The Jeeves Omnibus (97 page)

However, spilt milk blows nobody any good, and it is useless to dwell upon it. The task now confronting Bertram was to put matters right, and I was pacing the lawn, pondering to this end, when I suddenly heard a groan so lost-soulish that I thought it must have proceeded from Uncle Tom, escaped from captivity and come to groan in the garden.

Looking about me, however, I could discern no uncles. Puzzled, I was about to resume my meditations, when the sound came again. And peering into the shadows I observed a dim form seated on one of the rustic benches which so liberally dotted this pleasance and another dim form standing beside same. A second and more penetrating glance and I had assembled the facts.

These dim forms were, in the order named, Gussie Fink-Nottle and Jeeves. And what Gussie was doing, groaning all over the place like this, was more than I could understand.

Because, I mean to say, there was no possibility of error. He wasn’t singing. As I approached, he gave an encore, and it was beyond question a groan. Moreover, I could now see him clearly, and his whole aspect was definitely sandbagged.

‘Good evening, sir,’ said Jeeves. ‘Mr Fink-Nottle is not feeling well.’

Nor was I. Gussie had begun to make a low, bubbling noise, and I could no longer disguise it from myself that something must have gone seriously wrong with the works. I mean, I know marriage is a pretty solemn business and the realization that he is in for it frequently churns a chap up a bit, but I had never come across a case of a newly engaged man taking it on the chin so completely as this.

Gussie looked up. His eye was dull. He clutched the thatch.

‘Goodbye, Bertie,’ he said, rising.

I seemed to spot an error.

‘You mean “Hallo”, don’t you?’

‘No, I don’t. I mean goodbye. I’m off.’

‘Off where?’

‘To the kitchen garden. To drown myself.’

‘Don’t be an ass.’

‘I’m not an ass … Am I an ass, Jeeves?’

‘Possibly a little injudicious, sir.’

‘Drowning myself, you mean?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘You think, on the whole, not drown myself?’

‘I should not advocate it, sir.’

‘Very well, Jeeves. I accept your ruling. After all, it would be
unpleasant
for Mrs Travers to find a swollen body floating in her pond.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘And she has been very kind to me.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘And you have been very kind to me, Jeeves.’

‘Thank you, sir.’

‘So have you, Bertie. Very kind. Everybody has been very kind to me. Very, very kind. Very kind indeed. I have no complaints to make. All right, I’ll go for a walk instead.’

I followed him with bulging eyes as he tottered off into the dark.

‘Jeeves,’ I said, and I am free to admit that in my emotion I bleated like a lamb drawing itself to the attention of the parent sheep, ‘what the dickens is all this?’

‘Mr Fink-Nottle is not quite himself, sir. He has passed through a trying experience.’

I endeavoured to put together a brief synopsis of previous events.

‘I left him out here with Miss Bassett.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘I had softened her up.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘He knew exactly what he had to do. I had coached him thoroughly in lines and business.’

‘Yes, sir. So Mr Fink-Nottle informed me.’

‘Well, then –’

‘I regret to say, sir, that there was a slight hitch.’

‘You mean, something went wrong?’

‘Yes, sir.’

I could not fathom. The brain seemed to be tottering on its throne.

‘But how could anything go wrong? She loves him, Jeeves.’

‘Indeed, sir?’

‘She definitely told me so. All he had to do was propose.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Well, didn’t he?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Then what the dickens did he talk about?’

‘Newts, sir.’

‘Newts?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Newts?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘But why did he want to talk about newts?’

‘He did not want to talk about newts, sir. As I gather from Mr Fink-Nottle, nothing could have been more alien to his plans.’

I simply couldn’t grasp the trend.

‘But you can’t force a man to talk about newts.’

‘Mr Fink-Nottle was the victim of a sudden unfortunate spasm of nervousness, sir. Upon finding himself alone with the young lady, he admits to having lost his morale. In such circumstances, gentlemen frequently talk at random, saying the first thing that chances to enter their heads. This, in Mr Fink-Nottle’s case, would seem to have been the newt, its treatment in sickness and in health.’

The scales fell from my eyes. I understood. I had had the same sort of thing happen to me in moments of crisis. I remember once detaining a dentist with the drill at one of my lower bicuspids and holding him up for nearly ten minutes with a story about a Scotsman, an Irishman, and a Jew. Purely automatic. The more he tried to jab, the more I said ‘Hoots, mon’, ‘Begorrah’, and ‘Oy, oy.’ When one loses one’s nerve, one simply babbles.

I could put myself in Gussie’s place. I could envisage the scene. There he and the Bassett were, alone together in the evening stillness. No doubt, as I had advised, he had shot the works about sunsets and fairy princesses, and so forth, and then had arrived at the point where he had to say that bit about having something to say to her. At this, I take it, she lowered her eyes and said, ‘Oh, yes?’

He then, I should imagine, said it was something very important; to which her response would, one assumes, have been something on the lines of ‘Really?’ or ‘Indeed?’ or possibly just the sharp intake of the breath. And then their eyes met, just as mine met the dentist’s, and something suddenly seemed to catch him in the pit of the stomach and everything went black and he heard his voice starting to drool about newts. Yes, I could follow the psychology.

Nevertheless, I found myself blaming Gussie. On discovering that he was stressing the newt note in this manner, he ought, of course, to have tuned out, even if it had meant sitting there saying nothing. No matter how much of a twitter he was in, he should have had sense enough to see that he was throwing a spanner into the works. No girl, when she has been led to expect that a man is about to pour forth his soul in a fervour of passion, likes to find him suddenly shelving the whole topic in favour of an address on aquatic
Salamandridae
.

‘Bad, Jeeves.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘And how long did this nuisance continue?’

‘For some not inconsiderable time, I gather, sir. According to Mr Fink-Nottle, he supplied Miss Bassett with very full and complete information not only with respect to the common newt, but also the crested and palmated varieties. He described to her how newts, during the breeding season, live in the water, subsisting upon tadpoles, insect larvae, and crustaceans; how, later, they make their way to the land and eat slugs and worms; and how the newly born newt has three pairs of long, plumelike external gills. And he was just observing that newts differ from salamanders in the shape of the tail, which is compressed, and that a marked sexual dimorphism prevails in most species, when the young lady rose and said that she thought she would go back to the house.’

‘And then –’

‘She went, sir.’

I stood musing. More and more, it was beginning to be borne in upon me what a particularly difficult chap Gussie was to help. He seemed to so marked an extent to lack snap and finish. With infinite toil, you manoeuvred him into a position where all he had to do was charge ahead, and he didn’t charge ahead, but went off sideways, missing the objective completely.

‘Difficult, Jeeves.’

‘Yes, sir.’

In happier circs, of course, I would have canvassed his views on the matter. But after what had occurred in connexion with that mess jacket, my lips were sealed.

‘Well, I must think it over.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Burnish the brain a bit and endeavour to find the way out.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Well, good night, Jeeves.’

‘Good night, sir.’

He shimmered off, leaving a pensive Bertram Wooster standing motionless in the shadows. It seemed to me that it was hard to know what to do for the best.

I DON’T KNOW
if it has happened to you at all, but a thing I’ve noticed with myself is that, when I’m confronted by a problem which seems for the moment to stump and baffle, a good sleep will often bring the solution in the morning.

It was so on the present occasion.

The nibs who study these matters claim, I believe, that this has got something to do with the subconscious mind, and very possibly they may be right. I wouldn’t have said off-hand that I had a subconscious mind, but I suppose I must without knowing it, and no doubt it was there, sweating away diligently at the old stand, all the while the corporeal Wooster was getting his eight hours.

For directly I opened my eyes on the morrow, I saw daylight. Well, I don’t mean that exactly, because naturally I did. What I mean is that I found I had the thing all mapped out. The good old subconscious m. had delivered the goods, and I perceived exactly what steps must be taken in order to put Augustus Fink-Nottle among the practising Romeos.

I should like you, if you can spare me a moment of your valuable time, to throw your mind back to that conversation he and I had had in the garden on the previous evening. Not the glimmering landscape bit, I don’t mean that, but the concluding passages of it. Having done so, you will recall that when he informed me that he never touched alcoholic liquor, I shook the head a bit, feeling that this must inevitably weaken him as a force where proposing to girls was concerned.

And events had shown that my fears were well founded.

Put to the test, with nothing but orange juice inside him, he had proved a complete bust. In a situation calling for words of molten passion of a nature calculated to go through Madeline Basset like a red-hot gimlet through half a pound of butter, he had said not a syllable that could bring a blush to the cheek of modesty, merely delivering a well-phrased but, in the circumstances, quite misplaced lecture on newts.

A romantic girl is not to be won by such tactics. Obviously, before attempting to proceed further, Augustus Fink-Nottle must be induced to throw off the shackling inhibitions of the past and fuel up. It must be a primed, confident Fink-Nottle who squared up to the Bassett for Round No. 2.

Only so could the
Morning Post
make its ten bob, or whatever it is, for printing the announcement of the forthcoming nuptials.

Having arrived at this conclusion I found the rest easy, and by the time Jeeves brought me my tea I had evolved a plan complete in every detail. This I was about to place before him – indeed, I had got as far as the preliminary ‘I say, Jeeves’ – when we were interrupted by the arrival of Tuppy.

He came listlessly into the room, and I was pained to observe that a night’s rest had effected no improvement in the unhappy wreck’s appearance. Indeed, I should have said, if anything, that he was looking rather more moth-eaten than when I had seen him last. If you can visualize a bulldog which has just been kicked in the ribs and had its dinner sneaked by the cat, you will have Hildebrand Glossop as he now stood before me.

‘Stap my vitals, Tuppy, old corpse,’ I said, concerned, ‘you’re looking pretty blue round the rims.’

Jeeves slid from the presence in that tactful, eel-like way of his, and I motioned the remains to take a seat.

‘What’s the matter?’ I said.

He came to anchor on the bed, and for a while sat picking at the coverlet in silence.

‘I’ve been through hell, Bertie.’

‘Through where?’

‘Hell.’

‘Oh, hell? And what took you there?’

Once more he became silent, staring before him with sombre eyes. Following his gaze, I saw that he was looking at an enlarged photograph of my Uncle Tom in some sort of Masonic uniform which stood on the mantelpiece. I’ve tried to reason with Aunt Dahlia about this photograph for years, placing before her two alternative suggestions: (
a
) To burn the beastly thing; or (
b
) if she must preserve it, to shove me in another room when I come to stay. But she declines to accede. She says it’s good for me. A useful discipline, she maintains, teaching me that there is a darker side to life and that we were not put into this world for pleasure only.

‘Turn it to the wall, if it hurts you, Tuppy,’ I said gently.

‘Eh?’

‘That photograph of Uncle Tom as the bandmaster.’

‘I didn’t come here to talk about photographs. I came for sympathy.’

‘And you shall have it. What’s the trouble? Worrying about Angela, I suppose? Well, have no fear. I have another well-laid plan for encompassing that young shrimp. I’ll guarantee that she will be weeping on your neck before yonder sun has set.’

He barked sharply.

‘A fat chance!’

‘Tup, Tushy!’

‘Eh?’

‘I mean “Tush, Tuppy.” I tell you I will do it. I was just going to describe this plan of mine to Jeeves when you came in. Care to hear it?’

‘I don’t want to hear any of your beastly plans. Plans are no good. She’s gone and fallen in love with this other bloke, and now hates my gizzard.’

‘Rot.’

‘It isn’t rot.’

‘I tell you, Tuppy, as one who can read the female heart, that this Angela loves you still.’

‘Well, it didn’t look much like it in the larder last night.’

‘Oh, you went to the larder last night?’

‘I did.’

‘And Angela was there?’

‘She was. And your aunt. Also your uncle.’

I saw that I should require footnotes. All this was new stuff to me. I had stayed at Brinkley Court quite a lot in my time, but I had no idea the larder was such a social vortex. More like a snack bar on a racecourse than anything else, it seemed to have become.

‘Tell me the whole story in your own words,’ I said, ‘omitting no detail, however apparently slight, for one never knows how important the most trivial detail may be.’

He inspected the photograph for a moment with growing gloom.