For quite a while he had been a prominent member of the Drones Club, widely known for his effervescence and vivacity, but all of a sudden he had tendered his resignation and gone to live in the country, oddly enough at Steeple Bumpleigh in Essex, where my Aunt Agatha has her lair. This, somebody told me, was due to the circumstance that he had got engaged to a girl of strong character who disapproved of the Drones Club. You get girls like that every now and then, and in my opinion they are best avoided.
Well, naturally this had parted us. He never came to London, and I of course never went to Steeple Bumpleigh. You don’t catch me going anywhere near Aunt Agatha unless I have to. No sense in sticking one’s neck out. But I had missed him sorely. Oh for the touch of a vanished hand, is how you might put it.
Arriving at Barribault’s, I found him in the lobby where you have the pre-luncheon gargle before proceeding to the grillroom, and after the initial What-ho-ing and What-a-time-since-we-met-ing inevitable when two vanished hands who haven’t seen each other for ages re-establish contact he asked me if I would like one for the tonsils.
‘I won’t join you,’ he said. ‘I’m not actually on the wagon, I have a little light wine at dinner now and then, but my fiancee wants me to stay off cocktails. She says they harden the arteries.’
If you are about to ask me if this didn’t make me purse the lips a bit, I can assure you that it did. It seemed to point to his having gone and got hitched up with a popsy totally lacking in the proper spirit, and it bore out what I had been told about her being a girl of strong character. No one who wasn’t could have dashed the cup from his lips in this manner. She had apparently made him like it, too, for he had spoken of her not with the sullen bitterness of one crushed beneath the iron heel but with devotion in every syllable. Plainly he had got it up his nose and didn’t object to being bossed.
How different from me, I reflected, that time when I was engaged to my Uncle Percy’s bossy daughter Florence Craye. It didn’t last long, because she gave me the heave-ho and got betrothed to a fellow called Gorringe who wrote vers libre, but while it lasted I felt like one of those Ethiopian slaves Cleopatra used to push around, and I chafed more than somewhat. Whereas Ginger obviously hadn’t even started to chafe. It isn’t difficult to spot when a fellow’s chafing, and I could detect none of the symptoms. He seemed to think that putting the presidential veto on cocktails showed what an angel of mercy the girl was, always working with his good at heart.
The Woosters do not like drinking alone, particularly with a critical eye watching them to see if their arteries are hardening, so I declined the proffered snort –reluctantly, for I was athirst– and came straight to the main item on the agenda paper. On my way to Barribault’s I had, as you may suppose, pondered deeply on this business of him standing for Parliament, and I wanted to know the motives behind the move. It looked cockeyed to me.
‘Aunt Dahlia tells me you are staying with her in order to be handy to Market Snodsbury while giving the electors there the old oil,’ I said.
‘Yes, she very decently invited me. She was at school with my mother.’
‘So she told me. I wonder if her face was as red in those days. How do you like it there?’
‘It’s a wonderful place.’
‘Grade A. Gravel soil, main drainage, spreading grounds and Company’s own water. And, of course, Anatole’s cooking.’
‘Ah! ‘ he said, and I think he would have bared his head, only he hadn’t a hat on. ‘Very gifted, that man.’
‘A wizard,’ I agreed. ‘His dinners must fortify you for the tasks you have to face. How’s the election coming along? ‘
‘All right.’
‘Kissed any babies lately ? ‘
‘Ah! ‘ he said again, this time with a shudder. I could see that I had touched an exposed nerve. ‘What blighters babies are, Bertie, dribbling, as they do, at the side of the mouth. Still, it has to be done. My agent tells me to leave no stone unturned if I want to win the election.’