The Jeeves Omnibus (222 page)

‘Bertie, do you know what it is to have the scales fall from your eyes?’

‘Why, yes. Scales have frequently fallen from my eyes.’

‘They have fallen from mine,’ said Gussie. ‘And I’ll tell you the exact moment when it happened. It was when I was up in that tree gazing down at Constable Dobbs and hearing him describe the situation as a fair cop. That was when the scales fell from my eyes.’

I ventured to interrupt.

‘Half a second,’ I said. ‘Just to keep the record straight, what are you talking about?’

‘I’m telling you. The scales fell from my eyes. Something happened to me. In a flash, with no warning, love died.’

‘Whose love?’

‘Mine, you ass. For Corky. I felt that a girl who could subject a man to such an ordeal was not the wife for me. Mind you, I still admire her enormously, and I think she would make an excellent helpmeet for somebody of the Ernest Hemingway type who likes living dangerously, but after what has occurred tonight, I am quite
clear
in my mind that what I require as a life partner is someone slightly less impulsive. If you could have seen Constable Dobb’s eyes glittering in the moonlight!’ he said, and broke off with a strong shudder.

A silence ensued, for my ecstasy at this sensational news item was so profound that for an instant I was unable to utter. Then I said ‘Whoopee!’ and in doing so may possibly have raised my voice a little, for he leaped somewhat and said he wished I wouldn’t suddenly yell ‘Whoopee!’ like that, because I had made him bite his tongue.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said, ‘but I stick to it. I said “Whoopee!” and I meant “Whoopee!” “Whoopee!” with the possible exception of “Hallelujah!” is the only word that meets the case, and if I yelled it, it was merely because I was deeply stirred. I don’t mind telling you now, Gussie, that I have viewed your passion for young Corky with concern, pursing the lips and asking myself dubiously if you were on the right lines. Corky is fine and, as you say, admirably fitted to be the bride of the sort of man who won’t object to her landing him on the whim of the moment in a cell in one of our popular prisons, but the girl for you is obviously Madeline Bassett. Now you can go back to her and live happily ever after. It will be a genuine pleasure to me to weigh in with the silver egg-boiler or whatever you may suggest as a wedding gift, and during the ceremony you can rely on me to be in a ringside pew, singing “Now the labourer’s task is o’er” like nobody’s business.’

I paused at this point, for I noticed that he was writhing rather freely. I asked him why he writhed, and he said, Well, wouldn’t anybody writhe who had got himself into the jam he had, and he wished I wouldn’t stand there talking rot about going back to Madeline.

‘How can I go back to Madeline, dearly as I would like to, after writing that letter telling her it was all off?’

I saw that the time had come to slip him the good news.

‘Gussie,’ I said, ‘all is well. No need for concern. Others have worked while you slept.’

And without further preamble I ran through the Wimbledon continuity.

At the outset he listened dumbly, his eyes bulging, his lips moving like those of a salmon in the spawning season.

Then, as the gist penetrated, his face lit up, his horn-rimmed spectacles flashed fire and he clasped my hand, saying rather handsomely that while as a general rule he yielded to none in considering me the world’s premier half-wit, he was bound to own
that
on this occasion I had displayed courage, resource, enterprise and an almost human intelligence.

‘You’ve saved my life, Bertie!’

‘Quite all right, old man.’

‘But for you –’

‘Don’t mention it. Just the Wooster service.’

‘I’ll go and telephone her.’

‘A sound move.’

He mused for a moment.

‘No, I won’t, by Jove. I’ll pop right off and see her. I’ll get my car and drive to Wimbledon.’

‘She’ll be in bed.’

‘Well, I’ll sleep in London and go out there first thing in the morning.’

‘You’ll find her up and about shortly after eight. Don’t forget your sprained wrist.’

‘By Jove, no. I’m glad you reminded me. What sort of a child was it you told her I had saved?’

‘Small, blue-eyed, golden-haired and lisping.’

‘Small, blue-eyed, golden-haired and lisping. Right.’

He clasped my hand once more and bounded off, pausing at the door to tell me to tell Jeeves to send on his luggage, and I, having completed the toilet, sank into a chair to enjoy a quick cigarette before leaving for the drawing room.

I suppose in this moment of
bien être
, with the heart singing within me and the good old blood coursing through my veins, as I believe the expression is, I ought to have been saying to myself, ‘Go easy on the rejoicing, cocky. Don’t forget that the tangled love-lives of Catsmeat, Esmond Haddock, Gertrude Winkworth, Constable Dobbs and Queenie the parlourmaid remain still unstraightened out’, but you know how it is. There come times in a man’s life when he rather tends to think only of self, and I must confess that the anguish of the above tortured souls was almost completely thrust into the background of my consciousness by the reflection that Fate after a rocky start had at last done the square thing by Bertram Wooster.

My mental attitude, in short, was about that of an African explorer who by prompt shinning up a tree has just contrived to elude a quick-tempered crocodile and gathers from a series of shrieks below that his faithful native bearer had not been so fortunate. I mean to say he mourns, no doubt, as he listens to the doings, but though his heart may bleed, he cannot help his primary emotion being one of sober
relief
that, however, sticky life may have become for native bearers, he, personally, is sitting on top of the world.

I was crushing out the cigarette and preparing to leave, feeling just ripe for a cheery sandwich and an invigorating cup of coffee, when there was a flash of pink in the doorway, and Esmond Haddock came in.

IN DISHING UP
this narrative for family consumption, it has been my constant aim throughout to get the right word in the right place and to avoid fobbing the customers off with something weak and inexpressive when they have a right to expect the telling phrase. It means a bit of extra work, but one has one’s code.

We will therefore expunge that ‘came’ at the conclusion of the previous spasm and substitute for it ‘curvetted’. There was a flash of pink, and Esmond Haddock curvetted in. I don’t know if you have ever seen a fellow curvet, but war-horses used to do it rather freely in the old days, and Esmond Haddock was doing it now. His booted feet spurned the carpet in a sort of rhythmic dance something on the lines of that of the recent Poppy Kegley-Bassington, and it scarcely needed the ringing hunting cries which he uttered to tell me that here stood a bird who was about as full of beans and buck as a bird could be.

I Hallo-Esmonded and invited him to take a seat, and he stared at me in an incredulous sort of way.

‘You don’t seriously think that on this night of nights I can
sit down
?’ he said. ‘I don’t suppose I shall sit down again for months and months and months. It’s only by the exercise of the greatest will-power that I’m keeping myself from floating up to the ceiling. Yoicks!’ he proceeded, changing the subject. ‘Hard for’ard! Tally ho! Loo-loo-loo-loo-loo-loo!’

It had become pretty plain by now that Jeeves and I, while budgeting for a certain uplift of the spirit as the result of the success on the concert platform, had underestimated the heady results of a popular triumph. Watching this Haddock as he curvetted and listening to his animal cries, I felt that it was lucky for him that my old buddy Sir Roderick Glossop did not happen to be among those present. That zealous loony doctor would long ere this have been on the telephone summoning horny-handed assistants to rally round with the straight waistcoat and dust off the padded cell.

‘Well, be that as it may,’ I said, after he had loo-loo-looed for perhaps another minute and a quarter, ‘I should like, before going
any
further, to express my gratitude to you for your gallant conduct in taking on those poems of mine. Was everything all right?’

‘Terrific.’

‘No mob violence?’

‘Not a scrap. They ate ’em.’

‘That’s good. One felt that you were so solidly established with the many-headed that you would be in no real danger. Still, you were taking a chance, and thank Heaven that all has ended well. I don’t wonder you’re bucked,’ I said, interrupting him in a fresh outbreak of loo-loo-looing. ‘Anyone would be after making the sort of hit you did. You certainly wowed them.’

He paused in his curvetting to give me another incredulous look.

‘My good Gussie,’ he said, ‘you don’t think I’m floating about like this just because my song got over?’

‘Aren’t you?’

‘Certainly not.’

‘Then why do you float?’

‘Because of Corky, of course. Good Lord!’ he said, smiting his brow and seeming a moment later to wish he hadn’t, for he had caught it a rather juicy wallop. ‘Good Lord! I haven’t told you, have I? And that’ll give you a rough idea of the sort of doodah I’m in, because it was simply in order to tell you that I came here. You aren’t abreast, Gussie. You haven’t heard the big news. The most amazing front-page stuff has been happening, and you know nothing about it. Let me tell you the whole story.’

‘Do,’ I said, adding that I was agog.

He simmered down a bit, not sufficiently to enable him to take a seat but enough to make him cheese the curvetting for a while.

‘I wonder, Gussie, if you remember a conversation we had the first night you were here? To refresh your memory, it was the last time we were allowed to get at the port; the occasion when you touched up that lyric of my Aunt Charlotte’s in such a masterly way, strengthening the weak spots and making it box-office. If you recall?’

I said I recalled.

‘In the course of that conversation I told you that Corky had given me the brusheroo. If you recollect?’

I said I recollected.

‘Well, tonight – You know, Gussie,’ he said, breaking off, ‘it’s the most extraordinary sensation, swaying a vast audience …’

‘Would you call it a vast audience?’

The question seemed to ruffle him.

‘Well, the two-bob, shilling and eightpenny seats were all sold out
and
there must have been fully fifty threepenny standees at the back,’ he said, a bit stiffly. ‘Still, call it a fairly vast audience, if you prefer. It makes no difference to the argument. It’s the most extraordinary sensation, swaying a fairly vast audience. It does something to you. It fills you with a sense of power. It makes you feel that you’re a pretty hot number and that you aren’t going to stand any nonsense from anyone. And under the head of nonsense you find yourself classing girls giving you the brusheroo. I mention this so that you will be able to understand what follows.’

I smiled one of my subtle smiles.

‘I know what follows. You got hold of Corky and took a strong line.’

‘Why, yes,’ he said, seeming a little flattened. ‘As a matter of fact that was what I was leading up to. How did you guess?’

I smiled another subtle one.

‘I foresaw what would happen if you slew that fairly vast audience. I knew you were one of those birds on whom popular acclamation has sensational effects. Yours has been a repressed life, and you have, no doubt, a marked inferiority complex. The cheers of the multitude frequently act like a powerful drug upon bimbos with inferiority complexes.’

I had rather expected this to impress him, and it did. His lower jaw fell a notch, and he gazed at me in a reverent sort of way.

‘You’re a deep thinker, Gussie.’

‘I always have been. From a child.’

‘One wouldn’t suspect it, just to look at you.’

‘It doesn’t show on the surface. Yes,’ I said, getting back to the
res
, ‘matters have taken precisely the course which I anticipated. With the cheers of the multitude ringing in your ears, you came off that platform a changed man, full of yeast and breathing flame through the nostrils. You found Corky. You backed her into a corner. You pulled a dominant male on her and fixed everything up. Right?’

‘Yes, that was just what happened. Amazing how you got it all taped out.’

‘Oh, well, one studies the psychology of the individual, you know.’

‘Only I didn’t back her into a corner. She was in her car, just driving off somewhere, and I shoved my head in at the window.’

‘And –?’

‘Oh, we kidded back and forth,’ he said a little awkwardly, as if reluctant to reveal what had passed at that sacred scene. ‘I told her she was the lodestar of my life and all that sort of thing, adding that
I
intended to have no more rot about her not marrying me, and after a bit of pressing she came clean and admitted that I was the tree on which the fruit of her life hung.’

Those who know Bertram Wooster best are aware that he is not an indiscriminate back-slapper. He picks and chooses. But there was no question in my mind that here before me stood a back which it would be churlish not to slap. So I slapped it.

‘Nice work,’ I said. ‘Then everything’s all right?’

‘Yes,’ he assented. ‘Everything’s fine … except for one small detail.’

‘What is that in round numbers?’

‘Well, it’s a thing I don’t know if you will quite understand. To make it clear I shall have to go back to that time when we were engaged before. She severed relations then because she considered that I was a bit too much under the domination of my aunts, and she didn’t like it.’

Well, of course, I knew this, having had it from her personal lips, but I wore the mask and weighed in with a surprised ‘Really?’

‘Yes. And unfortunately she hasn’t changed her mind. Nothing doing in the orange-blossom and wedding-cake line, she says, until I have defied my aunts.’

‘Well, go ahead. Defy them.’

My words seemed to displease him. With a certain show of annoyance he picked up a statuette of a shepherdess on the mantelpiece and hurled it into the fireplace, reducing it to hash and removing it from the active list.