The Jeeves Omnibus (91 page)

‘Have you and Jeeves had a row?’

‘Nothing of the kind.’

‘You seem to have it in for him.’

‘Not at all.’

And yet I must admit that there was a modicum of truth in what she said. I had been feeling pretty austere about the man all day, and I’ll tell you why.

You remember that he caught that 12.45 train with the luggage, while I remained on in order to keep a luncheon engagement. Well, just before I started out to the tryst, I was pottering about the flat, and suddenly – I don’t know what put the suspicion into my head, possibly the fellow’s manner had been furtive – something seemed to whisper to me to go and have a look in the wardrobe.

And it was as I had suspected. There was the mess jacket still on its hanger. The hound hadn’t packed it.

Well, as anybody at the Drones will tell you, Bertram Wooster is a pretty hard chap to outgeneral. I shoved the thing in a brown-paper parcel and put it in the back of the car, and it was on a chair in the hall now. But that didn’t alter the fact that Jeeves had attempted to do the dirty on me, and I suppose
a
certain what-d’you-call-it had crept into my manner during the above remarks.

‘There has been no breach,’ I said. ‘You might describe it as a passing coolness, but no more. We did not happen to see eye to eye with regard to my white mess jacket with the brass buttons and I was compelled to assert my personality. But –’

‘Well, it doesn’t matter, anyway. The thing that matters is that you are talking piffle, you poor fish. Jeeves lost his grip? Absurd. Why, I saw him for a moment when he arrived, and his eyes were absolutely glittering with intelligence. I said to myself “Trust Jeeves,” and I intend to.’

‘You would be far better advised to let me see what I can accomplish, Aunt Dahlia.’

‘For heaven’s sake, don’t you start butting in. You’ll only make matters worse.’

‘On the contrary, it may interest you to know that while driving here I concentrated deeply on this trouble of Angela’s and was successful in formulating a plan, based on the psychology of the individual, which I am proposing to put into effect at an early moment.’

‘Oh, my God!’

‘My knowledge of human nature tells me it will work.’

‘Bertie,’ said Aunt Dahlia, and her manner struck me as febrile, ‘lay off, lay off! For pity’s sake, lay off. I know these plans of yours. I suppose you want to shove Angela into the lake and push young Glossop in after her to save her life, or something like that.’

‘Nothing of the kind.’

‘It’s the sort of thing you would do.’

‘My scheme is far more subtle. Let me outline it for you.’

‘No thanks.’

‘I say to myself –’

‘But not to me.’

‘Do listen for a second.’

‘I won’t.’

‘Right ho, then. I am dumb.’

‘And have been from a child.’

I perceived that little good could result from continuing the discussion. I waved a hand and shrugged a shoulder.

‘Very well, Aunt Dahlia,’ I said, with dignity, ‘if you don’t want to be in on the ground floor, that is your affair. But you are missing an intellectual treat. And, anyway, no matter how much you may behave like the deaf adder of Scripture which, as you are doubtless aware, the more one piped, the less it danced, or words to that effect, I
shall
carry on as planned. I am extremely fond of Angela, and I shall spare no effort to bring the sunshine back into her heart.’

‘Bertie, you abysmal chump, I appeal to you once more. Will you please lay off? You’ll only make things ten times as bad as they are already.’

I remember reading in one of those historical novels once about a chap – a buck he would have been, no doubt, or a macaroni or some such bird as that – who, when people said the wrong thing, merely laughed down from lazy eyelids and flicked a speck of dust from the irreproachable Mechlin lace at his wrists. This was practically what I did now. At least, I straightened my tie and smiled one of those inscrutable smiles of mine. I then withdrew and went out for a saunter in the garden.

And the first chap I ran into was young Tuppy. His brow was furrowed, and he was moodily bunging stones at a flowerpot.

I THINK I
have told you before about young Tuppy Glossop. He was the fellow, if you remember, who, callously ignoring the fact that we had been friends since boyhood, betted me one night at the Drones that I could swing myself across the swimming bath by the rings – a childish feat for one of my lissomness – and then, having seen me well on the way, looped back the last ring, thus rendering it necessary for me to drop into the deep end in formal evening costume.

To say that I had not resented this foul deed, which seemed to me deserving of the title of the crime of the century, would be paltering with the truth. I had resented it profoundly, chafing not a little at the time and continuing to chafe for some weeks.

But you know how it is with these things. The wound heals. The agony abates.

I am not saying, mind you, that had the opportunity presented itself of dropping a wet sponge on Tuppy from some high spot or of putting an eel in his bed or finding some other form of self-expression of a like nature, I would not have embraced it eagerly; but that let me out. I mean to say, grievously injured though I had been, it gave me no pleasure to feel that the fellow’s bally life was being ruined by the loss of a girl whom, despite all that had passed, I was convinced he still loved like the dickens.

On the contrary, I was heart and soul in favour of healing the breach and rendering everything hotsy-totsy once more between these two young sundered blighters. You will have gleaned that from my remarks to Aunt Dahlia, and if you had been present at this moment and had seen the kindly commiserating look I gave Tuppy, you would have gleaned it still more.

It was one of those searching, melting looks, and was accompanied by the hearty clasp of the right hand and the gentle laying of the left on the collarbone.

‘Well, Tuppy, old man,’ I said. ‘How are you, old man?’

My commiseration deepened as I spoke the words, for there had been no lighting up of the eye, no answering pressure of the palm,
no
sign whatever, in short, of any disposition on his part to do spring dances at the sight of an old friend. The man seemed sandbagged. Melancholy, as I remember Jeeves saying once about Pongo Twistleton when he was trying to knock off smoking, had marked him for her own. Not that I was surprised, of course. In the circs, no doubt, a certain moodiness was only natural.

I released the hand, ceased to knead the shoulder, and, producing the old case, offered him a cigarette.

He took it dully.

‘Are you here, Bertie?’ he asked.

‘Yes, I’m here.’

‘Just passing through, or come to stay?’

I thought for a moment. I might have told him that I had arrived at Brinkley Court with the express intention of bringing Angela and himself together once more, of knitting up the severed threads, and so on and so forth; and for perhaps half the time required for the lighting of a gasper I had almost decided to do so. Then, I reflected, better, on the whole, perhaps not. To broadcast the fact that I proposed to take him and Angela and play on them as on a couple of stringed instruments might have been injudicious. Chaps don’t always like being played on as on a stringed instrument.

‘It all depends,’ I said. ‘I may remain. I may push on. My plans are uncertain.’

He nodded listlessly, rather in the manner of a man who did not give a damn what I did, and stood gazing out over the sunlit garden. In build and appearance, Tuppy somewhat resembles a bulldog, and his aspect now was that of one of these fine animals who has just been refused a slice of cake. It was not difficult for a man of my discernment to read what was in his mind, and it occasioned me no surprise, therefore, when his next words had to do with the subject marked with a cross on the agenda paper.

‘You’ve heard of this business of mine, I suppose? Me and Angela?’

‘I have, indeed, Tuppy, old man.’

‘We’ve bust up.’

‘I know. Some little friction, I gather,
in re
Angela’s shark.’

‘Yes. I said it must have been a flatfish.’

‘So my informant told me.’

‘Who did you hear it from?’

‘Aunt Dahlia.’

‘I suppose she cursed me properly?’

‘Oh, no. Beyond referring to you in one passage as “this blasted
Glossop”,
she was, I thought, singularly temperate in her language for a woman who at one time hunted regularly with the Quorn. All the same, I could see, if you don’t mind me saying so, old man, that she felt you might have behaved with a little more tact.’

‘Tact!’

‘And I must admit I rather agreed with her. Was it nice, Tuppy, was it quite kind to take the bloom off Angela’s shark like that? You must remember that Angela’s shark is very dear to her. Could you not see what a sock on the jaw it would be for the poor child to hear it described by the man to whom she had given her heart as a flatfish?’

I saw that he was struggling with some powerful emotion.

‘And what about my side of the thing?’ he demanded, in a voice choked with feeling.

‘Your side?’

‘You don’t suppose,’ said Tuppy, with rising vehemence, ‘that I would have exposed this dashed synthetic shark for the flatfish it undoubtedly was if there had not been causes that led up to it. What induced me to speak as I did was the fact that Angela, the little squirt, had just been most offensive, and I seized the opportunity to get a bit of my own back.’

‘Offensive?’

‘Exceedingly offensive. Purely on the strength of my having let fall some casual remark – simply by way of saying something and keeping the conversation going – to the effect that I wondered what Anatole was going to give us for dinner, she said that I was too material and ought not always to be thinking of food. Material, my elbow! As a matter of fact, I’m particularly spiritual.’

‘Quite.’

‘I don’t see any harm in wondering what Anatole was going to give us for dinner. Do you?’

‘Of course not. A mere ordinary tribute of respect to a great artist.’

‘Exactly.’

‘All the same –’

‘Well?’

‘I was only going to say that it seems a pity that the frail craft of love should come a stinker like this when a few manly words of contrition –’

He stared at me.

‘You aren’t suggesting that I should climb down?’

‘It would be the fine, big thing, old egg.’

‘I wouldn’t dream of climbing down.’

‘But, Tuppy –’

‘No. I wouldn’t do it.’

‘But you love her, don’t you?’

This touched the spot. He quivered noticeably, and his mouth twisted. Quite the tortured soul.

‘I’m not saying I don’t love the little blighter,’ he said, obviously moved. ‘I love her passionately. But that doesn’t alter the fact that I consider that what she needs most in this world is a swift kick in the pants.’

A Wooster could scarcely pass this. ‘Tuppy, old man!’

‘It’s no good saying “Tuppy, old man”.’

‘Well, I do say “Tuppy, old man”. Your tone shocks me. One raises the eyebrows. Where is the fine, old, chivalrous spirit of the Glossops?’

‘That’s all right about the fine, old, chivalrous spirit of the Glossops. Where is the sweet, gentle, womanly spirit of the Angelas? Telling a fellow he was getting a double chin!’

‘Did she do that?’

‘She did.’

‘Oh, well, girls will be girls. Forget it, Tuppy. Go to her and make it up.’

He shook his head.

‘No. It is too late. Remarks have been passed about my tummy which it is impossible to overlook.’

‘But, Tummy – Tuppy, I mean – be fair. You once told her her new hat made her look like a Pekingese.’

‘It did make her look like a Pekingese. That was not vulgar abuse. It was sound, constructive criticism, with no motive behind it but the kindly desire to keep her from making an exhibition of herself in public. Wantonly to accuse a man of puffing when he goes up a flight of stairs is something very different.’

I began to see that the situation would require all my address and ingenuity. If the wedding bells were ever to ring out in the little church of Market Snodsbury, Bertram had plainly got to put in some shrewdish work. I had gathered, during my conversation with Aunt Dahlia, that there had been a certain amount of frank speech between the two contracting parties, but I had not realized till now that matters had gone so far.

The pathos of the thing gave me the pip. Tuppy had admitted in so many words that love still animated the Glossop bosom, and I was convinced that, even after all that had occurred, Angela had
not
ceased to love him. At the moment, no doubt, she might be wishing that she could hit him with a bottle, but deep down in her I was prepared to bet that there still lingered all the old affection and tenderness. Only injured pride was keeping these two apart, and I felt that if Tuppy would make the first move, all would be well.

I had another whack at it.

‘She’s broken-hearted about this rift, Tuppy.’

‘How do you know? Have you seen her?’

‘No, but I’ll bet she is.’

‘She doesn’t look it.’

‘Wearing the mask, no doubt. Jeeves does that when I assert my authority.’

‘She wrinkles her nose at me as if I were a drain that had got out of order.’

‘Merely the mask. I feel convinced she loves you still, and that a kindly word from you is all that is required.’

I could see that this had moved him. He plainly wavered. He did a sort of twiddly on the turf with his foot. And, when he spoke, one spotted the tremolo in the voice:

‘You really think that?’

‘Absolutely.’

‘H’m.’

‘If you were to go to her –’

He shook his head.

‘I can’t do that. It would be fatal. Bing, instantly, would go my prestige. I know girls. Grovel, and the best of them get uppish.’ He mused. ‘The only way to work the thing would be by tipping her off in some indirect way that I am prepared to open negotiations. Should I sigh a bit when we meet, do you think?’