P G Wodehouse - Much Obliged, Jeeves

I might have retorted by asking her what she expected me to do when I suddenly saw all, but I was too busy seeing all to be diverted into arguments about my voice production. The awful truth had hit me as squarely between the eyes as if it had been an egg or a turnip hurled by one of the Market Snodsbury electorate.

'Bingley ! ' I ejaculated.

'And don't sing.'

'I was not singing, I was ejaculating "Bingley ! ", or vociferating "Bingley ! " if you prefer it. You remember Bingley, the fellow who stole the club book, the chap you were going to take by the throat and shake like a rat. Aged relative, we are up against it in no uncertain manner. Bingley is the Runkle minion you alluded to. Jeeves says he dropped in to tea this afternoon. What simpler for him, having had his cuppa, than to nip upstairs and search my room? He used to be Runkle's personal attendant, so Runkle would turn to him naturally when he needed an accomplice. Yes, I don't wonder you're perturbed,' I added, for she had set the welkin ringing with one of those pungent monosyllables so often on her lips in the old Quorn-and-Pytchley days. 'And I'll tell you something else which will remove your last doubts, if you had any. He's just turned up again, and Runkle has gone out to confer with him. What do you suppose they're conferring about? Give you three guesses.'

The Quorn trains its daughters well. So does the Pytchley. She did not swoon, as many an aunt would have done in her place, merely repeated the monosyllable in a slightly lower tone,- meditatively as it were, like some aristocrat of the French Revolution on being informed that the tumbril waited.

'This tears it,' she said, the very words such an aristocrat would have used, though speaking of course in French. 'I'll have to confess that I took his foul porringer.'

'No, no, you mustn't do that.'

'What else is there for me to do? I can't let you go to chokey.'

'I don't mind.'

'I do. I may have my faults

' 'No, no.'

'Yes, yes. I am quite aware that there are blemishes in my spiritual make-up which ought to have been corrected at my finishing school, but I draw the line at letting my nephew do a stretch for pinching porringers which I pinched myself. That's final.'

I saw what she meant, of course. Noblesse oblige, and all that. And very creditable, too. But I had a powerful argument to put forward, and I lost no time in putting it.

'But wait, old ancestor. There's another aspect of the matter. If it's... what's the expression?... if it's bruited abroad that I'm merely an as-pure-as-the-driven-snow innocent bystander, my engagement to Florence will be on again.'

'Your what to who?'

It should have been 'whom', but I let it go.

'Are you telling me that you and Florence-'

'She proposed to me ten minutes ago and I had to accept her because one's either preux or one isn't, and then Runkle butted in and pointed out to her the disadvantages of marrying someone who would shortly be sewing mail bags in Wormwood Scrubs, and she broke it off.'

The relative seemed stunned, as if she had come on something abstruse in the Observer crossword puzzle.

'What is it about you that fascinates the girls? First Madeline Bassett, now Florence, and dozens of others in the past. You must have a magnetic personality.'

'That would seem to be the explanation,' I agreed.

'Anyway, there it is. One whisper that there isn't a stain on my character, and I haven't a hope. The Bishop will be notified, the assistant clergy and bridesmaids rounded up, the organist will start practising The Voice That Breathed O'er Eden, and the limp figure you see drooping at the altar rails will be Bertram Wilberforce Wooster. I implore you old blood relation, to be silent and let the law take its course. If it's a choice between serving a life sentence under Florence and sewing a mail bag or two, give me the mail bags every time.'

She nodded understandingly, and said she saw what I meant.

'I thought you would.'

'There is much in what you say.' She mused awhile.

'As a matter of fact, though I doubt if it will get as far as mail bags. I'm pretty sure what's going to happen. Runkle will offer to drop the whole, thing if I let him have Anatole.'

'Good God! '

'You may well say "Good GodI ". You know what Anatole means to Tom.' She did not need to labour the point. Uncle Tom combines a passionate love of food with a singular difficulty in digesting it, and Anatole is the only chef yet discovered who can fill him up to the Plimsoll mark without causing the worst sort of upheaval in his gastric juices.

'But would Anatole go to Runkle?'

'He'd go to anyone if the price was right.'

'None of that faithful old retainer stuff?'

'None. His outlook is entirely practical. That's the French in him.'

'I wonder you've been able to keep him so long. He must have had other offers.'

'I've always topped them. If it was simply another case of outbidding the opposition, I wouldn't be worrying.'