The Jeeves Omnibus - Vol 3 (60 page)

I drew myself up.

‘Jeeves!’ I said.

‘Pardon me, sir, but would it not be wiser to wear a hat? There is a keen wind.’

I blinked.

‘Aren’t I wearing a hat?’

‘No, sir.’

I put up a hand and felt the lemon. He was perfectly right.

‘Nor I am! I must have left it in Sippy’s office. Wait here, Jeeves, while I fetch it.’

‘Very good, sir.’

‘I have much to say to you.’

‘Thank you, sir.’

I galloped up the stairs and dashed in at the door. And something squashy fell on my neck, and the next minute the whole world was a solid mass of flour. In the agitation of the moment I had gone in at the wrong door; and what it all boils down to is that, if any more of my pals gets inferiority complexes, they can jolly well get rid of them for themselves. Bertram is through.

THE LETTER ARRIVED
on the morning of the sixteenth. I was pushing a bit of breakfast into the Wooster face at the moment and, feeling fairly well-fortified with coffee and kippers, I decided to break the news to Jeeves without delay. As Shakespeare says, if you’re going to do a thing you might just as well pop right at it and get it over. The man would be disappointed, of course, and possibly even chagrined: but, dash it all, a splash of disappointment here and there does a fellow good. Makes him realize that life is stern and life is earnest.

‘Oh, Jeeves,’ I said.

‘Sir?’

‘We have here a communication from Lady Wickham. She has written inviting me to Skeldings for the festives. So you will see about bunging the necessaries together. We repair thither on the twenty-third. Plenty of white ties, Jeeves, also a few hearty country suits for use in the daytime. We shall be there some little time, I expect.’

There was a pause. I could feel he was directing a frosty gaze at me, but I dug into the marmalade and refused to meet it.

‘I thought I understood you to say, sir, that you proposed to visit Monte Carlo immediately after Christmas.’

‘I know. But that’s all off. Plans changed.’

‘Very good, sir.’

At this point the telephone bell rang, tiding over very nicely what had threatened to be an awkward moment. Jeeves unhooked the receiver.

‘Yes? … Yes, madam … Very good, madam. Here is Mr Wooster.’ He handed me the instrument. ‘Mrs Spenser Gregson, sir.’

You know, every now and then I can’t help feeling that Jeeves is losing his grip. In his prime it would have been with him the work of a moment to have told Aunt Agatha that I was not at home. I gave him one of those reproachful glances, and took the machine.

‘Hullo?’ I said. ‘Yes? Hullo? Hullo? Bertie speaking. Hullo? Hullo? Hullo?’

‘Don’t keep on saying Hullo,’ yipped the old relative in her customary curt manner. ‘You’re not a parrot. Sometimes I wish you were, because then you might have a little sense.’

Quite the wrong sort of tone to adopt towards a fellow in the early morning, of course, but what can one do?

‘Bertie, Lady Wickham tells me she has invited you to Skeldings for Christmas. Are you going?’

‘Rather!’

‘Well, mind you behave yourself. Lady Wickham is an old friend of mine.’

I was in no mood for this sort of thing over the telephone. Face to face, I’m not saying, but at the end of a wire, no.

‘I shall naturally endeavour, Aunt Agatha,’ I replied stiffly, ‘to conduct myself in a manner befitting an English gentleman paying a visit –’

‘What did you say? Speak up. I can’t hear.’

‘I said Right-ho.’

‘Oh? Well, mind you do. And there’s another reason why I particularly wish you to be as little of an imbecile as you can manage while at Skeldings. Sir Roderick Glossop will be there.’

‘What!’

‘Don’t bellow like that. You nearly deafened me.’

‘Did you say Sir Roderick Glossop?’

‘I did.’

‘You don’t mean Tuppy Glossop?’

‘I mean Sir Roderick Glossop. Which was my reason for saying Sir Roderick Glossop. Now, Bertie, I want you to listen to me attentively. Are you there?’

‘Yes, still here.’

‘Well, then, listen. I have at last succeeded, after incredible difficulty, and in face of all the evidence, in almost persuading Sir Roderick that you are not actually insane. He is prepared to suspend judgment until he has seen you once more. On your behaviour at Skeldings, therefore –’

But I had hung up the receiver. Shaken. That’s what I was. S to the core.

Stop me if I’ve told you this before: but, in case you don’t know, let me just mention the facts in the matter of this Glossop. He was a formidable old bird with a bald head and out-size eyebrows, by profession a loony-doctor. How it happened, I couldn’t tell you to
this
day, but I once got engaged to his daughter, Honoria, a ghastly dynamic exhibit who read Nietzsche and had a laugh like waves breaking on a stern and rock-bound coast. The fixture was scratched owing to events occurring which convinced the old boy that I was off my napper; and since then he has always had my name at the top of his list of ‘Loonies I have Lunched With’.

It seemed to me that even at Christmas time, with all the peace on earth and goodwill towards men that there is knocking about at that season, a reunion with this bloke was likely to be tough going. If I hadn’t had more than one particularly good reason for wanting to go to Skeldings, I’d have called the thing off.

‘Jeeves,’ I said, all of a twitter, ‘Do you know what? Sir Roderick Glossop is going to be at Lady Wickham’s.’

‘Very good, sir. If you have finished breakfast, I will clear away.’

Cold and haughty. No symp. None of the rallying-round spirit which one likes to see. As I had anticipated, the information that we were not going to Monte Carlo had got in amongst him. There is a keen sporting streak in Jeeves, and I knew he had been looking forward to a little flutter at the tables.

We Woosters can wear the mask. I ignored his lack of decent feeling.

‘Do so, Jeeves,’ I said proudly, ‘and with all convenient speed.’

Relations continued pretty fairly strained all through the rest of the week. There was a frigid detachment in the way the man brought me my dollop of tea in the mornings. Going down to Skeldings in the car on the afternoon of the twenty-third, he was aloof and reserved. And before dinner on the first night of my visit he put the studs in my dress-shirt in what I can only call a marked manner. The whole thing was extremely painful, and it seemed to me, as I lay in bed on the morning of the twenty-fourth, that the only step to take was to put the whole facts of the case before him and trust to his native good sense to effect an understanding.

I was feeling considerably in the pink that morning. Everything had gone like a breeze. My hostess, Lady Wickham, was a beaky female built far too closely on the lines of my Aunt Agatha for comfort, but she had seemed matey enough on my arrival. Her daughter, Roberta, had welcomed me with a warmth which, I’m bound to say, had set the old heart-strings fluttering a bit. And Sir Roderick, in the brief moment we had had together, appeared to have let the Yule-Tide Spirit soak into him to the most amazing extent. When he saw me, his mouth sort of flickered at one corner, which I took to be his idea
of
smiling, and he said ‘Ha, young man!’ Not particularly chummily, but he said it: and my view was that it practically amounted to the lion lying down with the lamb.

So, all in all, life at this juncture seemed pretty well all to the mustard, and I decided to tell Jeeves exactly how matters stood.

‘Jeeves,’ I said, as he appeared with the steaming.

‘Sir?’

‘Touching on this business of our being here, I would like to say a few words of explanation. I consider that you have a right to the facts.’

‘Sir?’

‘I’m afraid scratching that Monte Carlo trip has been a bit of a jar for you, Jeeves.’

‘Not at all, sir.’

‘Oh, yes, it has. The heart was set on wintering in the world’s good old Plague Spot, I know. I saw your eye light up when I said we were due for a visit there. You snorted a bit and your fingers twitched. I know, I know. And now that there has been a change of programme the iron has entered into your soul.’

‘Not at all, sir.’

‘Oh, yes, it has. I’ve seen it. Very well, then, what I wish to impress upon you, Jeeves, is that I have not been actuated in this matter by any mere idle whim. It was through no light and airy caprice that I accepted this invitation to Lady Wickham’s. I have been angling for it for weeks, prompted by many considerations. In the first place, does one get the Yule-Tide Spirit at a spot like Monte Carlo?’

‘Does one desire the Yule-Tide Spirit, sir?’

‘Certainly one does. I am all for it. Well, that’s one thing. Now here’s another. It was imperative that I should come to Skeldings for Christmas, Jeeves, because I knew that young Tuppy Glossop was going to be here.’

‘Sir Roderick Glossop, sir?’

‘His nephew. You may have observed hanging about the place a fellow with light hair and a Cheshire-cat grin. That is Tuppy, and I have been anxious for some time to get to grips with him, I have it in for that man of wrath. Listen to the facts, Jeeves, and tell me if I am not justified in planning a hideous vengeance.’ I took a sip of tea, for the mere memory of my wrongs had shaken me. ‘In spite of the fact that young Tuppy is the nephew of Sir Roderick Glossop, at whose hands, Jeeves, as you are aware, I have suffered much, I fraternized with him freely, both at the Drones Club and elsewhere. I said to myself that a man is not to be blamed for his relations, and
that
I would hate to have my pals hold my Aunt Agatha, for instance, against me. Broad-minded, Jeeves, I think?’

‘Extremely, sir.’

‘Well, then, as I say, I sought this Tuppy out, Jeeves, and hobnobbed, and what do you think he did?’

‘I could not say, sir.’

‘I will tell you. One night after dinner at the Drones he betted me I wouldn’t swing myself across the swimming-bath by the ropes and rings. I took him on and was buzzing along in great style until I came to the last ring. And then I found that this fiend in human shape had looped it back against the rail, thus leaving me hanging in the void with no means of getting ashore to my home and loved ones. There was nothing for it but to drop into the water. He told me that he had often caught fellows that way: and what I maintain, Jeeves, is that, if I can’t get back at him somehow at Skeldings – with all the vast resources which a country-house affords at my disposal – I am not the man I was.’

‘I see, sir.’

There was still something in his manner which told me that even now he lacked complete sympathy and understanding, so, delicate though the subject was, I decided to put all my cards on the table.

‘And now, Jeeves, we come to the most important reason why I had to spend Christmas at Skeldings. Jeeves,’ I said, diving into the old cup once more for a moment and bringing myself out wreathed in blushes, ‘the fact of the matter is, I’m in love.’

‘Indeed, sir?’

‘You’ve seen Miss Roberta Wickham?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Very well, then.’

There was a pause, while I let it sink in.

‘During your stay here, Jeeves,’ I said, ‘you will, no doubt, be thrown a good deal together with Miss Wickham’s maid. On such occasions, pitch it strong.’

‘Sir?’

‘You know what I mean. Tell her I’m rather a good chap. Mention my hidden depths. These things get round. Dwell on the fact that I have a kind heart and was runner-up in the Squash Handicap at the Drones this year. A boost is never wasted, Jeeves.’

‘Very good, sir. But –’

‘But what?’

‘Well, sir –’

‘I wish you wouldn’t say “Well, sir” in that soupy tone of voice. I have had to speak of this before. The habit is one that is growing upon you. Check it. What’s on your mind?’

‘I hardly like to take the liberty –’

‘Carry on, Jeeves. We are always glad to hear from you, always.’

‘What I was about to remark, if you will excuse me, sir, was that I would scarcely have thought Miss Wickham a suitable –’

‘Jeeves,’ I said coldly, ‘if you have anything to say against that lady, it had better not be said in my presence.’

‘Very good, sir.’

‘Or anywhere else, for that matter. What is your kick against Miss Wickham?’

‘Oh, really, sir!’

‘Jeeves, I insist. This is a time for plain speaking. You have beefed about Miss Wickham. I wish to know why.’

‘It merely crossed my mind, sir, that for a gentleman of your description Miss Wickham is not a suitable mate.’

‘What do you mean by a gentleman of my description?’

‘Well, sir –’

‘Jeeves!’

‘I beg your pardon, sir. The expression escaped me inadvertently. I was about to observe that I can only asseverate –’

‘Only what?’

‘I can only say that, as you have invited my opinion –’

‘But I didn’t.’

‘I was under the impression that you desired to canvass my views on the matter, sir.’

‘Oh? Well, let’s have them, anyway.’

‘Very good, sir. Then briefly, if I may say so, sir, though Miss Wickham is a charming young lady –’

‘There, Jeeves, you spoke an imperial quart. What eyes!’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘What hair!’

‘Very true, sir.’

‘And what
espièglerie
, if that’s the word I want.’

‘The exact word, sir.’

‘All right, then. Carry on.’

‘I grant Miss Wickham the possession of all these desirable qualities, sir. Nevertheless, considered as a matrimonial prospect for
a
gentleman of your description, I cannot look upon her as suitable. In my opinion Miss Wickham lacks seriousness, sir. She is too volatile and frivolous. To qualify as Miss Wickham’s husband, a gentleman would need to possess a commanding personality and considerable strength of character.’

‘Exactly!’

‘I would always hesitate to recommend as a life’s companion a young lady with quite such a vivid shade of red hair. Red hair, sir, in my opinion, is dangerous.’

I eyed the blighter squarely.