I shuffled my feet and hoped for the best.
“Ah, well,” he said again. “I must not be like Lord Windermere, must I, Mr. Wooster? Tell me, did you draw that haughty old man from a living model?”
“Oh, no! Just thought of him and bunged him down, you know.”
“Genius!” murmured old Bittlesham. “Genius! Well, Mr. Wooster, you have won me over. Who, as you say, am I to pit myself against the decrees of Fate? I will write to Richard tonight and inform him of my consent to his marriage.”
“You can slip him the glad news in person,” I said. “He’s waiting downstairs, with wife complete. I’ll pop down and send them up. Cheerio, and thanks very much. Bingo will be most awfully bucked.”
I shot out and went downstairs. Bingo and Mrs. were sitting on a couple of chairs like patients in a dentist’s waiting-room.
“Well?” said Bingo eagerly.
“All over except the hand-clasping,” I replied, slapping the old crumpet on the back. “Charge up and get matey. Toodle-oo, old things. You know where to find me, if wanted. A thousand congratulations, and all that sort of rot.”
And I pipped, not wishing to be fawned upon.
You never can tell in this world. If ever I felt that something attempted, something done had earned a night’s repose, it was when I got back to the flat and shoved my feet up on the mantelpiece and started to absorb the cup of tea which Jeeves had brought in. Used as I am to seeing Life’s sitters blow up in the home stretch and finish nowhere, I couldn’t see any cause for alarm in this affair of young Bingo’s. All he had to do when I left him in Pounceby Gardens was to walk upstairs with the little missus and collect the blessing. I was so convinced of this that when, about half an hour later, he came galloping into my sitting room, all I thought was that he wanted to thank me in broken accents and tell me what a good chap I had been. I merely beamed benevolently on the old creature as he entered, and was just going to offer him a cigarette when I observed that he seemed to have something on his mind. In fact, he looked as if something solid had hit him in the solar plexus.
“My dear old soul,” I said, “what’s up?”
Bingo plunged about the room.
“I will be calm!” he said, knocking over an occasional table. “Calm, dammit!” He upset a chair.
“Surely nothing has gone wrong?”
Bingo uttered one of those hollow, mirthless yelps.
“Only every bally thing that could go wrong. What do you think happened after you left us? You know that beastly book you insisted on sending my uncle?”
It wasn’t the way I should have put it myself, but I saw the poor old bean was upset for some reason or other, so I didn’t correct him.
“The Woman Who Braved All?” I said. “It came in dashed useful. It was by quoting bits out of it that I managed to talk him round.”
“Well, it didn’t come in useful when we got into the room. It was lying on the table, and after we had started to chat a bit and everything was going along nicely the little woman spotted it. ‘Oh, have you read this, Lord Bittlesham?’ she said. ‘Three times already,’ said my uncle. ‘I’m so glad,’ said the little woman. ‘Why, are you also an admirer of Rosie M. Banks?’ asked the old boy, beaming. ‘I am Rosie M. Banks!’ said the little woman.”
“Oh, my aunt! Not really?”
“Yes.”
“But how could she be? I mean, dash it, she was slinging the foodstuffs at the Senior Liberal Club.”
Bingo gave the settee a moody kick.
“She took the job to collect material for a book she’s writing called Mervyn Keene, Clubman.”
“She might have told you.”
“It made such a hit with her when she found that I loved her for herself alone, despite her humble station, that she kept it under her hat. She meant to spring it on me later on, she said.”
“Well, what happened then?”
“There was the dickens of a painful scene. The old boy nearly got apoplexy. Called her an impostor. They both started talking at once at the top of their voices, and the thing ended with the little woman buzzing off to her publishers to collect proofs as a preliminary to getting a written apology from the old boy. What’s going to happen now, I don’t know. Apart from the fact that my uncle will be as mad as a wet hen when he finds out that he has been fooled, there’s going to be a lot of trouble when the little woman discovers that we worked the Rosie M. Banks wheeze with a view to trying to get me married to somebody else. You see, one of the things that first attracted her to me was the fact that I had never been in love before.”
“Did you tell her that?”
“Yes.”
“Great Scott!”
“Well, I hadn’t been … not really in love. There’s all the difference in the world between. … Well, never mind that. What am I going to do? That’s the point.”
“I don’t know.”
“Thanks,” said young Bingo. “That’s a lot of help.”
Next morning he rang me up on the phone just after I’d got the bacon and eggs into my system—the one moment of the day, in short, when a chappie wishes to muse on life absolutely undisturbed.
“Bertie!”
“Hallo?”
“Things are hotting up.”
“What’s happened now?”
“My uncle has given the little woman’s proofs the once-over and admits her claim. I’ve just been having five snappy minutes with him on the telephone. He
