The Jeeves Omnibus - Vol 3

by Wodehouse, P. G.

  I suppose it may have been for a matter of about ten minutes that I sat there inert, the jaw drooping, the eyes staring sightlessly at the surrounding scenery. Then I pulled myself together and resumed my journey. It has been well said of Bertram Wooster that though he may sink onto rustic benches and for a while give the impression of being licked to a custard, the old spirit will always come surging back sooner or later.

  As I walked, I was thinking hard and bitter thoughts of Corky, the fons et origo, if you know what I mean by fons et origo, of all the trouble. It was she who, by shamelessly flirting with him, by persistently giving him the flashing smile and the quick sidelong look out of the corner of the eye, had taken Gussie’s mind off his job and slowed him up as our correspondent on the spot. Oh, Woman, Woman, I said to myself, not for the first time, feeling that the sooner the sex was suppressed, the better it would be for all of us.

  At the age of eight, in the old dancing-class days, incensed by some incisive remarks on her part about my pimples, of which I had a notable collection at that time, I once forgot myself to the extent of socking Corky Pirbright on the top-knot with a wooden dumb-bell, and until this moment I had always regretted the unpleasant affair, considering my action a blot on an otherwise stainless record and, no matter what the provocation, scarcely the behaviour of a preux chevalier. But now, as I brooded on the Delilah stuff she was pulling, I found myself wishing I could do it again.

  I strode on, rehearsing in my mind some opening sentence to be employed when we should meet, and not far from the Vicarage came upon her seated at the wheel of her car by the side of the road.

  But when I confronted her and said I wanted a word with her, she regretted that it couldn’t be managed at the moment. It was, she explained, her busy afternoon. In pursuance of her policy of being the Little Mother to her uncle, the sainted Sidney, she was about to take a bowl of strengthening soup to one of his needy parishioners.

  ‘A Mrs Clara Wellbeloved, if you want to keep the record straight,’ she proceeded. ‘She lives in one of those picturesque cottages of the High Street. And it’s no good you waiting, because after delivering the bouillon I sit and talk to her about Hollywood. She’s a great fan, and it takes hours. Some other time, my lamb.’

  ‘Listen, Corky –’

  ‘You are probably saying to yourself “Where’s the soup?” I unfortunately forgot to bring it along, and Gussie has trotted back for it. What a delightful man he is, Bertie. So kind. So helpful. Always on hand to run errands, when required, and with a fund of good stories about newts. I’ve given him my autograph. Speaking of autographs, I heard from your cousin Thomas this morning.’

  ‘Never mind about young Thos. What I want –’

  She broke into speech again, as girls always do. I have had a good deal of experience of this tendency on the part of the female sex to refrain from listening when you talk to them, and it has always made me sympathize with those fellows who tried to charm the deaf adder and had it react like a Wednesday matinée audience.

  ‘You remember I gave him fifty of my autographs, and he expected to sell them to his playmates at sixpence apiece? Well, he tells me that he got a bob, not sixpence, which will give you a rough idea of how I stand with the boys at Bramley-on-Sea. He says a genuine Ida Lupino only fetches ninepence.’

  ‘Listen, Corky –’

  ‘He wants to come and spend his midterm holiday at the Vicarage, and, of course, I’ve written to say that I shall be delighted. I don’t think Uncle Sidney is too happy at the prospect, but it’s good for a clergyman to have these trials. Makes him more spiritual, and consequently hotter at his job.’

  ‘Listen, Corky. What I want to talk to you about –’

  ‘Ah, here’s Gussie,’ she said, once more doing the deaf adder.

  Gussie came bounding up with a look of reverent adoration on his face and a steaming can in his hands. Corky gave him a dazzling smile which seemed to go through him like a red-hot bullet through a pat of butter, and stowed the can away in the rumble seat.

  ‘Thank you, Gussie darling,’ she said. ‘Well, goodbye all. I must rush.’

  She drove off, Gussie standing gaping after her transfixed, like a goldfish staring at an ant’s egg. He did not, however, remain transfixed long, because I got him between the third and fourth ribs with a forceful finger, causing him to come to life with a sharp ‘Ouch!’

  ‘Gussie,’ I said, getting down to brass tacks and beating about no bushes. ‘What’s all this about you not writing to Madeline?’

  ‘Madeline?’

  ‘Madeline.’

  ‘Oh, Madeline?’

  ‘Yes, Madeline. You ought to have been writing to her every day.’

  This seemed to annoy him.

  ‘How on earth could I write to her every day? What chance do I get to write letters when my time is all taken up with memorizing my lines in this cross-talk act and thinking up effective business? I haven’t a moment.’

  ‘Well, you’ll jolly well have to find a moment. Do you realize she’s started sending telegrams about it? You must write today without fail.’

  ‘What, to Madeline?’

  ‘Yes, blast you, to Madeline.’

  I was surprised to see that he was glowering sullenly through his windshields.

  ‘I’ll be blowed if I write to Madeline,’ he said, and would have looked like a mule if he had not looked so like a fish. ‘I’m teaching her a lesson.’

  ‘You’re what?’

  ‘Teaching her a lesson. I’m not at all pleased with Madeline. She wanted me to come to this ghastly house, and I consented on the understanding that she would come, too, and give me moral support. It was a clear-cut gentlemen’s agreement. And at the last moment she coolly backed out on the flimsy plea that some school friend of hers at Wimbledon needed her. I was extremely annoyed, and I let her see it. She must be made to realize that she can’t do that sort of thing. So I’m not writing to her. It’s a sort of system.’

  I clutched at the brow. The mice in my interior had now got up an informal dance and were buck-and-winging all over the place like a bunch of Nijinskys.

  Gussie,’ I said, ‘once and for all, will you or will you not go back to the house and compose an eight-page letter breathing love in every syllable?’

  ‘No, I won’t,’ he said and left me flat.

  Baffled and despondent, I returned to the Hall. And the first person I saw there was Catsmeat. He was in my room, lying on the bed with one of my cigarettes in his mouth.

  There was a sort of dreamy look on his dial, as if he were thinking of Gertrude Winkworth.

  11

  * * *

  OBSERVING ME, HE switched off the dreamy look.

  ‘Oh, hallo, Bertie,’ he said. ‘I wanted to see you.’

  ‘Oh, yes?’ I riposted, quick as a flash, and I meant it to sting, for I was feeling a bit fed up with Catsmeat.

  I mean of his own free will he had taken on the job of valeting me, and in his capacity of my gentleman’s personal gentleman should have been in and out all the time, brushing here a coat, pressing there a trouser and generally making himself useful, and I hadn’t set eyes on him since the night we had arrived. One frowns on this absenteeism.

  ‘I wanted to tell you the good news.’

  I laughed hollowly.

  ‘Good news? Is there such a thing?’

  ‘You bet there’s such a thing. Things are looking up. The sun is smiling through. I believe I’m going to swing this Gertrude deal. Owing to the footling social conventions which prevent visiting valets hobnobbing with the daughter of the house, I haven’t seen her, of course, to speak to, but I’ve been sending her notes by Jeeves and she has been sending me notes by Jeeves, and in her latest she shows distinct signs of yielding to my prayers. I think about two more communications, if carefully worded, should do the trick. Don’t actually buy the fish-slice yet, but be prepared.’

  My pique vanished. As I have said before, the Woosters are fair-minded. I knew wh
at a dickens of a sweat these love letters are, a whole-time job calling for incessant concentration. If Catsmeat had been tied up with a lot of correspondence of this type, he wouldn’t have had much time for attending to my wardrobe, of course. You can’t press your suit and another fellow’s trousers simultaneously.

  ‘Well, that’s fine,’ I said, pleased to learn that, though the general outlook was so scaly, someone was getting a break. ‘I shall watch your future progress with considerable interest. But pigeon-holing your love life for the moment, Catsmeat, a most frightful thing has happened, and I should be glad if you could come across with anything in the aid-and-comfort line. That criminal lunatic Gussie –’

  ‘What’s he been doing?’

  ‘It’s what he’s not been doing that’s the trouble. You could have flattened me with a toothpick just now when I found out that he hasn’t written a single line to Madeline Bassett since he got here. And, what’s more, he says he isn’t going to write to her. He says he’s teaching her a lesson,’ I said, and in a few brief words placed the facts before him.

  He looked properly concerned. Catsmeat’s is a kindly and feeling heart, readily moved by the spectacle of an old friend splashing about in the gumbo, and he knows how I stand with regard to Madeline Bassett, because she told him the whole story one day when they met at a bazaar and the subject of me happened to come up.

  ‘This is rather serious,’ he said.

  ‘You bet it’s serious. I’m shaking like a leaf.’

  ‘Girls of the Madeline Bassett type attach such importance to the daily letter.’

  ‘Exactly. And if it fails to arrive, they come and make inquiries on the spot.’

  ‘And you say Gussie was not to be moved?’

  ‘Not an inch. I pleaded with him, I may say passionately, but he put his ears back and refused to cooperate.’

  Catsmeat pondered.

  ‘I think I know what’s behind all this. The trouble is that Gussie at the moment is slightly off his rocker.’

  ‘What do you mean, at the moment? And why slightly?’

  ‘He’s infatuated with Corky. Sorry to use such long words. I mean he’s got a crush on her.’

  ‘I know he has. So does everybody else for miles around. His crush is the favourite topic of conversation when aunt meets aunt.’

  ‘There has been comment in the servants’ hall, too.’

  ‘I’m not surprised. I’ll bet they’re discussing the thing in Basingstoke.’

  ‘You can’t blame him, of course.’

  ‘Yes, I can.’

  ‘I mean, it isn’t his fault, really. This is spring-time, Bertie, the mating season, when, as you probably know, a livelier iris gleams upon the burnished dove and a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love. The sudden impact plumb span in the middle of spring, of a girl like Corky on a fathead like Gussie, weakened by constantly swilling orange juice, must have been terrific. Corky, when she’s going nicely, bowls over the strongest. No one knows that better than you. You were making a colossal ass of yourself over her at one time.’

  ‘No need to rake up the dead past.’

  ‘I only raked it up to drive home my point, which is that he is more to be pitied than censured.’

  ‘She’s the one that wants censuring. Why does she encourage him?’

  ‘I don’t think she encourages him. He just adheres.’

  ‘She does encourage him. I’ve seen her doing it. She deliberately turns on the charm and gives him the old personality. Don’t tell me that a girl like Corky, accustomed to giving Hollywood glamour men the brusheroo, couldn’t put Gussie on ice, if she wanted to.’

  ‘But she doesn’t.’

  ‘That’s what I’m beefing about.’

  ‘And I’ll tell you why she doesn’t. I haven’t actually asked her, but I’m pretty sure she’s working this Gussie continuity with the idea of sticking the harpoon into Esmond Haddock. To show him that if he doesn’t want her, there are others who do.’

  ‘But he does want her.’

  ‘She doesn’t know that. Unless you’ve told her.’

  ‘I haven’t.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I wasn’t sure if it would be the correct procedure. You see, he dished out all that stuff about his inner feelings under the seal of the confessional, as you might say, and he said he didn’t want it to go any further. “This must go no further,” he said. On the other hand, a word in season might quite easily reunite a couple of sundered hearts. The whole thing is extraordinarily moot.’

  ‘I’d go ahead and tell her. Bung in the word in season. I’m all for reuniting sundered hearts.’

  ‘Me, too. But I think we’ve left it too late. Already the Bassett is burning up the wires with telegrams asking what it’s all about. A hot one just arrived. I found it on the hall table when I came in. It was the telegram of a girl on the verge of becoming fed to the eye teeth. I tell you, Catsmeat, I see no ray of light. I’m sunk.’

  ‘No, you’re not.’

  ‘I am. When I told Gussie about this telegram, urging upon him that now was the time for all good men to come to the aid of the party, he merely as I say, stuck his ears back and said he was teaching the girl a lesson and not a smell of a letter should she get from him till that lesson had been learned. The man’s non compos, and I repeat that I see no ray of light.’

  ‘It seems to me it’s all quite simple.’

  ‘You mean you have something to suggest?’

  ‘Of course I’ve something to suggest. I always have something to suggest. The thing’s obvious. If Gussie won’t write to this girl, you must write to her yourself.’

  ‘But she doesn’t want to hear from me. She wants to hear from Gussie.’

  ‘And so she will, bless her heart. Gussie has sprained his wrist, so had to dictate the letter to you.’

  ‘Gussie hasn’t sprained his wrist.’

  ‘Pardon me. He gave it a nasty wrench while stopping a runaway horse and at great personal risk saving a little child from a hideous death. A golden-haired child, if you will allow yourself to be guided by me, with blue eyes, pink cheeks and a lisp. I think a lisp is good box-office?’

  I gasped. I had got his drift.

  ‘Catsmeat, this is terrific! You’ll write the thing?’

  ‘Of course. It’ll be pie. I’ve been writing Gertrude that sort of letter since I was so high.’

  He seated himself at the table, took pen and paper and immediately became immersed in composition, as the expression is. I could see that it had been no idle boast on his part that the thing would be pie. He didn’t even seem to have to stop and think. In almost no time he was handing me the finished script and bidding me get a jerk on and copy it out.

  ‘It ought to go off at once, every moment being vital. Trot down to the post office with it yourself. Then she’ll get it first thing in the morning. And now, Bertie, I must leave you. I promised to play gin rummy with Queenie, and I am already late. She wants cheering up, poor child. You’ve heard about her tragedy? The severing of her engagement to the flatty Dobbs?’

  ‘No, really? Is her engagement off? Then that’s why she was looking like that, I suppose. I ran into her after lunch,’ I explained, ‘and I got the impression that the heart was heavy. What went wrong?’

  ‘She didn’t like him being an atheist, and he wouldn’t stop being an atheist, and finally he said something about Jonah and the Whale which it was impossible for her to overlook. This morning, she returned the ring, his letters and a china ornament with “A Present From Blackpool” on it, which he bought her last summer while visiting relatives in the north. It’s hit her pretty hard, I’m afraid. She’s passing through the furnace. She loves him madly and yearns to be his, but she can’t take that stuff about Jonah and the Whale. One can only hope that gin rummy will do something to ease the pain. Right ho, Bertie, get on with that letter. It’s not actually one of my best, perhaps, because I was working against time and couldn’t prune and polish, but I think
you’ll like it.’

  He was correct. I studied the communication carefully, and was enchanted with its virtuosity. If it wasn’t one of his best, his best must have been pretty good, and I was not surprised that upon receipt of a series Gertrude Winkworth was weakening. There are letters which sow doubts as to whether this bit here couldn’t have been rather more neatly phrased and that bit there gingered up a trifle, and other letters of which you say to yourself ‘This is the goods. Don’t alter a word’. This was one of the latter letters. He had got just the right modest touch into the passage about the runaway horse, and the lisping child was terrific. She stuck out like a sore thumb and hogged the show. As for the warmer portions about missing Madeline every minute and wishing she were here so that he could fold her in his arms and what not, they simply couldn’t have been improved upon.

  I copied the thing out, stuffed it in an envelope and took it down to the post office. And scarcely had it plopped into the box, when I was hailed from behind by a musical soprano and, turning, saw Corky heaving alongside.

  12

  * * *

  I FELT PROFOUNDLY bucked. The very girl I wanted to see. I grabbed her by the arm, so that she couldn’t do another of her sudden sneaks.

  ‘Corky,’ I said, ‘I want a long, heart to heart talk with you.’

  ‘Not about Hollywood?’

  ‘No, not about Hollywood.’

  ‘Thank God. I don’t think I could have stood any more Hollywood chatter this afternoon. I wouldn’t have believed,’ she said, proceeding, as always, to collar the conversation, ‘that anybody except Louella Parsons and Hedda Hopper could be such an authority on the film world as is Mrs Clara Wellbeloved. She knows much more about it than I do, and I’ll have been moving in celluloid circles two years come Lammas Eve. She knows exactly how many times everybody’s been divorced and why, how much every picture for the last twenty years has grossed, and how many Warner brothers there are. She even knows how many times Artie Shaw has been married, which I’ll bet he couldn’t tell you himself. She asked if I had ever married Artie Shaw, and when I said No, seemed to think I was pulling her leg or must have done it without noticing. I tried to explain that when a girl goes to Hollywood she doesn’t have to marry Artie Shaw, it’s optional, but I don’t think I convinced her. A very remarkable old lady, but a bit exhausting after the first hour or two. Did you say you wanted to speak to me about something.’