“Oh, no, sir.”
“Well, that's what it sounds like. Why don't you think this scheme will work?”
“I fear Miss Angela will merely attribute Mr. Glossop's abstinence to indigestion, sir.”
I hadn't thought of that, and I must confess it shook me for a moment. Then I recovered myself. I saw what was at the bottom of all this. Mortified by the consciousness of his own ineptness—or ineptitude—the fellow was simply trying to hamper and obstruct. I decided to knock the stuffing out of him without further preamble.
“Oh?” I said. “You do, do you? Well, be that as it may, it doesn't alter the fact that you've put out the wrong coat. Be so good, Jeeves,” I said, indicating with a gesture the gent's ordinary dinner jacket orsmoking, as we call it on the Cote d'Azur, which was suspended from the hanger on the knob of the wardrobe, “as to shove that bally black thing in the cupboard and bring out my white mess-jacket with the brass buttons.”
He looked at me in a meaning manner. And when I say a meaning manner, I mean there was a respectful but at the same time uppish glint in his eye and a sort of muscular spasm flickered across his face which wasn't quite a quiet smile and yet wasn't quite not a quiet smile. Also the soft cough.
“I regret to say, sir, that I inadvertently omitted to pack the garment to which you refer.”
The vision of that parcel in the hall seemed to rise before my eyes, and I exchanged a merry wink with it. I may even have hummed a bar or two. I'm not quite sure.
“I know you did, Jeeves,” I said, laughing down from lazy eyelids and nicking a speck of dust from the irreproachable Mechlin lace at my wrists. “But I didn't. You will find it on a chair in the hall in a brown-paper parcel.”
The information that his low manoeuvres had been rendered null and void and that the thing was on the strength after all, must have been the nastiest of jars, but there was no play of expression on his finely chiselled to indicate it. There very seldom is on Jeeves's f-c. In moments of discomfort, as I had told Tuppy, he wears a mask, preserving throughout the quiet stolidity of a stuffed moose.
“You might just slide down and fetch it, will you?”
“Very good, sir.”
“Right ho, Jeeves.”
And presently I was sauntering towards the drawing-room with me good old j. nestling snugly abaft the shoulder blades.
And Dahlia was in the drawing-room. She glanced up at my entrance.
“Hullo, eyesore,” she said. “What do you think you're made up as?”
I did not get the purport.
“The jacket, you mean?” I queried, groping.
“I do. You look like one of the chorus of male guests at Abernethy Towers in Act 2 of a touring musical comedy.”
“You do not admire this jacket?”
I do not.”
“You did at Cannes.”
“Well, this isn't Cannes.”
“But, dash it—”
“Oh, never mind. Let it go. If you want to give my butler a laugh, what does it matter? What does anything matter now?”
There was a death-where-is-thy-sting-fullness about her manner which I found distasteful. It isn't often that I score off Jeeves in the devastating fashion just described, and when I do I like to see happy, smiling faces about me.
“Tails up, Aunt Dahlia,” I urged buoyantly.
“Tails up be dashed,” was her sombre response. “I've just been talking to Tom.”
“Telling him?”
“No, listening to him. I haven't had the nerve to tell him yet.”
“Is he still upset about that income-tax money?”
“Upset is right. He says that Civilisation is in the melting-pot and that all thinking men can read the writing on the wall.”
“What wall?”
“Old Testament, ass. Belshazzar's feast.”
“Oh, that, yes. I've often wondered how that gag was worked. With mirrors, I expect.”
“I wish I could use mirrors to break it to Tom about this baccarat business.”
I had a word of comfort to offer here. I had been turning the thing over in my mind since our last meeting, and I thought I saw where she had got twisted. Where she made her error, it seemed to me, was in feeling she had got to tell Uncle Tom. To my way of thinking, the matter was one on which it would be better to continue to exercise a quiet reserve.
“I don't see why you need mention that you lost that money at baccarat.”
“What do you suggest, then? LettingMilady's Boudoirjoin Civilisation in the melting-pot. Because that is what it will infallibly do unless I get a cheque by next week. The printers have been showing a nasty spirit for months.”
“You don't follow. Listen. It's an understood thing, I take it, that Uncle Tom foots theBoudoirbills. If the bally sheet has been turning the corner for two years, he must have got used to forking out by this time. Well, simply ask him for the money to pay the printers.”
“I did. Just before I went to Cannes.”
“Wouldn't he give it to you?”
“Certainly he gave it to me. He brassed up like an officer and a gentleman. That was the money I lost at baccarat.”
“Oh? I didn't know that.”
“There isn't much you do know.”
A nephew's love made me overlook the slur.
“Tut!” I said.
“What did you say?”
“I said 'Tut!'“
“Say it once again, and I'll biff you where you stand. I've enough to endure without being tutted at.”
“Quite.”
“Any tutting that's required, I'll attend to myself. And the same applies to clicking the tongue, if you were thinking of doing that.”
“Far from it.”
“Good.”
I stood awhile in thought. I was concerned to the core. My heart, if you remember, had already bled once for Aunt Dahlia this evening. It now bled again. I knew how deeply attached she was to this paper of hers. Seeing it go down the drain would be for her like watching a loved child sink for the third time in some pond or mere.
And there was no question that, unless carefully prepared for the touch, Uncle Tom would see a hundredMilady's Boudoirsgo phut rather than take the rap.
Then I saw how the thing could be handled. This aunt, I perceived, must fall into line with my other clients. Tuppy Glossop was knocking off dinner to melt Angela. Gussie Fink-Nottle was knocking off dinner to impress the Bassett. Aunt Dahlia must knock off dinner to soften Uncle Tom. For the beauty of this scheme of mine was that there was no limit to the number of entrants. Come one, come all, the more the merrier, and satisfaction guaranteed in every case.
“I've got it,” I said. “There is only one course to pursue. Eat less meat.”
She looked at me in a pleading sort of way. I wouldn't swear that her eyes were wet with unshed tears, but I rather think they were, certainly she clasped her hands in piteous appeal.
“Must you drivel, Bertie? Won't you stop it just this once? Just for tonight, to please Aunt Dahlia?”
“I'm not drivelling.”
“I dare say that to a man of your high standards it doesn't come under the head of drivel, but—”
I saw what had happened. I hadn't made myself quite clear.
“It's all right,” I said. “Have no misgivings. This is the real Tabasco. When I said 'Eat less meat', what I meant was that you must refuse your oats at dinner tonight. Just sit there, looking blistered, and wave away each course as it comes with a weary gesture of resignation. You see what will happen. Uncle Tom will notice your loss of appetite, and I am prepared to bet that at the conclusion of the meal he will come to you and say 'Dahlia, darling'—I take it he calls you 'Dahlia'—'Dahlia darling,' he will say, 'I noticed at dinner tonight that you were a bit off your feed. Is anything the matter, Dahlia, darling?' 'Why, yes, Tom, darling,' you will reply. 'It is kind of you to ask, darling. The fact is, darling, I am terribly worried.' 'My darling,' he will say—”