Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves

been a mere passing what-d’you-call-it, the result of some momentary attack of the pip caused possibly by her saying he smoked too much or something of the sort. Anyway, whatever it was that had rifted the lute was now plainly forgotten and forgiven, and I was saying to myself that, the way things looked, I ought to be able to duck out of here immediately after breakfast tomorrow, when I noticed that a look of pain had spread over her map and that the eyes were dewy.
    ‘It makes me so sad to think of your hopeless love, Bertie,’ she said, adding something which I didn’t quite catch about moths and stars. ‘Life is so tragic, so cruel. But what can I do?’
    ‘Not a thing,’ I said heartily. ‘Just carry on regardless.’
    ‘But it breaks my heart.’
    And with these words she burst into what are sometimes called uncontrollable sobs. She sank into her chair, covering her face with her hands, and it seemed to me that the civil thing to do was to pat her head. This project I now carried out, and I can see, looking back, that it was a mistake. I remember Monty Bodkin of the Drones, who once patted a weeping female on the head, unaware that his betrothed was standing in his immediate rear, drinking the whole thing in, telling me that the catch in this head-patting routine is that, unless you exercise the greatest care, you forget to take your hand off. You just stand there resting it on the subject’s bean, and this is apt to cause spectators to purse their lips.
    Monty fell into this error and so did I. And the lip-pursing was attended to by Spode, who chanced to enter at this moment. Seeing the popsy bathed in tears, he quivered from stem to stern.
    ‘Madeline!’ he yipped. ‘What’s the matter?’
    ‘It is nothing, Roderick, nothing,’ she replied chokingly.
    She buzzed off, no doubt to bathe her eyes, and Spode pivoted round and gave me a penetrating look. He had grown a bit, I noticed, since I had last seen him, being now about nine foot seven. In speaking of him to Emerald Stoker I had, if you remember, compared him to a gorilla, and what I had had in mind had been the ordinary run-of-the-mill gorilla, not the large economy size. What he was looking like now was King Kong. His fists were clenched, his eyes glittered, and the dullest observer could have divined that it was in no sunny spirit that he was regarding Bertram.

    6
    To ease the strain, I asked him if he would have a cucumber sandwich, but with an impassioned gesture he indicated that he was not in the market for cucumber sandwiches, though I could have told him, for I had found them excellent, that he was passing up a good thing.
    ‘A muffin?’
    No, not a muffin, either. He seemed to be on a diet.
    ‘Wooster,’ he said, his jaw muscles moving freely, ‘I can’t make up my mind whether to break your neck or not.’
    ‘Not’ would have been the way my vote would have been cast, but he didn’t give me time to say so.
    ‘I was amazed when I heard from Madeline that you had had the effrontery to invite yourself here. Your motive, of course, was clear. You have come to try to undermine her faith in the man she loves and sow doubts in her mind. Like a creeping snake,’ he added, and I was interested to learn that this was what snakes did. ‘You had not the elementary decency, when she had made her choice, to accept her decision and efface yourself. You hoped to win her away from Fink-Nottle.’
    Feeling that it was about time I said something, I got as far as ‘I -‘, but he shushed me with another of those impassioned gestures. I couldn’t remember when I’d met anyone so resolved on hogging the conversation.
    ‘No doubt you will say that your love was so overpowering that you could not resist the urge to tell her of it and plead with her. Utter nonsense. Despicable weakness. Let me tell you, Wooster, that I have loved that girl for years and years, but never by word or look have I so much as hinted it to her. It was a great shock to me when she became engaged to this man Fink-Nottle, but I accepted the situation because I thought that that was where her happiness lay. Though stunned, I kept -‘
    ‘A stiff upper lip?’
    ‘- my feelings to myself. I sat -‘
    ‘Like Patience on a monument.’
    ‘- tight, and said nothing that would give her a suspicion of how I felt. All that mattered was that she should be happy. If you ask me if I approve of Fink-Nottle as a husband for her, I admit frankly that I do not. To me he seems