Right Ho, Jeeves
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.