Part 8

Harking back once again to that pageant, in sketching out for you my emotions on that occasion, I showed you only the darker side of the picture. There was, I should now mention, a splendid aftermath when, having climbed out of my suit of chain mail and sneaked off to the local pub, I entered the saloon bar and requested mine host to start pouring. A moment later, a tankard of their special home-brewed was in my hand, and the ecstasy of that first gollup is still green in my memory. The recollection of the agony through which I had passed was just what was needed to make it perfect.

It was the same now. When I realized, listening to her words, that she must be referring to Gussie--I mean to say, there couldn’t have been a whole platoon of men taking thorns out of her dog that day; the animal wasn’t a pin-cushion--and became aware that Gussie, who an instant before had, to all appearances, gone so far back in the betting as not to be worth a quotation, was the big winner after all, a positive thrill permeated the frame and there escaped my lips a “Wow!” so crisp and hearty that the Bassett leaped a liberal inch and a half from terra firma.

“I beg your pardon?” she said.

I waved a jaunty hand.

“Nothing,” I said. “Nothing. Just remembered there’s a letter I have to write tonight without fail. If you don’t mind, I think I’ll be going in. Here,” I said, “comes Gussie Fink-Nottle. He will look after you.”

And, as I spoke, Gussie came sidling out from behind a tree.

I passed away and left them to it. As regards these two, everything was beyond a question absolutely in order. All Gussie had to do was keep his head down and not press. Already, I felt, as I legged it back to the house, the happy ending must have begun to function. I mean to say, when you leave a girl and a man, each of whom has admitted in set terms that she and he loves him and her, in close juxtaposition in the twilight, there doesn’t seem much more to do but start pricing fish slices.

Something attempted, something done, seemed to me to have earned two-penn’orth of wassail in the smoking-room.

I proceeded thither.

-11-

The makings were neatly laid out on a side-table, and to pour into a glass an inch or so of the raw spirit and shoosh some soda-water on top of it was with me the work of a moment. This done, I retired to an arm-chair and put my feet up, sipping the mixture with carefree enjoyment, rather like Caesar having one in his tent the day he overcame the Nervii.

As I let the mind dwell on what must even now be taking place in that peaceful garden, I felt bucked and uplifted. Though never for an instant faltering in my opinion that Augustus Fink-Nottle was Nature’s final word in cloth-headed guffins, I liked the man, wished him well, and could not have felt more deeply involved in the success of his wooing if I, and not he, had been under the ether.

The thought that by this time he might quite easily have completed the preliminary _pourparlers_ and be deep in an informal discussion of honeymoon plans was very pleasant to me.

Of course, considering the sort of girl Madeline Bassett was--stars and rabbits and all that, I mean--you might say that a sober sadness would have been more fitting. But in these matters you have got to realize that tastes differ. The impulse of right-thinking men might be to run a mile when they saw the Bassett, but for some reason she appealed to the deeps in Gussie, so that was that.

I had reached this point in my meditations, when I was aroused by the sound of the door opening. Somebody came in and started moving like a leopard toward the side-table and, lowering the feet, I perceived that it was Tuppy Glossop.

The sight of him gave me a momentary twinge of remorse, reminding me, as it did, that in the excitement of getting Gussie fixed up I had rather forgotten about this other client. It is often that way when you’re trying to run two cases at once.

However, Gussie now being off my mind, I was prepared to devote my whole attention to the Glossop problem.

I had been much pleased by the way he had carried out the task assigned him at the dinner-table. No easy one, I can assure you, for the browsing and sluicing had been of the highest quality, and there had been one dish in particular--I allude to the _nonnettes de poulet Agnès Sorel_--which might well have broken down the most iron resolution. But he had passed it up like a professional fasting man, and I was proud of him.

“Oh, hullo, Tuppy,” I said, “I wanted to see you.”

He turned, snifter in hand, and it was easy to see that his privations had tried him sorely. He was looking like a wolf on the steppes of Russia which has seen its peasant shin up a high tree.

“Yes?” he said, rather unpleasantly. “Well, here I am.”

“Well?”

“How do you mean----well?”

“Make your report.”

“What report?”

“Have you nothing to tell me about Angela?”

“Only that she’s a blister.”

I was concerned.

“Hasn’t she come clustering round you yet?”

“She has not.”

“Very odd.”

“Why odd?”

“She must have noted your lack of appetite.”

He barked raspingly, as if he were having trouble with the tonsils of the soul.

“Lack of appetite! I’m as hollow as the Grand Canyon.”

“Courage, Tuppy! Think of Gandhi.”

“What about Gandhi?”

“He hasn’t had a square meal for years.”

“Nor have I. Or I could swear I hadn’t. Gandhi, my left foot.”

I saw that it might be best to let the Gandhi _motif_ slide. I went back to where we had started.

“She’s probably looking for you now.”

“Who is? Angela?”

“Yes. She must have noticed your supreme sacrifice.”

“I don’t suppose she noticed it at all, the little fathead. I’ll bet it didn’t register in any way whatsoever.”

“Come, Tuppy,” I urged, “this is morbid. Don’t take this gloomy view. She must at least have spotted that you refused those _nonnettes de poulet Agnès Sorel_. It was a sensational renunciation and stuck out like a sore thumb. And the _cèpes à la Rossini_----”

A hoarse cry broke from his twisted lips:

“Will you stop it, Bertie! Do you think I am made of marble? Isn’t it bad enough to have sat watching one of Anatole’s supremest dinners flit by, course after course, without having you making a song about it? Don’t remind me of those _nonnettes_. I can’t stand it.”

I endeavoured to hearten and console.

“Be brave, Tuppy. Fix your thoughts on that cold steak-and-kidney pie in the larder. As the Good Book says, it cometh in the morning.”

“Yes, in the morning. And it’s now about half-past nine at night. You would bring that pie up, wouldn’t you? Just when I was trying to keep my mind off it.”

I saw what he meant. Hours must pass before he could dig into that pie. I dropped the subject, and we sat for a pretty good time in silence. Then he rose and began to pace the room in an overwrought sort of way, like a zoo lion who has heard the dinner-gong go and is hoping the keeper won’t forget him in the general distribution. I averted my gaze tactfully, but I could hear him kicking chairs and things. It was plain that the man’s soul was in travail and his blood pressure high.

Presently he returned to his seat, and I saw that he was looking at me intently. There was that about his demeanour that led me to think that he had something to communicate.

Nor was I wrong. He tapped me significantly on the knee and spoke:

“Bertie.”

“Hullo?”

“Shall I tell you something?”

“Certainly, old bird,” I said cordially. “I was just beginning to feel that the scene could do with a bit more dialogue.”

“This business of Angela and me.”

“Yes?”

“I’ve been putting in a lot of solid thinking about it.”

“Oh, yes?”

“I have analysed the situation pitilessly, and one thing stands out as clear as dammit. There has been dirty work afoot.”

“I don’t get you.”

“All right. Let me review the facts. Up to the time she went to Cannes Angela loved me. She was all over me. I was the blue-eyed boy in every sense of the term. You’ll admit that?”

“Indisputably.”

“And directly she came back we had this bust-up.”

“Quite.”

“About nothing.”

“Oh, dash it, old man, nothing? You were a bit tactless, what, about her shark.”

“I was frank and candid about her shark. And that’s my point. Do you seriously believe that a trifling disagreement about sharks would make a girl hand a man his hat, if her heart were really his?”

“Certainly.”

It beats me why he couldn’t see it. But then poor old Tuppy has never been very hot on the finer shades. He’s one of those large, tough, football-playing blokes who lack the more delicate sensibilities, as I’ve heard Jeeves call them. Excellent at blocking a punt or walking across an opponent’s face in cleated boots, but not so good when it comes to understanding the highly-strung female temperament. It simply wouldn’t occur to him that a girl might be prepared to give up her life’s happiness rather than waive her shark.

“Rot! It was just a pretext.”

“What was?”

“This shark business. She wanted to get rid of me, and grabbed at the first excuse.”

“No, no.”

“I tell you she did.”

“But what on earth would she want to get rid of you for?”

“Exactly. That’s the very question I asked myself. And here’s the answer: Because she has fallen in love with somebody else. It sticks out a mile. There’s no other possible solution. She goes to Cannes all for me, she comes back all off me. Obviously during those two months, she must have transferred her affections to some foul blister she met out there.”

“No, no.”

“Don’t keep saying ‘No, no’. She must have done. Well, I’ll tell you one thing, and you can take this as official. If ever I find this slimy, slithery snake in the grass, he had better make all the necessary arrangements at his favourite nursing-home without delay, because I am going to be very rough with him. I propose, if and when found, to take him by his beastly neck, shake him till he froths, and pull him inside out and make him swallow himself.”

With which words he biffed off; and I, having given him a minute or two to get out of the way, rose and made for the drawing-room. The tendency of females to roost in drawing-rooms after dinner being well marked, I expected to find Angela there. It was my intention to have a word with Angela.

To Tuppy’s theory that some insinuating bird had stolen the girl’s heart from him at Cannes I had given, as I have indicated, little credence, considering it the mere unbalanced apple sauce of a bereaved man. It was, of course, the shark, and nothing but the shark, that had caused love’s young dream to go temporarily off the boil, and I was convinced that a word or two with the cousin at this juncture would set everything right.

For, frankly, I thought it incredible that a girl of her natural sweetness and tender-heartedness should not have been moved to her foundations by what she had seen at dinner that night. Even Seppings, Aunt Dahlia’s butler, a cold, unemotional man, had gasped and practically reeled when Tuppy waved aside those _nonnettes de poulet Agnès Sorel_, while the footman, standing by with the potatoes, had stared like one seeing a vision. I simply refused to consider the possibility of the significance of the thing having been lost on a nice girl like Angela. I fully expected to find her in the drawing-room with her heart bleeding freely, all ripe for an immediate reconciliation.

In the drawing-room, however, when I entered, only Aunt Dahlia met the eye. It seemed to me that she gave me rather a jaundiced look as I hove in sight, but this, having so recently beheld Tuppy in his agony, I attributed to the fact that she, like him, had been going light on the menu. You can’t expect an empty aunt to beam like a full aunt.

“Oh, it’s you, is it?” she said.

Well, it was, of course.

“Where’s Angela?” I asked.

“Gone to bed.”

“Already?”

“She said she had a headache.”

“H’m.”

I wasn’t so sure that I liked the sound of that so much. A girl who has observed the sundered lover sensationally off his feed does not go to bed with headaches if love has been reborn in her heart. She sticks around and gives him the swift, remorseful glance from beneath the drooping eyelashes and generally endeavours to convey to him that, if he wants to get together across a round table and try to find a formula, she is all for it too. Yes, I am bound to say I found that going-to-bed stuff a bit disquieting.

“Gone to bed, eh?” I murmured musingly.

“What did you want her for?”

“I thought she might like a stroll and a chat.”

“Are you going for a stroll?” said Aunt Dahlia, with a sudden show of interest. “Where?”

“Oh, hither and thither.”

“Then I wonder if you would mind doing something for me.”

“Give it a name.”

“It won’t take you long. You know that path that runs past the greenhouses into the kitchen garden. If you go along it, you come to a pond.”

“That’s right.”

“Well, will you get a good, stout piece of rope or cord and go down that path till you come to the pond----”

“To the pond. Right.”

“--and look about you till you find a nice, heavy stone. Or a fairly large brick would do.”

“I see,” I said, though I didn’t, being still fogged. “Stone or brick. Yes. And then?”

“Then,” said the relative, “I want you, like a good boy, to fasten the rope to the brick and tie it around your damned neck and jump into the pond and drown yourself. In a few days I will send and have you fished up and buried because I shall need to dance on your grave.”

I was more fogged than ever. And not only fogged--wounded and resentful. I remember reading a book where a girl “suddenly fled from the room, afraid to stay for fear dreadful things would come tumbling from her lips; determined that she would not remain another day in this house to be insulted and misunderstood.” I felt much about the same.

Then I reminded myself that one has got to make allowances for a woman with only about half a spoonful of soup inside her, and I checked the red-hot crack that rose to the lips.

“What,” I said gently, “is this all about? You seem pipped with Bertram.”

“Pipped!”

“Noticeably pipped. Why this ill-concealed animus?”

A sudden flame shot from her eyes, singeing my hair.

“Who was the ass, who was the chump, who was the dithering idiot who talked me, against my better judgment, into going without my dinner? I might have guessed----”

I saw that I had divined correctly the cause of her strange mood.

“It’s all right, Aunt Dahlia. I know just how you’re feeling. A bit on the hollow side, what? But the agony will pass. If I were you, I’d sneak down and raid the larder after the household have gone to bed. I am told there’s a pretty good steak-and-kidney pie there which will repay inspection. Have faith, Aunt Dahlia,” I urged. “Pretty soon Uncle Tom will be along, full of sympathy and anxious inquiries.”

“Will he? Do you know where he is now?”

“I haven’t seen him.”

“He is in the study with his face buried in his hands, muttering about civilization and melting pots.”

“Eh? Why?”

“Because it has just been my painful duty to inform him that Anatole has given notice.”

I own that I reeled.

“What?”

“Given notice. As the result of that drivelling scheme of yours. What did you expect a sensitive, temperamental French cook to do, if you went about urging everybody to refuse all food? I hear that when the first two courses came back to the kitchen practically untouched, his feelings were so hurt that he cried like a child. And when the rest of the dinner followed, he came to the conclusion that the whole thing was a studied and calculated insult, and decided to hand in his portfolio.”

“Golly!”

“You may well say ‘Golly!’ Anatole, God’s gift to the gastric juices, gone like the dew off the petal of a rose, all through your idiocy. Perhaps you understand now why I want you to go and jump in that pond. I might have known that some hideous disaster would strike this house like a thunderbolt if once you wriggled your way into it and started trying to be clever.”

Harsh words, of course, as from aunt to nephew, but I bore her no resentment. No doubt, if you looked at it from a certain angle, Bertram might be considered to have made something of a floater.

“I am sorry.”

“What’s the good of being sorry?”

“I acted for what I deemed the best.”

“Another time try acting for the worst. Then we may possibly escape with a mere flesh wound.”

“Uncle Tom’s not feeling too bucked about it all, you say?”

“He’s groaning like a lost soul. And any chance I ever had of getting that money out of him has gone.”

I stroked the chin thoughtfully. There was, I had to admit, reason in what she said. None knew better than I how terrible a blow the passing of Anatole would be to Uncle Tom.

I have stated earlier in this chronicle that this curious object of the seashore with whom Aunt Dahlia has linked her lot is a bloke who habitually looks like a pterodactyl that has suffered, and the reason he does so is that all those years he spent in making millions in the Far East put his digestion on the blink, and the only cook that has ever been discovered capable of pushing food into him without starting something like Old Home Week in Moscow under the third waistcoat button is this uniquely gifted Anatole. Deprived of Anatole’s services, all he was likely to give the wife of his b. was a dirty look. Yes, unquestionably, things seemed to have struck a somewhat rocky patch, and I must admit that I found myself, at moment of going to press, a little destitute of constructive ideas.

Confident, however, that these would come ere long, I kept the stiff upper lip.

“Bad,” I conceded. “Quite bad, beyond a doubt. Certainly a nasty jar for one and all. But have no fear, Aunt Dahlia, I will fix everything.”

I have alluded earlier to the difficulty of staggering when you’re sitting down, showing that it is a feat of which I, personally, am not capable. Aunt Dahlia, to my amazement, now did it apparently without an effort. She was well wedged into a deep arm-chair, but, nevertheless, she staggered like billy-o. A sort of spasm of horror and apprehension contorted her face.

“If you dare to try any more of your lunatic schemes----”

I saw that it would be fruitless to try to reason with her. Quite plainly, she was not in the vein. Contenting myself, accordingly, with a gesture of loving sympathy, I left the room. Whether she did or did not throw a handsomely bound volume of the Works of Alfred, Lord Tennyson, at me, I am not in a position to say. I had seen it lying on the table beside her, and as I closed the door I remember receiving the impression that some blunt instrument had crashed against the woodwork, but I was feeling too pre-occupied to note and observe.

I blame myself for not having taken into consideration the possible effects of a sudden abstinence on the part of virtually the whole strength of the company on one of Anatole’s impulsive Provençal temperament. These Gauls, I should have remembered, can’t take it. Their tendency to fly off the handle at the slightest provocation is well known. No doubt the man had put his whole soul into those _nonnettes de poulet_, and to see them come homing back to him must have gashed him like a knife.

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 sand-bagged.

“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 ‘Hullo,’ 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?”