“‘Uncouth’ about sums it up. I doubt if I’ve ever seen an uncouther kid
than this Glossop. Ask anyone who knew him in those days to describe
him in a word, and the word they will use is ‘uncouth’. And he’s just
the same today. It’s the old story. The boy is the father of the man.”
She appeared not to have heard.
“The boy,” I repeated, not wishing her to miss that one, “is the father
of the man.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about this Glossop.”
“I thought you said something about somebody’s father.”
“I said the boy was the father of the man.”
“What boy?”
“The boy Glossop.”
“He hasn’t got a father.”
“I never said he had. I said he was the father of the boy--or, rather,
of the man.”
“What man?”
I saw that the conversation had reached a point where, unless care was
taken, we should be muddled.
“The point I am trying to make,” I said, “is that the boy Glossop is
the father of the man Glossop. In other words, each loathsome fault and
blemish that led the boy Glossop to be frowned upon by his fellows is
present in the man Glossop, and causes him--I am speaking now of the
man Glossop--to be a hissing and a byword at places like the Drones,
where a certain standard of decency is demanded from the inmates. Ask
anyone at the Drones, and they will tell you that it was a black day
for the dear old club when this chap Glossop somehow wriggled into
the list of members. Here you will find a man who dislikes his face;
there one who could stand his face if it wasn’t for his habits. But the
universal consensus of opinion is that the fellow is a bounder and a
tick, and that the moment he showed signs of wanting to get into the
place he should have been met with a firm _nolle prosequi_ and heartily
blackballed.”
I had to pause again here, partly in order to take in a spot of breath,
and partly to wrestle with the almost physical torture of saying these
frightful things about poor old Tuppy.
“There are some chaps,” I resumed, forcing myself once more to the
nauseous task, “who, in spite of looking as if they had slept in their
clothes, can get by quite nicely because they are amiable and suave.
There are others who, for all that they excite adverse comment by being
fat and uncouth, find themselves on the credit side of the ledger
owing to their wit and sparkling humour. But this Glossop, I regret
to say, falls into neither class. In addition to looking like one of
those things that come out of hollow trees, he is universally admitted
to be a dumb brick of the first water. No soul. No conversation. In
short, any girl who, having been rash enough to get engaged to him,
has managed at the eleventh hour to slide out is justly entitled to
consider herself dashed lucky.”
I paused once more, and cocked an eye at Angela to see how the
treatment was taking. All the while I had been speaking, she had
sat gazing silently into the bushes, but it seemed to me incredible
that she should not now turn on me like a tigress, according to
specifications. It beat me why she hadn’t done it already. It seemed
to me that a mere tithe of what I had said, if said to a tigress about
a tiger of which she was fond, would have made her--the tigress, I
mean--hit the ceiling.
And the next moment you could have knocked me down with a toothpick.
“Yes,” she said, nodding thoughtfully, “you’re quite right.”
“Eh?”
“That’s exactly what I’ve been thinking myself.”
“What!”
“‘Dumb brick.’ It just describes him. One of the six silliest asses in
England, I should think he must be.”
I did not speak. I was endeavouring to adjust the faculties, which were
in urgent need of a bit of first-aid treatment.
I mean to say, all this had come as a complete surprise. In formulating
the well-laid plan which I had just been putting into effect, the
one contingency I had not budgeted for was that she might adhere to
the sentiments which I expressed. I had braced myself for a gush of
stormy emotion. I was expecting the tearful ticking off, the girlish
recriminations and all the rest of the bag of tricks along those lines.
But this cordial agreement with my remarks I had not foreseen, and it
gave me what you might call pause for thought.
She proceeded to develop her theme, speaking in ringing, enthusiastic
tones, as if she loved the topic. Jeeves could tell you the word I
want. I think it’s “ecstatic”, unless that’s the sort of rash you get
on your face and have to use ointment for. But if that is the right
word, then that’s what her manner was as she ventilated the subject of
poor old Tuppy. If you had been able to go simply by the sound of her
voice, she might have been a court poet cutting loose about an Oriental
monarch, or Gussie Fink-Nottle describing his last consignment of newts.
“It’s so nice, Bertie, talking to somebody who really takes a sensible
view about this man Glossop. Mother says he’s a good chap, which is
simply absurd. Anybody can see that he’s absolutely impossible. He’s
conceited and opinionative and argues all the time, even when he knows
perfectly well that he’s talking through his hat, and he smokes too
much and eats too much and drinks too much, and I don’t like the colour
of his hair. Not that he’ll have any hair in a year or two, because
he’s pretty thin on the top already, and before he knows where he is
he’ll be as bald as an egg, and he’s the last man who can afford to
go bald. And I think it’s simply disgusting, the way he gorges all
the time. Do you know, I found him in the larder at one o’clock this
morning, absolutely wallowing in a steak-and-kidney pie? There was
hardly any of it left. And you remember what an enormous dinner he
had. Quite disgusting, I call it. But I can’t stop out here all night,
talking about men who aren’t worth wasting a word on and haven’t even
enough sense to tell sharks from flatfish. I’m going in.”
And gathering about her slim shoulders the shawl which she had put on
as a protection against the evening dew, she buzzed off, leaving me
alone in the silent night.
Well, as a matter of fact, not absolutely alone, because a few moments
later there was a sort of upheaval in the bushes in front of me, and
Tuppy emerged.
-15-
I gave him the eye. The evening had begun to draw in a bit by now
and the visibility, in consequence, was not so hot, but there still
remained ample light to enable me to see him clearly. And what I saw
convinced me that I should be a lot easier in my mind with a stout
rustic bench between us. I rose, accordingly, modelling my style on
that of a rocketing pheasant, and proceeded to deposit myself on the
other side of the object named.
My prompt agility was not without its effect. He seemed somewhat taken
aback. He came to a halt, and, for about the space of time required to
allow a bead of persp. to trickle from the top of the brow to the tip
of the nose, stood gazing at me in silence.
“So!” he said at length, and it came as a complete surprise to me that
fellows ever really do say “So!” I had always thought it was just
a thing you read in books. Like “Quotha!” I mean to say, or “Odds
bodikins!” or even “Eh, ba goom!”
Still, there it was. Quaint or not quaint, bizarre or not bizarre, he
had said “So!” and it was up to me to cope with the situation on those
lines.
It would have been a duller man than Bertram Wooster who had failed
to note that the dear old chap was a bit steamed up. Whether his eyes
were actually shooting forth flame, I couldn’t tell you, but there
appeared to me to be a distinct incandescence. For the rest, his fists
were clenched, his ears quivering, and the muscles of his jaw rotating
rhythmically, as if he were making an early supper off something.
His hair was full of twigs, and there was a beetle hanging to the side
of his head which would have interested Gussie Fink-Nottle. To this,
however, I paid scant attention. There is a time for studying beetles
and a time for not studying beetles.
“So!” he said again.
Now, those who know Bertram Wooster best will tell you that he is
always at his shrewdest and most level-headed in moments of peril. Who
was it who, when gripped by the arm of the law on boat-race night not
so many years ago and hauled off to Vine Street police station, assumed
in a flash the identity of Eustace H. Plimsoll, of The Laburnums,
Alleyn Road, West Dulwich, thus saving the grand old name of Wooster
from being dragged in the mire and avoiding wide publicity of the wrong
sort? Who was it ...
But I need not labour the point. My record speaks for itself. Three
times pinched, but never once sentenced under the correct label. Ask
anyone at the Drones about this.
So now, in a situation threatening to become every moment more scaly, I
did not lose my head. I preserved the old sang-froid. Smiling a genial
and affectionate smile, and hoping that it wasn’t too dark for it to
register, I spoke with a jolly cordiality:
“Why, hallo, Tuppy. You here?”
He said, yes, he was here.
“Been here long?”
“I have.”
“Fine. I wanted to see you.”
“Well, here I am. Come out from behind that bench.”
“No, thanks, old man. I like leaning on it. It seems to rest the spine.”
“In about two seconds,” said Tuppy, “I’m going to kick your spine up
through the top of your head.”
I raised the eyebrows. Not much good, of course, in that light, but it
seemed to help the general composition.
“Is this Hildebrand Glossop speaking?” I said.
He replied that it was, adding that if I wanted to make sure I might
move a few feet over in his direction. He also called me an opprobrious
name.