The Jeeves Omnibus - Vol 1: (Jeeves & Wooster): No.1 (34 page)

‘Tell me,’ continued Gussie, ‘what sort of voice is she in these days? I ask, because if she is going to make those hunting noises of hers at me during her visit, I shall be compelled to tick her off pretty sharply. I had enough of that sort of thing when I was staying at Brinkley.’

I would have liked to go on musing on the unpleasant situation which had arisen, but it seemed to me that I had been given the cue to begin my probe.

‘What’s happened to you, Gussie?’ I asked.

‘Eh?’

‘Since when have you been like this?’

‘I don’t understand you.’

‘Well, to take an instance, saying you’re going to tick Aunt Dahlia off. At Brinkley, you cowered before her like a wet sock. And, to take another instance, telling Spode not to talk rot. By the way, what was he talking rot about?’

‘I forgot. He talks so much rot.’

‘I wouldn’t have the nerve to tell Spode not to talk rot,’ I said frankly. My candour met with an immediate response.

‘Well, to tell you the truth, Bertie,’ said Gussie, coming clean, ‘neither would I, a week ago.’

‘What happened a week ago?’

‘I had a spiritual rebirth. Thanks to Jeeves. There’s a chap, Bertie!’

‘Ah!’

‘We are as little children, frightened of the dark, and Jeeves is the wise nurse who takes us by the hand and –’

‘Switches the light on?’

‘Precisely. Would you care to hear about it?’

I assured him that I was all agog. I settled myself in my chair and, putting match to gasper, awaited the inside story.

Gussie stood silent for a moment. I could see that he was marshalling his facts. He took off his spectacles and polished them.

‘A week ago, Bertie,’ he began, ‘my affairs had reached a crisis. I was faced by an ordeal, the mere prospect of which blackened the horizon. I discovered that I would have to make a speech at the wedding breakfast.’

‘Well, naturally.’

‘I know, but for some reason I had not foreseen it, and the news came as a stunning blow. And shall I tell you why I was so overcome by stark horror at the idea of making a speech at the wedding breakfast? It was because Roderick Spode and Sir Watkyn Bassett would be in the audience. Do you know Sir Watkyn intimately?’

‘Not very. He once fined me five quid at his police court.’

‘Well, you can take it from me that he is a hard nut, and he strongly objects to having me as a son-in-law. For one thing, he would have liked Madeline to marry Spode – who, I may mention, has loved her since she was so high.’

‘Oh, yes?’ I said, courteously concealing my astonishment that anyone except a certified boob like himself could deliberately love this girl.

‘Yes. But apart from the fact that she wanted to marry me, he didn’t want to marry her. He looks upon himself as a Man of Destiny, you see, and feels that marriage would interfere with his mission. He takes a line through Napoleon.’

I felt that before proceeding further I must get the low-down on this Spode. I didn’t follow all this Man of Destiny stuff.

‘How do you mean, his mission? Is he someone special?’

‘Don’t you ever read the papers? Roderick Spode is the founder and head of the Saviours of Britain, a Fascist organization better known as the Black Shorts. His general idea, if he doesn’t get knocked on the head with a bottle in one of the frequent brawls in which he and his followers indulge, is to make himself a Dictator.’

‘Well, I’m blowed!’

I was astounded at my keenness of perception. The moment I
had
set eyes on Spode, if you remember, I had said to myself ‘What ho! A Dictator!’ and a Dictator he had proved to be. I couldn’t have made a better shot, if I had been one of those detectives who see a chap walking along the street and deduce that he is a retired manufacturer of poppet valves named Robinson with rheumatism in one arm, living at Clapham.

‘Well, I’m dashed! I thought he was something of that sort. That chin … Those eyes … And, for the matter of that, that moustache. By the way, when you say “shorts”, you mean “shirts”, or course.’

‘No. By the time Spode formed his association, there were no shirts left. He and his adherents wear black shorts.’

‘Footer bags, you mean?’

‘Yes.’

‘How perfectly foul.’

‘Yes.’

‘Bare knees?’

‘Bare knees.’

‘Golly!’

‘Yes.’

A thought struck me, so revolting that I nearly dropped my gasper.

‘Does old Bassett wear black shorts?’

‘No. He isn’t a member of the Saviours of Britain.’

‘Then how does he come to be mixed up with Spode? I met them going around London like a couple of sailors on shore leave.’

‘Sir Watkyn is engaged to be married to his aunt – a Mrs Wintergreen, widow of the late Colonel H. H. Wintergreen, of Pont Street.’

I mused for a moment, reviewing in my mind the scene in the antique-bin.

When you are standing in the dock, with a magistrate looking at you over his pince-nez and talking about you as ‘the prisoner Wooster’, you have ample opportunity for drinking him in, and what had struck me principally about Sir Watkyn Bassett that day at Bosher Street had been his peevishness. In that shop, on the other hand, he had given the impression of a man who has found the blue bird. He had hopped about like a carefree cat on hot bricks, exhibiting the merchandise to Spode with little chirps of ‘I think your aunt would like this?’ and ‘How about this?’ and so forth. And now a clue to that fizziness had been provided.

‘Do you know, Gussie,’ I said, ‘I’ve an idea he must have clicked yesterday.’

‘Quite possibly. However, never mind about that. That is not the point.’

‘No, I know. But it’s interesting.’

‘No, it isn’t.’

‘Perhaps you’re right.’

‘Don’t let us go wandering off into side issues,’ said Gussie, calling the meeting to order. ‘Where was I?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘I do. I was telling you that Sir Watkyn disliked the idea of having me for a son-in-law. Spode also was opposed to the match. Nor did he make any attempt to conceal the fact. He used to come popping out at me from round corners and muttering threats.’

‘You couldn’t have liked that.’

‘I didn’t.’

‘Why did he mutter threats?’

‘Because though he would not marry Madeline, even if she would have him, he looks on himself as a sort of knight, watching over her. He keeps telling me that the happiness of that little girl is very dear to him, and that if ever I let her down, he will break my neck. That is the gist of the threats he mutters, and that was one of the reasons why I was a bit agitated when Madeline became distant in her manner, on catching me with Stephanie Byng.’

‘Tell me, Gussie, what were you and Stiffy actually doing?’

‘I was taking a fly out of her eye.’

I nodded. If that was his story, no doubt he was wise to stick to it.

‘So much for Spode. We now come to Sir Watkyn Bassett. At our very first meeting I could see that I was not his dream man.’

‘Me, too.’

‘I became engaged to Madeline, as you know, at Brinkley Court. The news of the betrothal was, therefore, conveyed to him by letter, and I imagine that the dear girl must have hauled up her slacks about me in a way that led him to suppose that what he was getting was a sort of cross between Robert Taylor and Einstein. At any rate, when I was introduced to him as the man who was to marry his daughter, he just stared for a moment and said “What?” Incredulously, you know, as if he were hoping that this was some jolly practical joke and that the real chap would shortly jump out from behind a chair and say “Boo!” When he at last got on to it that there was no deception, he went off into a corner and sat there for
some
time, holding his head in his hands. After that I used to catch him looking at me over the top of his pince-nez. It unsettled me.’

I wasn’t surprised. I have already alluded to the effect that over-the-top-of-the-pince-nez look of old Bassett’s had had on me, and I could see that, if directed at Gussie, it might quite conceivably have stirred the old egg up a good deal.

‘He also sniffed. And when he learned from Madeline that I was keeping newts in my bedroom, he said something very derogatory – under his breath, but I heard him.’

‘You’ve got the troupe with you, then?’

‘Of course. I am in the middle of a very delicate experiment. An American professor has discovered that the full moon influences the love life of several undersea creatures, including one species of fish, two starfish groups, eight kinds of worms and a ribbon-like seaweed called Dictyota. The moon will be full in two or three days, and I want to find out if it affects the love life of newts, too.’

‘But what
is
the love life of newts, if you boil it right down? Didn’t you tell me once that they just waggled their tails at one another in the mating season?’

‘Quite correct.’

I shrugged my shoulders.

‘Well, all right, if they like it. But it’s not my idea of molten passion. So old Bassett didn’t approve of the dumb chums?’

‘No. He didn’t approve of anything about me. It made things most difficult and disagreeable. Add Spode, and you will understand why I was beginning to get thoroughly rattled. And then, out of a blue sky, they sprang it on me that I would have to make a speech at the wedding breakfast – to an audience, as I said before, of which Roderick Spode and Sir Watkyn Bassett would form a part.’

He paused, and swallowed convulsively, like a Pekingese taking a pill.

‘I am a shy man, Bertie. Diffidence is the price I pay for having a hyper-sensitive nature. And you know how I feel about making speeches under any conditions. The mere idea appals me. When you lugged me into that prize-giving affair at Market Snodsbury, the thought of standing on a platform, faced by a mob of pimply boys, filled me with a panic terror. It haunted my dreams. You can imagine, then, what it was like for me to have to contemplate that wedding breakfast. To the task of haranguing a flock of aunts and cousins I might have steeled myself. I don’t say it would have been easy, but I might have managed it. But to get up with Spode on one
side
of me and Sir Watkyn Bassett on the other … I didn’t see how I was going to face it. And then out of the night that covered me, black as the pit from pole to pole, there shone a tiny gleam of hope. I thought of Jeeves.’

His hand moved upwards, and I think his idea was to bare his head reverently. The project was, however, rendered null and void by the fact that he hadn’t a hat on.

‘I thought of Jeeves,’ he repeated, ‘and I took the train to London and placed my problem before him. I was fortunate to catch him in time.’

‘How do you mean, in time?’

‘Before he left England.’

‘He isn’t leaving England.’

‘He told me that you and he were starting off almost immediately on one of those Round-The-World cruises.’

‘Oh, no, that’s all off. I didn’t like the scheme.’

‘Does Jeeves say it’s all off?’

‘No, but I do.’

‘Oh?’

He looked at me rather oddly, and I thought he was going to say something more on the subject. But he only gave a rummy sort of short laugh, and resumed his narrative.

‘Well, as I say, I went to Jeeves, and put the facts before him. I begged him to try to find some way of getting me out of this frightful situation in which I was enmeshed – assuring him that I would not blame him if he failed to do so, because it seemed to me, after some days of reviewing this matter, that I was beyond human aid. And you will scarcely credit this, Bertie, I hadn’t got more than half-way through the glass of orange juice with which he had supplied me, when he solved the whole thing. I wouldn’t have believed it possible. I wonder what that brain of his weighs?’

‘A good bit, I fancy. He eats a lot of fish. So it was a winner, was it, this idea?’

‘It was terrific. He approached the matter from the psychological angle. In the final analysis, he said, disinclination to speak in public is due to fear of one’s audience.’

‘Well, I could have told you that.’

‘Yes, but he indicated how this might be cured. We do not, he said, fear those whom we despise. The thing to do, therefore, is to cultivate a lofty contempt for those who will be listening to one.’

‘How?’

‘Quite simple. You fill your mind with scornful thoughts about them. You keep saying to yourself: “Think of that pimple on Smith’s nose” … “Consider Jones’s flapping ears” … “Remember the time Robinson got hauled up before the beak for travelling first-class with a third-class ticket” … “Don’t forget you once saw the child Brown being sick at a children’s party” … and so on. So that when you are called upon to address Smith, Jones, Robinson and Brown, they have lost their sting. You dominate them.’

I pondered on this.

‘I see. Well, yes, it sounds good, Gussie. But would it work in practice?’

‘My dear chap, it works like a charm. I’ve tested it. You recall my speech at that dinner of yours?’

I started.

‘You weren’t despising us?’

‘Certainly I was. Thoroughly.’

‘What, me?’

‘You, and Freddie Widgeon, and Bingo Little, and Catsmeat Potter-Pirbright, and Barmy Fotheringay-Phipps, and all the rest of those present. “Worms!” I said to myself. “What a crew!” I said to myself. “There’s old Bertie,” I said to myself. “Golly!” I said to myself, “what I know about
him
!” With the result that I played on you as on a lot of stringed instruments, and achieved an outstanding triumph.’

I must say I was conscious of a certain chagrin. A bit thick, I mean, being scorned by a goof like Gussie – and that at a moment when he had been bursting with one’s meat and orange juice.

But soon more generous emotions prevailed. After all, I told myself, the great thing – the fundamental thing to which all other considerations must yield – was to get this Fink-Nottle safely under the wire and off on his honeymoon. And but for this advice of Jeeves’s, the muttered threats of Roderick Spode and the combined sniffing and looking over the top of the pince-nez of Sir Watkyn Bassett might well have been sufficient to destroy his morale entirely and cause him to cancel the wedding arrangements and go off hunting newts in Africa.