'Unquestionably, sir.'
'At a time like this one doesn't want to leave any avenue unturned.'
The interior of the wayside inn – the 'Fox and Goose', not that it matters – was like the interiors of all wayside inns, dark and cool and smelling of beer, cheese, coffee, pickles and the sturdy English peasantry. Entering, you found yourself in a cosy nook with tankards on the walls and chairs and tables dotted hither and thither. On one of the chairs at one of the tables Bobbie was seated with a glass and a bottle of ginger ale before her.
'Good Lord, Bertie!' she said as I stepped up and what-ho-ed. 'Where did you spring from?'
I explained that I was on my way back to Brinkley from London in my car.
'Be careful someone doesn't pinch it. I'll bet you haven't taken out the keys.'
'No, but Jeeves is there, keeping watch and ward, as you might say.'
'Oh, you've brought Jeeves with you? I thought he was on his holiday.'
'He very decently cancelled it.'
'Pretty feudal.'
'Very. When I told him I needed him at my side, he didn't hesitate.'
'What do you need him at your side for?'
The moment had come for the honeyed word. I lowered my voice to a confidential murmur, but on her inquiring if I had laryngitis raised it again.
'I had an idea that he might be able to do something.'
'What about?'
'About you and Kipper,' I said, and started to feel my way cautiously towards the core and centre. It would be necessary, I knew, to pick my words with c., for with girls of high and haughty spirit you have to watch your step, especially if they have red hair, like Bobbie. If they think you're talking out of turn, dudgeon ensues, and dudgeon might easily lead her to reach for the ginger ale bottle and bean me with it. I don't say she would, but it was a possibility that had to be taken into account. So I sort of eased into the agenda.
'I must begin by saying that Kipper has given me a full eyewitness's – well, earwitness's I suppose you'd say –report of that chat you and he had over the telephone, and no doubt you are saying to yourself that it would have been in better taste for him to have kept it under his hat. But you must remember that we were boys together, and a fellow naturally confides in a chap he was boys together with. Anyway, be that as it may, he poured out his soul to me, and he hadn't been pouring long before I was able to see that he was cut to the quick. His blood pressure was high, his eye rolled in what they call a fine frenzy, and he was death-where-is-thy-sting-ing like nobody's business.'
I saw her quiver and kept a wary eye on the ginger ale bottle. But even if she had raised it and brought it down on the Wooster bean, I couldn't have been more stunned than I was by the words that left her lips.
'The poor lamb!'
I had ordered a gin and tonic. I now spilled a portion of this.
'Did you say poor lamb?'
'You bet I said poor lamb, though «Poor sap» would perhaps be a better description. Just imagine him taking all that stuff I said seriously. He ought to have known I didn't mean it.'
I groped for the gist.
'You were just making conversation?'
'Well, blowing off steam. For heaven's sake, isn't a girl allowed to blow off some steam occasionally? I never dreamed it would really upset him. Reggie always takes everything so literally.'
'Then is the position that the laughing love god is once more working at the old stand?'
'Like a beaver.'
'In fact, to coin a phrase, you're sweethearts still?'
'Of course. I may have meant what I said at the time, but only for about five minutes.'
I drew a deep breath, and a moment later wished I hadn't, because I drew it while drinking the remains of my gin and tonic.
'Does Kipper know of this?' I said, when I had finished coughing.
'Not yet. I'm on my way to tell him.'
I raised a point on which I particularly desired assurance.
'Then what it boils down to is – No wedding bells for me?'
'I'm afraid not.'
'Quite all right. Anything that suits you.'
'I don't want to get jugged for bigamy.'
'No, one sees that. And your selection for the day is Kipper. I don't blame you. The ideal mate.'
'Just the way I look at it. He's terrific, isn't he?'
'Colossal.'
'I wouldn't marry anyone else if they came to me bringing apes, ivory and peacocks. Tell me what he was like as a boy.'
'Oh, much the same as the rest of us.'
'Nonsense!'
'Except, of course, for rescuing people from burning buildings and saving blue-eyed children from getting squashed by runaway horses.'
'He did that a lot?'
'Almost daily.'
'Was he the Pride of the School?'
'Oh, rather.'
'Not that it was much of a school to be the pride of, from what he tells me. A sort of Dotheboys Hall, wasn't it?'
'Conditions under Aubrey Upjohn were fairly tough. One's mind reverts particularly to the sausages on Sunday.'
'Reggie was very funny about those. He said they were made not from contented pigs but from pigs which had expired, regretted by all, of glanders, the botts and tuberculosis.'
'Yes, that would be quite a fair description of them, I suppose. You going?' I said, for she had risen.
'I can't wait for another minute. I want to fling myself into Reggie's arms. If I don't see him soon, I shall pass out.'
'I know how you feel. The chap in the Yeoman's Wedding Song thought along those same lines, only the way he put it was «Ding dong, ding dong, ding dong, I hurry along». At one time I often used to render the number at village concerts, and there was a nasty Becher's Brook to get over when you got to «For it is my wedding morning,» because you had to stretch out the «mor» for about ten minutes, which tested the lung power severely. I remember the vicar once telling me –'
Here I was interrupted, as I'm so often interrupted when giving my views on the Yeoman's Wedding Song, by her saying that she was dying to hear all about it but would rather wait till she could get it in my autobiography. We went out together, and I saw her off and returned to where Jeeves kept his vigil in the car, all smiles. I was all smiles, I mean, not Jeeves. The best he ever does is to let his mouth twitch slightly on one side, generally the left. I was in rare fettle, and the heart had touched a new high. I don't know anything that braces one up like finding you haven't got to get married after all.
'Sorry to keep you waiting, Jeeves,' I said. 'Hope you weren't bored?'
'Oh no, sir, thank you. I was quite happy with my Spinoza.'
'Eh?'
'The copy of Spinoza's Ethics which you kindly gave me some time ago.'
'Oh, ah, yes, I remember. Good stuff?'
'Extremely, sir.'
'I suppose it turns out in the end that the butler did it. Well, Jeeves, you'll be glad to hear that everything's under control.'
'Indeed, sir?'
'Yes, rift in lute mended and wedding bells liable to ring out at any moment. She's changed her mind.'
'Varium et mutabile semper femina, sir.'
'I shouldn't wonder. And now,' I said, climbing in and taking the wheel, 'I'll unfold the tale of Wilbert and the cow-creamer, and if that doesn't make your knotted locks do a bit of starting from their spheres, I for one shall be greatly surprised.'
12
Arriving at Brinkley in the quiet evenfall and putting the old machine away in the garage, I noticed that Aunt Dahlia's car was there and gathered from this that the aged relative was around and about once more. Nor was I in error. I found her in her boudoir getting outside a dish of tea and a crumpet. She greeted me with one of those piercing view-halloos which she had picked up on the hunting field in the days when she had been an energetic chivvier of the British fox. It sounded like a gas explosion and went through me from stem to stem. I've never hunted myself, but I understand that half the battle is being able to
make noises like some jungle animal with dyspepsia, and I believe that Aunt Dahlia in her prime could lift fellow-members of the Quorn and Pytchley out of their saddles with a single yip, though separated from them by two ploughed fields and a spinney.
'Hullo, ugly,' she said. 'Turned up again, have you?'
'Just this moment breasted the tape.'
'Been to Herne Bay, young Herring tells me.'
'Yes, to fetch Jeeves. How's Bonzo?'
'Spotty but cheerful. What did you want Jeeves for?'
'Well, as it turns out, his presence isn't needed, but I only discovered that when I was half-way here. I was bringing him along to meditate … no, it isn't meditate … to mediate, that's the word, between Bobbie Wickham and Kipper. You knew they were betrothed?'
'Yes, she told me.'
'Did she tell you about shoving that thing in The Times saying she was engaged to me?'
'I was the first in whom she confided. I got a good laugh out of that.'
'More than Kipper did, because it hadn't occurred to the cloth– headed young nitwit to confide in him. When he read the announcement, he reeled and everything went black. It knocked his faith in woman for a loop, and after seething for a while he sat down and wrote her a letter in the Thomas Otway vein.'
'In the who's vein?'
'You are not familiar with Thomas Otway? Seventeenth-century dramatist, celebrated for making bitter cracks about the other sex. Wrote a play called The Orphan, which is full of them.'
'So you do read something beside the comics?'
'Well, actually I haven't steeped myself to any great extent in Thos's output, but Kipper told me about him. He held the view that women are a mess, and Kipper passed this information on to Bobbie in this letter of which I speak. It was a snorter.'
'And you never thought of explaining to him, I suppose?'
'Of course I did. But by that time she'd got the letter.'
'Why didn't the idiot tell her not to open it?'
'It was his first move. «I've found a letter from you here, precious,» she said. «On no account open it, angel,» he said. So of course she opened it.'
She pursed the lips, nodded the loaf, and ate a moody piece of crumpet.
'So that's why he's been going about looking like a dead fish. I suppose Roberta broke the engagement?'
'In a speech lasting five minutes without a pause for breath.'
'And you brought Jeeves along to mediate?'
'That was the idea.'
'But if things have gone as far as that…'
'You doubt whether even Jeeves can heal the rift?' I patted her on the top knot. 'Dry the starting tear, old ancestor, it's healed. I met her at a pub on the way here, and she told me that almost immediately after she had flipped her lid in the manner described she had a change of heart. She loves him still with a passion that's more like boiling oil than anything, and when we parted she was tooling off to tell him so. By this time they must be like ham and eggs again. It's a great burden off my mind, because, having parted brass rags with Kipper, she announced her intention of marrying me.'
'A bit of luck for you, I should have thought.'
'Far from it.'
'Why? You were crazy about the girl once.' 'But no longer. The fever has passed, the scales have fallen from my eyes, and we're just good friends. The snag in this business of falling in love, aged relative, is that the parties of the first part so often get mixed up with the wrong parties of the second part, robbed of their cooler judgment by the parties of the second part's glamour. Put it like this. The male sex is divided into rabbits and non-rabbits and the female sex into dashers and dormice, and the trouble is that the male rabbit has a way of getting attracted by the female dasher (who would be fine for the male non-rabbit) and realizing too late that he ought to have been concentrating on some mild, gentle dormouse with whom he could settle down peacefully and nibble lettuce.'
'The whole thing, in short, a bit of a mix-up?' 'Exactly. Take me and Bobbie. I yield to no one in my appreciation of her espieglerie, but I'm one of the rabbits and always have been while she is about as pronounced a dasher as ever dashed. What I like is the quiet life, and Roberta Wickham wouldn't recognize the quiet life if you brought it to her on a plate with watercress round it. She's all for not letting the sun go down without having started something calculated to stagger humanity. In a word, she needs the guiding hand, which is a thing I couldn't supply her with. Whereas from Kipper she will get it in abundance, he being one of those tough non-rabbits for whom it is child's play to make the little woman draw the line somewhere. That is why the union of these twain has my support and approval and why, when she told me all that in the pub, I felt like doing a buck-and-wing dance. Where is Kipper? I should like to shake him by the hand and pat his back.'
'He went on a picnic with Wilbert and Phyllis.'
The significance of this did not escape me.
'Tailing up stuff, eh? Right on the job, is he?'
'Wilbert is constantly under his eye.'
'And if ever a man needed to be constantly under an eye, it's the above kleptomaniac.'
'The what?'
'Haven't you been told? Wilbert's a pincher.'
'How do you mean, a pincher?'
'He pinches things. Everything that isn't nailed down is grist to his mill.'
'Don't be an ass.'
'I'm not being an ass. He's got Uncle Tom's cow-creamer.'
'I know.'
'You know?'
'Of course I know.'
Her … what's the word? … phlegm, is it? … something beginning with a p… astounded me. I had expected to freeze her young – or, rather, middle-aged –blood and have her perm stand on end like quills upon the fretful porpentine, and she hadn't moved a muscle.
'Beshrew me,' I said, 'you take it pretty calmly.'
'Well, what's there to get excited about? Tom sold him the thing.'
'What?'
'Wilbert got in touch with him at Harrogate and put in his bid, and Tom phoned me to give it to him. Just shows how important that deal must be to Tom. I'd have thought he would rather have parted with his eyeteeth.'
I drew a deep breath, this time fortunately unmixed with gin and tonic. I was profoundly stirred.
'You mean,' said, my voice quavering like that of a coloratura soprano, 'that I went through that soul-shattering experience all for nothing?'
'Who's been shattering your soul, if any?'
'Ma Cream. By popping in while I was searching Wilbert's room for the loathsome object. Naturally I thought he'd swiped it and hidden it there.'
'And she caught you?'
'Not once, but twice.'
'What did she say?'
'She recommended me to take treatment from Roddy Glossop, of whose skill in ministering to the mentally afflicted she had heard such good reports. One sees what gave her the idea. I was half-way under the dressing-table at the moment, and no doubt she thought it odd.'
'Bertie! How absolutely priceless!'
The adjective 'priceless' seemed to me an ill-chosen one, and I said so. But my words were lost in the gale of mirth into which she now exploded. I had never heard anyone laugh so heartily, not even Bobbie on the occasion when the rake jumped up and hit me on the tip of the nose.
'I'd have given fifty quid to have been there,' she said, when she was able to get the vocal cords working. 'Half-way under the dressing– table, were you?' 'The second time. When we first forgathered, I was sitting on the floor with a chair round my neck.'
'Like an Elizabethan ruff, as worn by Thomas Botway.'
'Otway,' I said stiffly. As I have mentioned, I like to get things right. And I was about to tell her that what I had hoped for from a blood relation was sympathy and condolence rather than this crackling of thorns under a pot, as it is sometimes called, when the door opened and Bobbie came in.
The moment I cast an eye on her, it seemed to me that there was something strange about her aspect. Normally, this beasel presents to th
e world the appearance of one who is feeling that if it isn't the best of all possible worlds, it's quite good enough to be going on with till a better one comes along. Verve, I mean, and animation and all that sort of thing. But now there was a listlessness about her, not the listlessness of the cat Augustus but more that of the female in the picture in the Louvre, of whom Jeeves, on the occasion when he lugged me there to take a dekko at her, said that here was the head upon which all the ends of the world are come. He drew my attention, I remember, to the weariness of the eyelids. I got just the same impression of weariness from Bobbie's eyelids.
Unparting her lips which were set in a thin line as if she had just been taking a suck at a lemon, she said:
'I came to get that book of Mrs Cream's that I was reading, Mrs Travers.'
'Help yourself, child,' said the ancestor. 'The more people in this joint reading her stuff, the better. It all goes to help the composition.'
'So you got here all right, Bobbie,' I said. 'Have you seen Kipper?'
I wouldn't say she snorted, but she certainly sniffed.
'Bertie,' she said in a voice straight from the frigidaire, 'will you do me a favour?'
'Of course. What?'
'Don't mention that rat's name in my presence,' she said, and pushed off, the eyelids still weary.
She left me fogged and groping for the inner meaning, and I could see from Aunt Dahlia's goggling eyes that the basic idea hadn't got across with her either. 'Well!' she said. 'What's all this? I thought you told me she loved young Herring with a passion like boiling oil.'
'That was her story.'
'The oil seems to have gone off the boil. Yes, sir, if that was the language of love, I'll eat my hat,' said the blood relation, alluding, I took it, to the beastly straw contraption in which she does her gardening, concerning which I can only say that it is almost as foul as Uncle Tom's Sherlock Holmes deerstalker, which has frightened more crows than any other lid in Worcestershire. 'They must have had a fight.'
'It does look like it,' I agreed, 'and I don't understand how it can have happened considering that she left me with the love light in her eyes and can't have been back here more than about half an hour. What, one asks oneself, in so short a time can have changed a girl full of love and ginger ale into a girl who speaks of the adored object as «that rat» and doesn't want to hear his name mentioned? These are deep waters. Should I send for Jeeves?'
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