The Jeeves Omnibus - Vol 4: (Jeeves & Wooster): No.4 (58 page)

‘Well, you shouldn’t have kissed her.’

Again he showed surprise. He had thought it, he said, a pretty sound idea.

‘But you’re engaged to Madeline.’

I had hoped with these words to start his conscience working on all twelve cylinders, but something seemed to have gone wrong with the machinery, for he remained as calm and unmoved as the fish on ice he so closely resembled.

‘Ah, Madeline,’ he said. ‘I was about to touch on Madeline. Shall I tell you what’s wrong with Madeline Bassett? No heart. That’s where she slips up. Lovely to look at, but nothing
here
,’ he said, tapping the left side of his chest. ‘Do you know how she reacted to that serious flesh wound of mine? She espoused Bartholomew’s cause. She said the whole thing was my fault. She accused me of having teased the little blister. In short, she behaved like a louse. How different from Emerald Stoker. Do you know what Emerald Stoker did?’

‘You told me.’

‘I mean in addition to binding up my wounds. She went straight off to the kitchen and cut me a package of sandwiches. I have them here,’ said Gussie, exhibiting a large parcel and eyeing it reverently. ‘Ham,’ he added in a voice that throbbed with emotion. ‘She made them for me with her own hands, and I think it was her thoughtfulness
even
more than her divine sympathy that showed me that she was the only girl in the world for me. The scales fell from my eyes, and I saw that what I had once felt for Madeline had been just a boyish infatuation. What I feel for Emerald Stoker is the real thing. In my opinion she stands alone, and I shall be glad if you will stop going about the place saying that she looks like a Pekinese.’

‘But, Gussie –’

He silenced me with an imperious wave of the ham sandwiches.

‘It’s no good your saying “But, Gussie”. The trouble with you, Bertie, is that you haven’t got it in you to understand true love. You’re a mere butterfly flitting from flower to flower and sipping, like Freddie Widgeon and the rest of the halfwits of whom the Drones Club is far too full. A girl to you is just the plaything of an idle hour, and anything in the nature of a grand passion is beyond you. I’m different. I have depth. I’m a marrying man.’

‘But you can’t marry Emerald Stoker.’

‘Why not? We’re twin souls.’

I thought for a moment of giving him a word-portrait of old Stoker, to show him the sort of father-in-law he would be getting if he carried through the project he had in mind, but I let it go. Reason told me that a fellow who for months had been expecting to draw Pop Bassett as a father-in-law was not going to be swayed by an argument like that. However frank my description of him, Stoker could scarcely seem anything but a change for the better.

I stood there at a loss, and was still standing there at a loss, when I heard my name called and looking behind me saw Stinker and Stiffy. They were waving hands and things, and I gathered that they had come to thresh out with me the matter of Sir Watkyn Bassett and the hard-boiled egg.

The last thing I would have wished at this crucial point in my affairs was an interruption, for all my faculties should have been concentrated on reasoning with Gussie and trying to make him see the light, but it has often been said of Bertram Wooster that when a buddy in distress is drawn to his attention he forgets self. No matter what his commitments elsewhere, the distressed buddy has only to beckon and he is with him. With a brief word to Gussie that I would be back at an early date to resume our discussion, I hurried to where Stiffy and Stinker stood.

‘Talk quick,’ I said. ‘I’m in conference. Too long to tell you all about it, but a serious situation has arisen. As, according to Jeeves, one has with you. From what he told me I gathered that the odds against Stinker clicking as regards that vicarage have lengthened. More
letting-I-dare-not-wait-upon-I-would-ness
on Pop Bassett’s part, he gave me to understand. Too bad.’

‘Of course, one can see it from Sir Watkyn’s point of view,’ said Stinker, who, if he has a fault besides bumping into furniture and upsetting it, is always far too tolerant in his attitude toward the dregs of humanity. ‘He thinks that if I’d drilled the distinction between right and wrong more vigorously into the minds of the Infants Bible Class, the thing wouldn’t have happened.’

‘I don’t see why not,’ said Stiffy.

Nor did I. In my opinion, no amount of Sunday afternoon instruction would have been sufficient to teach a growing boy not to throw hard-boiled eggs at Sir Watkyn Bassett.

‘But there’s nothing I can do about it, is there?’ I said.

‘You bet there is,’ said Stiffy. ‘We haven’t lost all hope of sweetening him. The great thing is to let his nervous system gradually recover its poise, and what we came to see you about, Bertie, was to tell you on no account to go near him till he’s had a chance to simmer down. Don’t seek him out. Leave him alone. The sight of you does something to him.’

‘No more than the sight of him does to me,’ I riposted warmly. I resented the suggestion that I had nothing better to do with my time than fraternize with ex-magistrates. ‘Certainly I’ll avoid his society. It’ll be a pleasure. Is that all?’

‘That’s all.’

‘Then I’ll be getting back to Gussie,’ I said, and was starting to move off, when Stiffy uttered a sharp squeak.

‘Gussie! That reminds me. There’s something I wanted to tell him, something of vital concern to him, and I can’t think how it slipped my mind. Gussie,’ she called, and Gussie, seeming to wake abruptly from a daydream, blinked and came over. ‘What are you doing hanging about here, Gussie?’

‘Who, me? I was discussing something with Bertie, and he said he’d be back, when at liberty, to go into it further.’

‘Well, let me tell you that you’ve no time for discussing things with Bertie.’

‘Eh?’

‘Or for saying “Eh?” I met Roderick just now, and he asked me if I knew where you were, because he wants to tear you limb from limb owing to his having seen you kiss the cook.’

Gussie’s jaw fell with a dull thud.

‘You never told me that,’ he said to me, and one spotted the note of reproach in his voice.

‘No, sorry, I forgot to mention it. But it’s true. You’d better start coping. Run like a hare, is my advice.’

He took it. Standing not on the order of his going, as the fellow said, he dashed off as if shot from a gun, and was making excellent time when he was brought up short by colliding with Spode, who had at that moment entered left centre.

IT’S ALWAYS DISCONCERTING
to have even as small a chap as Gussie take you squarely in the midriff, as I myself can testify, having had the same experience down in Washington Square during a visit to New York. Washington Square is bountifully supplied with sad-eyed Italian kids who whizz to and fro on roller skates, and one of them, proceeding on his way with lowered head, rammed me in the neighbourhood of the third waistcoat button at a high rate of m.p.h. It gave me a strange Where-am-I feeling, and I imagine Spode’s sensations were somewhat similar. His breath escaped him in a sharp ‘Oof!’ and he swayed like some forest tree beneath the woodman’s axe. But unfortunately Gussie had paused to sway, too, and this gave him time to steady himself on even keel and regroup his forces. Reaching out a hamlike hand, he attached it to the scruff of Gussie’s neck and said ‘Ha!’

‘Ha!’ is one of those things it’s never easy to find the right reply to – it resembles ‘You!’ in that respect – but Gussie was saved the necessity of searching for words by the fact that he was being shaken like a cocktail in a manner that precluded speech, if precluded is the word I want. His spectacles fell off and came to rest near where I was standing. I picked them up with a view to returning them to him when he had need of them, which I could see would not be immediately.

As this Fink-Nottle was a boyhood friend, with whom, as I have said, I had frequently shared my last bar of milk chocolate, and as it was plain that if someone didn’t intervene pretty soon he was in danger of having all his internal organs shaken into a sort of macédoine or hash, the thought of taking some steps to put an end to this distressing scene naturally crossed my mind. The problem presenting several points of interest was, of course, what steps to take. My tonnage was quite insufficient to enable me to engage Spode in hand-to-hand conflict, and I toyed with the idea of striking him on the back of the head with a log of wood. But this project was rendered null and void by the fact that there were no logs of wood present. These yew alleys or rhododendron walks provide twigs and fallen leaves, but nothing
in
the shape of logs capable of being used as clubs. And I had just decided that something might be accomplished by leaping on Spode’s back and twining my arms around his neck, when I heard Stiffy cry ‘Harold!’

One gathered what she was driving at. Gussie was no particular buddy of hers, but she was a tender-hearted young prune and one always likes to save a fellow creature’s life, if possible. She was calling on Stinker to get into the act and save Gussie’s. And a quick look at him showed me that he was at a loss to know how to proceed. He stood there passing a finger thoughtfully over his chin, like a cat in an adage.

I knew what was stopping him getting into action. It was not … it’s on the tip of my tongue … begins with a p … I’ve heard Jeeves use the word … pusillanimity, that’s it, meaning broadly that a fellow is suffering from a pronounced case of cold feet … it was not, as I was saying when I interrupted myself, pusillanimity that held him back. Under normal conditions lions could have taken his correspondence course, and had he encountered Spode on the football field, he would have had no hesitation in springing at his neck and twisting it into a lovers’ knot. The trouble was that he was a curate, and the brass hats of the Church look askance at curates who swat the parishioners. Sock your flock, and you’re sunk. So now he shrank from intervening, and when he did intervene, it was merely with the soft word that’s supposed to turn away wrath.

‘I say, you know, what?’ he said.

I could have told him he was approaching the thing from the wrong angle. When a gorilla like Spode is letting his angry passions rise, there is little or no percentage in the mild remonstrance. Seeming to realize this, he advanced to where the blighter was now, or so it appeared, trying to strangle Gussie and laid a hand on his shoulder. Then, seeing that this, too, achieved no solid results, he pulled. There was a rending sound, and the clutching hand relaxed its grip.

I don’t know if you’ve ever tried detaching a snow leopard of the Himalayas from its prey – probably not, as most people don’t find themselves out that way much – but if you did, you would feel fairly safe in budgeting for a show of annoyance on the animal’s part. It was the same with Spode. Incensed at what I suppose seemed to him this unwarrantable interference with his aims and objects, he hit Stinker on the nose, and all the doubts that had been bothering that man of God vanished in a flash.

I should imagine that if there’s one thing that makes a fellow forget that he’s in holy orders, it’s a crisp punch on the beezer. A moment
before,
Stinker had been all concern about the disapproval of his superiors in the cloth, but now, as I read his mind, he was saying to himself ‘To hell with my superiors in the cloth,’ or however a curate would put it, ‘Let them eat cake.’

It was a superb spectacle while it lasted, and I was able to understand what people meant when they spoke of the Church Militant. A good deal to my regret it did not last long. Spode was full of the will to win, but Stinker had the science. It was not for nothing that he had added a Boxing Blue to his Football Blue when at the old Alma Mater. There was a brief mix-up, and the next thing one observed was Spode on the ground, looking like a corpse which had been in the water several days. His left eye was swelling visibly, and a referee could have counted a hundred over him without eliciting a response.

Stiffy, with a brief ‘At-a-boy!’, led Stinker off, no doubt to bathe his nose and staunch the vital flow, which was considerable, and I handed Gussie his glasses. He stood twiddling them in a sort of trance, and I made a suggestion which I felt was in his best interests.

‘Not presuming to dictate, Gussie, but wouldn’t it be wise to remove yourself before Spode comes to? From what I know of him, I think he’s one of those fellows who wake up cross.’

I have seldom seen anyone move quicker. We were out of the yew alley, if it was a yew alley, or the rhododendron walk, if that’s what it was, almost before the words had left my lips. We continued to set a good pace, but eventually we slowed up a bit, and he was able to comment on the recent scene.

‘That was a ghastly experience, Bertie,’ he said.

‘Can’t have been at all pleasant,’ I agreed.

‘My whole past life seemed to flash before me.’

‘That’s odd. You weren’t drowning.’

‘No, but the principle’s the same. I can tell you I was thankful when Pinker made his presence felt. What a splendid chap he is.’

‘One of the best.’

‘That’s what today’s Church needs, more curates capable of hauling off and letting fellows like Spode have it where it does most good. One feels so safe when he’s around.’

I put a point which seemed to have escaped his notice.

‘But he won’t always be around. He has Infants Bible Classes and Mothers Meetings and all that sort of thing to occupy his time. And don’t forget that Spode, though crushed to earth, will rise again.’

His jaw sagged a bit.

‘I never thought of that.’

‘If you take my advice, you’ll clear out and go underground for a while. Stiffy would lend you her car.’

‘I believe you’re right,’ he said, adding something about out of the mouths of babes and sucklings which I thought a bit offensive. ‘I’ll leave this evening.’

‘Without saying goodbye.’

‘Of course without saying goodbye. No, don’t go that way. Keep bearing to the left. I want to go to the kitchen garden. I told Em I’d meet her there.’

‘You told
who
?’

‘Emerald Stoker. Who did you think I meant? She had to go to the kitchen garden and gather beans and things for tonight’s dinner.’