‘Runkle came here hoping to sell Tom an old silver what-not for his collection, and as Tom had vanished and he had come a long way I had to put him up for the night, and at dinner I suddenly had an inspiration. I thought if I got him to stay on and plied him day and night with Anatole’s cooking, he might get into mellowed mood.’
She had ceased to speak in riddles. This time I followed her.
‘So that you would be able to talk him into slipping Tuppy some of his ill-gotten gains?’
‘Exactly. I’m biding my time. When the moment comes, I shall act like lightning. I told him Tom would be back in a day or two, not that he will, because he won’t come within fifty miles of the place till I blow the All Clear, so Runkle consented to stay on.’
‘And how’s it working out?’
‘The prospects look good. He mellows more with every meal. Anatole gave us his Mignonette de poulet Petit Due last night, and he tucked into it like a tapeworm that’s been on a diet for weeks. There was no mistaking the gleam in his eyes as he downed the last mouthful. A few more dinners ought to do the trick.’
She left me shortly after this to go and dress for dinner. I, strong in the knowledge that I could get into the soup and fish in ten minutes, lingered on, plunged in thought.
Extraordinary how I kept doing that as of even date. It just shows what life is like now. I don’t suppose in the old days I would have been plunged in thought more than about once a month.
7
* * *
I NEED SCARCELY say that Tuppy’s hard case, as outlined by the old blood relation, had got right in amongst me. You might suppose that a fellow capable of betting you you couldn’t swing yourself across the Drones swimming-bath by the rings and looping the last ring back deserved no consideration, but as I say the agony of that episode had long since abated and it pained me deeply to contemplate the spot he was in. For though I had affected to consider that the ancestor’s scheme for melting L. P. Runkle was the goods, I didn’t really believe it would work. You don’t get anywhere filling with rich foods a bloke who wears a Panama hat like his: the only way of inducing the L. P. Runkle type of man to part with cash is to kidnap him, take him to the cellar beneath the lonely mill and stick lighted matches between his toes. And even then he would probably give you a dud cheque.
The revelation of Tuppy’s hard-upness had come as quite a surprise. You know how it is with fellows you’re seeing all the time; if you think about their finances at all, you sort of assume they must be all right. It had never occurred to me that Tuppy might be seriously short of doubloons, but I saw now why there had been all this delay in assembling the bishop and assistant clergy and getting the show on the road. I presumed Uncle Tom would brass up if given the green light, he having the stuff in heaping sackfuls, but Tuppy has his pride and would quite properly jib at the idea of being supported by a father-in-law. Of course he really oughtn’t to have gone and signed Angela up with his bank balance in such a rocky condition, but love is love. Conquers all, as the fellow said.
Having mused on Tuppy for about five minutes, I changed gears and started musing on Angela, for whom I had always had a cousinly affection. A definitely nice young prune and just the sort to be a good wife, but of course the catch is that you can’t be a good wife if the other half of the sketch hasn’t enough money to marry you. Practically all you can do is hang around and twiddle your fingers and hope for the best. Weary waiting about sums it up, and the whole lay-out, I felt, must be g and wormwood for Angela, causing her to bedew her pillow with many a salty tear.
I always find when musing that the thing to do is to bury the face in the hands, because it seems to concentrate thought and keep the mind from wandering off elsewhere. I did this now, and was getting along fairly well, when I suddenly had that uncanny feeling that I was not alone. I sensed a presence, if you would prefer putting it that way, and I had not been mistaken. Removing the hands and looking up, I saw that Madeline Bassett was with me.
It was a nasty shock. I won’t say she was the last person I wanted to see, Spode of course heading the list of starters with L. P. Runkle in close attendance, but I would willingly have dispensed with her company. However, I rose courteously, and I don’t think there was anything in my manner to suggest that I would have liked to hit her with a brick, for I am pretty inscrutable at all times. Nevertheless, behind my calm front there lurked the uneasiness which always grips me when we meet.
Holding the mistaken view that I am hopelessly in love with her and more or less pining away into a decline, this Bassett never fails to look at me, when our paths cross, with a sort of tender pity, and she was letting me have it now. So melting indeed was her gaze that it was only by reminding myself that she was safely engaged to Spode that I was able to preserve my equanimity and sangfroid. When she had been betrothed to Gussie Fink-Nottle, the peril of her making a switch had always been present, Gussie being the sort of spectacled newt-collecting freak a girl might at any moment get second thoughts about, but there was something so reassuring in her being engaged to Spode. Because, whatever you might think of him, you couldn’t get away from it that he was the seventh Earl of Sidcup, and no girl who has managed to hook a seventh Earl with a castle in Shropshire and an income of twenty thousand pounds per annum is lightly going to change her mind about him.
Having given me the look, she spoke, and her voice was like treacle pouring out of a jug.
‘Oh, Bertie, how nice to see you again. How are you?’
‘I’m fine. How are you?’
‘I’m fine.’
‘That’s fine. How’s your father?’
‘He’s fine.’
I was sorry to hear this. My relations with Sir Watkyn Bassett were such that a more welcome piece of news would have been that he had contracted bubonic plague and wasn’t expected to recover.
‘I heard you were here,’ I said.
‘Yes, I’m here.’
‘So I heard. You’re looking well.’
‘Oh, I’m very, very well, and oh so happy.’
‘That’s good.’
‘I wake up each morning to the new day, and I know it’s going to be the best day that ever was. Today I danced on the lawn before breakfast, and then I went round the garden saying good morning to the flowers. There was a sweet black cat asleep on one of the flower beds. I picked it up and danced with it.’
I didn’t tell her so, but she couldn’t have made a worse social gaffe. If there is one thing Augustus, the cat to whom she referred, hates, it’s having his sleep disturbed. He must have cursed freely, though probably in a drowsy undertone. I suppose she thought he was purring.
She had paused, seeming to expect some comment on her fatheaded behaviour, so I said:
‘Euphoria.’
‘I what?’
‘That’s what it’s called, Jeeves tells me, feeling like that.’
‘Oh, I see. I just call it being happy, happy, happy.’
Having said which, she gave a start, quivered and put a hand up to her face as if she were having a screen test and had been told to register remorse.
‘Oh, Bertie!’
‘Hullo?’
‘I’m so sorry.’
‘Eh?’
‘It was so tactless of me to go on about my happiness. I should have remembered how different it was for you. I saw your face twist with pain as I came in and I can’t tell you how sorry I am to think that it is I who have caused it. Life is not easy, is it?’
‘Not very.’
‘Difficult.’
‘In spots.’
‘The only thing is to be brave.’
‘That’s about it.’
‘You must not lose courage. Who knows? Consolation may be waiting for you somewhere. Some day you will meet someone who will make you forget you ever loved me. No, not quite that. I think I shall always be a fragrant memory, always something deep in your heart that will be with you like a gentle, tender ghost as you watch the sunset on summer evenings while the
little birds sing their off-to-bed songs in the shrubbery.’
‘I wouldn’t be surprised,’ I said, for one simply has to say the civil thing. ‘You look a bit damp,’ I added, changing the subject. ‘Was it raining when you were out?’
‘A little, but I didn’t mind. I was saying good-night to the flowers.’
‘Oh, you say good-night to them, too?’
‘Of course. Their poor little feelings would be so hurt if I didn’t.’
‘Wise of you to come in. Might have got lumbago.’
‘That was not why I came in. I saw you through the window, and I had a question to ask you. A very, very serious question.’
‘Oh, yes?’
‘But it’s so difficult to know how to put it. I shall have to ask it as they do in books. You know what they say in books.’
‘What who say in books?’
‘Detectives and people like that. Bertie, are you going straight now?’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘You know what I mean. Have you given up stealing things?’
I laughed one of those gay debonair ones.
‘Oh, absolutely.’
‘I’m so glad. You don’t feel the urge any more? You’ve conquered the craving? I told Daddy it was just a kind of illness. I said you couldn’t help yourself.’
I remembered her submitting this theory to him … I was hiding behind a sofa at the time, a thing I have been compelled to do rather oftener than I could wish … and Sir Watkyn had replied in what I thought dubious taste that it was precisely my habit of helping myself to everything I could lay my hands on that he was criticizing.
Another girl might have left it at that, but not M. Bassett. She was all eager curiosity.
‘Did you have psychiatric treatment? Or was it will power?’
‘Just will power.’
‘How splendid. I’m so proud of you. It must have been a terrible struggle.’
‘Oh, so-so.’
‘I shall write to Daddy and tell him—’
Here she paused and put a hand to her left eye, and it was easy for a man of my discernment to see what had happened. The French window being open, gnats in fairly large numbers had been coming through and flitting to and fro. It’s a thing one always has to budget for in the English countryside. In America they have screens, of course, which make flying objects feel pretty nonplussed, but these have never caught on in England and the gnats have it more or less their own way. They horse around and now and then get into people’s eyes. One of these, it was evident, had now got into Madeline’s.
I would be the last to deny that Bertram Wooster has his limitations, but in one field of endeavour I am pre-eminent. In the matter of taking things out of eyes I yield to no one. I know what to say and what to do.
Counselling her not to rub it, I advanced handkerchief in hand.
I remember going into the technique of operations of this kind with Gussie Fink-Nottle at Totleigh when he had removed a fly from the eye of Stephanie Byng, now the Reverend Mrs Stinker Pinker, and we were in agreement that success could be achieved only by placing a hand under the patient’s chin in order to steady the head. Omit this preliminary and your efforts are bootless. My first move, accordingly, was to do so and it was characteristic of Spode that he should have chosen this moment to join us, just when we twain were in what you might call close juxtaposition.
I confess that there have been times when I have felt more at my ease. Spode, in addition to being constructed on the lines of a rather oversized gorilla, has a disposition like that of a short-tempered tiger of the jungle and a nasty mind which leads him to fall a ready prey to what I have heard Jeeves call the green-eyed monster which doth mock the meat it feeds on – viz. jealousy. Such a man, finding you steadying the head of the girl he loves, is always extremely likely to start trying to ascertain the colour of your insides, and to avert this I greeted him with what nonchalance I could muster.
‘Oh, hullo, Spode old chap, I mean Lord Sidcup old chap. Here we all are, what. Jeeves told me you were here, and Aunt Dahlia says you’ve been knocking the voting public base over apex with your oratory in the Conservative interest. Must be wonderful to be able to do that. It’s a gift, of course. Some have it, some haven’t. I couldn’t address a political meeting to please a dying grandmother. I should stand there opening and shutting my mouth like a goldfish. You, on the other hand, just clear your throat and the golden words come pouring out like syrup. I admire you enormously.’
Conciliatory, I think you’ll agree. I could hardly have given him the old salve with a more liberal hand, and one might have expected him to simper, shuffle his feet and mumble ‘Awfully nice of you to say so’ or something along those lines. Instead of which, all he did was come back at me with a guttural sound like an opera basso choking on a fishbone, and I had to sustain the burden of the conversation by myself.
‘I’ve just been taking a gnat out of Madeline’s eye.’
‘Oh?’
‘Dangerous devils, these gnats. Require skilled handling.’
‘Oh?’
‘Everything’s back to normal now, I think.’
‘Yes, thank you ever so much, Bertie.’
It was Madeline who said this, not Spode. He continued to gaze at me bleakly. She went on harping on the thing.
‘Bertie’s so clever.’
‘Oh?’
‘I don’t know what I would have done without him.’
‘Oh?’
‘He showed wonderful presence of mind.’
‘Oh?’
‘I feel so sorry, though, for the poor little gnat.’
‘It asked for it,’ I pointed out. ‘It was unquestionably the aggressor.’
‘Yes, I suppose that’s true, but …’ The clock on the mantelpiece caught her now de-gnatted eye, and she uttered an agitated squeak. ‘Oh, my goodness, is that the time? I must rush.’
She buzzed off, and I was on the point of doing the same, when Spode detained me with a curt ‘One moment’. There are all sorts of ways of saying ‘One moment’. This was one of the nastier ones, spoken with an unpleasant rasping note in the voice.
‘I want a word with you, Wooster.’
I am never anxious to chat with Spode, but if I had been sure that he merely wanted to go on saying ‘Oh?’, I would have been willing to listen. Something, however, seemed to tell me that he was about to give evidence of a wider vocabulary, and I edged towards the door.
‘Some other time, don’t you think?’
‘Not some ruddy other time. Now.’
‘I shall be late for dinner.’
‘You can’t be too late for me. And if you get your teeth knocked down your throat, as you will if you don’t listen attentively to what I have to say, you won’t be able to eat any dinner.’
This seemed plausible. I decided to lend him an ear, as the expression is. ‘Say on,’ I said, and he said on, lowering his voice to a sort of rumbling growl which made him difficult to follow. However, I caught the word ‘read’ and the word ‘book’ and perked up a bit. If this was going to be a literary discussion, I didn’t mind exchanging views.
‘Book?’ I said.
‘Book.’
‘You want me to recommend you a good book? Well, of course, it depends on what you like. Jeeves, for instance, is never happier than when curled up with his Spinoza or his Shakespeare. I, on the other hand, go in mostly for who-dun-its and novels of suspense. For the who-dun-it Agatha Christie is always a safe bet. For the novel of suspense …’
Here I paused, for he had called me an opprobrious name and told me to stop babbling, and it is always my policy to stop babbling when a man eight foot six in height and broad in proportion tells me to. I went into the silence, and he continued to say on.
‘I said that I could read you like a book, Wooster. I know what your game is.’
‘I don’t understand you, Lord Sidcup.’
‘Then you must be as big an ass as you look, which is saying a good d
eal. I am referring to your behaviour towards my fiancée. I come into this room and I find you fondling her face.’
I had to correct him here. One likes to get these things straight.
‘Only her chin.’
‘Pah!’ he said, or something that sounded like that.
‘And I had to get a grip on it in order to extract the gnat from her eye. I was merely steadying it.’
‘You were steadying it gloatingly.’
‘I wasn’t!’
‘Pardon me. I have eyes and can see when a man is steadying a chin gloatingly and when he isn’t. You were obviously delighted to have an excuse for soiling her chin with your foul fingers.’
‘You are wrong, Lord Spodecup.’
‘And, as I say, I know what your game is. You are trying to undermine me, to win her from me with your insidious guile, and what I want to impress upon you with all the emphasis at my disposal is that if anything of this sort is going to occur again, you would do well to take out an accident policy with some good insurance company at the earliest possible date. You probably think that being a guest in your aunt’s house I would hesitate to butter you over the front lawn and dance on the fragments in hobnailed boots, but you are mistaken. It will be a genuine pleasure. By an odd coincidence I brought a pair of hobnailed boots with me!’
So saying, and recognizing a good exit line when he saw one, he strode out, and after an interval of tense meditation I followed him. Repairing to my bedroom, I found Jeeves there, looking reproachful. He knows I can dress for dinner in ten minutes, but regards haste askance, for he thinks it results in a tie which, even if adequate, falls short of the perfect butterfly effect.
I ignored the silent rebuke in his eyes. After meeting Spode’s eyes, I was dashed if I was going to be intimidated by Jeeves’s.
‘Jeeves,’ I said, ‘you’re fairly well up in Hymns Ancient and Modern, I should imagine. Who were the fellows in the hymn who used to prowl and prowl around?’
‘The troops of Midian, sir.’
‘That’s right. Was Spode mentioned as one of them?’
The Jeeves Omnibus - Vol 5: (Jeeves & Wooster) Page 6