The Jeeves Omnibus - Vol 2: (Jeeves & Wooster): No. 2 (60 page)

‘Come, come, Jeeves. It is not like you to be a … what’s the word … it’s on the tip of my tongue.’

‘Defeatist, sir?’

‘That’s right. It is not like you to be a defeatist. Don’t give it up. Go and brood in the kitchen. There may be some fish there. Did you notice any, when you were there yesterday?’

‘Only a tin of anchovy paste, sir.’

My heart sank a bit. Anchovy paste is a slender reed on which to lean in a major crisis. Still, it was fish within the meaning of the act, and no doubt contained its quota of phosphorus.

‘Go and wade into it.’

‘Very good, sir.’

‘Don’t spare the stuff. Dig it out with a spoon,’ I said, and dismissed him with a moody gesture.

Moody was the word which would have described my aspect, as a few moments later I left the house and proceeded to the garden, feeling in need of a bit of air. I had kept up a brave front, but I had little real hope that anchovy paste would bring home the bacon. As I stood at the garden gate, staring sombrely before me, I was at a pretty low ebb.

I mean to say, I had been banking everything on that letter. I had counted on it to destroy the Wooster glamour in Florence’s eyes. And, lacking it, I couldn’t see how she was going to be persuaded that I was not a king among men. Not for the first time, I found myself musing bitterly on young Edwin, the
fons et origo
– a Latin expression – of all my troubles.

And I was just regretting that we were not in China, where it would have been a simple matter to frame up something against the child, thus putting him in line for the Death of the Thousand Cuts, when my reverie was interrupted by the ting of a bicycle bell, and Stilton came wheeling up.

After what had passed, of course, it was not agreeable to be closeted with this vindictive copper, and I am not ashamed to say that I backed a pace. In fact, I would probably have gone on backing, had he not reached out a hand like a ham and grabbed me by the slack of my coat.

‘Stand still, you blasted object,’ he said. ‘I have something to say to you.’

‘You couldn’t write?’

‘No, I could not write. Don’t wriggle. Listen.’

I could see that the man was wrestling with some strong emotion, and could only hope that it was not homicidal. The eyes were glittering, and the face flushed.

‘Listen,’ he said again. ‘You know that engagement of yours?’

‘To Florence?’

‘To Florence. It’s off.’

‘Off?’

‘Off,’ said Stilton.

A sharp exclamation passed my lips. I clutched at the gate for support. The sun, which a moment before had gone behind a cloud, suddenly came shooting out like a rabbit and started shining like the dickens. On every side, it seemed to me, birds began to tottle their songs of joy. It will give you some rough indication of my feelings when I tell you that not only did all Nature become beautiful, but even for an instant Stilton.

Through a sort of pink mist, I heard myself asking faintly what he meant. The question caused him to frown with some impatience.

‘You can understand words of one syllable, can’t you? I tell you your engagement is off. Florence is going to marry me. I met her, as I came away from this pest house, and had it out with her. After that revolting exhibition of fraud and skulduggery in there, I had decided to resign from the Force, and I told her so. It removed the only barrier there had ever been between us. Questioned, she broke down and came clean, admitting that she had always loved me, and had got engaged to you merely to score off me for something I had said about modern enlightened thought. I withdrew the remark, and she fell into my arms. She seemed not to like the idea of breaking the news to you, so I said I would do it. “And if young blasted Wooster has anything to say”, I told her, “I will twist his head off and ram it down his throat.” Have you anything to say, Wooster?’

I paused for a moment to listen to the tootling birds. Then I raised the map, and allowed the beaming sun to play on it.

‘Not a thing,’ I assured him.

‘You realize the position? She has returned you to store. No ruddy wedding bells for you.’

‘Quite.’

‘Good. You will be leaving here fairly soon, I take it?’

‘Almost at once.’

‘Good,’ said Stilton, and sprang on his bicycle as if it had been a mettlesome charger.

Nor did I linger. I did the distance from the gate to the kitchen in about three seconds flat. From the window of the bathroom, as I passed, there came the voice of Uncle Percy as he sluiced the frame. He was singing some gay air. A sea chanty, probably, which he had learned from Clam or one of the captains in his employment.

Jeeves was pacing the kitchen floor, deep in thought. He looked round, as I entered, and his manner was apologetic.

‘It appears, sir, I regret to say, that there is no anchovy paste. It was finished yesterday.’

I didn’t actually slap him on the back, but I gave him the dickens of a beaming smile.

‘Never mind the anchovy paste, Jeeves. It will not be required. I’ve just seen Stilton. A reconciliation has taken place between him and Lady Florence, and they are once more headed for the altar rails. So, there being nothing to keep us in Steeple Bumpleigh, let’s go.’

‘Very good sir. The car is at the door.’

I paused.

‘Oh, but, dash it, we can’t.’

‘Sir?’

‘I’ve just remembered I promised Uncle Percy to go to the Hall with him and help him cope with Aunt Agatha.’

‘Her ladyship is not at the Hall, sir.’

‘What! But you said she was.’

‘Yes, sir. I fear I was guilty of subterfuge. I regretted the necessity, but it seemed to me essential in the best interests of all concerned.’

I goggled at the man.

‘Egad, Jeeves!’

‘Yes, sir.’

Faintly from the distance there came the sound of Uncle Percy working through his chanty.

‘How would it be,’ I suggested, ‘to zoom off immediately, without waiting to pack?’

‘I was about to suggest such a course myself, sir.’

‘It would enable one to avoid tedious explanations.’

‘Precisely, sir.’

‘Then shift ho, Jeeves,’ I said.

It was as we were about half-way between Steeple Bumpleigh and
the
old metrop, that I mentioned that there was an expression on the tip of my tongue which seemed to me to sum up the nub of the recent proceedings.

Or, rather, when I say an expression, I mean a saying. A wheeze. A gag. What I believe is called a saw. Something about Joy …

But we went into all that before, didn’t we?

To
Bernard le Strange

NOW, TOUCHING THIS
business of old Jeeves – my man, you know – how do we stand? Lots of people think I’m much too dependent on him. My Aunt Agatha, in fact, has even gone so far as to call him my keeper. Well, what I say is: Why not? The man’s a genius. From the collar upwards he stands alone. I gave up trying to run my own affairs within a week of his coming to me. That was about half a dozen years ago, directly after the rather rummy business of Florence Craye, my Uncle Willoughby’s book, and Edwin, the Boy Scout.

The thing really began when I got back to Easeby, my uncle’s place in Shropshire. I was spending a week or so there, as I generally did in the summer; and I had to break my visit to come back to London to get a new valet. I had found Meadowes, the fellow I had taken to Easeby with me, sneaking my silk socks, a thing no bloke of spirit could stick at any price. It transpiring, moreover, that he had looted a lot of other things here and there about the place, I was reluctantly compelled to hand the misguided blighter the mitten and go to London to ask the registry office to dig up another specimen for my approval. They sent me Jeeves.

I shall always remember the morning he came. It so happened that the night before I had been present at a rather cheery little supper, and I was feeling pretty rocky. On top of this I was trying to read a book Florence Craye had given me. She had been one of the house-party at Easeby, and two or three days before I left we had got engaged. I was due back at the end of the week, and I knew she would expect me to have finished the book by then. You see, she was particularly keen on boosting me up a bit nearer her own plane of intellect. She was a girl with a wonderful profile, but steeped to the gills in serious purpose. I can’t give you a better idea of the way things stood than by telling you that the book she’d given me to read was called
Types of Ethical Theory
, and that when I opened it at random I struck a page beginning:

The postulate or common understanding involved in speech is certainly co-extensive,
in
the obligation it carries, with the social organism of which language is the instrument, and the ends of which it is an effort to subserve.

All perfectly true, no doubt; but not the sort of thing to spring on a lad with a morning head.

I was doing my best to skim through this bright little volume when the bell rang. I crawled off the sofa and opened the door. A kind of darkish sort of respectful Johnnie stood without.

‘I was sent by the agency, sir,’ he said. ‘I was given to understand that you require a valet.’

I’d have preferred an undertaker; but I told him to stagger in, and he floated noiselessly through the doorway like a healing zephyr. That impressed me from the start. Meadowes had had flat feet and used to clump. This fellow didn’t seem to have any feet at all. He just streamed in. He had a grave, sympathetic face, as if he, too, knew what it was to sup with the lads.

‘Excuse me, sir,’ he said gently.

Then he seemed to flicker, and wasn’t there any longer. I heard him moving about in the kitchen, and presently he came back with a glass on a tray.

‘If you would drink this, sir,’ he said, with a kind of bedside manner, rather like the royal doctor shooting the bracer into the sick prince. ‘It is a little preparation of my own invention. It is the Worcester Sauce that gives it its colour. The raw egg makes it nutritious. The red pepper gives it its bite. Gentlemen have told me they have found it extremely invigorating after a late evening.’

I would have clutched at anything that looked like a lifeline that morning. I swallowed the stuff. For a moment I felt as if somebody had touched off a bomb inside the old bean and was strolling down my throat with a lighted torch, and then everything seemed suddenly to get all right. The sun shone in through the window; birds twittered in the tree-tops; and, generally speaking, hope dawned once more.

‘You’re engaged!’ I said, as soon as I could say anything.

I perceived clearly that this cove was one of the world’s workers, the sort no home should be without.

‘Thank you, sir. My name is Jeeves.’

‘You can start in at once?’

‘Immediately, sir.’

‘Because I’m due down at Easeby, in Shropshire, the day after tomorrow.’

‘Very good, sir.’ He looked past me at the mantelpiece. ‘That is an excellent likeness of Lady Florence Craye, sir. It is two years since I saw her ladyship. I was at one time in Lord Worplesdon’s
employment.
I tendered my resignation because I could not see eye to eye with his lordship in his desire to dine in dress trousers, a flannel shirt, and a shooting coat.’

He couldn’t tell me anything I didn’t know about the old boy’s eccentricity. This Lord Worplesdon was Florence’s father. He was the old buster who, a few years later, came down to breakfast one morning, lifted the first cover he saw, said ‘Eggs! Eggs! Eggs! Damn all eggs!’ in an overwrought sort of voice, and instantly legged it for France, never to return to the bosom of his family. This, mind you, being a bit of luck for the bosom of the family, for old Worplesdon had the worst temper in the county.

I had known the family ever since I was a kid, and from boyhood up this old boy had put the fear of death into me. Time, the great healer, could never remove from my memory the occasion when he found me – then a stripling of fifteen – smoking one of his special cigars in the stables. He got after me with a hunting-crop just at the moment when I was beginning to realize that what I wanted most on earth was solitude and repose, and chased me more than a mile across difficult country. If there was a flaw, so to speak, in the pure joy of being engaged to Florence, it was the fact that she rather took after her father, and one was never certain when she might erupt. She had a wonderful profile, though.

‘Lady Florence and I are engaged, Jeeves,’ I said.

‘Indeed, sir?’

You know, there was a kind of rummy something about his manner. Perfectly all right and all that, but not what you’d call chirpy. It somehow gave me the impression that he wasn’t keen on Florence. Well, of course, it wasn’t my business. I supposed that while he had been valeting old Worplesdon she must have trodden on his toes in some way. Florence was a dear girl, and, seen sideways, most awfully good-looking; but if she had a fault it was a tendency to be a bit imperious with the domestic staff.

At this point in the proceedings there was another ring at the front door. Jeeves shimmered out and came back with a telegram. I opened it. It ran:

Return immediately. Extremely urgent. Catch first train. Florence.

‘Rum!’ I said.

‘Sir?’

‘Oh, nothing!’

It shows how little I knew Jeeves in those days that I didn’t go a bit deeper into the matter with him. Nowadays I would never dream of reading a rummy communication without asking him what he thought
of
it. And this one was devilish odd. What I mean is, Florence knew I was going back to Easeby the day after tomorrow, anyway; so why the hurry call? Something must have happened, of course; but I couldn’t see what on earth it could be.

‘Jeeves,’ I said, ‘we shall be going down to Easeby this afternoon. Can you manage it?’

‘Certainly, sir.’

‘You can get your packing done and all that?’

‘Without any difficulty, sir. Which suit will you wear for the journey?’

‘This one.’

I had on a rather sprightly young check that morning, to which I was a good deal attached; I fancied it, in fact, more than a little. It was perhaps rather sudden till you got used to it, but, nevertheless, an extremely sound effort, which many lads at the club and elsewhere had admired unrestrainedly.