"Hallo, face," I said.
"Cheerio, ugly," said young Bingo, and we settled down to have a small one before lunch.
Once a year the committee of the Drones decides that the old club could do with a wash and brush-up, so they shoo us out and dump us down for a few weeks at some other institution. This time we were roosting at the Senior Liberal, and personally I had found the strain pretty fearful. I mean, when you've got used to a club where everything's nice and cheery, and where, if you want to attract a chappie's attention, you heave a bit of bread at him, it kind of damps you to come to a place where the youngest member is about eighty-seven and it isn't considered good form to talk to anyone unless you and he were through the Peninsular War[Pg 233] together. It was a relief to come across Bingo. We started to talk in hushed voices.
"This club," I said, "is the limit."
"It is the eel's eyebrows," agreed young Bingo. "I believe that old boy over by the window has been dead three days, but I don't like to mention it to anyone."
"Have you lunched here yet?"
"No. Why?"
"They have waitresses instead of waiters."
"Good Lord! I thought that went out with the armistice." Bingo mused a moment, straightening his tie absently. "Er—pretty girls?" he said.
"No."
He seemed disappointed, but pulled round.
"Well, I've heard that the cooking's the best in London."
"So they say. Shall we be going in?"
"All right. I expect," said young Bingo, "that at the end of the meal—or possibly at the beginning—the waitress will say, 'Both together, sir?' Reply in the affirmative. I haven't a bean."
"Hasn't your uncle forgiven you yet?"
"Not yet, confound him!"
I was sorry to hear the row was still on. I resolved to do the poor old thing well at the festive board, and I scanned the menu with some intentness when the girl rolled up with it.
"How would this do you, Bingo?" I said at length. "A few plovers' eggs to weigh in with, a cup of soup, a touch of cold salmon, some cold curry, and a splash of gooseberry tart and cream with a bite of cheese to finish?"
I don't know that I had expected the man actually to scream with delight, though I had picked the items from my knowledge of his pet dishes, but I had expected him to say something.[Pg 234] I looked up, and found that his attention was elsewhere. He was gazing at the waitress with the look of a dog that's just remembered where its bone was buried.
She was a tallish girl with sort of soft, soulful brown eyes. Nice figure and all that. Rather decent hands, too. I didn't remember having seen her about before, and I must say she raised the standard of the place quite a bit.
"How about it, laddie?" I said, being all for getting the order booked and going on to the serious knife-and-fork work.
"Eh?" said young Bingo absently.
I recited the programme once more.
"Oh, yes, fine!" said Bingo. "Anything, anything." The girl pushed off, and he turned to me with protruding eyes. "I thought you said they weren't pretty, Bertie!" he said reproachfully.
"Oh, my heavens!" I said. "You surely haven't fallen in love again—and with a girl you've only just seen?"
"There are times, Bertie," said young Bingo, "when a look is enough—when, passing through a crowd, we meet somebody's eye and something seems to whisper...."
At this point the plovers' eggs arrived, and he suspended his remarks in order to swoop on them with some vigour.
"Jeeves," I said that night when I got home, "stand by."
"Sir?"
"Burnish the old brain and be alert and vigilant. I suspect that Mr. Little will be calling round shortly for sympathy and assistance."
"Is Mr. Little in trouble, sir?"
"Well, you might call it that. He's in love.[Pg 235] For about the fifty-third time. I ask you, Jeeves, as man to man, did you ever see such a chap?"
"Mr. Little is certainly warm-hearted, sir."
"Warm-hearted! I should think he has to wear asbestos vests. Well, stand by, Jeeves."
"Very good, sir."
And sure enough, it wasn't ten days before in rolled the old ass, bleating for volunteers to step one pace forward and come to the aid of the party.
"Bertie," he said, "if you are a pal of mine, now is the time to show it."
"Proceed, old gargoyle," I replied. "You have our ear."
"You remember giving me lunch at the Senior Liberal some days ago. We were waited on by a——"
"I remember. Tall, lissom female."
He shuddered somewhat.
"I wish you wouldn't talk of her like that, dash it all. She's an angel."
"All right. Carry on."
"I love her."
"Right-o! Push along."
"For goodness sake don't bustle me. Let me tell the story in my own way. I love her, as I was saying, and I want you, Bertie, old boy, to pop round to my uncle and do a bit of diplomatic work. That allowance of mine must be restored, and dashed quick, too. What's more, it must be increased."
"But look here," I said, being far from keen on the bally business, "why not wait awhile?"
"Wait? What's the good of waiting?"
"Well, you know what generally happens when you fall in love. Something goes wrong with the works and you get left. Much better tackle your uncle after the whole thing's fixed and settled."
[Pg 236]
"It is fixed and settled. She accepted me this morning."
"Good Lord! That's quick work. You haven't known her two weeks."
"Not in this life, no," said young Bingo. "But she has a sort of idea that we must have met in some previous existence. She thinks I must have been a king in Babylon when she was a Christian slave. I can't say I remember it myself, but there may be something in it."
"Great Scott!" I said. "Do waitresses really talk like that?"
"How should I know how waitresses talk?"
"Well, you ought to by now. The first time I ever met your uncle was when you hounded me on to ask him if he would rally round to help you marry that girl Mabel in the Piccadilly bun-shop."
Bingo started violently. A wild gleam came into his eyes. And before I knew what he was up to he had brought down his hand with a most frightful whack on my summer trousering, causing me to leap like a young ram.
"Here!" I said.
"Sorry," said Bingo. "Excited. Carried away. You've given me an idea, Bertie." He waited till I had finished massaging the limb, and resumed his remarks. "Can you throw your mind back to that occasion, Bertie? Do you remember the frightfully subtle scheme I worked? Telling him you were what's-her-name, the woman who wrote those books, I mean?"
It wasn't likely I'd forget. The ghastly thing was absolutely seared into my memory.
"That is the line of attack," said Bingo. "That is the scheme. Rosie M. Banks forward once more."
"It can't be done, old thing. Sorry, but it's out[Pg 237] of the question. I couldn't go through all that again."
"Not for me?"
"Not for a dozen more like you."
"I never thought," said Bingo sorrowfully, "to hear those words from Bertie Wooster!"
"Well, you've heard them now," I said. "Paste them in your hat."
"Bertie, we were at school together."
"It wasn't my fault."
"We've been pals for fifteen years."
"I know. It's going to take me the rest of my life to live it down."
"Bertie, old man," said Bingo, drawing up his chair closer and starting to knead my shoulder-blade, "listen! Be reasonable!"
And of course, dash it, at the end of ten minutes I'd allowed the blighter to talk me round. It's always the way. Anyone can talk me round. If I were in a Trappist monastery, the first thing that would happen would be that some smooth performer would lure me into some frightful idiocy against my better judgment by means of the deaf-and-dumb language.
"Well, what do you want me to do?" I said, realising that it was hopeless to struggle.
"Start off by sending the old boy an autographed copy of your latest effort with a flattering inscription. That will tickle him to death. Then you pop round and put it across."
"What is my latest?"
"'The Woman Who Braved All,'" said young Bingo. "I've seen it all over the place. The shop windows and bookstalls are full of nothing but it. It looks to me from the picture on the jacket the sort of book any chappie would be proud to have written. Of course, he will want to discuss it with you."
[Pg 238]
"Ah!" I said, cheering up. "That dishes the scheme, doesn't it? I don't know what the bally thing is about."
"You will have to read it, naturally."
"Read it! No, I say...."
"Bertie, we were at school together."
"Oh, right-o! Right-o!" I said.
"I knew I could rely on you. You have a heart of gold. Jeeves," said young Bingo, as the faithful servitor rolled in, "Mr. Wooster has a heart of gold."
"Very good, sir," said Jeeves.
Bar a weekly wrestle with the Pink 'Un and an occasional dip into the form book I'm not much of a lad for reading, and my sufferings as I tackled "The Woman" (curse her!) "Who Braved All" were pretty fearful. But I managed to get through it, and only just in time, as it happened, for I'd hardly reached the bit where their lips met in one long, slow kiss and everything was still but for the gentle sighing of the breeze in the laburnum, when a messenger boy brought a note from old Bittlesham asking me to trickle round to lunch.
I found the old boy in a mood you could only describe as melting. He had a copy of the book on the table beside him and kept turning the pages in the intervals of dealing with things in aspic and what not.
"Mr. Wooster," he said, swallowing a chunk of trout, "I wish to congratulate you. I wish to thank you. You go from strength to strength. I have read 'All For Love'; I have read 'Only a Factory Girl'; I know 'Madcap Myrtle' by heart. But this—this is your bravest and best. It tears the heartstrings."
"Yes?"
"Indeed yes! I have read it three times since[Pg 239] you most kindly sent me the volume—I wish to thank you once more for the charming inscription—and I think I may say that I am a better, sweeter, deeper man. I am full of human charity and kindliness toward my species."
"No, really?"
"Indeed, indeed I am."
"Towards the whole species?"
"Towards the whole species."
"Even young Bingo?" I said, trying him pretty high.
"My nephew? Richard?" He looked a bit thoughtful, but stuck it like a man and refused to hedge. "Yes, even towards Richard. Well ... that is to say ... perhaps ... yes, even towards Richard."
"That's good, because I wanted to talk about him. He's pretty hard up, you know."
"In straitened circumstances?"
"Stoney. And he could use a bit of the right stuff paid every quarter, if you felt like unbelting."
He mused awhile and got through a slab of cold guinea hen before replying. He toyed with the book, and it fell open at page two hundred and fifteen. I couldn't remember what was on page two hundred and fifteen, but it must have been something tolerably zippy, for his expression changed and he gazed up at me with misty eyes, as if he'd taken a shade too much mustard with his last bite of ham.
"Very well, Mr. Wooster," he said. "Fresh from a perusal of this noble work of yours, I cannot harden my heart. Richard shall have his allowance."
"Stout fellow!" I said. Then it occurred to me that the expression might strike a chappie who weighed seventeen stone as a bit personal. "Good egg, I mean. That'll take a weight off his mind. He wants to get married, you know."
[Pg 240]
"I did not know. And I am not sure that I altogether approve. Who is the lady?"
"Well, as a matter of fact, she's a waitress."
He leaped in his seat.
"You don't say so, Mr. Wooster! This is remarkable. This is most cheering. I had not given the boy credit for such tenacity of purpose. An excellent trait in him which I had not hitherto suspected. I recollect clearly that, on the occasion when I first had the pleasure of making your acquaintance, nearly eighteen months ago, Richard was desirous of marrying this same waitress."
I had to break it to him.
"Well, not absolutely this same waitress. In fact, quite a different waitress. Still, a waitress, you know."
The light of avuncular affection died out of the old boy's eyes.
"H'm!" he said a bit dubiously. "I had supposed that Richard was displaying the quality of constancy which is so rare in the modern young man. I—I must think it over."
So we left it at that, and I came away and told Bingo the position of affairs.
"Allowance O.K.," I said. "Uncle blessing a trifle wobbly."
"Doesn't he seem to want the wedding bells to ring out?"
"I left him thinking it over. If I were a bookie, I should feel justified in offering a hundred to eight against."
"You can't have approached him properly. I might have known you would muck it up," said young Bingo. Which, considering what I had been through for his sake, struck me as a good bit sharper than a serpent's tooth.
"It's awkward," said young Bingo. "It's[Pg 241] infernally awkward. I can't tell you all the details at the moment, but ... yes, it's awkward."
He helped himself absently to a handful of my cigars and pushed off.
I didn't see him again for three days. Early in the afternoon of the third day he blew in with a flower in his buttonhole and a look on his face as if someone had hit him behind the ear with a stuffed eel skin.
"Hallo, Bertie."
"Hallo, old turnip. Where have you been all this while?"
"Oh, here and there! Ripping weather we're having, Bertie."
"Not bad."
"I see the Bank Rate is down again."
"No, really?"
"Disturbing news from Lower Silesia, what?"
"Oh, dashed!"
He pottered about the room for a bit, babbling at intervals. The boy seemed cuckoo.
"Oh, I say, Bertie!" he said suddenly, dropping a vase which he had picked off the mantelpiece and was fiddling with. "I know what it was I wanted to tell you. I'm married."