This seemed fair enough to me, and I remember thinking that these barristers put things well, but it appeared to annoy the aged relative.
‘I am afraid I do not understand you,’ she said, and I knew she was getting steamed up, for if she had been her calm self, she would have said ‘Sorry, I don’t get you.’
‘If you will allow me to explain. I can do so in a few simple words. I have just had a visit from a slimy slinking slug.’
I drew myself up haughtily. Not much good, of course, in the circs, but the gesture seemed called for. One does not object to fair criticism, but this was mere abuse.
I could think of nothing in our relations which justified such a description of me. My views on barristers and their way of putting things changed sharply. Whether or not Aunt Dahlia bridled, as the expression is, I couldn’t say, but I think she must have done, for her next words were straight from the deep freeze.
‘Are you referring to my nephew Bertram Wooster?’
The McCorkadale did much to remove the bad impression her previous words had made on me. She said her caller had not given his name, but she was sure he could not have been Mrs. Travers’s nephew.
‘He was a very common man,’ she said, and with the quickness which is so characteristic of me I suddenly got on to it that she must be alluding to Bingley, who had been ushered into her presence immediately after I had left. I could understand her applying those derogatory adjectives to Bingley. And the noun slug, just right. Once again I found myself thinking how well barristers put things.
The old ancestor, too, appeared — what’s the word beginning with m and meaning less hot under the collar ? Mollified, that’s it. The suggestion that she could not have a nephew capable of being described as a common man mollified her. I don’t say that even now she would have asked Ma McCorkadale to come on a long walking tour with her, but her voice was definitely matier.
‘Why do you call him a slug?’ she asked, and the McCorkadale had her answer to that.
‘For the same reason that I call a spade a spade, because it is the best way of conveying a verbal image of him. He made me a disgraceful proposition.’
‘WHAT? ‘ said Aunt Dahlia rather tactlessly.
I could understand her being surprised. It was difficult to envisage a man so eager to collect girl friends as to make disgraceful propositions to Mrs. McCorkadale.
It amazed me that Bingley could have done it. I had never liked him, but I must confess to a certain admiration for his temerity. Our humble heroes, I felt.
‘You’re pulling my leg,’ said the aged relative.
The McCorkadale came back at her briskly.
‘I am doing nothing of the kind. I am telling you precisely what occurred. I was in my drawing-room going over the speech I have prepared for the debate tomorrow, when I was interrupted by the incursion of this man. Naturally annoyed, I asked him what his business was, and he said with a most offensive leer that he was Father Christmas bringing me manna in the wilderness and tidings of great joy. I was about to ring the bell to have him shown out, for of course I assumed that he was intoxicated, when he made me this extraordinary proposition. He had contrived to obtain information to the detriment of my opponent, and this he wished to sell to me. He said it would make my victory in the election certain. It would, as he phrased it, he a snip.’
I stirred on my base. If I hadn’t been afraid I might be overheard, I would have said ‘Ahal ‘ Had circs been other than they were, I would have stepped into the room, tapped the ancestor on the shoulder and said ‘Didn’t I tell you Bingley had information? Perhaps another time you’ll believe me’. But as this would have involved renewing my acquaintance with a woman of whom I had already seen sufficient to last a lifetime, it was not within the sphere of practical politics. I remained, accordingly, where I was, merely hitching my ears up another couple of notches in order not to miss the rest of the dialogue.