Boko was looking subdued and chastened, as if his soul had been passed through the wringer. He wore the unmistakable air of a man who has just been properly told where he gets off by the girl of his dreams and has not yet reassembled the stunned faculties.
‘Hullo, Bertie,’ he said, in a sort of hushed, saintlike voice.
‘Pip-pip, Boko.’
‘Some night!’
‘Considerable.’
‘You haven’t a flask on you, have you?’
‘No.’
‘A pity. One should always carry a flask about in case of emergencies. Saint Bernard dogs do it in the Alps. Fifty million Saint Bernard dogs can’t be wrong. I have just passed through a great emotional experience, Bertie.’
‘Did Nobby find you?’
He gave a little shiver.
‘I’ve just been chatting with her.’
‘I had a sort of idea you had.’
‘It shows in my appearance, does it? Yes, I suppose it would. It wasn’t you who told her about those Joke Goods, was it?’
‘Of course not.’
‘Somebody did.’
‘Uncle Percy, probably.’
‘That’s true. She would have asked him how the lunch came out. Yes, I imagine that was the authoritative source from which she had her information.’
‘So she touched on the Joke Goods?’
‘Oh, yes. Yes, she touched on them. Her conversation dealt partly with them and partly with what happened to-night. She was at no loss for words on either theme. You’re absolutely sure you haven’t a flask?’
‘Quite, I’m afraid.’
‘Ah, well,’ said Boko, and relapsed into silence for a while, emerging from it to ask me in a wondering sort of voice where girls picked up these expressions.
‘What expressions?’
‘I couldn’t repeat them, with gentlemen present. I suppose they learn them at their finishing schools.’
‘She gave you beans, did she?’
‘With no niggardly hand. It was an extraordinary feeling, standing there while she put me through it. One had a dazed sensation of something small and shrill whirling about one, seething with fury. Like being attacked by a Pekinese.’
‘I’ve never been attacked by a Pekinese.’
‘Well, ask the man who has. He’ll tell you. Every moment, I was expecting to get a nasty nip in the ankle.’
‘How did it all end?’
‘Oh, I got away with my life. Still, what’s life?’
‘Life’s all right.’
‘Not if you’ve lost the girl you love.’
‘Have you lost the girl you love?’
‘That’s what I’m trying to figure out. I can’t make up my mind. It all depends what construction you place on the words “I never want to see or speak to you again in this world or the next, you miserable fathead.”’
‘Did she say that?’
‘Among other things.’
I saw that the time had come to soothe and encourage.
‘I wouldn’t let that worry me, Boko.’
He seemed surprised.
‘You wouldn’t?’
‘No. She didn’t mean it.’
‘Didn’t mean it?’
‘Of course not.’
‘Just said it for something to say? Making conversation, as it were?’
‘Well, I’ll tell you, Boko. I’ve made a pretty deep study of the sex, observing them in all their moods, and the conclusion I’ve come to is that when they shoot their heads off in the manner described, little attention need be paid to the subject matter.’
‘You would advise ignoring it?’
‘Absolutely. Dismiss it from the mind.’
He was silent for a moment. When he spoke, it was on a note of hope.
‘There’s one thing, of course. She used to love me. As recently as this afternoon. Dearly. She said so. One’s got to remember that.’
‘She still does.’
‘You really feel that, do you?’
‘Of course.’
‘In spite of calling me a miserable fathead?’
‘Certainly. You are a miserable fathead.’
‘That’s true.’
‘You can’t go by what a girl says, when she’s giving you the devil for making a chump of yourself. It’s like Shakespeare. Sounds well, but doesn’t mean anything.’
‘Your view, then, is that the old affection still lingers?’
‘Definitely. Dash it, man, if she could love you in spite of those grey flannel trousers of yours, it isn’t likely that any mere acting of the goat on your part will have choked her off. Love is indestructible. Its holy flame burneth for ever.’
‘Who told you that?’
‘Jeeves.’
‘He ought to know.’
‘He does. You can bank on Jeeves.’
‘That’s right. You can, can’t you? You’re a great comfort, Bertie.’
‘I try to be, Boko.’
‘You give me hope. You raise me from the depths.’
He had perked up considerably. He wasn’t actually squaring his shoulders and sticking his chin out, but the morale had plainly stiffened. And I have an idea that in another minute or two he might have become almost jaunty, had there not cut through the night air at this juncture a feminine voice, calling his name.
‘Boko!’
He shook like an aspen.
‘Yes, darling?’
‘Come here. I want you.’
‘Coming, darling. Oh, my God!’ I heard him whisper. ‘An encore!’
He tottered off, and I was left to ponder over the trend of affairs.
I may say at once that I viewed the situation without concern. To Boko, who had actually been in the ring with the young geezer while she was exploding in all directions, it had naturally seemed that the end of the world had come and Judgement Day set in with unusual severity. But to me, the cool and level-headed bystander, the whole thing had been pure routine. One shrugged the shoulders and recognized it for what it was—viz. pure apple sauce.
Love’s silken bonds are not broken just because the female half of the sketch takes umbrage at the loony behaviour of the male partner and slips it across him in a series of impassioned speeches. However devoutly a girl may worship the man of her choice, there always comes a time when she feels an irresistible urge to haul off and let him have it in the neck. I suppose if the young lovers I’ve known in my time were placed end to end—difficult to manage, of course, but what I mean is just suppose they were—they would reach half-way down Piccadilly. And I couldn’t think of a single dashed one who hadn’t been through what Boko had been through to-night.
Already, I felt, the second phase had probably set in, where the female lovebird weeps on the male lovebird’s chest and says she’s sorry she was cross. And that my surmise was correct was proved by Boko’s demeanour, as he rejoined me some minutes later. Even in the dim light, you could see that he was feeling like a million dollars. He walked as if on air, and the whole soul had obviously expanded, like a bath sponge placed in water.
‘Bertie.’
‘Hullo?’
‘Still there?’
‘On the spot.’
‘It’s all right, Bertie.’
‘She loves you still?’
‘Yes.’
‘Good.’
‘She wept on my chest.’
‘Fine.’
‘And said she was sorry she had been cross. I said “There, there!” and everything is once more gas and gaiters.’
‘Splendid.’
‘I felt terrific.’
‘I bet you did.’
‘She withdrew the words “miserable fathead”.’
‘Good.’
‘She said I was the tree on which the fruit of her life hung.’
‘Fine.’
‘And apparently it was all a mistake when she told me she never wanted to see or speak to me again in this world or the next. She does. Frequently.’
‘Splendid.’
‘I clasped her to me, and kissed her madly.’
‘I bet you did.’
‘Jeeves, who was present, was much affected.’
‘Oh, Jeeves was there?’
‘Yes. He and Nobby had been discussing plans and schemes.’
‘For sweetening Uncle Percy?’
‘Yes. For, of course, that still has to be done.’
I looked grave. Not much use, of course, in that light.
‘It’s going to be difficult—’
‘Not a bit.’
‘—after your not only addressing him as “my dear Worplesdon” but also calling him a silly ass.’
‘Not a bit, Bertie, not a bit. Jeeves has come across with one of his ripest suggestions.’
‘He has?’
‘What a man!’
‘Ah!’
‘I often say there’s nobody like Jeeves.’
‘And well you may.’
‘Have you ever noticed how his head sticks out at the back?’
‘Often.’
‘That’s where the brain is. Packed away behind the ears.’
‘Yes. What’s his idea?’
‘Briefly this. He thinks it would make an excellent impression and enable me to recover the lost ground, if I stuck up for old Worplesdon.’
‘Stuck him up? I don’t get that. With a gun, do you mean?’
‘I didn’t say “stuck up”. Stuck up for.’
‘Oh, stuck up for?’
‘That’s right. Stuck up for. In other words, he advises me to take the old boy’s part—protect him, as it were.’
‘Protect Uncle Percy?’
‘Oh, I know it sounds bizarre. But Jeeves thinks it will work.’
‘I still don’t get it.’
‘It’s perfectly simple, really. Look here. Suppose some great blustering brute of a chap barges into old Worplesdon’s study at ten sharp to-morrow morning and starts ballyragging him like the dickens, calling him every name under the sun and generally making himself thoroughly offensive. I’m waiting outside the study window, and at the psychological moment I stick my head in and in a quiet, reproving voice, say “Stop, Bertie!—”’
‘Bertie?’
‘The chap’s name is Bertie. But don’t interrupt. I’ll lose the thread. I stick my head in and say “Stop, Bertie! You are strangely forgetting yourself. I cannot stand by and listen to you abusing a man I admire and respect as highly as Lord Worplesdon. Lord Worplesdon and I may have had our differences—the fault was mine and I am heartily sorry for it—but I have never deviated from the opinion that it is an honour to know him. And when I hear you calling him a—”’
I am pretty quick. Already, I had spotted the nature of the frightful scheme.
‘You want me to go into Uncle Percy’s lair and call him names?’
‘At ten sharp. Most important, that. We shall have to synchronize to the second. Nobby tells me he always spends the morning in his study, no doubt writing stinkers to the captains of his ships.’
‘And you bob up and tick me off for ticking him off?’
‘That’s the idea. It can hardly fail to show me in a sympathetic light, causing him to warm to me and feel that I’m a pretty good chap, after all. There he will be, I mean to say, cowering in his chair, while you stand over him, shaking your finger in his face—’
The vision conjured up by these words was so ghastly that I staggered and would have fallen, had I not clutched at a tree.
‘You say Jeeves suggested that?’
‘As I told you, just like a flash.’
‘He must be tight.’
A stiffness crept into Boko’s manner.
‘I don’t understand you, Bertie. I rank the scheme among his very subtlest efforts. It seems to me one of those simple stratagems, all the more effective for their simplicity, which can hardly drop a stitch. Coming in at the moment when you are intimidating old Worplesdon, and throwing the whole weight of my sympathy and support on his side, I shall—’
There are moments when we Woosters can be very firm—adamant is perhaps the word—and one of these is when we are asked to intimidate men like Uncle Percy.
‘I’m sorry, Boko.’
‘Sorry? Why?’
‘Include me out.’
‘What!’
‘Nothing doing.’
He leaned forward, the better to stare incredulously into my face. The man seemed stunned.
‘Bertie!’
‘Yes, I know. But I repeat—nothing doing.’
‘Nothing doing?’
‘Nothing doing.’
A pleading note came into his voice, the same sort of note I’ve sometimes heard in Bingo Little’s, when asking a bookie to take the broad, spacious view and wait for his money till Wednesday week.
‘But, Bertie, you’re fond of Nobby?’
‘Of course.’
‘Of course you are, or you would never have given her that threepennyworth of acid drops. And you don’t, I take it, dispute the fact that you and I were at school together? Of course, you don’t. When I thought I heard you say you wouldn’t sit in, I must have misunderstood you.’
‘You didn’t.’
‘I didn’t?’
‘No.’
‘You refuse to do your bit?’
‘I do.’
‘You—I want to get this straight—you really decline to play your part—your simple, easy part—in this enterprise?’
‘That’s right.’
‘This is Bertie Wooster speaking?’
‘It is.’
‘The Bertie Wooster I was at school with?’
‘That’s right.’
He drew in his breath with a sort of whistle.
‘Well, if anybody had told me this would happen, I wouldn’t have believed it. I would have laughed mockingly. Bertie Wooster let me down? No, no, I would have said—not Bertie, who was not only at school with me but is at this very moment bursting with my meat.’
This was a nasty one. I wasn’t actually bursting with his meat, of course, because there hadn’t been such a frightful lot of it, but I saw what it meant. For an instant, when he put it like that, I nearly weakened. Then I thought of Uncle Percy ‘cowering in his chair’—cowering in his chair, my foot!—and was strong again.
‘I’m sorry, Boko.’
‘So am I, Bertie. Sorry and disappointed. Sick at heart is the expression that leaps to the lips. Well, I suppose I shall have to go and break the news to Nobby. Golly, how she’ll cry!’
I could not repress a pang.
‘I don’t want to make Nobby cry.’
‘You will, though. Gallons.’
He faded away into the darkness, sighing reproachfully, leaving me alone with the stars.
And I was just examining them and wondering what had given Jeeves the idea that they were quiring to the young-eyed cherubims—I couldn’t see the slightest indication of such a thing myself—when they suddenly merged, as if they had been Uncle Percy and J. Chichester Clam, and became a jagged sheet of flame.
This was because a hidden hand, creeping up behind me unperceived, had given me the dickens of a slosh with what I assumed to be some blunt instrument. It caught me squarely on the back hair, bringing me to earth with a sharp ‘Ouch!’