“Very good, sir.”
“And about the tea. Get in some muffins.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And some jam, ham, cake, scrambled eggs, and five or six waggonloads of sardines.”
“Sardines, sir?” said Jeeves, with a shudder.
“Sardines.”
There was an awkward pause.
“Don’t blame me, Jeeves,” I said. “It isn’t my fault.
“No, sir.”
“Well, that’s that.”
“Yes, sir.”
I could see the man was brooding tensely.
∗
I’ve found, as a general rule in life, that the things you think are going to be the scaliest nearly always turn out not so bad after all; but it wasn’t that way with Bingo’s tea-party. From the moment he invited himself I felt that the thing was going to be blue round the edges, and it was. And I think the most gruesome part of the whole affair was the fact that, for the first time since I’d known him, I saw Jeeves come very near to being rattled. I suppose there’s a chink in everyone’s armour, and young Bingo found Jeeves’s right at the drop of the flag when he breezed in with six inches or so of brown beard hanging on to his chin. I had forgotten to warn Jeeves about the beard, and it came on him absolutely out of a blue sky. I saw the man’s jaw drop, and he clutched at the table for support. I don’t blame him, mind you. Few people have ever looked fouler than young Bingo in the fungus. Jeeves paled a little; then the weakness passed and he was himself again. But I could see that he had been shaken.
Young Bingo was too busy introducing the mob to take much notice. They were a very C3 collection. Comrade Butt looked like one of the things that come out of dead trees after the rain; moth-eaten was the word I should have used to describe old Rowbotham; and as for Charlotte, she seemed to take me straight into another and a dreadful world. It wasn’t that she was exactly bad-looking. In fact, if she had knocked off starchy foods and done Swedish exercises for a bit, she might have been quite tolerable. But there was too much of her. Billowy curves. Well-nourished, perhaps, expresses it best. And, while she may have had a heart of gold, the thing you noticed about her first was that she had a tooth of gold. I knew that young Bingo, when in form, could fall in love with practically anything of the other sex; but this time I couldn’t see any excuse for him at all.
“My friend, Mr. Wooster,” said Bingo, completing the ceremonial.
Old Rowbotham looked at me and then he looked round the room, and I could see he wasn’t particularly braced. There’s nothing of absolutely Oriental luxury about the old flat, but I have managed to make myself fairly comfortable, and I suppose the surroundings jarred him a bit.
“Mr. Wooster?” said old Rowbotham. “May I say Comrade Wooster?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Are you of the movement?”
“Well — er —”
“Do you yearn for the Revolution?”
“Well, I don’t know that I exactly yearn. I mean to say, as far as I can make out, the whole hub of the scheme seems to be to massacre coves like me; and I don’t mind owning I’m not frightfully keen on the idea.”
“But I’m talking him round,” said Bingo. “I’m wrestling with him. A few more treatments ought to do the trick.”
Old Rowbotham looked at me a bit doubtfully.
“Comrade Little has great eloquence,” he admitted.
“I think he talks something wonderful,” said the girl, and young Bingo shot a glance of such succulent devotion at her that I reeled in my tracks. It seemed to depress Comrade Butt a good deal too. He scowled at the carpet and said something about dancing on volcanoes.
“Tea is served, sir,” said Jeeves.
“Tea, pa!” said Charlotte, starting at the word like the old war-horse who hears the bugle; and we got down to it.
Funny how one changes as the years roll on. At school, I remember, I would cheerfully have sold my soul for scrambled eggs and sardines at five in the afternoon; but somehow, since reaching man’s estate, I had rather dropped out of the habit; and I’m bound to admit I was appalled to a goodish extent at the way the sons and daughter of the Revolution shoved their heads down and went for the foodstuffs. Even Comrade Butt cast off his gloom for a space and immersed his whole being in scrambled eggs, only coming to the surface at intervals to grab another cup of tea. Presently the hot water gave out, and I turned to Jeeves.
“More hot water.”
“Very good, sir.”
“Hey! what’s this? What’s this?” Old Rowbotham had lowered his cup and was eyeing us sternly. He tapped Jeeves on the shoulder. “No servility, my lad; no servility!”
“I beg your pardon, sir?”
“Don’t call me “sir.” Call me Comrade. Do you know what you are, my lad? You’re an obsolete relic of an exploded feudal system.”
“Very good, sir.”
“If there’s one thing that makes the blood boil in my veins —”
“Have another sardine,” chipped in young Bingo — the first sensible thing he’d done since I had known him. Old Rowbotham took three and dropped the subject, and Jeeves drifted away. I could see by the look of his back what he felt.
At last, just as I was beginning to feel that it was going on for ever, the thing finished. I woke up to find the party getting ready to leave.
Sardines and about three quarts of tea had mellowed old Rowbotham. There was quite a genial look in his eye as he shook my hand.
“I must thank you for your hospitality, Comrade Wooster,” he said.
“Oh, not at all! Only too glad —”
“Hospitality?” snorted the man Butt, going off in my ear like a depth-charge. He was scowling in a morose sort of manner at young Bingo and the girl, who were giggling together by the window. “I wonder the food didn’t turn to ashes in our mouths! Eggs! Muffins! Sardines! All wrung from the bleeding lips of the starving poor!”
“Oh, I say! What a beastly idea!”
“I will send you some literature on the subject of the Cause,” said old Rowbotham. “And soon, I hope, we shall see you at one of our little meetings.”
Jeeves came in to clear away, and found me sitting among the ruins. It was all very well for Comrade Butt to knock the food, but he had pretty well finished the ham; and if you had shoved the remainder of the jam into the bleeding lips of the starving poor it would hardly have made them sticky.
“Well, Jeeves,” I said, “how about it?”
“I would prefer to express no opinion, sir.”
“Jeeves, Mr. Little is in love with that female.”
“So I gathered, sir. She was slapping him in the passage.”
I clutched my brow.
“Slapping him?
“Yes, sir. Roguishly.”
“Great Scott! I didn’t know it had got as far as that. How did Comrade Butt seem to be taking it? Or perhaps he didn’t see?”
“Yes, sir, he observed the entire proceedings. He struck me as extremely jealous.”
“I don’t blame him. Jeeves, what are we to do?”
“I could not say, sir.”
“It’s a bit thick.”
“Very much so, sir.”
And that was all the consolation I got from Jeeves.
The Great Sermon Handicap
AFTER Goodwood’s over, I generally find that I get a bit restless. I’m not much of a lad for the birds and the trees and the great open spaces as a rule, but there’s no doubt that London’s not at its best in August, and rather tends to give me the pip and make me think of popping down into the country till things have bucked up a trifle. London, about a couple of weeks after that spectacular finish of young Bingo’s which I’ve just been telling you about, was empty and smelled of burning asphalt. All my pals were away, most of the theatres were shut, and they were taking up Piccadilly in large spadefuls.
It was most infernally hot. As I sat in the old fiat one night trying to muster up energy enough to go to bed, I felt I couldn’t
stand it much longer: and when Jeeves came in with the tissue-restorers on a tray I put the thing to him squarely.
“Jeeves,” I said, wiping the brow and gasping like a stranded goldfish, “it’s beastly hot.”
“The weather is oppressive, sir.”
“Not all the soda, Jeeves.”
“No, sir.”
“I think we’ve had about enough of the metrop. for the time being, and require a change. Shift-ho, I think, Jeeves, what?”
“Just as you say, sir. There is a letter on the tray, sir.”
“By Jove, Jeeves, that was practically poetry. Rhymed, did you notice?” I opened the letter. “I say, this is rather extraordinary.”
“Sir?”
“You know Twing Hall?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, Mr. Little is there.”
“Indeed, sir?”
“Absolutely in the flesh. He’s had to take another of those tutoring jobs.”
After that fearful mix-up at Goodwood, when young Bingo Little, a broken man, had touched me for a tenner and whizzed silently off into the unknown, I had been all over the place, asking mutual friends if they had heard anything of him, but nobody had. And all the time he had been at Twing Hall. Rummy. And I’ll tell you why it was rummy. Twing Hall belongs to old Lord Wickhammersley, a great pal of my guv’nor’s when he was alive, and I have a standing invitation to pop down there when I like. I generally put in a week or two some time in the summer, and I was thinking of going there before I read the letter.
“And, what’s more, Jeeves, my cousin Claude, and my cousin Eustace — you remember them?”
“Very vividly, sir.”
“Well, they’re down there, too, reading for some exam or other with the vicar. I used to read with him myself at one time. He’s known far and wide as a pretty hot coach for those of fairly feeble intellect. Well, when I tell you he got me through Smalls, you’ll gather that he’s a bit of a hummer. I call this most extraordinary.”
I read the letter again. It was from Eustace. Claude and Eustace are twins, and more or less generally admitted to be the curse of the human race.
The Vicarage,
Twing, Glos.
Dear Bertie — Do you want to make a bit of money? I hear you had a bad Goodwood, so you probably do. Well, come down here quick and get in on the biggest sporting event of the season. I’ll explain when I see you, but you can take it from me it’s all right.
Claude and I are with a reading-party at old Heppenstall’s. There are nine of us, not counting your pal Bingo Little, who is tutoring the kid up at the Hall.
Don’t miss this golden opportunity, which may never occur again. Come and join us.
Yours,
Eustace
I handed this to Jeeves. He studied it thoughtfully.
“What do you make of it? A rummy communication, what?”
“Very high-spirited young gentlemen, sir, Mr. Claude and Mr. Eustace. Up to some game, I should be disposed to imagine.”
“Yes. But what game, do you think?”
“It is impossible to say, sir. Did you observe that the letter continues over the page?”
“Eh, what?” I grabbed the thing. This was what was on the other side of the last page:
SERMON HANDICAP
RUNNERS AND BETTING
PROBABLE STARTERS
Rev. Joseph Tucker (Badgwick), scratch.
Rev. Leonard Starkie (Stapleton), scratch.
Rev. Alexander Jones (Upper Bingley), receives three minutes.
Rev. W. Dix (Little Clickton-in-the-Wold), receives five minutes.
Rev. Francis Heppenstall (Twing), receives eight minutes.
Rev. Cuthbert Dibble (Boustead Parva), receives nine minutes.
Rev. Orlo Hough (Boustead Magna), receives nine minutes.
Rev. J. J. Roberts (Fale-by-the-Water), receives ten minutes.
Rev. G. Hayward (Lower Bingley), receives twelve minutes.
Rev. James Bates (Gandle-by-the-Hill), receives fifteen minutes.
(The above have arrived)
PRICES.–5–2, Tucker, Starkie; 3–1, Jones; 9–2, Dix; 6-1, Heppenstall, Dibble, Hough; 100–8 any other.
It baffled me.
“Do you understand it, Jeeves?”
“No, sir.”
“Well, I think we ought to have a look into it, anyway, what?”
“Undoubtedly, sir.”
“Right-o, then. Pack our spare dickey and a toothbrush in a neat brown-paper parcel, send a wire to Lord Wickhammersley to say we’re coming, and buy two tickets on the five-ten at Paddington tomorrow.”
∗
The five-ten was late as usual, and everybody was dressing for dinner when I arrived at the Hall. It was only by getting into my evening things in record time and taking the stairs to the dining-room in a couple of bounds that I managed to dead-heat with the soup. I slid into the vacant chair, and found that I was sitting next to old Wickhammersley’s youngest daughter, Cynthia.
“Oh, hallo, old thing,” I said.
Great pals we’ve always been. In fact, there was a time when I had an idea I was in love with Cynthia. However, it blew over. A dashed pretty and lively and attractive girl, mind you, but full of ideals and all that. I may be wronging her, but I have an idea that she’s the sort of girl who would want a fellow to carve out a career and what not. I know I’ve heard her speak favourably of Napoleon. So what with one thing and another the jolly old frenzy sort of petered out, and now we’re just pals. I think she’s a topper, and she thinks me next door to a looney, so everything’s nice and matey.
“Well, Bertie, so you’ve arrived?”
“Oh, yes, I’ve arrived. Yes, here I am. I say, I seem to have plunged into the middle of quite a young dinner-party. Who are all these coves?”
“Oh, just people from round about. You know most of them. You remember Colonel Willis, and the Spencers —”
“Of course, yes. And there’s old Heppenstall. Who’s the other clergyman next to Mrs. Spencer?”
“Mr. Hayward, from Lower Bingley.”
“What an amazing lot of clergymen there are round here. Why, there’s another, next to Mrs. Willis.”
“That’s Mr. Bates, Mr. Heppenstall’s nephew. He’s an assistant-master at Eton. He’s down here during the summer holidays, acting as locum tenens for Mr. Spettigue, the rector of Gandle-by-the-Hill.”
“I thought I knew his face. He was in his fourth year at Oxford when I was a fresher. Rather a blood. Got his rowing-blue and all that.” I took another look round the table, and spotted young Bingo. “Ah, there he is,” I said. “There’s the old egg.”
“There’s who?”
“Young Bingo Little. Great pal of mine. He’s tutoring your brother, you know.”
“Good gracious! Is he a friend of yours?”
“Rather! Known him all my life.”
“Then tell me, Bertie, is he at all weak in the head?”
“Weak in the head?”
“I don’t mean simply because he’s a friend of yours. But he’s so strange in his manner.”
“How do you mean?”
“Well, he keeps looking at me so oddly.”
“Oddly? How? Give an imitation.”
“I can’t in front of all these people.”
“Yes, you can. I’ll hold my napkin up.”
“All right, then. Quick. There!”
Considering that she had only about a second and a half to do it in, I must say it was a jolly fine exhibition. She opened her mouth and eyes pretty wide and let her jaw drop sideways, and managed to look so like a dyspeptic calf that I recognized the symptoms immediately.
“Oh, that’s all right,” I said. “No need to be alarmed. He’s simply in love with you.”
“In love with me. Don’t be absurd.”
“My dear old thing, you don’t know young Bingo. He can fall in love with anybody.”
“Thank you!”
“Oh, I didn’t mean it that way, you k
now. I don’t wonder at his taking to you. Why, I was in love with you myself once.”
“Once? Ah! And all that remains now are the cold ashes. This isn’t one of your tactful evenings, Bertie.”
“Well, my dear sweet thing, dash it all, considering that you gave me the bird and nearly laughed yourself into a permanent state of hiccoughs when I asked you —”
“Oh, I’m not reproaching you. No doubt there were faults on both sides. He’s very good-looking, isn’t he?”
“Good-looking? Bingo? Bingo good-looking? No, I say, come now, really!”
“I mean, compared with some people,” said Cynthia.
Some time after this, Lady Wickhammersley gave the signal for the females of the species to leg it, and they duly stampeded. I didn’t get a chance of talking to young Bingo when they’d gone, and later, in the drawing-room, he didn’t show up. I found him eventually in his room, lying on the bed with his feet on the rail, smoking a toofah. There was a notebook on the counterpane beside him.
“Hallo, old scream,” I said.
“Hallo, Bertie,” he replied, in what seemed to me rather a moody, distrait sort of manner.
“Rummy finding you down here. I take it your uncle cut off your allowance after that Goodwood binge and you had to take this tutoring job to keep the wolf from the door?”
“Correct,” said young Bingo tersely.
“Well, you might have let your pals know where you were.”
He frowned darkly.
“I didn’t want them to know where I was. I wanted to creep away and hide myself. I’ve been through a bad time, Bertie, these last weeks. The sun ceased to shine —”
“That’s curious. We’ve had gorgeous weather in London.”
The birds ceased to sing—”
“What birds?”
“What the devil does it matter what birds?” said young Bingo, with some asperity. “Any birds. The birds round about here. You don’t expect me to specify them by their pet names, do you? I tell you, Bertie, it hit me hard at first, very hard.”
“What hit you?” I simply couldn’t follow the blighter.
“Charlotte’s calculated callousness.”
“Oh, ah!” I’ve seen poor old Bingo through so many unsuccessful love-affairs that I’d almost forgotten there was a girl mixed up with that Goodwood business. Of course! Charlotte Corday Rowbotham. And she had given him the raspberry, I remembered, and gone off with Comrade Butt.
Expecting Jeeves Page 8