The Jeeves Omnibus (312 page)

‘Sir?’

‘The last straw. I’d enough on my mind already.’

‘There is something disturbing you, sir?’

‘You’re right there is. Hell’s foundations are quivering. What do you call it when a couple of nations start off by being all palsy-walsy and then begin calling each other ticks and bounders?’

‘Relations have deteriorated would be the customary phrase, sir.’

‘Well, relations have deteriorated between Miss Bassett and Gussie. He, as we know, was already disgruntled, and now she’s disgruntled, too. She has taken exception to a derogatory crack he made about the sunset. She thinks highly of sunsets, and he told her they made him sick. Can you believe this?’

‘Quite readily, sir. Mr. Fink-Nottle was commenting to me on the sunset yesterday evening. He said it looked so like a slice of underdone beef that it tortured him to see it. One can appreciate his feelings.’

‘I dare say, but I wish he’d keep them to himself. He also appears to have spoken disrespectfully of the Blessed Damozel. Who’s the Blessed Damozel, Jeeves? I don’t seem to have heard of her.’

‘The heroine of a poem by the late Dante Gabriel Rossetti, sir. She leaned out from the gold bar of Heaven.’

‘Yes, I gathered that. That much was specified.’

‘Her eyes were deeper than the depths of waters stilled at even. She had three lilies in her hand, and the stars in her hair were seven.’

‘Oh, were they? Well, be that as it may, Gussie said she made him sick, too, and Miss Bassett’s as sore as a sunburned neck.’

‘Most disturbing, sir.’

‘Disturbing is the word. If things go on the way they are, no bookie would give odds of less than a hundred to eight on this betrothal lasting another week. I’ve seen betrothals in my time, many of them, but never one that looked more likely to come apart at the seams than that of Augustus Fink-Nottle and Madeline, daughter of Sir Watkyn and the late Lady Bassett. The suspense is awful. Who was the chap I remember reading about somewhere, who had a sword hanging over him attached to a single hair?’

‘Damocles, sir. It is an old Greek legend.’

‘Well, I know just how he felt. And with this on my mind, I’m expected to attend a ruddy school treat. I won’t go.’

‘Your absence may cause remark, sir.’

‘I don’t care. They won’t get a smell of me. I’m oiling out, and let them make of it what they will.’

Apart from anything else, I was remembering the story I had heard Pongo Twistleton tell one night at the Drones, illustrative of how unbridled passions are apt to become at these binges. Pongo got mixed up once in a school treat down in Somersetshire, and his description of how, in order to promote a game called ‘Is Mr. Smith at Home?’ he had had to put his head in a sack and allow the younger generation to prod him with sticks had held the smoking-room spellbound. At a place like Totleigh, where even on normal days human life was not safe, still worse excesses were to be expected. The glimpse or two I had had of the local Dead End kids had told me how tough a bunch they were and how sedulously they should be avoided by the man who knew what was good for him.

‘I shall nip over to Brinkley in the car and have lunch with Uncle Tom. You at my side, I hope?’

‘Impossible, I fear, sir. I have promised to assist Mr. Butterfield in the tea tent.’

‘Then you can tell me all about it.’

‘Very good, sir.’

‘If you survive.’

‘Precisely, sir.’

It was a nice easy drive to Brinkley, and I got there well in advance of the luncheon hour. Aunt Dahlia wasn’t there, having, as foreshadowed, popped up to London for the day, and Uncle Tom and I sat down alone to a repast in Anatole’s best vein. Over the
Suprême de Foie Gras au Champagne
and the
Neige aux Perles des Alpes
I placed him in possession of the facts relating to the black amber statuette thing, and his relief at learning that Pop Bassett hadn’t got a thousand-quid
objet d’art
for a fiver was so profound and the things he said about Pop B. so pleasing to the ear that by the time I started back my dark mood had become sensibly lightened and optimism had returned to its throne.

After all, I reminded myself, it wasn’t as if Gussie was going to be indefinitely under Madeline’s eye. In due season he would buzz back to London and there would be able to tuck into the beefs and muttons till his ribs squeaked, confident that not a word of his activities would reach her. The effect of this would be to refill him with sweetness and light, causing him to write her loving letters which would carry him along till she emerged from this vegetarian phase and took up stamp collecting or something. I know the other sex and their sudden enthusiasms. They get these crazes and wallow in them for awhile, but they soon become fed up and turn to other things. My Aunt Agatha once went in for politics, but it only took a few meetings at
which
she got the bird from hecklers to convince her that the cagey thing to do was to stay at home and attend to her fancy needlework, giving the whole enterprise a miss.

It was getting on for what is called the quiet evenfall when I anchored at Totleigh Towers. I did my usual sneak to my room, and I had been there a few minutes when Jeeves came in.

‘I saw you arrive, sir,’ he said, ‘and I thought you might be in need of refreshment.’

I assured him that his intuition had not led him astray, and he said he would bring me a whisky-and-s. immediately.

‘I trust you found Mr. Travers in good health, sir.’

I was able to reassure him there.

‘He was a bit low when I blew in, but on receipt of my news about the what-not blossomed like a flower. It would have done you good to have heard what he had to say about Pop Bassett. And talking of Pop Bassett, how did the school treat go off?’

‘I think the juvenile element enjoyed the festivities, sir.’

‘How about you?’

‘Sir?’

‘You were all right? They didn’t put your head in a sack and prod you with sticks?’

‘No, sir. My share in the afternoon’s events was confined to assisting in the tea tent.’

‘You speak lightly, Jeeves, but I’ve known some dark work to take place in school treat tea tents.’

‘It is odd that you should say that, sir, for it was while partaking of tea that a lad threw a hard-boiled egg at Sir Watkyn.’

‘And hit him?’

‘On the left cheek-bone, sir. It was most unfortunate.’

I could not subscribe to this.

‘I don’t know why you say “unfortunate”. Best thing that could have happened, in my opinion. The very first time I set eyes on Pop Bassett, in the picturesque environment of Bosher Street police court, I remember saying to myself that there sat a man to whom it would do all the good in the world to have hard-boiled eggs thrown at him. One of my crowd on that occasion, a lady accused of being drunk and disorderly and resisting the police, did on receipt of her sentence, throw her boot at him, but with a poor aim, succeeding only in beaning the magistrate’s clerk. What’s the boy’s name?’

‘I could not say, sir. His actions were cloaked in anonymity.’

‘A pity. I would have liked to reward him by sending camels bearing apes, ivory and peacocks to his address. Did you see anything of Gussie
in
the course of the afternoon?’

‘Yes, sir. Mr. Fink-Nottle, at Miss Bassett’s insistence, played a large part in the proceedings and was, I am sorry to say, somewhat roughly handled by the younger revellers. Among other vicissitudes that he underwent, a child entangled its all-day sucker in his hair.’

‘That must have annoyed him. He’s fussy about his hair.’

‘Yes, sir, he was visibly incensed. He detached the sweetmeat and threw it from him with a good deal of force, and by ill luck it struck Miss Byng’s dog on the nose. Affronted by what he presumably mistook for an unprovoked assault, the animal bit Mr. Fink-Nottle in the leg.’

‘Poor old Gussie!’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Still, into each life some rain must fall.’

‘Precisely, sir. I will go and bring your whisky-and-soda.’

He had scarcely gone, when Gussie blew in, limping a little but otherwise showing no signs of what Jeeves had called the vicissitudes he had undergone. He seemed, indeed, above rather than below his usual form, and I remember the phrase ‘the bulldog breed’ passed through my mind. If Gussie was a sample of young England’s stamina and fortitude, it seemed to me that the country’s future was secure. It is not every nation that can produce sons capable of grinning, as he was doing, so shortly after being bitten by Aberdeen terriers.

‘Oh, there you are, Bertie,’ he said. ‘Jeeves told me you were back. I looked in to borrow some cigarettes.’

‘Go ahead.’

‘Thanks,’ he said, filling his case. ‘I’m taking Emerald Stoker for a walk.’

‘You’re
what
?’

‘Or a row on the river. Whichever she prefers.’

‘But, Gussie –’

‘Oh, before I forget. Pinker is looking for you. He says he wants to see you about something important.’

‘Never mind about Stinker. You can’t take Emerald Stoker for walks.’

‘Can’t I? Watch me.’

‘But –’

‘Sorry, no time to talk now. I don’t want to keep her waiting. So long, I must be off.’

He left me plunged in thought, and not agreeable thought either. I think I have made it clear to the meanest i. that my whole future depended on Augustus Fink-Nottle sticking to the straight and narrow
path
and not blotting his copybook, and I could not but feel that by taking Emerald Stoker for walks he was skidding off the straight and narrow path and blotting his c. in no uncertain manner. That, at least, was, I was pretty sure, how an idealistic beazel like Madeline Bassett, already rendered hot under the collar by his subversive views on sunsets and Blessed Damozels, would regard it. It is not too much to say that when Jeeves returned with the whisky-and-s., he found me all of a twitter and shaking on my stem.

I would have liked to put him abreast of this latest development, but, as I say, there are things we don’t discuss, so I merely drank deep of the flowing bowl and told him that Gussie had just been a pleasant visitor.

‘He tells me Stinker Pinker wants to see me about something.’

‘No doubt with reference to the episode of Sir Watkyn and the hard-boiled egg, sir.’

‘Don’t tell me it was Stinker who threw it.’

‘No, sir, the miscreant is believed to have been a lad in his early teens. But the young fellow’s impulsive action has led to unfortunate consequences. It has caused Sir Watkyn to entertain doubts as to the wisdom of entrusting a vicarage to a curate incapable of maintaining order at a school treat. Miss Byng, while confiding this information to me, appeared greatly distressed. She had supposed – I quote her verbatim – that the thing was in the bag, and she is naturally much disturbed.’

I drained my glass and lit a moody gasper. If Totleigh Towers wanted to turn me into a cynic, it was going the right way about it.

‘There’s a curse on this house, Jeeves. Broken blossoms and shattered hopes wherever you look. It seems to be something in the air. The sooner we’re out of here, the better. I wonder if we couldn’t –’

I had been about to add ‘make our getaway tonight’, but at this moment the door flew open and Spode came bounding in, wiping the words from my lips and causing me to raise an eyebrow or two. I resented this habit he was developing of popping up out of a trap at me every other minute like a Demon King in pantomime, and only the fact that I couldn’t think of anything restrained me from saying something pretty stinging. As it was, I wore the mask and spoke with the suavity of the perfect host.

‘Ah, Spode. Come on in and take a few chairs,’ I said, and was on the point of telling him that we Woosters kept open house, when he interrupted me with the uncouth abruptness so characteristic of these human gorillas. Roderick Spode may have had his merits, though I had never been able to spot them, but his warmest admirer couldn’t have called him couth.

‘HAVE YOU SEEN
Fink-Nottle?’ he said.

I didn’t like the way he spoke or the way he was looking. The lips, I noted, were twitching, and the eyes glittered with what I believe is called a baleful light. It seemed pretty plain to me that it was in no friendly spirit that he was seeking Gussie, so I watered down the truth a bit, as the prudent man does on these occasions.

‘I’m sorry, no. I’ve only just got back from my uncle’s place over Worcestershire way. Some urgent family business came up and I had to go and attend to it, so unfortunately missed the school treat. A great disappointment. You haven’t seen Gussie, have you, Jeeves?’

He made no reply, possibly because he wasn’t there. He generally slides discreetly off when the young master is entertaining the quality, and you never see him go. He just evaporates.

‘Was it something important you wanted to see him about?’

‘I want to break his neck.’

My eyebrows, which had returned to normal, rose again. I also, if I remember rightly, pursed my lips.

‘Well, really, Spode! Is this not becoming a bit thick? It’s not so long ago that you were turning over in your mind the idea of breaking mine. I think you should watch yourself in this matter of neck-breaking and check the urge before it gets too strong a grip on you. No doubt you say to yourself that you can take it or leave it alone, but isn’t there the danger of the thing becoming habit-forming? Why do you want to break Gussie’s neck?’

He ground his teeth, at least that’s what I think he did to them, and was silent for a space. Then, though there wasn’t anyone within earshot but me, he lowered his voice.

‘I can speak frankly to you, Wooster, because you, too, love her.’

‘Eh? Who?’ I said. It should have been ‘whom’, I suppose, but that didn’t occur to me at the time.

‘Madeline, of course.’

‘Oh, Madeline?’

‘As I told you, I have always loved her, and her happiness is very
dear
to me. It is everything to me. To give her a moment’s pleasure I would cut myself in pieces.’

I couldn’t follow him there, but before I could go into the question of whether girls enjoy seeing people cut themselves in pieces he had resumed.