Right Ho, Jeeves - P. G. Wodehouse (the top 100 crime novels of all time .TXT) 📗

this trouble of Angela’s and was successful in formulating a plan, based on the psychology of the individual, which I am proposing to put into effect at an early moment.”

“Oh, my God!”

“My knowledge of human nature tells me it will work.”

“Bertie,” said Aunt Dahlia, and her manner struck me as febrile, “lay off, lay off! For pity’s sake, lay off. I know these plans of yours. I suppose you want to shove Angela into the lake and push young Glossop in after her to save her life, or something like that.”

“Nothing of the kind.”

“It’s the sort of thing you would do.”

“My scheme is far more subtle. Let me outline it for you.”

“No, thanks.”

“I say to myself⁠—”

“But not to me.”

“Do listen for a second.”

“I won’t.”

“Right ho, then. I am dumb.”

“And have been from a child.”

I perceived that little good could result from continuing the discussion. I waved a hand and shrugged a shoulder.

“Very well, Aunt Dahlia,” I said, with dignity, “if you don’t want to be in on the ground floor, that is your affair. But you are missing an intellectual treat. And, anyway, no matter how much you may behave like the deaf adder of Scripture which, as you are doubtless aware, the more one piped, the less it danced, or words to that effect, I shall carry on as planned. I am extremely fond of Angela, and I shall spare no effort to bring the sunshine back into her heart.”

“Bertie, you abysmal chump, I appeal to you once more. Will you please lay off? You’ll only make things ten times as bad as they are already.”

I remember reading in one of those historical novels once about a chap⁠—a buck he would have been, no doubt, or a macaroni or some such bird as that⁠—who, when people said the wrong thing, merely laughed down from lazy eyelids and flicked a speck of dust from the irreproachable Mechlin lace at his wrists. This was practically what I did now. At least, I straightened my tie and smiled one of those inscrutable smiles of mine. I then withdrew and went out for a saunter in the garden.

And the first chap I ran into was young Tuppy. His brow was furrowed, and he was moodily bunging stones at a flowerpot.

VIII

I think I have told you before about young Tuppy Glossop. He was the fellow, if you remember, who, callously ignoring the fact that we had been friends since boyhood, betted me one night at the Drones that I could swing myself across the swimming bath by the rings⁠—a childish feat for one of my lissomeness⁠—and then, having seen me well on the way, looped back the last ring, thus rendering it necessary for me to drop into the deep end in formal evening costume.

To say that I had not resented this foul deed, which seemed to me deserving of the title of the crime of the century, would be paltering with the truth. I had resented it profoundly, chafing not a little at the time and continuing to chafe for some weeks.

But you know how it is with these things. The wound heals. The agony abates.

I am not saying, mind you, that had the opportunity presented itself of dropping a wet sponge on Tuppy from some high spot or of putting an eel in his bed or finding some other form of self-expression of a like nature, I would not have embraced it eagerly; but that let me out. I mean to say, grievously injured though I had been, it gave me no pleasure to feel that the fellow’s bally life was being ruined by the loss of a girl whom, despite all that had passed, I was convinced he still loved like the dickens.

On the contrary, I was heart and soul in favour of healing the breach and rendering everything hotsy-totsy once more between these two young sundered blighters. You will have gleaned that from my remarks to Aunt Dahlia, and if you had been present at this moment and had seen the kindly commiserating look I gave Tuppy, you would have gleaned it still more.

It was one of those searching, melting looks, and was accompanied by the hearty clasp of the right hand and the gentle laying of the left on the collarbone.

“Well, Tuppy, old man,” I said. “How are you, old man?”

My commiseration deepened as I spoke the words, for there had been no lighting up of the eye, no answering pressure of the palm, no sign whatever, in short, of any disposition on his part to do Spring dances at the sight of an old friend. The man seemed sandbagged. Melancholy, as I remember Jeeves saying once about Pongo Twistleton when he was trying to knock off smoking, had marked him for her own. Not that I was surprised, of course. In the circs., no doubt, a certain moodiness was only natural.

I released the hand, ceased to knead the shoulder, and, producing the old case, offered him a cigarette.

He took it dully.

“Are you here, Bertie?” he asked.

“Yes, I’m here.”

“Just passing through, or come to stay?”

I thought for a moment. I might have told him that I had arrived at Brinkley Court with the express intention of bringing Angela and himself together once more, of knitting up the severed threads, and so on and so forth; and for perhaps half the time required for the lighting of a gasper I had almost decided to do so. Then, I reflected, better, on the whole, perhaps not. To broadcast the fact that I proposed to take him and Angela and play on them as on a couple of stringed instruments might have been injudicious. Chaps don’t always like being played on as on a stringed instrument.

“It all depends,” I said. “I may remain. I may push on. My plans are uncertain.”

He nodded listlessly, rather in the manner of a man who did not give a damn what I did, and stood gazing out over the sunlit