The Jeeves Omnibus (122 page)

It being, however, one of those situations where
noblesse
more or less
obliges
, I decided that I had better do the square thing, and I had
torn
off my coat and flung it from me and was preparing to plunge into the burning building, though still feeling that it was a bit thick having to get myself all charred up to gratify a kid who would be far better cooked to a cinder, when he emerged. His face was black, and he hadn’t any eyebrows, but in other respects appeared reasonably bobbish. Indeed, he seemed entertained rather than alarmed by what had occurred.

‘Coo!’ he said, in a pleased sort of voice. ‘Bit of a bust up, wasn’t it?’

I eyed him sternly.

‘What the dickens have you been playing at, you abysmal young louse?’ I demanded. ‘What was that explosion?’

‘That was the kitchen chimney. It was full of soot, so I shoved some gunpowder up it. And I think I may have used too much. Because there was a terrific bang and everything sort of caught fire. Coo! It didn’t half make me laugh.’

‘Why didn’t you pour water on the flames?’

‘I did. Only it turned out to be paraffin.’

I clutched the brow. I was deeply moved. It had just come home to me that this blazing pyre was tie joint which was supposed to be the Wooster G.H.Q., and the householder spirit had awoken in me. Every impulse urged me to give the little snurge six of the best with a bludgeon. But you can’t very well slosh a child who has just lost his eyebrows. Besides, I hadn’t a bludgeon.

‘Well, you’ve properly messed things up,’ I said.

‘It didn’t all work out quite the way I meant,’ he admitted. ‘But I wanted to do my last Friday’s act of kindness.’

At these words, all was suddenly made plain to me. It was so long since I had seen the young poison sac that I had forgotten the kink in his psychology which made him such a menace to society.

This Edwin, I now recalled, was one of those thorough kids who spare no effort. He had the same serious outlook on life as his sister Florence. And when he joined the Boy Scouts, he did so, resolved not to shirk his responsibilities. The programme called for a daily act of kindness, and he went at it in a grave and earnest spirit. Unfortunately, what with one thing and another, he was always dropping behind schedule, and would then set such a clip to try and catch up with himself that any spot in which he happened to be functioning rapidly became a perfect hell for man and beast. It was so at the house in Shropshire where I had first met him, and it was evidently just the same now.

It was with a grave face and a thoughtful tooth chewing the
lower
lip that I picked up my coat and donned it. A weaker man, contemplating the fact that he was trapped in a locality containing not only Florence Craye, Police Constable Cheesewright and Uncle Percy, but also Edwin doing acts of kindness, would probably have given at the knees. And I am not so sure I might not have done so myself, had not my mind been diverted by a frightful discovery, so ghastly that I uttered a hoarse cry and all thoughts of Florence, Stilton, Uncle Percy and Edwin were wiped from my mind.

I had just remembered that my suitcase with the Sindbad the Sailor costume in it was in the Wee Nooke front hall and the flames leaping ever nearer.

There was no hesitation, no vacillating about my movements now. When it had been a matter of risking my life to save Boy Scouts, I may have stood scratching the chin a bit, but this was different. I needed that Sindbad. Only by retrieving it would I be able to attend the fancy dress ball at East Wibley tomorrow night, the one bright spot in a dark and sticky future. Well, I suppose I could have popped up to London and got something else, but probably a mere Pierrot, and my whole heart was set on the Sindbad and the ginger whiskers.

Edwin was saying something about fire brigades, and I right-hoed absently. Then, snapping into it like a jack rabbit, I commended my soul to God, and plunged in.

Well, as it turned out, I needn’t have worried. It is true that there was a certain amount of smoke in the hall, billowing hither and thither in murky clouds, but nothing to bother a man who had often sat to leeward of Catsmeat Potter-Pirbright when he was enjoying one of those cigars of his. In a few minutes, it was plain, the whole place would be a cheerful blaze, but for the nonce conditions were reasonably normal.

It is no story, in short, of a jolly-nearly-fried-to-a-crisp Bertram Wooster that I have to tell, but rather of a Bertram Wooster who just scooped up the old suitcase, whistled a gay air and breezed out without a mark on him. I may have coughed once or twice, but nothing more.

But though peril might have failed to get off the mark inside the house, it was very strong on the wing outside. The first thing I saw, as I emerged was Uncle Percy standing at the gate. And as Edwin had now vanished, presumably in search of fire brigades, I was alone with him in the great open spaces – a thing I’ve always absolutely barred being from the days of childhood.

‘Oh, hullo, Uncle Percy,’ I said. ‘Good afternoon, good afternoon.’

A casual passer-by, hearing the words and noting the hearty voice in which they had been spoken, might have been deceived into supposing that Bertram was at his ease. Such, however, was far from being the case. Whether anyone was ever at his ease in the society of this old Gawd-help-us, I cannot say, but I definitely was not. The spine, and I do not attempt to conceal the fact, had become soluble in the last degree.

You may wonder at this, arguing that as I was not responsible for the disaster which had come upon us, I had nothing to fear. But a longish experience has taught me that on these occasions innocence pays no dividends. Pure as the driven snow though he may be, or even purer, it is the man on the spot who gets the brickbats.

My civil greeting elicited no response. He was staring past me at the little home, now beyond any possible doubt destined to be a total loss. Edwin might return with all the fire brigades in Hampshire, but nothing was going to prevent Wee Nooke winding up as a heap of ashes.

‘What?’ he said, speaking thickly, as if the soul were bruised, as I imagine to have been the case. ‘What? What? What? What …?’

I saw that, unless checked, this was going to take some time.

‘There’s been a fire,’ I said.

‘What do you mean?’

Well I didn’t see how I could have put it much clearer.

‘A fire,’ I repeated, waving a hand in the direction of the burning edifice, as much as to tell him to take a glance for himself. ‘How are you, Uncle Percy? You’re looking fine.’

He wasn’t, as a matter of fact, nor did this attempt to ease the strain by giving him the old oil have the desired effect. He directed at me a kind of frenzied glare, containing practically nil in the way of an uncle’s love, and spoke in a sort of hollow, despairing voice.

‘I might have known! My best friends would have warned me what would come of letting a lunatic like you loose in the place. I ought to have guessed that the first thing you would do – before so much as unpacking – would be to set the whole damned premises ablaze.’

‘Not me,’ I said, wishing to give credit where credit was due. ‘Edwin.’

‘Edwin? My son?’

‘Yes, I know,’ I said sympathetically. ‘Too bad. Yes, he’s your son, all right. He’s been tidying up.’

‘You can’t start a fire by tidying up.’

‘You can if you use gunpowder.’

‘Gunpowder?’

‘He appears to have touched off a keg or two in the kitchen chimney, to correct a disposition on its part to harbour soot.’

Well, I had naturally supposed, as anyone would have supposed, that this frank explanation would have set me right, causing him to dismiss me without a stain on my character, and that the rather personal note which had crept into his remarks would instantly have been switched off. What I had anticipated was that he would issue an apology for that crack of his about lunatics, which I would gracefully accept, and that we would then get together like two old buddies and shake our heads over the impulsiveness of the younger generation.

Not a bit of it, however. He continued to bend upon me the accusing gaze which I had disliked so much from the start.

‘Why the devil did you give the boy gunpowder?’

I saw that he had still got the wrong angle.

‘I didn’t give the boy gunpowder.’

‘Only a congenital idiot would give a boy gunpowder. There’s not a man in England, except you, who wouldn’t know what would happen if you gave a boy gunpowder. Do you realize what you have done? The sole reason for your coming here was that I should have a place where I could meet an old friend and discuss certain matters of interest, and now look at it. I ask you. Look at it.’

‘Not too good,’ I was forced to concede, as the roof fell in, sending up a shower of sparks and causing a genial glow to play about our cheeks.

‘I suppose it never occurred to you to throw water on the flames?’

‘It did to Edwin. Only he used paraffin.’

He started, staring at me incredulously.

‘You tried to put the fire out with paraffin? You ought to be certified, and as soon as I collect a couple of doctors, I’ll have it seen to.’

What was making this conversation so difficult was, as you have probably spotted, the apparent impossibility of getting the old ass to sort out the principals in the affair and assign to each his respective role. He was one of those men you meet sometimes who only listen to about two words of any observation addressed to them. I suppose he had got that way through presiding at board meetings and constantly chipping in and squelching shareholders in the middle of sentences.

Once more, I tried to drive it home to him that it was Edwin who had done all the what you might call heavy work, Bertram having been throughout merely an innocent bystander, but it didn’t
penetrate.
He was left with the settled conviction that I and the child had got together, forming a quorum, and after touching off the place with gunpowder had nursed the conflagration along with careful injections of paraffin, each encouraging each, as you might say, on the principle that it is team-work that tells.

When he finally pushed off, instructing me to send Jeeves along to him the moment he arrived, he was reiterating the opinion that I ought not to be at large, and wishing – though here I definitely could not see eye to eye with him – that I was ten years younger, so that he could have got after me with that hunting-crop of his. He then withdrew, leaving me to my meditations.

These, as you may suppose, were not of the juiciest. However, they didn’t last long, for I don’t suppose I had been meditating more than about a couple of minutes when a wheezing, rattling sound made itself heard off-stage and there entered left upper centre a vehicle which could only have been a station taxi. There was luggage on it, and looking more closely I saw Jeeves protruding from the side window.

The weird old object – the cab, I mean, not Jeeves – came to a halt at the gate. Jeeves paid it off, the luggage was dumped by the roadside, and he was at liberty to get into conference with the young master, not an instant too soon for the latter. I had need of his sympathy, encouragement and advice. I also wanted to tick him off a bit for letting me in for all this.

‘JEEVES,’ I SAID
, getting right down to it in the old Wooster way, ‘here’s a nice state of things!’

‘Sir?’

‘Hell’s foundations have been quivering.’

‘Indeed, sir?’

‘The curse has come upon me. As I warned you it would, if I ever visited Steeple Bumpleigh. You have long been familiar with my views on this leper colony. Have I not repeatedly said that, what though the spicy breezes blow soft o’er Steeple Bumpleigh, the undersigned deemed it wisest to give it the complete miss-in-baulk?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Very well, Jeeves. Perhaps you will listen to me another time. However, let us flit lightly over the recriminations and confine ourselves to the facts. You notice our little home has been gutted?’

‘Yes, sir. I was just observing it.’

‘Edwin did that. There’s a lad, Jeeves. There’s a boy who makes you feel that what this country wants is somebody like King Herod. Started in with gunpowder and carried on with paraffin. Just cast your eye over those smouldering ruins. You would scarcely have thought it possible, would you, that one frail child in a sport shirt and khaki shorts could have accomplished such devastation. Yet he did it, Jeeves, and did it on his head. You understand what this means?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘He has properly put the kybosh on the trysting-place of Uncle Percy and his nautical pal. You’ll have to think again.’

‘Yes, sir. His lordship is fully alive to the fact that in the existing circumstances a meeting at Wee Nooke will not be feasible.’

‘You’ve seen him, then?’

‘He was emerging from the lane, as I entered it, sir.’

‘Did he tell you he wants you to go and hobnob with him at your earliest convenience?’

‘Yes, sir. Indeed, he insists on my taking up my residence at the Hall.’

‘So as to be handy, in case you have a sudden inspiration?’

‘No doubt that was in his lordship’s mind, sir.’

‘Was I invited?’

‘No, sir.’

Well, I hadn’t expected to be. Nevertheless, I was conscious of a pang.

‘We part, then, for the nonce, do we?’

‘I fear so, sir.’

‘You taking the high road, and self taking the low road, as it were?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘I shall miss you, Jeeves.’

‘Thank you, sir.’

‘Who was the chap who was always beefing about losing gazelles?’

‘The poet Moore, sir. He complained that he had never nursed a dear gazelle, to glad him with its soft black eye, but when it came to know him well and love him, it was sure to die.’

‘It’s the same with me. I am a gazelle short. You don’t mind me alluding to you as a gazelle, Jeeves?’

‘Not at all, sir.’

‘Well, that’s that, then. I suppose I had better go and stay with Boko.’

‘I was about to suggest it, sir. I am sure Mr Fittleworth will be most happy to accommodate you.’