“But you can’t force a man to talk about newts.”
“Mr. Fink-Nottle was the victim of a sudden unfortunate spasm of
nervousness, sir. Upon finding himself alone with the young lady, he
admits to having lost his morale. In such circumstances, gentlemen
frequently talk at random, saying the first thing that chances to enter
their heads. This, in Mr. Fink-Nottle’s case, would seem to have been
the newt, its treatment in sickness and in health.”
The scales fell from my eyes. I understood. I had had the same sort
of thing happen to me in moments of crisis. I remember once detaining
a dentist with the drill at one of my lower bicuspids and holding him
up for nearly ten minutes with a story about a Scotchman, an Irishman,
and a Jew. Purely automatic. The more he tried to jab, the more I said
“Hoots, mon,” “Begorrah,” and “Oy, oy”. When one loses one’s nerve, one
simply babbles.
I could put myself in Gussie’s place. I could envisage the scene. There
he and the Bassett were, alone together in the evening stillness. No
doubt, as I had advised, he had shot the works about sunsets and fairy
princesses, and so forth, and then had arrived at the point where he
had to say that bit about having something to say to her. At this, I
take it, she lowered her eyes and said, “Oh, yes?”
He then, I should imagine, said it was something very important; to
which her response would, one assumes, have been something on the lines
of “Really?” or “Indeed?” or possibly just the sharp intake of the
breath. And then their eyes met, just as mine met the dentist’s, and
something suddenly seemed to catch him in the pit of the stomach and
everything went black and he heard his voice starting to drool about
newts. Yes, I could follow the psychology.
Nevertheless, I found myself blaming Gussie. On discovering that he was
stressing the newt note in this manner, he ought, of course, to have
tuned out, even if it had meant sitting there saying nothing. No matter
how much of a twitter he was in, he should have had sense enough to
see that he was throwing a spanner into the works. No girl, when she
has been led to expect that a man is about to pour forth his soul in a
fervour of passion, likes to find him suddenly shelving the whole topic
in favour of an address on aquatic Salamandridae.
“Bad, Jeeves.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And how long did this nuisance continue?”
“For some not inconsiderable time, I gather, sir. According to Mr.
Fink-Nottle, he supplied Miss Bassett with very full and complete
information not only with respect to the common newt, but also the
crested and palmated varieties. He described to her how newts, during
the breeding season, live in the water, subsisting upon tadpoles,
insect larvae, and crustaceans; how, later, they make their way to the
land and eat slugs and worms; and how the newly born newt has three
pairs of long, plumlike, external gills. And he was just observing
that newts differ from salamanders in the shape of the tail, which
is compressed, and that a marked sexual dimorphism prevails in most
species, when the young lady rose and said that she thought she would
go back to the house.”
“And then----”
“She went, sir.”
I stood musing. More and more, it was beginning to be borne in upon
me what a particularly difficult chap Gussie was to help. He seemed
to so marked an extent to lack snap and finish. With infinite toil,
you manoeuvred him into a position where all he had to do was charge
ahead, and he didn’t charge ahead, but went off sideways, missing the
objective completely.
“Difficult, Jeeves.”
“Yes, sir.”
In happier circs., of course, I would have canvassed his views on
the matter. But after what had occurred in connection with that
mess-jacket, my lips were sealed.
“Well, I must think it over.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Burnish the brain a bit and endeavour to find the way out.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, good night, Jeeves.”
“Good night, sir.”
He shimmered off, leaving a pensive Bertram Wooster standing motionless
in the shadows. It seemed to me that it was hard to know what to do for
the best.
-12-
I don’t know if it has happened to you at all, but a thing I’ve noticed
with myself is that, when I’m confronted by a problem which seems for
the moment to stump and baffle, a good sleep will often bring the
solution in the morning.
It was so on the present occasion.
The nibs who study these matters claim, I believe, that this has got
something to do with the subconscious mind, and very possibly they may
be right. I wouldn’t have said off-hand that I had a subconscious mind,
but I suppose I must without knowing it, and no doubt it was there,
sweating away diligently at the old stand, all the while the corporeal
Wooster was getting his eight hours.
For directly I opened my eyes on the morrow, I saw daylight. Well, I
don’t mean that exactly, because naturally I did. What I mean is that I
found I had the thing all mapped out. The good old subconscious m. had
delivered the goods, and I perceived exactly what steps must be taken
in order to put Augustus Fink-Nottle among the practising Romeos.
I should like you, if you can spare me a moment of your valuable time,
to throw your mind back to that conversation he and I had had in the
garden on the previous evening. Not the glimmering landscape bit, I
don’t mean that, but the concluding passages of it. Having done so, you
will recall that when he informed me that he never touched alcoholic
liquor, I shook the head a bit, feeling that this must inevitably
weaken him as a force where proposing to girls was concerned.
And events had shown that my fears were well founded.
Put to the test, with nothing but orange juice inside him, he had
proved a complete bust. In a situation calling for words of molten
passion of a nature calculated to go through Madeline Bassett like
a red-hot gimlet through half a pound of butter, he had said not a
syllable that could bring a blush to the cheek of modesty, merely
delivering a well-phrased but, in the circumstances, quite misplaced
lecture on newts.
A romantic girl is not to be won by such tactics. Obviously, before
attempting to proceed further, Augustus Fink-Nottle must be induced to
throw off the shackling inhibitions of the past and fuel up. It must be
a primed, confident Fink-Nottle who squared up to the Bassett for Round
No. 2.
Only so could the _Morning Post_ make its ten bob, or whatever it is,
for printing the announcement of the forthcoming nuptials.
Having arrived at this conclusion I found the rest easy, and by the
time Jeeves brought me my tea I had evolved a plan complete in every
detail. This I was about to place before him--indeed, I had got as far
as the preliminary “I say, Jeeves”--when we were interrupted by the
arrival of Tuppy.
He came listlessly into the room, and I was pained to observe that
a night’s rest had effected no improvement in the unhappy wreck’s
appearance. Indeed, I should have said, if anything, that he was
looking rather more moth-eaten than when I had seen him last. If you
can visualize a bulldog which has just been kicked in the ribs and had
its dinner sneaked by the cat, you will have Hildebrand Glossop as he
now stood before me.
“Stap my vitals, Tuppy, old corpse,” I said, concerned, “you’re looking
pretty blue round the rims.”
Jeeves slid from the presence in that tactful, eel-like way of his, and
I motioned the remains to take a seat.
“What’s the matter?” I said.
He came to anchor on the bed, and for awhile sat picking at the
coverlet in silence.
“I’ve been through hell, Bertie.”
“Through where?”
“Hell.”
“Oh, hell? And what took you there?”
Once more he became silent, staring before him with sombre eyes.
Following his gaze, I saw that he was looking at an enlarged photograph
of my Uncle Tom in some sort of Masonic uniform which stood on
the mantelpiece. I’ve tried to reason with Aunt Dahlia about this
photograph for years, placing before her two alternative suggestions:
(a) To burn the beastly thing; or (b) if she must preserve it, to shove
me in another room when I come to stay. But she declines to accede. She
says it’s good for me. A useful discipline, she maintains, teaching me
that there is a darker side to life and that we were not put into this
world for pleasure only.
“Turn it to the wall, if it hurts you, Tuppy,” I said gently.
“Eh?”
“That photograph of Uncle Tom as the bandmaster.”
“I didn’t come here to talk about photographs. I came for sympathy.”
“And you shall have it. What’s the trouble? Worrying about Angela,
I suppose? Well, have no fear. I have another well-laid plan for
encompassing that young shrimp. I’ll guarantee that she will be weeping
on your neck before yonder sun has set.”
He barked sharply.
“A fat chance!”
“Tup, Tushy!”
“Eh?”
“I mean ‘Tush, Tuppy.’ I tell you I will do it. I was just going to
describe this plan of mine to Jeeves when you came in. Care to hear it?”
“I don’t want to hear any of your beastly plans. Plans are no good.
She’s gone and fallen in love with this other bloke, and now hates my
gizzard.”
“Rot.”
“It isn’t rot.”
“I tell you, Tuppy, as one who can read the female heart, that this
Angela loves you still.”
“Well, it didn’t look much like it in the larder last night.”
“Oh, you went to the larder last night?”
“I did.”
“And Angela was there?”
“She was. And your aunt. Also your uncle.”
I saw that I should require foot-notes. All this was new stuff to me.
I had stayed at Brinkley Court quite a lot in my time, but I had no
idea the larder was such a social vortex. More like a snack bar on a
race-course than anything else, it seemed to have become.
“Tell me the whole story in your own words,” I said, “omitting no
detail, however apparently slight, for one never knows how important
the most trivial detail may be.”
He inspected the photograph for a moment with growing gloom.
“All right,” he said. “This is what happened. You know my views about
that steak-and-kidney pie.”
“Quite.”
“Well, round about one a.m. I thought the time was ripe. I stole from
my room and went downstairs. The pie seemed to beckon me.”