The Jeeves Omnibus (245 page)

I was visibly agitated.

‘But, Aunt Dahlia! Do you realize what you’ve taken on? Have you an inkling of the sort of scourge you’ve introduced into your home? In the society of young Thos, strong men quail. He is England’s premier fiend in human shape. There is no devilry beyond his scope.’

‘That’s what I have always gathered from the form book,’ agreed the relative. ‘But just now, curse him, he’s behaving like something out of a Sunday School story. You see, poor old Mr Anstruther is very frail these days, and when he found he was in a house containing two small boys he acted promptly. He offered a prize of five pounds to whichever behaved best during his stay. The consequence is that, ever since, Thomas has had large white wings sprouting out of his
shoulders
.’ A shadow seemed to pass across her face. She appeared embittered. ‘Mercenary little brute!’ she said. ‘I never saw such a sickeningly well-behaved kid in my life. It’s enough to make one despair of human nature.’

I couldn’t follow her.

‘But isn’t that all to the good?’

‘No, it’s not.’

‘I can’t see why. Surely a smug, oily Thos about the house is better than a Thos, raging hither and thither and being a menace to society? Stands to reason.’

‘It doesn’t stand to anything of the kind. You see, Bertie, this Good Conduct prize has made matters a bit complex. There are wheels within wheels. The thing stirred Jane Snettisham’s sporting blood to such an extent that she insisted on having a bet on the result.’

A great light shone upon me. I got what she was driving at.

‘Ah!’ I said. ‘Now I follow. Now I see. Now I comprehend. She’s betting on Thos, is she?’

‘Yes. And naturally, knowing him, I thought the thing was in the bag.’

‘Of course.’

‘I couldn’t see myself losing. Heaven knows I have no illusions about my darling Bonzo. Bonzo is, and has been from the cradle, a pest. But to back him to win a Good Conduct contest with Thomas seemed to me simply money for jam.’

‘Absolutely.’

‘When it comes to devilry, Bonzo is just a good, ordinary selling-plater. Whereas Thomas is a classic yearling.’

‘Exactly. I don’t see that you have any cause to worry, Aunt Dahlia. Thos can’t last. He’s bound to crack.’

‘Yes. But before that the mischief may be done.’

‘Mischief?’

‘Yes. There is dirty work afoot, Bertie,’ said Aunt Dahlia gravely. ‘When I booked this bet, I reckoned without the hideous blackness of the Snettishams’ souls. Only yesterday it came to my knowledge that Jack Snettisham had been urging Bonzo to climb on the roof and boo down Mr Anstruther’s chimney.’

‘No!’

‘Yes. Mr Anstruther is very frail, poor old fellow, and it would have frightened him into a fit. On coming out of which, his first action would have been to disqualify Bonzo and declare Thomas the winner by default.’

‘But Bonzo did not boo?’

‘No,’ said Aunt Dahlia, and a mother’s pride rang in her voice. ‘He firmly refused to boo. Mercifully, he is in love at the moment and it has quite altered his nature. He scorned the tempter.’

‘In love? Who with?’

‘Lilian Gish. We had an old film of hers at the Bijou Dream in the village a week ago, and Bonzo saw her for the first time. He came out with a pale, set face, and ever since has been trying to lead a finer, better life. So the peril was averted.’

‘That’s good.’

‘Yes. But now it’s my turn. You don’t suppose I am going to take a thing like that lying down, do you? Treat me right, and I am fairness itself; but try any of this nobbling of starters, and I can play that game, too. If this Good Conduct contest is to be run on rough lines, I can do my bit as well as anyone. Far too much hangs on the issue for me to handicap myself by remembering the lessons I learned at my mother’s knee.’

‘Lot of money involved?’

‘Much more than mere money. I’ve betted Anatole against Jane Snettisham’s kitchen-maid.’

‘Great Scott! Uncle Thomas will have something to say if he comes back and finds Anatole gone.’

‘And won’t he say it!’

‘Pretty long odds you gave her, didn’t you? I mean, Anatole is famed far and wide as a hash-slinger without peer.’

‘Well, Jane Snettisham’s kitchen-maid is not to be sneezed at. She is very hot stuff, they tell me, and good kitchen-maids nowadays are about as rare as original Holbeins. Besides, I had to give her a shade the best of the odds. She stood out for it. Well, anyway, to get back to what I was saying, if the opposition are going to place temptations in Bonzo’s path, they shall jolly well be placed in Thomas’s path, too, and plenty of them. So ring for Jeeves and let him get his brain working.’

‘But I haven’t brought Jeeves.’

‘You haven’t brought Jeeves?’

‘No. He always takes his holiday at this time of year. He’s down at Bognor for the shrimping.’

Aunt Dahlia registered deep concern.

‘Then send for him at once! What earthly use do you suppose you are without Jeeves, you poor ditherer?’

I drew myself up a trifle – in fact, to my full height. Nobody has a greater respect for Jeeves than I have, but the Wooster pride was stung.

‘Jeeves isn’t the only one with brains,’ I said coldly. ‘Leave this thing to me, Aunt Dahlia. By dinner-time tonight I shall hope to have a fully matured scheme to submit for your approval. If I can’t thoroughly encompass this Thos, I’ll eat my hat.’

‘About all you’ll get to eat if Anatole leaves,’ said Aunt Dahlia in a pessimistic manner which I did not like to see.

I was brooding pretty tensely as I left the presence. I have always had a suspicion that Aunt Dahlia, while invariably matey and bonhomous and seeming to take pleasure in my society, has a lower opinion of my intelligence than I quite like. Too often it is her practice to address me as ‘fathead’, and if I put forward any little thought or idea or fancy in her hearing it is apt to be greeted with the affectionate but jarring guffaw. In our recent interview she had hinted quite plainly that she considered me negligible in a crisis which, like the present one, called for initiative and resource. It was my intention to show her how greatly she had underestimated me.

To let you see the sort of fellow I really am, I got a ripe, excellent idea before I had gone half-way down the corridor. I examined it for the space of one and a half cigarettes, and could see no flaw in it, provided – I say, provided – old Mr Anstruther’s notion of what constituted bad conduct squared with mine.

The great thing on these occasions, as Jeeves will tell you, is to get a toe-hold on the psychology of the individual. Study the individual, and you will bring home the bacon. Now, I had been studying young Thos for years, and I knew his psychology from caviare to nuts. He is one of those kids who never let the sun go down on their wrath, if you know what I mean. I mean to say, do something to annoy or offend or upset this juvenile thug, and he will proceed at the earliest possible opp. to wreak a hideous vengeance upon you. Only the previous summer, for instance, it having been drawn to his attention that the latter had reported him for smoking, he had marooned a Cabinet Minister on an island in the lake at Aunt Agatha’s place in Hertfordshire – in the rain, mark you, and with no company but that of one of the nastiest-minded swans I have ever encountered. Well, I mean!

So now it seemed to me that a few well-chosen taunts, or jibes, directed at his more sensitive points, must infallibly induce in this Thos a frame of mind which would lead to his working some sensational violence upon me. And, if you wonder that I was willing to sacrifice myself to this frightful extent in order to do Aunt Dahlia a bit of good, I can only say that we Woosters are like that.

The one point that seemed to me to want a spot of clearing up was this: viz., would old Mr Anstruther consider an outrage perpetrated on the person of Bertram Wooster a crime sufficiently black to cause him to rule Thos out of the race? Or would he just give a senile chuckle and mumble something about boys being boys? Because, if the latter, the thing was off. I decided to have a word with the old boy and make sure.

He was still in the smoking room, looking very frail over the morning
Times
. I got to the point at once.

‘Oh, Mr Anstruther,’ I said. ‘What ho!’

‘I don’t like the way the American market is shaping,’ he said. ‘I don’t like this strong Bear movement.’

‘No?’ I said. ‘Well, be that as it may, about this Good Conduct prize of yours?’

‘Ah, you have heard of that, eh?’

‘I don’t quite understand how you are doing the judging.’

‘No? It is very simple. I have a system of daily marks. At the beginning of each day I accord the two lads twenty marks apiece. These are subject to withdrawal either in small or large quantities according to the magnitude of the offence. To take a simple example, shouting outside my bedroom in the early morning would involve a loss of three marks – whistling two. The penalty for a more serious lapse would be correspondingly greater. Before retiring to rest at night I record the day’s marks in my little book. Simple, but, I think, ingenious, Mr Wooster?’

‘Absolutely.’

‘So far the result has been extremely gratifying. Neither of the little fellows has lost a single mark, and my nervous system is acquiring a tone which, when I learned that two lads of immature years would be staying in the house during my visit, I confess I had not dared to anticipate.’

‘I see,’ I said. ‘Great work. And how do you react to what I might call general moral turpitude?’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘Well, I mean when the thing doesn’t affect you personally. Suppose one of them did something to me, for instance? Set a booby-trap or something? Or, shall we say, put a toad or so in my bed?’

He seemed shocked at the very idea.

‘I would certainly in such circumstances deprive the culprit of a full ten marks.’

‘Only ten?’

‘Fifteen, then.’

‘Twenty is a nice, round number.’

‘Well, possibly even twenty. I have a peculiar horror of practical joking.’

‘Me, too.’

‘You will not fail to advise me, Mr Wooster, should such an outrage occur?’

‘You shall have the news before anyone,’ I assured him.

And so out into the garden, ranging to and fro in quest of young Thos. I knew where I was now. Bertram’s feet were on solid ground.

I hadn’t been hunting long before I found him in the summer-house, reading an improving book.

‘Hullo,’ he said, smiling a saintlike smile.

This scourge of humanity was a chunky kid whom a too indulgent public had allowed to infest the country for a matter of fourteen years. His nose was snub, his eyes green, his general aspect that of one studying to be a gangster. I had never liked his looks much, and with a saintlike smile added to them they became ghastly to a degree.

I ran over in my mind a few assorted taunts.

‘Well, young Thos,’ I said. ‘So there you are. You’re getting as fat as a pig.’

It seemed as good an opening as any other. Experience had taught me that if there was a subject on which he was unlikely to accept persiflage in a spirit of amused geniality it was this matter of his bulging tum. On the last occasion when I made a remark of this nature, he had replied to me, child though he was, in terms which I would have been proud to have had in my own vocabulary. But now, though a sort of wistful gleam did flit for a moment into his eyes, he merely smiled in a more saintlike manner than ever.

‘Yes, I think I have been putting on a little weight,’ he said gently. ‘I must try and exercise a lot while I’m here. Won’t you sit down, Bertie?’ he asked, rising. ‘You must be tired after your journey. I’ll get you a cushion. Have you cigarettes? And matches? I could bring you some from the smoking room. Would you like me to fetch you something to drink?’

It is not too much to say that I felt baffled. In spite of what Aunt Dahlia had told me, I don’t think that until this moment I had really believed there could have been anything in the nature of a genuinely sensational change in this young plugugly’s attitude towards his fellows. But now, hearing him talk as if he were a combination of
Boy
Scout and delivery wagon, I felt definitely baffled. However, I stuck at it in the old bull-dog way.

‘Are you still at that rotten kids’ school of yours?’ I asked.

He might have been proof against jibes at his
embonpoint
, but it seemed to me incredible that he could have sold himself for gold so completely as to lie down under taunts directed at his school. I was wrong. The money-lust evidently held him in its grip. He merely shook his head.

‘I left this term. I’m going to Pevenhurst next term.’

‘They wear mortar-boards there, don’t they?’

‘Yes.’

‘With pink tassels?’

‘Yes.’

‘What a priceless ass you’ll look!’ I said, but without much hope. And I laughed heartily.

‘I expect I shall,’ he said, and laughed still more heartily.

‘Mortar-boards!’

‘Ha, ha!’

‘Pink tassels!’

‘Ha, ha!’

I gave the thing up.

‘Well, teuf-teuf,’ I said moodily, and withdrew.

A couple of days later I realized that the virus had gone even deeper than I had thought. The kid was irredeemably sordid.

It was old Mr Anstruther who sprang the bad news.

‘Oh, Mr Wooster,’ he said, meeting me on the stairs as I came down after a refreshing breakfast. ‘You were good enough to express an interest in this little prize for Good Conduct which I am offering.’

‘Oh, ah?’

‘I explained to you my system of marking, I believe. Well, this morning I was impelled to vary it somewhat. The circumstances seemed to me to demand it. I happened to encounter our hostess’s nephew, the boy Thomas, returning to the house, his aspect somewhat weary, it appeared to me, and travel-stained. I inquired of him where he had been at that early hour – it was not yet breakfast-time – and he replied that he had heard you mention overnight a regret that you had omitted to order the
Sporting Times
to be sent to you before leaving London, and he had actually walked all the way to the railway-station, a distance of more than three miles, to procure it for you.’