The Inferiority Complex of Old Sippy
I checked the man with one of my glances. I was astounded and shocked.
“Not another word, Jeeves,” I said. “You have gone too far. Hats, yes. Socks, yes. Coats, trousers, shirts, ties, and spats, absolutely. On all these things I defer to your judgment. But when it comes to vases, no.”
“Very good, sir.”
“You say that this vase is not in harmony with the appointments of the room—whatever that means, if anything. I deny this, Jeeves, in toto. I like this vase. I call it decorative, striking, and, all in all, an exceedingly good fifteen bob’s worth.”
“Very good, sir.”
“That’s that, then. If anybody rings up, I shall be closeted during the next hour with Mr. Sipperley at the offices of The Mayfair Gazette.”
I beetled off with a fairish amount of restrained hauteur, for I was displeased with the man. On the previous afternoon, while sauntering along the Strand, I had found myself wedged into one of those sort of alcove places where fellows with voices like foghorns stand all day selling things by auction. And, though I was still vague as to how exactly it had happened, I had somehow become the possessor of a large china vase with crimson dragons on it. And not only dragons, but birds, dogs, snakes, and a thing that looked like a leopard. This menagerie was now stationed on a bracket over the door of my sitting-room.
I liked the thing. It was bright and cheerful. It caught the eye. And that was why, when Jeeves, wincing a bit, had weighed in with some perfectly gratuitous art-criticism, I ticked him off with no little vim. Ne sutor ultra whatever-it-is, I would have said to him, if I’d thought of it. I mean to say, where does a valet get off, censoring vases? Does it fall within his province to knock the young master’s chinaware? Absolutely not, and so I told him.
I was still pretty heartily hipped when I reached the office of The Mayfair Gazette, and it would have been a relief to my feelings to have decanted my troubles on to old Sippy, who, being a very, very dear old pal of mine, would no doubt have understood and sympathized. But when the office-boy had slipped me through into the inner cubbyhole where the old lad performed his editorial duties, he seemed so preoccupied that I hadn’t the heart.
All these editor blokes, I understand, get pretty careworn after they’ve been at the job for awhile. Six months before, Sippy had been a cheery cove, full of happy laughter; but at that time he was what they call a freelance, bunging in a short story here and a set of verses there and generally enjoying himself. Ever since he had become editor of this rag, I had sensed a change, so to speak.
Today he looked more editorial then ever; so, shelving my own worries for the nonce, I endeavoured to cheer him up by telling him how much I had enjoyed his last issue. As a matter of fact, I hadn’t read it, but we Woosters do not shrink from subterfuge when it is a question of bracing up a buddy.
The treatment was effective. He showed animation and verve.
“You really liked it?”
“Red-hot, old thing.”
“Full of good stuff, eh?”
“Packed.”
“That poem—‘Solitude’?”
“What a gem!”
“A genuine masterpiece.”
“Pure tabasco. Who wrote it?”
“It was signed,” said Sippy, a little coldly.
“I keep forgetting names.”
“It was written,” said Sippy, “by Miss Gwendolen Moon. Have you ever met Miss Moon, Bertie?”
“Not to my knowledge. Nice girl?”
“My God!” said Sippy.
I looked at him keenly. If you ask my Aunt Agatha, she will tell you—in fact, she is quite likely to tell you even if you don’t ask her—that I am a vapid and irreflective chump. Barely sentient, was the way she once described me: and I’m not saying that in a broad, general sense she isn’t right. But there is one department of life in which I am old Lynx-Eye in person. I can recognize Love’s Young Dream more quickly than any other bloke of my weight and age in the Metropolis. So many of my pals have copped it in the past few years that now I can spot it a mile off on a foggy day. Sippy was leaning back in his chair, chewing a piece of indiarubber, with a far-off look in his eyes, and I formed my diagnosis instantly.
“Tell me all, laddie,” I said.
“Bertie, I love her.”
“Stout fellow! Have you told her so?”
“How can I?”
“I don’t see why not. Quite easy to bring into the general conversation.”
Sippy groaned hollowly.
“Do you know what it is, Bertie, to feel the humility of a worm?”
“Rather! I do sometimes with Jeeves. But today he went too far. You will scarcely credit it, old man, but he had the crust to criticize a vase which—”
“She is so far above me.”
“Tall girl?”
“Spiritually. She is all soul. And what am I? Earthy.”
“Would you say that?”
“I would. Have you forgotten that a year ago I did thirty days without the option for punching a policeman in the stomach on Boat-Race night?”
“But you were whiffled at the time.”
“Exactly. What right has an inebriated jailbird to aspire to a goddess?”
My heart bled for the poor old chap.
“Aren’t you exaggerating things a trifle, old lad?” I said. “Everybody who has had a gentle upbringing gets a bit sozzled on Boat-Race night, and the better element nearly always have trouble with the gendarmes.”
He shook his head.
“It’s no good, Bertie. You mean well, but words
