Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves

I frowned. I disapproved of this shilly-shallying. I could see how it must be throwing a spanner into Stinker's whole foreign policy, putting him in a spot and causing him alarm and despondency. He can't marry Stiffy on a curate's stipend, so they've got to wait till Pop Bassett gives him a vicarage which he has in his gift. And while I personally, though fond of the young gumboil, would run a mile in tight shoes to avoid marrying Stiffy, I knew him to be strongly in favour of signing her up. 'Something always happens to put him off. I think he was about ready to close the deal before he went to stay at Brinkley, but most unfortunately I bumped into a valuable vase of his and broke it. It seemed to rankle rather.'

I heaved a sigh. It's always what Jeeves would call most disturbing to hear that a chap with whom you have plucked the gowans fine, as the expression is, isn't making out as well as could be wished. I was all set to follow this Pinker's career with considerable interest, but the way things were shaping it began to look as if there wasn't going to be a career to follow.

'You move in a mysterious way your wonders to perform, Stinker. I believe you would bump into something if you were crossing the Gobi desert.'

'I've never been in the Gobi desert.'

'Well, don't go. It isn't safe. I suppose Stiffy's sore about this . . . what's the word? . . . Not vaseline . . . Vacillation, that's it. She chafes, I imagine, at this vacillation on Bassett's part and resents him letting "I dare not" wait upon "I would", like the poor cat in the adage. Not my own, that, by the way. Jeeves's. Pretty steamed up, is she?'

'She is rather.'

'I don't blame her. Enough to upset any girl. Pop Bassett has no right to keep gumming up the course of true love like this.'

'No.'

'He needs a kick in the pants.'

'Yes.'

'If I were Stiffy, I'd put a toad in his bed or strychnine in his soup.'

'Yes. And talking of Stiffy, Bertie—'

He broke off, and I eyed him narrowly. There could be no question to my mind that I had been right about that perilous stuff. His bosom was obviously chock-full of it.

'There's something the matter, Stinker.'

'No, there isn't. Why do you say that?'

'Your manner is strange. You remind me of a faithful dog looking up into its proprietor's face as if it were trying to tell him something. Are you trying to tell me something?'

He swallowed once or twice, and his colour deepened, which took a bit of doing, for even when his soul is in repose he always looks like a clerical beetroot. It was as though the collar he buttons at the back was choking him. In a hoarse voice he said:

'Bertie.'

'Hullo?'

'Bertie.'

'Still here, old man, and hanging on your lips.'

'Bertie, are you busy just now?'

'Not more than usual.'

'You could get away for a day or two?'

'I suppose one might manage it.'

'Then can you come to Totleigh?'

'To stay with you, do you mean?'

'No, to stay at Totleigh Towers.'

I stared at the man, wide-eyed as the expression is. Had it not been that I knew him to be abstemiousness itself, rarely indulging in anything stronger than a light lager, and not even that during Lent, I should have leaped to the conclusion that there beside me sat a curate who had been having a couple. My eyebrows rose till they nearly disarranged my front hair.

'Stay where? Stinker, you're not yourself, or you wouldn't be gibbering like this. You can't have forgotten the ordeal I passed through last time I went to Totleigh Towers.'

'I know. But there's something Stiffy wants you to do for her. She wouldn't tell me what it was, but she said it was most important and that you would have to be on the spot to do it.'

I drew myself up. I was cold and resolute.

'You're crazy, Stinker!'

'I don't see why you say that.'

'Then let me explain where your whole scheme falls to the ground. To begin with, is it likely that after what has passed between us Sir Watkyn B. would issue an invitation to one who has always been to him a pain in the neck to end all pains in the neck? If ever there was a man who was all in favour of me taking the high road while he took the low road, it is this same Bassett. His idea of a happy day is one spent with at least a hundred miles between him and Bertram.'

'Madeline would invite you, if you sent her a wire asking if you could come for a day or two. She never consults Sir Watkyn about guests, it's an understood thing that she has anyone she wants to at the house.'

This I knew to be true, but I ignored the suggestion and proceeded remorselessly.