward policy. Psychology doesn’t get you anywhere. You, if I may remind you without wounding your feelings, fell into the error of mucking about with psychology in connection with this Fink-Nottle, and the result was a wash-out. You attempted to push him over the line by rigging him out in a Mephistopheles costume and sending him off to a fancy-dress ball, your view being that scarlet tights would embolden him. Futile.”

“The matter was never actually put to the test, sir.”

“No. Because he didn’t get to the ball. And that strengthens my argument. A man who can set out in a cab for a fancy-dress ball and not get there is manifestly a poop of no common order. I don’t think I have ever known anybody else who was such a dashed silly ass that he couldn’t even get to a fancy-dress ball. Have you, Jeeves?”

“No, sir.”

“But don’t forget this, because it is the point I wish, above all, to make: Even if Gussie had got to that ball; even if those scarlet tights, taken in conjunction with his horn-rimmed spectacles, hadn’t given the girl a fit of some kind; even if she had rallied from the shock and he had been able to dance and generally hobnob with her; even then your efforts would have been fruitless, because, Mephistopheles costume or no Mephistopheles costume, Augustus Fink-Nottle would never have been able to summon up the courage to ask her to be his. All that would have resulted would have been that she would have got that lecture on newts a few days earlier. And why, Jeeves? Shall I tell you why?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Because he would have been attempting the hopeless task of trying to do the thing on orange juice.”

“Sir?”

“Gussie is an orange-juice addict. He drinks nothing else.”

“I was not aware of that, sir.”

“I have it from his own lips. Whether from some hereditary taint, or because he promised his mother he wouldn’t, or simply because he doesn’t like the taste of the stuff, Gussie Fink-Nottle has never in the whole course of his career pushed so much as the simplest gin and tonic over the larynx. And he expects--this poop expects, Jeeves--this wabbling, shrinking, diffident rabbit in human shape expects under these conditions to propose to the girl he loves. One hardly knows whether to smile or weep, what?”

“You consider total abstinence a handicap to a gentleman who wishes to make a proposal of marriage, sir?”

The question amazed me.

“Why, dash it,” I said, astounded, “you must know it is. Use your intelligence, Jeeves. Reflect what proposing means. It means that a decent, self-respecting chap has got to listen to himself saying things which, if spoken on the silver screen, would cause him to dash to the box-office and demand his money back. Let him attempt to do it on orange juice, and what ensues? Shame seals his lips, or, if it doesn’t do that, makes him lose his morale and start to babble. Gussie, for example, as we have seen, babbles of syncopated newts.”

“Palmated newts, sir.”

“Palmated or syncopated, it doesn’t matter which. The point is that he babbles and is going to babble again, if he has another try at it. Unless--and this is where I want you to follow me very closely, Jeeves--unless steps are taken at once through the proper channels. Only active measures, promptly applied, can provide this poor, pusillanimous poop with the proper pep. And that is why, Jeeves, I intend tomorrow to secure a bottle of gin and lace his luncheon orange juice with it liberally.”

“Sir?”

I clicked the tongue.

“I have already had occasion, Jeeves,” I said rebukingly, “to comment on the way you say ‘Well, sir’ and ‘Indeed, sir?’ I take this opportunity of informing you that I object equally strongly to your ‘Sir?’ pure and simple. The word seems to suggest that in your opinion I have made a statement or mooted a scheme so bizarre that your brain reels at it. In the present instance, there is absolutely nothing to say ‘Sir?’ about. The plan I have put forward is entirely reasonable and icily logical, and should excite no sirring whatsoever. Or don’t you think so?”

“Well, sir----”

“Jeeves!”

“I beg your pardon, sir. The expression escaped me inadvertently. What I intended to say, since you press me, was that the action which you propose does seem to me somewhat injudicious.”

“Injudicious? I don’t follow you, Jeeves.”

“A certain amount of risk would enter into it, in my opinion, sir. It is not always a simple matter to gauge the effect of alcohol on a subject unaccustomed to such stimulant. I have known it to have distressing results in the case of parrots.”

“Parrots?”

“I was thinking of an incident of my earlier life, sir, before I entered your employment. I was in the service of the late Lord Brancaster at the time, a gentleman who owned a parrot to which he was greatly devoted, and one day the bird chanced to be lethargic, and his lordship, with the kindly intention of restoring it to its customary animation, offered it a portion of seed cake steeped in the ’84 port. The bird accepted the morsel gratefully and consumed it with every indication of satisfaction. Almost immediately afterwards, however, its manner became markedly feverish. Having bitten his lordship in the thumb and sung part of a sea-chanty, it fell to the bottom of the cage and remained there for a considerable period of time with its legs in the air, unable to move. I merely mention this, sir, in order to----”

I put my finger on the flaw. I had spotted it all along.

“But Gussie isn’t a parrot.”

“No, sir, but----”

“It is high time, in my opinion, that this question of what young Gussie really is was threshed out and cleared up. He seems to think he is a male newt, and you now appear to suggest that he is a parrot. The truth of the matter being that he is just a plain, ordinary poop and needs a snootful as badly as ever man did. So no more discussion, Jeeves. My mind is made up. There is only one way of handling this difficult case, and that is the way I have outlined.”

“Very good, sir.”

“Right ho, Jeeves. So much for that, then. Now here’s something else: You noticed that I said I was going to put this project through tomorrow, and no doubt you wondered why I said tomorrow. Why did I, Jeeves?”

“Because you feel that if it were done when ’tis done, then ’twere well it were done quickly, sir?”

“Partly, Jeeves, but not altogether. My chief reason for fixing the date as specified is that tomorrow, though you have doubtless forgotten, is the day of the distribution of prizes at Market Snodsbury Grammar School, at which, as you know, Gussie is to be the male star and master of the revels. So you see we shall, by lacing that juice, not only embolden him to propose to Miss Bassett, but also put him so into shape that he will hold that Market Snodsbury audience spellbound.”

“In fact, you will be killing two birds with one stone, sir.”

“Exactly. A very neat way of putting it. And now here is a minor point. On second thoughts, I think the best plan will be for you, not me, to lace the juice.”

“Sir?”

“Jeeves!”

“I beg your pardon, sir.”

“And I’ll tell you why that will be the best plan. Because you are in a position to obtain ready access to the stuff. It is served to Gussie daily, I have noticed, in an individual jug. This jug will presumably be lying about the kitchen or somewhere before lunch tomorrow. It will be the simplest of tasks for you to slip a few fingers of gin in it.”

“No doubt, sir, but----”

“Don’t say ‘but,’ Jeeves.”

“I fear, sir----”

“‘I fear, sir’ is just as bad.”

“What I am endeavouring to say, sir, is that I am sorry, but I am afraid I must enter an unequivocal _nolle prosequi_.”

“Do what?”

“The expression is a legal one, sir, signifying the resolve not to proceed with a matter. In other words, eager though I am to carry out your instructions, sir, as a general rule, on this occasion I must respectfully decline to co-operate.”

“You won’t do it, you mean?”

“Precisely, sir.”

I was stunned. I began to understand how a general must feel when he has ordered a regiment to charge and has been told that it isn’t in the mood.

“Jeeves,” I said, “I had not expected this of you.”

“No, sir?”

“No, indeed. Naturally, I realize that lacing Gussie’s orange juice is not one of those regular duties for which you receive the monthly stipend, and if you care to stand on the strict letter of the contract, I suppose there is nothing to be done about it. But you will permit me to observe that this is scarcely the feudal spirit.”

“I am sorry, sir.”

“It is quite all right, Jeeves, quite all right. I am not angry, only a little hurt.”

“Very good, sir.”

“Right ho, Jeeves.”

-14-

Investigation proved that the friends Angela had gone to spend the day with were some stately-home owners of the name of Stretchley-Budd, hanging out in a joint called Kingham Manor, about eight miles distant in the direction of Pershore. I didn’t know these birds, but their fascination must have been considerable, for she tore herself away from them only just in time to get back and dress for dinner. It was, accordingly, not until coffee had been consumed that I was able to get matters moving. I found her in the drawing-room and at once proceeded to put things in train.

It was with very different feelings from those which had animated the bosom when approaching the Bassett twenty-four hours before in the same manner in this same drawing-room that I headed for where she sat. As I had told Tuppy, I have always been devoted to Angela, and there is nothing I like better than a ramble in her company.

And I could see by the look of her now how sorely in need she was of my aid and comfort.

Frankly, I was shocked by the unfortunate young prune’s appearance. At Cannes she had been a happy, smiling English girl of the best type, full of beans and buck. Her face now was pale and drawn, like that of a hockey centre-forward at a girls’ school who, in addition to getting a fruity one on the shin, has just been penalized for “sticks”. In any normal gathering, her demeanour would have excited instant remark, but the standard of gloom at Brinkley Court had become so high that it passed unnoticed. Indeed, I shouldn’t wonder if Uncle Tom, crouched in his corner waiting for the end, didn’t think she was looking indecently cheerful.

I got down to the agenda in my debonair way.

“What ho, Angela, old girl.”

“Hullo, Bertie, darling.”

“Glad you’re back at last. I missed you.”

“Did you, darling?”

“I did, indeed. Care to come for a saunter?”

“I’d love it.”

“Fine. I have much to say to you that is not for the public ear.”

I think at this moment poor old Tuppy must have got a sudden touch of cramp. He had been sitting hard by, staring at the ceiling, and he now gave a sharp leap like a gaffed salmon and upset a small table containing a vase, a bowl of potpourri, two china dogs, and a copy of Omar Khayyám bound in limp leather.

Aunt Dahlia uttered a startled hunting cry. Uncle Tom, who probably imagined from the noise that this was civilization crashing at last, helped things along by breaking a coffee-cup.

Tuppy said he was sorry. Aunt Dahlia, with a deathbed groan, said it didn’t matter. And Angela, having stared haughtily for a moment like a princess of the old régime confronted by some notable example of gaucherie on the part of some particularly foul member of the underworld, accompanied me across the threshold. And presently I had deposited her and self on one of the rustic benches in the garden, and was ready to snap into the business of the evening.

I considered it best, however, before doing so, to ease things along with a little informal chitchat. You don’t want to rush a delicate job like the one I had in hand. And so for a while we spoke of neutral topics. She said that what had kept her so long at the Stretchley-Budds was that Hilda Stretchley-Budd had made her stop on and help with the arrangements for their servants’ ball tomorrow night, a task which she couldn’t very well decline, as all the Brinkley Court domestic staff were to be present. I said that a jolly night’s revelry might be just what was needed to cheer Anatole up and take his mind off things. To which she replied that Anatole wasn’t going. On being urged to do so by Aunt Dahlia, she said, he had merely shaken his head sadly and gone on talking of returning to Provence, where he was appreciated.

It was after the sombre silence induced by this statement that Angela said the grass was wet and she thought she would go in.

This, of course, was entirely foreign to my policy.

“No, don’t do that. I haven’t had a chance to talk to you since you arrived.”

“I shall ruin my shoes.”

“Put your feet up on my lap.”

“All right. And you can tickle my ankles.”

“Quite.”

Matters were accordingly arranged on these lines, and for some minutes we continued chatting in desultory fashion. Then the conversation petered out. I made a few observations _in re_ the scenic effects, featuring the twilight hush, the peeping stars, and the soft glimmer of the waters of the lake, and she said yes. Something rustled in the bushes in front of us, and I advanced the theory that it was possibly a weasel, and she said it might be. But it was plain that the girl was distraite, and I considered it best to waste no more time.

“Well, old thing,” I said, “I’ve heard all about your little dust-up. So those wedding bells are not going to ring out, what?”

“No.”

“Definitely over, is it?”

“Yes.”

“Well, if you want my opinion, I think that’s a bit of goose for you, Angela, old girl. I think you’re extremely well out of it. It’s a mystery to me how you stood this Glossop so long. Take him for all in all, he ranks very low down among the wines and spirits. A washout, I should describe him as. A frightful oik, and a mass of side to boot. I’d pity the girl who was linked for life to a bargee like Tuppy Glossop.”

And I emitted a hard laugh--one of the sneering kind.

“I always thought you were such friends,” said Angela.

I let go another hard one, with a bit more top spin on it than the first time:

“Friends? Absolutely not. One was civil, of course, when one met the fellow, but it would be absurd to say one was a friend of his. A club acquaintance, and a mere one at that. And then one was at school with the man.”

“At Eton?”

“Good heavens, no. We wouldn’t have a fellow like that at Eton. At a kid’s school before I went there. A grubby little brute he was, I recollect. Covered with ink and mire generally, washing only on alternate Thursdays. In short, a notable outsider, shunned by all.”

I paused. I was more than a bit perturbed. Apart from the agony of having to talk in this fashion of one who, except when he was looping back rings and causing me to plunge into swimming baths in correct evening costume, had always been a very dear and esteemed crony, I didn’t seem to be getting anywhere. Business was not resulting. Staring into the bushes without a yip, she appeared to be bearing these slurs and innuendos of mine with an easy calm.

I had another pop at it:

“‘Uncouth’ about sums it up. I doubt if I’ve ever seen an uncouther kid than this Glossop. Ask anyone who knew him in those days to describe him in a word, and the word they will use is ‘uncouth’. And he’s just the same today. It’s the old story. The boy is the father of the man.”

She appeared not to have heard.

“The boy,” I repeated, not wishing her to miss that one, “is the father of the man.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about this Glossop.”

“I thought you said something about somebody’s father.”

“I said the boy was the father of the man.”

“What boy?”

“The boy Glossop.”

“He hasn’t got a father.”

“I never said he had. I said he was the father of the boy--or, rather, of the man.”

“What man?”

I saw that the conversation had reached a point where, unless care was taken, we should be muddled.

“The point I am trying to make,” I said, “is that the boy Glossop is the father of the man Glossop. In other words, each loathsome fault and blemish that led the boy Glossop to be frowned upon by his fellows is present in the man Glossop, and causes him--I am speaking now of the man Glossop--to be a hissing and a byword at places like the Drones, where a certain standard of decency is demanded from the inmates. Ask anyone at the Drones, and they will tell you that it was a black day for the dear old club when this chap Glossop somehow wriggled into the list of members. Here you will find a man who dislikes his face; there one who could stand his face if it wasn’t for his habits. But the universal consensus of opinion is that the fellow is a bounder and a tick, and that the moment he showed signs of wanting to get into the place he should have been met with a firm _nolle prosequi_ and heartily blackballed.”

I had to pause again here, partly in order to take in a spot of breath, and partly to wrestle with the almost physical torture of saying these frightful things about poor old Tuppy.

“There are some chaps,” I resumed, forcing myself once more to the nauseous task, “who, in spite of looking as if they had slept in their clothes, can get by quite nicely because they are amiable and suave. There are others who, for all that they excite adverse comment by being fat and uncouth, find themselves on the credit side of the ledger owing to their wit and sparkling humour. But this Glossop, I regret to say, falls into neither class. In addition to looking like one of those things that come out of hollow trees, he is universally admitted to be a dumb brick of the first water. No soul. No conversation. In short, any girl who, having been rash enough to get engaged to him, has managed at the eleventh hour to slide out is justly entitled to consider herself dashed lucky.”

I paused once more, and cocked an eye at Angela to see how the treatment was taking. All the while I had been speaking, she had sat gazing silently into the bushes, but it seemed to me incredible that she should not now turn on me like a tigress, according to specifications. It beat me why she hadn’t done it already. It seemed to me that a mere tithe of what I had said, if said to a tigress about a tiger of which she was fond, would have made her--the tigress, I mean--hit the ceiling.

And the next moment you could have knocked me down with a toothpick.

“Yes,” she said, nodding thoughtfully, “you’re quite right.”

“Eh?”

“That’s exactly what I’ve been thinking myself.”

“What!”

“‘Dumb brick.’ It just describes him. One of the six silliest asses in England, I should think he must be.”

I did not speak. I was endeavouring to adjust the faculties, which were in urgent need of a bit of first-aid treatment.

I mean to say, all this had come as a complete surprise. In formulating the well-laid plan which I had just been putting into effect, the one contingency I had not budgeted for was that she might adhere to the sentiments which I expressed. I had braced myself for a gush of stormy emotion. I was expecting the tearful ticking off, the girlish recriminations and all the rest of the bag of tricks along those lines.

But this cordial agreement with my remarks I had not foreseen, and it gave me what you might call pause for thought.

She proceeded to develop her theme, speaking in ringing, enthusiastic tones, as if she loved the topic. Jeeves could tell you the word I want. I think it’s “ecstatic”, unless that’s the sort of rash you get on your face and have to use ointment for. But if that is the right word, then that’s what her manner was as she ventilated the subject of poor old Tuppy. If you had been able to go simply by the sound of her voice, she might have been a court poet cutting loose about an Oriental monarch, or Gussie Fink-Nottle describing his last consignment of newts.

“It’s so nice, Bertie, talking to somebody who really takes a sensible view about this man Glossop. Mother says he’s a good chap, which is simply absurd. Anybody can see that he’s absolutely impossible. He’s conceited and opinionative and argues all the time, even when he knows perfectly well that he’s talking through his hat, and he smokes too much and eats too much and drinks too much, and I don’t like the colour of his hair. Not that he’ll have any hair in a year or two, because he’s pretty thin on the top already, and before he knows where he is he’ll be as bald as an egg, and he’s the last man who can afford to go bald. And I think it’s simply disgusting, the way he gorges all the time. Do you know, I found him in the larder at one o’clock this morning, absolutely wallowing in a steak-and-kidney pie? There was hardly any of it left. And you remember what an enormous dinner he had. Quite disgusting, I call it. But I can’t stop out here all night, talking about men who aren’t worth wasting a word on and haven’t even enough sense to tell sharks from flatfish. I’m going in.”

And gathering about her slim shoulders the shawl which she had put on as a protection against the evening dew, she buzzed off, leaving me alone in the silent night.

Well, as a matter of fact, not absolutely alone, because a few moments later there was a sort of upheaval in the bushes in front of me, and Tuppy emerged.

-15-

I gave him the eye. The evening had begun to draw in a bit by now and the visibility, in consequence, was not so hot, but there still remained ample light to enable me to see him clearly. And what I saw convinced me that I should be a lot easier in my mind with a stout rustic bench between us. I rose, accordingly, modelling my style on that of a rocketing pheasant, and proceeded to deposit myself on the other side of the object named.

My prompt agility was not without its effect. He seemed somewhat taken aback. He came to a halt, and, for about the space of time required to allow a bead of persp. to trickle from the top of the brow to the tip of the nose, stood gazing at me in silence.

“So!” he said at length, and it came as a complete surprise to me that fellows ever really do say “So!” I had always thought it was just a thing you read in books. Like “Quotha!” I mean to say, or “Odds bodikins!” or even “Eh, ba goom!”

Still, there it was. Quaint or not quaint, bizarre or not bizarre, he had said “So!” and it was up to me to cope with the situation on those lines.

It would have been a duller man than Bertram Wooster who had failed to note that the dear old chap was a bit steamed up. Whether his eyes were actually shooting forth flame, I couldn’t tell you, but there appeared to me to be a distinct incandescence. For the rest, his fists were clenched, his ears quivering, and the muscles of his jaw rotating rhythmically, as if he were making an early supper off something.

His hair was full of twigs, and there was a beetle hanging to the side of his head which would have interested Gussie Fink-Nottle. To this, however, I paid scant attention. There is a time for studying beetles and a time for not studying beetles.

“So!” he said again.

Now, those who know Bertram Wooster best will tell you that he is always at his shrewdest and most level-headed in moments of peril. Who was it who, when gripped by the arm of the law on boat-race night not so many years ago and hauled off to Vine Street police station, assumed in a flash the identity of Eustace H. Plimsoll, of The Laburnums, Alleyn Road, West Dulwich, thus saving the grand old name of Wooster from being dragged in the mire and avoiding wide publicity of the wrong sort? Who was it ...

But I need not labour the point. My record speaks for itself. Three times pinched, but never once sentenced under the correct label. Ask anyone at the Drones about this.

So now, in a situation threatening to become every moment more scaly, I did not lose my head. I preserved the old sang-froid. Smiling a genial and affectionate smile, and hoping that it wasn’t too dark for it to register, I spoke with a jolly cordiality:

“Why, hallo, Tuppy. You here?”

He said, yes, he was here.

“Been here long?”

“I have.”

“Fine. I wanted to see you.”

“Well, here I am. Come out from behind that bench.”

“No, thanks, old man. I like leaning on it. It seems to rest the spine.”

“In about two seconds,” said Tuppy, “I’m going to kick your spine up through the top of your head.”

I raised the eyebrows. Not much good, of course, in that light, but it seemed to help the general composition.

“Is this Hildebrand Glossop speaking?” I said.

He replied that it was, adding that if I wanted to make sure I might move a few feet over in his direction. He also called me an opprobrious name.

I raised the eyebrows again.

“Come, come, Tuppy, don’t let us let this little chat become acrid. Is ‘acrid’ the word I want?”

“I couldn’t say,” he replied, beginning to sidle round the bench.

I saw that anything I might wish to say must be said quickly. Already he had sidled some six feet. And though, by dint of sidling, too, I had managed to keep the bench between us, who could predict how long this happy state of affairs would last?

I came to the point, therefore.

“I think I know what’s on your mind, Tuppy,” I said. “If you were in those bushes during my conversation with the recent Angela, I dare say you heard what I was saying about you.”

“I did.”

“I see. Well, we won’t go into the ethics of the thing. Eavesdropping, some people might call it, and I can imagine stern critics drawing in the breath to some extent. Considering it--I don’t want to hurt your feelings, Tuppy--but considering it un-English. A bit un-English, Tuppy, old man, you must admit.”

“I’m Scotch.”

“Really?” I said. “I never knew that before. Rummy how you don’t suspect a man of being Scotch unless he’s Mac-something and says ‘Och, aye’ and things like that. I wonder,” I went on, feeling that an academic discussion on some neutral topic might ease the tension, “if you can tell me something that has puzzled me a good deal. What exactly is it that they put into haggis? I’ve often wondered about that.”

From the fact that his only response to the question was to leap over the bench and make a grab at me, I gathered that his mind was not on haggis.

“However,” I said, leaping over the bench in my turn, “that is a side issue. If, to come back to it, you were in those bushes and heard what I was saying about you----”

He began to move round the bench in a nor’-nor’-easterly direction. I followed his example, setting a course sou’-sou’-west.

“No doubt you were surprised at the way I was talking.”

“Not a bit.”

“What? Did nothing strike you as odd in the tone of my remarks?”

“It was just the sort of stuff I should have expected a treacherous, sneaking hound like you to say.”

“My dear chap,” I protested, “this is not your usual form. A bit slow in the uptake, surely? I should have thought you would have spotted right away that it was all part of a well-laid plan.”

“I’ll get you in a jiffy,” said Tuppy, recovering his balance after a swift clutch at my neck. And so probable did this seem that I delayed no longer, but hastened to place all the facts before him.

Speaking rapidly and keeping moving, I related my emotions on receipt of Aunt Dahlia’s telegram, my instant rush to the scene of the disaster, my meditations in the car, and the eventual framing of this well-laid plan of mine. I spoke clearly and well, and it was with considerable concern, consequently, that I heard him observe--between clenched teeth, which made it worse--that he didn’t believe a damned word of it.

“But, Tuppy,” I said, “why not? To me the thing rings true to the last drop. What makes you sceptical? Confide in me, Tuppy.”

He halted and stood taking a breather. Tuppy, pungently though Angela might have argued to the contrary, isn’t really fat. During the winter months you will find him constantly booting the football with merry shouts, and in the summer the tennis racket is seldom out of his hand.

But at the recently concluded evening meal, feeling, no doubt, that after that painful scene in the larder there was nothing to be gained by further abstinence, he had rather let himself go and, as it were, made up leeway; and after really immersing himself in one of Anatole’s dinners, a man of his sturdy build tends to lose elasticity a bit. During the exposition of my plans for his happiness a certain animation had crept into this round-and-round-the mulberry-bush jamboree of ours--so much so, indeed, that for the last few minutes we might have been a rather oversized greyhound and a somewhat slimmer electric hare doing their stuff on a circular track for the entertainment of the many-headed.

This, it appeared, had taken it out of him a bit, and I was not displeased. I was feeling the strain myself, and welcomed a lull.

“It absolutely beats me why you don’t believe it,” I said. “You know we’ve been pals for years. You must be aware that, except at the moment when you caused me to do a nose dive into the Drones’ swimming bath, an incident which I long since decided to put out of my mind and let the dead past bury its dead about, if you follow what I mean--except on that one occasion, as I say, I have always regarded you with the utmost esteem. Why, then, if not for the motives I have outlined, should I knock you to Angela? Answer me that. Be very careful.”

“What do you mean, be very careful?”

Well, as a matter of fact, I didn’t quite know myself. It was what the magistrate had said to me on the occasion when I stood in the dock as Eustace Plimsoll, of The Laburnums: and as it had impressed me a good deal at the time, I just bunged it in now by way of giving the conversation a tone.

“All right. Never mind about being careful, then. Just answer me that question. Why, if I had not your interests sincerely at heart, should I have ticked you off, as stated?”

A sharp spasm shook him from base to apex. The beetle, which, during the recent exchanges, had been clinging to his head, hoping for the best, gave it up at this and resigned office. It shot off and was swallowed in the night.

“Ah!” I said. “Your beetle,” I explained. “No doubt you were unaware of it, but all this while there has been a beetle of sorts parked on the side of your head. You have now dislodged it.”

He snorted.

“Beetles!”

“Not beetles. One beetle only.”

“I like your crust!” cried Tuppy, vibrating like one of Gussie’s newts during the courting season. “Talking of beetles, when all the time you know you’re a treacherous, sneaking hound.”

It was a debatable point, of course, why treacherous, sneaking hounds should be considered ineligible to talk about beetles, and I dare say a good cross-examining counsel would have made quite a lot of it.

But I let it go.

“That’s the second time you’ve called me that. And,” I said firmly, “I insist on an explanation. I have told you that I acted throughout from the best and kindliest motives in roasting you to Angela. It cut me to the quick to have to speak like that, and only the recollection of our lifelong friendship would have made me do it. And now you say you don’t believe me and call me names for which I am not sure I couldn’t have you up before a beak and jury and mulct you in very substantial damages. I should have to consult my solicitor, of course, but it would surprise me very much if an action did not lie. Be reasonable, Tuppy. Suggest another motive I could have had. Just one.”

“I will. Do you think I don’t know? You’re in love with Angela yourself.”

“What?”

“And you knocked me in order to poison her mind against me and finally remove me from your path.”

I had never heard anything so absolutely loopy in my life. Why, dash it, I’ve known Angela since she was so high. You don’t fall in love with close relations you’ve known since they were so high. Besides, isn’t there something in the book of rules about a man may not marry his cousin? Or am I thinking of grandmothers?

“Tuppy, my dear old ass,” I cried, “this is pure banana oil! You’ve come unscrewed.”

“Oh, yes?”

“Me in love with Angela? Ha-ha!”

“You can’t get out of it with ha-ha’s. She called you ‘darling’.”

“I know. And I disapproved. This habit of the younger g. of scattering ‘darlings’ about like birdseed is one that I deprecate. Lax, is how I should describe it.”

“You tickled her ankles.”

“In a purely cousinly spirit. It didn’t mean a thing. Why, dash it, you must know that in the deeper and truer sense I wouldn’t touch Angela with a barge pole.”

“Oh? And why not? Not good enough for you?”

“You misunderstand me,” I hastened to reply. “When I say I wouldn’t touch Angela with a barge pole, I intend merely to convey that my feelings towards her are those of distant, though cordial, esteem. In other words, you may rest assured that between this young prune and myself there never has been and never could be any sentiment warmer and stronger than that of ordinary friendship.”

“I believe it was you who tipped her off that I was in the larder last night, so that she could find me there with that pie, thus damaging my prestige.”

“My dear Tuppy! A Wooster?” I was shocked. “You think a Wooster would do that?”

He breathed heavily.

“Listen,” he said. “It’s no good your standing there arguing. You can’t get away from the facts. Somebody stole her from me at Cannes. You told me yourself that she was with you all the time at Cannes and hardly saw anybody else. You gloated over the mixed bathing, and those moonlight walks you had together----”

“Not gloated. Just mentioned them.”

“So now you understand why, as soon as I can get you clear of this damned bench, I am going to tear you limb from limb. Why they have these bally benches in gardens,” said Tuppy discontentedly, “is more than I can see. They only get in the way.”

He ceased, and, grabbing out, missed me by a hair’s breadth.

It was a moment for swift thinking, and it is at such moments, as I have already indicated, that Bertram Wooster is at his best. I suddenly remembered the recent misunderstanding with the Bassett, and with a flash of clear vision saw that this was where it was going to come in handy.

“You’ve got it all wrong, Tuppy,” I said, moving to the left. “True, I 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.