“Don’t take all that guff of hers too literally, old man. You know what
girls are like.”
“I do,” he said, with another snort that came straight up from his
insteps. “And I wish I’d never met one.”
“I mean to say, it’s obvious that she must have spotted you in those
bushes and was simply talking to score off you. There you were, I mean,
if you follow the psychology, and she saw you, and in that impulsive
way girls have, she seized the opportunity of ribbing you a bit--just
told you a few home truths, I mean to say.”
“Home truths?”
“That’s right.”
He snorted once more, causing me to feel rather like royalty receiving
a twenty-one gun salute from the fleet. I can’t remember ever having
met a better right-and-left-hand snorter.
“What do you mean, ‘home truths’? I’m not fat.”
“No, no.”
“And what’s wrong with the colour of my hair?”
“Quite in order, Tuppy, old man. The hair, I mean.”
“And I’m not a bit thin on the top.... What the dickens are you
grinning about?”
“Not grinning. Just smiling slightly. I was conjuring up a sort of
vision, if you know what I mean, of you as seen through Angela’s eyes.
Fat in the middle and thin on the top. Rather funny.”
“You think it funny, do you?”
“Not a bit.”
“You’d better not.”
“Quite.”
It seemed to me that the conversation was becoming difficult again.
I wished it could be terminated. And so it was. For at this moment
something came shimmering through the laurels in the quiet evenfall,
and I perceived that it was Angela.
She was looking sweet and saintlike, and she had a plate of sandwiches
in her hand. Ham, I was to discover later.
“If you see Mr. Glossop anywhere, Bertie,” she said, her eyes resting
dreamily on Tuppy’s facade, “I wish you would give him these. I’m so
afraid he may be hungry, poor fellow. It’s nearly ten o’clock, and he
hasn’t eaten a morsel since dinner. I’ll just leave them on this bench.”
She pushed off, and it seemed to me that I might as well go with her.
Nothing to keep me here, I mean. We moved towards the house, and
presently from behind us there sounded in the night the splintering
crash of a well-kicked plate of ham sandwiches, accompanied by the
muffled oaths of a strong man in his wrath.
“How still and peaceful everything is,” said Angela.
-16-
Sunshine was gilding the grounds of Brinkley Court and the ear detected
a marked twittering of birds in the ivy outside the window when I woke
next morning to a new day. But there was no corresponding sunshine in
Bertram Wooster’s soul and no answering twitter in his heart as he
sat up in bed, sipping his cup of strengthening tea. It could not be
denied that to Bertram, reviewing the happenings of the previous night,
the Tuppy-Angela situation seemed more or less to have slipped a cog.
With every desire to look for the silver lining, I could not but feel
that the rift between these two haughty spirits had now reached such
impressive proportions that the task of bridging same would be beyond
even my powers.
I am a shrewd observer, and there had been something in Tuppy’s manner
as he booted that plate of ham sandwiches that seemed to tell me that
he would not lightly forgive.
In these circs., I deemed it best to shelve their problem for the nonce
and turn the mind to the matter of Gussie, which presented a brighter
picture.
With regard to Gussie, everything was in train. Jeeves’s morbid
scruples about lacing the chap’s orange juice had put me to a good deal
of trouble, but I had surmounted every obstacle in the old Wooster
way. I had secured an abundance of the necessary spirit, and it was
now lying in its flask in the drawer of the dressing-table. I had also
ascertained that the jug, duly filled, would be standing on a shelf in
the butler’s pantry round about the hour of one. To remove it from that
shelf, sneak it up to my room, and return it, laced, in good time for
the midday meal would be a task calling, no doubt, for address, but in
no sense an exacting one.
It was with something of the emotions of one preparing a treat for a
deserving child that I finished my tea and rolled over for that extra
spot of sleep which just makes all the difference when there is man’s
work to be done and the brain must be kept clear for it.
And when I came downstairs an hour or so later, I knew how right I
had been to formulate this scheme for Gussie’s bucking up. I ran into
him on the lawn, and I could see at a glance that if ever there was a
man who needed a snappy stimulant, it was he. All nature, as I have
indicated, was smiling, but not Augustus Fink-Nottle. He was walking
round in circles, muttering something about not proposing to detain us
long, but on this auspicious occasion feeling compelled to say a few
words.
“Ah, Gussie,” I said, arresting him as he was about to start another
lap. “A lovely morning, is it not?”
Even if I had not been aware of it already, I could have divined from
the abruptness with which he damned the lovely morning that he was not
in merry mood. I addressed myself to the task of bringing the roses
back to his cheeks.
“I’ve got good news for you, Gussie.”
He looked at me with a sudden sharp interest.
“Has Market Snodsbury Grammar School burned down?”
“Not that I know of.”
“Have mumps broken out? Is the place closed on account of measles?”
“No, no.”
“Then what do you mean you’ve got good news?”