The Jeeves Omnibus - Vol 2: (Jeeves & Wooster): No. 2 (49 page)

Having been
en route
for the bathroom at the moment when I buzzed off to seek audience of Boko, I was still, of course, in the ordinary slumberwear of the English gentleman, plus a dressing-gown, and it was some little time, accordingly, after I had returned to the house, before I showed up in the dining-salon. I found Boko there, getting outside a breakfast egg. I asked him if he knew what a porpentine was, and he said to hell with all porpentines and had I got that sheet of instructions all right and, if so, what did I think of it.

To this, my reply was that I certainly had jolly well got it and that it had frozen me to the marrow. No human power, I added, would induce me to pass on to Uncle Percy even a skeleton outline of the document’s frightful contents.

‘Frightful contents.’

‘That was what I said.’

He seemed wounded, and murmured something about the artist and destructive criticism.

‘I thought it was particularly good stuff. Crisp, terse and telling. The subject inspired me, and I was under the impression that I had given of my best. Still, if you feel that I stressed the personal note a bit too much, you can modify it here and there, if you like – preserving the substance, of course.’

‘As a matter of fact,’ I said, thinking it best to prepare him, ‘you mustn’t be surprised, Boko, if at the last moment I change my plans and decide to give the whole thing a miss.’

‘What!’

‘I am toying with the idea.’

‘Well, I’m blowed! Is this –?’

‘Yes, it is.’

‘You don’t know what I was going to say.’

‘Yes, I do. You were going to say “Is this Bertie Wooster speaking?”’

‘Quite right. I was. Well, is it?’

‘Yes.’

His table talk then took on a rather acid tone, touching disparagingly on so-called friends who, supposed by him hitherto to be staunch and true, turned out to his disappointment to be lily-livered poltroons lacking even the meagre courage of a rabbit.

‘Where are the boys of the bulldog breed? That’s what I want to know,’ he concluded, plainly chagrined. ‘Well, you understand clearly what this means. Fail me, and not an inkling of the Fittleworth secret do you get.’

I smiled subtly, and helped myself to a slice of ham. He little knew, I felt.

‘I shall watch you walking up the aisle with Florence Craye, and not stir a finger to save you. In fact, you will hear a voice singing “Oh, perfect love” rather louder than the rest of the congregation, and it will be mine. Reconsider, Bertie. That is what I advise.’

‘Well, of course,’ I said, ‘I don’t say I will back out of the assignment. I only say I may.’

This calmed him somewhat, and he softened – saying that he was sure that when the hour struck, my better self would prevail. And a bit later, we parted with mutual good wishes.

For it had been arranged that we should proceed to the Hall separately. In his case, Boko felt, not without some reason, that there was need for stealth, lest he be fallen upon and slung out. He proposed, therefore, to circle round the outskirts till he found a gap in the hedge and then approach the study by a circuitous route, keeping well in the shelter of the bushes and not letting a twig snap beneath his feet.

I set out by myself, accordingly, and arriving at the main entrance found Jeeves waiting for me in the drive. It needed but a glance to inform me that the man had good tidings. I can always tell. He doesn’t exactly smile on these occasions, because he never does, but the lips twitch slightly at the corners and the eye is benevolent.

I gave tongue eagerly.

‘Well, Jeeves?’

‘I have the data you require, sir.’

‘Splendid fellow! You saw the butler! You probed the cook?’

‘Actually, it was from the boy who cleans the knives and boots
that
I secured the information, sir. A young fellow of the name of Erbut.’

‘How did he come to be our special correspondent?’

‘It appears that he was actually an eyewitness of the scene, sir, sheltered in the obscurity of a neighbouring bush, where he had been enjoying a surreptitious cigarette. From this point of vantage he was enabled to view the entire proceedings.’

‘And what were they? Tell me all, Jeeves, omitting no detail, however slight.’

‘Well, sir, the first thing that attracted the lad’s attention was the approach of Master Edwin.’

‘He comes into it, does he?’

‘Yes, sir. His role, as you will see, is an important one. Master Edwin, Erbut reports, was advancing through the undergrowth, his gaze fixed upon the ground. He seemed to be tracking something.’

‘Spooring, no doubt. It is a practice to which these Scouts are much addicted.’

‘So I understand, sir. His movements, Erbut noted, were being observed with a sisterly indulgence by Lady Florence, who was cutting flowers in an adjacent border.’

‘She was watching him, eh?’

‘Yes, sir. Simultaneously, Mr Fittleworth appeared, following the young gentleman.’

‘Spooring the spoorer?’

‘Yes, sir. Erbut describes his manner as keen and purposeful. That, at least, was his meaning, though the actual phrasing of his statement was different. These knives and boots boys seldom express themselves well.’

‘I’ve often noticed it. Rotten vocabularies. Go on, Jeeves. I’m all agog. Boko, you say, was trailing Edwin. Why?’

‘That was what Erbut appears to have asked himself, sir.’

‘He was mystified?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘I don’t blame him. I’m mystified myself. I gather, of course, that the plot thickens, but I’m dashed if I can see where it’s heading.’

‘It was not long before Mr Fittleworth’s motives were abundantly clear, sir. As Master Edwin approached the flower bed, he suddenly accelerated his movements –’

‘Edwin did?’

‘No, sir. Mr Fittleworth. He bounded forward at the young gentleman, and taking advantage of the fact that the latter, in the course
of
his spooring, had just adopted a stooping posture, proceeded to deliver a forceful kick upon his person –’

‘Golly, Jeeves!’

‘– causing him to fly through the air and fall at Lady Florence’s feet. Her ladyship, horrified and incensed, rebuked Mr Fittleworth sharply, demanding an immediate explanation of this wanton assault. The latter endeavoured to justify his action by accusing Master Edwin of having tampered with his patent egg boiler, so disorganizing the mechanism that a new-laid egg had flown from its base and struck him on the tip of the nose. Her ladyship, however, was unable to see her way to accepting this as a palliation of what had occurred, and shortly afterwards announced that the betrothal was at an end.’

I drew in the breath. The scales had fallen from my eyes. I saw all. So that was the Fittleworth remedy – booting young Edwin! No wonder Boko had spoken of it as simple and efficacious. All you needed was a good stout shoe and a sister’s love.

I heard Jeeves cough.

‘If you will glance to your left, sir,’ he said, ‘you will observe that Master Edwin has just entered the drive and is stooping over some object on the ground that appears to have engaged his attention.’

I GOT THE
gist. The significance of his words was not lost upon me. The grave, encouraging look with which he had accompanied the news bulletin would alone have been enough to enable me to sense the underlying message he was trying to convey. It was the sort of look a Roman father might have given his son, when handing him shield and spear and pushing him off to battle, and it ought, I suppose, to have stirred me like a bugle.

Nevertheless, I found myself hesitating. After that sock on the head he had given me on the previous night, the thought of kicking young Edwin was one that presented many attractions, of course, and there was no question but that the child had been asking for some such little personal attention for years. But there’s something rather embarrassing about doing that sort of thing in cold blood. Difficult, I felt, to lead up to it neatly in the course of conversation. (‘Hello, Edwin. How are you? Lovely day.’
Biff
. You see what I mean. Not easy.)

In Boko’s case, of course, the whole set-up had been entirely different, for he had been in the grip of the berserk fury which comes upon a man when he is hit on the tip of the nose with new-laid eggs. This had enabled him, so to speak, to get a running start.

And so I fingered the chin dubiously.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Yes, there he is, Jeeves – and, as you say, stooping. But do you really advise –’

‘I do, sir.’

‘What, now?’

‘Yes, sir. There is a tide in the affairs of men which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune. Omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and in miseries.’

‘Oh, rather. Quite. No argument about that. But –’

‘If what you are trying to say, sir, is that it is of the essence that Lady Florence be present, to observe the proceedings as she did in the case of Mr Fittleworth, I fully concur. I would suggest that I go
and
inform her ladyship that you are waiting on the drive and would be glad of a word with her.’

I still hesitated. It was one of those cases where you approve the broad, general principle of an idea, but can’t help being in a bit of a twitter at the prospect of putting it into practical effect. I explained this to Jeeves, and he said that much the same thing had bothered Hamlet.

‘Your irresolution is quite understandable, sir. Between the acting of a dreadful thing and the first motion, all the interim is like a phantasma or a hideous dream. The genius and the mortal instruments are then in council; and that state of man, like to a little kingdom, suffers then the nature of an insurrection.’

‘Absolutely,’ I said. He puts these things well.

‘If it would assist you to stiffen the sinews and summon up the blood, sir, may I remind you that it is very nearly ten o’clock, and that only the promptest action along the lines I have indicated can enable you to avoid appearing in his lordship’s study at that hour.’

He had found the talking-point. I hesitated no longer.

‘You’re right, Jeeves. How long do you think it will be necessary to detail young Edwin in conversation before you can bring Lady Florence on stage?’

‘Not more than a few minutes, sir. I happen to know that her ladyship is at the moment in her private apartment, engaged upon literary work. There will be but a brief interval before she appears.’

‘Then tally ho!’

‘Very good, sir.’

He flickered off upon his mission, while I, having summoned up the blood a bit and stiffened the sinews as far as was possible at such short notice, squared the shoulders and headed for where Edwin was squatting. The weather continued uniformly fine. The sun shone, and a blackbird, I remember, was singing in an adjoining thicket. No reason why it
shouldn’t
have been, of course. I mention the fact merely to stress the general peace and tranquillity of everything. And I must say it did strike me as a passing thought that the sort of setting a job like this really needed was a blasted heath at midnight, with a cold wind whistling in the bushes and three witches doing their stuff at the cauldron.

However, one can’t have everything, and I doubt if an observer would have noted any diffidence in Bertram’s bearing as he advanced upon his prey. Bertram, I rather fancy he would have thought, was in pretty good form.

I hove to at the stripling’s side.

‘Hullo, young Edwin,’ I said.

His gaze had been riveted on the ground, but at the sound of the familiar voice a couple of pink-rimmed eyes came swivelling round in my direction. He looked up at me like a ferret about to pass the time of day with another ferret.

‘Hullo, Bertie. I say, Bertie, I did another act of kindness this morning.’

‘Oh, yes?’

‘I finished pasting the notices of Florence’s novel in her album. That puts me all right up to last Wednesday.’

‘Good work. You’re catching up. And what do you think you’re doing now?’

‘I’m studying ants. Do you know anything about ants, Bertie?’

‘Only from meeting them at picnics.’

‘I’ve been reading up about them. Very interesting.’

‘Vastly, I shouldn’t wonder.’

I was glad the topic had been introduced, for it promised to be one that would carry us along nicely until Florence’s arrival on the scene. It was obvious that the young squirt was bulging with information about these industrious little creatures and asked nothing better than to be allowed to impart it.

‘Did you know that ants can talk?’

‘Talk?’

‘In a sort of way. To other ants, of course. They do it by tapping their heads on a leaf. How’s your head this morning, Bertie? I nearly forgot to ask.’

‘Still on the tender side.’

‘I thought it would be. Coo! That was funny last night, wasn’t it? I laughed for hours, when I got to bed.’

He emitted a ringing guffaw, and at the raucous sound any spark of compunction that might have been lingering in my bosom was quenched. A boy to whom the raising of a lump the size of a golf ball on the Wooster bean was a subject for heartless mirth deserved all that boot toe could do to him. For the first time, I found myself contemplating the task before me with real fire and enthusiasm – almost, as you might say, in a missionary spirit. I mean, I felt what a world of good a swift kick in the pants would do to this child. It might prove to be the turning-point in his life.

‘You laughed, did you?’

‘Rather!’

‘Ha!’ I said, and ground a few teeth.

The maddening thing was, of course, that though I was now keyed
up
to give of my best, and though the position he had assumed for this ant-studying session of his was the exact position demanded by the run of the scenario, I was debarred from getting action. You might have compared me to a greyhound on the leash. Until Florence came along, I could not fulfil myself. As Jeeves had said, her presence was of the essence. I scanned the horizon for a sight of her, like a shipwrecked mariner hoping for a sail, but she did not appear, and in the meantime we went on talking about ants, Edwin saying that they were members of the Hymenoptera family and self replying, ‘Well, well. Quite the nibs, eh?’