Chapter VII: Part 7

I pondered. What I had heard was, of course, of a nature to excite pity and terror, not to mention alarm and despondency, and it would be paltering with the truth to say that I was pleased about it. On the other hand, it was all over now, and it seemed to me that the thing to do was not to mourn over the past but to fix the mind on the bright future. I mean to say, Gussie might have lowered the existing Worcestershire record for goofiness and definitely forfeited all chance of becoming Market Snodsbury’s favourite son, but you couldn’t get away from the fact that he had proposed to Madeline Bassett, and you had to admit that she had accepted him.

I put this to Jeeves.

“A frightful exhibition,” I said, “and one which will very possibly ring down history’s pages. But we must not forget, Jeeves, that Gussie, though now doubtless looked upon in the neighbourhood as the world’s worst freak, is all right otherwise.”

“No, sir.”

I did not get quite this.

“When you say ‘No, sir,’ do you mean ‘Yes, sir’?”

“No, sir. I mean ‘No, sir.’”

“He is not all right otherwise?”

“No, sir.”

“But he’s betrothed.”

“No longer, sir. Miss Bassett has severed the engagement.”

“You don’t mean that?”

“Yes, sir.”

I wonder if you have noticed a rather peculiar thing about this chronicle. I allude to the fact that at one time or another practically everybody playing a part in it has had occasion to bury his or her face in his or her hands. I have participated in some pretty glutinous affairs in my time, but I think that never before or since have I been mixed up with such a solid body of brow clutchers.

Uncle Tom did it, if you remember. So did Gussie. So did Tuppy. So, probably, though I have no data, did Anatole, and I wouldn’t put it past the Bassett. And Aunt Dahlia, I have no doubt, would have done it, too, but for the risk of disarranging the carefully fixed coiffure.

Well, what I am trying to say is that at this juncture I did it myself. Up went the hands and down went the head, and in another jiffy I was clutching as energetically as the best of them.

And it was while I was still massaging the coconut and wondering what the next move was that something barged up against the door like the delivery of a ton of coals.

“I think this may very possibly be Mr. Fink-Nottle himself, sir,” said Jeeves.

His intuition, however, had led him astray. It was not Gussie but Tuppy. He came in and stood breathing asthmatically. It was plain that he was deeply stirred.

-18-

I eyed him narrowly. I didn’t like his looks. Mark you, I don’t say I ever had, much, because Nature, when planning this sterling fellow, shoved in a lot more lower jaw than was absolutely necessary and made the eyes a bit too keen and piercing for one who was neither an Empire builder nor a traffic policeman. But on the present occasion, in addition to offending the aesthetic sense, this Glossop seemed to me to be wearing a distinct air of menace, and I found myself wishing that Jeeves wasn’t always so dashed tactful. I mean, it’s all very well to remove yourself like an eel sliding into mud when the employer has a visitor, but there are moments--and it looked to me as if this was going to be one of them--when the truer tact is to stick round and stand ready to lend a hand in the free-for-all.

For Jeeves was no longer with us. I hadn’t seen him go, and I hadn’t heard him go, but he had gone. As far as the eye could reach, one noted nobody but Tuppy. And in Tuppy’s demeanour, as I say, there was a certain something that tended to disquiet. He looked to me very much like a man who had come to reopen that matter of my tickling Angela’s ankles.

However, his opening remark told me that I had been alarming myself unduly. It was of a pacific nature, and came as a great relief.

“Bertie,” he said, “I owe you an apology. I have come to make it.”

My relief on hearing these words, containing as they did no reference of any sort to tickled ankles, was, as I say, great. But I don’t think it was any greater than my surprise. Months had passed since that painful episode at the Drones, and until now he hadn’t given a sign of remorse and contrition. Indeed, word had reached me through private sources that he frequently told the story at dinners and other gatherings and, when doing so, laughed his silly head off.

I found it hard to understand, accordingly, what could have caused him to abase himself at this later date. Presumably he had been given the elbow by his better self, but why?

Still, there it was.

“My dear chap,” I said, gentlemanly to the gills, “don’t mention it.”

“What’s the sense of saying, ‘Don’t mention it’? I have mentioned it.”

“I mean, don’t mention it any more. Don’t give the matter another thought. We all of us forget ourselves sometimes and do things which, in our calmer moments, we regret. No doubt you were a bit tight at the time.”

“What the devil do you think you’re talking about?”

I didn’t like his tone. Brusque.

“Correct me if I am wrong,” I said, with a certain stiffness, “but I assumed that you were apologizing for your foul conduct in looping back the last ring that night in the Drones, causing me to plunge into the swimming b. in the full soup and fish.”

“Ass! Not that, at all.”

“Then what?”

“This Bassett business.”

“What Bassett business?”

“Bertie,” said Tuppy, “when you told me last night that you were in love with Madeline Bassett, I gave you the impression that I believed you, but I didn’t. The thing seemed too incredible. However, since then I have made inquiries, and the facts appear to square with your statement. I have now come to apologize for doubting you.”

“Made inquiries?”

“I asked her if you had proposed to her, and she said, yes, you had.”

“Tuppy! You didn’t?”

“I did.”

“Have you no delicacy, no proper feeling?”

“No.”

“Oh? Well, right-ho, of course, but I think you ought to have.”

“Delicacy be dashed. I wanted to be certain that it was not you who stole Angela from me. I now know it wasn’t.”

So long as he knew that, I didn’t so much mind him having no delicacy.

“Ah,” I said. “Well, that’s fine. Hold that thought.”

“I have found out who it was.”

“What?”

He stood brooding for a moment. His eyes were smouldering with a dull fire. His jaw stuck out like the back of Jeeves’s head.

“Bertie,” he said, “do you remember what I swore I would do to the chap who stole Angela from me?”

“As nearly as I recall, you planned to pull him inside out----”

“--and make him swallow himself. Correct. The programme still holds good.”

“But, Tuppy, I keep assuring you, as a competent eyewitness, that nobody snitched Angela from you during that Cannes trip.”

“No. But they did after she got back.”

“What?”

“Don’t keep saying, ‘What?’ You heard.”

“But she hasn’t seen anybody since she got back.”

“Oh, no? How about that newt bloke?”

“Gussie?”

“Precisely. The serpent Fink-Nottle.”

This seemed to me absolute gibbering.

“But Gussie loves the Bassett.”

“You can’t all love this blighted Bassett. What astonishes me is that anyone can do it. He loves Angela, I tell you. And she loves him.”

“But Angela handed you your hat before Gussie ever got here.”

“No, she didn’t. Couple of hours after.”

“He couldn’t have fallen in love with her in a couple of hours.”

“Why not? I fell in love with her in a couple of minutes. I worshipped her immediately we met, the popeyed little excrescence.”

“But, dash it----”

“Don’t argue, Bertie. The facts are all docketed. She loves this newt-nuzzling blister.”

“Quite absurd, laddie--quite absurd.”

“Oh?” He ground a heel into the carpet--a thing I’ve often read about, but had never seen done before. “Then perhaps you will explain how it is that she happens to come to be engaged to him?”

You could have knocked me down with a f.

“Engaged to him?”

“She told me herself.”

“She was kidding you.”

“She was not kidding me. Shortly after the conclusion of this afternoon’s binge at Market Snodsbury Grammar School he asked her to marry him, and she appears to have right-hoed without a murmur.”

“There must be some mistake.”

“There was. The snake Fink-Nottle made it, and by now I bet he realizes it. I’ve been chasing him since 5.30.”

“Chasing him?”

“All over the place. I want to pull his head off.”

“I see. Quite.”

“You haven’t seen him, by any chance?”

“No.”

“Well, if you do, say goodbye to him quickly and put in your order for lilies.... Oh, Jeeves.”

“Sir?”

I hadn’t heard the door open, but the man was on the spot once more. My private belief, as I think I have mentioned before, is that Jeeves doesn’t have to open doors. He’s like one of those birds in India who bung their astral bodies about--the chaps, I mean, who having gone into thin air in Bombay, reassemble the parts and appear two minutes later in Calcutta. Only some such theory will account for the fact that he’s not there one moment and is there the next. He just seems to float from Spot A to Spot B like some form of gas.

“Have you seen Mr. Fink-Nottle, Jeeves?”

“No, sir.”

“I’m going to murder him.”

“Very good, sir.”

Tuppy withdrew, banging the door behind him, and I put Jeeves abreast.

“Jeeves,” I said, “do you know what? Mr. Fink-Nottle is engaged to my Cousin Angela.”

“Indeed, sir?”

“Well, how about it? Do you grasp the psychology? Does it make sense? Only a few hours ago he was engaged to Miss Bassett.”

“Gentlemen who have been discarded by one young lady are often apt to attach themselves without delay to another, sir. It is what is known as a gesture.”

I began to grasp.

“I see what you mean. Defiant stuff.”

“Yes, sir.”

“A sort of ‘Oh, right-ho, please yourself, but if you don’t want me, there are plenty who do.’”

“Precisely, sir. My Cousin George----”

“Never mind about your Cousin George, Jeeves.”

“Very good, sir.”

“Keep him for the long winter evenings, what?”

“Just as you wish, sir.”

“And, anyway, I bet your Cousin George wasn’t a shrinking, non-goose-bo-ing jellyfish like Gussie. That is what astounds me, Jeeves--that it should be Gussie who has been putting in all this heavy gesture-making stuff.”

“You must remember, sir, that Mr. Fink-Nottle is in a somewhat inflamed cerebral condition.”

“That’s true. A bit above par at the moment, as it were?”

“Exactly, sir.”

“Well, I’ll tell you one thing--he’ll be in a jolly sight more inflamed cerebral condition if Tuppy gets hold of him.... What’s the time?”

“Just on eight o’clock, sir.”

“Then Tuppy has been chasing him for two hours and a half. We must save the unfortunate blighter, Jeeves.”

“Yes, sir.”

“A human life is a human life, what?”

“Exceedingly true, sir.”

“The first thing, then, is to find him. After that we can discuss plans and schemes. Go forth, Jeeves, and scour the neighbourhood.”

“It will not be necessary, sir. If you will glance behind you, you will see Mr. Fink-Nottle coming out from beneath your bed.”

And, by Jove, he was absolutely right.

There was Gussie, emerging as stated. He was covered with fluff and looked like a tortoise popping forth for a bit of a breather.

“Gussie!” I said.

“Jeeves,” said Gussie.

“Sir?” said Jeeves.

“Is that door locked, Jeeves?”

“No, sir, but I will attend to the matter immediately.”

Gussie sat down on the bed, and I thought for a moment that he was going to be in the mode by burying his face in his hands. However, he merely brushed a dead spider from his brow.

“Have you locked the door, Jeeves?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Because you can never tell that that ghastly Glossop may not take it into his head to come----”

The word “back” froze on his lips. He hadn’t got any further than a _b_-ish sound, when the handle of the door began to twist and rattle. He sprang from the bed, and for an instant stood looking exactly like a picture my Aunt Agatha has in her dining-room--The Stag at Bay--Landseer. Then he made a dive for the cupboard and was inside it before one really got on to it that he had started leaping. I have seen fellows late for the 9.15 move less nippily.

I shot a glance at Jeeves. He allowed his right eyebrow to flicker slightly, which is as near as he ever gets to a display of the emotions.

“Hullo?” I yipped.

“Let me in, blast you!” responded Tuppy’s voice from without. “Who locked this door?”

I consulted Jeeves once more in the language of the eyebrow. He raised one of his. I raised one of mine. He raised his other. I raised my other. Then we both raised both. Finally, there seeming no other policy to pursue, I flung wide the gates and Tuppy came shooting in.

“Now what?” I said, as nonchalantly as I could manage.

“Why was the door locked?” demanded Tuppy.

I was in pretty good eyebrow-raising form by now, so I gave him a touch of it.

“Is one to have no privacy, Glossop?” I said coldly. “I instructed Jeeves to lock the door because I was about to disrobe.”

“A likely story!” said Tuppy, and I’m not sure he didn’t add “Forsooth!” “You needn’t try to make me believe that you’re afraid people are going to run excursion trains to see you in your underwear. You locked that door because you’ve got the snake Fink-Nottle concealed in here. I suspected it the moment I’d left, and I decided to come back and investigate. I’m going to search this room from end to end. I believe he’s in that cupboard.... What’s in this cupboard?”

“Just clothes,” I said, having another stab at the nonchalant, though extremely dubious as to whether it would come off. “The usual wardrobe of the English gentleman paying a country-house visit.”

“You’re lying!”

Well, I wouldn’t have been if he had only waited a minute before speaking, because the words were hardly out of his mouth before Gussie was out of the cupboard. I have commented on the speed with which he had gone in. It was as nothing to the speed with which he emerged. There was a sort of whir and blur, and he was no longer with us.

I think Tuppy was surprised. In fact, I’m sure he was. Despite the confidence with which he had stated his view that the cupboard contained Fink-Nottles, it plainly disconcerted him to have the chap fizzing out at him like this. He gargled sharply, and jumped back about five feet. The next moment, however, he had recovered his poise and was galloping down the corridor in pursuit. It only needed Aunt Dahlia after them, shouting “Yoicks!” or whatever is customary on these occasions, to complete the resemblance to a brisk run with the Quorn.

I sank into a handy chair. I am not a man whom it is easy to discourage, but it seemed to me that things had at last begun to get too complex for Bertram.

“Jeeves,” I said, “all this is a bit thick.”

“Yes, sir.”

“The head rather swims.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I think you had better leave me, Jeeves. I shall need to devote the very closest thought to the situation which has arisen.”

“Very good, sir.”

The door closed. I lit a cigarette and began to ponder.

-19-

Most chaps in my position, I imagine, would have pondered all the rest of the evening without getting a bite, but we Woosters have an uncanny knack of going straight to the heart of things, and I don’t suppose it was much more than ten minutes after I had started pondering before I saw what had to be done.

What was needed to straighten matters out, I perceived, was a heart-to-heart talk with Angela. She had caused all the trouble by her mutton-headed behaviour in saying “Yes” instead of “No” when Gussie, in the grip of mixed drinks and cerebral excitement, had suggested teaming up. She must obviously be properly ticked off and made to return him to store. A quarter of an hour later, I had tracked her down to the summer-house in which she was taking a cooler and was seating myself by her side.

“Angela,” I said, and if my voice was stern, well, whose wouldn’t have been, “this is all perfect drivel.”

She seemed to come out of a reverie. She looked at me inquiringly.

“I’m sorry, Bertie, I didn’t hear. What were you talking drivel about?”

“I was not talking drivel.”

“Oh, sorry, I thought you said you were.”

“Is it likely that I would come out here in order to talk drivel?”

“Very likely.”

I thought it best to haul off and approach the matter from another angle.

“I’ve just been seeing Tuppy.”

“Oh?”

“And Gussie Fink-Nottle.”

“Oh, yes?”

“It appears that you have gone and got engaged to the latter.”

“Quite right.”

“Well, that’s what I meant when I said it was all perfect drivel. You can’t possibly love a chap like Gussie.”

“Why not?”

“You simply can’t.”

Well, I mean to say, of course she couldn’t. Nobody could love a freak like Gussie except a similar freak like the Bassett. The shot wasn’t on the board. A splendid chap, of course, in many ways--courteous, amiable, and just the fellow to tell you what to do till the doctor came, if you had a sick newt on your hands--but quite obviously not of Mendelssohn’s March timber. I have no doubt that you could have flung bricks by the hour in England’s most densely populated districts without endangering the safety of a single girl capable of becoming Mrs. Augustus Fink-Nottle without an anaesthetic.

I put this to her, and she was forced to admit the justice of it.

“All right, then. Perhaps I don’t.”

“Then what,” I said keenly, “did you want to go and get engaged to him for, you unreasonable young fathead?”

“I thought it would be fun.”

“Fun!”

“And so it has been. I’ve had a lot of fun out of it. You should have seen Tuppy’s face when I told him.”

A sudden bright light shone upon me.

“Ha! A gesture!”

“What?”

“You got engaged to Gussie just to score off Tuppy?”

“I did.”

“Well, then, that was what I was saying. It was a gesture.”

“Yes, I suppose you could call it that.”

“And I’ll tell you something else I’ll call it--viz. a dashed low trick. I’m surprised at you, young Angela.”

“I don’t see why.”

I curled the lip about half an inch. “Being a female, you wouldn’t. You gentler sexes are like that. You pull off the rawest stuff without a pang. You pride yourselves on it. Look at Jael, the wife of Heber.”

“Where did you ever hear of Jael, the wife of Heber?”

“Possibly you are not aware that I once won a Scripture-knowledge prize at school?”

“Oh, yes. I remember Augustus mentioning it in his speech.”

“Quite,” I said, a little hurriedly. I had no wish to be reminded of Augustus’s speech. “Well, as I say, look at Jael, the wife of Heber. Dug spikes into the guest’s coconut while he was asleep, and then went swanking about the place like a Girl Guide. No wonder they say, ‘Oh, woman, woman!’”

“Who?”

“The chaps who do. Coo, what a sex! But you aren’t proposing to keep this up, of course?”

“Keep what up?”

“This rot of being engaged to Gussie.”

“I certainly am.”

“Just to make Tuppy look silly.”

“Do you think he looks silly?”

“I do.”

“So he ought to.”

I began to get the idea that I wasn’t making real headway. I remember when I won that Scripture-knowledge prize, having to go into the facts about Balaam’s ass. I can’t quite recall what they were, but I still retain a sort of general impression of something digging its feet in and putting its ears back and refusing to co-operate; and it seemed to me that this was what Angela was doing now. She and Balaam’s ass were, so to speak, sisters under the skin. There’s a word beginning with r----“re” something----“recal” something--No, it’s gone. But what I am driving at is that is what this Angela was showing herself.

“Silly young geezer,” I said.

She pinkened.

“I’m not a silly young geezer.”

“You are a silly young geezer. And, what’s more, you know it.”

“I don’t know anything of the kind.”

“Here you are, wrecking Tuppy’s life, wrecking Gussie’s life, all for the sake of a cheap score.”

“Well, it’s no business of yours.”

I sat on this promptly:

“No business of mine when I see two lives I used to go to school with wrecked? Ha! Besides, you know you’re potty about Tuppy.”

“I’m not!”

“Is that so? If I had a quid for every time I’ve seen you gaze at him with the lovelight in your eyes----”

She gazed at me, but without the lovelight.

“Oh, for goodness sake, go away and boil your head, Bertie!”

I drew myself up.

“That,” I replied, with dignity, “is just what I am going to go away and boil. At least, I mean, I shall now leave you. I have said my say.”

“Good.”

“But permit me to add----”

“I won’t.”

“Very good,” I said coldly. “In that case, tinkerty tonk.”

And I meant it to sting.

“Moody” and “discouraged” were about the two adjectives you would have selected to describe me as I left the summer-house. It would be idle to deny that I had expected better results from this little chat.

I was surprised at Angela. Odd how you never realize that every girl is at heart a vicious specimen until something goes wrong with her love affair. This cousin and I had been meeting freely since the days when I wore sailor suits and she hadn’t any front teeth, yet only now was I beginning to get on to her hidden depths. A simple, jolly, kindly young pimple she had always struck me as--the sort you could more or less rely on not to hurt a fly. But here she was now laughing heartlessly--at least, I seemed to remember hearing her laugh heartlessly--like something cold and callous out of a sophisticated talkie, and fairly spitting on her hands in her determination to bring Tuppy’s grey hairs in sorrow to the grave.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again--girls are rummy. Old Pop Kipling never said a truer word than when he made that crack about the f. of the s. being more d. than the m.

It seemed to me in the circs. that there was but one thing to do--that is head for the dining-room and take a slash at the cold collation of which Jeeves had spoken. I felt in urgent need of sustenance, for the recent interview had pulled me down a bit. There is no gainsaying the fact that this naked-emotion stuff reduces a chap’s vitality and puts him in the vein for a good whack at the beef and ham.

To the dining-room, accordingly, I repaired, and had barely crossed the threshold when I perceived Aunt Dahlia at the sideboard, tucking into salmon mayonnaise.

The spectacle drew from me a quick “Oh, ah,” for I was somewhat embarrassed. The last time this relative and I had enjoyed a _tête-à-tête_, it will be remembered, she had sketched out plans for drowning me in the kitchen-garden pond, and I was not quite sure what my present standing with her was.

I was relieved to find her in genial mood. Nothing could have exceeded the cordiality with which she waved her fork.

“Hallo, Bertie, you old ass,” was her very matey greeting. “I thought I shouldn’t find you far away from the food. Try some of this salmon. Excellent.”

“Anatole’s?” I queried.

“No. He’s still in bed. But the kitchen maid has struck an inspired streak. It suddenly seems to have come home to her that she isn’t catering for a covey of buzzards in the Sahara Desert, and she has put out something quite fit for human consumption. There is good in the girl, after all, and I hope she enjoys herself at the dance.”

I ladled out a portion of salmon, and we fell into pleasant conversation, chatting of this servants’ ball at the Stretchley-Budds and speculating idly, I recall, as to what Seppings, the butler, would look like, doing the rumba.

It was not till I had cleaned up the first platter and was embarking on a second that the subject of Gussie came up. Considering what had passed at Market Snodsbury that afternoon, it was one which I had been expecting her to touch on earlier. When she did touch on it, I could see that she had not yet been informed of Angela’s engagement.

“I say, Bertie,” she said, meditatively chewing fruit salad. “This Spink-Bottle.”

“Nottle.”

“Bottle,” insisted the aunt firmly. “After that exhibition of his this afternoon, Bottle, and nothing but Bottle, is how I shall always think of him. However, what I was going to say was that, if you see him, I wish you would tell him that he has made an old woman very, very happy. Except for the time when the curate tripped over a loose shoelace and fell down the pulpit steps, I don’t think I have ever had a more wonderful moment than when good old Bottle suddenly started ticking Tom off from the platform. In fact, I thought his whole performance in the most perfect taste.”

I could not but demur.

“Those references to myself----”

“Those were what I liked next best. I thought they were fine. Is it true that you cheated when you won that Scripture-knowledge prize?”

“Certainly not. My victory was the outcome of the most strenuous and unremitting efforts.”

“And how about this pessimism we hear of? Are you a pessimist, Bertie?”

I could have told her that what was occurring in this house was rapidly making me one, but I said no, I wasn’t.

“That’s right. Never be a pessimist. Everything is for the best in this best of all possible worlds. It’s a long lane that has no turning. It’s always darkest before the dawn. Have patience and all will come right. The sun will shine, although the day’s a grey one.... Try some of this salad.”

I followed her advice, but even as I plied the spoon my thoughts were elsewhere. I was perplexed. It may have been the fact that I had recently been hobnobbing with so many bowed-down hearts that made this cheeriness of hers seem so bizarre, but bizarre was certainly what I found it.

“I thought you might have been a trifle peeved,” I said.

“Peeved?”

“By Gussie’s manoeuvres on the platform this afternoon. I confess that I had rather expected the tapping foot and the drawn brow.”

“Nonsense. What was there to be peeved about? I took the whole thing as a great compliment, proud to feel that any drink from my cellars could have produced such a majestic jag. It restores one’s faith in post-war whisky. Besides, I couldn’t be peeved at anything tonight. I am like a little child clapping its hands and dancing in the sunshine. For though it has been some time getting a move on, Bertie, the sun has at last broken through the clouds. Ring out those joy bells. Anatole has withdrawn his notice.”

“What? Oh, very hearty congratulations.”

“Thanks. Yes, I worked on him like a beaver after I got back this afternoon, and finally, vowing he would ne’er consent, he consented. He stays on, praises be, and the way I look at it now is that God’s in His heaven and all’s right with----”

She broke off. The door had opened, and we were plus a butler.

“Hullo, Seppings,” said Aunt Dahlia. “I thought you had gone.”

“Not yet, madam.”

“Well, I hope you will all have a good time.”

“Thank you, madam.”

“Was there something you wanted to see me about?”

“Yes, madam. It is with reference to Monsieur Anatole. Is it by your wish, madam, that Mr. Fink-Nottle is making faces at Monsieur Anatole through the skylight of his bedroom?”

-20-

There was one of those long silences. Pregnant, I believe, is what they’re generally called. Aunt looked at butler. Butler looked at aunt. I looked at both of them. An eerie stillness seemed to envelop the room like a linseed poultice. I happened to be biting on a slice of apple in my fruit salad at the moment, and it sounded as if Carnera had jumped off the top of the Eiffel Tower on to a cucumber frame.

Aunt Dahlia steadied herself against the sideboard, and spoke in a low, husky voice:

“Faces?”

“Yes, madam.”

“Through the skylight?”

“Yes, madam.”

“You mean he’s sitting on the roof?”

“Yes, madam. It has upset Monsieur Anatole very much.”

I suppose it was that word “upset” that touched Aunt Dahlia off. Experience had taught her what happened when Anatole got upset. I had always known her as a woman who was quite active on her pins, but I had never suspected her of being capable of the magnificent burst of speed which she now showed. Pausing merely to get a rich hunting-field expletive off her chest, she was out of the room and making for the stairs before I could swallow a sliver of--I think--banana. And feeling, as I had felt when I got that telegram of hers about Angela and Tuppy, that my place was by her side, I put down my plate and hastened after her, Seppings following at a loping gallop.

I say that my place was by her side, but it was not so dashed easy to get there, for she was setting a cracking pace. At the top of the first flight she must have led by a matter of half a dozen lengths, and was still shaking off my challenge when she rounded into the second. At the next landing, however, the gruelling going appeared to tell on her, for she slackened off a trifle and showed symptoms of roaring, and by the time we were in the straight we were running practically neck and neck. Our entry into Anatole’s room was as close a finish as you could have wished to see.

Result:
1. _Aunt Dahlia._
2. _Bertram._
3. _Seppings._

_Won by a short head. Half a staircase separated second and third._

The first thing that met the eye on entering was Anatole. This wizard of the cooking-stove is a tubby little man with a moustache of the outsize or soup-strainer type, and you can generally take a line through it as to the state of his emotions. When all is well, it turns up at the ends like a sergeant-major’s. When the soul is bruised, it droops.

It was drooping now, striking a sinister note. And if any shadow of doubt had remained as to how he was feeling, the way he was carrying on would have dispelled it. He was standing by the bed in pink pyjamas, waving his fists at the skylight. Through the glass, Gussie was staring down. His eyes were bulging and his mouth was open, giving him so striking a resemblance to some rare fish in an aquarium that one’s primary impulse was to offer him an ant’s egg.

Watching this fist-waving cook and this goggling guest, I must say that my sympathies were completely with the former. I considered him thoroughly justified in waving all the fists he wanted to.

Review the facts, I mean to say. There he had been, lying in bed, thinking idly of whatever French cooks do think about when in bed, and he had suddenly become aware of that frightful face at the window. A thing to jar the most phlegmatic. I know I should hate to be lying in bed and have Gussie popping up like that. A chap’s bedroom--you can’t get away from it--is his castle, and he has every right to look askance if gargoyles come glaring in at him.

While I stood musing thus, Aunt Dahlia, in her practical way, was coming straight to the point:

“What’s all this?”

Anatole did a sort of Swedish exercise, starting at the base of the spine, carrying on through the shoulder-blades and finishing up among the back hair.

Then he told her.

In the chats I have had with this wonder man, I have always found his English fluent, but a bit on the mixed side. If you remember, he was with Mrs. Bingo Little for a time before coming to Brinkley, and no doubt he picked up a good deal from Bingo. Before that, he had been a couple of years with an American family at Nice and had studied under their chauffeur, one of the Maloneys of Brooklyn. So, what with Bingo and what with Maloney, he is, as I say, fluent but a bit mixed.

He spoke, in part, as follows:

“Hot dog! You ask me what is it? Listen. Make some attention a little. Me, I have hit the hay, but I do not sleep so good, and presently I wake and up I look, and there is one who make faces against me through the dashed window. Is that a pretty affair? Is that convenient? If you think I like it, you jolly well mistake yourself. I am so mad as a wet hen. And why not? I am somebody, isn’t it? This is a bedroom, what-what, not a house for some apes? Then for what do blighters sit on my window so cool as a few cucumbers, making some faces?”

“Quite,” I said. Dashed reasonable, was my verdict.

He threw another look up at Gussie, and did Exercise 2--the one where you clutch the moustache, give it a tug and then start catching flies.

“Wait yet a little. I am not finish. I say I see this type on my window, making a few faces. But what then? Does he buzz off when I shout a cry, and leave me peaceable? Not on your life. He remain planted there, not giving any damns, and sit regarding me like a cat watching a duck. He make faces against me and again he make faces against me, and the more I command that he should get to hell out of here, the more he do not get to hell out of here. He cry something towards me, and I demand what is his desire, but he do not explain. Oh, no, that arrives never. He does but shrug his head. What damn silliness! Is this amusing for me? You think I like it? I am not content with such folly. I think the poor mutt’s loony. _Je me fiche de ce type infect. C’est idiot de faire comme ça l’oiseau.... Allez-vous-en, louffier_.... Tell the boob to go away. He is mad as some March hatters.”

I must say I thought he was making out a jolly good case, and evidently Aunt Dahlia felt the same. She laid a quivering hand on his shoulder.

“I will, Monsieur Anatole, I will,” she said, and I couldn’t have believed that robust voice capable of sinking to such an absolute coo. More like a turtle dove calling to its mate than anything else. “It’s quite all right.”

She had said the wrong thing. He did Exercise 3.

“All right? _Nom d’un nom d’un nom_! The hell you say it’s all right! Of what use to pull stuff like that? Wait one half-moment. Not yet quite so quick, my old sport. It is by no means all right. See yet again a little. It is some very different dishes of fish. I can take a few smooths with a rough, it is true, but I do not find it agreeable when one play larks against me on my windows. That cannot do. A nice thing, no. I am a serious man. I do not wish a few larks on my windows. I enjoy larks on my windows worse as any. It is very little all right. If such rannygazoo is to arrive, I do not remain any longer in this house no more. I buzz off and do not stay planted.”

Sinister words, I had to admit, and I was not surprised that Aunt Dahlia, hearing them, should have uttered a cry like the wail of a master of hounds seeing a fox shot. Anatole had begun to wave his fists again at Gussie, and she now joined him. Seppings, who was puffing respectfully in the background, didn’t actually wave his fists, but he gave Gussie a pretty austere look. It was plain to the thoughtful observer that this Fink-Nottle, in getting on to that skylight, had done a mistaken thing. He couldn’t have been more unpopular in the home of G.G. Simmons.

“Go away, you crazy loon!” cried Aunt Dahlia, in that ringing voice of hers which had once caused nervous members of the Quorn to lose stirrups and take tosses from the saddle.

Gussie’s reply was to waggle his eyebrows. I could read the message he was trying to convey.

“I think he means,” I said--reasonable old Bertram, always trying to throw oil on the troubled w’s----“that if he does he will fall down the side of the house and break his neck.”

“Well, why not?” said Aunt Dahlia.

I could see her point, of course, but it seemed to me that there might be a nearer solution. This skylight happened to be the only window in the house which Uncle Tom had not festooned with his bally bars. I suppose he felt that if a burglar had the nerve to climb up as far as this, he deserved what was coming to him.

“If you opened the skylight, he could jump in.”

The idea got across.

“Seppings, how does this skylight open?”

“With a pole, madam.”

“Then get a pole. Get two poles. Ten.”

And presently Gussie was mixing with the company, Like one of those chaps you read about in the papers, the wretched man seemed deeply conscious of his position.

I must say Aunt Dahlia’s bearing and demeanour did nothing to assist toward a restored composure. Of the amiability which she had exhibited when discussing this unhappy chump’s activities with me over the fruit salad, no trace remained, and I was not surprised that speech more or less froze on the Fink-Nottle lips. It isn’t often that Aunt Dahlia, normally as genial a bird as ever encouraged a gaggle of hounds to get their noses down to it, lets her angry passions rise, but when she does, strong men climb trees and pull them up after them.

“Well?” she said.

In answer to this, all that Gussie could produce was a sort of strangled hiccough.

“Well?”

Aunt Dahlia’s face grew darker. Hunting, if indulged in regularly over a period of years, is a pastime that seldom fails to lend a fairly deepish tinge to the patient’s complexion, and her best friends could not have denied that even at normal times the relative’s map tended a little toward the crushed strawberry. But never had I seen it take on so pronounced a richness as now. She looked like a tomato struggling for self-expression.

“Well?”

Gussie tried hard. And for a moment it seemed as if something was going to come through. But in the end it turned out nothing more than a sort of death-rattle.

“Oh, take him away, Bertie, and put ice on his head,” said Aunt Dahlia, giving the thing up. And she turned to tackle what looked like the rather man’s size job of soothing Anatole, who was now carrying on a muttered conversation with himself in a rapid sort of way.

Seeming to feel that the situation was one to which he could not do justice in Bingo-cum-Maloney Anglo-American, he had fallen back on his native tongue. Words like “_marmiton de Domange,” “pignouf,” “hurluberlu_” and “_roustisseur_” were fluttering from him like bats out of a barn. Lost on me, of course, because, though I sweated a bit at the Gallic language during that Cannes visit, I’m still more or less in the Esker-vous-avez stage. I regretted this, for they sounded good.

I assisted Gussie down the stairs. A cooler thinker than Aunt Dahlia, I had already guessed the hidden springs and motives which had led him to the roof. Where she had seen only a cockeyed reveller indulging himself in a drunken prank or whimsy, I had spotted the hunted fawn.

“Was Tuppy after you?” I asked sympathetically.

What I believe is called a _frisson_ shook him.

“He nearly got me on the top landing. I shinned out through a passage window and scrambled along a sort of ledge.”

“That baffled him, what?”

“Yes. But then I found I had stuck. The roof sloped down in all directions. I couldn’t go back. I had to go on, crawling along this ledge. And then I found myself looking down the skylight. Who was that chap?”

“That was Anatole, Aunt Dahlia’s chef.”

“French?”

“To the core.”

“That explains why I couldn’t make him understand. What asses these Frenchmen are. They don’t seem able to grasp the simplest thing. You’d have thought if a chap saw a chap on a skylight, the chap would realize the chap wanted to be let in. But no, he just stood there.”

“Waving a few fists.”

“Yes. Silly idiot. Still, here I am.”

“Here you are, yes--for the moment.”

“Eh?”

“I was thinking that Tuppy is probably lurking somewhere.”

He leaped like a lamb in springtime.

“What shall I do?”

I considered this.

“Sneak back to your room and barricade the door. That is the manly policy.”

“Suppose that’s where he’s lurking?”

“In that case, move elsewhere.”

But on arrival at the room, it transpired that Tuppy, if anywhere, was infesting some other portion of the house. Gussie shot in, and I heard the key turn. And feeling that there was no more that I could do in that quarter, I returned to the dining-room for further fruit salad and a quiet think. And I had barely filled my plate when the door opened and Aunt Dahlia came in. She sank into a chair, looking a bit shopworn.

“Give me a drink, Bertie.”

“What sort?”

“Any sort, so long as it’s strong.”

Approach Bertram Wooster along these lines, and you catch him at his best. St. Bernard dogs doing the square thing by Alpine travellers could not have bustled about more assiduously. I filled the order, and for some moments nothing was to be heard but the sloshing sound of an aunt restoring her tissues.

“Shove it down, Aunt Dahlia,” I said sympathetically. “These things take it out of one, don’t they? You’ve had a toughish time, no doubt, soothing Anatole,” I proceeded, helping myself to anchovy paste on toast. “Everything pretty smooth now, I trust?”

She gazed at me in a long, lingering sort of way, her brow wrinkled as if in thought.

“Attila,” she said at length. “That’s the name. Attila, the Hun.”

“Eh?”

“I was trying to think who you reminded me of. Somebody who went about strewing ruin and desolation and breaking up homes which, until he came along, had been happy and peaceful. Attila is the man. It’s amazing.” she said, drinking me in once more. “To look at you, one would think you were just an ordinary sort of amiable idiot--certifiable, perhaps, but quite harmless. Yet, in reality, you are worse a scourge than the Black Death. I tell you, Bertie, when I contemplate you I seem to come up against all the underlying sorrow and horror of life with such a thud that I feel as if I had walked into a lamp post.”

Pained and surprised, I would have spoken, but the stuff I had thought was anchovy paste had turned out to be something far more gooey and adhesive. It seemed to wrap itself round the tongue and impede utterance like a gag. And while I was still endeavouring to clear the vocal cords for action, she went on:

“Do you realize what you started when you sent that Spink-Bottle man down here? As regards his getting blotto and turning the prize-giving ceremonies at Market Snodsbury Grammar School into a sort of two-reel comic film, I will say nothing, for frankly I enjoyed it. But when he comes leering at Anatole through skylights, just after I had with infinite pains and tact induced him to withdraw his notice, and makes him so temperamental that he won’t hear of staying on after tomorrow----”

The paste stuff gave way. I was able to speak:

“What?”

“Yes, Anatole goes tomorrow, and I suppose poor old Tom will have indigestion for the rest of his life. And that is not all. I have just seen Angela, and she tells me she is engaged to this Bottle.”

“Temporarily, yes,” I had to admit.

“Temporarily be blowed. She’s definitely engaged to him and talks with a sort of hideous coolness of getting married in October. So there it is. If the prophet Job were to walk into the room at this moment, I could sit swapping hard-luck stories with him till bedtime. Not that Job was in my class.”

“He had boils.”

“Well, what are boils?”

“Dashed painful, I understand.”

“Nonsense. I’d take all the boils on the market in exchange for my troubles. Can’t you realize the position? I’ve lost the best cook to England. My husband, poor soul, will probably die of dyspepsia. And my only daughter, for whom I had dreamed such a wonderful future, is engaged to be married to an inebriated newt fancier. And you talk about boils!”

I corrected her on a small point:

“I don’t absolutely talk about boils. I merely mentioned that Job had them. Yes, I agree with you, Aunt Dahlia, that things are not looking too oojah-cum-spiff at the moment, but be of good cheer. A Wooster is seldom baffled for more than the nonce.”

“You rather expect to be coming along shortly with another of your schemes?”

“At any minute.”

She sighed resignedly.

“I thought as much. Well, it needed but this. I don’t see how things could possibly be worse than they are, but no doubt you will succeed in making them so. Your genius and insight will find the way. Carry on, Bertie. Yes, carry on. I am past caring now. I shall even find a faint interest in seeing into what darker and profounder abysses of hell you can plunge this home. Go to it, lad.... What’s that stuff you’re eating?”

“I find it a little difficult to classify. Some sort of paste on toast. Rather like glue flavoured with beef extract.”

“Gimme,” said Aunt Dahlia listlessly.

“Be careful how you chew,” I advised. “It sticketh closer than a brother.... Yes, Jeeves?”

The man had materialized on the carpet. Absolutely noiseless, as usual.

“A note for you, sir.”

“A note for me, Jeeves?”

“A note for you, sir.”

“From whom, Jeeves?”

“From Miss Bassett, sir.”

“From whom, Jeeves?”

“From Miss Bassett, sir.”

“From Miss Bassett, Jeeves?”

“From Miss Bassett, sir.”

At this point, Aunt Dahlia, who had taken one nibble at her whatever-it-was-on-toast and laid it down, begged us--a little fretfully, I thought--for heaven’s sake to cut out the cross-talk vaudeville stuff, as she had enough to bear already without having to listen to us doing our imitation of the Two Macs. Always willing to oblige, I dismissed Jeeves with a nod, and he flickered for a moment and was gone. Many a spectre would have been less slippy.

“But what,” I mused, toying with the envelope, “can this female be writing to me about?”

“Why not open the damn thing and see?”

“A very excellent idea,” I said, and did so.

“And if you are interested in my movements,” proceeded Aunt Dahlia, heading for the door, “I propose to go to my room, do some Yogi deep breathing, and try to forget.”

“Quite,” I said absently, skimming p. l. And then, as I turned over, a sharp howl broke from my lips, causing Aunt Dahlia to shy like a startled mustang.

“Don’t do it!” she exclaimed, quivering in every limb.

“Yes, but dash it----”

“What a pest you are, you miserable object,” she sighed. “I remember years ago, when you were in your cradle, being left alone with you one day and you nearly swallowed your rubber comforter and started turning purple. And I, ass that I was, took it out and saved your life. Let me tell you, young Bertie, it will go very hard with you if you ever swallow a rubber comforter again when only I am by to aid.”

“But, dash it!” I cried. “Do you know what’s happened? Madeline Bassett says she’s going to marry me!”

“I hope it keeps fine for you,” said the relative, and passed from the room looking like something out of an Edgar Allan Poe story.

-21-

I don’t suppose I was looking so dashed unlike something out of an Edgar Allan Poe story myself, for, as you can readily imagine, the news item which I have just recorded had got in amongst me properly. If the Bassett, in the belief that the Wooster heart had long been hers and was waiting ready to be scooped in on demand, had decided to take up her option, I should, as a man of honour and sensibility, have no choice but to come across and kick in. The matter was obviously not one that could be straightened out with a curt _nolle prosequi_. All the evidence, therefore, seemed to point to the fact that the doom had come upon me and, what was more, had come to stay.

And yet, though it would be idle to pretend that my grip on the situation was quite the grip I would have liked it to be, I did not despair of arriving at a solution. A lesser man, caught in this awful snare, would no doubt have thrown in the towel at once and ceased to struggle; but the whole point about the Woosters is that they are not lesser men.

By way of a start, I read the note again. Not that I had any hope that a second perusal would enable me to place a different construction on its contents, but it helped to fill in while the brain was limbering up. I then, to assist thought, had another go at the fruit salad, and in addition ate a slice of sponge cake. And it was as I passed on to the cheese that the machinery started working. I saw what had to be done.

To the question which had been exercising the mind--viz., can Bertram cope?--I was now able to reply with a confident “Absolutely.”

The great wheeze on these occasions of dirty work at the crossroads is not to lose your head but to keep cool and try to find the ringleaders. Once find the ringleaders, and you know where you are.

The ringleader here was plainly the Bassett. It was she who had started the whole imbroglio by chucking Gussie, and it was clear that before anything could be done to solve and clarify, she must be induced to revise her views and take him on again. This would put Angela back into circulation, and that would cause Tuppy to simmer down a bit, and then we could begin to get somewhere.

I decided that as soon as I had had another morsel of cheese I would seek this Bassett out and be pretty eloquent.

And at this moment in she came. I might have foreseen that she would be turning up shortly. I mean to say, hearts may ache, but if they know that there is a cold collation set out in the dining-room, they are pretty sure to come popping in sooner or later.

Her eyes, as she entered the room, were fixed on the salmon mayonnaise, and she would no doubt have made a bee-line for it and started getting hers, had I not, in the emotion of seeing her, dropped a glass of the best with which I was endeavouring to bring about a calmer frame of mind. The noise caused her to turn, and for an instant embarrassment supervened. A slight flush mantled the cheek, and the eyes popped a bit.

“Oh!” she said.

I have always found that there is nothing that helps to ease you over one of these awkward moments like a spot of stage business. Find something to do with your hands, and it’s half the battle. I grabbed a plate and hastened forward.

“A touch of salmon?”

“Thank you.”

“With a suspicion of salad?”

“If you please.”

“And to drink? Name the poison.”

“I think I would like a little orange juice.”