‘Trouble?’ I whispered hoarsely. ‘You mean there’s a what-d’you-call-it? ‘
‘What would that be?’
‘A rift within the lute which widens soon and makes the music mute. Not my own, Jeeves’s.’
‘The evidence points in that direction. At dinner last night I noticed that he was refusing Anatole’s best, while she looked wan and saintlike and crumbled bread. And talking of Anatole’s best, what I wanted to tell you about L. P. Runkle was that zero hour is approaching. I am crouching for my spring and have strong hopes that Tuppy will soon be in the money.’
I clicked the tongue. Nobody could be keener than I on seeing Tuppy dip into L. P. Runkle’s millions, but this was no time to change the subject.
‘Never mind about Tuppy for the moment. Concentrate on the sticky affairs of Bertram Wilberforce Wooster.’ ‘Wilberforce,’ she murmured, as far as a woman of her outstanding lung power could murmur. ‘Did I ever tell you how you got that label? It was your father’s doing. The day before you were lugged to the font looking like a minor actor playing a bit part in a gangster film he won a packet on an outsider in the Grand National called that, and he insisted on you carrying on the name. Tough on you, but we all have our cross to bear. Your Uncle Tom’s second name is Portarlington, and I came within an ace of being christened Phyllis.’
I rapped her sharply on the top-knot with a paper knife of Oriental design, the sort that people in novels of suspense are always getting stabbed in the back with.
‘Don’t wander from the res. The fact that you nearly got christened Phyllis will, no doubt, figure in your autobiography, but we need not discuss it now. What we are talking about is the ghastly peril that confronts me if the Madeline-Spode axis blows a fuse.’
‘You mean that if she breaks her engagement, you will have to fill the vacuum?’
‘Exactly.’
‘She won’t. Not a chance.’
‘But you said-‘
‘I only wanted to emphasize my warning to you not to keep on taking gnats out of Madeline’s eyes. Perhaps I overdid it.’
‘You chilled me to the marrow.’
‘Sorry I was so dramatic. You needn’t worry. They’ve only had a lovers’ tiff such as occurs with the mushiest couples.’
‘What about?’
‘How do I know? Perhaps he queried her statement that the stars were God’s daisy chain.’
I had to admit that there was something in this theory. Madeline’s breach with Gussie Fink-Nottle had been caused by her drawing his attention to the sunset and saying sunsets always made her think of the Blessed Damozel leaning out from the gold bar of heaven, and he said, ‘Who?’ and she said, ‘The Blessed Damozel’, and he said ‘Never heard of her’, adding that sunsets made him sick, and so did the Blessed Damozel. A girl with her outlook would be bound to be touchy about stars and daisy chains.
‘It’s probably over by now,’ said the ancestor. ‘All the same, you’d better keep away from the girl. Spode’s an impulsive man. He might slosh you.’
‘He said he would.’
‘He used the word slosh?’
‘No, but he assured me he would butter me over the front lawn and dance on the remains with hobnailed boots.’
‘Much the same thing. So I would be careful if I were you. Treat her with distant civility. If you see any more gnats headed in her direction, hold their coats and wish them luck, but restrain the impulse to mix in.’
‘I will.’
‘I hope I have relieved your fears?’
‘You have, old flesh and blood.’
‘Then why the furrows in your brow?’
‘Oh. those? It’s Ginger.
‘What’s Ginger?’
‘He’s why my brow is furrowed.’ It shows how profoundly the thought of Madeline Bassett possibly coming into circulation again had moved me that it was only now that I had remembered Bingley and what he had said about the certainty of Ginger finishing as an also-ran in the election. I burned with shame and remorse that I should have allowed my personal troubles to make me shove him down to the foot of the agenda paper in this scurvy manner. Long ere this I ought to have been inviting Aunt Dahlia’s views on his prospects. Not doing so amounted to letting a pal down, a thing I pride myself on never being guilty of. Little wonder that I b’d with s and r.