The Jeeves Omnibus (177 page)

‘But think of the papers. The ninth Earl of Rowcester, whose ancestors held the field at Agincourt, skipped from the field at Epsom with a slavering punter after him. It’ll be jam for the newspaper boys.’

‘Unquestionably the circumstance of your lordship having gone into business as a Silver Ring bookmaker would be accorded wide publicity.’

Bill, who had been pacing the floor again, stopped in mid-stride and regarded the speaker with an accusing eye.

‘And who was it suggested that I should go into business as a Silver Ring bookie? You, Jeeves. I don’t want to be harsh, but you must own that the idea came from you. You were the –’

‘
Fons et origo mali
, m’lord? That, I admit, is true. But if your lordship will recall, we were in something of a quandary. We had agreed that your lordship’s impending marriage made it essential to augment your lordship’s slender income, and we went through the Classified Trades section of the telephone directory in quest of a possible profession which your lordship might adopt. It was merely because nothing of a suitable nature had presented itself by the time we reached the T’s that I suggested Turf Accountant
faute de mieux
.’

‘
Faute de
what?’

‘
Mieux
, m’lord. A French expression. We should say “for want of anything better”.’

‘What asses these Frenchmen are! Why can’t they talk English?’

‘They are possibly more to be pitied than censured, m’lord. Early upbringing no doubt has a good deal to do with it. As I was saying, it seemed to me a happy solution of your lordship’s difficulties. In the United States of America, I believe, bookmakers are considered persons of a somewhat low order and are, indeed, suppressed by the police, but in England it is very different. Here they are looked up to and courted. There is a school of thought which regards them as the new aristocracy. They make a great deal of money, and have the added gratification of not paying income tax.’

Bill sighed wistfully.

‘
We
made a lot of money up to Newmarket.’

‘Yes, m’lord.’

‘And where is it now?’

‘Where, indeed, m’lord?’

‘I shouldn’t have spent so much doing up the place.’

‘No, m’lord.’

‘And it was a mistake to pay my tailor’s bill.’

‘Yes, m’lord. One feels that your lordship did somewhat overdo it there. As the old Roman observed,
ne quid nimis
.’

‘Yes, that was rash. Still, no good beefing about it now, I suppose.’

‘No, m’lord. The moving finger writes, and having writ –’

‘Hoy!’

‘– moves on, nor all your piety and wit can lure it back to cancel half a line nor all your tears wash out one word of it. You were saying, m’lord?’

‘I was only going to ask you to cheese it.’

‘Certainly, m’lord.’

‘Not in the mood.’

‘Quite so, m’lord. It was only the appositeness of the quotation – from the works of the Persian poet Omar Khayyám – that led me to speak. I wonder if I might ask a question, m’lord?’

‘Yes, Jeeves?’

‘Is Miss Wyvern aware of your lordship’s professional connection with the turf?’

Bill quivered like an aspen at the mere suggestion.

‘I should say not. She would throw fifty-seven fits if she knew. I’ve rather given her the idea that I’m employed by the Agricultural Board.’

‘A most respectable body of men.’

‘I didn’t actually say so in so many words. I just strewed the place with Agricultural Board report forms and took care she saw them. Did you know that they issue a hundred and seventy-nine different blanks other than the seventeen questionnaires?’

‘No, m’lord. I was not aware. It shows zeal.’

‘Great zeal. They’re on their toes, those boys.’

‘Yes, m’lord.’

‘But we’re wandering from the point, which is that Miss Wyvern must never learn the awful truth. It would be fatal. At the outset of our betrothal she put her foot down firmly on the subject of my tendency to have an occasional flutter, and I promised her faithfully that I would never punt again. Well, you might argue that being a Silver Ring bookie is not the same thing as punting, but I doubt if you would ever sell that idea to Miss Wyvern.’

‘The distinction is certainly a nice one, m’lord.’

‘Let her discover the facts, and all would be lost.’

‘Those wedding bells would not ring out.’

‘They certainly wouldn’t. She would return me to store before I could say “What ho”. So if she comes asking questions, reveal
nothing
. Not even if she sticks lighted matches between your toes.’

‘The contingency is a remote one, m’lord.’

‘Possibly. I’m merely saying, whatever happens, Jeeves, secrecy and silence.’

‘You may rely on me, m’lord. In the inspired words of Pliny the Younger –’

Bill held up a hand. ‘Right ho, Jeeves.’

‘Very good, m’lord.’

‘I’m not interested in Pliny the Younger.’

‘No, m’lord.’

‘As far as I’m concerned, you may take Pliny the Younger and put him where the monkey put the nuts.’

‘Certainly, m’lord.’

‘And now leave me, Jeeves. I have a lot of heavy brooding to do. Go and get me a stiffish whisky and soda.’

‘Very good, m’lord. I will attend to the matter immediately.’

Jeeves melted from the room with a look of respectful pity, and Bill sat down and put his head between his hands. A hollow groan escaped him, and he liked the sound of it and gave another.

He was starting on a third, bringing it up from the soles of his feet, when a voice spoke at his side.

‘Good heavens, Bill. What on earth’s the matter?’

Jill Wyvern was standing there.

IN THE INTERVAL
which had elapsed since her departure from the living room, Jill had rubbed American ointment on Mike the Irish terrier, taken a look at a goldfish belonging to the cook, which had caused anxiety in the kitchen by refusing its ants’ eggs, and made a routine tour of the pigs and cows, giving one of the latter a bolus. She had returned to the house agreeably conscious of duty done and looking forward to a chat with her loved one, who, she presumed, would by now be back from his Agricultural Board rounds and in a mood for pleasant dalliance. For even when the Agricultural Board know they have got hold of an exceptionally good man and wish (naturally) to get every possible ounce of work out of him, they are humane enough to let the poor peon call it a day round about the hour of the evening cocktail.

To find him groaning with his head in his hands was something of a shock.

‘What on earth’s the matter?’ she repeated.

Bill had sprung from his chair with a convulsive leap. That loved voice, speaking unexpectedly out of the void when he supposed himself to be alone with his grief, had affected him like a buzz-saw applied to the seat of his trousers. If it had been Captain C.G. Brabazon-Biggar, of the United Rovers Club, Northumberland Avenue, he could not have been much more perturbed. He gaped at her, quivering in every limb. Jeeves, had he been present, would have been reminded of Macbeth seeing the ghost of Banquo.

‘Matter?’ he said, inserting three Ms at the beginning of the word.

Jill was looking at him with grave, speculative eyes. She had that direct, honest gaze which many nice girls have, and as a rule Bill liked it. But at the moment he could have done with something that did not pierce quite so like a red-hot gimlet to his inmost soul. A sense of guilt makes a man allergic to direct, honest gazes.

‘Matter?’ he said, getting the word shorter and crisper this time.
‘What
do you mean, what’s the matter? Nothing’s the matter. Why do you ask?’

‘You were groaning like a foghorn.’

‘Oh, that. Touch of neuralgia.’

‘You’ve got a headache?’

‘Yes, it’s been coming on for some time. I’ve had rather an exhausting afternoon.’

‘Why, aren’t the crops rotating properly? Or are the pigs going in for smaller families?’

‘My chief problem today,’ said Bill dully, ‘concerned horses.’

A quick look of suspicion came into Jill’s gaze. Like all nice girls, she had, where the man she loved was concerned, something of the Private Eye about her.

‘Have you been betting again?’

Bill stared.

‘
Me?
’

‘You gave me your solemn promise you wouldn’t. Oh, Bill, you are an idiot. You’re more trouble to look after than a troupe of performing seals. Can’t you see it’s just throwing money away? Can’t you get it into your fat head that the punters haven’t a hope against the bookmakers? I know people are always talking about bringing off fantastic doubles and winning thousands of pounds with a single fiver, but that sort of thing never really happens. What did you say?’

Bill had not spoken. The sound that had proceeded from his twisted lips had been merely a soft moan like that of an emotional red Indian at the stake.

‘It happens sometimes,’ he said hollowly. ‘I’ve heard of cases.’

‘Well, it couldn’t happen to you. Horses just aren’t lucky for you.’

Bill writhed. The illusion that he was being roasted over a slow fire had become extraordinarily vivid.

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I see that now.’

Jill’s gaze became more direct and penetrating than ever.

‘Come clean, Bill. Did you back a loser in the Oaks?’

This was so diametrically opposite to what had actually occurred that Bill perked up a little.

‘Of course I didn’t.’

‘You swear?’

‘I may begin to at any moment.’

‘You didn’t back anything in the Oaks?’

‘Certainly not.’

‘Then what’s the matter?’

‘I told you. I’ve got a headache.’

‘Poor old thing. Can I get you anything?’

‘No, thanks. Jeeves is bringing me a whisky and soda.’

‘Would a kiss help, while you’re waiting?’

‘It would save a human life.’

Jill kissed him, but absently. She appeared to be thinking.

‘Jeeves was with you today, wasn’t he?’ she said.

‘Yes. Yes, Jeeves was along.’

‘You always take him with you on these expeditions of yours.’

‘Yes.’

‘Where do you go?’

‘We make the rounds.’

‘Doing what?’

‘Oh, this and that.’

‘I see. How’s the headache?’

‘A little better, thanks.’

‘Good.’

There was silence for a moment.

‘I used to have headaches a few years ago,’ said Jill.

‘Bad?’

‘Quite bad. I suffered agonies.’

‘They do touch you up, don’t they?’

‘They do. But,’ proceeded Jill, her voice rising and a hard note creeping into her voice, ‘my headaches, painful as they were, never made me look like an escaped convict lurking in a bush listening to the baying of the bloodhounds and wondering every minute when the hand of doom was going to fall on the seat of his pants. And that’s how you are looking now. There’s guilt written on your every feature. If you were to tell me at this moment that you had done a murder and were worrying because you had suddenly remembered you hadn’t hidden the body properly, I would say “I thought as much”. Bill, for the last time, what’s the matter?’

‘Nothing’s the matter.’

‘Don’t tell me.’

‘I am telling you.’

‘There’s nothing on your mind?’

‘Not a thing.’

‘You’re as gay and carefree as a lark singing in the summer sky?’

‘If anything, rather more so.’

There was another silence. Jill was biting her lip, and Bill wished she wouldn’t. There is, of course, nothing actually low and degrading in a girl biting her lip, but it is a spectacle that a
fiancé
with a good deal on his mind can never really enjoy.

‘Bill, tell me,’ said Jill. ‘How do you feel about marriage?’

Bill brightened. This, he felt, was more the stuff.

‘I think it’s an extraordinarily good egg. Always provided, of course, that the male half of the sketch is getting someone like you.’

‘Never mind the pretty speeches. Shall I tell you how I feel about it?’

‘Do.’

‘I feel that unless there is absolute trust between a man and a girl, they’re crazy even to think of getting married, because if they’re going to hide things from each other and not tell each other their troubles, their marriage is bound to go on the rocks sooner or later. A husband and wife ought to tell each other everything. I wouldn’t ever dream of keeping anything from you, and if it interests you to know it, I’m as sick as mud to think that you’re keeping this trouble of yours, whatever it is, from me.’

‘I’m not in any trouble.’

‘You are. What’s happened, I don’t know, but a short-sighted mole that’s lost its spectacles could see that you’re a soul in torment. When I came in here, you were groaning your head off.’

Bill’s self-control, so sorely tried today, cracked.

‘Damn it all,’ he bellowed, ‘why shouldn’t I groan? I believe Rowcester Abbey is open for being groaned in at about this hour, is it not? I wish to heaven you would leave me alone,’ he went on, gathering momentum. ‘Who do you think you are? One of these G-men fellows questioning some rat of the Underworld? I suppose you’ll be asking next where I was on the night of February the twenty-first. Don’t be such an infernal Nosy Parker.’

Jill was a girl of spirit, and with girls of spirit this sort of thing soon reaches saturation point.

‘I don’t know if you know it,’ she said coldly, ‘but when you spit on your hands and get down to it, you can be the world’s premier louse.’

‘That’s a nice thing to say.’

‘Well, it’s the truth,’ said Jill. ‘You’re simply a pig in human shape. And if you want to know what I think,’ she went on, gathering momentum in her turn, ‘I believe what’s happened is that you’ve gone and got mixed up with some awful female.’

‘You’re crazy. Where the dickens could I have met any awful females?’

‘I should imagine you have had endless opportunities. You’re
always
going off in your car, sometimes for a week at a stretch. For all I know, you may have been spending your time festooned with hussies.’

‘I wouldn’t so much as look at a hussy if you brought her to me on a plate with watercress round her.’