The Jeeves Omnibus - Vol 1: (Jeeves & Wooster): No.1 (18 page)

However, I carried on stoutly and, having related the salient facts, wound up with a pretty eloquent plea for the stearic matter.

‘Butter, Chuffy, old man,’ I said. ‘Slabs of butter. If you have butter, prepare to shed it now. I’ll just saunter about out here, shall I, while you pop to the kitchen and secure the stuff? And you realize, don’t you, that time is of the essence? I shall only just be able to catch that train, as it is.’

He did not speak for a moment or two. When he did, there was such a nasty tinkle in his voice that I confess the heart sank.

‘Let me get all this straight,’ he said. ‘You want me to bring you butter?’

‘That’s the idea.’

‘So that you can clean your face and go off on this train to London.’

‘Yes.’

‘Thus escaping from Mr Stoker.’

‘That’s right. Amazing the way you’ve followed it all,’ I said in a congratulatory sort of voice, deeming it best to suck up a bit and apply the old salve. ‘I don’t suppose I know six fellows who would
have
grasped the plot with the same unerring accuracy. I’ve always thought highly of your intelligence, Chuffy, old man – very highly.’

But the heart was still sinking. And when I heard him snort emotionally in the darkness it touched a new low.

‘I see,’ he said. ‘In other words, you wish me to help you back out of your honourable obligations, what?’

‘What?’

‘That’s what I said – “What?” Good God!’ cried Chuffy, and I dare say he quivered from head to foot, but I couldn’t see properly, it being too dark. ‘I didn’t interrupt when you were telling me your degrading story, because I wanted to get it quite clear. Now, perhaps, you will let me say a word.’

He snorted a bit more.

‘You want to catch trains to London, do you? I see. Well, I don’t know what you think of yourself, Wooster, but, if you would care to know how your conduct strikes a perfectly unprejudiced outsider, I don’t mind informing you that in my opinion you are behaving like a hound, a skunk, a worm, a tick, and a wart-hog. Good gosh! This beautiful girl loves you. Her father very decently consents to an early wedding. And instead of being delighted and pleased and tickled as – er – as anybody else would be, you are planning to edge away.’

‘But, Chuffy –’

‘I repeat, to edge away. You are brutally and callously scheming to oil out, leaving this lovely girl to break her heart – deserted, abandoned, flung aside like a … like a … I shall forget my own name next … like a soiled glove.’

‘But, Chuffy –’

‘Don’t try to deny it.’

‘But, dash it, it isn’t as if she were in love with me.’

‘Ha! Isn’t she so infatuated with you that she swims ashore from yachts to get at you?’

‘She loves you.’

‘Ha!’

‘She does, I tell you. It was you she swam ashore last night to see. And she only took on this binge of marrying me to score off you because you doubted her.’

‘Ha!’

‘So take the sensible viewpoint, old man, and bring me butter.’

‘Ha!’

‘I wish you wouldn’t keep saying “Ha!” It doesn’t advance the issue, and it sounds rotten. I must have butter, Chuffy. It is of the
essence
. If it be only a small pat, bring it out. Wooster speaking, old man – the chap you were at school with, the fellow you’ve known since he was so high.’

I paused. For a moment I had an idea that this had done the trick. I felt his hand fall on my shoulder with a distinct kneading movement. At that instant I would have put my shirt on it that he was softened.

And so he was, but not along the right lines.

‘I will tell you exactly how I feel about all this, Bertie,’ he said, and there was a sort of beastly gentleness in his manner. ‘I won’t pretend that I don’t love this girl. Even after what has happened, I still love her. I shall always love her. I loved her from the first moment we met. It was at the Savoy Grill, I remember, and she was sitting on one of those chairs in that lobby place half-way through a medium dry Martini, because Sir Roderick and I were a bit late getting there and her father had thought they might as well be having a cocktail instead of just sitting. Our eyes met, and I knew that I had found the only girl in the world for me, not having the foggiest that she was really crazy about you.’

‘She isn’t!’

‘I realize it now, and I know, of course, that I can never win her for myself. But I can do this, Bertie. Having this great love for her, I can see to it that she is not robbed of her happiness. If she is happy, that is all that matters. For some reason her heart is set on being your wife. Why, one cannot say, and we need not go into it. But for some unexplained reason she wants you, and she shall jolly well get you. Funny that you should have come to me, of all people, to help you shatter her girlish dreams and rob her of her sweet, childlike trust in the goodness of human nature! You think I will sit in with you on this foul project? My left foot I will! You get no butter from me, my lad. You will remain exactly as you are, and, after thinking it over, I have no doubt that you will find your better self pointing the way and that you will go back to the yacht, prepared to fulfil your obligations like an English gentleman.’

‘But, Chuffy –’

‘And, if you wish, I will be your best man. Agony, of course, but I’ll do it if you want me to.’

I clutched at his arm.

‘Butter, Chuffy!’

He shook his head.

‘No butter, Wooster. You are better without it.’

And, flinging aside my hand like a soiled glove, he stalked past me into the night.

I don’t know how long it was that I stood there, rooted to the s. It may have been a short time. It may have been quite a stretch. Despair was gripping me, and when that happens you don’t keep looking at your watch.

Let us say, then, that at some point – five, ten, fifteen, or it may have been twenty minutes, later – I became aware of somebody coughing softly at my side like a respectful sheep trying to attract the attention of its shepherd, and how can I describe with what thankfulness and astonishment I perceived Jeeves.

A BALLY MIRACLE
it seemed to me at the moment, but of course there was a simple explanation.

‘I was hoping that you would not have left the grounds, sir,’ he said. ‘I have been searching for you for some little time. On learning that the scullerymaid had become a victim of hysterics as the result of opening the back door and observing a black man, I sprang to the conclusion that you must have been calling there, no doubt with a view to seeing me. Has something gone wrong, sir?’

I wiped the brow.

‘Jeeves,’ I said, ‘I feel like a lost child that has found its mother.’

‘Indeed, sir?’

‘If you don’t mind me calling you a mother?’

‘Not at all, sir.’

‘Thank you, Jeeves.’

‘Then there is something wrong, sir?’

‘Wrong! You said it. What are those sore things people find themselves in?’

‘Straits, sir.’

‘I am in the sorest straits, Jeeves. To start with, I found that soap and water won’t get this stuff off.

‘No, sir. I should have informed you that butter is a
sine qua non
.’

‘Well, I was on the point of getting butter when Brinkley – my man, you know – suddenly blew in and burned the house down.’

‘Too bad, sir.’

‘The expression “Too bad” scarcely overstates it, Jeeves. It landed me in the dickens of a hole. I came here. I tried to get in touch with you. But that scullerymaid gummed up that project.’

‘A temperamental girl, sir. And by an unfortunate coincidence she and the cook, at the moment of your arrival, had just been occupying
themselves
with the Ouija board – with, I believe, some interesting results. She appears to have regarded you as a materialized spirit.’

I quivered a bit.

‘If cooks would stick to their roasts and hashes,’ I said rather severely, ‘and not waste their time in psychical research, life would be a very different thing.’

‘Quite true, sir.’

‘Well, then I ran into Chuffy. He stoutly declined to lend me butter.’

‘Indeed, sir?’

‘He was in a very unpleasant mood.’

‘His lordship is undergoing a good deal of mental anguish at the moment, sir.’

‘I could see that. He left me apparently to go for a country ramble. At this time of night!’

‘Physical exercise is a recognized palliative when the heart is aching, sir.’

‘Well, I mustn’t think too harshly of Chuffy. I must always remember that he kicked Brinkley properly. It did me good to watch him. And now you’ve turned up, all is well. The happy ending, what?’

‘Precisely, sir. I shall be delighted to procure you butter.’

‘But can I still catch that 10.21?’

‘I fear not, sir. But I have ascertained that there is another train as late as 11.50.’

‘Then I’m on velvet.’

‘Yes, sir.’

I breathed deeply. The relief was great.

‘I shouldn’t wonder if you couldn’t even dig me up a packet of sandwiches for the journey, what?’

‘Certainly, sir.’

‘And a drop of something?’

‘Undoubtedly, sir.’

‘Then if you happened to have such a thing as a cigarette on your person at this moment, everything would be more or less perfect.’

‘Turkish or Virginian, sir?’

‘Both.’

There is nothing like a quiet cigarette for soothing the system. For some moments I puffed luxuriously, and my nerves, which had been sticking out of my body an inch long and curled at the ends, gradually slipped into place again. I felt restored and invigorated and in a mood for conversation.

‘What was all that yelling about, Jeeves?’

‘Sir?’

‘Just before I met Chuffy, animal cries started to proceed from somewhere in the house. It sounded like Seabury.’

‘It was Master Seabury, sir. He is a little fractious tonight.’

‘What’s biting him?’

‘He is somewhat acutely disappointed, sir, at having missed the negro entertainment on the yacht.’

‘Absolutely his own fault, the silly little geezer. If he wanted to go to Dwight’s birthday-party, he shouldn’t have started a scrap with him.’

‘Just so, sir.’

‘To attempt to touch your host for one and sixpence protection money on the eve of a birthday-party is the act of a fathead.’

‘Very true, sir.’

‘What did they do about it? He seems to have stopped yelling. Did they chloroform him?’

‘No, sir. I understand that steps are being taken to provide something in the nature of an alternative entertainment for the little fellow.’

‘How do you mean, Jeeves? Are they having the niggers up here?’

‘No, sir. The expense rules that project out of the sphere of practical politics. But I understand that her ladyship has induced Sir Roderick Glossop to offer his services.’

I could not follow this.

‘Old Glossop?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘But what can he do?’

‘It appears, sir, that he has a pleasing baritone voice and as a younger man – in the days when he was a medical student – was often accustomed to render songs at smoking concerts and similar entertainments.’

‘Old Glossop!’

‘Yes, sir. I overheard him telling her ladyship so.’

‘Well, I would never have thought it.’

‘I agree that one would scarcely suspect such a thing from his bearing nowadays, sir.
Tempora mutantur, nos et mutamur in illis
.’

‘Then you mean that he is going to soothe young Seabury with song?’

‘Yes, sir. Accompanied by her ladyship on the piano.’

I spotted the snag.

‘It won’t work, Jeeves. Reason it out for yourself.’

‘Sir!’

‘Well, here is a kid who has been looking forward to seeing a troupe of nigger minstrels do their stuff. Is he likely to accept as an adequate substitute a white-faced loony-doctor accompanied by his mother on the piano?’

‘Not white-faced, sir.’

‘What!’

‘No, sir. The question was debated, and it was her ladyship’s view that something in the nature of a negroid performance was indispensable. The young gentleman, when in his present frame of mind, is always extremely exigent.’

I swallowed a puff of smoke the wrong way in my emotion.

‘Old Glossop isn’t blacking up?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Jeeves, pull yourself together. This can’t be true. He is blacking his face?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘It isn’t possible.’

‘Sir Roderick is very amenable at the moment, sir, you must remember, to any suggestion emanating from her ladyship.’

‘You mean he’s in love?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘And Love conquers all?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘But even so … If you were in love, Jeeves, would you black up to entertain the son of the adored object?’

‘No, sir. But we are not all constituted alike.’

‘True.’

‘Sir Roderick did endeavour to protest, but her ladyship overruled his objections. And, as a matter of fact, sir, I think that, on the whole, it is a good thing that she did. Sir Roderick’s kindly act will serve to heal the breach between Master Seabury and himself. I happen to know that the young gentleman has been unsuccessful in his endeavour to extract protection money from Sir Roderick, and was resenting the fact keenly.’

‘He tried to gouge the old boy?’

‘Yes, sir. For ten shillings. I have the information from the young gentleman himself.’

‘They all confide in you, Jeeves.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘And old Glossop wouldn’t kick in?’

‘No, sir. Instead, he read the young gentleman something of a lecture. What the young gentleman described as “pi-jaws”. And I happen to know that hard feelings existed as a consequence on the latter’s side. So much so, indeed, that I received the impression that he had been planning something in the nature of a reprisal.’

‘He wouldn’t have the nerve to do the dirty on a future stepfather, would he?’

‘Young gentlemen are headstrong, sir.’

‘True. One recalls the case of my Aunt Agatha’s son, young Thos, and the Cabinet Minister.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘In a spirit of ill-will he marooned him on an island in the lake with a swan.’