The Jeeves Omnibus (337 page)

To this I might have replied that I was perfectly entitled at all times to enter a summerhouse which was the property of my Aunt Dahlia and so related to me by ties of blood, but
something
told me that suavity would be the better policy. In rebuttal, therefore, I merely said that I wasn’t creeping about like a ruddy detective, but navigating with a firm and manly stride, and had simply been looking for him because Florence had ordered me to and I had learned from a usually well-informed source that this was where he was.

My reasoning had the soothing effect I had hoped for. His manner changed, losing its cinnamon bear quality and taking on a welcome all-pals-together-ness. It bore out what I have always said, that there’s nothing like suavity for pouring oil on the troubled w’s. When he spoke again, it was plain that he regarded me as a friend and an ally.

‘I suppose all this seems a bit odd to you, Bertie.’

‘Not at all, old man, not at all.’

‘But there is a simple explanation. I love Magnolia.’

‘I thought you loved Florence.’

‘So did I. But you know how apt one is to make mistakes.’

‘Of course.’

‘When you’re looking for the ideal girl, I mean.’

‘Quite.’

‘I dare say you’ve had the same experience yourself.’

‘From time to time.’

‘Happens to everybody, I expect.’

‘I shouldn’t wonder.’

‘Where one goes wrong when looking for the ideal girl is in making one’s selection before walking the full length of the counter. You meet someone with a perfect profile, platinum-blonde hair and a willowy figure, and you think your search is over. “Bingo!” you say to yourself. “This is the one. Accept no substitutes.” Little knowing that you are linking your lot with that of a female sergeant-major with strong views on the subject of discipline, and that if you’d only gone on a bit further you would have found the sweetest, kindest, gentlest girl that ever took down outgoing mail in shorthand, who would love you and cherish you and would never dream of giving you hell, no matter what the circumstances. I allude to Magnolia Glendennon.’

‘I thought you did.’

‘I can’t tell you how I feel about her, Bertie.’

‘Don’t try.’

‘Ever since we came down here I’ve had a lurking suspicion that she was the mate for me and that in signing on the dotted
line
with Florence I had made the boner of a lifetime. Just now my last doubts were dispelled.’

‘What happened just now?’

‘She rubbed the back of my neck. My interview with Florence, coming on top of that ghastly Chamber of Commerce lunch, had given me a splitting headache, and she rubbed the back of my neck. Then I knew. As those soft fingers touched my skin like dainty butterflies hovering over a flower—’

‘Right ho.’

‘It was a revelation, Bertie. I knew that I had come to journey’s end. I said to myself, “This is a good thing. Push it along.” I turned. I grasped her hand. I gazed into her eyes. She gazed into mine. I told her I loved her. She said so she did me. She fell into my arms. I grabbed her. We stood murmuring endearments, and for a while everything was fine. Couldn’t have been better. Then a thought struck me. There was a snag. You’ve probably spotted it.’

‘Florence?’

‘Exactly. Bossy though she is, plainspoken though she may be when anything displeases her, and I wish you could have heard her after that Chamber of Commerce lunch, I am still engaged to her. And while girls can break engagements till the cows come home, men can’t.’

I followed his train of thought. It was evident that he, like me, aimed at being a
preux chevalier
, and you simply can’t be
preux
or anything like it if you go about the place getting betrothed and then telling the party of the second part it’s all off. It seemed to me that the snag which had raised its ugly head was one of formidable – you might say king-size – dimensions, well calculated to make the current of whatever he proposed to do about it turn awry and lose the name of action. But when I put this to him with a sympathetic tremor in my voice, and I’m not sure I didn’t clasp his hand, he surprised me by chuckling like a leaky radiator.

‘That’s all right,’ he said. ‘It would, I admit, appear to be a tricky situation, but I can handle it. I’m going to get Florence to break the engagement.’

He spoke with such a gay, confident ring in his voice, so like the old ancestor predicting what she was going to do to L. P. Runkle in the playing-on-a-stringed-instrument line, that I was loth, if that’s the word I want, to say anything to depress him, but the question had to be asked.

‘How?’ I said, asking it.

‘Quite simple. We agreed, I think, that she has no use for a loser. I propose to lose this election.’

Well, it was a thought of course, and I was in complete agreement with his supposition that if the McCorkadale nosed ahead of him in the voting, Florence would in all probability hand him the pink slip, but where it seemed to me that the current went awry was that he had no means of knowing that the electorate would put him in second place. Of course voters are like aunts, you never know what they will be up to from one day to the next, but it was a thing you couldn’t count on.

I mentioned this to him, and he repeated his impersonation of a leaky radiator.

‘Don’t you worry, Bertie. I have the situation well in hand. Something happened in a dark corner of the Town Hall after lunch which justifies my confidence.’

‘What happened in a dark corner of the Town Hall after lunch?’

‘Well, the first thing that happened after lunch was that Florence got hold of me and became extremely personal. It was then that I realized that it would be the act of a fathead to marry her.’

I nodded adhesion to this sentiment. That time when she had broken her engagement with me my spirits had soared and I had gone about singing like a relieved nightingale.

One thing rather puzzled me and seemed to call for explanatory notes.

‘Why did Florence draw you into a dark corner when planning to become personal?’ I asked. ‘I wouldn’t have credited her with so much tact and consideration. As a rule, when she’s telling people what she thinks of them, an audience seems to stimulate her. I recall one occasion when she ticked me off in the presence of seventeen Girl Guides, all listening with their ears flapping, and she had never spoken more fluently.’

He put me straight on the point I had raised. He said he had misled me.

‘It wasn’t Florence who drew me into the dark corner, it was Bingley.’

‘Bingley?’

‘A fellow who worked for me once.’

‘He worked for me once.’

‘Really? It’s a small world, isn’t it.’

‘Pretty small. Did you know he’d come into money?’

‘He’ll soon be coming into some more.’

‘But you were saying he drew you into the dark corner. Why did he do that?’

‘Because he had a proposition to make to me which demanded privacy. He … but before going on I must lay a proper foundation. You know in those Perry Mason stories how whenever Perry says anything while cross-examining a witness, the District Attorney jumps up and yells “Objection, your honour. The S.O.B. has laid no proper foundation”. Well, then, you must know that this man Bingley belongs to a butlers and valets club in London called the Junior Ganymede, and one of the rules there is that members have to record the doings of their employers in the club book.’

I would have told him I knew all too well about that, but he carried on before I could speak.

‘Such a book, as you can imagine, contains a lot of damaging stuff, and he told me he had been obliged to contribute several pages about me which, if revealed, would lose me so many votes that the election would be a gift to my opponent. He added that some men in his place would have sold it to the opposition and made a lot of money, but he wouldn’t do a thing like that because it would be low and in the short time we were together he had come to have a great affection for me. I had never realized before what an extraordinarily good chap he was. I had always thought him a bit of a squirt. Shows how wrong you can be about people.’

Again I would have spoken, but he rolled over me like a tidal wave.

‘I should have explained that the committee of the Junior Ganymede, recognizing the importance of this book, had entrusted it to him with instructions to guard it with his life, and his constant fear was that bad men would get wind of this and try to steal it. So what would remove a great burden from his mind, he said, would be if I took it into my possession. Then I could be sure that its contents wouldn’t be used against me. I could return it to him after the election and slip him a few quid, if I wished, as a token of my gratitude. You can picture me smiling my subtle smile as he said this. He little knew that my first act would be to send the thing by messenger to the offices of the
Market Snodsbury Argus-Reminder
, thereby handing the election on a plate to the McCorkadale and enabling
me
to free myself from my honourable obligations to Florence, who would of course, on reading the stuff, recoil from me in horror. Do you know the
Argus-Reminder?
Very far to the left. Can’t stand Conservatives. It had a cartoon of me last week showing me with my hands dripping with the blood of the martyred proletariat. I don’t know where they get these ideas. I’ve never spilled a drop of anybody’s blood except when boxing, and then the other chap was spilling mine – wholesome give and take. So it wasn’t long before Bingley and I had everything all fixed up. He couldn’t give me the book then, as he had left it at home, and he wouldn’t come and have a drink with me because he had to hurry back because he thought Jeeves might be calling and he didn’t want to miss him. Apparently Jeeves is a pal of his – old club crony, that sort of thing. We’re meeting tomorrow. I shall reward him with a purse of gold, he will give me the book, and five minutes later, if I can find some brown paper and string, it will be on its way to the
Argus-Reminder
. The material should be in print the day after tomorrow. Allow an hour or so for Florence to get hold of a copy and say twenty minutes for a chat with her after she’s read it, and I ought to be a free man well before lunch. About how much gold do you think I should reward Bingley with? Figures were not named, but I thought at least a hundred quid, because he certainly deserves something substantial for his scrupulous high-mindedness. As he said, some men in his place would have sold the book to the opposition and cleaned up big.’

By what I have always thought an odd coincidence he paused at this point and asked me why I was looking like something the cat brought in, precisely as the aged relative had asked me after my interview with Ma McCorkadale. I don’t know what cats bring into houses, but one assumes that it is something not very jaunty, and apparently, when in the grip of any strong emotion, I resemble their treasure trove. I could well understand that I was looking like that now. I find it distasteful to have to shatter a long-time buddy’s hopes and dreams, and no doubt this shows on the surface.

There was no sense in beating about bushes. It was another of those cases of if it were done, then ’twere well ’twere done quickly.

‘Ginger,’ I said, ‘I’m afraid I have a bit of bad news for you. ‘That book is no longer among those present. Jeeves called on Bingley, gave him a Mickey Finn and got it away from him. He now has it among his archives.’

He didn’t get it at first, and I had to explain.

‘Bingley is not the man of integrity you think him. He is on the contrary a louse of the first water. You might describe him as a slimy slinking slug. He pinched that book from the Junior Ganymede and tried to sell it to the McCorkadale. She sent him away with a flea in his ear because she was a fair fighter, and he tried to sell it to you. But meanwhile Jeeves nipped in and obtained it.’

It took him perhaps a minute to absorb this, but to my surprise he wasn’t a bit upset.

‘Well, that’s all right. Jeeves can take it to the
Argus-Reminder
.’

I shook the loaf sadly, for I knew that this time those hopes and dreams of his were really due for a sock in the eye.

‘He wouldn’t do it, Ginger. To Jeeves that club book is sacred. I’ve gone after him a dozen times, urging him to destroy the pages concerning me, but he always remains as uncooperative as Balaam’s ass, who, you may remember, dug his feet in and firmly refused to play ball. He’ll never let it out of his hands.’

He took it, as I had foreseen, big. He spluttered a good deal. He also kicked the table and would have splintered it if it hadn’t been made of marble. It must have hurt like sin, but what disturbed him, I deduced, was not so much the pain of a bruised toe as spiritual anguish. His eyes glittered, his nose wiggled, and if he was not gnashing his teeth I don’t know a gnashed tooth when I hear one.

‘Oh, won’t he?’ he said, going back into the old cinnamon bear routine. ‘He won’t, won’t he? We’ll see about that. Pop off, Bertie. I want to think.’

I popped off, glad to do so. These displays of naked emotion take it out of one.

14

THE SHORTEST WAY
to the house was across the lawn, but I didn’t take it. Instead, I made for the back door. It was imperative, I felt, that I should see Jeeves without delay and tell him of the passions he had unchained and warn him, until the hot blood had had time to cool, to keep out of Ginger’s way. I hadn’t at all liked the sound of the latter’s ‘We’ll see about that’, nor the clashing of those gnashed teeth. I didn’t of course suppose that, however much on the boil, he would inflict personal violence on Jeeves – sock him, if you prefer the expression – but he would certainly say things to him which would wound his feelings and cause their relations, so pleasant up to now, to deteriorate. And naturally I didn’t want that to happen.

Jeeves was in a deck-chair outside the back door, reading Spinoza with the cat Augustus on his lap. I had given him the Spinoza at Christmas and he was constantly immersed in it. I hadn’t dipped into it myself, but he tells me it is good ripe stuff, well worth perusal.