‘Damocles, sir. It is an old Greek legend.’
‘Well, I know just how he felt. And with this on my mind, I’m expected to attend a ruddy school treat. I won’t go.’
‘Your absence may cause remark, sir.’
‘I don’t care. They won’t get a smell of me. I’m oiling out, and let them make of it what they will.’
Apart from anything else, I was remembering the story I had heard Pongo Twistleton tell one night at the Drones, illustrative of how unbridled passions are apt to become at these binges. Pongo got mixed up once in a school treat down in Somersetshire, and his description of how, in order to promote a game called ‘Is Mr. Smith at Home?’ he had had to put his head in a sack and allow the younger generation to prod him with sticks had held the smoking-room spellbound. At a place like Totleigh, where even on normal days human life was not safe, still worse excesses were to be expected. The glimpse or two I had had of the local Dead End kids had told me how tough a bunch they were and how sedulously they should be avoided by the man who knew what was good for him.
‘I shall nip over to Brinkley in the car and have lunch with Uncle Tom. You at my side, I hope?’
‘Impossible, I fear, sir. I have promised to assist Mr. Butterfield in the tea tent.’
‘Then you can tell me all about it.’
‘Very good, sir.’
‘If you survive.’
‘Precisely, sir.’
It was a nice easy drive to Brinkley, and I got there well in advance of the luncheon hour. Aunt Dahlia wasn’t there, having, as foreshadowed, popped up to London for the day, and Uncle Tom and I sat down alone to a repast in Anatole’s best vein. Over the Supreme de Foie Gras au Champagne and the Neige aux Perles des Alpes I placed him in possession of the facts relating to the black amber statuette thing, and his relief at learning that Pop Bassett hadn’t got a thousand-quid objet d’art for a fiver was so profound and the things he said about Pop B. so pleasing to the ear that by the time I started back my dark mood had become sensibly lightened and optimism had returned to its throne.
After all, I reminded myself, it wasn’t as if Gussie was going to be indefinitely under Madeline’s eye. In due season he would buzz back to London and there would be able to tuck into the beefs and muttons till his ribs squeaked, confident that not a word of his activities would reach her. The effect of this would be to refill him with sweetness and light, causing him to write her loving letters which would carry him along till she emerged from this vegetarian phase and took up stamp collecting or something. I know the other sex and their sudden enthusiasms. They get these crazes and wallow in them for awhile, but they soon become fed up and turn to other things. My Aunt Agatha once went in for politics, but it only took a few meetings at which she got the bird from hecklers to convince her that the cagey thing to do was to stay at home and attend to her fancy needlework, giving the whole enterprise a miss.
It was getting on for what is called the quiet evenfall when I anchored at Totleigh Towers. I did my usual sneak to my room, and I had been there a few minutes when Jeeves came in.
‘I saw you arrive, sir,’ he said, ‘and I thought you might be in need of refreshment.’
I assured him that his intuition had not led him astray, and he said he would bring me a whisky-and-s. immediately.
‘I trust you found Mr. Travers in good health, sir.’
I was able to reassure him there.
‘He was a bit low when I blew in, but on receipt of my news about the what-not blossomed like a flower. It would have done you good to have heard what he had to say about Pop Bassett. And talking of Pop Bassett, how did the school treat go off?’