-20-
There was one of those long silences. Pregnant, I believe, is whatthey're generally called. Aunt looked at butler. Butler looked at aunt. Ilooked at both of them. An eerie stillness seemed to envelop the roomlike a linseed poultice. I happened to be biting on a slice of apple in myfruit salad at the moment, and it sounded as if Carnera had jumped offthe top of the Eiffel Tower on to a cucumber frame.
Aunt Dahlia steadied herself against the sideboard, and spoke in a low,husky voice:
"Faces?"
"Yes, madam."
"Through the skylight?"
"Yes, madam."
"You mean he's sitting on the roof?"
"Yes, madam. It has upset Monsieur Anatole very much."
I suppose it was that word "upset" that touched Aunt Dahlia off.Experience had taught her what happened when Anatole got upset. I hadalways known her as a woman who was quite active on her pins, but I hadnever suspected her of being capable of the magnificent burst of speedwhich she now showed. Pausing merely to get a rich hunting-fieldexpletive off her chest, she was out of the room and making for thestairs before I could swallow a sliver of--I think--banana. And feeling,as I had felt when I got that telegram of hers about Angela and Tuppy,that my place was by her side, I put down my plate and hastened afterher, Seppings following at a loping gallop.
I say that my place was by her side, but it was not so dashed easy to getthere, for she was setting a cracking pace. At the top of the firstflight she must have led by a matter of half a dozen lengths, and wasstill shaking off my challenge when she rounded into the second. At thenext landing, however, the gruelling going appeared to tell on her, forshe slackened off a trifle and showed symptoms of roaring, and by thetime we were in the straight we were running practically neck and neck.Our entry into Anatole's room was as close a finish as you could havewished to see.
Result:
1. _Aunt Dahlia._
2. _Bertram._
3. _Seppings._
_Won by a short head. Half a staircase separated second and third._
The first thing that met the eye on entering was Anatole. This wizard ofthe cooking-stove is a tubby little man with a moustache of the outsizeor soup-strainer type, and you can generally take a line through it as tothe state of his emotions. When all is well, it turns up at the ends likea sergeant-major's. When the soul is bruised, it droops.
It was drooping now, striking a sinister note. And if any shadow of doubthad remained as to how he was feeling, the way he was carrying on wouldhave dispelled it. He was standing by the bed in pink pyjamas, waving hisfists at the skylight. Through the glass, Gussie was staring down. Hiseyes were bulging and his mouth was open, giving him so striking aresemblance to some rare fish in an aquarium that one's primary impulsewas to offer him an ant's egg.
Watching this fist-waving cook and this goggling guest, I must say thatmy sympathies were completely with the former. I considered himthoroughly justified in waving all the fists he wanted to.
Review the facts, I mean to say. There he had been, lying in bed,thinking idly of whatever French cooks do think about when in bed, and hehad suddenly become aware of that frightful face at the window. A thingto jar the most phlegmatic. I know I should hate to be lying in bed andhave Gussie popping up like that. A chap's bedroom--you can't get awayfrom it--is his castle, and he has every right to look askance ifgargoyles come glaring in at him.
While I stood musing thus, Aunt Dahlia, in her practical way, was comingstraight to the point:
"What's all this?"
Anatole did a sort of Swedish exercise, starting at the base of thespine, carrying on through the shoulder-blades and finishing up among theback hair.
Then he told her.
In the chats I have had with this wonder man, I have always found hisEnglish fluent, but a bit on the mixed side. If you remember, he was withMrs. Bingo Little for a time before coming to Brinkley, and no doubt hepicked up a good deal from Bingo. Before that, he had been a couple ofyears with an American family at Nice and had studied under theirchauffeur, one of the Maloneys of Brooklyn. So, what with Bingo and whatwith Maloney, he is, as I say, fluent but a bit mixed.
He spoke, in part, as follows:
"Hot dog! You ask me what is it? Listen. Make some attention a little.Me, I have hit the hay, but I do not sleep so good, and presently I wakeand up I look, and there is one who make faces against me through thedashed window. Is that a pretty affair? Is that convenient? If you thinkI like it, you jolly well mistake yourself. I am so mad as a wet hen. Andwhy not? I am somebody, isn't it? This is a bedroom, what-what, not ahouse for some apes? Then for what do blighters sit on my window so coolas a few cucumbers, making some faces?"
"Quite," I said. Dashed reasonable, was my verdict.
He threw another look up at Gussie, and did Exercise 2--the one where youclutch the moustache, give it a tug and then start catching flies.
"Wait yet a little. I am not finish. I say I see this type on my window,making a few faces. But what then? Does he buzz off when I shout a cry,and leave me peaceable? Not on your life. He remain planted there, notgiving any damns, and sit regarding me like a cat watching a duck. Hemake faces against me and again he make faces against me, and the more Icommand that he should get to hell out of here, the more he do not get tohell out of here. He cry something towards me, and I demand what is hisdesire, but he do not explain. Oh, no, that arrives never. He does butshrug his head. What damn silliness! Is this amusing for me? You think Ilike it? I am not content with such folly. I think the poor mutt's loony._Je me fiche de ce type infect. C'est idiot de faire comme cal'oiseau.... Allez-vous-en, louffier_.... Tell the boob to go away. He ismad as some March hatters."
I must say I thought he was making out a jolly good case, and evidentlyAunt Dahlia felt the same. She laid a quivering hand on his shoulder.
"I will, Monsieur Anatole, I will," she said, and I couldn't havebelieved that robust voice capable of sinking to such an absolute coo.More like a turtle dove calling to its mate than anything else. "It'squite all right."
She had said the wrong thing. He did Exercise 3.
"All right? _Nom d'un nom d'un nom_! The hell you say it's all right! Ofwhat use to pull stuff like that? Wait one half-moment. Not yet quite soquick, my old sport. It is by no means all right. See yet again a little.It is some very different dishes of fish. I can take a few smooths with arough, it is true, but I do not find it agreeable when one play larksagainst me on my windows. That cannot do. A nice thing, no. I am aserious man. I do not wish a few larks on my windows. I enjoy larks on mywindows worse as any. It is very little all right. If such rannygazoo isto arrive, I do not remain any longer in this house no more. I buzz offand do not stay planted."
Sinister words, I had to admit, and I was not surprised that Aunt Dahlia,hearing them, should have uttered a cry like the wail of a master ofhounds seeing a fox shot. Anatole had begun to wave his fists again atGussie, and she now joined him. Seppings, who was puffing respectfully inthe background, didn't actually wave his fists, but he gave Gussie apretty austere look. It was plain to the thoughtful observer that thisFink-Nottle, in getting on to that skylight, had done a mistaken thing.He couldn't have been more unpopular in the home of G.G. Simmons.
"Go away, you crazy loon!" cried Aunt Dahlia, in that ringing voice ofhers which had once caused nervous members of the Quorn to lose stirrupsand take tosses from the saddle.
Gussie's reply was to waggle his eyebrows. I could read the message hewas trying to convey.
"I think he means," I said--reasonable old Bertram, always trying tothrow oil on the troubled w's----"that if he does he will fall down theside of the house and break his neck."
"Well, why not?" said Aunt Dahlia.
I could see her point, of course, but it seemed to me that there might bea nearer solution. This skylight happened to be the only window in thehouse which Uncle Tom had not festooned with his bally bars. I suppose hefelt that if a burglar had the nerve to climb up as far as this,
hedeserved what was coming to him.
"If you opened the skylight, he could jump in."
The idea got across.
"Seppings, how does this skylight open?"
"With a pole, madam."
"Then get a pole. Get two poles. Ten."
And presently Gussie was mixing with the company, Like one of those chapsyou read about in the papers, the wretched man seemed deeply conscious ofhis position.
I must say Aunt Dahlia's bearing and demeanour did nothing to assisttoward a restored composure. Of the amiability which she had exhibitedwhen discussing this unhappy chump's activities with me over the fruitsalad, no trace remained, and I was not surprised that speech more orless froze on the Fink-Nottle lips. It isn't often that Aunt Dahlia,normally as genial a bird as ever encouraged a gaggle of hounds to gettheir noses down to it, lets her angry passions rise, but when she does,strong men climb trees and pull them up after them.
"Well?" she said.
In answer to this, all that Gussie could produce was a sort of strangledhiccough.
"Well?"
Aunt Dahlia's face grew darker. Hunting, if indulged in regularly over aperiod of years, is a pastime that seldom fails to lend a fairly deepishtinge to the patient's complexion, and her best friends could not havedenied that even at normal times the relative's map tended a littletoward the crushed strawberry. But never had I seen it take on sopronounced a richness as now. She looked like a tomato struggling forself-expression.
"Well?"
Gussie tried hard. And for a moment it seemed as if something was goingto come through. But in the end it turned out nothing more than a sort ofdeath-rattle.
"Oh, take him away, Bertie, and put ice on his head," said Aunt Dahlia,giving the thing up. And she turned to tackle what looked like the ratherman's size job of soothing Anatole, who was now carrying on a mutteredconversation with himself in a rapid sort of way.
Seeming to feel that the situation was one to which he could not dojustice in Bingo-cum-Maloney Anglo-American, he had fallen back on hisnative tongue. Words like "_marmiton de Domange," "pignouf,""hurluberlu_" and "_roustisseur_" were fluttering from him like bats outof a barn. Lost on me, of course, because, though I sweated a bit at theGallic language during that Cannes visit, I'm still more or less in theEsker-vous-avez stage. I regretted this, for they sounded good.
I assisted Gussie down the stairs. A cooler thinker than Aunt Dahlia, Ihad already guessed the hidden springs and motives which had led him tothe roof. Where she had seen only a cockeyed reveller indulging himselfin a drunken prank or whimsy, I had spotted the hunted fawn.
"Was Tuppy after you?" I asked sympathetically.
What I believe is called a _frisson_ shook him.
"He nearly got me on the top landing. I shinned out through a passagewindow and scrambled along a sort of ledge."
"That baffled him, what?"
"Yes. But then I found I had stuck. The roof sloped down in alldirections. I couldn't go back. I had to go on, crawling along thisledge. And then I found myself looking down the skylight. Who was thatchap?"
"That was Anatole, Aunt Dahlia's chef."
"French?"
"To the core."
"That explains why I couldn't make him understand. What asses theseFrenchmen are. They don't seem able to grasp the simplest thing. You'dhave thought if a chap saw a chap on a skylight, the chap would realizethe chap wanted to be let in. But no, he just stood there."
"Waving a few fists."
"Yes. Silly idiot. Still, here I am."
"Here you are, yes--for the moment."
"Eh?"
"I was thinking that Tuppy is probably lurking somewhere."
He leaped like a lamb in springtime.
"What shall I do?"
I considered this.
"Sneak back to your room and barricade the door. That is the manlypolicy."
"Suppose that's where he's lurking?"
"In that case, move elsewhere."
But on arrival at the room, it transpired that Tuppy, if anywhere, wasinfesting some other portion of the house. Gussie shot in, and I heardthe key turn. And feeling that there was no more that I could do in thatquarter, I returned to the dining-room for further fruit salad and aquiet think. And I had barely filled my plate when the door opened andAunt Dahlia came in. She sank into a chair, looking a bit shopworn.
"Give me a drink, Bertie."
"What sort?"
"Any sort, so long as it's strong."
Approach Bertram Wooster along these lines, and you catch him at hisbest. St. Bernard dogs doing the square thing by Alpine travellers couldnot have bustled about more assiduously. I filled the order, and for somemoments nothing was to be heard but the sloshing sound of an auntrestoring her tissues.
"Shove it down, Aunt Dahlia," I said sympathetically. "These things takeit out of one, don't they? You've had a toughish time, no doubt, soothingAnatole," I proceeded, helping myself to anchovy paste on toast."Everything pretty smooth now, I trust?"
She gazed at me in a long, lingering sort of way, her brow wrinkled as ifin thought.
"Attila," she said at length. "That's the name. Attila, the Hun."
"Eh?"
"I was trying to think who you reminded me of. Somebody who went aboutstrewing ruin and desolation and breaking up homes which, until he camealong, had been happy and peaceful. Attila is the man. It's amazing." shesaid, drinking me in once more. "To look at you, one would think you werejust an ordinary sort of amiable idiot--certifiable, perhaps, but quiteharmless. Yet, in reality, you are worse a scourge than the Black Death.I tell you, Bertie, when I contemplate you I seem to come up against allthe underlying sorrow and horror of life with such a thud that I feel asif I had walked into a lamp post."
Pained and surprised, I would have spoken, but the stuff I had thoughtwas anchovy paste had turned out to be something far more gooey andadhesive. It seemed to wrap itself round the tongue and impede utterancelike a gag. And while I was still endeavouring to clear the vocal cordsfor action, she went on:
"Do you realize what you started when you sent that Spink-Bottle man downhere? As regards his getting blotto and turning the prize-givingceremonies at Market Snodsbury Grammar School into a sort of two-reelcomic film, I will say nothing, for frankly I enjoyed it. But when hecomes leering at Anatole through skylights, just after I had withinfinite pains and tact induced him to withdraw his notice, and makes himso temperamental that he won't hear of staying on after tomorrow----"
The paste stuff gave way. I was able to speak:
"What?"
"Yes, Anatole goes tomorrow, and I suppose poor old Tom will haveindigestion for the rest of his life. And that is not all. I have justseen Angela, and she tells me she is engaged to this Bottle."
"Temporarily, yes," I had to admit.
"Temporarily be blowed. She's definitely engaged to him and talks with asort of hideous coolness of getting married in October. So there it is.If the prophet Job were to walk into the room at this moment, I could sitswapping hard-luck stories with him till bedtime. Not that Job was in myclass."
"He had boils."
"Well, what are boils?"
"Dashed painful, I understand."
"Nonsense. I'd take all the boils on the market in exchange for mytroubles. Can't you realize the position? I've lost the best cook toEngland. My husband, poor soul, will probably die of dyspepsia. And myonly daughter, for whom I had dreamed such a wonderful future, is engagedto be married to an inebriated newt fancier. And you talk about boils!"
I corrected her on a small point:
"I don't absolutely talk about boils. I merely mentioned that Job hadthem. Yes, I agree with you, Aunt Dahlia, that things are not looking toooojah-cum-spiff at the moment, but be of good cheer. A Wooster is seldombaffled for more than the nonce."
"You rather expect to be coming along shortly with another of yourschemes?"
"At any minute."
She sighed resignedly.
"I thought as much.
Well, it needed but this. I don't see how thingscould possibly be worse than they are, but no doubt you will succeed inmaking them so. Your genius and insight will find the way. Carry on,Bertie. Yes, carry on. I am past caring now. I shall even find a faintinterest in seeing into what darker and profounder abysses of hell youcan plunge this home. Go to it, lad.... What's that stuff you're eating?"
"I find it a little difficult to classify. Some sort of paste on toast.Rather like glue flavoured with beef extract."
"Gimme," said Aunt Dahlia listlessly.
"Be careful how you chew," I advised. "It sticketh closer than abrother.... Yes, Jeeves?"
The man had materialized on the carpet. Absolutely noiseless, as usual.
"A note for you, sir."
"A note for me, Jeeves?"
"A note for you, sir."
"From whom, Jeeves?"
"From Miss Bassett, sir."
"From whom, Jeeves?"
"From Miss Bassett, sir."
"From Miss Bassett, Jeeves?"
"From Miss Bassett, sir."
At this point, Aunt Dahlia, who had taken one nibble at herwhatever-it-was-on-toast and laid it down, begged us--a little fretfully,I thought--for heaven's sake to cut out the cross-talk vaudeville stuff,as she had enough to bear already without having to listen to us doingour imitation of the Two Macs. Always willing to oblige, I dismissedJeeves with a nod, and he flickered for a moment and was gone. Many aspectre would have been less slippy.
"But what," I mused, toying with the envelope, "can this female bewriting to me about?"
"Why not open the damn thing and see?"
"A very excellent idea," I said, and did so.
"And if you are interested in my movements," proceeded Aunt Dahlia,heading for the door, "I propose to go to my room, do some Yogi deepbreathing, and try to forget."
"Quite," I said absently, skimming p. l. And then, as I turned over, asharp howl broke from my lips, causing Aunt Dahlia to shy like a startledmustang.
"Don't do it!" she exclaimed, quivering in every limb.
"Yes, but dash it----"
"What a pest you are, you miserable object," she sighed. "I rememberyears ago, when you were in your cradle, being left alone with you oneday and you nearly swallowed your rubber comforter and started turningpurple. And I, ass that I was, took it out and saved your life. Let metell you, young Bertie, it will go very hard with you if you ever swallowa rubber comforter again when only I am by to aid."
"But, dash it!" I cried. "Do you know what's happened? Madeline Bassettsays she's going to marry me!"
"I hope it keeps fine for you," said the relative, and passed from theroom looking like something out of an Edgar Allan Poe story.