The Jeeves Omnibus (332 page)

‘Does he like anyone?’ said the relative. ‘Except, presumably, Madeline Bassett.’

‘He seems fond of L. P. Runkle.’

‘What makes you think that?’

‘I overheard them exchanging confidences.’

‘Oh?’ said the relative, for these things are catching. ‘Well, I suppose one ought not to be surprised. Birds of a feather—’

‘Flock together?’

‘Exactly. And even the dregs of pond life fraternize with other dregs of pond life. By the way, remind me to tell you something about L. P. Runkle.’

‘Right ho.’

‘We will come to L. P. Runkle later. This animosity of Spode’s, is it just the memory of old Totleigh days, or have you done anything lately to incur his displeasure?’

This time I had no hesitation in telling her all. I felt she would be sympathetic. I laid the facts before her with every confidence that an aunt’s condolences would result.

‘There was this gnat.’

‘I don’t follow you.’

‘I had to rally round.’

‘You’ve still lost me.’

‘Spode didn’t like it.’

‘So he doesn’t like gnats either. Which gnat? What gnat? Will you get on with your story, curse you, starting at the beginning and carrying on to the end.’

‘Certainly, if you wish. Here is the scenario.’

I told her about the gnat in Madeline’s eye, the part I had played in restoring her vision to mid-season form and the exception Spode had taken to my well-meant efforts. She whistled. Everyone seemed to be whistling at me today. Even the recent maid on recognizing me had puckered up her lips as if about to.

‘I wouldn’t do that sort of thing again,’ she said.

‘If the necessity arose I would have no option.’

‘Then you’d better get one as soon as possible. Because if you keep on taking things out of Madeline’s eye, you may have to marry the girl.’

‘But surely the peril has passed now that she’s engaged to Spode.’

‘I don’t know so much. I think there’s some trouble between Spode and Madeline.’

I would be surprised to learn that in the whole W.1 postal section of London there is a man more capable than Bertram Wooster of bearing up with a stiff upper lip under what I have heard Jeeves call the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune; but at these frightful words I confess that I went into my old aspen routine even more wholeheartedly than I had done during my get-together with the relict of the late McCorkadale.

And not without reason. My whole foreign policy was based on the supposition that the solidarity of these two consenting adults was something that couldn’t be broken or even cracked. He, on his own statement, had worshipped her since she was so high, while she, as I have already recorded, would not lightly throw a man of his eligibility into the discard. If ever there was a union which you could have betted with perfect confidence would culminate in a golden wedding with all the trimmings, this was the one.

‘Trouble?’ I whispered hoarsely. ‘You mean there’s a what-d’you-call-it?’

‘What would that be?’

‘A rift within the lute which widens soon and makes the music mute. Not my own, Jeeves’s.’

‘The evidence points in that direction. At dinner last night I noticed that he was refusing Anatole’s best, while she looked wan and saintlike and crumbled bread. And talking of Anatole’s best, what I wanted to tell you about L. P. Runkle was that zero hour is approaching. I am crouching for my spring and have strong hopes that Tuppy will soon be in the money.’

I clicked the tongue. Nobody could be keener than I on seeing Tuppy dip into L. P. Runkle’s millions, but this was no time to change the subject.

‘Never mind about Tuppy for the moment. Concentrate on the sticky affairs of Bertram Wilberforce Wooster.’

‘Wilberforce,’ she murmured, as far as a woman of her outstanding lung power could murmur. ‘Did I ever tell you how you got that label? It was your father’s doing. The day before you were lugged to the font looking like a minor actor playing a bit part in a gangster film he won a packet on an outsider in the Grand National called that, and he insisted on you carrying on the name. Tough on you, but we all have our cross to bear. Your Uncle Tom’s second name is Portarlington, and I came within an ace of being christened Phyllis.’

I rapped her sharply on the top-knot with a paper-knife of Oriental design, the sort that people in novels of suspense are always getting stabbed in the back with.

‘Don’t wander from the
res
. The fact that you nearly got christened Phyllis will, no doubt, figure in your autobiography, but we need not discuss it now. What we are talking about is the ghastly peril that confronts me if the Madeline-Spode axis blows a fuse.’

‘You mean that if she breaks her engagement, you will have to fill the vacuum?’

‘Exactly.’

‘She won’t. Not a chance.’

‘But you said—’

‘I only wanted to emphasize my warning to you not to keep on taking gnats out of Madeline’s eyes. Perhaps I overdid it.’

‘You chilled me to the marrow.’

‘Sorry I was so dramatic. You needn’t worry. They’ve only had a lovers’ tiff such as occurs with the mushiest couples.’

‘What about?’

‘How do I know? Perhaps he queried her statement that the stars were God’s daisy chain.’

I had to admit that there was something in this theory. Madeline’s breach with Gussie Fink-Nottle had been caused by her drawing his attention to the sunset and saying sunsets always made her think of the Blessed Damozel leaning out from the gold bar of heaven, and he said, ‘Who?’ and she said, ‘The Blessed Damozel’, and he said, ‘Never heard of her’, adding that sunsets made him sick, and so did the Blessed Damozel. A girl with her outlook would be bound to be touchy about stars and daisy chains.

‘It’s probably over by now,’ said the ancestor. ‘All the same, you’d better keep away from the girl. Spode’s an impulsive man. He might slosh you.’

‘He said he would.’

‘He used the word slosh?’

‘No, but he assured me he would butter me over the front lawn and dance on the remains with hobnailed boots.’

‘Much the same thing. So I would be careful if I were you. Treat her with distant civility. If you see any more gnats headed in her direction, hold their coats and wish them luck, but restrain the impulse to mix in.’

‘I will.’

‘I hope I have relieved your fears?’

‘You have, old flesh and blood.’

‘Then why the furrows in your brow?’

‘Oh, those? It’s Ginger.’

‘What’s Ginger?’

‘He’s why my brow is furrowed.’

It shows how profoundly the thought of Madeline Bassett possibly coming into circulation again had moved me that it was only now that I had remembered Bingley and what he had said about the certainty of Ginger finishing as an also-ran in the election. I burned with shame and remorse that I should have allowed my personal troubles to make me shove him down to the foot of the agenda paper in this scurvy manner. Long ere this I ought to have been inviting Aunt Dahlia’s views on his prospects. Not doing so amounted to letting a pal down, a thing I pride myself on never being guilty of. Little wonder that I b’d with s and r.

I hastened to make amends, if those are what you make when you have done the dirty on a fellow you love like a brother.

‘Did I ever mention a bloke called Bingley to you?’

‘If you did, I’ve forgotten.’

‘He was my personal attendant for a brief space when Jeeves and I differed about me playing the banjolele. That time when I had a cottage down at Chufnell Regis.’

‘Oh yes, he set it on fire, didn’t he?’

‘While tight as an owl. It was burned to a cinder, as was my banjolele.’

‘I’ve got him placed now. What about him?’

‘He lives in Market Snodsbury. I met him this morning and happened to mention that I was canvassing for Ginger.’

‘If you can call it canvassing.’

‘And he told me I was wasting my time. He advised me to have a substantial bet on Ma McCorkadale. He said Ginger hadn’t an earthly.’

‘He’s a fool.’

‘I must say I’ve always thought so, but he spoke as if he had inside information.’

‘What on earth information could he have? An election isn’t a horse race where you get tips from the stable cat. I don’t say it may not be a close thing, but Ginger ought to win all right. He has a secret weapon.’

‘Repeat that, if you wouldn’t mind. I don’t think I got it.’

‘Ginger defies competition because he has a secret weapon.’

‘Which is?’

‘Spode.’

‘Spode?’

‘My lord Sidcup. Have you ever heard him speak?’

‘I did just now.’

‘In public, fool.’

‘Oh, in public. No, I haven’t.’

‘He’s a terrific orator, as I told you, only you’ve probably forgotten.’

This seemed likely enough to me. Spode at one time had been one of those Dictators, going about at the head of a band of supporters in footer shorts shouting ‘Heil Spode’, and to succeed in that line you have to be able to make speeches.

‘You aren’t fond of him, nor am I, but nobody can deny that he’s eloquent. Audiences hang on his every word, and when he’s finished cheer him to the echo.’

I nodded. I had had the same experience myself when singing ‘The Yeoman’s Wedding Song’ at village concerts. Two or three encores sometimes, even when I blew up in the words and had
to
fill in with ‘Ding dong, ding dong, ding dong, I hurry along’. I began to feel easier in my mind. I told her this, and she said ‘Your
what
?’

‘You have put new heart into me, old blood relation,’ I said, ignoring the crack. ‘You see, it means everything to him to win this election.’

‘Is he so bent on representing Market Snodsbury in the Westminster menagerie?’

‘It isn’t that so much. Left to himself, I imagine he could take Parliament or leave it alone. But he thinks Florence will give him the bum’s rush if he loses.’

‘He’s probably right. She can’t stand a loser.’

‘So he told me. Remember what happened to Percy Gorringe.’

‘And others. England is strewn with ex-fiancés whom she bounced because they didn’t come up to her specifications. Dozens of them. I believe they form clubs and societies.’

‘Perhaps calling themselves the Old Florentians.’

‘And having an annual dinner!’

We mused on Florence for awhile; then she said she ought to be going to confer with Anatole about dinner tonight, urging him to dish up something special. It was vital, she said, that he should excel his always high standard.

‘I was speaking, just now, when you interrupted me and turned my thoughts to the name Wilberforce, of L. P. Runkle.’

‘You said you had an idea he might be going to cooperate.’

‘Exactly. Have you ever seen a python after a series of hearty meals?’

‘Not to my knowledge.’

‘It gets all softened up. It becomes a kindlier, gentler, more lovable python. And if I am not greatly mistaken, the same thing is happening to L. P. Runkle as the result of Anatole’s cooking. You saw him at dinner last night.’

‘Sorry, no, I wasn’t looking. Every fibre of my being was concentrated on the foodstuffs. He would have repaid inspection, would he? Worth seeing, eh?’

‘He was positively beaming. He was too busy to utter, but it was plain that he had become all amiability and benevolence. He had the air of a man who would start scattering largesse if given a word of encouragement. It is for Anatole to see to it that this Christmas spirit does not evaporate but comes more and more to the boil. And I know that I can rely on him.’

‘Good old Anatole,’ I said, lighting a cigarette.

‘Amen,’ said the ancestor reverently; then, touching on another subject, ‘Take that foul cigarette outside, you young hellhound. It smells like an escape of sewer gas.’

Always glad to indulge her lightest whim, I passed through the French window, in a far different mood from that in which I had entered the room. Optimism now reigned in the Wooster bosom. Ginger, I told myself, was going to be all right, Tuppy was going to be all right, and it would not be long before the laughing love god straightened things out between Madeline and Spode, even if he had talked out of turn about stars and daisy chains.

Having finished the gasper, I was about to return and resume conversation with the aged relative, when from within there came the voice of Seppings, now apparently restored to health, and what he was saying froze me in every limb. I couldn’t have become stiffer if I had been Lot’s wife, whose painful story I had had to read up when I won that Scripture Knowledge prize.

What he was saying ran as follows:

‘Mrs McCorkadale, madam.’

10

LEANING AGAINST THE
side of the house, I breathed rather in the manner copyrighted by the hart which pants for cooling streams when heated in the chase. The realization of how narrowly I had missed having to mingle again with this blockbusting female barrister kept me Lot’s-wifed for what seemed an hour or so, though I suppose it can’t have been more than a few seconds. Then gradually I ceased to be a pillar of salt and was able to concentrate on finding out what on earth Ma McCorkadale’s motive was in paying us this visit. The last place, I mean to say, where you would have expected to find her. Considering how she stood in regard to Ginger, it was as if Napoleon had dropped in for a chat with Wellington on the eve of Waterloo.

I have had occasion to mention earlier the advantages as a listening-post afforded by the just-outside-the-French-window spot where I was standing. Invisible to those within, I could take in all they were saying, as I had done with Spode and L. P. Runkle. Both had come through loud and clear, and neither had had a notion that Bertram Wooster was on the outskirts, hearing all.

As I could hardly step in and ask her to repeat any of her remarks which I didn’t quite catch, it was fortunate that the McCorkadale’s voice was so robust, while Aunt Dahlia’s, of course, would be audible if you were at Hyde Park Corner and she in Piccadilly Circus. I have often thought that the deaf adder I read about when I won my Scripture Knowledge prize would have got the message right enough if the aged relative had been one of the charmers. I was able to continue leaning against the side of the house in full confidence that I shouldn’t miss a syllable of either protagonist’s words.