The Jeeves Omnibus - Vol 4: (Jeeves & Wooster): No.4 (8 page)

‘Harking back to the earlier portion of our conversation, Stilton,’ I said, changing the subject after we had agreed that his Uncle Joseph was a cockeyed fathead who would do well to consult some good oculist, ‘I noticed that when you spoke of Florence, you used the expression “My fiancée”. Am I to infer from this that the dove of peace has pulled a quick one since I saw you last? That broken engagement, has it been soldered?’

He nodded.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I made certain concessions and yielded certain points.’ Here his hand strayed to his upper lip and a look of pain passed over his face. ‘A reconciliation took place this morning.’

‘Splendid!’

‘You’re pleased?’

‘Of course.’

‘Ho!’

‘Eh?’

He eyed me fixedly.

‘Wooster, come off it. You know you’re in love with her yourself.’

‘Absurd.’

‘Absurd, my foot! You needn’t think you can fool me. You worship that girl, and I am still inclined to believe that the whole of this moustache sequence was a vile plot on your part to steal her from me. Well, all I have to say is that if I ever catch you oiling round her and trying to alienate her affections, I shall break your spine in four places.’

‘Three, I thought you said.’

‘No, four. However, she will be out of your reach for some little time, I am glad to say. She goes today to visit your aunt, Mrs. Travers, in Worcestershire.’

Amazing how with a careless word you can land yourself in the soup. I was within the merest toucher of saying Yes, so she had told me, which would, of course, have been fatal. In the nick of time I contrived to substitute an ‘Oh, really?’

‘She’s going to Brinkley, is she? You also?’

‘I shall be following in a few days.’

‘You aren’t going with her?’

‘Talk sense. You don’t suppose I intend to appear in public during the early stages of growing that damned moustache she insists on. I shall remain confined to my room till the foul thing has started to sprout a bit. Good-bye, Wooster. You will remember what I was saying about your spine?’

I assured him that I would bear it in mind, and he finished his special and withdrew.

THE DAYS THAT
followed saw me at the peak of my form, fizzy to an almost unbelievable extent and enchanting one and all with my bright smile and merry sallies. During this halcyon period, if halcyon is the word I want, it would not be too much to say that I revived like a watered flower.

It was as if a great weight had been rolled off the soul. Only those who have had to endure the ordeal of having G. D’Arcy Cheesewright constantly materialize from thin air and steal up behind them, breathing down the back of their necks as they took their ease in their smoking-room, can fully understand the relief of being able to sink into a chair and order a restorative, knowing that the place would be wholly free from this pre-eminent scourge. My feelings, I suppose, were roughly what those of Mary would have been, had she looked over her shoulder one morning and found the lamb no longer among those present.

And then –
bing
– just as I was saying to myself that this was the life, along came all those telegrams.

The first to arrive reached me at my residence just as I was lighting the after-breakfast cigarette, and I eyed it with something of the nervous discomfort of one confronted with a ticking bomb. Telegrams have so often been the heralds or harbingers or whatever they’re called of sharp crises in my affairs that I have come to look on them askance, wondering if something is going to pop out of the envelope and bite me in the leg. It was with a telegram, it may be recalled, that Fate teed off in the sinister episode of Sir Watkyn Bassett, Roderick Spode and the silver cow-creamer which I was instructed by Aunt Dahlia to pinch from the first-named’s collection at Totleigh Towers.

Little wonder, then, that as I brooded over this one – eyeing it, as I say, askance – I was asking myself if Hell’s foundations were about to quiver again.

Still, there the thing was, and it seemed to me, weighing the pros and cons, that only one course lay before me – viz. to open it.

I did so. Handed in at Brinkley-cum-Snodsfield-in-the-Marsh, it was signed ‘Travers’, this revealing it as the handiwork either of Aunt Dahlia or Thomas P. Travers, her husband, a pleasant old bird whom she had married at her second pop some years earlier. From the fact that it started with the words ‘Bertie, you worm’ I deduced that it was the former who had taken post-office pen in hand. Uncle Tom is more guarded in his speech than the female of the species. He generally calls me ‘Me boy’.

This was the substance of the communication:

Bertie, you worm, your early presence desired. Drop everything and come down here pronto, prepared for lengthy visit. Urgently need you to buck up a blighter with whiskers. Love. Travers.

I brooded over this for the rest of the morning, and on my way to lunch at the Drones shot off my answer, a brief request for more light:

Did you say whiskers or whisky? Love. Wooster.

I found another from her on returning:

Whiskers, ass. The son of a what-not has short but distinct side-whiskers. Love. Travers.

It’s an odd thing about memory, it so often just fails to spear the desired object. At the back of my mind there was dodging about a hazy impression that somewhere at some time I heard someone mention short side-whiskers in some connection, but I couldn’t pin it down. It eluded me. So, pursuing the sound old policy of going to the fountain-head for information, I stepped out and dispatched the following:

What short side-whiskered son of a what-not would this be, and why does he need bucking up? Wire full details, as at present fogged, bewildered and mystified. Love. Wooster.

She replied with the generous warmth which causes so many of her circle to hold on to their hats when she lets herself go:

Listen, you foul blot. What’s the idea of making me spend a fortune on telegrams like this? Do you think I am made of money? Never you mind what short side-whiskered son of a what-not it is or why he needs bucking up. You just come as I tell you and look slippy about it. Oh, and by the way, go to Aspinall’s in Bond Street and get pearl necklace of mine they have there and bring it down with you. Have you got that? Aspinall’s. Bond Street. Pearl necklace. Shall expect you tomorrow. Love. Travers.

A little shaken but still keeping the flag flying, I responded with the ensuing:

Fully grasp all that Aspinall’s-Bond-Street-pearl-necklace stuff, but what you are overlooking is that coming to Brinkley at present juncture not so jolly simple as you seem to think. There are complications and what not. Wheels within wheels, if you get what I mean. Whole thing calls for deep thought. Will weigh matter carefully and let you know decision. Love. Wooster.

You see, though Brinkley Court is a home from home and gets five stars in Baedeker as the headquarters of Monsieur Anatole, Aunt Dahlia’s French cook – a place, in short, to which in ordinary circs I race, when invited, with a whoop and a holler – it had taken me but an instant to spot that under existing conditions there were grave objections to going there. I need scarcely say that I allude to the fact that Florence was on the premises and Stilton expected shortly.

It was this that was giving me pause. Who could say that the latter, finding me in residence on his arrival, would not leap to the conclusion that I had rolled up in pursuit of the former like young Lochinvar coming out of the west? And should this thought flit into his mind, what, I asked myself, would the harvest be? His parting words about my spine were still green in my memory. I knew him to be a man rather careful in his speech, on whose promises one could generally rely, and if he said he was going to break spines in four places, you could be quite sure that four places was precisely what he would break them in.

I passed a restless and uneasy evening. In no mood for revelry at
the
Drones, I returned home early and was brushing up on my
Mystery of the Pink Crayfish
when the telephone rang, and so disordered was the nervous system that I shot ceilingwards at the sound. It was as much as I could do to totter across the room and unhook the receiver.

The voice that floated over the wire was that of Aunt Dahlia.

Well, when I say floated, possibly ‘thundered’ would be more the
mot juste
. A girlhood and early womanhood spent in chivvying the British fox in all weathers under the auspices of the Quorn and Pytchley have left this aunt brick-red in colour and lent amazing power to her vocal cords. I’ve never pursued foxes myself, but apparently, when you do, you put in a good bit of your time shouting across ploughed fields in a high wind, and this becomes a habit. If Aunt Dahlia has a fault, it is that she is inclined to talk to you when face to face in a small drawing-room as if she were addressing some crony a quarter of a mile away whom she had observed riding over hounds. For the rest, she is a large, jovial soul, built rather on the lines of Mae West, and is beloved by all including the undersigned. Our relations had always been chummy to the last drop.

‘Hullo, hullo, hullo!’ she boomed. The old hunting stuff coming to the surface, you notice. ‘Is that you, Bertie, darling?’

I said it was none other.

‘Then what’s the idea, you half-witted Gadarene swine, of all this playing hard-to-get? You and your matter-weighing! I never heard such nonsense in my life. You’ve got to come here, and immediately, if you don’t want an aunt’s curse delivered on your doorstep by return of post. If I have to cope unaided with that ruddy Percy any longer, I shall crack beneath the strain.’

She paused to take in breath, and I put a question.

‘Is Percy the whiskered bloke?’

‘That’s the one. He’s casting a thick pall of gloom over the place. It’s like living in a fog. Tom says if something isn’t done soon, he will take steps.’

‘But what’s the matter with the chap?’

‘He’s madly in love with Florence Craye.’

‘Oh, I see. And it depresses him to think that she’s engaged to Stilton Cheesewright?’

‘Exactly. He’s as sick as mud about it. He moons broodingly to and fro, looking like Hamlet. I want you to come and divert him. Take him for walks, dance before him, tell him funny stories. Anything to bring a smile to that whiskered, tortoiseshell-rimmed face.’

I saw her point, of course. No hostess wants a Hamlet on the premises. But what I couldn’t understand was how a chap like that
came
to be polluting the pure air of Brinkley. I knew the old relative to be quite choosey in the matter of guests. Cabinet Ministers have sometimes failed to crash the gate. I put this to her, and she said the explanation was perfectly simple.

‘I told you I was in the middle of a spot of business with Trotter. I’ve got the whole family here – Percy’s stepfather, L.G. Trotter, Percy’s mother, Mrs. Trotter, and Percy in person. I only wanted Trotter, but Mrs. T. and Percy rang themselves in.’

‘I see. What they call a package deal.’ I broke off, aghast. Memory had returned to its throne, and I knew now why that stuff about short side-whiskers had seemed to have a familiar ring. ‘Trotter?’ I cried.

She whooped censoriously.

‘Don’t yell like that. You nearly broke my ear-drum.’

‘But did you say Trotter?’

‘Of course I said Trotter.’

‘This Percy’s name isn’t Gorringe?’

‘That’s what it unquestionably is. He admits it.’

‘Then I’m frightfully sorry, old thing, but I can’t possibly come. It was only the other day that the above Gorringe was trying to nick me for a thousand quid to put into this play he’s made of Florence’s book, and I turned him down like a bedspread. You can readily see, then, how fraught with embarrassment a meeting in the flesh would be. I shouldn’t know which way to look.’

‘If that’s all that’s worrying you, forget it. Florence tells me he has raised that thousand elsewhere.’

‘Well, I’m dashed. Where did he get it?’

‘She doesn’t know. He’s secretive about it. He just said it was all right, he had got the stuff and they could go ahead. So you needn’t be shy about meeting him. What if he does think you the world’s premier louse? Don’t we all?’

‘Something in that.’

‘Then you’ll come?’

I chewed the lower lip dubiously. I was thinking of Stilton.

‘Well, speak up, dumb-bell,’ said the relative with asperity. ‘What’s all the silence about?’

‘I was musing.’

‘Then stop musing and give me the good word. If it will help to influence your decision, I may mention that Anatole is at the top of his form just now.’

I started. If this was so, it would clearly be madness not to be one of the company ranged around the festive board.

I have touched so far only lightly on this Anatole, and I take the
opportunity
now of saying that his was an output which had to be tasted to be believed, mere words being inadequate to convey the full facts with regard to his amazing virtuosity. After one of Anatole’s lunches has melted in the mouth, you unbutton the waistcoat and loll back, breathing heavily and feeling that life has no more to offer, and then, before you know where you are, along comes one of his dinners, with even more on the ball, the whole lay-out constituting something about as near Heaven as any reasonable man could wish.

I felt, accordingly, that no matter how vehemently Stilton might express and fulfil himself on discovering me … well, not perhaps exactly cheek by jowl with the woman he loved but certainly hovering in her vicinity, the risk of rousing the fiend within him was one that must be taken. It cannot ever, of course, be agreeable to find yourself torn into a thousand pieces with a fourteen-stone Othello doing a ‘Shuffle off to Buffalo’ on the scattered fragments, but if you are full at the time of Anatole’s
Timbale de ris de veau Toulousiane
, the discomfort unquestionably becomes modified.

‘I’ll come,’ I said.

‘Good boy. With you taking Percy off my neck, I shall be free to concentrate on Trotter. And every ounce of concentration will be needed, if I’m to put this deal through.’