The Jeeves Omnibus - Vol 3 (44 page)

‘Oh, my God!’

‘It will do Dobbs all the good in the world to be coshed. It may prove a turning-point in his life. I have a feeling that things are breaking just right these days and that very shortly an era of universal happiness will set in. Look at Catsmeat, if you want Exhibit A. Have you seen him?’

‘Not to speak to,’ I said, speaking in a
distrait
manner, for my mind was still occupied with Thos and his plans. The last thing you want, when the nervous system is in a state of hash, are your first cousins socking policemen with rubber bludgeons. ‘What about Catsmeat?’

‘I met him just now, and he was singing like a linnet all over the place. He had a note from Gertrude last night, and she says that, if and when she can elude her mother’s eye, she will elope with him. His cup of joy is full.’

‘I’m glad someone’s is.’

The sombreness of my tone caused her to look sharply at me, and her eyes widened as she saw the disorder of my outer crust.

‘Bertie! My lamb!’ she cried, visibly moved. ‘What have you been doing to yourself? You look like –’

‘Something the cat brought in?’

‘I was going to say something excavated from Tutankhamen’s tomb, but your guess is as good as mine. What’s been happening?’

I passed a weary hand over the brow.

‘Corky,’ I said, ‘I’ve been through hell.’

‘About the only place I thought you didn’t have to go through to get to King’s Deverill. And how were they all?’

‘I have a frightful story to relate.’

‘Did somebody cosh you?’

‘I’ve just come from Wimbledon.’

‘From Wimbledon? But Catsmeat was attending to the Wimbledon end. He told me all about it.’

‘He didn’t tell you all about it, because all about it is precisely what he doesn’t know. If you’ve only heard Catsmeat’s reminiscences, you simply aren’t within a million miles of being in possession of the facts. He barely scratched the surface of Wimbledon, whereas I … Would you care to have the ghastly details?’

She said she would love to, and I slipped them to her, and for once she listened attentively from start to finish, an agreeable deviation from her customary deaf-adder tactics. I found her a good audience. She was properly impressed when I spoke of Gussie’s letter, nor did she omit to draw the breath in sharply as I touched on the Gudgeon and the sinister affair of the studio portrait. The facts in connection with the white, woolly dog also went over big.

‘Golly!’ she said, as I wore to a close. ‘You do live, don’t you, Bertie?’

I agreed that I lived, but expressed a doubt as to whether, the circumstances being what they were it was worthwhile continuing to do so. One was rather inclined, I said, to murmur ‘Death, where is thy sting?’ and turn the toes up.

‘The best one can say,’ I concluded, ‘is that one has obtained a brief respite, if respite is the word. And that only if Catsmeat was successful in dissuading the Bassett from her awful purpose. For all I know, she may be coming on the next train.’

‘No, she’s not. He headed her off.’

‘You had that straight from the horse’s mouth?’

‘Direct from his personal lips.’

I drew a deep breath. This certainly put a brighter aspect on the cloud wreck. In fact, it seemed to me that ‘Hallelujah!’ about summed it up, and I mentioned this.

I was concerned to note that she appeared a bit dubious.

‘Yes, I suppose “Hallelujah!” sums it up … to a certain extent. I
mean
you can make your mind easy about her coming here. She isn’t coming. But in the light of what you tell me about Mervyn Keene, Clubman, and the studio portrait, it’s a pity Catsmeat didn’t hit on some other method of heading her off. I do feel that.’

My heart stood still. I clutched at the windscreen for support, and what-whatted.

‘The great thing to remember, the thing to bear in mind and keep the attention fixed on, is that he meant well.’

My heart stood stiller. In your walks about London you will sometimes see bent, haggard figures that look as if they had recently been caught in some powerful machinery. They are those of fellows who got mixed up with Catsmeat when he was meaning well.

‘What he told Miss Bassett was this. He said that on hearing that she was coming to the hall you betrayed agitation and concern, and finally he got it out of you what the trouble was. Loving her hopelessly as you do, you shrank from the agony of having to see her day after day in Gussie’s society.’

My heart, ceasing to stand still, gave a leap and tried to get out through my front teeth.

‘He told Madeline Bassett that?’ I quavered, shaking on my stem.

‘Yes, and implored her to stay away and not subject you to this anguish. He says he was terrific and wished one or two managers had been there to catch his work, and I think he must have been pretty good, because Miss Bassett cried buckets and said she quite understood and, of course, would cancel her visit, adding something in a low voice about the desire of the moth for the star and how sad life was. What did you say?’

I explained that I had not spoken, merely uttered one of those hollow groans, and she agreed that in the circs hollow groans were perhaps in order.

‘But, of course, it wasn’t easy for the poor angel to think of a good way of stopping her coming,’ she argued. ‘And the great thing was to stop her somehow.’

‘True.’

‘So, if I were you, I would try to look on the bright side. Count your blessings one by one, if you know what I mean.’

This is an appeal which, when addressed to Bertram Wooster, rarely falls on deaf ears. The stunned sensation which her words had induced did not actually leave me, but it diminished somewhat in intensity. I saw her point.

‘There is much in what you say,’ I agreed, rising on stepping-stones of my dead self to higher things, as I have mentioned is my custom.
‘The
great thing, as you justly remark, was to stop the Bassett blowing in, and, if that has been accomplished, one does wrong to be fussy about the actual mechanism. And, after all, she was already firmly convinced of my unswerving devotion, so Catsmeat hasn’t really plunged me so very much deeper in the broth than I was before.’

‘That’s my brave little man. That’s the way to talk.’

‘We now have a respite, and all depends on how quickly you can put Gussie on ice. The moment that is done, the whole situation will clarify. Released from your fatal spell, he will automatically return to the old love, feeling that the cagey thing is to go where he is appreciated. When do you expect to cool him off?’

‘Very soon.’

‘Why not instanter?’

‘Well, I’ll tell you, Bertie. There’s a little job I want him to do for me first.’

‘What job?’

‘Ah, here’s Thomas at last. He seems to have bought every fan magazine in existence. To read at the concert, if he’s sensible. You haven’t forgotten the concert is this evening? Well, mind you don’t. And when you see Jeeves, ask him how that claque of Esmond’s has come out. Hop in, Thomas.’

Thos hopped in, giving me another of his supercilious looks, and when in, leaned across and slipped a penny into my hand, saying ‘Here, my poor man’ and urging me not to spend it on drink. At any other moment this coarse ribaldry would have woken the fiend that sleeps in Bertram Wooster and led to the young pot of poison receiving another clout on the head, but I had no time now for attending to Thoses. I fixed Corky with a burning eye.

‘What job?’ I repeated.

‘Oh, it wouldn’t interest you,’ she said. ‘Just a trivial little job about the place.’

And she drove off, leaving me a prey to a nameless fear.

I was hoofing along the road that led to the hall, speculating dully as to what precisely she had meant by the expression ‘trivial little job’, when, as I rounded a corner, something large and Norfolk-coated hove in sight, and I identified it as Esmond Haddock.

OWING TO THE
fact that on the instructions of Dame Daphne (‘Safety First’) Winkworth port was no longer served after dinner and the male and female members of the gang now left the table in a body at the conclusion of the evening repast, I had not enjoyed a
tête-à-tête
with Esmond Haddock since the night of my arrival. I had seen him around the place, of course, but always in the company of a brace of assorted aunts or that of his cousin Gertrude, in each case looking Byronic. (Checking up with Jeeves, I find that that is the word all right. Apparently it means looking like the late Lord Byron, who was a gloomy sort of bird, taking things the hard way.)

We came together, he approaching from the nor’-nor’-east and self approaching from the sou’-sou’-west, and he greeted me with a moody twitch of the cheek muscles, as if he had thought of smiling and then thought again and said ‘Oh, to hell with it’.

‘Hallo,’ he said.

‘Hallo,’ I said.

‘Nice day,’ he said.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Out for a walk?’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘You out for a walk?’

Prudence compelled me to descend to subterfuge.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I’m out for a walk. I just ran into Miss Pirbright.’

At the mention of that name, he winced as if troubled by an old wound.

‘Oh?’ he said. ‘Miss Pirbright, eh?’

He swallowed a couple of times. I could see a question trembling on his lips, but it was plainly one that nauseated him, for after uttering the word ‘Was’ he kept right along swallowing. I was just about to touch on the situation in the Balkans in order to keep the conversation going, when he got it out.

‘Was Wooster with her?’

‘No, she was alone.’

‘You’re sure?’

‘Certain.’

‘He may have been lurking in the background. Behind a tree or something.’

‘The meeting occurred in the station yard.’

‘He wasn’t skulking in a doorway?’

‘Oh, no.’

‘Strange. You don’t often see her without Wooster these days,’ he said, and ground his teeth a trifle.

I had a shot at trying to mitigate his anguish, which I could see was considerable. He, too, had obviously noted Gussie’s spotty work, and it was plain that what is technically known as the green-eyed monster had been slipping it across him properly.

‘They’re old friends, of course,’ I said.

‘Are they?’

‘Oh, rather. We – I should say they – have known each other since childhood. They went to the same dancing class.’

The moment I had mentioned that, I was wishing I hadn’t, for it seemed to affect him as though some hidden hand had given him the hotfoot. You couldn’t say his brow darkened because it had been dark to start with, but he writhed visibly. Like Lord Byron reading a review of his last slim volume of verse and finding it a stinker. I wasn’t surprised. A man in love and viewing with concern the competition of a rival does not like to think of the adored object and that rival pirouetting about together at dancing classes and probably splitting a sociable milk and biscuit in the eleven o’clock interval.

‘Oh?’ he said, and gave a sort of whistling sigh like the last whoosh of a dying soda-water syphon. ‘The same dancing class? The same dancing class, eh?’

He brooded a while. When he spoke again, his voice was hoarse and rumbling.

‘Tell me about this fellow Wooster, Gussie. He is a friend of yours?’

‘Oh, yes.’

‘Known him long?’

‘We were at school together.’

‘I suppose he was a pretty loathsome boy? The pariah of the establishment?’

‘Oh, no.’

‘Changed after he grew up, eh? Well, he certainly made up leeway all right, because of all the slinking snakes it has ever been my misfortune to encounter, he is the slimiest.’

‘Would you call him a slinking snake?’

‘I did call him a slinking snake, and I’ll do it again as often as you wish. The fishfaced trailing arbutus!’

‘He’s not a bad chap.’

‘That may be your opinion. It is not mine, nor, I should imagine, that of most decent-minded people. Hell is full of men like Wooster. What the devil does she see in him?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Nor anyone else. I’ve studied the fellow carefully and without bias, and he seems to me entirely lacking in charm. Have you ever turned over a flat stone?’

‘From time to time.’

‘And what came crawling out? A lot of obscene creatures that might have been his brothers. I tell you, Gussie, if you were to put a bit of gorgonzola cheese on the slide of a microscope and tell me to take a look, the first thing I’d say on getting it focused would be: “Why, hallo, Wooster!”’

He brooded Byronically for a moment.

‘I know the specious argument you are going to put forward, Gussie,’ he proceeded. ‘You are going to say that it is not Wooster’s fault that he looks like a slightly enlarged cheesemite. Very true. One strives to be fair. But it is not only the man’s revolting appearance that distresses the better element. He is a menace to the community.’

‘Oh, come.’

‘What do you mean, “Oh, come”? You heard what my Aunt Daphne was telling us at dinner the night you arrived. About this ghastly Wooster perpetually stealing policemen’s helmets.’

‘Not perpetually. Just as a treat on Boat Race night.’

He frowned.

‘I don’t like the way you stick up for the fellow, Gussie. You probably consider that you are being broad-minded, but you want to be careful how you let that so-called broad-mindedness grow on you. It is apt to become mere moral myopia. The facts are well documented. Whenever Wooster has a spare moment, he goes about London persecuting unfortunate policemen, assaulting them, hampering them in their duties, making their lives a hell on earth. That’s the kind of man Wooster is.’

He paused, and became for a moment lost in thought. Then there flitted across his map another of those quick twitches which he seemed to be using nowadays, on the just-as-good principle, as a substitute for smiles.

‘Well, I’ll tell you one thing, Gussie. I only hope he intends to start something on those lines here, because we’re ready for him.’

‘Eh?’

‘Ready and waiting. You know Dobbs?’

‘The flatty?’

‘Our village constable, yes. A splendid fellow, tireless in the performance of his duties.’