The Jeeves Omnibus (204 page)

It shows how the rush and swirl of events at Deverill Hall had affected me when I say that for an instant nothing stirred.

‘Dog?’

‘Silversmith says it belongs to you.’

‘Oh, ah,’ I said, memory returning to its throne. ‘Yes, yes, yes, of course. Yes, to be sure. You mean Sam Goldwyn. But he’s not mine. He belongs to Corky.’

‘To
whom?
’

‘Corky Pirbright. She asked me to put him up for a day or two.’

The mention of Corky’s name, as had happened at the dinner table, caused her to draw in her breath and do a quick-take-um. There was no getting away from the fact that the girl’s popularity at Deverill Hall was but slight.

‘Is Miss Pirbright a great friend of yours?’

‘Oh, rather,’ I said, remembering too late that this scarcely squared with what Corky had told Esmond Haddock. I was glad that he was no longer with us. ‘She was a trifle dubious about springing the animal on her uncle without a certain amount of preliminary spade-work, he being apparently not very dog-minded, so she turned it over to me. It’s in the stables.’

‘It is not in the stables.’

‘Then Silversmith was pulling my leg. He said he would have it taken there!’

‘He did have it taken there, but it broke loose and came rushing into the drawing room just now like a mad thing.’

I saw that here was where the soothing word was required.

‘Sam Goldwyn isn’t dotty,’ I assured her. ‘I wouldn’t say he was one of our great minds, but he’s perfectly compos.
In re
his rushing into the drawing room, that was because he thought I was there. He has conceived a burning passion for me and counts every minute lost when he is not in my society. No doubt his first act on being tied up in the stables was to start gnawing through the rope in order to be free to come and look for me. Rather touching.’

Her manner suggested that she did not think it in the least touching. Her eye was alight with anti-Sam sentiment.

‘Well, it was most unpleasant. We had left the french windows open, as the night was so warm, and suddenly this disgusting brute came galloping in. My sister Charlotte received a nervous shock from which it will take her a long time to recover. The animal leaped upon her back and chased her all over the room.’

I did not give the thought utterance, for if there is one thing the Woosters are, it is tactful, but it did occur to me that this had come more or less as a judgment on Charlotte for writing all that Hallo-hallo-hallo-hallo, a-hunting-we-will-go stuff and would be a lesson to her next time she took pen in hand. She was now in a position to see the thing from the fox’s point of view.

‘And when we rang for Silversmith, the creature bit him.’

I must confess to feeling a thrill of admiration as I heard these words. ‘You’re a better man than I am, Gunga Din’, I came within a toucher of saying. I wouldn’t have bitten Silversmith myself to please a dying grandmother.

‘I’m frightfully sorry,’ I said. ‘Is there anything I can do?’

‘No, thank you.’

‘I have considerable influence with this hound. I might be able to induce him to call it a day and go back to the stables and get his eight hours.’

‘It will not be necessary. Silversmith succeeded in overpowering the animal and locking it in a cupboard. Now that you tell me its home is at the Vicarage, I will send it there at once.’

‘I’ll take him, shall I?’

‘Pray do not trouble. I think it would be better if you were to go straight to bed.’

This seemed to me the most admirable suggestion. From the moment when the females had legged it from the dinner table, I had been musing somewhat apprehensively on the quiet home evening which would set in as soon as Esmond and I were through with the port. You know what these quiet home evenings are like at country houses were the personnel of the ensemble is mainly feminine. You get backed into corners and shown photograph albums. Folk songs are sung at you. You find the head drooping like a lily on its stem and have to keep jerking it back into position one with an effort that taxes the frail strength to the utmost. Far, far better to retire to my sleeping quarters now, especially as I was most anxious to get in touch with Jeeves, who long ’ere this must have arrived by train with the heavy luggage.

I am not saying that this woman’s words, with their underlying suggestion that I was fried to the tonsils, had not wounded me. It was all too plainly her opinion that, if let loose in drawing rooms, I would immediately proceed to create an atmosphere reminiscent of a waterfront saloon when the Fleet is in. But the Woosters are essentially fair-minded, and I did not blame her for holding these views. I could quite see that when you come into a dining room and find a guest leaping about on a chair with a decanter in his hand, singing Hallo, hallo, hallo, hallo, a-hunting we will go, my lads, a-hunting we will go, you are pretty well bound to fall into a certain train of thought.

‘I do feel a little fatigued after my journey,’ I said.

‘Silversmith will show you to your room,’ she replied, and I perceived that Uncle Charlie was in our midst. I had not seen or heard him arrive. Like Jeeves, he had manifested himself silently out of the void. No doubt these things run in families.

‘Silversmith.’

‘Madam?’

‘Show Mr Fink-Nottle to his room,’ said Dame Daphne, though I could see that she was feeling that ‘help’ would have been more the
mot juste
.

‘Very good, madam.’

I noticed that the man was limping slightly, seeming to suggest that
Sam
Goldwyn had connected with his calf, but I forbore to probe and question, realizing that the subject, like the calf, might be a sore one. I followed him up the stairs to a well-appointed chamber and wished him a cheery good night.

‘Oh, Silversmith,’ I said.

‘Sir?’

‘Has my man arrived?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘You might send him along.’

‘Very good, sir.’

He withdrew, and a few minutes later there entered a familiar form.

But it wasn’t the familiar form of Jeeves. It was the familiar form of Claude Cattermole Pirbright.

WELL, I SUPPOSE
if I had been a Seigneur of the Middle Ages – somebody like Childe Roland, for instance – in the days when you couldn’t throw a brick without beaning a magician or a wizard or a sorcerer and people were always getting changed into something else, I wouldn’t have given the thing a second thought. I would just have said ‘Ah, so Jeeves has had a spell cast on him and been turned into Catsmeat, has he? Too bad. Still, that’s life’, and carried on regardless, calling for my pipe and my bowl and my fiddlers three.

But nowadays you tend to lose this easy outlook, and it would be wilfully deceiving my public to say that I did not take it big. I stared at the man, my eyes coming out of the parent sockets like a snail’s and waving about on their stems.

‘Catsmeat!’ I yipped.

He waggled his head frowningly, like a conspirator when a fellow-conspirator has said the wrong thing.

‘Meadowes,’ he corrected.

‘What do you mean, Meadowes?’

‘That is my name while I remain in your employment. I’m your man.’

A solution occurred to me. I have already mentioned that the port which I had swigged perhaps a little too freely in Esmond Haddock’s society was of a fine old vintage and full of body. It now struck me that it must have had even more authority than I had supposed and that Dame Daphne Winkworth had been perfectly correct in assuming that I was scrooched. And I was about to turn my face to the wall and try to sleep it off, when he proceeded.

‘Your valet. Your attendant. Your gentleman’s personal gentleman. It’s quite simple. Jeeves couldn’t come.’

‘What!’

‘No.’

‘You mean Jeeves isn’t going to be at my side?’

‘That’s right. So I am taking his place. What are you doing?’

‘Turning my face to the wall.’

‘Why?’

‘Well, wouldn’t you turn your face to the wall if you were trapped in a place like this with everybody thinking you were Gussie Fink-Nottle and without Jeeves to comfort and advise? Oh, hell! Oh, blast! Oh, damn! Why couldn’t Jeeves come? Is he ill?’

‘I don’t think so. I speak only as a layman, of course, not as a medical man, but the last I saw of him he seemed pretty full of vitamins. Sparkling eyes. Rosy cheeks. No, Jeeves isn’t ill. What stopped him coming was the fact that his Uncle Charlie is the butler here.’

‘Why the devil should that stop him?’

‘My good Bertie, use your intelligence, if any. Uncle Charlie knows that Jeeves is your keeper. No doubt Jeeves writes him weekly letters, saying how happy he is with you and how nothing would ever induce him to switch elsewhere. Well, what would happen if he suddenly showed up in attendance on Gussie Fink-Nottle? I’ll tell you what would happen. Uncle Charlie’s suspicions would be aroused. “Something fishy here,” he would say to himself. And before you knew where you were he would be tearing off your whiskers and denouncing you. Obviously Jeeves couldn’t come.’

I was forced to admit that there was something in this. But I still chafed.

‘Why didn’t he tell me?’

‘It only occurred to him after you had left.’

‘And why couldn’t he have squared Silversmith?’

‘That point came up when we were discussing the thing, and Jeeves said his Uncle Charlie was one of those fellows who can’t be squared. A man of very rigid principles.’

‘Every man has his price.’

‘Not Jeeves’s Uncle Charlie. My gosh, Bertie, what a lad! He received me when I arrived, and my bones turned to water. Do you remember the effect King Solomon had on the Queen of Sheba at their first meeting? My reactions were somewhat similar. “The half was not told unto me,” I said to myself. If it hadn’t been for Queenie leading me from the presence and buoying me up with a quick cooking sherry, I might have swooned in my tracks.’

‘Who’s Queenie?’

‘Haven’t you met her? The parlourmaid. Delightful girl. Engaged to the village policeman, a fellow named Dobbs. Have you ever tasted cooking sherry, Bertie? Odd stuff.’

I felt that we were wandering from the nub. This was no time for desultory chit-chat about cooking sherry.

‘But, look here, dash it, I can understand Jeeves’s reasons for backing out, but I can’t see why you had to come.’

He raised a couple of eyebrows.

‘You can’t see why I had to come? Didn’t you yourself say with your own lips, when we were discussing the idea of me understudying Gussie, that this was the one place where I ought to be? It’s vital that I should be on the spot, seeing Gertrude constantly, pleading with her, reasoning with her, trying to break down her sales resistance.’ He paused, and gave me a penetrating look. ‘You’ve nothing against my being here, have you?’

‘Well …’

‘So!’ he said, and his voice was cold and hard, like a picnic egg. ‘You have some far-fetched objection to the scheme, have you? You don’t want me to win the girl I love?’

‘Of course I want you to win the bally girl you love.’

‘Well, I can’t do it by mail.’

‘But I don’t see why you’ve got to be at the Hall. Why couldn’t you have stayed at the Vicarage?’

‘You couldn’t expect Uncle Sidney to have Corky
and
me on the premises. The mixture would be too rich.’

‘At the inn, then.’

‘There isn’t an inn. Only what they call beer-houses.’

‘You could have got a bed at a cottage.’

‘And shared it with the cottager? No, thanks. How many beds do you think these birds have?’

I relapsed into a baffled silence. But it is never any good repining on these occasions. When I next spoke, I doubt if Catsmeat spotted the suspicion of a tremor in the voice. We Woosters are like that. In moments of mental anguish we resemble those Red Indians who, while getting cooked to a crisp at the stake, never failed to be the life and soul of the party.

‘Have you seen her?’ I asked.

‘Gertrude? Yes, just before I came up here. I was in the hall, and she suddenly appeared from the drawing room.’

‘I suppose she was surprised.’

‘Surprised is right. She swayed and tottered. Queenie said “Oh, miss, are you ill?” and rushed off to get sal volatile.’

‘Oh, Queenie was there?’

‘Yes, Queenie was there with her hair in a braid. She had just been telling me how worried she was about her betrothed’s spiritual outlook. He’s an atheist.’

‘So Corky told me.’

‘And every time she tries to make him see the light, he just twirls his moustache and talks Ingersoll at her. This upsets the poor girl.’

‘She’s very pretty.’

‘Extraordinarily pretty. I don’t remember ever having seen a prettier parlourmaid.’

‘Gertrude. Not Queenie.’

‘Oh, Gertrude. Well, dash it, you don’t need to tell me that. She’s the top. She begins where Helen of Troy left off.’

‘Did you get a chance to talk to her?’

‘Unfortunately no. A couple of aunts came out of the drawing room, and I had to leg it. That’s the trouble about being a valet. You can’t mix. By the way, Bertie, I’ve found out something of the utmost importance. That Lovers’ Leap binge is fixed for next Thursday. Queenie told me. She’s cutting the sandwiches. I hope you haven’t weakened? You are still in your splendid, resolute frame of mind of yesterday? I can rely on you to foil and battle that foul blot, Esmond Haddock?’

‘I like Esmond Haddock.’

‘Then you ought to be ashamed of yourself.’

I smiled an indulgent smile.

‘It’s all right, Catsmeat You can simmer down. Gertrude Winkworth means nothing to Esmond Haddock. He’s not really pursuing her with his addresses.’

‘Don’t be an ass. How about the Lovers’ Leap? What price the sandwiches?’

‘All that stuff is just to make Corky jealous.’

‘What!’

‘He thinks it will bring her round. You see, he didn’t give Corky the brush-off. You had your facts twisted. She gave him the brush-off, because they had differed on a point of policy, and she is still the lodestar of his life. I had this from his own lips. We got matey over the port. So you can cease to regard him as a menace.’

He gaped at me. You could see hope beginning to dawn.