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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 deal. I am referring to your behaviour towards my fiancee. 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?'
'Sir?'
'I ask because he's prowling around as if Midian was his home
town. Let me tell you all about it.'
'I fear it will not be feasible, sir. The gong is sounding.'
'So it is. Who's sounding it? You said Seppings was in bed.'
'The parlourmaid, sir, deputizing for Mr Seppings.'
'I like her wrist work. Well, I'll tell you later.'
'Very good, sir. Pardon me, your tie.'
'What's wrong with it?'
'Everything, sir. If you will allow me.'
'All right, go ahead. But I can't help asking myself if ties
really matter at a time like this.'
There is no time when ties do not matter, sir.'
My mood was sombre as I went down to dinner. Anatole, I was
thinking, would no doubt give us of his best, possibly his Timbale
de ris de veau Toulousaine or his Sylphides a la creme
d'ecrevisses, but Spode would be there and Madeline would be there
and Florence would be there and L. P. Runkle would be there.
There was, I reflected, always something.
It has been well said of Bertram Wooster that when he sets his
hand to the plough he does not stop to pick daisies and let the
grass grow under his feet. Many men in my position, having
undertaken to canvass for a friend anxious to get into Parliament,
would have waited till after lunch next day to get rolling, saying
to themselves Oh, what difference do a few hours make and going off
to the billiard-room for a game or two of snooker. I, in sharp
contradistinction as I have heard Jeeves call it, was on my way
shortly after breakfast. It can't have been much more than a
quarter to eleven when, fortified by a couple of kippers, toast,
marmalade and three cups of coffee, I might have been observed
approaching a row of houses down by the river to which someone with
a flair for the mot juste had given the name of River Row. From
long acquaintance with the town I knew that this was one of the
posher parts of Market Snodsbury, stiff with householders likely to
favour the Conservative cause, and it was for that reason that I
was making it my first port of call. No sense, I mean, in starting
off with the less highly priced localities where everybody was
bound to vote Labour and would not only turn a deaf ear to one's
reasoning but might even bung a brick at one. Ginger no doubt had a
special posse of tough supporters, talking and spitting out of the
side of their mouths, and they would attend to the brick-bunging
portion of the electorate.
Jeeves was at my side, but whereas I had selected Number One as
my objective, his intention was to push on to Number Two. I would
then give Number Three the treatment, while he did the same to
Number Four. Talking it over, we had decided that if we made it a
double act and blew into a house together, it might give the
occupant the impression that he was receiving a visit from the
plain clothes police and excite him unduly. Many of the men who
live in places like River Row have a tendency to apoplectic fits as
the result of high living, and a voter expiring on the floor from
shock means a voter less on the voting list. One has to think of
these things.
'What beats me, Jeeves,' I said, for I was in thoughtful mood,
'is why people don't object to somebody they don't know from Adam
muscling into their homes without a ... without a what? It's on the
tip of my tongue.'
'A With-your-leave or a By-your-leave, sir?'
'That's right. Without a With-your-leave or a By-your-leave and
telling them which way to vote. Taking a liberty, it strikes me
as.'
'It is the custom at election time, sir. Custom reconciles us
to everything, a wise man once said.'
'Shakespeare?'
'Burke, sir. You will find the apothegm in his On The Sublime
And Beautiful. I think the electors, conditioned by many years of
canvassing, would be disappointed if nobody called on them.'
'So we shall be bringing a ray of sunshine into their drab
lives?'
'Something on that order, sir.'
'Well, you may be right. Have you ever done this sort of thing
before?'
'Once or twice, sir, before I entered your employment.'
'What were your methods?'
'I outlined as briefly as possible the main facets of my
argument, bade my auditors goodbye, and withdrew.'
'No preliminaries?'
'Sir?'
'You didn't make a speech of any sort before getting down to
brass tacks? No mention of Burke or Shakespeare or the poet Burns?'
'No, sir. It might have caused exasperation.'
I disagreed with him. I felt that he was on the wrong track
altogether and couldn't expect anything in the nature of a triumph
at Number Two. There is probably nothing a voter enjoys more than
hearing the latest about Burke and his On The Sublime And
Beautiful, and here he was, deliberately chucking away the
advantages his learning gave him. I had half a mind to draw his
attention to the Parable of the Talents, with which I had become
familiar when doing research for that Scripture Knowledge prize I
won at school. Time, however, was getting along, so I passed it up.
But I told him I thought he was mistaken. Preliminaries, I
maintained, were of the essence. Breaking the ice is what it's
called. I mean, you can't just barge in on a perfect stranger and
get off the mark with an abrupt 'Hoy there. I hope you're going to
vote for my candidate!' How much better to say 'Good morning, sir.
I can see at a glance that you are a man of culture, probably never
happier than when reading your Burke. I wonder if you are familiar
with his On The Sublime And Beautiful?' Then away you go, off to a
nice start.
'You must have an approach,' I said. 'I myself am all for the
jolly, genial. I propose, on meeting my householder, to begin with
a jovial "Hullo there, Mr Whatever-it-is, hullo there", thus
ingratiating myself with him from the kick-off. I shall then tell
him a funny story. Then, and only then, will I get to the nub -
waiting, of course, till he has stopped laughing. I can't fail.'
'I am sure you will not, sir. The system would not suit me, but
it is merely a matter of personal taste.'
'The psychology of the individual, what?'
'Precisely, sir. By different methods different men excel.'
'Burke?'
'Charles Churchill, sir, a poet who flourished in the early
eighteenth century. The words occur in his Epistle To William
Hogarth.'
We halted. Cutting out a good pace, we had arrived at the door
of Number One. I pressed the bell.
'Zero hour, Jeeves,' I said gravely.
'Yes, sir.'
'Carry on.'
'Very good, sir.'
'Heaven speed your canvassing.'
'Thank you, sir.'
'And mine.'
'Yes, sir.'
He pushed along and mounted the steps of Number Two, leaving me
feeling rather as I had done in my younger days at a clergyman
uncle's place in Kent when about to compete in the Choir Boys
Bicycle Handicap open to all those whose voices had not broken by
the first Sunday in Epiphany - nervous, but full of the will to
win.
The door opened as I was running through the high spots of the
laughable story I planned to unleash when I got inside. A maid was
standing there, and conceive my emotion when I recognized her as
one who had held office under Aunt Dahlia the last time I had
enjoyed the latter's hospitality; the one with whom, the old sweats
will recall, I had chewed the fat on the subject of the cat
Augustus and his tendency to pass his days in sleep instead of
bustling about and catching mice.
The sight of her friendly face was like a tonic. My morale,
which had begun to sag a bit after Jeeves had left me, rose
sharply, closing at nearly par. I felt that even if the fellow I
was going to see kicked me downstairs, she would be there to show
me out and tell me that these things are sent to try us, with the
general idea of making us more spiritual.
'Why, hullo!' I said.
'Good morning, sir.'
'We meet again.'
'Yes, sir.'
'You remember me?'
'Oh yes, sir.'
'And you have not forgotten Augustus?'
'Oh no, sir.'
'He's still as lethargic as ever. He joined me at breakfast
this morning, fust managed to keep awake while getting outside his
portion of kipper, then fell into a dreamless sleep at the end of
the bed with his head hanging down. So you have resigned your
portfolio at Aunt Dahlia's since we last met. Too bad. We shall all
miss you. Do you like it here?'
'Oh yes, sir.'
'That's the spirit. Well, getting down to business, I've come
to see your boss on a matter of considerable importance. What sort
of chap is he? Not too short-tempered? Not too apt to be cross with
callers, I hope?'
'It isn't a gentleman, sir, it's a lady. Mrs McCorkadale.'
This chipped quite a bit off the euphoria I was feeling. I had
been relying on the story I had prepared to put me over with a
bang, carrying me safely through the first awkward moments when the
fellow you've called on without an invitation is staring at you as
if wondering to what he owes the honour of this visit, and now it
would have to remain untold. It was one I had heard from Catsmeat
Potter-Pirbright at the Drones and it was essentially a conte whose
spiritual home was the smoking-room of a London club or the men's
wash-room on an American train - in short, one by no means adapted
to the ears of the gentle sex; especially a member of that sex who
probably ran the local Watch Committee.
It was, consequently, a somewhat damped Bertram Wooster whom
the maid ushered into the drawing-room, and my pep was in no way
augmented by the first sight I had of mine hostess. Mrs McCorkadale
was what I would call a grim woman. Not so grim as my Aunt Agatha,
perhaps, for that could hardly be expected, but certainly well up
in the class of Jael the wife of Heber and the Madame Whoever-it-
was who used to sit and knit at the foot of the guillotine during
the French Revolution. She had a beaky nose, tight thin lips, and
her eye could have been used for splitting logs in the teak forests
of Borneo. Seeing her steadily and seeing her whole, as the
expression is, one marvelled at the intrepidity of Mr McCorkadale
in marrying her - a man obviously whom nothing could daunt.
However, I had come there to be jolly and genial, and jolly and
genial I was resolved to be. Actors will tell you that on these
occasions, when the soul is a-twitter and the nervous system not
like mother makes it, the thing to do is to take a deep breath. I
took three, and immediately felt much better.
'Good morning, good morning, good morning,' I said. 'Good
morning,' I added, rubbing it in, for it was my policy to let there
be no stint.
'Good morning,' she replied, and one might have totted things
up as so far, so good. But if I said she said it cordially, I would
be deceiving my public. The impression I got was that the sight of
me hurt her in some sensitive spot. The woman, it was plain, shared
Spode's view of what was needed to make England a land fit for
heroes to live in.
Not being able to uncork the story and finding the way her eye
was going through me like a dose of salts more than a little trying
to my already dented sangfroid, I might have had some difficulty in
getting the conversation going, but fortunately I was full of good
material just waiting to be decanted. Over an after-dinner smoke on
the previous night Ginger had filled me in on what his crowd
proposed to do when they got down to it. They were going, he said,
to cut taxes to the bone, straighten out our foreign policy, double
our export trade, have two cars in the garage and two chickens in
the pot for everyone and give the pound the shot in the arm it had
been clamouring for for years. Than which, we both agreed, nothing
could be sweeter, and I saw no reason to suppose that the
McCorkadale gargoyle would not feel the same. I began, therefore,
by asking her if she had a vote, and she said Yes, of course, and I
said Well, that was fine, because if she hadn't had, the point of
my arguments would have been largely lost.
'An excellent thing, I've always thought, giving women the
vote,' I proceeded heartily, and she said -rather nastily, it
seemed to me - that she was glad I approved. 'When you cast yours,
if cast is the word I want, I strongly advise you to cast it in
favour of Ginger Winship.'
'On what do you base that advice?'
She couldn't have given me a better cue. She had handed it to
me on a plate with watercress round it. Like a flash I went into my
sales talk, mentioning Ginger's attitude towards taxes, our foreign
policy, our export trade, cars in the garage, chickens in the pot
and first aid for the poor old pound, and was shocked to observe an
entire absence of enthusiasm on her part. Not a ripple appeared on
the stern and rockbound coast of her map. She looked like Aunt
Agatha listening to the boy Wooster trying to explain away a
drawing-room window broken by a cricket ball.
I pressed her closely, or do I mean keenly.
'You want taxes cut, don't you?'
'I do.'
'And our foreign policy bumped up?'
'Certainly.'
'And our exports doubled and a stick of dynamite put under the
pound? I'll bet you do. Then vote for Ginger Winship, the man who
with his hand on the helm of the ship of state will steer England
to prosperity and happiness, bringing back once more the spacious
days of Good Queen Bess.' This was a line of talk that Jeeves had
roughed out for my use. There was also some rather good stuff about
this sceptred isle and this other Eden, demi-something, but I had
forgotten it. 'You can't say that wouldn't be nice,' I said.
A moment before, I wouldn't have thought it possible that she
could look more like Aunt Agatha than she had been doing, but she
now achieved this breathtaking feat. She sniffed, if not snorted,
and spoke as follows:
'Young man, don't be idiotic. Hand on the helm of the ship of
state, indeed! If Mr Winship performs the miracle of winning this
election, which he won't, he will be an ordinary humble back-
bencher, doing nothing more notable than saying "Hear, hear" when
his superiors are speaking and "Oh" and "Question" when the
opposition have the floor. As,' she went on, 'I shall if I win this
election, as I intend to.'
I blinked. A sharp 'Whatwasthatyousaid?' escaped my lips, and
she proceeded to explain or, as Jeeves would say, elucidate.
'You are not very quick at noticing things, are you? I imagine
not, or you would have seen that Market Snodsbury is liberally
plastered with posters bearing the words "Vote for McCorkadale". An
abrupt way of putting it, but one that is certainly successful in
conveying its meaning.'
It was a blow, I confess, and I swayed beneath it like an
aspen, if aspens are those things that sway. The Woosters can take
a good deal, but only so much. My most coherent thought at the
moment was that it was just like my luck, when I sallied forth as a
canvasser, to collide first crack out of the box with the rival
candidate. I also had the feeling that if Jeeves had taken on
Number One instead of Number Two, he would probably have persuaded
Ma McCorkadale to vote against herself.
I suppose if you had asked Napoleon how he had managed to get
out of Moscow, he would have been a bit vague about it, and it was
the same with me. I found myself on the front steps with only a
sketchy notion of how I had got there, and I was in the poorest of
shapes. To try to restore the shattered system I lit a cigarette
and had begun to puff, when a cheery voice hailed me and I became
aware that some foreign substance was sharing my doorstep. 'Hullo,
Wooster old chap' it was saying and, the mists clearing from before
my eyes, I saw that it was Bingley.
I gave the blighter a distant look. Knowing that this blot on
the species resided in Market Snodsbury, I had foreseen that I
might run into him sooner or later, so I was not surprised to see
him. But I certainly wasn't pleased. The last thing I wanted in the
delicate state to which the McCorkadale had reduced me was
conversation with a man who set cottages on fire and chased the
hand that fed him hither and thither with a carving knife.
He was as unduly intimate, forward, bold, intrusive and
deficient in due respect as he had been at the Junior Ganymede. He
gave my back a cordial slap and would, I think, have prodded me in
the ribs if it had occurred to him. You wouldn't have thought that
carving knives had ever come between us.
'And what are you doing in these parts, cocky?' he asked.
I said I was visiting my aunt Mrs Travers, who had a house in
the vicinity, and he said he knew the place, though he had never
met the old geezer to whom I referred.
'I've seen her around. Red-faced old girl, isn't she?'
'Fairly vermilion.'
'High blood pressure, probably.'
'Or caused by going in a lot for hunting. It chaps the cheeks.'
'Different from a barmaid. She cheeks the chaps.'
If he had supposed that his crude humour would get so much as a
simper out of me, he was disappointed. I preserved the cold
aloofness of a Wednesday matinee audience, and he proceeded.
'Yes, that might be it. She looks a sport. Making a long stay?'
'I don't know,' I said, for the length of my visits to the old
ancestor is always uncertain. So much depends on whether she throws
me out or not. 'Actually I'm here to canvass for the Conservative
candidate. He's a pal of mine.'
He whistled sharply. He had been looking repulsive and
cheerful; he now looked repulsive and grave. Seeming to realize
that he had omitted a social gesture, he prodded me in the ribs.
'You're wasting your time, Wooster, old man,' he said. 'He
hasn't an earthly.'
'No?' I quavered. It was simply one man's opinion, of course,
but the earnestness with which he had spoken was unquestionably
impressive. 'What makes you think that?'
'Never you mind what makes me think it. Take my word for it. If
you're sensible, you'll phone your bookie and have a big bet on
McCorkadale. You'll never regret it. You'll come to me later and
thank me for the tip with tears in your -'
At some point in this formal interchange of thoughts by spoken
word, as Jeeves's Dictionary of Synonyms puts it, he must have
pressed the bell, for at this moment the door opened and my old
buddy the maid appeared. Quickly adding the word 'eyes', he turned
to her.
'Mrs McCorkadale in, dear?' he asked, and having been responded
to in the affirmative he left me, and I headed for home. I ought,
of course, to have carried on along River Row, taking the odd
numbers while Jeeves attended to the even, but I didn't feel in the
vein.
I was uneasy. You might say, if you happened to know the word,
that the prognostications of a human wart like Bingley deserved
little credence, but he had spoken with such conviction, so like
someone who has heard something, that I couldn't pass them off with
a light laugh.
Brooding tensely, I reached the old homestead and found the
ancestor lying on a chaise longue, doing the Observer crossword
puzzle.
There was a time when this worthy housewife, tackling the
Observer crossword puzzle, would snort and tear her hair and fill
the air with strange oaths picked up from cronies on the hunting
field, but consistent inability to solve more than about an eighth
of the clues has brought a sort of dull resignation and today she
merely sits and stares at it, knowing that however much she licks
the end of her pencil little or no business will result.
As I came in, I heard her mutter, soliloquizing like someone in
Shakespeare, 'Measured tread of saint round St Paul's, for God's
sake', seeming to indicate that she had come up against a hot one,
and I think it was a relief to her to become aware that her
favourite nephew was at her side and that she could conscientiously
abandon her distasteful task, for she looked up and greeted me
cheerily. She wears tortoiseshell-rimmed spectacles for reading
which make her look like a fish in an aquarium. She peered at me
through these.
'Hullo, my bounding Bertie.'
'Good morning, old ancestor.'
'Up already?'
'I have been up some time.'
'Then why aren't you out canvassing? And why are you looking
like something the cat brought in?'
I winced. I had not intended to disclose the recent past, but
with an aunt's perception she had somehow spotted that in some
manner I had passed through the furnace and she would go on probing
and questioning till I came clean. Any capable aunt can give
Scotland Yard inspectors strokes and bisques in the matter of
interrogating a suspect, and I knew that all attempts at
concealment would be fruitless. Or is it bootless? I would have to
check with Jeeves.
'I am looking like something the cat brought in because I am
feeling like something the c.b. in,' I said. 'Aged relative, I have
a strange story to relate. Do you know a local blister of the name
of Mrs McCorkadale?'
'Who lives in River Row?'
'That's the one.'
'She's a barrister.'
'She looks it.'
'You've met her?'
'I've met her.'
'She's Ginger's opponent in this election.'
'I know. Is Mr McCorkadale still alive?'
'Died years ago. He got run over by a municipal tram.'
'I don't blame him. I'd have done the same myself in his place.
It's the only course to pursue when you're married to a woman like
that.'
'How did you meet her?'
'I called on her to urge her to vote for Ginger,' I said, and
in a few broken words I related my strange story.
It went well. In fact, it went like a breeze. Myself, I was
unable to see anything humorous in it, but there was no doubt about
it entertaining the blood relation. She guffawed more liberally
than I had ever heard a woman guffaw. If there had been an aisle,
she would have rolled in it. I couldn't help feeling how ironical
it was that, having failed so often to be well received when
telling a funny story, I should have aroused such gales of mirth
with one that was so essentially tragic.
While she was still giving her impersonation of a hyena which
has just heard a good one from another hyena, Spode came in,
choosing the wrong moment as usual. One never wants to see Spode,
but least of all when someone is having a hearty laugh at your
expense.
'I'm looking for the notes for my speech tomorrow,' he said.
'Hullo, what's the joke?'
Convulsed as she was, it was not easy for the ancestor to
articulate, but she managed a couple of words.
'It's Bertie.'
'Oh?' said Spode, looking at me as if he found it difficult to
believe that any word or act of mine could excite mirth and not
horror and disgust.
'He's just been calling on Mrs McCorkadale.'
'Oh?'
'And asking her to vote for Ginger Winship.'
'Oh?' said Spode again. I have already indicated that he was a
compulsive Oh-sayer. 'Well, it is what I would have expected of
him,' and with another look in which scorn and animosity were
nicely blended and a word to the effect that he might have left
those notes in the summerhouse by the lake he removed his
distasteful presence.
That he and I were not on Damon and Pythias terms seemed to
have impressed itself on the aged relative. She switched off the
hyena sound effects.
'Not a bonhomous type, Spode.'
'No.'
'He doesn't like you.'
'No.'
'And I don't think he likes me.'
'No,' I said, and it occurred to me, for the Woosters are
essentially fairminded, that it was hardly for me to criticize
Spode's Oh's when my No's were equally frequent. Why beholdest thou
the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam
that is in thine own eye, Wooster? I found myself asking myself, it
having been one of the many good things I had picked up in my
researches when I won that Scripture Knowledge prize.
'Does he like anyone?' said the relative. 'Except, presumably,
Madeline Bassett.'
'He seems fond of L. P. Runkle.'
'What makes you think that?'
'I overheard them exchanging confidences.'
'Oh?' said the relative, for these things are catching. 'Well,
I suppose one ought not to be surprised. Birds of a feather -'
'Flock together?'
'Exactly. And even the dregs of pond life fraternize with other
dregs of pond life. By the way, remind me to tell you something
about L. P. Runkle.'
'Right ho.'
'We will come to L. P. Runkle later. This animosity of Spode's,
is it just the memory of old Totleigh days, or have you done
anything lately to incur his displeasure?'
This time I had no hesitation in telling her all. I felt she
would be sympathetic. I laid the facts before her with every
confidence that an aunt's condolences would result.
'There was this gnat.'
'I don't follow you.'
'I had to rally round.'
'You've still lost me.'
'Spode didn't like it.'
'So he doesn't like gnats either. Which gnat? What gnat? Will
you get on with your story, curse you, starting at the beginning
and carrying on to the end.'
'Certainly, if you wish. Here is the scenario.'
I told her about the gnat in Madeline's eye, the part I had
played in restoring her vision to mid-season form and the exception
Spode had taken to my well-meant efforts. She whistled. Everyone
seemed to be whistling at me today. Even the recent maid on
recognizing me had puckered up her lips as if about to.
'I wouldn't do that sort of thing again,' she said.
'If the necessity arose I would have no option.'
'Then you'd better get one as soon as possible.
Because if you keep on taking things out of Madeline's eye, you
may have to marry the girl.'
'But surely the peril has passed now that she's engaged to
Spode.'
'I don't know so much. I think there's some trouble between
Spode and Madeline.'
I would be surprised to learn that in the whole W.1 postal
section of London there is a man more capable than Bertram Wooster
of bearing up with a stiff upper lip under what I have heard Jeeves
call the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune; but at these
frightful words I confess that I went into my old aspen routine
even more wholeheartedly than I had done during my get-together
with the relict of the late McCorkadale.
And not without reason. My whole foreign policy was based on
the supposition that the solidarity of these two consenting adults
was something that couldn't be broken or even cracked. He, on his
own statement, had worshipped her since she was so high, while she,
as I have already recorded, would not lightly throw a man of his
eligibility into the discard. If ever there was a union which you
could have betted with perfect confidence would culminate in a
golden wedding with all the trimmings, this was the one.
'Trouble?' I whispered hoarsely. 'You mean there's a what-d'you-
call-it?'
'What would that be?'
'A rift within the lute which widens soon and makes the music
mute. Not my own, Jeeves's.'
'The evidence points in that direction. At dinner last night I
noticed that he was refusing Anatole's best, while she looked wan
and saintlike and crumbled bread. And talking of Anatole's best,
what I wanted to tell you about L. P. Runkle was that zero hour is
approaching. I am crouching for my spring and have strong hopes
that Tuppy will soon be in the money.'
I clicked the tongue. Nobody could be keener than I on seeing
Tuppy dip into L. P. Runkle's millions, but this was no time to
change the subject.
'Never mind about Tuppy for the moment. Concentrate on the
sticky affairs of Bertram Wilberforce Wooster.'
'Wilberforce,' she murmured, as far as a woman of her
outstanding lung power could murmur. 'Did I ever tell you how you
got that label? It was your father's doing. The day before you were
lugged to the font looking like a minor actor playing a bit part in
a gangster film he won a packet on an outsider in the Grand
National called that, and he insisted on you carrying on the name.
Tough on you, but we all have our cross to bear. Your Uncle Tom's
second name is Portarlington, and I came within an ace of being
christened Phyllis.'
I rapped her sharply on the top-knot with a paper-knife of
Oriental design, the sort that people in novels of suspense are
always getting stabbed in the back with.
'Don't wander from the res. The fact that you nearly got
christened Phyllis will, no doubt, figure in your autobiography,
but we need not discuss it now. What we are talking about is the
ghastly peril that confronts me if the Madeline-Spode axis blows a
fuse.'
'You mean that if she breaks her engagement, you will have to
fill the vacuum?'
'Exactly.'
'She won't. Not a chance.'
'But you said -'
'I only wanted to emphasize my warning to you not to keep on
taking gnats out of Madeline's eyes. Perhaps I overdid it.'
'You chilled me to the marrow.'
'Sorry I was so dramatic. You needn't worry. They've only had a
lovers' tiff such as occurs with the mushiest couples.'
'What about?'
'How do I know? Perhaps he queried her statement that the stars
were God's daisy chain.'
I had to admit that there was something in this theory.
Madeline's breach with Gussie Fink-Nottle had been caused by her
drawing his attention to the sunset and saying sunsets always made
her think of the Blessed Damozel leaning out from the gold bar of
heaven, and he said, 'Who?' and she said, 'The Blessed Damozel',
and he said, 'Never heard of her', adding that sunsets made him
sick, and so did the Blessed Damozel. A girl with her outlook would
be bound to be touchy about stars and daisy chains.
'It's probably over by now,' said the ancestor. 'All the same,
you'd better keep away from the girl. Spode's an impulsive man. He
might slosh you.'
'He said he would.'
'He used the word slosh?'
'No, but he assured me he would butter me over the front lawn
and dance on the remains with hobnailed boots.'
'Much the same thing. So I would be careful if I were you.
Treat her with distant civility. If you see any more gnats headed
in her direction, hold their coats and wish them luck, but restrain
the impulse to mix in.'
'I will.'
'I hope I have relieved your fears?'
'You have, old flesh-and-blood.'
'Then why the furrows in your brow?'
'Oh, those? It's Ginger.'
'What's Ginger?'
'He's why my brow is furrowed.'
It shows how profoundly the thought of Madeline Bassett
possibly coming into circulation again had moved me that it was
only now that I had remembered Bingley and what he had said about
the certainty of Ginger finishing as an also-ran in the election. I
burned with shame and remorse that I should have allowed my
personal troubles to make me shove him down to the foot of the
agenda paper in this scurvy manner. Long ere this I ought to have
been inviting Aunt Dahlia's views on his prospects. Not doing so
amounted to letting a pal down, a thing I pride myself on never
being guilty of. Little wonder that I b.'d with s. and r.
I hastened to make amends, if those are what you make when you
have done the dirty on a fellow you love like a brother.
'Did I ever mention a bloke called Bingley to you?'
'If you did. I've forgotten.'
'He was my personal attendant for a brief space when Jeeves and
I differed about me playing the banjolele. That time when I had a
cottage down at Chufnell Regis.'
'Oh yes, he set it on fire, didn't he?'
'While tight as an owl. It was burned to a cinder, as was my
banjolele.'
'I've got him placed now. What about him?'
'He lives in Market Snodsbury. I met him this morning and
happened to mention that I was canvassing for Ginger.'
'If you can call it canvassing.'
'And he told me I was wasting my time. He advised me to have a
substantial bet on Ma McCorkadale. He said Ginger hadn't an
earthly.'
'He's a fool.'
'I must say I've always thought so, but he spoke as if he had
inside information.'
'What on earth information could he have? An election isn't a
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 deal. I am referring to your behaviour towards my fiancee. 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?'
'Sir?'
'I ask because he's prowling around as if Midian was his home
town. Let me tell you all about it.'
'I fear it will not be feasible, sir. The gong is sounding.'
'So it is. Who's sounding it? You said Seppings was in bed.'
'The parlourmaid, sir, deputizing for Mr Seppings.'
'I like her wrist work. Well, I'll tell you later.'
'Very good, sir. Pardon me, your tie.'
'What's wrong with it?'
'Everything, sir. If you will allow me.'
'All right, go ahead. But I can't help asking myself if ties
really matter at a time like this.'
There is no time when ties do not matter, sir.'
My mood was sombre as I went down to dinner. Anatole, I was
thinking, would no doubt give us of his best, possibly his Timbale
de ris de veau Toulousaine or his Sylphides a la creme
d'ecrevisses, but Spode would be there and Madeline would be there
and Florence would be there and L. P. Runkle would be there.
There was, I reflected, always something.
It has been well said of Bertram Wooster that when he sets his
hand to the plough he does not stop to pick daisies and let the
grass grow under his feet. Many men in my position, having
undertaken to canvass for a friend anxious to get into Parliament,
would have waited till after lunch next day to get rolling, saying
to themselves Oh, what difference do a few hours make and going off
to the billiard-room for a game or two of snooker. I, in sharp
contradistinction as I have heard Jeeves call it, was on my way
shortly after breakfast. It can't have been much more than a
quarter to eleven when, fortified by a couple of kippers, toast,
marmalade and three cups of coffee, I might have been observed
approaching a row of houses down by the river to which someone with
a flair for the mot juste had given the name of River Row. From
long acquaintance with the town I knew that this was one of the
posher parts of Market Snodsbury, stiff with householders likely to
favour the Conservative cause, and it was for that reason that I
was making it my first port of call. No sense, I mean, in starting
off with the less highly priced localities where everybody was
bound to vote Labour and would not only turn a deaf ear to one's
reasoning but might even bung a brick at one. Ginger no doubt had a
special posse of tough supporters, talking and spitting out of the
side of their mouths, and they would attend to the brick-bunging
portion of the electorate.
Jeeves was at my side, but whereas I had selected Number One as
my objective, his intention was to push on to Number Two. I would
then give Number Three the treatment, while he did the same to
Number Four. Talking it over, we had decided that if we made it a
double act and blew into a house together, it might give the
occupant the impression that he was receiving a visit from the
plain clothes police and excite him unduly. Many of the men who
live in places like River Row have a tendency to apoplectic fits as
the result of high living, and a voter expiring on the floor from
shock means a voter less on the voting list. One has to think of
these things.
'What beats me, Jeeves,' I said, for I was in thoughtful mood,
'is why people don't object to somebody they don't know from Adam
muscling into their homes without a ... without a what? It's on the
tip of my tongue.'
'A With-your-leave or a By-your-leave, sir?'
'That's right. Without a With-your-leave or a By-your-leave and
telling them which way to vote. Taking a liberty, it strikes me
as.'
'It is the custom at election time, sir. Custom reconciles us
to everything, a wise man once said.'
'Shakespeare?'
'Burke, sir. You will find the apothegm in his On The Sublime
And Beautiful. I think the electors, conditioned by many years of
canvassing, would be disappointed if nobody called on them.'
'So we shall be bringing a ray of sunshine into their drab
lives?'
'Something on that order, sir.'
'Well, you may be right. Have you ever done this sort of thing
before?'
'Once or twice, sir, before I entered your employment.'
'What were your methods?'
'I outlined as briefly as possible the main facets of my
argument, bade my auditors goodbye, and withdrew.'
'No preliminaries?'
'Sir?'
'You didn't make a speech of any sort before getting down to
brass tacks? No mention of Burke or Shakespeare or the poet Burns?'
'No, sir. It might have caused exasperation.'
I disagreed with him. I felt that he was on the wrong track
altogether and couldn't expect anything in the nature of a triumph
at Number Two. There is probably nothing a voter enjoys more than
hearing the latest about Burke and his On The Sublime And
Beautiful, and here he was, deliberately chucking away the
advantages his learning gave him. I had half a mind to draw his
attention to the Parable of the Talents, with which I had become
familiar when doing research for that Scripture Knowledge prize I
won at school. Time, however, was getting along, so I passed it up.
But I told him I thought he was mistaken. Preliminaries, I
maintained, were of the essence. Breaking the ice is what it's
called. I mean, you can't just barge in on a perfect stranger and
get off the mark with an abrupt 'Hoy there. I hope you're going to
vote for my candidate!' How much better to say 'Good morning, sir.
I can see at a glance that you are a man of culture, probably never
happier than when reading your Burke. I wonder if you are familiar
with his On The Sublime And Beautiful?' Then away you go, off to a
nice start.
'You must have an approach,' I said. 'I myself am all for the
jolly, genial. I propose, on meeting my householder, to begin with
a jovial "Hullo there, Mr Whatever-it-is, hullo there", thus
ingratiating myself with him from the kick-off. I shall then tell
him a funny story. Then, and only then, will I get to the nub -
waiting, of course, till he has stopped laughing. I can't fail.'
'I am sure you will not, sir. The system would not suit me, but
it is merely a matter of personal taste.'
'The psychology of the individual, what?'
'Precisely, sir. By different methods different men excel.'
'Burke?'
'Charles Churchill, sir, a poet who flourished in the early
eighteenth century. The words occur in his Epistle To William
Hogarth.'
We halted. Cutting out a good pace, we had arrived at the door
of Number One. I pressed the bell.
'Zero hour, Jeeves,' I said gravely.
'Yes, sir.'
'Carry on.'
'Very good, sir.'
'Heaven speed your canvassing.'
'Thank you, sir.'
'And mine.'
'Yes, sir.'
He pushed along and mounted the steps of Number Two, leaving me
feeling rather as I had done in my younger days at a clergyman
uncle's place in Kent when about to compete in the Choir Boys
Bicycle Handicap open to all those whose voices had not broken by
the first Sunday in Epiphany - nervous, but full of the will to
win.
The door opened as I was running through the high spots of the
laughable story I planned to unleash when I got inside. A maid was
standing there, and conceive my emotion when I recognized her as
one who had held office under Aunt Dahlia the last time I had
enjoyed the latter's hospitality; the one with whom, the old sweats
will recall, I had chewed the fat on the subject of the cat
Augustus and his tendency to pass his days in sleep instead of
bustling about and catching mice.
The sight of her friendly face was like a tonic. My morale,
which had begun to sag a bit after Jeeves had left me, rose
sharply, closing at nearly par. I felt that even if the fellow I
was going to see kicked me downstairs, she would be there to show
me out and tell me that these things are sent to try us, with the
general idea of making us more spiritual.
'Why, hullo!' I said.
'Good morning, sir.'
'We meet again.'
'Yes, sir.'
'You remember me?'
'Oh yes, sir.'
'And you have not forgotten Augustus?'
'Oh no, sir.'
'He's still as lethargic as ever. He joined me at breakfast
this morning, fust managed to keep awake while getting outside his
portion of kipper, then fell into a dreamless sleep at the end of
the bed with his head hanging down. So you have resigned your
portfolio at Aunt Dahlia's since we last met. Too bad. We shall all
miss you. Do you like it here?'
'Oh yes, sir.'
'That's the spirit. Well, getting down to business, I've come
to see your boss on a matter of considerable importance. What sort
of chap is he? Not too short-tempered? Not too apt to be cross with
callers, I hope?'
'It isn't a gentleman, sir, it's a lady. Mrs McCorkadale.'
This chipped quite a bit off the euphoria I was feeling. I had
been relying on the story I had prepared to put me over with a
bang, carrying me safely through the first awkward moments when the
fellow you've called on without an invitation is staring at you as
if wondering to what he owes the honour of this visit, and now it
would have to remain untold. It was one I had heard from Catsmeat
Potter-Pirbright at the Drones and it was essentially a conte whose
spiritual home was the smoking-room of a London club or the men's
wash-room on an American train - in short, one by no means adapted
to the ears of the gentle sex; especially a member of that sex who
probably ran the local Watch Committee.
It was, consequently, a somewhat damped Bertram Wooster whom
the maid ushered into the drawing-room, and my pep was in no way
augmented by the first sight I had of mine hostess. Mrs McCorkadale
was what I would call a grim woman. Not so grim as my Aunt Agatha,
perhaps, for that could hardly be expected, but certainly well up
in the class of Jael the wife of Heber and the Madame Whoever-it-
was who used to sit and knit at the foot of the guillotine during
the French Revolution. She had a beaky nose, tight thin lips, and
her eye could have been used for splitting logs in the teak forests
of Borneo. Seeing her steadily and seeing her whole, as the
expression is, one marvelled at the intrepidity of Mr McCorkadale
in marrying her - a man obviously whom nothing could daunt.
However, I had come there to be jolly and genial, and jolly and
genial I was resolved to be. Actors will tell you that on these
occasions, when the soul is a-twitter and the nervous system not
like mother makes it, the thing to do is to take a deep breath. I
took three, and immediately felt much better.
'Good morning, good morning, good morning,' I said. 'Good
morning,' I added, rubbing it in, for it was my policy to let there
be no stint.
'Good morning,' she replied, and one might have totted things
up as so far, so good. But if I said she said it cordially, I would
be deceiving my public. The impression I got was that the sight of
me hurt her in some sensitive spot. The woman, it was plain, shared
Spode's view of what was needed to make England a land fit for
heroes to live in.
Not being able to uncork the story and finding the way her eye
was going through me like a dose of salts more than a little trying
to my already dented sangfroid, I might have had some difficulty in
getting the conversation going, but fortunately I was full of good
material just waiting to be decanted. Over an after-dinner smoke on
the previous night Ginger had filled me in on what his crowd
proposed to do when they got down to it. They were going, he said,
to cut taxes to the bone, straighten out our foreign policy, double
our export trade, have two cars in the garage and two chickens in
the pot for everyone and give the pound the shot in the arm it had
been clamouring for for years. Than which, we both agreed, nothing
could be sweeter, and I saw no reason to suppose that the
McCorkadale gargoyle would not feel the same. I began, therefore,
by asking her if she had a vote, and she said Yes, of course, and I
said Well, that was fine, because if she hadn't had, the point of
my arguments would have been largely lost.
'An excellent thing, I've always thought, giving women the
vote,' I proceeded heartily, and she said -rather nastily, it
seemed to me - that she was glad I approved. 'When you cast yours,
if cast is the word I want, I strongly advise you to cast it in
favour of Ginger Winship.'
'On what do you base that advice?'
She couldn't have given me a better cue. She had handed it to
me on a plate with watercress round it. Like a flash I went into my
sales talk, mentioning Ginger's attitude towards taxes, our foreign
policy, our export trade, cars in the garage, chickens in the pot
and first aid for the poor old pound, and was shocked to observe an
entire absence of enthusiasm on her part. Not a ripple appeared on
the stern and rockbound coast of her map. She looked like Aunt
Agatha listening to the boy Wooster trying to explain away a
drawing-room window broken by a cricket ball.
I pressed her closely, or do I mean keenly.
'You want taxes cut, don't you?'
'I do.'
'And our foreign policy bumped up?'
'Certainly.'
'And our exports doubled and a stick of dynamite put under the
pound? I'll bet you do. Then vote for Ginger Winship, the man who
with his hand on the helm of the ship of state will steer England
to prosperity and happiness, bringing back once more the spacious
days of Good Queen Bess.' This was a line of talk that Jeeves had
roughed out for my use. There was also some rather good stuff about
this sceptred isle and this other Eden, demi-something, but I had
forgotten it. 'You can't say that wouldn't be nice,' I said.
A moment before, I wouldn't have thought it possible that she
could look more like Aunt Agatha than she had been doing, but she
now achieved this breathtaking feat. She sniffed, if not snorted,
and spoke as follows:
'Young man, don't be idiotic. Hand on the helm of the ship of
state, indeed! If Mr Winship performs the miracle of winning this
election, which he won't, he will be an ordinary humble back-
bencher, doing nothing more notable than saying "Hear, hear" when
his superiors are speaking and "Oh" and "Question" when the
opposition have the floor. As,' she went on, 'I shall if I win this
election, as I intend to.'
I blinked. A sharp 'Whatwasthatyousaid?' escaped my lips, and
she proceeded to explain or, as Jeeves would say, elucidate.
'You are not very quick at noticing things, are you? I imagine
not, or you would have seen that Market Snodsbury is liberally
plastered with posters bearing the words "Vote for McCorkadale". An
abrupt way of putting it, but one that is certainly successful in
conveying its meaning.'
It was a blow, I confess, and I swayed beneath it like an
aspen, if aspens are those things that sway. The Woosters can take
a good deal, but only so much. My most coherent thought at the
moment was that it was just like my luck, when I sallied forth as a
canvasser, to collide first crack out of the box with the rival
candidate. I also had the feeling that if Jeeves had taken on
Number One instead of Number Two, he would probably have persuaded
Ma McCorkadale to vote against herself.
I suppose if you had asked Napoleon how he had managed to get
out of Moscow, he would have been a bit vague about it, and it was
the same with me. I found myself on the front steps with only a
sketchy notion of how I had got there, and I was in the poorest of
shapes. To try to restore the shattered system I lit a cigarette
and had begun to puff, when a cheery voice hailed me and I became
aware that some foreign substance was sharing my doorstep. 'Hullo,
Wooster old chap' it was saying and, the mists clearing from before
my eyes, I saw that it was Bingley.
I gave the blighter a distant look. Knowing that this blot on
the species resided in Market Snodsbury, I had foreseen that I
might run into him sooner or later, so I was not surprised to see
him. But I certainly wasn't pleased. The last thing I wanted in the
delicate state to which the McCorkadale had reduced me was
conversation with a man who set cottages on fire and chased the
hand that fed him hither and thither with a carving knife.
He was as unduly intimate, forward, bold, intrusive and
deficient in due respect as he had been at the Junior Ganymede. He
gave my back a cordial slap and would, I think, have prodded me in
the ribs if it had occurred to him. You wouldn't have thought that
carving knives had ever come between us.
'And what are you doing in these parts, cocky?' he asked.
I said I was visiting my aunt Mrs Travers, who had a house in
the vicinity, and he said he knew the place, though he had never
met the old geezer to whom I referred.
'I've seen her around. Red-faced old girl, isn't she?'
'Fairly vermilion.'
'High blood pressure, probably.'
'Or caused by going in a lot for hunting. It chaps the cheeks.'
'Different from a barmaid. She cheeks the chaps.'
If he had supposed that his crude humour would get so much as a
simper out of me, he was disappointed. I preserved the cold
aloofness of a Wednesday matinee audience, and he proceeded.
'Yes, that might be it. She looks a sport. Making a long stay?'
'I don't know,' I said, for the length of my visits to the old
ancestor is always uncertain. So much depends on whether she throws
me out or not. 'Actually I'm here to canvass for the Conservative
candidate. He's a pal of mine.'
He whistled sharply. He had been looking repulsive and
cheerful; he now looked repulsive and grave. Seeming to realize
that he had omitted a social gesture, he prodded me in the ribs.
'You're wasting your time, Wooster, old man,' he said. 'He
hasn't an earthly.'
'No?' I quavered. It was simply one man's opinion, of course,
but the earnestness with which he had spoken was unquestionably
impressive. 'What makes you think that?'
'Never you mind what makes me think it. Take my word for it. If
you're sensible, you'll phone your bookie and have a big bet on
McCorkadale. You'll never regret it. You'll come to me later and
thank me for the tip with tears in your -'
At some point in this formal interchange of thoughts by spoken
word, as Jeeves's Dictionary of Synonyms puts it, he must have
pressed the bell, for at this moment the door opened and my old
buddy the maid appeared. Quickly adding the word 'eyes', he turned
to her.
'Mrs McCorkadale in, dear?' he asked, and having been responded
to in the affirmative he left me, and I headed for home. I ought,
of course, to have carried on along River Row, taking the odd
numbers while Jeeves attended to the even, but I didn't feel in the
vein.
I was uneasy. You might say, if you happened to know the word,
that the prognostications of a human wart like Bingley deserved
little credence, but he had spoken with such conviction, so like
someone who has heard something, that I couldn't pass them off with
a light laugh.
Brooding tensely, I reached the old homestead and found the
ancestor lying on a chaise longue, doing the Observer crossword
puzzle.
There was a time when this worthy housewife, tackling the
Observer crossword puzzle, would snort and tear her hair and fill
the air with strange oaths picked up from cronies on the hunting
field, but consistent inability to solve more than about an eighth
of the clues has brought a sort of dull resignation and today she
merely sits and stares at it, knowing that however much she licks
the end of her pencil little or no business will result.
As I came in, I heard her mutter, soliloquizing like someone in
Shakespeare, 'Measured tread of saint round St Paul's, for God's
sake', seeming to indicate that she had come up against a hot one,
and I think it was a relief to her to become aware that her
favourite nephew was at her side and that she could conscientiously
abandon her distasteful task, for she looked up and greeted me
cheerily. She wears tortoiseshell-rimmed spectacles for reading
which make her look like a fish in an aquarium. She peered at me
through these.
'Hullo, my bounding Bertie.'
'Good morning, old ancestor.'
'Up already?'
'I have been up some time.'
'Then why aren't you out canvassing? And why are you looking
like something the cat brought in?'
I winced. I had not intended to disclose the recent past, but
with an aunt's perception she had somehow spotted that in some
manner I had passed through the furnace and she would go on probing
and questioning till I came clean. Any capable aunt can give
Scotland Yard inspectors strokes and bisques in the matter of
interrogating a suspect, and I knew that all attempts at
concealment would be fruitless. Or is it bootless? I would have to
check with Jeeves.
'I am looking like something the cat brought in because I am
feeling like something the c.b. in,' I said. 'Aged relative, I have
a strange story to relate. Do you know a local blister of the name
of Mrs McCorkadale?'
'Who lives in River Row?'
'That's the one.'
'She's a barrister.'
'She looks it.'
'You've met her?'
'I've met her.'
'She's Ginger's opponent in this election.'
'I know. Is Mr McCorkadale still alive?'
'Died years ago. He got run over by a municipal tram.'
'I don't blame him. I'd have done the same myself in his place.
It's the only course to pursue when you're married to a woman like
that.'
'How did you meet her?'
'I called on her to urge her to vote for Ginger,' I said, and
in a few broken words I related my strange story.
It went well. In fact, it went like a breeze. Myself, I was
unable to see anything humorous in it, but there was no doubt about
it entertaining the blood relation. She guffawed more liberally
than I had ever heard a woman guffaw. If there had been an aisle,
she would have rolled in it. I couldn't help feeling how ironical
it was that, having failed so often to be well received when
telling a funny story, I should have aroused such gales of mirth
with one that was so essentially tragic.
While she was still giving her impersonation of a hyena which
has just heard a good one from another hyena, Spode came in,
choosing the wrong moment as usual. One never wants to see Spode,
but least of all when someone is having a hearty laugh at your
expense.
'I'm looking for the notes for my speech tomorrow,' he said.
'Hullo, what's the joke?'
Convulsed as she was, it was not easy for the ancestor to
articulate, but she managed a couple of words.
'It's Bertie.'
'Oh?' said Spode, looking at me as if he found it difficult to
believe that any word or act of mine could excite mirth and not
horror and disgust.
'He's just been calling on Mrs McCorkadale.'
'Oh?'
'And asking her to vote for Ginger Winship.'
'Oh?' said Spode again. I have already indicated that he was a
compulsive Oh-sayer. 'Well, it is what I would have expected of
him,' and with another look in which scorn and animosity were
nicely blended and a word to the effect that he might have left
those notes in the summerhouse by the lake he removed his
distasteful presence.
That he and I were not on Damon and Pythias terms seemed to
have impressed itself on the aged relative. She switched off the
hyena sound effects.
'Not a bonhomous type, Spode.'
'No.'
'He doesn't like you.'
'No.'
'And I don't think he likes me.'
'No,' I said, and it occurred to me, for the Woosters are
essentially fairminded, that it was hardly for me to criticize
Spode's Oh's when my No's were equally frequent. Why beholdest thou
the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam
that is in thine own eye, Wooster? I found myself asking myself, it
having been one of the many good things I had picked up in my
researches when I won that Scripture Knowledge prize.
'Does he like anyone?' said the relative. 'Except, presumably,
Madeline Bassett.'
'He seems fond of L. P. Runkle.'
'What makes you think that?'
'I overheard them exchanging confidences.'
'Oh?' said the relative, for these things are catching. 'Well,
I suppose one ought not to be surprised. Birds of a feather -'
'Flock together?'
'Exactly. And even the dregs of pond life fraternize with other
dregs of pond life. By the way, remind me to tell you something
about L. P. Runkle.'
'Right ho.'
'We will come to L. P. Runkle later. This animosity of Spode's,
is it just the memory of old Totleigh days, or have you done
anything lately to incur his displeasure?'
This time I had no hesitation in telling her all. I felt she
would be sympathetic. I laid the facts before her with every
confidence that an aunt's condolences would result.
'There was this gnat.'
'I don't follow you.'
'I had to rally round.'
'You've still lost me.'
'Spode didn't like it.'
'So he doesn't like gnats either. Which gnat? What gnat? Will
you get on with your story, curse you, starting at the beginning
and carrying on to the end.'
'Certainly, if you wish. Here is the scenario.'
I told her about the gnat in Madeline's eye, the part I had
played in restoring her vision to mid-season form and the exception
Spode had taken to my well-meant efforts. She whistled. Everyone
seemed to be whistling at me today. Even the recent maid on
recognizing me had puckered up her lips as if about to.
'I wouldn't do that sort of thing again,' she said.
'If the necessity arose I would have no option.'
'Then you'd better get one as soon as possible.
Because if you keep on taking things out of Madeline's eye, you
may have to marry the girl.'
'But surely the peril has passed now that she's engaged to
Spode.'
'I don't know so much. I think there's some trouble between
Spode and Madeline.'
I would be surprised to learn that in the whole W.1 postal
section of London there is a man more capable than Bertram Wooster
of bearing up with a stiff upper lip under what I have heard Jeeves
call the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune; but at these
frightful words I confess that I went into my old aspen routine
even more wholeheartedly than I had done during my get-together
with the relict of the late McCorkadale.
And not without reason. My whole foreign policy was based on
the supposition that the solidarity of these two consenting adults
was something that couldn't be broken or even cracked. He, on his
own statement, had worshipped her since she was so high, while she,
as I have already recorded, would not lightly throw a man of his
eligibility into the discard. If ever there was a union which you
could have betted with perfect confidence would culminate in a
golden wedding with all the trimmings, this was the one.
'Trouble?' I whispered hoarsely. 'You mean there's a what-d'you-
call-it?'
'What would that be?'
'A rift within the lute which widens soon and makes the music
mute. Not my own, Jeeves's.'
'The evidence points in that direction. At dinner last night I
noticed that he was refusing Anatole's best, while she looked wan
and saintlike and crumbled bread. And talking of Anatole's best,
what I wanted to tell you about L. P. Runkle was that zero hour is
approaching. I am crouching for my spring and have strong hopes
that Tuppy will soon be in the money.'
I clicked the tongue. Nobody could be keener than I on seeing
Tuppy dip into L. P. Runkle's millions, but this was no time to
change the subject.
'Never mind about Tuppy for the moment. Concentrate on the
sticky affairs of Bertram Wilberforce Wooster.'
'Wilberforce,' she murmured, as far as a woman of her
outstanding lung power could murmur. 'Did I ever tell you how you
got that label? It was your father's doing. The day before you were
lugged to the font looking like a minor actor playing a bit part in
a gangster film he won a packet on an outsider in the Grand
National called that, and he insisted on you carrying on the name.
Tough on you, but we all have our cross to bear. Your Uncle Tom's
second name is Portarlington, and I came within an ace of being
christened Phyllis.'
I rapped her sharply on the top-knot with a paper-knife of
Oriental design, the sort that people in novels of suspense are
always getting stabbed in the back with.
'Don't wander from the res. The fact that you nearly got
christened Phyllis will, no doubt, figure in your autobiography,
but we need not discuss it now. What we are talking about is the
ghastly peril that confronts me if the Madeline-Spode axis blows a
fuse.'
'You mean that if she breaks her engagement, you will have to
fill the vacuum?'
'Exactly.'
'She won't. Not a chance.'
'But you said -'
'I only wanted to emphasize my warning to you not to keep on
taking gnats out of Madeline's eyes. Perhaps I overdid it.'
'You chilled me to the marrow.'
'Sorry I was so dramatic. You needn't worry. They've only had a
lovers' tiff such as occurs with the mushiest couples.'
'What about?'
'How do I know? Perhaps he queried her statement that the stars
were God's daisy chain.'
I had to admit that there was something in this theory.
Madeline's breach with Gussie Fink-Nottle had been caused by her
drawing his attention to the sunset and saying sunsets always made
her think of the Blessed Damozel leaning out from the gold bar of
heaven, and he said, 'Who?' and she said, 'The Blessed Damozel',
and he said, 'Never heard of her', adding that sunsets made him
sick, and so did the Blessed Damozel. A girl with her outlook would
be bound to be touchy about stars and daisy chains.
'It's probably over by now,' said the ancestor. 'All the same,
you'd better keep away from the girl. Spode's an impulsive man. He
might slosh you.'
'He said he would.'
'He used the word slosh?'
'No, but he assured me he would butter me over the front lawn
and dance on the remains with hobnailed boots.'
'Much the same thing. So I would be careful if I were you.
Treat her with distant civility. If you see any more gnats headed
in her direction, hold their coats and wish them luck, but restrain
the impulse to mix in.'
'I will.'
'I hope I have relieved your fears?'
'You have, old flesh-and-blood.'
'Then why the furrows in your brow?'
'Oh, those? It's Ginger.'
'What's Ginger?'
'He's why my brow is furrowed.'
It shows how profoundly the thought of Madeline Bassett
possibly coming into circulation again had moved me that it was
only now that I had remembered Bingley and what he had said about
the certainty of Ginger finishing as an also-ran in the election. I
burned with shame and remorse that I should have allowed my
personal troubles to make me shove him down to the foot of the
agenda paper in this scurvy manner. Long ere this I ought to have
been inviting Aunt Dahlia's views on his prospects. Not doing so
amounted to letting a pal down, a thing I pride myself on never
being guilty of. Little wonder that I b.'d with s. and r.
I hastened to make amends, if those are what you make when you
have done the dirty on a fellow you love like a brother.
'Did I ever mention a bloke called Bingley to you?'
'If you did. I've forgotten.'
'He was my personal attendant for a brief space when Jeeves and
I differed about me playing the banjolele. That time when I had a
cottage down at Chufnell Regis.'
'Oh yes, he set it on fire, didn't he?'
'While tight as an owl. It was burned to a cinder, as was my
banjolele.'
'I've got him placed now. What about him?'
'He lives in Market Snodsbury. I met him this morning and
happened to mention that I was canvassing for Ginger.'
'If you can call it canvassing.'
'And he told me I was wasting my time. He advised me to have a
substantial bet on Ma McCorkadale. He said Ginger hadn't an
earthly.'
'He's a fool.'
'I must say I've always thought so, but he spoke as if he had
inside information.'
'What on earth information could he have? An election isn't a