It wasn’t as if he and I were in any way bosom. We had seen a lot of each other at one time, of course, but in the last two years I hadn’t had so much as a post card from him.
I put all this to Jeeves:
“Odd, his coming to me. Still, if he did, he did. No argument about that. It must have been a nasty jar for the poor perisher when he found I wasn’t here.”
“No, sir. Mr. Fink-Nottle did not call to see you, sir.”
“Pull yourself together, Jeeves. You’ve just told me that this is what he has been doing, and assiduously, at that.”
“It was I with whom he was desirous of establishing communication, sir.”
“You? But I didn’t know you had ever met him.”
“I had not had that pleasure until he called here, sir. But it appears that Mr. Sipperley, a fellow student of whom Mr. Fink-Nottle had been at the university, recommended him to place his affairs in my hands.”
The mystery had conked. I saw all. As I dare say you know, Jeeves’s reputation as a counsellor has long been established among the cognoscenti, and the first move of any of my little circle on discovering themselves in any form of soup is always to roll round and put the thing up to him. And when he’s got A out of a bad spot, A puts B on to him. And then, when he has fixed up B, B sends C along. And so on, if you get my drift, and so forth.
That’s how these big consulting practices like Jeeves’s grow. Old Sippy, I knew, had been deeply impressed by the man’s efforts on his behalf at the time when he was trying to get engaged to Elizabeth Moon, so it was not to be wondered at that he should have advised Gussie to apply. Pure routine, you might say.
“Oh, you’re acting for him, are you?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Now I follow. Now I understand. And what is Gussie’s trouble?”
“Oddly enough, sir, precisely the same as that of Mr. Sipperley when I was enabled to be of assistance to him. No doubt you recall Mr. Sipperley’s predicament, sir. Deeply attached to Miss Moon, he suffered from a rooted diffidence which made it impossible for him to speak.”
I nodded.
“I remember. Yes, I recall the Sipperley case. He couldn’t bring himself to the scratch. A marked coldness of the feet, was there not? I recollect you saying he was letting—what was it?—letting something do something. Cats entered into it, if I am not mistaken.”
“Letting ‘I dare not’ wait upon ‘I would’, sir.”
“That’s right. But how about the cats?”
“Like the poor cat i’ the adage, sir.”
“Exactly. It beats me how you think up these things. And Gussie, you say, is in the same posish?”
“Yes, sir. Each time he endeavours to formulate a proposal of marriage, his courage fails him.”
“And yet, if he wants this female to be his wife, he’s got to say so, what? I mean, only civil to mention it.”
“Precisely, sir.”
I mused.
“Well, I suppose this was inevitable, Jeeves. I wouldn’t have thought that this Fink-Nottle would ever have fallen a victim to the divine p, but, if he has, no wonder he finds the going sticky.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Look at the life he’s led.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I don’t suppose he has spoken to a girl for years. What a lesson this is to us, Jeeves, not to shut ourselves up in country houses and stare into glass tanks. You can’t be the dominant male if you do that sort of thing. In this life, you can choose between two courses. You can either shut yourself up in a country house and stare into tanks, or you can be a dasher with the sex. You can’t do both.”
“No, sir.”
I mused once more. Gussie and I, as I say, had rather lost touch, but all the same I was exercised about the poor fish, as I am about all my pals, close or distant, who find themselves treading upon Life’s banana skins. It seemed to me that he was up against it.