Right Ho, Jeeves
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