"Not another word, Jeeves," I said. "You have gone too far. Hats, yes.
Socks, yes. Coats, trousers, shirts, ties, and spats, absolutely. On
all these things I defer to your judgment. But when it comes to vases,
no."
"Very good, sir."
"You say that this vase is not in harmony with the appointments of the
room--whatever that means, if anything. I deny this, Jeeves, _in toto_.
I like this vase. I call it decorative, striking, and, all in all, an
exceedingly good fifteen bobs' worth."
"Very good, sir."
"That's that, then. If anybody rings up, I shall be closeted during the
next hour with Mr. Sipperley at the offices of the _Mayfair Gazette_."
I beetled off with a fairish amount of restrained hauteur, for I was
displeased with the man. On the previous afternoon, while sauntering
along the Strand, I had found myself wedged into one of those sort of
alcove places where fellows with voices like fog horns stand all day
selling things by auction. And, though I was still vague as to how
exactly it happened, I had somehow become the possessor of a large
china vase with crimson dragons on it. And not only dragons, but
birds, dogs, snakes, and a thing that looked like a leopard. This
menagerie was now stationed on a bracket over the door of my sitting
room.
I liked the thing. It was bright and cheerful. It caught the eye. And
that was why, when Jeeves, wincing a bit, had weighed in with some
perfectly gratuitous art criticism, I ticked him off with no little
vim. _Ne sutor ultra_ whatever-it-is, I would have said to him, if I'd
thought of it. I mean to say, where does a valet get off, censoring
vases? Does it fall within his province to knock the young master's
chinaware? Absolutely not, and so I told him.
I was still pretty heartily hipped when I reached the office of the
_Mayfair Gazette_, and it would have been a relief to my feelings to
have decanted my troubles on to old Sippy, who, being a very dear old
pal of mine, would no doubt have understood and sympathized. But when
the office boy had slipped me through into the inner cubbyhole where
the old lad performed his editorial duties, he seemed so preoccupied
that I hadn't the heart.
All these editor blokes, I understand, get pretty careworn after
they've been at the job for awhile. Six months before, Sippy had been a
cheery cove, full of happy laughter; but at that time he was what they
call a free lance, bunging in a short story here and a set of verses
there and generally enjoying himself. Ever since he had become editor
of this rag, I had sensed a change, so to speak.
To-day he looked more editorial than ever; so, shelving my own worries
for the nonce, I endeavoured to cheer him up by telling him how much
I had enjoyed his last issue. As a matter of fact, I hadn't read it,
but we Woosters do not shrink from subterfuge when it is a question of
bracing up a buddy.
The treatment was effective. He showed animation and verve.
"You really liked it?"
"Red-hot, old thing."
"Full of good stuff, eh?"
"Packed."
"That poem--'Solitude'?"
"What a gem!"
"A genuine masterpiece."
"Pure tabasco. Who wrote it?"
"It was signed," said Sippy, a little coldly.
"I keep forgetting names."
"It was written," said Sippy, "by Miss Gwendolen Moon. Have you ever
met Miss Moon, Bertie?"
"Not to my knowledge. Nice girl?"
"My God!" said Sippy.
I looked at him keenly. If you ask my aunt Agatha she will tell you--in
fact, she is quite likely to tell you even if you don't ask her--that
I am a vapid and irreflective chump. "Barely sentient," was the way
she once described me: and I'm not saying that in a broad, general
sense she isn't right. But there is one department of life in which
I am Hawkshaw the detective in person. I can recognize Love's Young
Dream more quickly than any other bloke of my weight and age in the
metropolis. So many of my pals have copped it in the past few years
that now I can spot it a mile off on a foggy day. Sippy was leaning
back in his chair, chewing a piece of India rubber with a far-off look
in his eyes, and I formed my diagnosis instantly.
"Tell me all, laddie," I said.
"Bertie, I love her."
"Have you told her so?"
"How can I?"
"I don't see why not. Quite easy to bring into the general
conversation."
Sippy groaned hollowly.
"Do you know what it is, Bertie, to feel the humility of a worm?"
"Rather! I do sometimes with Jeeves. But to-day he went too far. You
will scarcely credit it, old man, but he had the crust to criticize a
vase which----"
"She is so far above me."
"Tall girl?"
"Spiritually. She is all soul. And what am I? Earthy."
"Would you say that?"
"I would. Have you forgotten that a year ago I did thirty days without
the option for punching a policeman in the stomach on Boat Race Night?"
"But you were whiffled at the time."
"Exactly. What right has an inebriated jail bird to aspire to a
goddess?"
My heart bled for the poor old chap.
"Aren't you exaggerating things a trifle, old lad?" I said. "Everybody
who has had a gentle upbringing gets a bit sozzled on Boat Race Night,
and the better element nearly always have trouble with the gendarmes."
He shook his head.
"It's no good, Bertie. You mean well, but words are useless. No, I can
but worship from afar. When I am in her presence a strange dumbness
comes over me. My tongue seems to get entangled with my tonsils. I
could no more muster up the nerve to propose to her than.... Come in!"
he shouted.
For, just as he was beginning to go nicely and display a bit of
eloquence, a knock had sounded on the door. In fact, not so much a
knock as a bang--or even a slosh. And there now entered a large,
important-looking bird with penetrating eyes, a Roman nose, and high
cheek bones. Authoritative. That's the word I want. I didn't like his
collar, and Jeeves would have had a thing or two to say about the sit
of his trousers; but, nevertheless, he was authoritative. There was
something compelling about the man. He looked like a traffic policeman.
"Ah, Sipperley!" he said.
Old Sippy displayed a good deal of agitation. He had leaped from his
chair, and was now standing in a constrained attitude, with a sort of
pop-eyed expression on his face.
"Pray be seated, Sipperley," said the cove. He took no notice of me.
After one keen glance and a brief waggle of the nose in my direction,
he had washed Bertram out of his life. "I have brought you another
little offering--ha! Look it over at your leisure, my dear fellow."
"Yes, sir," said Sippy.
"I think you will enjoy it. But there is just one thing. I should be
glad, Sipperley, if you would give it a leetle better display, a rather
more prominent position in the paper than you accorded to my 'Landmarks
of Old Tuscany.' I am quite aware that in a weekly journal space is a
desideratum, but one does not like one's efforts to be--I can only say
pushed away in a back corner among advertisements of bespoke tailors
and places of amusement." He paused, and a nasty gleam came into his
eyes. "You will bear this in mind, Sipperley?"
"Yes, sir," said Sippy.
"I am greatly obliged, my dear fellow," said the cove, becoming
genial again. "You must forgive my mentioning it. I would be the last
person to attempt to dictate the--ha!--editorial policy, but----Well,
good-afternoon, Sipperley. I will call for your decision at three
o'clock to-morrow."
He withdrew, leaving a gap in the atmosphere about ten feet by six.
When this had closed in I sat up.
"What was that?" I said.
I was startled to observe poor old Sippy apparently go off his onion.
He raised his hands over his head, clutched his hair, wrenched it about
for a while, kicked a table with great violence, and then flung himself
into his chair.
"Curse him!" said Sippy. "May he tread on a banana skin on his way to
chapel and sprain both ankles!"
"Who was he?"
"May he get frog-in-the-throat and be unable to deliver the end-of-term
sermon!"
"Yes, but who was he?"
"My old head master, Bertie," said Sippy.
"Yes, but, my dear old soul----"
"Head master of my old school." He gazed at me in a distraught sort of
way. "Good Lord! Can't you understand the position?"
"Not by a jugful, laddie."
Sippy sprang from his chair and took a turn or two up and down the
carpet.
"How do you feel," he said, "when you meet the head master of your old
school?"
"I never do. He's dead."
"Well, I'll tell you how I feel. I feel as if I were in the Lower
Fourth again, and had been sent up by my form master for creating a
disturbance in school. That happened once, Bertie, and the memory still
lingers. I can recall it as if it were yesterday--knocking at old
Waterbury's door and hearing him say, 'Come in!' like a lion roaring
at an early Christian, and going in and shuffling my feet on the mat
and him looking at me and me explaining--and then, after what seemed
a lifetime, bending over and receiving six of the juiciest on the old
spot with a cane that bit like an adder. And whenever he comes into my
office now the old wound begins to trouble me, and I just say, 'Yes,
sir,' and 'No, sir,' and feel like a kid of fourteen."
I began to grasp the posish. The whole trouble with these fellows
like Sippy, who go in for writing, is that they develop the artistic
temperament, and you never know when it is going to break out.
"He comes in here with his pockets full of articles on 'The Old School
Cloisters' and 'Some Little-Known Aspects of Tacitus,' and muck like
that, and I haven't the nerve to refuse them. And this is supposed to
be a paper devoted to the lighter interests of Society."
"You must be firm, Sippy. Firm, old thing."
"How can I, when the sight of him makes me feel like a piece of chewed
blotting paper? When he looks at me over that nose my morale goes blue
at the roots and I am back at school again. It's persecution, Bertie.
And the next thing that'll happen is that my proprietor will spot one
of those articles, assume with perfect justice that if I can print that
sort of thing I must be going off my chump, and fire me."