The Jeeves Omnibus (24 page)

‘I’m darned if I’ll marry you, Bertie.’

‘The right spirit,’ I said approvingly. ‘But can you preserve that intrepid attitude when you see Pop breathing flame through his nostrils and chewing broken bottles in the foreground? Will you not, if I may coin a phrase, be afraid of the big bad wolf?’

She wavered a bit.

‘We’re going to have a tough time with him, of course. I can see that. He’s pretty sore with you, angel, you know.’

Chuffy puffed out his chest.

‘I’ll attend to him!’

‘No,’ I said firmly, ‘I will attend to him. Leave the whole conduct of the affair to me.’

Pauline laughed. I didn’t like it. It seemed to me to have a derogatory ring.

‘You! Why, you poor lamb, you would run a mile if Father so much as said “Boo!” to you.’

I raised the eyebrows.

‘I anticipate no such contingency. Why should he say “Boo!” to me? I mean, a damn silly thing for anybody to say to anyone. And even if he did make that idiotic observation, the effects would not be such as you have outlined. That I was once a little on the nervous side in your parent’s presence, I admit. But no longer. Not any more. The scales have fallen from my eyes. Recently I have seen him in the space of something under three minutes reduced by Jeeves from a howling blizzard to a gentle breeze, and his spell is broken. When he comes, you may leave him to me with every confidence. I shall not be rough with him, but I shall be very firm.’

Chuffy looked a bit thoughtful.

‘Is he coming?’

Outside in the garden, footsteps had become audible. Also heavy breathing. I jerked a thumb at the window.

‘This, if I mistake not, Watson,’ I said, ‘is our client now.’

AND SO IT
was. A substantial form appeared against the summer sky. It entered. It took a seat. And, having taken a seat, it hauled out a handkerchief and started to mop the brow. A bit preoccupied, I divined, and my trained sense enabled me to recognize the symptoms. They were those of a man who had just been hobnobbing with Brinkley.

That this diagnosis was correct was proved a moment later when lowering the handkerchief for a space, he disclosed what had all the makings of a very sweetish black eye.

Pauline, sighting this, uttered a daughterly yip.

‘What on earth has been happening, Father?’

Old Stoker breathed heavily.

‘I couldn’t get at the fellow,’ he said, with a sort of wild regret in his voice.

‘What fellow?’

‘I don’t know who he was. Some lunatic in that Dower House. He stood there at the window, throwing potatoes at me. I had hardly knocked at the door, when he was there at the window, throwing potatoes. Wouldn’t come out like a man and let me get at him. Just stood at the window, throwing potatoes.’

I confess that, as I heard these words, a sort of reluctant admiration for this bloke Brinkley stole over me. We could never be friends, of course, but one had to admit that he was a man who could do the right and public-spirited thing when the occasion called. I took it that old Stoker’s banging on the knocker had roused him from a morning-after reverie to the discovery that he had a pretty nasty headache, and that he had instantly started to take steps through the proper channels. All most satisfactory.

‘You can consider yourself dashed lucky,’ I said, pointing out the bright side, ‘that the fellow elected to deal with you at long range. For close-quarters work he usually employs a carving knife or a chopper, and a good deal of clever footwork is called for.’

He had been so wrapped up in his own concerns till now that I don’t think he had got on to the fact that Bertram was with him once more. At any rate, he stared quite a bit.

‘Ah, Stoker,’ I said airily, to help him out.

He continued to goggle.

‘Are you Wooster?’ he asked, in what seemed to me a rather awed way.

‘Still Wooster, Stoker, old man,’ I said cheerily. ‘First, last, and all the time Bertram Wooster.’

He was looking from Chuffy to Pauline and back again almost pleadingly, as if seeking comfort and support.

‘What the devil has he done to his face?’

‘Sunburn,’ I said. ‘Well, Stoker,’ I proceeded, anxious to get the main business of the day settled, ‘it’s most convenient that you should have dropped in like this. I’ve been looking for you … well, that’s putting it a bit loosely, perhaps, but, anyway, I’m glad to see you now, because I’ve been wanting to tell you that that idea of yours about your daughter and me getting married is off. Forget it, Stoker. Abandon it. Wash it right out. Nothing to it, at all.’

It would be difficult to overpraise the magnificent courage and firmness with which I spoke. In fact, for a moment I rather wondered if I mightn’t have overdone it a little, because I caught Pauline’s eye and there was such a look of worshipping reverence in it that it seemed quite on the cards that, overcome by my glamour at this juncture, she might decide that I was her hero, after all, and switch back again from Chuffy to me. This thought caused me to go on a bit quickly to the next item on the agenda.

‘She’s going to marry Chuffy – Lord Chuffnell – him,’ I said, indicating C. with a wave of the hand.

‘What!’

‘Yes. All set.’

Old Stoker gave a powerful snort. He was deeply moved.

‘Is this true?’

‘Yes, Father.’

‘Oh! You intend to marry a man who calls your father a pop-eyed old swindler, do you?’

I was intrigued.

‘Did you call him a pop-eyed old swindler, Chuffy?’

Chuffy hitched up a lower jaw which had sagged a bit.

‘Certainly not,’ he said weakly.

‘You did,’ said Stoker. ‘When I told you I was not going to buy this house of yours.’

‘Oh, well,’ said Chuffy. ‘You know how it is.’

Pauline intervened. She seemed to be feeling that the point was being wandered from. Women like to stick to the practical issue.

‘Anyway, I’m going to marry him, Father.’

‘You are not.’

‘I am, too. I love him.’

‘And only yesterday you were in love with this damned sooty-faced imbecile here.’

I drew myself up. We Woosters can make allowances for a father’s chagrin, but there is a sharply defined limit.

‘Stoker,’ I said, ‘you forget yourself strangely. I must ask you to preserve the decencies of debate. And it isn’t soot – it’s boot polish.’

‘I wasn’t,’ cried Pauline.

‘You said you were.’

‘Well, I wasn’t.’

Old Stoker got off another of his snorts.

‘The fact of the matter is, you don’t know your own mind, and I’m going to make it up for you.’

‘I’m not going to marry Bertie, whatever you say.’

‘Well, you’re certainly not going to marry a fortune-hunting English lord.’

Chuffy took this fairly big.

‘What do you mean, a fortune-hunting English lord?’

‘I mean what I say. You haven’t a cent, and you’re trying to marry a girl in Pauline’s position. Why, darn it, you’re just like that fellow in that musical comedy I saw once … what was the name … Lord Wotwotleigh.’

An animal cry escaped Chuffy’s ashen lips.

‘Wotwotleigh!’

‘The living spit of him. Same sort of face, same expression, same way of talking. I’ve been wondering all along who it was you reminded me of, and now I know. Lord Wotwotleigh.’

Pauline charged in again.

‘You’re talking perfect nonsense, Father. The whole trouble all along was that Marmaduke was so scrupulous and chivalrous that he wouldn’t ask me to marry him till he felt he had enough money. I couldn’t think what was the matter with him. And then you promised to buy Chuffnell Hall, and five minutes later he came bounding up to me and started proposing. If you didn’t mean to buy the hall
you
ought not to have said you would. And I don’t see why you won’t, either.’

‘I was planning to buy it because Glossop asked me to,’ said old Stoker. ‘The way I feel towards that guy now, I wouldn’t buy a peanut stand to please him.’

I felt impelled to put in a word.

‘Not a bad sort, old Glossop. I like him.’

‘You can have him.’

‘What first endeared him to me was the way he set about little Seabury last night. It seemed to me to argue the right outlook.’

Stoker was staring with his left eye. The other had now closed like some tired flower at nightfall. I couldn’t help feeling that Brinkley must have been a jolly good shot to have plugged him so squarely. It’s not the easiest thing in the world to hit a fellow in the eye with a potato at a longish range. I know, because I’ve tried it. The very nature of the potato, it being a rummy shape and covered with knobs, renders accurate aiming a tricky business.

‘What’s that you’re saying? Glossop soaked that boy?’

‘With a will, they tell me.’

‘Well, I’m darned!’

I don’t know if you’ve ever seen one of those films where the tough guy hears the old song his mother used to teach him at her knee and you get a close-up of his face working and before you know where you are he’s a melted man and off doing lots of good to all and sundry. A bit sudden I’ve always looked on it as, but you can take it from me that these lightning softenings do occur. Because now before our very eyes old Stoker was undergoing one of them.

One moment he had been absolutely the man of chilled steel. The next, he was practically human. He stared at me, speechless. Then he licked his lips.

‘You really tell me old Glossop did that?’

‘I was not present in person, but I have it straight from Jeeves, who got it from Mary, the parlourmaid, who was an eyewitness throughout. He put it across little Seabury properly – at a venture, I should say with the back of a hairbrush.’

‘Well, I’m darned!’

Pauline was doing a bit of eye-sparkling. You could see that hope had dawned once more. I’m not sure she didn’t clap her hands in girlish glee.

‘You see, Father. You got him all wrong. He’s really a splendid
man
. You’ll have to go to him and tell him you’re sorry you were so snooty and that you’re going to buy the house for him, after all.’

Well, I could have told the poor cloth-head that she was doing the wrong thing, butting in like this. Girls have no idea of handling any situation that calls for nice tact. I mean to say, Jeeves will tell you that on these occasions the whole thing is to study the psychology of the individual, and an owl could have seen what old Stoker’s psychology was like. A male owl, that is. He was one of those fellows who get their backs up the minute they think their nearest and dearest are trying to shove them into anything; a chap who, as the Bible puts it, if you say Go, he cometh, and if you say Come, he goeth; a fellow, in a word, who, if he came to a door with ‘Push’ on it, would always pull.

And I was right. Left to himself, this Stoker in about another half-minute would have been dancing round the room, strewing roses out of his hat. He was within a short jump of becoming a thing compact entirely of sweetness and light. Now he suddenly stiffened, and a mulish look came into his eye. You could see his haughty spirit resented being rushed.

‘I won’t do anything of the sort!’

‘Oh, Father!’

‘Telling me what I’m to do and what I’m not to do.’

‘I didn’t mean it like that.’

‘Never mind how you meant it.’

Affairs had taken an unpleasant turn. Old Stoker was gruffling to himself like a not too sunny bulldog. Pauline was looking as if she had recently taken a short-arm punch in the solar plexus. Chuffy had the air of a man who has not yet recovered from being compared to Lord Wotwotleigh. And, as for me, while I could see that it was a moment that called for the intervention of a silver-tongued orator, I felt it wasn’t much use hanging a pop at being a silver-tongued orator if one hadn’t anything to say, and I hadn’t

So all that occurred was a good deal of silence, and this silence was still in progress and getting momentarily stickier, when there was a knock at the door and in floated Jeeves.

‘Excuse me, sir,’ he said, shimmering towards old Stoker and presenting an envelope on a salver. ‘A seaman from your yacht has just brought this cablegram, which arrived shortly after your departure this morning. The captain of the vessel, fancying that it might be of an urgent nature, instructed him to convey it to this house. I
took
it from him at the back door and hastened hither with it in order to deliver it to you personally.’

The way he put it made the whole thing seem like one of those great epics you read about. You followed the procedure step by step, and the interest and drama worked up to the big moment. Old Stoker, however, instead of being thrilled, seemed somewhat on the impatient side.

‘What you mean is, there’s a cable for me.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Then why not say so, damn it, instead of making a song about it. Do you think you’re singing in opera, or something? Gimme.’

Jeeves handed over the missive with a dignified reserve, and drifted out with salver. Stoker started to rip open the envelope.

‘I shall certainly not say anything of the kind to Glossop,’ he said, resuming the discussion. ‘If he cares to come to me and apologize, I may possibly …’

His voice died away with a sort of sound not unlike the last utterance of one of those toy ducks you inflate and then let the air out of. His jaw had dropped, and he was staring at the cable as if he had suddenly discovered he was fondling a tarantula. The next moment there proceeded from his lips an observation which even in these lax modern days I should certainly not have considered suitable for mixed company.

Pauline hopped towards him. Solicitous. When pain and anguish racks the brow stuff.

‘What’s the matter, Father?’

Old Stoker was making gulping noises.

‘It’s happened!’

‘What has happened?’

‘What? What?’ I saw Chuffy start. ‘What? What? I’ll tell you what. They’re contesting old George’s will!’

‘You don’t mean that!’

‘I do mean that. Read it for yourself.’

Pauline studied the document. She looked up, rattled.

‘But if this goes through, bang goes our fifty million.’

‘Of course it does.’