That was all. Immediately after that the starting-gun went and we toddled down to the festive. And from that moment, I’m bound to say, in the superior interest of the proceedings he rather faded out of my mind. For good old Anatole, braced presumably by the fact of there being guests, had absolutely surpassed himself.
I am not a man who speaks hastily in these matters. I weigh my words. And I say again that Anatole had surpassed himself. It was as good a dinner as I have ever absorbed, and it revived Uncle Thomas like a watered flower. As we sat down he was saying some things about the Government which they wouldn’t have cared to hear. With the consommé pâté d’Italie he said but what could you expect nowadays? With the paupiettes de sole à la princesse he admitted rather decently that the Government couldn’t be held responsible for the rotten weather, anyway. And shortly after the caneton Aylesbury à la broche he was practically giving the lads the benefit of his wholehearted support.
And all the time young Bingo looking like an owl with a secret sorrow. Rummy!
I thought about it a good deal as I walked home, and I was hoping he wouldn’t roll round with his hard-luck story too early in the morning. He had the air of one who intends to charge in at about six-thirty.
Jeeves was waiting up for me when I got back.
“A pleasant dinner, sir?” he said.
“Magnificent, Jeeves.”
“I am glad to hear that, sir. Mr. George Travers rang up on the telephone shortly after you had left. He was extremely desirous that you should join him at Harrogate, sir. He leaves for that town by an early train tomorrow.”
My Uncle George is a festive old bird who has made a habit for years of doing himself a dashed sight too well, with the result that he’s always got Harrogate or Buxton hanging over him like the sword of what’s-his-name. And he hates going there alone.
“It can’t be done,” I said. Uncle George is bad enough in London, and I wasn’t going to let myself be cooped up with him in one of these cure-places.
“He was extremely urgent, sir.”
“No, Jeeves,” I said, firmly. “I am always anxious to oblige, but Uncle George—no, no! I mean to say, what?”
“Very good, sir,” said Jeeves.
It was a pleasure to hear the way he said it. Docile the man was becoming, absolutely docile. It just showed that I had been right in putting my foot down about those shirts.
When Bingo showed up next morning, I had had breakfast and was all ready for him. Jeeves shot him into the presence, and he sat down on the bed.
“Good morning, Bertie,” said young Bingo.
“Good morning, old thing,” I replied, courteously.
“Don’t go, Jeeves,” said young Bingo hollowly. “Wait.”
“Sir?”
“Remain. Stay. Cluster round. I shall need you.”
“Very good, sir.”
Bingo lit a cigarette and frowned bleakly at the wallpaper.
“Bertie,” he said, “the most frightful calamity has occurred. Unless something is done, and done right speedily, my social prestige is doomed, my self-respect will be obliterated, my name will be mud, and I shall not dare to show my face in the West-end of London again.”
“My aunt!” I cried, deeply impressed.
“Exactly,” said young Bingo, with a hollow laugh. “You have put it in a nutshell. The whole trouble is due to your blasted aunt.”
“Which blasted aunt? Specify, old thing. I have so many.”
“Mrs. Travers. The one who runs that infernal paper.”
“Oh, no, dash it, old man,” I protested. “She’s the only decent aunt I’ve got. Jeeves, you will bear me out in this?”
“Such has always been my impression, I must confess, sir.”
“Well, get rid of it, then,” said young Bingo. “The woman is a menace to society, a home-wrecker, and a pest. Do you know what she’s done? She’s got Rosie to write an article for that rag of hers.”
“I know that.”
“Yes, but you don’t know what it’s about.”
“No. She only told me Aunt Dahlia had given her a splendid idea for the thing.”
“It’s about me!”
“You?”
“Yes, me! Me! And do you know what it’s called? It is called ‘How I Keep the Love of My Husband-Baby.’ ”
“My what?”
“Husband-baby!”
“What’s a husband-baby?”
“I am, apparently,” said young Bingo, with much bitterness. “I am also, according to this article, a lot of other things which I have too much sense of decency to repeat even to an old friend. This beastly composition, in short, is one of those things they call ‘human interest stories’; one of those intimate revelations of married life over which the female public loves to gloat; all about Rosie and me and what she does when I come home cross, and so on. I tell you, Bertie, I am still blushing all over at the recollection of something she says in paragraph two.”
“What?”
“I decline to tell you. But you can take it from me that it’s the edge. Nobody could be fonder of Rosie than I am, but—dear, sensible girl as she is in ordinary life—the moment she gets in front of a dictating-machine she becomes absolutely maudlin. Bertie, that article must not appear!”
“But—”
“If it does I shall have to resign from my clubs, grow a beard, and become a hermit. I shall not be able to face the world.”
“Aren’t you pitching it a bit strong, old lad?” I said. “Jeeves, don’t you think he’s pitching it a bit strong?”
“Well, sir—”
“I am pitching it feebly,” said young Bingo, earnestly. “You haven’t heard the thing. I have. Rosie shoved the cylinder on the dictating-machine last night before dinner, and it was grisly to hear the instrument croaking out those awful sentences. If that article appears I shall be kidded to death by every pal I’ve got. Bertie,” he said, his voice sinking to a hoarse whisper, “you have about as much imagination as a warthog, but surely even you can picture to yourself what Jimmy Bowles and Tuppy Rogers, to
