“Who?”
“The chaps who do. Coo, what a sex! But you aren’t proposing to keep this up, of course?”
“Keep what up?”
“This rot of being engaged to Gussie.”
“I certainly am.”
“Just to make Tuppy look silly.”
“Do you think he looks silly?”
“I do.”
“So he ought to.”
I began to get the idea that I wasn’t making real headway. I remember when I won that Scripture-knowledge prize, having to go into the facts about Balaam’s ass. I can’t quite recall what they were, but I still retain a sort of general impression of something digging its feet in and putting its ears back and refusing to cooperate; and it seemed to me that this was what Angela was doing now. She and Balaam’s ass were, so to speak, sisters under the skin. There’s a word beginning with r—“re” something—“recal” something—No, it’s gone. But what I am driving at is that is what this Angela was showing herself.
“Silly young geezer,” I said.
She pinkened.
“I’m not a silly young geezer.”
“You are a silly young geezer. And, what’s more, you know it.”
“I don’t know anything of the kind.”
“Here you are, wrecking Tuppy’s life, wrecking Gussie’s life, all for the sake of a cheap score.”
“Well, it’s no business of yours.”
I sat on this promptly:
“No business of mine when I see two lives I used to go to school with wrecked? Ha! Besides, you know you’re potty about Tuppy.”
“I’m not!”
“Is that so? If I had a quid for every time I’ve seen you gaze at him with the lovelight in your eyes—”
She gazed at me, but without the lovelight.
“Oh, for goodness sake, go away and boil your head, Bertie!”
I drew myself up.
“That,” I replied, with dignity, “is just what I am going to go away and boil. At least, I mean, I shall now leave you. I have said my say.”
“Good.”
“But permit me to add—”
“I won’t.”
“Very good,” I said coldly. “In that case, tinkerty tonk.”
And I meant it to sting.
“Moody” and “discouraged” were about the two adjectives you would have selected to describe me as I left the summerhouse. It would be idle to deny that I had expected better results from this little chat.
I was surprised at Angela. Odd how you never realize that every girl is at heart a vicious specimen until something goes wrong with her love affair. This cousin and I had been meeting freely since the days when I wore sailor suits and she hadn’t any front teeth, yet only now was I beginning to get on to her hidden depths. A simple, jolly, kindly young pimple she had always struck me as—the sort you could more or less rely on not to hurt a fly. But here she was now laughing heartlessly—at least, I seemed to remember hearing her laugh heartlessly—like something cold and callous out of a sophisticated talkie, and fairly spitting on her hands in her determination to bring Tuppy’s grey hairs in sorrow to the grave.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again—girls are rummy. Old Pop Kipling never said a truer word than when he made that crack about the f. of the s. being more d. than the m.
It seemed to me in the circs. that there was but one thing to do—that is head for the dining-room and take a slash at the cold collation of which Jeeves had spoken. I felt in urgent need of sustenance, for the recent interview had pulled me down a bit. There is no gainsaying the fact that this naked-emotion stuff reduces a chap’s vitality and puts him in the vein for a good whack at the beef and ham.
To the dining-room, accordingly, I repaired, and had barely crossed the threshold when I perceived Aunt Dahlia at the sideboard, tucking into salmon mayonnaise.
The spectacle drew from me a quick “Oh, ah,” for I was somewhat embarrassed. The last time this relative and I had enjoyed a tête-à-tête, it will be remembered, she had sketched out plans for drowning me in the kitchen-garden pond, and I was not quite sure what my present standing with her was.
I was relieved to find her in genial mood. Nothing could have exceeded the cordiality with which she waved her fork.
“Hallo, Bertie, you old ass,” was her very matey greeting. “I thought I shouldn’t find you far away from the food. Try some of this salmon. Excellent.”
“Anatole’s?” I queried.
“No. He’s still in bed. But the kitchen maid has struck an inspired streak. It suddenly seems to have come home to her that she isn’t catering for a covey of buzzards in the Sahara Desert, and she has put out something quite fit for human consumption. There is good in the girl, after all, and I hope she enjoys herself at the dance.”
I ladled out a portion of salmon, and we fell into pleasant conversation, chatting of this servants’ ball at the Stretchley-Budds and speculating idly, I recall, as to what Seppings, the butler, would look like, doing the rumba.
It was not till I had cleaned up the first platter and was embarking on a second that the subject of Gussie came up. Considering what had passed at Market Snodsbury that afternoon, it was one which I had been expecting her to touch on earlier. When she did touch on it, I could see that she had not yet been informed of Angela’s engagement.
“I say, Bertie,” she said, meditatively chewing fruit salad. “This Spink-Bottle.”
“Nottle.”
“Bottle,” insisted the aunt firmly. “After that exhibition of his this afternoon, Bottle, and nothing but Bottle, is how I shall always think of him. However, what I was going to say was that, if you see him, I wish you would tell him that he has made an old woman very, very happy. Except for the time when the curate tripped over a loose shoelace and fell down the pulpit steps, I don’t think I have ever had a more wonderful moment than when
