Right Ho, Jeeves
credence, considering it the mere unbalanced apple sauce of a bereaved
man. It was, of course, the shark, and nothing but the shark, that had
caused love’s young dream to go temporarily off the boil, and I was
convinced that a word or two with the cousin at this juncture would set
everything right.
For, frankly, I thought it incredible that a girl of her natural
sweetness and tender-heartedness should not have been moved to her
foundations by what she had seen at dinner that night. Even Seppings,
Aunt Dahlia’s butler, a cold, unemotional man, had gasped and
practically reeled when Tuppy waved aside those _nonnettes de poulet
Agnès Sorel_, while the footman, standing by with the potatoes, had
stared like one seeing a vision. I simply refused to consider the
possibility of the significance of the thing having been lost on a nice
girl like Angela. I fully expected to find her in the drawing-room with
her heart bleeding freely, all ripe for an immediate reconciliation.
In the drawing-room, however, when I entered, only Aunt Dahlia met the
eye. It seemed to me that she gave me rather a jaundiced look as I hove
in sight, but this, having so recently beheld Tuppy in his agony, I
attributed to the fact that she, like him, had been going light on the
menu. You can’t expect an empty aunt to beam like a full aunt.
“Oh, it’s you, is it?” she said.
Well, it was, of course.
“Where’s Angela?” I asked.
“Gone to bed.”
“Already?”
“She said she had a headache.”
“H’m.”
I wasn’t so sure that I liked the sound of that so much. A girl who
has observed the sundered lover sensationally off his feed does not
go to bed with headaches if love has been reborn in her heart. She
sticks around and gives him the swift, remorseful glance from beneath
the drooping eyelashes and generally endeavours to convey to him that,
if he wants to get together across a round table and try to find a
formula, she is all for it too. Yes, I am bound to say I found that
going-to-bed stuff a bit disquieting.
“Gone to bed, eh?” I murmured musingly.
“What did you want her for?”
“I thought she might like a stroll and a chat.”
“Are you going for a stroll?” said Aunt Dahlia, with a sudden show of
interest. “Where?”
“Oh, hither and thither.”
“Then I wonder if you would mind doing something for me.”
“Give it a name.”
“It won’t take you long. You know that path that runs past the
greenhouses into the kitchen garden. If you go along it, you come to a
pond.”
“That’s right.”
“Well, will you get a good, stout piece of rope or cord and go down
that path till you come to the pond----”
“To the pond. Right.”
“--and look about you till you find a nice, heavy stone. Or a fairly
large brick would do.”
“I see,” I said, though I didn’t, being still fogged. “Stone or brick.
Yes. And then?”
“Then,” said the relative, “I want you, like a good boy, to fasten the
rope to the brick and tie it around your damned neck and jump into the
pond and drown yourself. In a few days I will send and have you fished
up and buried because I shall need to dance on your grave.”
I was more fogged than ever. And not only fogged--wounded and
resentful. I remember reading a book where a girl “suddenly fled from
the room, afraid to stay for fear dreadful things would come tumbling
from her lips; determined that she would not remain another day in this
house to be insulted and misunderstood.” I felt much about the same.
Then I reminded myself that one has got to make allowances for a woman
with only about half a spoonful of soup inside her, and I checked the
red-hot crack that rose to the lips.
“What,” I said gently, “is this all about? You seem pipped with
Bertram.”
“Pipped!”
“Noticeably pipped. Why this ill-concealed animus?”
A sudden flame shot from her eyes, singeing my hair.
“Who was the ass, who was the chump, who was the dithering idiot who
talked me, against my better judgment, into going without my dinner? I
might have guessed----”
I saw that I had divined correctly the cause of her strange mood.
“It’s all right, Aunt Dahlia. I know just how you’re feeling. A bit
on the hollow side, what? But the agony will pass. If I were you, I’d
sneak down and raid the larder after the household have gone to bed.
I am told there’s a pretty good steak-and-kidney pie there which will
repay inspection. Have faith, Aunt Dahlia,” I urged. “Pretty soon Uncle
Tom will be along, full of sympathy and anxious inquiries.”
“Will he? Do you know where he is now?”
“I haven’t seen him.”
“He is in the study with his face buried in his hands, muttering about
civilization and melting pots.”
“Eh? Why?”
“Because it has just been my painful duty to inform him that Anatole
has given notice.”
I own that I reeled.
“What?”
“Given notice. As the result of that drivelling scheme of yours. What
did you expect a sensitive, temperamental French cook to do, if you
went about urging everybody to refuse all food? I hear that when the
first two courses came back to the kitchen practically untouched, his
feelings were so hurt that he cried like a child. And when the rest of
the dinner followed, he came to the conclusion that the whole thing was
a studied and calculated insult, and decided to hand in his portfolio.”
“Golly!”
“You may well say ‘Golly!’ Anatole, God’s gift to the gastric juices,
gone like the dew off the petal of a rose, all through your idiocy.
Perhaps you understand now why I want you to go and jump in that pond.
I might have known that some hideous disaster would strike this house
like a thunderbolt if once you wriggled your way into it and started
trying to be clever.”
Harsh words, of course, as from aunt to nephew, but I bore her no
resentment. No doubt, if you looked at it from a certain angle, Bertram
might be considered to have made something of a floater.
“I am sorry.”
“What’s the good of being sorry?”
“I acted for what I deemed the best.”
“Another time try acting for the worst. Then we may possibly escape
with a mere flesh wound.”
“Uncle Tom’s not feeling too bucked about it all, you say?”
“He’s groaning like a lost soul. And any chance I ever had of getting
that money out of him has gone.”
I stroked the chin thoughtfully. There was, I had to admit, reason in
what she said. None knew better than I how terrible a blow the passing
of Anatole would be to Uncle Tom.
I have stated earlier in this chronicle that this curious object of
the seashore with whom Aunt Dahlia has linked her lot is a bloke who
habitually looks like a pterodactyl that has suffered, and the reason
he does so is that all those years he spent in making millions in the
Far East put his digestion on the blink, and the only cook that has
ever been discovered capable of pushing food into him without starting
something like Old Home Week in Moscow under the third waistcoat button
is this uniquely gifted Anatole. Deprived of Anatole’s services,
all he was likely to give the wife of his b. was a dirty look. Yes,
unquestionably, things seemed to have struck a somewhat rocky patch,
and I must admit that I found myself, at moment of going to press, a
little destitute of constructive ideas.
Confident, however, that these would come ere long, I kept the stiff
upper lip.
“Bad,” I conceded. “Quite bad, beyond a doubt. Certainly a nasty jar
for one and all. But have no fear, Aunt Dahlia, I will fix everything.”
I have alluded earlier to the difficulty of staggering when you’re
sitting down, showing that it is a feat of which I, personally, am not
capable. Aunt Dahlia, to my amazement, now did it apparently without an
effort. She was well wedged into a deep arm-chair, but, nevertheless,
she staggered like billy-o. A sort of spasm of horror and apprehension
contorted her face.
“If you dare to try any more of your lunatic schemes----”
I saw that it would be fruitless to try to reason with her. Quite
plainly, she was not in the vein. Contenting myself, accordingly, with
a gesture of loving sympathy, I left the room. Whether she did or
did not throw a handsomely bound volume of the Works of Alfred, Lord
Tennyson, at me, I am not in a position to say. I had seen it lying on
the table beside her, and as I closed the door I remember receiving the
impression that some blunt instrument had crashed against the woodwork,
but I was feeling too pre-occupied to note and observe.
I blame myself for not having taken into consideration the possible
effects of a sudden abstinence on the part of virtually the whole
strength of the company on one of Anatole’s impulsive Provençal
temperament. These Gauls, I should have remembered, can’t take it.
Their tendency to fly off the handle at the slightest provocation
is well known. No doubt the man had put his whole soul into those
_nonnettes de poulet_, and to see them come homing back to him must
have gashed him like a knife.
However, spilt milk blows nobody any good, and it is useless to dwell
upon it. The task now confronting Bertram was to put matters right, and
I was pacing the lawn, pondering to this end, when I suddenly heard a
groan so lost-soulish that I thought it must have proceeded from Uncle
Tom, escaped from captivity and come to groan in the garden.
Looking about me, however, I could discern no uncles. Puzzled, I was
about to resume my meditations, when the sound came again. And peering
into the shadows I observed a dim form seated on one of the rustic
benches which so liberally dotted this pleasance and another dim form
standing beside same. A second and more penetrating glance and I had
assembled the facts.
These dim forms were, in the order named, Gussie Fink-Nottle and
Jeeves. And what Gussie was doing, groaning all over the place like
this, was more than I could understand.
Because, I mean to say, there was no possibility of error. He wasn’t
singing. As I approached, he gave an encore, and it was beyond question
a groan. Moreover, I could now see him clearly, and his whole aspect
was definitely sand-bagged.
“Good evening, sir,” said Jeeves. “Mr. Fink-Nottle is not feeling well.”
Nor was I. Gussie had begun to make a low, bubbling noise, and I
could no longer disguise it from myself that something must have gone
seriously wrong with the works. I mean, I know marriage is a pretty
solemn business and the realization that he is in for it frequently
churns a chap up a bit, but I had never come across a case of a
newly-engaged man taking it on the chin so completely as this.
Gussie looked up. His eye was dull. He clutched the thatch.
“Goodbye, Bertie,” he said, rising.
I seemed to spot an error.
“You mean ‘Hullo,’ don’t you?”
“No, I don’t. I mean goodbye. I’m off.”
“Off where?”
“To the kitchen garden. To drown myself.”
“Don’t be an ass.”
“I’m not an ass.... Am I an ass, Jeeves?”
“Possibly a little injudicious, sir.”
“Drowning myself, you mean?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You think, on the whole, not drown myself?”
“I should not advocate it, sir.”
“Very well, Jeeves. I accept your ruling. After all, it would be
unpleasant for Mrs. Travers to find a swollen body floating in her
pond.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And she has been very kind to me.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And you have been very kind to me, Jeeves.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“So have you, Bertie. Very kind. Everybody has been very kind to me.
Very, very kind. Very kind indeed. I have no complaints to make. All
right, I’ll go for a walk instead.”
I followed him with bulging eyes as he tottered off into the dark.
“Jeeves,” I said, and I am free to admit that in my emotion I bleated
like a lamb drawing itself to the attention of the parent sheep, “what
the dickens is all this?”
“Mr. Fink-Nottle is not quite himself, sir. He has passed through a
trying experience.”