“And then–-”
“She went, sir.”
I stood musing. More and more, it was beginning to be borne in upon me what a particularly difficult chap Gussie was to help. He seemed to so marked an extent to lack snap and finish. With infinite toil, you manoeuvred him into a position where all he had to do was charge ahead, and he didn’t charge ahead, but went off sideways, missing the objective completely.
“Difficult, Jeeves.”
“Yes, sir.”
In happier circs., of course, I would have canvassed his views on the matter. But after what had occurred in connection with that mess-jacket, my lips were sealed.
“Well, I must think it over.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Burnish the brain a bit and endeavour to find the way out.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, good night, Jeeves.”
“Good night, sir.”
He shimmered off, leaving a pensive Bertram Wooster standing motionless in the shadows. It seemed to me that it was hard to know what to do for the best.
-12-
I don’t know if it has happened you to at all, but a thing I’ve noticed with myself is that, when I’m confronted by a problem which seems for the moment to stump and baffle, a good sleep will often bring the solution in the morning.
It was so on the present occasion.
The nibs who study these matters claim, I believe, that this has got something to do with the subconscious mind, and very possibly they may be right. I wouldn’t have said off-hand that I had a subconscious mind, but I suppose I must without knowing it, and no doubt it was there, sweating away diligently at the old stand, all the while the corporeal Wooster was getting his eight hours.
For directly I opened my eyes on the morrow, I saw daylight. Well, I don’t mean that exactly, because naturally I did. What I mean is that I found I had the thing all mapped out. The good old subconscious m. had delivered the goods, and I perceived exactly what steps must be taken in order to put Augustus Fink-Nottle among the practicing Romeos.
I should like you, if you can spare me a moment of your valuable time, to throw your mind back to that conversation he and I had had in the garden on the previous evening. Not the glimmering landscape bit, I don’t mean that, but the concluding passages of it. Having done so, you will recall that when he informed me that he never touched alcoholic liquor, I shook the head a bit, feeling that this must inevitably weaken him as a force where proposing to girls was concerned.
And events had shown that my fears were well founded.
Put to the test, with nothing but orange juice inside him, he had proved a complete bust. In a situation calling for words of molten passion of a nature calculated to go through Madeline Bassett like a red-hot gimlet through half a pound of butter, he had said not a syllable that could bring a blush to the cheek of modesty, merely delivering a well-phrased but, in the circumstances, quite misplaced lecture on newts.
A romantic girl is not to be won by such tactics. Obviously, before attempting to proceed further, Augustus Fink-Nottle must be induced to throw off the shackling inhibitions of the past and fuel up. It must be a primed, confident Fink-Nottle who squared up to the Bassett for Round No.
2.
Only so could the Morning Post make its ten bob, or whatever it is, for printing the announcement of the forthcoming nuptials.
Having arrived at this conclusion I found the rest easy, and by the time Jeeves brought me my tea I had evolved a plan complete in every detail. This I was about to place before him—indeed, I had got as far as the preliminary “I say, Jeeves”—when we were interrupted by the arrival of Tuppy.
He came listlessly into the room, and I was pained to observe that a night’s rest had effected no improvement in the unhappy wreck’s appearance. Indeed, I should have said, if anything, that he was looking rather more moth-eaten than when I had seen him last. If you can visualize a bulldog which has just been kicked in the ribs and had its dinner sneaked by the cat, you will have Hildebrand Glossop as he now stood before me.