Right Ho, Jeeves
Gussie, you see, wasn’t like some of my pals--the name of Bingo Little
is one that springs to the lips--who, if turned down by a girl, would
simply say, “Well, bung-oh!” and toddle off quite happily to find
another. He was so manifestly a bird who, having failed to score in the
first chukker, would turn the thing up and spend the rest of his life
brooding over his newts and growing long grey whiskers, like one of
those chaps you read about in novels, who live in the great white house
you can just see over there through the trees and shut themselves off
from the world and have pained faces.
“I’m afraid he doesn’t care for me in that way. At least, he has said
nothing. You understand that I am only telling you this because----”
“Oh, rather.”
“It’s odd that you should have asked me if I believed in love at first
sight.” She half closed her eyes. “‘Who ever loved that loved not at
first sight?’” she said in a rummy voice that brought back to me--I
don’t know why--the picture of my Aunt Agatha, as Boadicea, reciting
at that pageant I was speaking of. “It’s a silly little story. I was
staying with some friends in the country, and I had gone for a walk
with my dog, and the poor wee mite got a nasty thorn in his little foot
and I didn’t know what to do. And then suddenly this man came along----”
Harking back once again to that pageant, in sketching out for you my
emotions on that occasion, I showed you only the darker side of the
picture. There was, I should now mention, a splendid aftermath when,
having climbed out of my suit of chain mail and sneaked off to the
local pub, I entered the saloon bar and requested mine host to start
pouring. A moment later, a tankard of their special home-brewed was
in my hand, and the ecstasy of that first gollup is still green in my
memory. The recollection of the agony through which I had passed was
just what was needed to make it perfect.
It was the same now. When I realized, listening to her words, that she
must be referring to Gussie--I mean to say, there couldn’t have been a
whole platoon of men taking thorns out of her dog that day; the animal
wasn’t a pin-cushion--and became aware that Gussie, who an instant
before had, to all appearances, gone so far back in the betting as
not to be worth a quotation, was the big winner after all, a positive
thrill permeated the frame and there escaped my lips a “Wow!” so crisp
and hearty that the Bassett leaped a liberal inch and a half from terra
firma.
“I beg your pardon?” she said.
I waved a jaunty hand.
“Nothing,” I said. “Nothing. Just remembered there’s a letter I have to
write tonight without fail. If you don’t mind, I think I’ll be going
in. Here,” I said, “comes Gussie Fink-Nottle. He will look after you.”
And, as I spoke, Gussie came sidling out from behind a tree.
I passed away and left them to it. As regards these two, everything
was beyond a question absolutely in order. All Gussie had to do was
keep his head down and not press. Already, I felt, as I legged it back
to the house, the happy ending must have begun to function. I mean to
say, when you leave a girl and a man, each of whom has admitted in set
terms that she and he loves him and her, in close juxtaposition in the
twilight, there doesn’t seem much more to do but start pricing fish
slices.
Something attempted, something done, seemed to me to have earned
two-penn’orth of wassail in the smoking-room.
I proceeded thither.
-11-
The makings were neatly laid out on a side-table, and to pour into a
glass an inch or so of the raw spirit and shoosh some soda-water on
top of it was with me the work of a moment. This done, I retired to
an arm-chair and put my feet up, sipping the mixture with carefree
enjoyment, rather like Caesar having one in his tent the day he
overcame the Nervii.
As I let the mind dwell on what must even now be taking place in that
peaceful garden, I felt bucked and uplifted. Though never for an
instant faltering in my opinion that Augustus Fink-Nottle was Nature’s
final word in cloth-headed guffins, I liked the man, wished him well,
and could not have felt more deeply involved in the success of his
wooing if I, and not he, had been under the ether.
The thought that by this time he might quite easily have completed the
preliminary _pourparlers_ and be deep in an informal discussion of
honeymoon plans was very pleasant to me.
Of course, considering the sort of girl Madeline Bassett was--stars and
rabbits and all that, I mean--you might say that a sober sadness would
have been more fitting. But in these matters you have got to realize
that tastes differ. The impulse of right-thinking men might be to run a
mile when they saw the Bassett, but for some reason she appealed to the
deeps in Gussie, so that was that.
I had reached this point in my meditations, when I was aroused by the
sound of the door opening. Somebody came in and started moving like a
leopard toward the side-table and, lowering the feet, I perceived that
it was Tuppy Glossop.
The sight of him gave me a momentary twinge of remorse, reminding me,
as it did, that in the excitement of getting Gussie fixed up I had
rather forgotten about this other client. It is often that way when
you’re trying to run two cases at once.
However, Gussie now being off my mind, I was prepared to devote my
whole attention to the Glossop problem.
I had been much pleased by the way he had carried out the task assigned
him at the dinner-table. No easy one, I can assure you, for the
browsing and sluicing had been of the highest quality, and there had
been one dish in particular--I allude to the _nonnettes de poulet Agnès
Sorel_--which might well have broken down the most iron resolution. But
he had passed it up like a professional fasting man, and I was proud of
him.
“Oh, hullo, Tuppy,” I said, “I wanted to see you.”
He turned, snifter in hand, and it was easy to see that his privations
had tried him sorely. He was looking like a wolf on the steppes of
Russia which has seen its peasant shin up a high tree.
“Yes?” he said, rather unpleasantly. “Well, here I am.”
“Well?”
“How do you mean----well?”
“Make your report.”
“What report?”
“Have you nothing to tell me about Angela?”
“Only that she’s a blister.”
I was concerned.
“Hasn’t she come clustering round you yet?”
“She has not.”
“Very odd.”
“Why odd?”
“She must have noted your lack of appetite.”
He barked raspingly, as if he were having trouble with the tonsils of
the soul.
“Lack of appetite! I’m as hollow as the Grand Canyon.”
“Courage, Tuppy! Think of Gandhi.”
“What about Gandhi?”
“He hasn’t had a square meal for years.”
“Nor have I. Or I could swear I hadn’t. Gandhi, my left foot.”
I saw that it might be best to let the Gandhi _motif_ slide. I went
back to where we had started.
“She’s probably looking for you now.”
“Who is? Angela?”
“Yes. She must have noticed your supreme sacrifice.”
“I don’t suppose she noticed it at all, the little fathead. I’ll bet it
didn’t register in any way whatsoever.”
“Come, Tuppy,” I urged, “this is morbid. Don’t take this gloomy view.
She must at least have spotted that you refused those _nonnettes de
poulet Agnès Sorel_. It was a sensational renunciation and stuck out
like a sore thumb. And the _cèpes à la Rossini_----”
A hoarse cry broke from his twisted lips:
“Will you stop it, Bertie! Do you think I am made of marble? Isn’t it
bad enough to have sat watching one of Anatole’s supremest dinners flit
by, course after course, without having you making a song about it?
Don’t remind me of those _nonnettes_. I can’t stand it.”
I endeavoured to hearten and console.
“Be brave, Tuppy. Fix your thoughts on that cold steak-and-kidney pie
in the larder. As the Good Book says, it cometh in the morning.”
“Yes, in the morning. And it’s now about half-past nine at night. You
would bring that pie up, wouldn’t you? Just when I was trying to keep
my mind off it.”
I saw what he meant. Hours must pass before he could dig into that pie.
I dropped the subject, and we sat for a pretty good time in silence.
Then he rose and began to pace the room in an overwrought sort of way,
like a zoo lion who has heard the dinner-gong go and is hoping the
keeper won’t forget him in the general distribution. I averted my gaze
tactfully, but I could hear him kicking chairs and things. It was plain
that the man’s soul was in travail and his blood pressure high.
Presently he returned to his seat, and I saw that he was looking at me
intently. There was that about his demeanour that led me to think that
he had something to communicate.
Nor was I wrong. He tapped me significantly on the knee and spoke:
“Bertie.”
“Hullo?”
“Shall I tell you something?”
“Certainly, old bird,” I said cordially. “I was just beginning to feel
that the scene could do with a bit more dialogue.”
“This business of Angela and me.”
“Yes?”
“I’ve been putting in a lot of solid thinking about it.”
“Oh, yes?”
“I have analysed the situation pitilessly, and one thing stands out as
clear as dammit. There has been dirty work afoot.”
“I don’t get you.”
“All right. Let me review the facts. Up to the time she went to Cannes
Angela loved me. She was all over me. I was the blue-eyed boy in every
sense of the term. You’ll admit that?”
“Indisputably.”
“And directly she came back we had this bust-up.”
“Quite.”
“About nothing.”
“Oh, dash it, old man, nothing? You were a bit tactless, what, about
her shark.”
“I was frank and candid about her shark. And that’s my point. Do you
seriously believe that a trifling disagreement about sharks would make
a girl hand a man his hat, if her heart were really his?”
“Certainly.”
It beats me why he couldn’t see it. But then poor old Tuppy has never
been very hot on the finer shades. He’s one of those large, tough,
football-playing blokes who lack the more delicate sensibilities, as
I’ve heard Jeeves call them. Excellent at blocking a punt or walking
across an opponent’s face in cleated boots, but not so good when it
comes to understanding the highly-strung female temperament. It simply
wouldn’t occur to him that a girl might be prepared to give up her
life’s happiness rather than waive her shark.
“Rot! It was just a pretext.”
“What was?”
“This shark business. She wanted to get rid of me, and grabbed at the
first excuse.”
“No, no.”
“I tell you she did.”
“But what on earth would she want to get rid of you for?”
“Exactly. That’s the very question I asked myself. And here’s the
answer: Because she has fallen in love with somebody else. It sticks
out a mile. There’s no other possible solution. She goes to Cannes all
for me, she comes back all off me. Obviously during those two months,
she must have transferred her affections to some foul blister she met
out there.”
“No, no.”
“Don’t keep saying ‘No, no’. She must have done. Well, I’ll tell
you one thing, and you can take this as official. If ever I find
this slimy, slithery snake in the grass, he had better make all the
necessary arrangements at his favourite nursing-home without delay,
because I am going to be very rough with him. I propose, if and when
found, to take him by his beastly neck, shake him till he froths, and
pull him inside out and make him swallow himself.”
With which words he biffed off; and I, having given him a minute or two
to get out of the way, rose and made for the drawing-room. The tendency
of females to roost in drawing-rooms after dinner being well marked, I
expected to find Angela there. It was my intention to have a word with
Angela.
To Tuppy’s theory that some insinuating bird had stolen the girl’s
heart from him at Cannes I had given, as I have indicated, little