must be placed in his hands
without a moment's delay.'
     'What can Jeeves do?'
     'That,' I said, 'I cannot say, but he will do something. If he  has
been  eating plenty of fish, as no doubt he would at a seashore resort,
his brain will be at the top of its form, and when Jeeves's brain is at
the top of its form, all you have to do is press a button and stand out
of the way while he takes charge.'


        11
     It's considerably more than a step from Brinkley Court to Herne Bay,
the  one  being in the middle of Worcestershire and the  other  on  the
coast  of Kent, and even under the best of conditions you don't  expect
to do the trip in a flash. On the present occasion, held up by the Arab
steed getting taken with a fit of the vapours and having to be towed to
a garage for medical treatment, I didn't fetch up at journey's end till
well past midnight. And when I rolled round to Jeeves's address on  the
morrow, I was informed that he had gone out early and they didn't  know
when he would be back. Leaving word for him to ring me at the Drones, I
returned  to the metropolis and was having the pre-dinner keg of  nails
in the smoking-room when his call came through.
     'Mr Wooster? Good evening, sir. This is Jeeves.'
     'And not a moment too soon,' I said, speaking with the emotion of a
lost  lamb  which after long separation from the parent  sheep  finally
manages  to  spot it across the meadow. 'Where have you been  all  this
time?'
     'I had an appointment to lunch with a friend at Folkestone, sir, and
while  there  was  persuaded to extend my visit in  order  to  judge  a
seaside bathing belles contest.'
     'No, really? You do live, don't you?'
     'Yes, sir.'
     'How did it go off?'
     'Quite satisfactorily, sir, thank you.'
     'Who won?'
     'A  Miss  Marlene Higgins of Brixton, sir, with Miss Lana Brown  of
Tulse Hill and Miss Marilyn Bunting of Penge honourably mentioned.  All
most attractive young ladies.'
     'Shapely?'
     'Extremely so.'
     'Well, let me tell you, Jeeves, and you can paste this in your hat,
shapeliness isn't everything in this world. In fact, it sometimes seems
to me that the more curved and lissome the members of the opposite sex,
the  more  likely  they  are to set Hell's foundations  quivering.  I'm
sorely  beset, Jeeves. Do you recall telling me once about someone  who
told somebody he could tell him something which would make him think  a
bit? Knitted socks and porcupines entered into it, I remember.'
     'I think you may be referring to the ghost of the father of Hamlet,
Prince  of  Denmark, sir. Addressing his son, he said "I could  a  tale
unfold  whose lightest word would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy  young
blood,  make  thy two eyes, like stars, start from their  spheres,  thy
knotted and combined locks to part and each particular hair to stand on
end like quills upon the fretful porpentine."'
     'That's right. Locks, of course, not socks. Odd that he should have
said  porpentine when he meant porcupine. Slip of the tongue, no doubt,
as  so  often happens with ghosts. Well, he had nothing on me,  Jeeves.
It's  a tale of that precise nature that I am about to unfold. Are  you
listening?'
     'Yes, sir.'
     'Then hold on to your hat and don't miss a word.'
     When  I  had finished unfolding, he said, 'I can readily appreciate
your  concern,  sir.  The situation, as you say, is  one  fraught  with
anxiety,'  which is pitching it strong for Jeeves, he as a rule  coming
through with a mere 'Most disturbing, sir.'
     'I will come to Brinkley Court immediately, sir.'
     'Will you really? I hate to interrupt your holiday.'
     'Not at all, sir.'
     'You can resume it later.'
     'Certainly, sir, if that is convenient to you.'
     'But now -'
     'Precisely sir. Now, if I may borrow a familiar phrase -'
     ' - is the time for all good men to come to the aid of the party?'
     'The  very  words I was about to employ, sir. I will  call  at  the
apartment at as early an hour tomorrow as is possible.'
     'And we'll drive down together. Right,' I said, and went off to  my
simple but wholesome dinner.
     It was with ... well, not quite an uplifted heart... call it a heart
lifted  about  half  way ... that I started out  for  Brinkley  on  the
following afternoon. The thought that Jeeves was at my side, his  fish-
fed  brain  at  my  disposal, caused a spot of silver lining  to  gleam
through  the storm clouds, but only a spot, for I was asking myself  if
even  Jeeves might not fail to find a solution of the problem that  had
raised  its  ugly  head. Admittedly expert though  he  was  at  joining
sundered  hearts, he had rarely been up against a rift within the  lute
so  complete  as that within the lute of Roberta Wickham  and  Reginald
Herring, and as I remember hearing him say once, 'tis not in mortals to
command  success. And at the thought of what would ensue,  were  he  to
fall  down  on the assignment, I quivered like something  in  aspic.  I
could  not  forget  that  Bobbie, while handing  Kipper  his  hat,  had
expressed  in set terms her intention of lugging me to the altar  rails
and  signalling to the clergyman to do his stuff. So as I  drove  along
the heart, as I have indicated, was uplifted only to a medium extent.
     When  we  were  out of the London traffic and it  was  possible  to
converse  without  bumping  into buses and  pedestrians,  I  threw  the
meeting open for debate.
     'You  have  not forgotten our telephone conversation  of  yestreen,
Jeeves?'
     'No, sir.'
     'You have the salient points docketed in your mind?'
     'Yes, sir.'
     'Have you been brooding on them?'
     'Yes, sir.'
     'Got a bite of any sort?'
     'Not yet, sir.'
     'No, I hardly expected you would. These things always take time.'
     'Yes, sir.'
     'The core of the matter is,' I said, twiddling the wheel to avoid a
passing  hen, 'that in Roberta Wickham we are dealing with  a  girl  of
high and haughty spirit.'
     'Yes, sir.'
     'And  girls  of  high and haughty spirit need kidding  along.  This
cannot be done by calling them carrot-topped Jezebels.'
     'No, sir.'
     'I know if anyone called me a carrot-topped Jezebel, umbrage is the
first  thing  I'd  take. Who was Jezebel, by the way?  The  name  seems
familiar, but I can't place her.'
     'A character in the Old Testament, sir. A queen of Israel.'
     'Of  course,  yes. Be forgetting my own name next. Eaten  by  dogs,
wasn't she?'
     'Yes, sir.'
     'Can't have been pleasant for her.'
     'No, sir.'
     'Still,  that's the way the ball rolls. Talking of being  eaten  by
dogs, there's a dachshund at Brinkley who when you first meet him  will
give you the impression that he plans to convert you into a light snack
between  his  regular meals. Pay no attention. It's  all  eyewash.  His
belligerent attitude is simply -'
     'Sound and fury signifying nothing, sir?'
     'That's it. Pure swank. A few civil words, and he will be grappling
you ... what's that expression I've heard you use?'
     'Grappling me to his soul with hoops of steel, sir?'
     'In the first two minutes. He wouldn't hurt a fly, but he has to put
up  a  front because his name's Poppet. One can readily appreciate that
when  a  dog  hears himself addressed day in and day out as Poppet,  he
feels he must throw his weight about. His self-respect demands it.'
     'Precisely, sir.'
     'You'll  like Poppet. Nice dog. Wears his ears inside out.  Why  do
dachshunds wear their ears inside out?'
     'I could not say, sir.'
     'Nor  me. I've often wondered. But this won't do, Jeeves.  Here  we
are,  yakking  about  Jezebels and dachshunds,  when  we  ought  to  be
concentrating our minds on...'
     I broke off abruptly. My eye had been caught by a wayside inn. Well,
not actually so much by the wayside inn as by what was standing outside
it  -  to wit, a scarlet roadster which I recognized instantly  as  the
property of Bobbie Wickham. One saw what had happened. Driving back  to
Brinkley after a couple of nights with Mother, she had found the  going
a  bit warm and had stopped off at this hostelry for a quick one. And a
very  sensible thing to do, too. Nothing picks one up more than a  spot
of sluicing on a hot summer afternoon.
     I applied the brakes.
     'Mind waiting here a minute, Jeeves?'
     'Certainly, sir. You wish to speak to Miss Wickham?'
     'Ah, you spotted her car?'
     'Yes, sir. It is distinctly individual.'
     'Like  its owner. I have a feeling that I may be able to accomplish
something  in the breach-healing way with a honeyed word or two.  Worth
trying, don't you think?'
     'Unquestionably, sir.'
     'At a time like this one doesn't want to leave any avenue unturned.'
     The interior of the wayside inn - the 'Fox and Goose', not that  it
matters - was like the interiors of all wayside inns, dark and cool and
smelling  of  beer,  cheese, coffee, pickles  and  the  sturdy  English
peasantry. Entering, you found yourself in a cosy nook with tankards on
the  walls and chairs and tables dotted hither and thither. On  one  of
the  chairs at one of the tables Bobbie was seated with a glass  and  a
bottle of ginger ale before her.
     'Good Lord, Bertie!' she said as I stepped up and what-ho-ed. 'Where
did you spring from?'
     I explained that I was on my way back to Brinkley from London in my
car.
     'Be careful someone doesn't pinch it. I'll bet you haven't taken out
the keys.'
     'No, but Jeeves is there, keeping watch and ward, as you might say.'
     'Oh,  you've  brought  Jeeves with you? I thought  he  was  on  his
holiday.'
     'He very decently cancelled it.'
     'Pretty feudal.'
     'Very. When I told him I needed him at my side, he didn't hesitate.'
     'What do you need him at your side for?'
     The  moment had come for the honeyed word. I lowered my voice to  a
confidential murmur, but on her inquiring if I had laryngitis raised it
again.
     'I had an idea that he might be able to do something.'
     'What about?'
     'About  you  and  Kipper,'  I said, and  started  to  feel  my  way
cautiously towards the core and centre. It would be necessary, I  knew,
to pick my words with c., for with girls of high and haughty spirit you
have to watch your step, especially if they have red hair, like Bobbie.
If  they  think you're talking out of turn, dudgeon ensues, and dudgeon
might  easily lead her to reach for the ginger ale bottle and  bean  me
with it. I don't say she would, but it was a possibility that had to be
taken into account. So I sort of eased into the agenda.
     'I must begin by saying that Kipper has given me a full eyewitness's
-  well, earwitness's I suppose you'd say -report of that chat you  and
he had over the telephone, and no doubt you are saying to yourself that
it  would  have been in better taste for him to have kept it under  his
hat.  But  you must remember that we were boys together, and  a  fellow
naturally confides in a chap he was boys together with. Anyway, be that
as  it  may,  he poured out his soul to me, and he hadn't been  pouring
long  before I was able to see that he was cut to the quick. His  blood
pressure was high, his eye rolled in what they call a fine frenzy,  and
he was death-where-is-thy-sting-ing like nobody's business.'
     I  saw her quiver and kept a wary eye on the ginger ale bottle. But
even  if  she had raised it and brought it down on the Wooster bean,  I
couldn't  have been more stunned than I was by the words that left  her
lips.
     'The poor lamb!'
     I had ordered a gin and tonic. I now spilled a portion of this.
     'Did you say poor lamb?'
     'You  bet  I said poor lamb, though "Poor sap" would perhaps  be  a
better  description.  Just imagine him taking all  that  stuff  I  said
seriously. He ought to have known I didn't mean it.'
     I groped for the gist.
     'You were just making conversation?'
     'Well, blowing off steam. For heaven's sake, isn't a girl allowed to
blow off some steam occasionally? I never dreamed it would really upset
him. Reggie always takes everything so literally.'
     'Then  is  the  position that the laughing love god  is  once  more
working at the old stand?'
     'Like a beaver.'
     'In fact, to coin a phrase, you're sweethearts still?'
     'Of course. I may have meant what I said at the time, but only  for
about five minutes.'
     I drew a deep breath, and a moment later wished I hadn't, because I
drew it while drinking the remains of my gin and tonic.
     'Does Kipper know of this?' I said, when I had finished coughing.
     'Not yet. I'm on my way to tell him.'
     I raised a point on which I particularly desired assurance.
     'Then what it boils down to is - No wedding bells for me?'
     'I'm afraid not.'
     'Quite all right. Anything that suits you.'
     'I don't want to get jugged for bigamy.'
     'No,  one  sees that. And your selection for the day is  Kipper.  I
don't blame you. The ideal mate.'
     'Just the way I look at it. He's terrific, isn't he?'
     'Colossal.'
     'I  wouldn't  marry anyone else if they came to me  bringing  apes,
ivory and peacocks. Tell me what he was like as a boy.'
     'Oh, much the same as the rest of us.'
     'Nonsense!'
     'Except, of course, for rescuing people from burning buildings  and
saving blue-eyed children from getting squashed by runaway horses.'
     'He did that a lot?'
     'Almost daily.'
     'Was he the Pride of the School?'
     'Oh, rather.'
     'Not that it was much of a school to be the pride of, from what  he
tells me. A sort of Dotheboys Hall, wasn't it?'
     'Conditions  under  Aubrey Upjohn were  fairly  tough.  One's  mind
reverts particularly to the sausages on Sunday.'
     'Reggie was very funny about those. He said they were made not from
contented  pigs but from pigs which had expired, regretted by  all,  of
glanders, the botts and tuberculosis.'
     'Yes, that would be quite a fair description of them, I suppose. You
going?' I said, for she had risen.
     'I  can't  wait  for another minute. I want to  fling  myself  into
Reggie's arms. If I don't see him soon, I shall pass out.'
     'I know how you feel. The chap in the Yeoman's Wedding Song thought
along  those  same lines, only the way he put it was "Ding  dong,  ding
dong, ding dong, I hurry along". At one time I often used to render the
number at village concerts, and there was a nasty Becher's Brook to get
over when you got to "For it is my wedding morning," because you had to
stretch  out  the  "mor" for about ten minutes, which tested  the  lung
power severely. I remember the vicar once telling me -'
     Here I was interrupted, as I'm so often interrupted when giving  my
views on the Yeoman's Wedding Song, by her saying that she was dying to
hear  all  about it but would rather wait till she could get it  in  my
autobiography. We went out together, and I saw her off and returned  to
where Jeeves kept his vigil in the car, all smiles. I was all smiles, I
mean,  not  Jeeves. The best he ever does is to let  his  mouth  twitch
slightly on one side, generally the left. I was in rare fettle, and the
heart had touched a new high. I don't know anything that braces one  up
like finding you haven't got to get married after all.
     'Sorry  to  keep  you waiting, Jeeves,' I said. 'Hope  you  weren't
bored?'
     'Oh no, sir, thank you. I was quite happy with my Spinoza.'
     'Eh?'
     'The  copy of Spinoza's Ethics which you kindly gave me  some  time
ago.'
     'Oh, ah, yes, I remember. Good stuff?'
     'Extremely, sir.'
     'I  suppose it turns out in the end that the butler did  it.  Well,
Jeeves, you'll be glad to hear that everything's under control.'
     'Indeed, sir?'
     'Yes,  rift in lute mended and wedding bells liable to ring out  at
any moment. She's changed her mind.'
     'Varium et mutabile semper femina, sir.'
     'I  shouldn't wonder. And now,' I said, climbing in and taking  the
wheel,  'I'll  unfold the tale of Wilbert and the cow-creamer,  and  if
that  doesn't make your knotted locks do a bit of starting  from  their
spheres, I for one shall be greatly surprised.'


        12
     Arriving  at  Brinkley in the quiet evenfall and  putting  the  old
machine away in the garage, I noticed that Aunt Dahlia's car was  there
and gathered from this that the aged relative was around and about once
more. Nor was I in error. I found her in her boudoir getting outside  a
dish  of  tea and a crumpet. She greeted me with one of those  piercing
view-halloos which she had picked up on the hunting field in  the  days
when  she had been an energetic chivvier of the British fox. It sounded
like  a gas explosion and went through me from stem to stem. I've never
hunted  myself, but I understand that half the battle is being able  to
make  noises like some jungle animal with dyspepsia, and I believe that
Aunt  Dahlia  in her prime could lift fellow-members of the  Quorn  and
Pytchley out of their saddles with a single yip, though separated  from
them by two ploughed fields and a spinney.
     'Hullo, ugly,' she said. 'Turned up again, have you?'
     'Just this moment breasted the tape.'
     'Been to Herne Bay, young Herring tells me.'
     'Yes, to fetch Jeeves. How's Bonzo?'
     'Spotty but cheerful. What did you want Jeeves for?'
     'Well,  as  it  turns out, his presence isn't needed,  but  I  only
discovered that when I was half-way here. I was bringing him  along  to
meditate  ...  no, it isn't meditate ... to mediate, that's  the  word,
between Bobbie Wickham and Kipper. You knew they were betrothed?'
     'Yes, she told me.'
     'Did she tell you about shoving that thing in The Times saying  she
was engaged to me?'
     'I  was the first in whom she confided. I got a good laugh  out  of
that.'
     'More  than  Kipper did, because it hadn't occurred to  the  cloth-
headed  young  nitwit to confide in him. When he read the announcement,
he  reeled and everything went black. It knocked his faith in woman for
a  loop,  and  after seething for a while he sat down and wrote  her  a
letter in the Thomas Otway vein.'
     'In the who's vein?'
     'You  are  not  familiar  with  Thomas  Otway?  Seventeenth-century
dramatist,  celebrated for making bitter cracks about  the  other  sex.
Wrote a play called The Orphan, which is full of them.'
     'So you do read something beside the comics?'
     'Well,  actually I haven't steeped myself to any  great  extent  in
Thos's  output,  but Kipper told me about him. He held  the  view  that
women  are  a mess, and Kipper passed this information on to Bobbie  in
this letter of which I speak. It was a snorter.'
     'And you never thought of explaining to him, I suppose?'
     'Of course I did. But by that time she'd got the letter.'
     'Why didn't the idiot tell her not to open it?'
     'It  was  his  first  move. "I've found a  letter  from  you  here,
precious,"  she said. "On no account open it, angel," he  said.  So  of
course she opened it.'
     She  pursed  the lips, nodded the loaf, and ate a  moody  piece  of
crumpet.
     'So  that's why he's been going about looking like a dead  fish.  I
suppose Roberta broke the engagement?'
     'In a speech lasting five minutes without a pause for breath.'
     'And you brought Jeeves along to mediate?'
     'That was the idea.'
     'But if things have gone as far as that...'
     'You doubt whether even Jeeves can heal the rift?' I patted her  on
the  top knot. 'Dry the starting tear, old ancestor, it's healed. I met
her  at  a pub on the way here, and she told me that almost immediately
after  she had flipped her lid in the manner described she had a change
of  heart. She loves him still with a passion that's more like  boiling
oil  than anything, and when we parted she was tooling off to tell  him
so.  By  this time they must be like ham and eggs again. It's  a  great
burden off my mind, because, having parted brass rags with Kipper,  she
announced her intention of marrying me.'
     'A bit of luck for you, I should have thought.'
     'Far from it.'
     'Why? You were crazy about the girl once.' 'But no longer. The fever
has  passed, the scales have fallen from my eyes, and we're  just  good
friends.  The snag in this business of falling in love, aged  relative,
is  that  the parties of the first part so often get mixed up with  the
wrong  parties of the second part, robbed of their cooler  judgment  by
the  parties of the second part's glamour. Put it like this.  The  male
sex  is  divided into rabbits and non-rabbits and the female  sex  into
dashers and dormice, and the trouble is that the male rabbit has a  way
of  getting attracted by the female dasher (who would be fine  for  the
male  non-rabbit)  and realizing too late that he ought  to  have  been
concentrating on some mild, gentle dormouse with whom he  could  settle
down peacefully and nibble lettuce.'
     'The  whole thing, in short, a bit of a mix-up?' 'Exactly. Take  me
and  Bobbie.  I yield to no one in my appreciation of her  espieglerie,
but  I'm one of the rabbits and always have been while she is about  as
pronounced a dasher as ever dashed. What I like is the quiet life,  and
Roberta Wickham wouldn't recognize the quiet life if you brought it  to
her  on a plate with watercress round it. She's all for not letting the
sun  go  down  without having started something calculated  to  stagger
humanity.  In a word, she needs the guiding hand, which is  a  thing  I
couldn't  supply  her with. Whereas from Kipper  she  will  get  it  in
abundance,  he  being one of those tough non-rabbits  for  whom  it  is
child's play to make the little woman draw the line somewhere. That  is
why  the union of these twain has my support and approval and why, when
she  told  me  all  that in the pub, I felt like doing a  buck-and-wing
dance. Where is Kipper? I should like to shake him by the hand and  pat
his back.'
     'He went on a picnic with Wilbert and Phyllis.'
     The significance of this did not escape me.
     'Tailing up stuff, eh? Right on the job, is he?'
     'Wilbert is constantly under his eye.'
     'And  if ever a man needed to be constantly under an eye, it's  the
above kleptomaniac.'
     'The what?'
     'Haven't you been told? Wilbert's a pincher.'
     'How do you mean, a pincher?'
     'He  pinches things. Everything that isn't nailed down is grist  to
his mill.'
     'Don't be an ass.'
     'I'm not being an ass. He's got Uncle Tom's cow-creamer.'
     'I know.'
     'You know?'
     'Of course I know.'
     Her ... what's the word? ... phlegm, is it? ... something beginning
with  a  p...  astounded me. I had expected to freeze her young  -  or,
rather,  middle-aged -blood and have her perm stand on end like  quills
upon the fretful porpentine, and she hadn't moved a muscle.
     'Beshrew me,' I said, 'you take it pretty calmly.'
     'Well, what's there to get excited about? Tom sold him the thing.'
     'What?'
     'Wilbert got in touch with him at Harrogate and put in his bid, and
Tom  phoned  me to give it to him. Just shows how important  that  deal
must  be to Tom. I'd have thought he would rather have parted with  his
eyeteeth.'
     I  drew  a deep breath, this time fortunately unmixed with gin  and
tonic. I was profoundly stirred.
     'You  mean,'  said, my voice quavering like that  of  a  coloratura
soprano, 'that I went through that soul-shattering experience  all  for
nothing?'
     'Who's been shattering your soul, if any?'
     'Ma  Cream. By popping in while I was searching Wilbert's room  for
the loathsome object. Naturally I thought he'd swiped it and hidden  it
there.'
     'And she caught you?'
     'Not once, but twice.'
     'What did she say?'
     'She  recommended me to take treatment from Roddy Glossop, of whose
skill in ministering to the mentally afflicted she had heard such  good
reports.  One  sees  what gave her the idea. I was half-way  under  the
dressing-table at the moment, and no doubt she thought it odd.'
     'Bertie! How absolutely priceless!'
     The adjective 'priceless' seemed to me an ill-chosen one, and I said
so.  But  my  words were lost in the gale of mirth into which  she  now
exploded.  I had never heard anyone laugh so heartily, not even  Bobbie
on  the  occasion when the rake jumped up and hit me on the tip of  the
nose.
     'I'd have given fifty quid to have been there,' she said, when  she
was  able to get the vocal cords working. 'Half-way under the dressing-
table, were you?'
'The second time. When we first forgathered, I was sitting on the floor
with a chair round my neck.'
     'Like an Elizabethan ruff, as worn by Thomas Botway.'
     'Otway,' I said stiffly. As I have mentioned, I like to get  things
right.  And  I was about to tell her that what I had hoped for  from  a
blood  relation was sympathy and condolence rather than this  crackling
of  thorns under a pot, as it is sometimes called, when the door opened
and Bobbie came in.
     The  moment  I cast an eye on her, it seemed to me that  there  was
something  strange about her aspect. Normally, this beasel presents  to
the  world  the appearance of one who is feeling that if it  isn't  the
best of all possible worlds, it's quite good enough to be going on with
till  a  better one comes along. Verve, I mean, and animation  and  all
that sort of thing. But now there was a listlessness about her, not the
listlessness  of the cat Augustus but more that of the  female  in  the
picture  in the Louvre, of whom Jeeves, on the occasion when he  lugged
me there to take a dekko at her, said that here was the head upon which
all  the  ends of the world are come. He drew my attention, I remember,
to  the  weariness  of the eyelids. I got just the same  impression  of
weariness from Bobbie's eyelids.
     Unparting her lips which were set in a thin line as if she had just
been taking a suck at a lemon, she said:
     'I  came  to  get that book of Mrs Cream's that I was reading,  Mrs
Travers.'
     'Help yourself, child,' said the ancestor. 'The more people in this
joint  reading  her  stuff,  the  better.  It  all  goes  to  help  the
composition.'
     'So you got here all right, Bobbie,' I said. 'Have you seen Kipper?'
     I wouldn't say she snorted, but she certainly sniffed.
     'Bertie,'  she said in a voice straight from the frigidaire,  'will
you do me a favour?'
     'Of course. What?'
     'Don't mention that rat's name in my presence,' she said, and pushed
off, the eyelids still weary.
     She  left me fogged and groping for the inner meaning, and I  could
see  from  Aunt Dahlia's goggling eyes that the basic idea  hadn't  got
across with her either.
'Well!'  she  said. 'What's all this? I thought you told me  she  loved
young Herring with a passion like boiling oil.'
     'That was her story.'
     'The oil seems to have gone off the boil. Yes, sir, if that was the
language  of love, I'll eat my hat,' said the blood relation, alluding,
I  took  it,  to the beastly straw contraption in which  she  does  her
gardening, concerning which I can only say that it is almost as foul as
Uncle  Tom's  Sherlock Holmes deerstalker, which  has  frightened  more
crows  than  any  other lid in Worcestershire. 'They must  have  had  a
fight.'
     'It does look like it,' I agreed, 'and I don't understand how it can
have  happened considering that she left me with the love light in  her
eyes  and can't have been back here more than about half an hour. What,
one  asks oneself, in so short a time can have changed a girl  full  of
love  and  ginger  ale into a girl who speaks of the adored  object  as
"that rat" and doesn't want to hear his name mentioned? These are  deep
waters. Should I send for Jeeves?'
     'What on earth can Jeeves do?'
     'Well,  now  you put it that way, I'm bound to admit that  I  don't
know.  It's  just that one drops into the habit of sending  for  Jeeves
whenever  things have gone agley, if that's the word I'm  thinking  of.
Scotch,  isn't  it?  Agley, I mean. It sounds Scotch  to  me.  However,
passing  lightly over that, the thing to do when you want the  low-down
is  to  go  to  the fountainhead and get it straight from  the  horse's
mouth. Kipper can solve this mystery. I'll pop along and find him.'
     I was, however, spared the trouble of popping, for at this moment he
entered left centre.
     'Oh, there you are, Bertie,' he said. 'I heard you were back. I was
looking for you.'
     He  had  spoken in a low, husky sort of way, like a voice from  the
tomb,  and I now saw that he was exhibiting all the earmarks of  a  man
who  has  recently  had a bomb explode in his vicinity.  His  shoulders
sagged  and his eyes were glassy. He looked, in short, like the  fellow
who  hadn't  started to take Old Doctor Gordon's Bile Magnesia,  and  I
snapped  into  it without preamble. This was no time for being  tactful
and pretending not to notice.
     'What's  all this strained-relations stuff between you and  Bobbie,
Kipper?'  I  said,  and when he said, 'Oh, nothing,' rapped  the  table
sharply and told him to cut out the coy stuff and come clean.
     'Yes,' said Aunt Dahlia. 'What's happened, young Herring?'
     I  think for a moment he was about to draw himself up with  hauteur
and  say he would prefer, if we didn't mind, not to discuss his private
affairs,  but when he was half-way up he caught Aunt Dahlia's  eye  and
returned  to  position one. Aunt Dahlia's eye, while not  in  the  same
class  as that of my Aunt Agatha, who is known to devour her young  and
conduct  human  sacrifices at the time of the full moon,  has  lots  of
authority. He subsided into a chair and sat there looking filleted.
     'Well, if you must know,' he said, 'she's broken the engagement.'
     This didn't get us any farther. We had assumed as much. You don't go
calling people rats if love still lingers.
     'But it's only an hour or so,' I said, 'since I left her outside  a
hostelry called the "Fox and Goose", and she had just been giving you a
rave notice. What came unstuck? What did you do to the girl?'
     'Oh, nothing.'
     'Come, come!'
     'Well, it was this way.'
     There  was a pause here while he said that he would give a  hundred
quid  for a stiff whisky-and-soda, but as this would have involved  all
the  delay  of ringing for Pop Glossop and having it fetched  from  the
lowest  bin, Aunt Dahlia would have none of it. In lieu of the  desired
refreshment she offered him a cold crumpet, which he declined, and told
him to get on with it.
     'Where  I  went wrong,' he said, still speaking in that low,  husky
voice as if he had been a ghost suffering from catarrh, 'was in getting
engaged to Phyllis Mills.'
     'What?' I cried.
     'What?' cried Aunt Dahlia.
     'Egad!' I said.
     'What on earth did you do that for?' said Aunt Dahlia.
     He shifted uneasily in his chair, like a man troubled with ants  in
the pants.
'It  seemed a good idea at the time,' he said. 'Bobbie had told  me  on
the  telephone that she never wanted to speak to me again in this world
or  the  next, and Phyllis had been telling me that, while  she  shrank
from Wilbert Cream because of his murky past, she found him so magnetic
that she knew she wouldn't be able to refuse him if he proposed, and  I
had  been commissioned to stop him proposing, so I thought the simplest
thing to do was to get engaged to her myself. So we talked it over, and
having  reached a thorough understanding that it was simply a ruse  and
nothing binding on either side, we announced it to Cream.'
     'Very shrewd,' said Aunt Dahlia. 'How did he take it?'
     'He reeled.'
     'Lot of reeling there's been in this business,' I said. 'You reeled,
if  you  recollect, when you remembered you'd written  that  letter  to
Bobbie.'
     'And I reeled again when she suddenly appeared from nowhere just as
I was kissing Phyllis.'
     I pursed the lips. Getting a bit French, this sequence, it seemed to
me.
     'There was no need for you to do that.'
     'No need, perhaps, but I wanted to make it look natural to Cream.'
     'Oh, I see. Driving it home, as it were?'
     'That was the idea. Of course I wouldn't have done it if I'd  known
that  Bobbie had changed her mind and wanted things to be as they  were
before that telephone
conversation.  But  I  didn't know. It's  just  one  of  life's  little
ironies. You get the same sort of thing in Thomas Hardy.'
     I knew nothing of this T. Hardy of whom he spoke, but I saw what he
meant.  It  was like what's always happening in the novels of suspense,
where the girl goes around saying, 'Had I but known.'
     'Didn't you explain?'
     He gave me a pitying look.
     'Have you ever tried explaining something to a red-haired girl who's
madder than a wet hen?'
     I took his point.
     'What happened then?'
     'Oh,  she was very lady-like. Talked amiably of this and that  till
Phyllis  had left us. Then she started in. She said she had raced  here
with  a  heart overflowing with love, longing to be in my arms,  and  a
jolly surprise it was to find those arms squeezing the stuffing out  of
another and ... Oh, well, a lot more along those lines. The trouble is,
she's  always  been  a  bit  squiggle-eyed about  Phyllis,  because  in
Switzerland  she held the view that we were a shade too matey.  Nothing
in it, of course.'
     'Just good friends?'
     'Exactly.'
     'Well, if you want to know what I think,' said Aunt Dahlia.
     But we never did get around to knowing what she thought, for at this
moment Phyllis came in.



        13
     Giving the wench the once-over as she entered, I found myself  well
able  to  understand why Bobbie on observing her entangled with  Kipper
had  exploded  with  so loud a report. I'm not myself,  of  course,  an
idealistic  girl  in love with a member of the staff  of  the  Thursday
Review  and  never have been, but if I were I know I'd get the  megrims
somewhat severely if I caught him in a clinch with anyone as personable
as  this  stepdaughter of Aubrey Upjohn, for though shaky  on  the  IQ,
physically  she  was  a  pipterino of the first water.  Her  eyes  were
considerably  bluer  than the skies above, she  was  wearing  a  simple
summer dress which accentuated rather than hid the graceful outlines of
her  figure,  if  you know what I mean, and it was not surprising  that
Wilbert Cream, seeing her, should have lost no time in reaching for the
book  of  poetry  and making a bee line with her to the  nearest  leafy
glade.
     'Oh, Mrs Travers,' she said, spotting Aunt Dahlia, 'I've just  been
talking to Daddy on the telephone.'
     This took the old ancestor's mind right off the tangled affairs  of
the Kipper-Bobbie axis, to which a moment before she had been according
her  best  attention,  and I didn't wonder. With  the  prize-giving  at
Market  Snodsbury  Grammar School, a function at  which  all  that  was
bravest  and  fairest in the neighbourhood would be present,  only  two
days away, she must have been getting pretty uneasy about the continued
absence of the big shot slated to address the young scholars on  ideals
and life in the world outside. If you are on the board of governors  of
a  school and have contracted to supply an orator for the great day  of
the year, you can be forgiven for feeling a trifle jumpy when you learn
that  the silver-tongued one has gadded off to the metropolis,  leaving
no  word  as to when he will be returning, if ever. For all  she  knew,
Upjohn  might  have  got the holiday spirit and be planning  to  remain
burning  up the boulevards indefinitely, and of course nothing gives  a
big  beano a black eye more surely than the failure to show up  of  the
principal speaker. So now she quite naturally blossomed like a rose  in
June  and  asked  if  the old son of a bachelor had mentioned  anything
about when he was coming back.
     'He's  coming  back  tonight. He says he  hopes  you  haven't  been
worrying.'
     A  snort of about the calibre of an explosion in an ammunition dump
escaped my late father's sister.
     'Oh,  does  he?  Well, I've a piece of news for him.  I  have  been
worrying. What's kept him in London so long?'
     'He's  been seeing his lawyer about this libel action he's bringing
against the Thursday Review.'
     I have often asked myself how many inches it was that Kipper leaped
from  his chair at these words. Sometimes I think it was ten, sometimes
only  six,  but  whichever it was he unquestionably came  up  from  the
padded  seat like an athlete competing in the Sitting High Jump  event.
Scarface McColl couldn't have risen more nippily.
     'Against the Thursday Review?' said Aunt Dahlia. 'That's your  rag,
isn't it, young Herring? What have they done to stir him up?'
     'It's  this book Daddy wrote about preparatory schools. He wrote  a
book  about  preparatory schools. Did you know he had  written  a  book
about preparatory schools?'
     'Hadn't an inkling. Nobody tells me anything.'
     'Well,  he wrote this book about preparatory schools. It was  about
preparatory schools.'
     'About preparatory schools, was it?'
     'Yes, about preparatory schools.'
     'Thank God we've got that straightened out at last. I had a feeling
we should get somewhere if we dug long enough. And - ?'
     'And  the  Thursday Review said something libellous about  it,  and
Daddy's lawyer says the jury ought to give Daddy at least five thousand
pounds. Because they libelled him. So he's been in London all this time
seeing his lawyer. But he's coming back tonight. He'll be here for  the
prize-giving, and I've got his speech all typed out and ready for  him.
Oh,  there's  my  precious Poppet,' said Phyllis, as a distant  barking
reached the ears. 'He's asking for his dinner, the sweet little  angel.
All right, darling, Mother's coming,' she fluted, and buzzed off on the
errand of mercy.
     A brief silence followed her departure.
     'I don't care what you say,' said Aunt Dahlia at length in a defiant
sort  of  way. 'Brains aren't everything. She's a dear, sweet  girl.  I
love her like a daughter, and to hell with anyone who calls her a half-
wit. Why, hullo,' she proceeded, seeing that Kipper was slumped back in
his chair trying without much success to hitch up a drooping lower jaw.
'What's eating you, young Herring?'
     I could see that Kipper was in no shape for conversation, so took it
upon myself to explain.
     'A certain stickiness has arisen, aged relative. You heard what  P.
Mills  said  before going to minister to Poppet. Those words  tell  the
story.'
     'What do you mean?'
     'The facts are readily stated. Upjohn wrote this slim volume, which,
if  you  recall, was about preparatory schools, and in  it,  so  Kipper
tells  me,  said  that the time spent in these establishments  was  the
happiest  of  our lives. Ye Ed passed it on to Kipper for comment,  and
he, remembering the dark days at Malvern House, Bramley-on-Sea, when he
and  I were plucking the gowans fine there, slated it with no uncertain
hand. Correct, Kipper?'
     He  found  speech, if you could call making a noise like a  buffalo
taking its foot out of a swamp finding speech.
     'But,  dash  it,'  he said, finding a bit more, 'it  was  perfectly
legitimate criticism. I didn't mince my words, of course -'
     'It  would  be  interesting to find out what these  unminced  words
were,' said Aunt Dahlia, 'for among them there appear to have been  one
or  two which seem likely to set your proprietor back five thousand  of
the  best  and  brightest. Bertie, get your car out and  go  to  Market
Snodsbury  station and see if the bookstall has a copy of  this  week's
...  No, wait, hold the line. Cancel that order. I shan't be a minute,'
she said, and went out, leaving me totally fogged as to what she was up
to. What aunts are up to is never an easy thing to divine.
     I turned to Kipper.
     'Bad show,' I said.
     From  the  way he writhed I gathered that he was feeling  it  could
scarcely be worse.
     'What happens when an editorial assistant on a weekly paper lets the
bosses in for substantial libel damages?'
     He was able to answer that one.
     'He gets the push and, what's more, finds it pretty damned difficult
to land another job. He's on the blacklist.'
     I  saw what he meant. These birds who run weekly papers believe  in
watching  the pennies. They like to get all that's coming to  them  and
when the stuff, instead of pouring in, starts pouring out as the result
of an injudicious move on the part of a unit of the staff, what they do
to  that  unit is plenty. I think Kipper's outfit was financed by  some
sort  of  board  or syndicate, but boards and syndicates  are  just  as
sensitive about having to cough up as individual owners. As Kipper  had
indicated, they not only give the errin