“Yes. I was astounded. I was all prepared for a refusal. But no. We drank his health, and he rose to his feet as cool as some cucumbers, as Anatole would say, and held us spellbound.”
“Tight as a skunk, I suppose?”
“On the contrary. Absolutely sober.”
“Well, nice to hear.”
This Gussie was a fish-faced pal of mine, who had buried himself in the country and devoted himself entirely to the study of newts, keeping the little chaps in a glass tank and observing their habits with a sedulous eye. A confirmed recluse you would have called him, if you had happened to know the word, and you would have been right. But Love will find a way. Meeting Madeline Bassett one day, he had emerged from his retirement and started to woo, and after numerous vicissitudes had been successful. Now he was going to marry that ghastly girl.
I call her a ghastly girl because she was a ghastly girl. The Woosters are chivalrous, but they can tell the truth. Droopy, soupy, sentimental, with melting eyes and a cooing voice and the most extraordinary views on such things as stars and rabbits. I remember her telling me once that rabbits were gnomes in attendance on the Fairy Queen and that the stars were God’s daisy chain. Perfect nonsense, of course. They’re nothing of the sort.
Aunt Dahlia emitted a low, rumbling chuckle.
“Good old Spink-Bottle[25]! Where is he now?”
“Staying at the Bassett’s place—Totleigh Towers, Glos[26]. He went back there this morning. They’re having the wedding at the local church.”
“Are you going to it?”
“Definitely no.”
“No, I suppose it would be too painful for you. You were in love with the girl.”
I stared.
“In love? With a female who thinks that every time a fairy sneezes a baby is born?”
“Well, you were certainly engaged to her once.”
“For about five minutes, yes, and there was no fault of my own. My dear old relative,” I said, “you are perfectly well aware of the inside facts of that frightful affair.”
I winced. It was an incident in my career which I don’t like to remember. Briefly, what had occurred was this. Gussie had asked me to talk to Madeline Bassett for him. And when I did so, the fat-headed[27] girl thought I was pleading mine. With the result that she had refused Gussie and attached herself to me, and I had no option but to take the rap[28]. Mercifully, things went well and there was a reconciliation between them, but the thought of my peril was one at which I still shuddered.
“Well, if it is of any interest to you,” said Aunt Dahlia, “I am not proposing to attend that wedding myself. I disapprove of Sir Watkyn Bassett, and don’t think he ought to be encouraged.”
“You know the old crumb[29], then?” I said, rather surprised. It’s a small world.[30]
“Yes, I know him. He’s a friend of Tom’s. They both collect old silver and snarl at one another like wolves about it all the time. We had him staying at Brinkley[31] last month. And would you care to hear how he repaid me for all the loving care I lavished on him while he was my guest? Behind my back he tried to steal Anatole!”
“No!”
“That’s what he did. Fortunately, Anatole proved staunch—after I had doubled his wages.”
“Double them again,” I said earnestly. “Keep on doubling them. Pour out money like water rather than lose that superb master of the roasts and hashes.”
I was visibly affected.
“Yes,” said Aunt Dahlia, “Sir Watkyn Bassett is a swindler. You had better warn Spink-Bottle to watch out on the wedding day. The slightest relaxation of vigilance, and the old man will probably steal his wedding ring. And now push off. Oh, and give this to Jeeves, when you see him. It’s the “Husbands’ Corner” article. It’s about men’s trousers, and I’d like him to read it. For all I know, it may be Red propaganda. And I can rely on you not to bungle that job? Tell me in your own words what it is you’re supposed to do.”
“Go to antique shop—”
“—in the Brompton Road—”
“—in, as you say, the Brompton Road. Ask to see cow-creamer—”
“—and sneer. Right. Go away. The door is behind you.”
It was with a light heart that I went out into the street and caught a cab. I was conscious only of pleasure at the thought that I had it in my power to perform this little act of kindness. Scratch Bertram Wooster[32], I often say, and you find a Boy Scout[33].
The antique shop in the Brompton Road proved to be an antique shop in the Brompton Road and, like all antique shops, dingy outside and dark and smelly within. I don’t know why it is, but the proprietors of these establishments always seem to be cooking some food in the back room.
“I say,” I began, entering; then paused as I perceived that the man was attending to two other customers.
“Oh, sorry,” I was about to add, when the words froze on my lips.
In spite of the poor light I was able to note that the smaller and elder of these two customers was no stranger to me. It was old Pop Bassett in person. Himself. Not a picture. But I stood firm. After all, I had paid my debt to Society and had nothing to fear from this swindler. So I remained where I was.
He turned and shot a quick look at me, and then he had been peering at me sideways. It was only a question of time, I felt, before he would realize that the figure leaning on its umbrella was an old acquaintance. And he came across to where I stood.
“Hallo, hallo,” he said. “I know you, young man. I never forget a face. You came up before me once.” I bowed slightly. “But not twice. Good! Learned your lesson, eh? Going straight now? Good. Now, let me see, what was it? Don’t tell me. Of course, yes. Bag-snatching[34].”
“No, no. It was—”
“Bag-snatching,” he repeated firmly. “I remember it distinctly. Still, it’s all past, eh? We live a new life, don’t we? Splendid. Roderick[35], come over here. This is most interesting.”
His friends, who had been examining a salver, put it down and joined us. He was about seven feet in height, and about six feet across, he caught the eye and arrested it. It was as if Nature had intended to make a gorilla, and had changed its mind at the last moment.
His gaze was keen and piercing. I don’t know if you have even seen those pictures in the papers of Dictators with blazing eyes, inflaming the populace with fiery words, but that was what he reminded me of.
“Roderick,” said old Bassett, “I want you to meet this fellow. Here is a case which illustrates exactly what I have so often said—that prison life does not degrade, that it does not warp the character and prevent a man rising on stepping-stones of his dead self to higher things.”
I recognized the gag—one of Jeeves’s—and wondered where he could have heard it.
“Look at this chap. I gave him three months not long ago for snatching bags at railway stations, and it is quite evident that his term in jail has had the most excellent effect on him. He has reformed.”
“Oh, yes?” said the Dictator. I didn’t like the way he spoke. He was looking at me with a nasty sort of supercilious expression.
“What makes you think he has reformed?”
“Of course he has reformed. Look at him. Well groomed, well dressed, a decent member of Society. What his present walk in life is, I do not know, but it is perfectly obvious that he is no longer stealing bags. What are you doing now, young man?”
“Stealing umbrellas, apparently,” said the Dictator. “I notice he’s got yours.”
I was going to deny the accusation hotly—I had, indeed, already opened my lips to do so—when I remembered that I had come out without my umbrella, and yet here I was, beyond any question of doubt, had one! What had caused me to take up the one that had been leaning against a seventeenth-century chair, I cannot say, unless it was the primeval instinct which makes a man without an umbrella reach out for the nearest one in sight, like a flower groping toward the sun.
“I say, I’m most frightfully sorry.”
Old Bassett said he was, too, sorry and disappointed. He said it was this sort of thing that made a man sick at heart. The Dictator asked if he should call a policeman, and old Bassett’s eyes gleamed for a moment. A magistrate loves the idea of calling policemen. It’s like a tiger tasting blood. But he shook his head.