The Jeeves Omnibus - Vol 4: (Jeeves & Wooster): No.4 (17 page)

‘You don’t despair?’

‘Not at all. I have high hopes that, after they have thought things over, these two proud spirits who have parted brass rags will come together and be reconciled, thus letting me out. The rift was due –’

‘I know. She told me.’

‘– to the fact that Stilton learned that I had taken Florence to The Mottled Oyster one night about a week ago, and he refused to believe that I had done so merely in order to enable her to accumulate atmosphere for her new book. When he has cooled off and reason has returned to its throne, he may realize how mistaken he was and beg her to forgive him for his low suspicions. I think so, I hope so.’

She agreed that there was something in this and commended me for my spirit, which in her opinion was the right one. My intrepidity reminded her, she said, of the Spartans at Thermopylae, wherever that may be.

‘But he’s a long way from being in that frame of mind at the moment, according to Florence. She says he is convinced that you two were on an unbridled toot together. And, of course, his finding you in the cupboard in her bedroom at one in the morning was unfortunate.’

‘Most. One would gladly have avoided the occurrence.’

‘Must have given the man quite a start. What beats me is why he didn’t hammer the stuffing out of you. I should have thought that would have been his first move.’

I smiled quietly.

‘He has drawn me in the Drones Club Darts sweep.’

‘What’s that got to do with it?’

‘My dear soul, does a fellow hammer the stuffing out of a chap on whose virtuosity at the Darts board he stands to win fifty-six pounds, ten shillings?’

‘Oh, I see.’

‘So did Stilton. I made the position thoroughly clear to him, and he has ceased to be a menace. However much his thoughts may drift
in
the direction of stuffing-hammering, he will have to continue to maintain the non-belligerent status of a mild cat in an adage. I have bottled him up good and proper. There was nothing further you wished to discuss?’

‘Not that I know of.’

‘Then if you will withdraw, I will be getting up and dressing.’ I rose from the hay as the door closed, and having bathed, shaved and clad the outer man, took my cigarette out for a stroll in the grounds and messuages.

The sun was now a good bit higher in the heavens than when last observed, and its genial warmth increased the optimism of my mood. Thinking of Stilton and the dead stymie I had laid him, I found myself feeling that it was not such a bad little old world, after all. I don’t know anything that braces you more thoroughly than outgeneralling one of the baser sort who has been chucking his weight about and planning to start something. It was with much the same quiet satisfaction which I had experienced when bending Roderick Spode to my will at Totleigh Towers that I contemplated Stilton in his bottled-up state. As Aunt Dahlia had said, quite the lion tamer.

True, as against this, there was Florence – already, it appeared, speaking freely of bridesmaids, caterers and St. George’s, Hanover Square – and a lesser man might have allowed her dark shadow to cloud his feeling of
bien-être
. But it is always the policy of the Woosters to count their blessings one by one, and I concentrated my attention exclusively on the bright side of the picture, telling myself that even if an eleventh-hour reprieve failed to materialize and I was compelled to drain the bitter cup, I wouldn’t have to do it with two black eyes and a fractured spine, wedding presents from G. D’Arcy Cheesewright. Come what might, I was that much ahead of the game.

I was, in short, in buoyant mood and practically saying ‘Tra la’, when I observed Jeeves shimmering up in the manner of one desiring audience.

‘Ah, Jeeves,’ I said. ‘Nice morning.’

‘Extremely agreeable, sir.’

‘Did you want to see me about something?’

‘If you could spare me a moment, sir. I was anxious to ascertain if it would be possible for you to dispense with my services today in order that I may go to London. The Junior Ganymede luncheon, sir.’

‘I thought that was next week.’

‘The date has been put forward to accommodate Sir Everard Everett’s butler, who leaves with his employer tomorrow for the
United
States of America. Sir Everard is assuming his duties as Britannic ambassador at Washington.’

‘Is that so? Good luck to the old blister.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘One likes to see these public servants bustling about and earning their salaries.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘If one is a taxpayer, I mean, contributing one’s whack to those salaries.’

‘Precisely, sir. I should be glad if you could see your way to allowing me to attend the function, sir. As I informed you, I am taking the chair.’

Well, of course, when he put it like that, I had no option but to right-ho.

‘Certainly, Jeeves. Push along and revel till your ribs squeak. It may be your last chance,’ I added significantly.

‘Sir?’

‘Well, you’ve often stressed how fussy the brass hats at the Ganymede are about members not revealing the secrets of the club book, and Aunt Dahlia tells me you’ve just been spilling the whole inner history of Spode and Eulalie Sœurs to her. Won’t they drum you out if this becomes known?’

‘The contingency is a remote one, sir, and I gladly took the risk, knowing that Mrs. Travers’s happiness was at stake.’

‘Pretty white, Jeeves.’

‘Thank you, sir. I endeavour to give satisfaction. And now I think perhaps, if you will excuse me, sir, I should be starting for the station. The train for London leaves very shortly.’

‘Why not drive up in the two-seater?’

‘If you could spare it, sir?’

‘Of course.’

‘Thank you very much, sir. It will be a great convenience.’

He pushed off in the direction of the house, no doubt to go and get the bowler hat which is his inseparable companion when in the metropolis, and scarcely had he left me when I heard my name called in a bleating voice and turned to perceive Percy Gorringe approaching, his tortoiseshell-rimmed spectacles glistening in the sunshine.

My first emotion on beholding him was one of surprise, a feeling that of all the in-and-out performers I had ever met he was the most unpredictable. I mean, you couldn’t tell from one minute to another what aspect he was going to present to the world, for he switched from Stormy to Set Fair and from Set Fair to Stormy like a barometer
with
something wrong with its works. At dinner on the previous night he had been all gaiety and effervescence, and here he was now, only a few hours later, once more giving that impersonation of a dead codfish which had caused Aunt Dahlia to take so strong a line with him. Fixing me with lack-lustre eyes, if lack-lustre is the word I want, and wasting no time on preliminary pip-pippings and pourparlers, he started straight off cleansing his bosom of the perilous stuff that weighs upon the heart.

‘Wooster,’ he said, ‘Florence has just told me a story that shocked me!’

Well, difficult to know what to say to that, of course. One’s impulse was to ask what story, adding that if it was the one about the bishop and the lady snake-charmer, one had heard it. And one could, no doubt, have shoved in a thoughtful word or two deploring the growing laxity of speech of the modern girl. I merely said ‘Oh, ah?’ and waited for further details.

His eye, as Florence’s had done on the previous night, rolled in a fine frenzy and glanced from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven. You could see the thing had upset him.

‘Shortly after breakfast,’ he continued, retrieving the eye and fixing it on me once more, ‘finding her alone in the herbaceous border, cutting flowers, I hastened up and asked if I might be allowed to hold the basket.’

‘Very civil.’

‘She thanked me and said she would be glad if I would do so, and for awhile we talked of neutral subjects. One topic led to another, and eventually I asked her to be my wife.’

‘’At-a-boy!’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘I only said “’At-a-boy!”’

‘Why did you say “’At-a-boy!”?’

‘Sort of cheering you on, as it were.’

‘I see. Cheering me on. The expression is a corruption, one assumes, of the phrase “That is the boy” and signifies friendly encouragement?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Then I am surprised in the circumstances – and may I say more than a little disgusted – to hear it from your lips, Wooster. It would have been in better taste to have refrained from cheap taunts and jeers.’

‘Eh?’

‘If you have triumphed, that is no reason why you should mock those who have been less fortunate.’

‘I’m sorry. If you could give me a few footnotes …’

He tchah-ed impatiently.

‘I told you that I asked Florence to be my wife, and I also told you that she said something which shocked me profoundly. It was that she was engaged to you.’

I got it now. I saw what he was driving at.

‘Oh, ah, yes, of course. Quite. Yes, we would appear to be betrothed.’

‘When did this happen, Wooster?’

‘Fairly recently.’

He snorted.

‘Very recently, I should imagine, seeing that it was only yesterday that she was engaged to Cheesewright. It’s all most confusing,’ said Percy peevishly. ‘It makes one’s head swim. One doesn’t know where one is.’

I could see his point.

‘Bit of a mix-up,’ I agreed.

‘It’s bewildering. I cannot think what she can possibly see in you.’

‘No. Very odd, the whole thing.’

He brooded darkly for a while.

‘Her recent infatuation for Cheesewright,’ he said, teeing off again, ‘one could dimly understand. Whatever his mental defects, he is a vigorous young animal, and it is not uncommon to find girls of intellect attracted by vigorous young animals. Bernard Shaw made this the basis of this early novel,
Cashel Byron’s Profession
. But
you
! It’s inexplicable. A mere weedy butterfly.’

‘Would you call me a weedy butterfly?’

‘If you can think of a better description, I shall be happy to hear it. I am unable to discern in you the slightest vestige of charm, the smallest trace of any quality that could reasonably be expected to appeal to a girl like Florence. It amazes one that she should wish to have you permanently about the house.’

I don’t know if you would call me a touchy man. As a rule, I should say not. But it is not pleasant to find yourself chalked up on the slate as a weedy butterfly, and I confess that I spoke a little shortly.

‘Well, there it is,’ I said, and went into the silence. And as he, too, seemed disinclined for chit-chat, we stood for some moments like a couple of Trappist monks who have run into each other by chance at the dog races. And I think I would pretty soon have nodded curtly and removed myself, had he not arrested me with an exclamation similar in tone and volume to the one which Stilton had uttered on finding me festooned with hat-boxes in Florence’s cupboard. He was
looking
at me through the windshields with what appeared to be concern, if not horror. It puzzled me. It couldn’t have taken him all this time, I felt, to notice the moustache.

‘Wooster! Good gracious! You are not wearing a hat!’

‘I don’t much in the country.’

‘But in this hot sun! You might get sunstroke. You ought not to take such risks.’

I must say I was touched by this solicitude. Much of the pique I had been feeling left me. It isn’t many fellows, I mean to say, who get all worked up about the well-being of birds who are virtually strangers. It just showed, I thought, that a man may talk a lot of rot about weedy butterflies and still have a tender heart beneath what I should imagine was pretty generally recognized as a fairly repulsive exterior.

‘Don’t worry,’ I said, soothing his alarm.

‘But I do worry,’ he responded sharply. ‘I feel very strongly that you ought either to get a hat or else stay in the shade. I don’t want to appear fussy, but your health is naturally a matter of the greatest concern to me. You see, I have drawn you in the Drones Club Darts sweep.’

This got right past me. I could make nothing of it. It sounded to me like straight delirium.

‘You’ve what? How do you mean you’ve drawn me in the Drones Club Darts sweep?’

‘I put it badly. I was agitated. What I should have said was that I have bought you from Cheesewright. He has sold me the ticket bearing your name. So can you wonder that it makes me nervous when I see you going about in this hot sun without a hat?’

In a career liberally spotted with nasty shocks I have had occasion to do quite a bit of reeling and tottering from time to time, but I have seldom reeled and tottered more heartily than I did on hearing these frightful words. I had addressed Aunt Dahlia on the previous night, if you remember, as a fluttering aspen. The description would have fitted me at this moment like the paper on the wall.

This surge of emotion will, I think, be readily understood. My whole foreign policy, as I have made clear, had been built on the fact that I had bottled Stilton up good and proper, and it now appeared, dash it, that I hadn’t bottled him up at all. He was once more in the position of an Assyrian fully licensed to come down like a wolf on the fold with his cohorts all gleaming with purple and gold, and the realization that his thirst for vengeance was so pronounced that, rather than forgo his war aims, he was prepared to sacrifice fifty-six quid and a bender was one that froze the marrow.

‘There must be a lot of hidden good in Cheesewright,’ proceeded Percy. ‘I confess frankly that I misjudged him, and, if I had not already returned the galley proofs, I would withdraw that “Caliban at Sunset” thing of mine from
Parnassus
. He tells me that you are a certain winner of this Darts contest, and yet he voluntarily offered to sell me for quite a trivial sum the ticket bearing your name, because, he said, he had taken a great fancy to me and would like to do me a good turn. A big, generous, warm-hearted gesture, and one that restores one’s faith in human nature. By the way, Cheesewright is looking for you. He wants to see you about something.’

He repeated his advice with ref. to the hat and moved off, and for quite a while I stood where I was, rigid to the last limb, my numbed bean trying to grapple with this hideous problem which had arisen. It was plain that some diabolically clever counter-move would have to be made and made slippily, but what diabolically clever counter-move? There was what is called the rub.