The Jeeves Omnibus (223 page)

‘It’s all very well to say that. It’s a thing that presents all sorts of technical difficulties. You can’t just walk up to an aunt and say “I defy you”. You need a cue of some sort. I’m dashed if I know how to set about it.’

I mused.

‘I’ll tell you what,’ I said. ‘It seems to me that here is a matter on which you would do well to seek advice from Jeeves.’

‘Jeeves?’

‘My man.’

‘I thought your man’s name was Meadowes.’

‘A slip of the tongue,’ I said hastily. ‘I meant to say Wooster’s man. He is a bird of extraordinary sagacity and never fails to deliver the goods.’

He frowned a bit.

‘Doesn’t one rather want to keep visiting valets out of this?’

‘No, one does not want to keep visiting valets out of this,’ I said
firmly
. ‘Not when they’re Jeeves. If you didn’t live all the year round in this rural morgue, you’d know that Jeeves isn’t so much a valet as a Mayfair consultant. The highest in the land bring their problems to him. I shouldn’t wonder if they didn’t give him jewelled snuff-boxes.’

‘And you think he would have something to suggest?’

‘He always has something to suggest.’

‘In that case,’ said Esmond Haddock, brightening, ‘I’ll go and find him.’

With a brief ‘Loo-loo-loo’ he pushed off, clicking his spurs, and I settled down to another cigarette and a pleasant reverie.

Really, I told myself, things were beginning to straighten out. Deverill Hall still housed, no doubt, its quota of tortured souls, but the figures showed a distinct downward trend. I was all right. Gussie was all right. It was only on the Catsmeat front that the outlook was still unsettled and the blue bird a bit slow in picking up its cues.

I pondered on Catsmeat’s affairs for a while, then turned to the more agreeable theme of my own, and I was still doing so, feeling more braced every moment, when the door opened.

There was no flash of pink this time, because it wasn’t Esmond home from the hunt. It was Jeeves.

‘I have extricated Mr Fink-Nottle from his beard, sir,’ he said, looking modestly pleased with himself, like a man who has fought the good fight, and I said Yes, Gussie had been paying me a neighbourly call and I had noticed the absence of the fungoid growth.

‘He told me to tell you to pack his things and send them on. He’s gone back to London.’

‘Yes, sir. I saw Mr Fink-Nottle and received his instructions in person.’

‘Did he tell you why he was going to London?’

‘No, sir.’

I hesitated. I yearned to share the good news with him, but I was asking myself if it wouldn’t involve bandying a woman’s name. And, as I have explained earlier, Jeeves and I do not bandy women’s names.

I put out a feeler.

‘You’ve been seeing a good deal of Gussie recently, Jeeves?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Constantly together, swapping ideas, what?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘I wonder if by any chance … in some moment of expansiveness, if that’s the word … he ever happened to let fall anything that gave you the impression that his heart, instead of sticking
like
glue to Wimbledon, had skidded a bit in another direction?’

‘Yes, sir. Mr Fink-Nottle was good enough to confide in me regarding the emotions which Miss Pirbright had aroused in his bosom. He spoke freely on the subject.’

‘Good. Then I can speak freely, too. All that’s off.’

‘Indeed, sir?’

‘Yes. He came down from that tree feeling that Corky was not the dream mate he had supposed her to be. The scales fell from his eyes. He still admires her many fine qualities and considers that she would make a good wife for Sinclair Lewis, but –’

‘Precisely, sir. I must confess that I had rather anticipated some such contingency. Mr Fink-Nottle is of the quiet, domestic type that enjoys a calm, regular life, and Miss Pirbright is perhaps somewhat –’

‘More than somewhat. Considerably more. He sees that now. He realizes that association with young Corky, though having much to be said for it, must inevitably lead in the end to a five-year stretch in Wormwood Scrubs or somewhere, and his object in going to London tonight is to get a good flying start for an early morning trip to Wimbledon Common tomorrow. He is very anxious to see Miss Bassett as soon as possible. No doubt they will breakfast together, and having downed a couple of rashers and a pot of coffee, saunter side by side through the sunlit grounds.’

‘Most gratifying, sir.’

‘Most. And I’ll tell you something else that’s gratifying. Esmond Haddock and Corky are engaged.’

‘Indeed, sir?’

‘Provisionally, perhaps I ought to say.’

And I sketched out for him the set-up at the moment of going to press.

‘I advised him to consult you,’ I said, ‘and he went off to find you. You see the posish, Jeeves? As he rightly says, however much you may want to defy a bunch of aunts, you can’t get started unless they give you something to defy them about. What we want is some situation where they’re saying “Go”, like the chap in the Bible, and instead of going he cometh. If you see what I mean?’

‘I interpret your meaning exactly, sir, and I will devote my best thought to the problem. Meanwhile, I fear I must be leaving you, sir. I promised to help my Uncle Charlie serve the refreshments in the drawing room.’

‘Scarcely your job, Jeeves?’

‘No, sir. But one is glad to stretch a point to oblige a relative.’

‘Blood is thicker than water, you mean?’

‘Precisely, sir.’

He withdrew, and about a minute later Esmond blew in again, looking baffled, like a Master of Hounds who has failed to locate the fox.

‘I can’t find the blighter,’ he said.

‘He has just this moment left. He’s gone to the drawing room to help push around the sandwiches.’

‘And that’s where we ought to be, my lad,’ said Esmond. ‘We’re a bit late.’

He was right. Silversmith, whom we encountered in the hall, informed us that he had just shown out the last batch of alien guests, the Kegley-Bassington gang, and that apart from members of the family only the vicar, Miss Pirbright and what he called ‘the young gentleman’, a very loose way of describing my cousin Thomas, remained on the burning deck. Esmond exhibited pleasure at the news, saying that now we should have a bit of elbow room.

‘Smooth work, missing those stiffs, Gussie. What England needs is fewer and better Kegley-Bassingtons. You agree with me, Silversmith?’

‘I fear I have not formulated an opinion on the subject, sir.’

‘Silversmith,’ said Esmond, ‘you’re a pompous old ass,’ and, incredible as it may seem, he poised a finger and with a cheery ‘Yoicks!’ drove it into the other’s well-covered ribs.

And it was as the stricken butler reeled back and tottered off with an incredulous stare of horror in his gooseberry eyes, no doubt to restore himself with a quick one in the pantry, that Dame Daphne came out of the drawing room.

‘Esmond!’ she said in the voice which in days gone by had reduced so many Janes and Myrtles and Gladyses to tearful pulp in the old study. ‘Where have you been?’

It was a situation which in the pre-Hallo-hallo epoch would have had Esmond Haddock tying himself in apologetic knots and perspiring at every pore: and no better evidence of the changed conditions prevailing in the soul of King’s Deverill’s Bing Crosby could have been afforded than by the fact that his brow remained unmoistened and he met her eye with a pleasant smile.

‘Oh, hallo, Aunt Daphne,’ he said. ‘Where are you off to?’

‘I am going to bed. I have a headache. Why are you so late, Esmond?’

‘Well, if you ask me,’ said Esmond cheerily, ‘I’d say it was because I didn’t arrive sooner.’

‘Colonel and Mrs Kegley-Bassington were most surprised. They could not understand why you were not here.’

Esmond uttered a ringing laugh.

‘Then they must be the most priceless fatheads,’ he said. ‘You’d think a child would have realized that the solution was that I was somewhere else. Come along, Gussie. Loo-loo-loo-loo-loo,’ he added in a dispassionate sort of way, and led me into the drawing room.

Even though the drawing room had been cleansed of Kegley-Bassingtons, it still gave the impression of being fairly well filled up. Four aunts, Corky, young Thos, Gertrude Winkworth and the Rev. Sidney Pirbright might not be absolute capacity, but it was not at all what you would call a poor house. Add Esmond and self and Jeeves and Queenie moving to and fro with the refreshments, and you had quite a quorum.

I had taken a couple of sandwiches (sardine) off Jeeves and was lolling back in my chair, feeling how jolly this all was, when Silversmith appeared in the doorway, still pale after his recent ordeal.

He stood to attention and inflated his chest.

‘Constable Dobbs,’ he announced.

THE REACTIONS OF
a gaggle of coffee and sandwich chewers in the drawing room of an aristocratic home who, just as they are getting down to it, observe the local flatty muscling in through the door, vary according to what Jeeves calls the psychology of the individual. Thus, while Esmond Haddock welcomed the newcomer with a genial ‘Loo-loo-loo’, the aunts raised their eyebrows with a good deal of To-what-are-we-indebted-for-the-honour-of-this-visitness and the vicar drew himself up austerely, suggesting in his manner that one crack out of the zealous officer about Jonah and the Whale and he would know what to do about it. Gertrude Winkworth, who had been listless, continued listless, Silversmith preserved the detached air which butlers wear on all occasions, and the parlourmaid Queenie turned pale and uttered a stifled ‘Oo-er!’ giving the impression of a woman on the point of wailing for her demon lover. I, personally, put in a bit of quick gulping. The mood of
bien être
left me, and I was conscious of a coolness about the feet. When the run of events has precipitated, as Jeeves would say, a situation of such delicacy as existed at Deverill Hall, it jars you to find the place filling up with rozzers.

It was to Esmond Haddock that the constable directed his opening remark.

‘I’ve come on an unpleasant errand, sir,’ he said, and the chill in the Wooster feet became accentuated. ‘But before I go into that there,’ he proceeded, now addressing himself to the Rev. Sidney Pirbright, ‘there’s this here. I wonder if I might have a word with you, sir, on a spiritual subject?’

I saw the sainted Sidney stiffen, and knew that he was saying to himself ‘Here it comes’.

‘It’s with ref to my having seen the light, sir.’

Somebody gave a choking gasp, like a Pekingese that has taken on a chump chop too large for its frail strength, and looking around I saw that it was Queenie. She was staring at Constable Dobbs wide-eyed and parted-lipped.

This choking gasp might have attracted more attention had it not dead-heated with another, equally choking, which proceeded from the thorax of the Rev. Sidney. He, too, was staring wide-eyed. He looked like a vicar who has just seen the outsider on whom he has placed his surplice nose its way through the throng of runners and flash in the lead past the judge’s box.

‘Dobbs! What did you say? You have seen the light?’

I could have told the officer he was a chump to nod so soon after taking that juicy one on the napper from the serviceable rubber instrument, but he did so, and the next thing he said was ‘Ouch!’ But the English policeman is made of splendid stuff, and after behaving for a moment like a man who has just swallowed one of Jeeves’s morning specials he resumed his normal air, which was that of a stuffed gorilla.

‘R,’ he said. ‘And I’ll tell you how it come about, sir. On the evening of the twenty-third inst … well, tonight, as a matter of fact … I was proceeding about my duties, chasing a marauder up a tree, when I was unexpectedly struck by a thunderbolt.’

That, as might have been expected, went big. The vicar said ‘A thunderbolt’, two of the aunts said ‘A
thunderbolt
?’ and Esmond Haddock said ‘Yoicks’.

‘Yes, sir,’ proceeded the officer, ‘a thunderbolt. Caught me on the back of the head, it did, and hasn’t half raised a lump.’

The vicar said ‘Most extraordinary’, the other two aunts said ‘Tch, tch’ and Esmond said ‘Tally ho’.

‘Well, sir, I’m no fool,’ continued Ernest Dobbs. ‘I can take a hint. “Dobbs,” I said to myself, “no use kidding yourself about what
this
is, Dobbs. It’s a warning from above, Dobbs,” I said to myself, “it’s time you made a drawstic revision of your spiritual outlook, Dobbs,” I said to myself. So, if you follow my meaning, sir, I’ve seen the light, and what I wanted to ask you, sir, was Do I have to join the Infants’ Bible Class or can I start singing in the choir right away?’

I mentioned earlier in this narrative that I had never actually seen a shepherd welcoming a strayed lamb back into the fold, but watching Dame Daphne Winkworth on the occasion to which I allude I had picked up a pointer or two about the technique, so was able to recognize that this was what was going to happen now. You could see from his glowing eyes and benevolent smile, not to mention the hand raised as if about to bestow a blessing, that this totally unexpected reversal of form on the part of the local backslider had taken the Rev. Sidney’s mind right off the church organ. I think that in about another couple of ticks he would have come across with something
pretty
impressive in the way of simple, manly words, but, as it so happened, he hadn’t time to get set. Even as his lips parted, there was a noise like a rising pheasant from the outskirts and some solid object left the ranks and hurled itself on Constable Dobbs’s chest.

Closer inspection showed this to be Queenie. She was clinging to the representative of the Law like a poultice, and from the fact that she was saying ‘Oh, Ernie!’ and bedewing his uniform with happy tears I deduced, being pretty shrewd, that what she was trying to convey was that all was forgiven and forgotten and that she was expecting the prompt return of the ring, the letters and the china ornament with ‘A Present From Blackpool’ on it. And as it did not escape my notice that he, on his side, was covering her upturned face with burning kisses and saying ‘Oh, Queenie!’ I gathered that Tortured Souls Preferred had taken another upward trend and that one could chalk up on the slate two more sundered hearts reunited in the springtime.