However, Gussie now being off my mind, I was prepared to devote my whole attention to the Glossop problem.
I had been much pleased by the way he had carried out the task assigned him at the dinner-table. No easy one, I can assure you, for the browsing and sluicing had been of the highest quality, and there had been one dish in particularI allude to thenonnettes de poulet Agnes Sorelwhich might well have broken down the most iron resolution. But he had passed it up like a professional fasting man, and I was proud of him.
Oh, hullo, Tuppy, I said, I wanted to see you.
He turned, snifter in hand, and it was easy to see that his privations had tried him sorely. He was looking like a wolf on the steppes of Russia which has seen its peasant shin up a high tree.
Yes? he said, rather unpleasantly. Well, here I am.
Well?
How do you meanwell?
Make your report.
What report?
Have you nothing to tell me about Angela?
Only that she's a blister.
I was concerned.
Hasn't she come clustering round you yet?
She has not.
Very odd.
Why odd?
She must have noted your lack of appetite.
He barked raspingly, as if he were having trouble with the tonsils of the soul.
Lack of appetite! I'm as hollow as the Grand Canyon.
Courage, Tuppy! Think of Gandhi.
What about Gandhi?
He hasn't had a square meal for years.
Nor have I. Or I could swear I hadn't. Gandhi, my left foot.
I saw that it might be best to let the Gandhimotifslide. I went back to where we had started.
She's probably looking for you now.
Who is? Angela?
Yes. She must have noticed your supreme sacrifice.
I don't suppose she noticed it at all, the little fathead. I'll bet it didn't register in any way whatsoever.
Come, Tuppy, I urged, this is morbid. Don't take this gloomy view. She must at least have spotted that you refused thosenonnettes de poulet Agnes Sorel. It was a sensational renunciation and stuck out like a sore thumb. And thecepes a la Rossini
A hoarse cry broke from his twisted lips:
Will you stop it, Bertie! Do you think I am made of marble? Isn't it bad enough to have sat watching one of Anatole's supremest dinners flit by, course after course, without having you making a song about it? Don't remind me of thosenonnettes. I can't stand it.
I endeavoured to hearten and console.
Be brave, Tuppy. Fix your thoughts on that cold steak-and-kidney pie in the larder. As the Good Book says, it cometh in the morning.
Yes, in the morning. And it's now about half-past nine at night. You would bring that pie up, wouldn't you? Just when I was trying to keep my mind off it.
I saw what he meant. Hours must pass before he could dig into that pie. I dropped the subject, and we sat for a pretty good time in silence. Then he rose and began to pace the room in an overwrought sort of way, like a zoo lion who has heard the dinner-gong go and is hoping the keeper won't forget him in the general distribution. I averted my gaze tactfully, but I could hear him kicking chairs and things. It was plain that the man's soul was in travail and his blood pressure high.
Presently he returned to his seat, and I saw that he was looking at me intently. There was that about his demeanour that led me to think that he had something to communicate.
Nor was I wrong. He tapped me significantly on the knee and spoke:
Bertie.
Hullo?
Shall I tell you something?
Certainly, old bird, I said cordially. I was just beginning to feel that the scene could do with a bit more dialogue.
This business of Angela and me.
Yes?
I've been putting in a lot of solid thinking about it.
Oh, yes?
I have analysed the situation pitilessly, and one thing stands out as clear as dammit. There has been dirty work afoot.
I don't get you.
All right. Let me review the facts. Up to the time she went to Cannes Angela loved me. She was all over me. I was the blue-eyed boy in every sense of the term. You'll admit that?
Indisputably.
And directly she came back we had this bust-up.
Quite.
About nothing.
Oh, dash it, old man, nothing? You were a bit tactless, what, about her shark.
I was frank and candid about her shark. And that's my point. Do you seriously believe that a trifling disagreement about sharks would make a girl hand a man his hat, if her heart were really his?
Certainly.
It beats me why he couldn't see it. But then poor old Tuppy has never been very hot on the finer shades. He's one of those large, tough, football-playing blokes who lack the more delicate sensibilities, as I've heard Jeeves call them. Excellent at blocking a punt or walking across an opponent's face in cleated boots, but not so good when it comes to understanding the highly-strung female temperament. It simply wouldn't occur to him that a girl might be prepared to give up her life's happiness rather than waive her shark.
Rot! It was just a pretext.
What was?
This shark business. She wanted to get rid of me, and grabbed at the first excuse.
No, no.
I tell you she did.
But what on earth would she want to get rid of you for?
Exactly. That's the very question I asked myself. And here's the answer: Because she has fallen in love with somebody else. It sticks out a mile. There's no other possible solution. She goes to Cannes all for me, she comes back all off me. Obviously during those two months, she must have transferred her affections to some foul blister she met out there.
No, no.
Don't keep saying 'No, no'. She must have done. Well, I'll tell you one thing, and you can take this as official. If ever I find this slimy, slithery snake in the grass, he had better make all the necessary arrangements at his favourite nursing-home without delay, because I am going to be very rough with him. I propose, if and when found, to take him by his beastly neck, shake him till he froths, and pull him inside out and make him swallow himself.
With which words he biffed off; and I, having given him a minute or two to get out of the way, rose and made for the drawing-room. The tendency of females to roost in drawing-rooms after dinner being well marked, I expected to find Angela there. It was my intention to have a word with Angela.
To Tuppy's theory that some insinuating bird had stolen the girl's heart from him at Cannes I had given, as I have indicated, little credence, considering it the mere unbalanced apple sauce of a bereaved man. It was, of course, the shark, and nothing but the shark, that had caused love's young dream to go temporarily off the boil, and I was convinced that a word or two with the cousin at this juncture would set everything right.
For, frankly, I thought it incredible that a girl of her natural sweetness and tender-heartedness should not have been moved to her foundations by what she had seen at dinner that night. Even Seppings, Aunt Dahlia's butler, a cold, unemotional man, had gasped and practically reeled when Tuppy waved aside thosenonnettes de poulet Agnes Sorel, while the footman, standing by with the potatoes, had stared like one seeing a vision. I simply refused to consider the possibility of the significance of the thing having been lost on a nice girl like Angela. I fully expected to find her in the drawing-room with her heart bleeding freely, all ripe for an immediate reconciliation.
In the drawing-room, however, when I entered, only Aunt Dahlia met the eye. It seemed to me that she gave me rather a jaundiced look as I hove in sight, but this, having so recently beheld Tuppy in his agony, I attributed to the fact that she, like him, had been going light on the menu. You can't expect an empty aunt to beam like a full aunt.