“He did, did he? He specifically recommended that definite costume?”
“Yes.”
“Ha!”
“Eh?”
“Nothing. Just ‘Ha!’”
And I’ll tell you why I said “Ha!” Here was Jeeves making heavy weather
about me wearing a perfectly ordinary white mess jacket, a garment not
only _tout ce qu’il y a de chic_, but absolutely _de rigueur_, and in
the same breath, as you might say, inciting Gussie Fink-Nottle to be a
blot on the London scene in scarlet tights. Ironical, what? One looks
askance at this sort of in-and-out running.
“What has he got against Pierrots?”
“I don’t think he objects to Pierrots as Pierrots. But in my case he
thought a Pierrot wouldn’t be adequate.”
“I don’t follow that.”
“He said that the costume of Pierrot, while pleasing to the eye, lacked
the authority of the Mephistopheles costume.”
“I still don’t get it.”
“Well, it’s a matter of psychology, he said.”
There was a time when a remark like that would have had me snookered.
But long association with Jeeves has developed the Wooster vocabulary
considerably. Jeeves has always been a whale for the psychology of the
individual, and I now follow him like a bloodhound when he snaps it out
of the bag.
“Oh, psychology?”
“Yes. Jeeves is a great believer in the moral effect of clothes. He
thinks I might be emboldened in a striking costume like this. He said
a Pirate Chief would be just as good. In fact, a Pirate Chief was his
first suggestion, but I objected to the boots.”
I saw his point. There is enough sadness in life without having fellows
like Gussie Fink-Nottle going about in sea boots.
“And are you emboldened?”
“Well, to be absolutely accurate, Bertie, old man, no.”
A gust of compassion shook me. After all, though we had lost touch a
bit of recent years, this man and I had once thrown inked darts at each
other.
“Gussie,” I said, “take an old friend’s advice, and don’t go within a
mile of this binge.”
“But it’s my last chance of seeing her. She’s off tomorrow to stay with
some people in the country. Besides, you don’t know.”
“Don’t know what?”
“That this idea of Jeeves’s won’t work. I feel a most frightful chump
now, yes, but who can say whether that will not pass off when I get
into a mob of other people in fancy dress. I had the same experience
as a child, one year during the Christmas festivities. They dressed me
up as a rabbit, and the shame was indescribable. Yet when I got to the
party and found myself surrounded by scores of other children, many
in costumes even ghastlier than my own, I perked up amazingly, joined
freely in the revels, and was able to eat so hearty a supper that I was
sick twice in the cab coming home. What I mean is, you can’t tell in
cold blood.”