'Yes,' I said.
'No, you haven't,' he said.
'I can explain everything,' I said.
'No, you can't,' he said.
And, by Jove, I suddenly realized I couldn't. It would have involved a long character analysis of Sir Watkyn Bassett, another of my Uncle Tom, a third of Stephanie (Stiffy) Byng, now Mrs Stinker Pinker, a fourth of Jeeves, and would have taken about two hours and a quarter, provided he listened attentively and didn't interrupt, which of course he would have done.
Matters, therefore, seemed to be at what you might call a deadlock, and the thought had suggested itself to me that my best plan would be to leave his presence and start running and keep on running till I reached the northern fringe of Scotland, when a noise like an explosion in a gas works broke in on my reverie, and I saw that he was holding the slim volume which Vanessa, the silly ass, had omitted to take off-stage with her.
'This book!' he yowled.
I did my best.
'Ah, yes,' I said, 'Reggie Sprockett's latest. I always keep up with his work. A brilliant young poet of whom the critics expect great things. These, in case you are interested, are whimsical essays. They are superb. Not only the style, but the thought in these little gems . . .'
My voice died away. I had been about to urge him to buy a copy, but I saw that he was not in the mood. He was staring at the opening page with its inscription, and I knew that words would be wasted, as the expression is.
He gave the hunting crop a twitch.
'My daughter has been here.'
'She did look in.'
'Ha!'
I knew what that 'Ha!' meant. It was short for 'I shall now thrash you within an inch of your life.' A moment later he used the longer version, as if in doubt as to whether he had made himself clear.
If you were to come to me and say 'Wooster, to settle a bet, which would you estimate is to be preferred, having your insides torn out by somebody's bare hands or being thrashed within an inch of your life?', I would find it difficult to decide. Both are things you'd rather have happen to another chap. But I think I would give my vote in favour of the last-named, always provided the other fellow was doing it in a small room, for there he would find that he had set himself a testing task. The dimensions of the sitting-room of Wee Nooke did not permit of a full swing. Cook had to confine himself to chip shots, which an agile person like myself had little difficulty in eluding.
I eluded them, therefore, with no great expenditure of physical effort, but I would be deceiving my public if I said that I was enjoying the episode. It offends one's pride when one has to leap like a lamb in Springtime at the bidding of an elderly little Gawd-help-us with whom it is impossible to reason. And it was plain that Cook in his present frame of mind wouldn't recognize reason if you served it up to him in an individual plate with watercress round it.
That, of course, was what prevented me fulfilling myself in the encounter, the fact that he was an elderly little Gawd-help-us. It was the combination of age and size that kept me from giving of my best. I might – indeed I would – have dotted in the eye a small young Gawd-help-us or a Gawd-help-us of riper years of the large economy size, but I couldn't possibly get tough with an undersized little squirt who would never see fifty-five again. The chivalry of the Woosters couldn't ever contemplate such an action.
I thought once or twice of adopting the policy which had occurred to me at the outset – viz. running up to the north of Scotland. I had often wondered, when I read about fellows getting horsewhipped on the steps of their club, why they didn't just go up the steps and into the club, knowing that the chap behind the horsewhip wasn't a member and wouldn't have a chance of getting past the hall porter.
But the catch was that running up to Scotland would mean turning my back, a fatal move. So we just carried on with our rhythmic dance till my guardian angel, who until now had just been sitting there, decided – and about time, too – to take a hand in the proceedings. As might have been expected in a cottage called Wee Nooke, there was a grandfather clock over against the wall, and he now arranged that Cook should bump into this and come a purler. And while he was still on the floor I acted with the true Wooster resource.
I have stated that the previous owner of Wee Nooke expressed herself as a rule in water colours, but on one occasion she had changed her act. Over the mantelpiece there hung a large oil painting depicting a bloke in a three-cornered hat and riding breeches in conference with a girl in a bonnet and what looked like muslin, and as it caught my eye I suddenly remembered Gussie Fink-Nottle and the portrait at Aunt Dahlia's place in Worcestershire.
Gussie – stop me if you've heard this before – while closely pursued by Spode, now Lord Sidcup, who, if memory serves me aright, wanted to break his neck, had taken refuge in my bedroom and was on the point of having his neck broken when he plucked a picture from the wall and brought it down on Spode's head. The head came through the canvas, and Spode, momentarily bewildered at finding himself wearing a portrait of one of Uncle Tom's ancestors round his neck like an Elizabethan ruff, gave me the opportunity of snatching a sheet from the bed and enveloping him in it, rendering him null and void, as the expression is.
I went through a precisely similar routine now, first applying the picture and then the tablecloth. After which I withdrew and went off to the Goose and Grasshopper to see Orlo.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Anybody not in possession of the facts would probably have been appalled at my rashness in placing myself within disembowelling range of Orlo Porter, feeling that I was tempting fate, and in about two ticks would be wishing I hadn't.
But I, strong in the knowledge that Orlo P. had been reduced to the level of a fifth-rate power, was able to approach the coming interview in a bumps-a-daisy spirit which might quite easily have led to my bursting into song.
Orlo, as I had predicted, was in the bar having a gin and ginger. He lowered the beaker as I drew near and regarded me in a squiggle-eyed manner like a fastidious luncher observing a caterpillar in his salad.
'Oh, it's you,' he said.
I conceded this, for he was right. No argument about it. Assured that he wasn't looking squiggle-eyed at the wrong chap, he proceeded.
'What do you want?'
'A word with you.'
'So you have come to gloat?'
'Certainly not, Porter,' I said, 'when you hear what I have to say, you will start skipping like the high hills, not that I've ever seen high hills skip, or low hills for that matter. Porter, what would you say if I told you all your troubles, all the little odds and ends that are bothering you now, would be over 'ere yonder sun had set?'
'It has set.'
'Oh, has it? I didn't notice.'
'And it is getting on for dinner time. So if you will kindly get the hell out of here –'
'Not till I have spoken.'
'Are you going to speak some more?'
'Lots more. Let us examine the position you and I are in calmly, and in a judicial spirit. Vanessa Cook has told me she will marry me, and you are probably looking on me as a snake in the grass. Well, let me tell you that any resemblance between me and a snake in the grass is purely coincidental. I couldn't issue a nolle prosequi, could I, when she said that? Of course not. But all the while I was right-hoing I felt I was behaving like a louse.'
'You are a louse.'
'No, that's where you make your error, Porter. I am a man of sensibility, and a man of sensibility does not marry a girl who's in love with somebody else. He gives her up.'
He finished his gin and ginger, and choked on it as he suddenly got the gist.
'You would give her up to me?'
'Absolutely.'
'But, Wooster, this is noble. I'm sorry I said you were a louse.'
'Quite all right. Sort of mistake anyone might make.'
'You remind me of Cyrano de Bergerac.'
'One has one's code.'
He had been all smiles – or pretty nearly all smiles – up to this point, bu
t now melancholy marked him for her own again. He heaved a sigh, as if he had found a dead mouse at the bottom of his tankard.
'It would be useless for you to make this sacrifice, Wooster. Vanessa would never marry me.'
'Of course she would.'
'You weren't there when she broke the engagement.'
'My representative was. At least he was listening at the door.'
'Then you know the general run of the thing.'
'He gave me a full report.'
'And you say she still loves me?'
'Like a ton of bricks. Love cannot be extinguished by a potty little lovers' quarrel.'
'Potty little lovers' quarrel my left eyeball. She called me a lily-livered poltroon. And a sleekit timorous cowering beastie. One wonders where she picks up such expressions. And all because I refused to go to old Cook and demand my money. I'd been to him once and asked him in the most civil manner to cough up, and she wanted me to go again and this time to thump the table and generally throw my weight about.'
'You should, Orlo. That's just what you ought to do. What happened last time?'
'He flatly refused.'
'How flatly?'
'Very flatly. And it would be the same if I went again.'
He had given me the cue I wanted. I had been wondering how best to introduce what I had in mind. I smiled one of my subtle smiles, and he asked me what I was grinning about.
'Not if you select your time properly,' I said. 'What time was it you made your other try?'
'About five in the afternoon.'
'As I suspected. No wonder he gave you the bum's rush. Five in the afternoon is when a man's sunny disposition is down in the lowest brackets. Lunch wore off hours ago, and cocktails are not yet in sight. He isn't in the mood to oblige anyone about anything. Cook may be a hard-boiled egg, but dinner softens the hardest. Approach him when he is full to the brim, and you'll be surprised. Fellows at the Drones have told me that, applying after he had tucked into the evening meal, they have got substantial loans out of Oofy Prosser.'
'Who is Oofy Prosser?'
'The club millionaire, a man who by daylight watches his disbursement like a hawk. Cook is probably just the same.
Tails up, Porter. Get cracking. Be bloody, bold and resolute,' I said, remembering a gag from that play Macbeth, which I was mentioning some while back.
He was impressed, as who would not have been. His face lit up as if someone had pressed a button.
'Wooster,' he said, 'you're right. You have shown me the way. You have made my path straight. Thank you, Wooster, old man.'
'Not at all, Porter, old chap.'
'It's an extraordinary thing; anyone looking at you would write you off as a brainless nincompoop with about as much intelligence as a dead rabbit.'
'Thank you, Porter, old chap.'
'Not at all, Wooster, old man. Whereas all the time you have this amazing insight into human psychology.'
'I have hidden depths, would you say?'
'You bet you have, Wooster, old horse.'
And in another jiffy he was pressing a gin and ginger on me as if we had been bosom pals for years and the subject of my insides had never come up between us.
Returning to Wee Nooke some twenty minutes later after what had practically amounted to a love-feast, I had that jolly feeling you don't often get nowadays that God was in his Heaven and all right with the world, as the fellow said. I counted my blessings one by one and found the sum total most satisfactory. All was quiet on the Porter front, Billy Graham was even now returning the cat to its little circle at Eggesford Court, Porter and Vanessa Cook would soon be sweethearts again, and if my popularity with Pop Cook was at a low ebb, rendering unlikely any chance of a present from him next Christmas, that was a small flaw in the ointment. Or is it fly? I never can remember. Everything, in short, was just like Mother makes it, and it was a blithe B. Wooster who, hearing the telephone tootle, went to answer it with, as you might say, a song on his lips.
It was the aged relative, and the dullest ear could have spotted that she was in something of a doodah. For some moments after we had established connection she confined herself to gasps and gurgles such as might have proceeded from some strong swimmer in his agony.
'Hullo,' I said. 'Is something up?'
In the course of this narrative I have had occasion to mention several hacking laughs, but for sheer rasp and explosiveness the one the old ancestor emitted at these words topped the lot.
'Something up?' she boomed. 'You would say a thing like that when I'm nearly off my rocker. Has that cat been returned to store yet?'
'Billy Graham is in full control.'
'You mean he hasn't started yet?'
'Yes, and come back. But unfortunately the cat followed him. So he says. Anyway, he arrived here with it in close attendance, and he has now taken it off again. He's probably decanting the animal at this moment. But why the agitation?'
'I'll tell you why the agitation. If that cat is not back where it belongs immediately, if not sooner, ruin stares me in the eyeball and Tom is in for the worst attack of indigestion he has had since the time he ate all that lobster at his club. And only myself to blame.'
'Did you say you were to blame?'
'Yes. Why?'
'I only wondered if I had heard you correctly.'
I have become so accustomed to being blamed for everything that goes wrong that her words had touched me deeply. You don't often find an aunt taking the rap when she has a nephew at her disposal to shove the thing on to. It is pretty universally agreed that that is what nephews are for. My voice shook a bit as I applied for further details.
'What seems to be the trouble?' I asked.
Aunts as a class are seldom good listeners. She did not answer the question, but embarked on what sounded as if it was going to be a lecture on conditions in her native land.
'I'll tell you what's wrong with the England of today, Bertie. There are too many people around with scruples and high principles and all that sort of guff. You can't do the simplest thing without somebody jumping on the back of your neck because you've offended against his blasted code of ethics. You'd think a man like Jimmy Briscoe would be broadminded, but no. He couldn't have been more puff-faced if he'd been the Archbishop of Canterbury. You probably put the blame on his brother the vicar, but I don't agree. I can excuse him because it's his job to be finicky about things. But Jimmy! He made me feel as if I'd shot a fox or something. And it wasn't as if I was getting anything out of it. It was a pure act of kindness because I could see he had the interests of the organ at heart and was really worried about it. Dammit, St Francis of Assisi would have done the same and everybody would have said what a splendid chap he was and what a pity there weren't more like him, whereas the way Jimmy went on . . .'
I could see that if not checked with a firm hand this would continue for a goodish time.
'I'm sorry if I seem slow in the uptake, aged r.,' I said, 'but, if so, put it down to the fact that you appear to me to be delirious. Your words are like the crackling of thorns under the pot, as the fellow said. What on earth do you think you're talking about?'
'Haven't you been listening?'
'I have been listening, yes, but without coming within a mile and a quarter of getting the gist.'
'Oh, heavens, I might have known I would have to tell you in words of one syllable. Here's what's happened in simple language which even you can understand. I happened to be talking to the vicar, and he told me what a weight on his mind the church organ was, it being at its last gasp and no money to pay the vet., because he'd already touched Jimmy for quite a bit to mend the church roof, and if he tried to bite his ear again so soon after that, there would, he said, be hell to pay. So what the devil to do, he said, he didn't know.
'Well, you know me, Bertie. Being a woman with a heart like butter and always anxious to spread a little happiness as I pass by, I told him that if he wanted a bit of easy money, to put his shirt on Jimmy's Simla for the big race. A
nd I told him about the cat, just to make it quite clear to him that he would be betting on a sure thing.'
'But –'
'Put a sock in it and listen. Can't you stop talking for half a second? I know what you were going to say – that you were returning the cat. But this was before you told me. So I went ahead, fearing nothing, just thinking of the happiness I was bringing into his life. I ought to have known that a clergyman was bound to have scruples, but it didn't occur to me at the time and to cut a long story short he went to Jimmy and spilled the beans, and Jimmy blew his top. "Take that cat back where it belongs," he said, and a lot of stuff about being shocked and horrified. Which wouldn't have mattered if he had confined himself to telling me what he thought of me, but he didn't. He said that if that cat wasn't back at Cook's within the hour he would scratch Simla's nomination. Yessir, he said Simla would not be among those present at the starting post, which meant that bang would go the vast sum I had put on his nose.'
'But –'
'Yes, I know you had told me you were sending the cat back, but how was I to be sure that, on thinking it over and realizing what a good thing you would be passing up, you hadn't changed your mind?'
I could see what she meant. A nephew with a lust for gold and lacking the Wooster play-the-game spirit might quite well have done as she said. No wonder she had been all of a doodah. It was a pleasure to set her mind at rest.
'It's quite all right, old ancestor,' I said. 'Billy Graham is already en route for the Cookeries, and ought to have got there by now.'
'Complete with cat?'
'To the last drop.'
'Not to worry?'
'Not as far as Simla getting scratched is concerned.'
'Well, that's a weight off my mind, though it's disappointing to feel that my bit of stuff isn't on a cert.'
'Teach you not to nobble horses.'