I had to correct him here. One likes to get these things straight.
‘Only her chin.’
‘Pah ! ‘ he said, or something that sounded like that.
‘And I had to get a grip on it in order to extract the gnat from her eye. I was merely steadying it.’
‘You were steadying it gloatingly.’
‘I wasn’t!’
‘Pardon me. I have eyes and can see when a man is steadying a chin gloatingly and when he isn’t. You were obviously delighted to have an excuse for soiling her chin with your foul fingers.’
‘You are wrong, Lord Spodecup.’
‘And, as I say, I know what your game is. You are trying to undermine me, to win her from me with your insidious guile, and what I want to impress upon you with all the emphasis at my disposal is that if anything of this sort is going to occur again, you would do well to take out an accident policy with some good insurance company at the earliest possible date. You probably think that being a guest in your aunt’s house I would hesitate to butter you over the front lawn and dance on the fragments in hobnailed boots, but you are mistaken. It will be a genuine pleasure. By an odd coincidence I brought a pair of hobnailed boots with me!’
So saying, and recognizing a good exit line when he saw one, he strode out, and after an interval of tense meditation I followed him. Repairing to my bedroom, I found Jeeves there, looking reproachful. He knows I can dress for dinner in ten minutes, but regards haste askance, for he thinks it results in a tie which, even if adequate, falls short of the perfect butterfly effect.
I ignored the silent rebuke in his eyes. After meeting Spode’s eyes, I was dashed if I was going to be intimidated by Jeeves’s.
‘Jeeves,’ I said, ‘You’re fairly well up in Hymns Ancient and Modern, I should imagine. Who were the fellows in the hymn who used to prowl and prowl around?’
‘The troops of Midian, sir.’
‘That’s right. Was Spode mentioned as one of them?’
‘Sir?’
‘I ask because he’s prowling around as if Midian was his home town. Let me tell you all about it.’
‘I fear it will not be feasible, sir. The gong is sounding.’
‘So it is. Who’s sounding it? You said Seppings was in bed.’
‘The parlourmaid, sir, deputizing for Mr. Seppings.’
‘I like her wrist work. Well, I’ll tell you later.’
‘Very good, sir. Pardon me, your tie.’
‘What’s wrong with it?’
‘Everything, sir. If you will allow me.’
‘All right, go ahead. But I can’t help asking myself if ties really matter at a time like this.’
‘There is no time when ties do not matter, sir.’
My mood was sombre as I went down to dinner. Anatole, I was thinking, would no doubt give us of his best, possibly his Timbale de ris de veau Toulousaine or his Sylphides a la creme d’ecrevisses, but Spode would be there and Madeline would be there and Florence would be there and L. P. Runkle would be there.
There was, I reflected, always something.
CHAPTER Eight
It has been well said of Bertram Wooster that when he sets his hand to the plough he does not stop to pick daisies and let the grass grow under his feet. Many men in my position, having undertaken to canvass for a friend anxious to get into Parliament, would have waited till after lunch next day to get rolling, saying to themselves Oh, what difference do a few hours make and going off to the billiard room for a game or two of snooker. I, in sharp contradistinction as I have heard Jeeves call it, was on my way shortly after breakfast. It can’t have been much more than a quarter to eleven when, fortified by a couple of kippers, toast, marmalade and three cups of coffee, I might have been observed approaching a row of houses down by the river to which someone with a flair for the mot juste had given the name of River Row. From long acquaintance with the town I knew that this was one of the posher parts of Market Snodsbury, stiff with householders likely to favour the Conservative cause, and it was for that reason that I was making it my first port of call. No sense, I mean, in starting off with the less highly priced localities where everybody was bound to vote Labour and would not only turn a deaf ear to one’s reasoning but might even bung a brick at one. Ginger no doubt had a special posse of tough supporters, talking and spitting out of the side of their mouths, and they would attend to the brick-bunging portion of the electorate.