Pelham Wodehouse - Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves

'What goes on?' she asked.

This time I did laugh that mocking laugh. It seemed to be indicated.

'You know that black eyesore thing that was on the dinner table? Apparently it's disappeared, and Spode has got the extraordinary idea that I've pinched it and am holding it . . . what's the word . . . Not incognito . . . Incommunicado, that's it. He thinks I'm holding it incommunicado.'

'He does?'

'So he says.'

'Man must be an ass.'

Spode wheeled around, flushed with his excesses. I was pleased to see that while looking under the seat he had got a bit of oil on his nose. He eyed Stiffy bleakly.

'Did you call me an ass?'

'Certainly I did. I was taught by a long series of governesses always to speak the truth. The idea of accusing Bertie of taking that statuette.'

'It does sound silly,' I agreed. 'Bizarre is perhaps the word.'

'The thing's in Uncle Watkyn's collection room.'

'It is not in the collection room.'

'Who says so?'

'I say so.'

'Well, I say it is. Go and look, if you don't believe me. Stop that, Bartholomew, you blighted dog!' bellowed Stiffy, abruptly changing the subject, and she hastened off on winged feet to confer with the hound, who had found something in, I presumed, the last stages of decay and was rolling on it. I could follow her train of thought. Scotties at their best are niffy. Add to their natural bouquet the aroma of a dead rat or whatever it was, and you have a mixture too rich for the human nostril. There was a momentary altercation, and Bartholomew, cursing a good deal as was natural, was hauled off tubwards.

A minute or two later Spode returned with most of the stuffing removed from his person.

'I seem to have done you an injustice, Wooster,' he said, and I was amazed that he had it in him to speak so meekly.

The Woosters are always magnanimous. We do not crush the vanquished beneath the iron heel.

'Oh, was the thing there all right?'

'Er—yes. Yes, it was.'

'Ah well, we all make mistakes.'

'I could have sworn it had gone.'

'But wasn't the door locked?'

'Yes.'

'Reminds you of one of those mystery stories, doesn't it, where there's a locked room with no windows, and blowed if one fine morning you don't find a millionaire inside with a dagger of Oriental design sticking in his wishbone. You've got some oil on your nose.'

'Oh, have I?' he said, feeling.

'Now you've got it on your cheek. I'd go and join Bartholomew in the bath tub if I were you.'

'I will. Thank you, Wooster.'

'Not at all, Spode, or rather, Sidcup. Don't spare the soap.' I suppose there's nothing that braces one more thoroughly than the spectacle of the forces of darkness stubbing their toe, and the heart was light as I made my way to the house. What with this and what with that, it was as though a great weight had rolled off me. Birds sang, insects buzzed, and I felt that what they were trying to say was 'All is well. Bertram has come through.'

But a thing I've often noticed is that when I've got something off my mind, it pretty nearly always happens that Fate sidles up and shoves on something else, as if curious to see how much the traffic will bear. It went into its act on the present occasion. Feeling that I needed something else to worry about, it spat on its hands and got down to it, allowing Madeline Bassett to corner me as I was passing through the hall.

Even if she had been her normal soupy self, she would have been the last person I wanted to have a word with, but this she was far from being. Something had happened to remove the droopiness, and her eyes had a gleam in them which filled me with a nameless fear. She was obviously all steamed up for some reason, and it was plain that what she was about to say was not going to make the last of the Woosters clap his hands in glee and start chanting hosannas like the Cherubim and Seraphim, if I've got the names right. A moment later she revealed what it was that was eating her, dishing it out without what I believe is called preamble.

'I am furious with Augustus!' she said, and my heart stood still.

It was as if the Totleigh Towers spectre, if there was one, had laid an icy hand on it. 'Why, what's happened?'

'He was very rude to Roderick.'

This seemed incredible. Nobody but an all-in wrestling champion would be rude to a fellow as big as Spode. 'Surely not?'

'I mean he was very rude about Roderick. He said he was sick and tired of seeing him clumping about the place as if it belonged to him, and hadn't he got a home of his own, and if Daddy had an ounce more sense than a billiard ball he would charge him rent. He was most offensive.'

My h. stood stiller. It is not stretching the facts to say that I was appalled and all of a doodah. It just showed, I was telling myself, what a vegetarian diet can do to a chap, changing him in a flash from a soft-boiled to a hard-boiled egg. I have no doubt the poet Shelley's circle noticed the same thing with the poet Shelley.

I tried to pour oil on the troubled w's.

'Probably just kidding, don't you think?'

'No, I don't.'

'He didn't say it with a twinkle in his eye?'

'No.'

'Nor with a light laugh?'

'No.'

'You might not have noticed it. Very easy to miss, these light laughs.'

'He meant every word he said.'

'Then it was probably just a momentary spasm of what-d'you-call-it. Irritability. We all have them.'

She ground a tooth or two. At least, it looked as if that was what she was doing.

'It was nothing of the kind. He was harsh and bitter, and he has been like that for a long time. I noticed it first at Brinkley. One morning we had walked in the meadows and the grass was all covered with little wreaths of mist, and I said Didn't he sometimes feel that they were the elves' bridal veils, and he said sharply, "No, never," adding that he had never heard such a silly idea in his life.'

Well, of course, he was perfectly correct, but it was no good pointing that out to a girl like Madeline Bassett.

'And that evening we were watching the sunset, and I said sunsets always made me think of the Blessed Damozel leaning out from the gold bar of heaven, and he said "Who?" and I said "The Blessed Damozel," and he said, "Never heard of her". And he said that sunsets made him sick and so did the Blessed Damozel and he had a pain in his inside.'

I saw that the time had come to be a raisonneur .

'This was at Brinkley?'

'Yes.'

'I see. After you had made him become a vegetarian. Are you sure,' I said, raisonneur ing like nobody's business, 'that you were altogether wise in confining him to spinach and what not? Many a proud spirit rebels when warned off the proteins. And I don't know if you know it, but medical research has established that the ideal diet is one in which animal and vegetable foods are balanced. It's something to do with the something acids required by the body.'

I won't say she actually snorted, but the sound she uttered was certainly on the borderline of the snort.

'What nonsense!'

'It's what doctors say.'

'Which doctors?'

'Well-known Harley Street physicians.'

'I don't believe it. Thousands of people are vegetarians and enjoy perfect health.'

'Bodily health, yes,' I said, cleverly seizing on the debating point. 'But what of the soul? If you suddenly steer a fellow off the steaks and chops, it does something to his soul. My Aunt Agatha once made my Uncle Percy be a vegetarian, and his whole nature became soured. Not,' I was forced to admit, 'that it wasn't fairly soured already, as anyone's would be who was in constant contact with my Aunt Agatha. I bet you'll find that that's all that's wrong with Gussie. He simply wants a mutton chop or two under his belt.'

'Well, he's not going to have them. And if he continues to behave like a sulky child, I shall know what to do about it.'