The Jeeves Omnibus - Vol 3 (74 page)

To let you see the sort of fellow I really am, I got a ripe, excellent idea before I had gone half-way down the corridor. I examined it for the space of one and a half cigarettes, and could see no flaw in it, provided – I say, provided – old Mr Anstruther’s notion of what constituted bad conduct squared with mine.

The great thing on these occasions, as Jeeves will tell you, is to get a toe-hold on the psychology of the individual. Study the individual, and you will bring home the bacon. Now, I had been studying young Thos for years, and I knew his psychology from caviare to nuts. He is one of those kids who never let the sun go down on their wrath, if you know what I mean. I mean to say, do something to annoy or offend or upset this juvenile thug, and he will proceed at the earliest possible opp. to wreak a hideous vengeance upon you. Only the previous summer, for instance, it having been drawn to his attention that the latter had reported him for smoking, he had marooned a Cabinet Minister on an island in the lake at Aunt Agatha’s place in Hertfordshire – in the rain, mark you, and with no company but that of one of the nastiest-minded swans I have ever encountered. Well, I mean!

So now it seemed to me that a few well-chosen taunts, or jibes, directed at his more sensitive points, must infallibly induce in this Thos a frame of mind which would lead to his working some sensational violence upon me. And, if you wonder that I was willing to sacrifice myself to this frightful extent in order to do Aunt Dahlia a bit of good, I can only say that we Woosters are like that.

The one point that seemed to me to want a spot of clearing up was this: viz., would old Mr Anstruther consider an outrage perpetrated on the person of Bertram Wooster a crime sufficiently black to cause him to rule Thos out of the race? Or would he just give a senile chuckle and mumble something about boys being boys? Because, if the latter, the thing was off. I decided to have a word with the old boy and make sure.

He was still in the smoking room, looking very frail over the morning
Times
. I got to the point at once.

‘Oh, Mr Anstruther,’ I said. ‘What ho!’

‘I don’t like the way the American market is shaping,’ he said. ‘I don’t like this strong Bear movement.’

‘No?’ I said. ‘Well, be that as it may, about this Good Conduct prize of yours?’

‘Ah, you have heard of that, eh?’

‘I don’t quite understand how you are doing the judging.’

‘No? It is very simple. I have a system of daily marks. At the beginning of each day I accord the two lads twenty marks apiece. These are subject to withdrawal either in small or large quantities according to the magnitude of the offence. To take a simple example, shouting outside my bedroom in the early morning would involve a loss of three marks – whistling two. The penalty for a more serious lapse would be correspondingly greater. Before retiring to rest at night I record the day’s marks in my little book. Simple, but, I think, ingenious, Mr Wooster?’

‘Absolutely.’

‘So far the result has been extremely gratifying. Neither of the little fellows has lost a single mark, and my nervous system is acquiring a tone which, when I learned that two lads of immature years would be staying in the house during my visit, I confess I had not dared to anticipate.’

‘I see,’ I said. ‘Great work. And how do you react to what I might call general moral turpitude?’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘Well, I mean when the thing doesn’t affect you personally. Suppose one of them did something to me, for instance? Set a booby-trap or something? Or, shall we say, put a toad or so in my bed?’

He seemed shocked at the very idea.

‘I would certainly in such circumstances deprive the culprit of a full ten marks.’

‘Only ten?’

‘Fifteen, then.’

‘Twenty is a nice, round number.’

‘Well, possibly even twenty. I have a peculiar horror of practical joking.’

‘Me, too.’

‘You will not fail to advise me, Mr Wooster, should such an outrage occur?’

‘You shall have the news before anyone,’ I assured him.

And so out into the garden, ranging to and fro in quest of young Thos. I knew where I was now. Bertram’s feet were on solid ground.

I hadn’t been hunting long before I found him in the summer-house, reading an improving book.

‘Hullo,’ he said, smiling a saintlike smile.

This scourge of humanity was a chunky kid whom a too indulgent public had allowed to infest the country for a matter of fourteen years. His nose was snub, his eyes green, his general aspect that of one studying to be a gangster. I had never liked his looks much, and with a saintlike smile added to them they became ghastly to a degree.

I ran over in my mind a few assorted taunts.

‘Well, young Thos,’ I said. ‘So there you are. You’re getting as fat as a pig.’

It seemed as good an opening as any other. Experience had taught me that if there was a subject on which he was unlikely to accept persiflage in a spirit of amused geniality it was this matter of his bulging tum. On the last occasion when I made a remark of this nature, he had replied to me, child though he was, in terms which I would have been proud to have had in my own vocabulary. But now, though a sort of wistful gleam did flit for a moment into his eyes, he merely smiled in a more saintlike manner than ever.

‘Yes, I think I have been putting on a little weight,’ he said gently. ‘I must try and exercise a lot while I’m here. Won’t you sit down, Bertie?’ he asked, rising. ‘You must be tired after your journey. I’ll get you a cushion. Have you cigarettes? And matches? I could bring you some from the smoking room. Would you like me to fetch you something to drink?’

It is not too much to say that I felt baffled. In spite of what Aunt Dahlia had told me, I don’t think that until this moment I had really believed there could have been anything in the nature of a genuinely sensational change in this young plugugly’s attitude towards his fellows. But now, hearing him talk as if he were a combination of
Boy
Scout and delivery wagon, I felt definitely baffled. However, I stuck at it in the old bull-dog way.

‘Are you still at that rotten kids’ school of yours?’ I asked.

He might have been proof against jibes at his
embonpoint
, but it seemed to me incredible that he could have sold himself for gold so completely as to lie down under taunts directed at his school. I was wrong. The money-lust evidently held him in its grip. He merely shook his head.

‘I left this term. I’m going to Pevenhurst next term.’

‘They wear mortar-boards there, don’t they?’

‘Yes.’

‘With pink tassels?’

‘Yes.’

‘What a priceless ass you’ll look!’ I said, but without much hope. And I laughed heartily.

‘I expect I shall,’ he said, and laughed still more heartily.

‘Mortar-boards!’

‘Ha, ha!’

‘Pink tassels!’

‘Ha, ha!’

I gave the thing up.

‘Well, teuf-teuf,’ I said moodily, and withdrew.

A couple of days later I realized that the virus had gone even deeper than I had thought. The kid was irredeemably sordid.

It was old Mr Anstruther who sprang the bad news.

‘Oh, Mr Wooster,’ he said, meeting me on the stairs as I came down after a refreshing breakfast. ‘You were good enough to express an interest in this little prize for Good Conduct which I am offering.’

‘Oh, ah?’

‘I explained to you my system of marking, I believe. Well, this morning I was impelled to vary it somewhat. The circumstances seemed to me to demand it. I happened to encounter our hostess’s nephew, the boy Thomas, returning to the house, his aspect somewhat weary, it appeared to me, and travel-stained. I inquired of him where he had been at that early hour – it was not yet breakfast-time – and he replied that he had heard you mention overnight a regret that you had omitted to order the
Sporting Times
to be sent to you before leaving London, and he had actually walked all the way to the railway-station, a distance of more than three miles, to procure it for you.’

The old boy swam before my eyes. He looked like two old Mr Anstruthers, both flickering at the edges.

‘What!’

‘I can understand your emotion, Mr Wooster. I can appreciate it. It is indeed rarely that one encounters such unselfish kindliness in a lad of his age. So genuinely touched was I by the goodness of heart which the episode showed that I have deviated from my original system and awarded the little fellow a bonus of fifteen marks.’

‘Fifteen!’

‘On second thoughts, I shall make it twenty. That, as you yourself suggested, is a nice, round number.’

He doddered away, and I bounded off to find Aunt Dahlia.

‘Aunt Dahlia,’ I said, ‘matters have taken a sinister turn.’

‘You bet your Sunday spats they have,’ agreed Aunt Dahlia emphatically. ‘Do you know what happened just now? That crook Snettisham, who ought to be warned off the turf and hounded out of his club, offered Bonzo ten shillings if he would burst a paper bag behind Mr Anstruther’s chair at breakfast. Thank heaven the love of a good woman triumphed again. My sweet Bonzo merely looked at him and walked away in a marked manner. But it just shows you what we are up against.’

‘We are up against worse than that, Aunt Dahlia,’ I said. And I told her what had happened.

She was stunned. Aghast, you might call it.

‘
Thomas
did that?’

‘Thos in person.’

‘Walked six miles to get you a paper?’

‘Six miles and a bit.’

‘The young hound! Good heavens, Bertie, do you realize that he may go on doing these Acts of Kindness daily – perhaps twice a day? Is there no way of stopping him?’

‘None that I can think of. No, Aunt Dahlia, I must confess it. I am baffled. There is only one thing to do. We must send for Jeeves.’

‘And about time,’ said the relative churlishly. ‘He ought to have been here from the start. Wire him this morning.’

There is good stuff in Jeeves. His heart is in the right place. The acid test does not find him wanting. Many men in his position, summoned back by telegram in the middle of their annual vacation, might have cut up rough a bit. But not Jeeves. On the following afternoon in he blew, looking bronzed and fit, and I gave him the scenario without delay.

‘So there you have it, Jeeves,’ I said, having sketched out the facts. ‘The problem is one that will exercise your intelligence to the utmost.
Rest
now, and tonight, after a light repast, withdraw to some solitary place and get down to it. Is there any particularly stimulating food or beverage you would like for dinner? Anything that you feel would give the old brain just that extra fillip? If so, name it.’

‘Thank you very much, sir, but I have already hit upon a plan which should, I fancy, prove effective.’

I gazed at the man with some awe.

‘Already?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Not
already?
’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Something to do with the psychology of the individual?’

‘Precisely, sir.’

I shook my head, a bit discouraged. Doubts had begun to creep in.

‘Well, spring it, Jeeves,’ I said. ‘But I have not much hope. Having only just arrived, you cannot possibly be aware of the frightful change that has taken place in young Thos. You are probably building on your knowledge of him, when last seen. Useless, Jeeves. Stirred by the prospect of getting his hooks on five of the best, this blighted boy has become so dashed virtuous that his armour seems to contain no chink. I mocked at his waistline and sneered at his school and he merely smiled in a pale, dying-duck sort of way. Well, that’ll show you. However, let us hear what you have to suggest.’

‘It occurred to me, sir, that the most judicious plan in the circumstances would be for you to request Mrs Travers to invite Master Sebastian Moon here for a short visit.’

I shook the onion again. The scheme sounded to me like apple sauce, and Grade A apple sauce, at that.

‘What earthly good would that do?’ I asked, not without a touch of asperity. ‘Why Sebastian Moon?’

‘He has golden curls, sir.’

‘What of it?’

‘The strongest natures are sometimes not proof against long golden curls.’

Well, it was a thought, of course. But I can’t say I was leaping about to any great extent. It might be that the sight of Sebastian Moon would break down Thos’s iron self-control to the extent of causing him to inflict mayhem on the person, but I wasn’t any too hopeful.

‘It may be so, Jeeves.’

‘I do not think I am too sanguine, sir. You must remember that
Master
Moon, apart from his curls, has a personality which is not uniformly pleasing. He is apt to express himself with a breezy candour which I fancy Master Thomas might feel inclined to resent in one some years his junior.’

I had had a feeling all along that there was a flaw somewhere, and now it seemed to me that I had spotted it.

‘But, Jeeves. Granted that little Sebastian is the pot of poison you indicate, why won’t he act just as forcibly on young Bonzo as on Thos? Pretty silly we should look if our nominee started putting it across him. Never forget that already Bonzo is twenty marks down and falling back in the betting.’

‘I do not anticipate any such contingency, sir. Master Travers is in love, and love is a very powerful restraining influence at the age of thirteen.’

‘H’m.’ I mused. ‘Well, we can but try, Jeeves.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘I’ll get Aunt Dahlia to write to Sippy tonight.’

I’m bound to say that the spectacle of little Sebastian when he arrived two days later did much to remove pessimism from my outlook. If ever there was a kid whose whole appearance seemed to call aloud to any right-minded boy to lure him into a quiet spot and inflict violence upon him, that kid was undeniably Sebastian Moon. He reminded me strongly of Little Lord Fauntleroy. I marked young Thos’s demeanour closely at the moment of their meeting and, unless I was much mistaken, there came into his eyes the sort of look which would come into those of an Indian chief – Chingachgook, let us say, or Sitting Bull – just before he started reaching for his scalping-knife. He had the air of one who is about ready to begin.