‘His porringer. I told you about it the day you got here. Don’t you remember? That silver thing he came to try to sell to Tom.’
She had refreshed my memory. I recalled the conversation to which she referred. I had asked her why she was entertaining in her home a waste product like L. P. Runkle, and she had said that he had come hoping to sell Uncle Tom a silver something for his collection and she had got him to stay on in order to soften him up with Anatole’s cooking and put to him, when softened up, her request for cash for Tuppy.
‘When he turned me down just now, it suddenly occurred to me that if I got hold of the thing and told him he wouldn’t get it back unless he made a satisfactory settlement, I would have a valuable bargaining point and we could discuss the matter further at any time that suited him.’
I was ap-what-is-it. Forget my own name next. Appalled, that’s the word, though shocked to the core would be about as good; nothing much in it, really. I hadn’t read any of those etiquette books you see all over the place, but I was prepared to bet that the leaders of Society who wrote them would raise an eyebrow or two at carrying-ons of this description. The chapter on Hints To Hostesses would be bound to have a couple of paragraphs warning them that it wasn’t the done things to invite people to the home and having got them settled in to pinch their porringers.
‘But good Lord I ‘ I ejaculated, appalled or, if you prefer it, shocked to the core.
‘Now what?’
‘The man is under your roof.’
‘Did you expect him to be on it?’
‘He has eaten your salt.’
‘Very imprudent, with blood pressure like his. His doctor probably forbids it.’
‘You can’t do this.’
‘I know I can’t, but I have,’ she said, just like the chap in the story, and I saw it would be fruitless or bootless to go on arguing. It rarely is with aunts, – if you’re their nephew, I mean, because they were at your side all through your formative years and know what an ass you were then and can’t believe that anything that you may say later is worth listening to. I shouldn’t be at all surprised if Jeeves’s three aunts don’t shut him up when he starts talking, remembering that at the age of six the child Jeeves didn’t know the difference between the poet Burns and a hole in the ground.
Ceasing to expostulate, therefore, if expostulate is the word I want, I went to the bell and pressed it, and when she asked for footnotes throwing a light on why I did this, I told her I proposed to place the matter in the hands of a higher power.
‘I’m ringing for Jeeves.’
‘You’ll only get Seppings.’
‘Seppings will provide Jeeves.’
‘And what do you think Jeeves can do? ‘
‘Make you see reason.’
‘I doubt it.’
‘Well, it’s worth a try.’
Further chit-chat was suspended till Jeeves arrived and silence fell except for the ancestor snorting from time to time, and self breathing more heavily than usual, for I was much stirred. It always stirs a nephew to discover that a loved aunt does not know the difference between right and wrong. There is a difference… at my private school Arnold Abney M.A. used to rub it into the student body both Sundays and weekdays… but apparently nobody had told the aged relative about it, with the result that she could purloin people’s porringers without a yip from her conscience. Shook me a bit, I confess.
When Jeeves blew in, it cheered me to see the way his head stuck out at the back, for that’s where the brain is, and what was needed here was a man with plenty of the old grey matter who would put his points so that even a fermenting aunt would have to be guided by him.
‘Well, here’s Jeeves,’ said the ancestor. ‘Tell him the facts and I’ll bet he says I’ve done the only possible thing and can carry on along the lines I sketched out.’