'Her nature is so frank, honest and forthright.'
'It is, isn't it.'
'She speaks her mind.'
'Invariably.'
'It's an admirable trait.'
'Oh, most.'
'You can't get away with much with a girl like Florence.'
'No.'
We fell into a silence. He was twiddling his fingers and a sort of what-d'you-call-it had come into his manner, as if he wanted to say something but was having trouble in getting it out. I remembered encountering a similar diffidence in the Rev. Stinker Pinker when he was trying to nerve himself to ask me to come to Totleigh Towers, and you find the same thing in dogs when they put a paw on your knee and look up into your face but don't utter, though making it clear that there is a subject on which they are anxious to touch.
'Bertie,' he said at length.
'Hullo?'
'Bertie.'
'Yes?'
'Bertie.'
'Still here. Excuse me asking, but have you any cracked gramophone record blood in you? Perhaps your mother was frightened by one?'
And then it all came out in a rush as if a cork had been pulled.
'Bertie, there's something I must tell you about Florence, though you probably know it already, being a cousin of hers. She's a wonderful girl and practically perfect in every respect, but she has one characteristic which makes it awkward for those who love her and are engaged to her. Don't think I'm criticizing her.'
'No, no.'
'I'm just mentioning it.'
'Exactly.'
'Well, she has no use for a loser. To keep her esteem you have to be a winner. She's like one of those princesses in the fairy tales who set fellows some task to perform, as it might be scaling a mountain of glass or bringing her a hair from the beard of the Great Cham of Tartary, and gave them the brush-off when they couldn't make the grade.'
I recalled the princesses of whom he spoke, and I had always thought them rather fatheads. I mean to say, what sort of foundation for a happy marriage is the bridegroom's ability to scale mountains of glass? A fellow probably wouldn't be called on to do it more than about once every ten years, if that.
'Gorringe,' said Ginger, continuing, 'was a loser, and that dished him. And long ago, someone told me, she was engaged to a gentleman jockey and she chucked him because he took a spill at the canal turn in the Grand National. She's a perfectionist. I admire her for it, of course.'
'Of course.'
'A girl like her is entitled to have high standards.'
'Quite.'
'But, as I say, it makes it awkward for me. She has set her heart on my winning this Market Snodsbury election, heaven knows why, for I never thought she had any interest in politics, and if I lose it, I shall lose her, too. So '
'Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of the party?'
'Exactly. You are going to canvass for me. Well, canvass like a ton of bricks, and see that Jeeves does the same. I've simply got to win.'
'You can rely on us.'
'Thank you, Bertie, I knew I could. And now let's go in and have a bite of lunch.'
4
Having restored the tissues with the excellent nourishment which Barribault's hotel always provides and arranged that Ginger was to pick me up in his car later in the afternoon, my own sports model being at the vet's with some nervous ailment, we parted, he to go in search of Magnolia Glendennon, I to walk back to the Wooster GHQ.
It was, as you may suppose, in thoughtful mood that I made my way through London's thoroughfares. I was reading a novel of suspense the other day in which the heroine, having experienced a sock in the eye or two, was said to be lost in a maze of mumbling thoughts, and that description would have fitted me like the paper on the wall.
My heart was heavy. When a man is an old friend and pretty bosom at that, it depresses you to hear that he's engaged to Florence Craye. I recalled my own emotions when I had found myself in that unpleasant position. I had felt like someone trapped in the underground den of the Secret Nine.
Though, mark you, there's nothing to beef about in her outer crust. At the time when she was engaged to Stilton Cheesewright I remember recording in the archives that she was tall and willowy with a terrific profile and luxuriant platinum-blonde hair; the sort of girl who might, as far as looks were concerned, have been the star unit of the harem of one of the better-class Sultans; and though I hadn't seen her for quite a while, I presumed that these conditions still prevailed. The fact that Ginger, when speaking of her, had gone so readily into his turtle dove impersonation seemed to indicate as much.
Looks, however, aren't everything. Against this pin-up-ness of hers you had to put the bossiness which would lead her to expect the bloke she married to behave like a Hollywood Yes-man. From childhood up she had been I can't think of the word begins with an i No, it's gone but I can give you the idea. When at my private school I once won a prize for Scripture Knowledge, which naturally involved a lot of researching into Holy Writ, and in the course of my researches I came upon the story of the military chap who used to say 'Come' and they cometh and 'Go' and they goeth. I have always thought that that was Florence in a nutshell. She would have given short shrift, as the expression is, to anyone who had gone when she said 'Come' or the other way round. Imperious, that's the word I was groping for. She was as imperious as a traffic cop. Little wonder that the heart was heavy. I felt that Ginger, mistaking it for a peach, had plucked a lemon in the garden of love.
And then my meditations took a less sombre turn. This often happens after a good lunch, even if you haven't had a cocktail. I reminded myself that many married men positively enjoy being kept on their toes by the little woman, and possibly Ginger might be one of them. He might take the view that when the little w made him sit up and beg and snap lumps of sugar off his nose, it was a compliment really, because it showed that she was taking an interest.
Feeling a bit more cheerful, I reached for my cigarette case and was just going to open it, when like an ass I dropped it and it fell into the road. And as I stepped from the pavement to retrieve it there was a sudden tooting in my rear, and whirling on my axis I perceived that in about another two ticks I was going to be rammed amidships by a taxi.
The trouble about whirling on your axis, in case you didn't know, is that you're liable, if not an adagio dancer, to trip over your feet, and this was what I proceeded to do. My left shoe got all mixed up with my right ankle, I tottered, swayed, and after a brief pause came down like some noble tree beneath the woodman's axe, and I was sitting there lost in a maze of numbing thoughts, when an unseen hand attached itself to my arm and jerked me back to safety. The taxi went on and turned the corner.
Well, of course the first thing the man of sensibility does on these occasions is to thank his brave preserver. I turned to do this, and blow me tight if the b.p. wasn't Jeeves. Came as a complete surprise. I couldn't think what he was doing there, and for an instant the idea occurred to me that this might be his astral body.
'Jeeves!' I ejaculated. I'm pretty sure that's the word. Anyway, I'll risk it.
'Good afternoon, sir. I trust you are not too discommoded. That was a somewhat narrow squeak.'
'It was indeed. I don't say my whole life passed before me, but a considerable chunk of it did. But for you '
'Not at all, sir.'
'Yes, you and you only saved me from appearing in tomorrow's obituary column.'
'A pleasure, sir.'
'It's amazing how you always turn up at the crucial moment, like the United States Marines. I remember how you did when A. B. Filmer and I were having our altercation with that swan, and there were other occasions too numerous to mention. Well, you will certainly get a rave notice in my prayers next time I make them. But how do you happen to be in these parts? Where are we, by the way?'