“Egad, Jeeves! Fancy that. It’s a small world, isn’t it, what?”
“The young lady is an acquaintance of yours, sir?”
“I know her well. Your news has relieved my mind, Jeeves. It makes
the whole thing begin to seem far more like a practical working
proposition.”
“Indeed, sir?”
“Absolutely. I confess that until you supplied this information I was
feeling profoundly dubious about poor old Gussie’s chances of inducing
any spinster of any parish to join him in the saunter down the aisle.
You will agree with me that he is not everybody’s money.”
“There may be something in what you say, sir.”
“Cleopatra wouldn’t have liked him.”
“Possibly not, sir.”
“And I doubt if he would go any too well with Tallulah Bankhead.”
“No, sir.”
“But when you tell me that the object of his affections is Miss
Bassett, why, then, Jeeves, hope begins to dawn a bit. He’s just the
sort of chap a girl like Madeline Bassett might scoop in with relish.”
This Bassett, I must explain, had been a fellow visitor of ours at
Cannes; and as she and Angela had struck up one of those effervescent
friendships which girls do strike up, I had seen quite a bit of her.
Indeed, in my moodier moments it sometimes seemed to me that I could
not move a step without stubbing my toe on the woman.
And what made it all so painful and distressing was that the more we
met, the less did I seem able to find to say to her.
You know how it is with some girls. They seem to take the stuffing
right out of you. I mean to say, there is something about their
personality that paralyses the vocal cords and reduces the contents
of the brain to cauliflower. It was like that with this Bassett and
me; so much so that I have known occasions when for minutes at a
stretch Bertram Wooster might have been observed fumbling with the
tie, shuffling the feet, and behaving in all other respects in her
presence like the complete dumb brick. When, therefore, she took her
departure some two weeks before we did, you may readily imagine that,
in Bertram’s opinion, it was not a day too soon.
It was not her beauty, mark you, that thus numbed me. She was a pretty
enough girl in a droopy, blonde, saucer-eyed way, but not the sort of
breath-taker that takes the breath.
No, what caused this disintegration in a usually fairly fluent prattler
with the sex was her whole mental attitude. I don’t want to wrong
anybody, so I won’t go so far as to say that she actually wrote poetry,
but her conversation, to my mind, was of a nature calculated to excite
the liveliest suspicions. Well, I mean to say, when a girl suddenly
asks you out of a blue sky if you don’t sometimes feel that the stars
are God’s daisy-chain, you begin to think a bit.
As regards the fusing of her soul and mine, therefore, there was
nothing doing. But with Gussie, the posish was entirely different. The
thing that had stymied me--viz. that this girl was obviously all loaded
down with ideals and sentiment and what not--was quite in order as far
as he was concerned.
Gussie had always been one of those dreamy, soulful birds--you can’t
shut yourself up in the country and live only for newts, if you’re
not--and I could see no reason why, if he could somehow be induced to
get the low, burning words off his chest, he and the Bassett shouldn’t
hit it off like ham and eggs.
“She’s just the type for him,” I said.
“I am most gratified to hear it, sir.”
“And he’s just the type for her. In fine, a good thing and one to be
pushed along with the utmost energy. Strain every nerve, Jeeves.”
“Very good, sir,” replied the honest fellow. “I will attend to the
matter at once.”
Now up to this point, as you will doubtless agree, what you might call
a perfect harmony had prevailed. Friendly gossip between employer and
employed, and everything as sweet as a nut. But at this juncture, I
regret to say, there was an unpleasant switch. The atmosphere suddenly
changed, the storm clouds began to gather, and before we knew where we
were, the jarring note had come bounding on the scene. I have known
this to happen before in the Wooster home.
The first intimation I had that things were about to hot up was a
pained and disapproving cough from the neighbourhood of the carpet.
For, during the above exchanges, I should explain, while I, having
dried the frame, had been dressing in a leisurely manner, donning here
a sock, there a shoe, and gradually climbing into the vest, the shirt,
the tie, and the knee-length, Jeeves had been down on the lower level,
unpacking my effects.
He now rose, holding a white object. And at the sight of it, I realized
that another of our domestic crises had arrived, another of those
unfortunate clashes of will between two strong men, and that Bertram,
unless he remembered his fighting ancestors and stood up for his
rights, was about to be put upon.
I don’t know if you were at Cannes this summer. If you were, you will
recall that anybody with any pretensions to being the life and soul of
the party was accustomed to attend binges at the Casino in the ordinary
evening-wear trouserings topped to the north by a white mess-jacket
with brass buttons. And ever since I had stepped aboard the Blue Train
at Cannes station, I had been wondering on and off how mine would go
with Jeeves.
In the matter of evening costume, you see, Jeeves is hidebound and
reactionary. I had had trouble with him before about soft-bosomed
shirts. And while these mess-jackets had, as I say, been all the
rage--_tout ce qu’il y a de chic_--on the Côte d’Azur, I had never
concealed it from myself, even when treading the measure at the Palm
Beach Casino in the one I had hastened to buy, that there might be
something of an upheaval about it on my return.