I Hallo-Esmonded and invited him to take a seat, and he stared at me in an incredulous sort of way.
‘You don’t seriously think that on this night of nights I can sit down?’ he said. ‘I don’t suppose I shall sit down again for months and months and months. It’s only by the exercise of the greatest will-power that I’m keeping myself from floating up to the ceiling. Yoicks!’ he proceeded, changing the subject. ‘Hard for’ard! Tally ho! Loo-loo-loo-loo-loo-loo!’
It had become pretty plain by now that Jeeves and I, while budgeting for a certain uplift of the spirit as the result of the success on the concert platform, had underestimated the heady results of a popular triumph. Watching this Haddock as he curvetted and listening to his animal cries, I felt that it was lucky for him that my old buddy Sir Roderick Glossop did not happen to be among those present. That zealous loony doctor would long ere this have been on the telephone summoning horny-handed assistants to rally round with the straight waistcoat and dust off the padded cell.
‘Well, be that as it may,’ I said, after he had loo-loo-looed for perhaps another minute and a quarter, ‘I should like, before going any further, to express my gratitude to you for your gallant conduct in taking on those poems of mine. Was everything all right?’
‘Terrific.’
‘No mob violence?’
‘Not a scrap. They ate ’em.’
‘That’s good. One felt that you were so solidly established with the many-headed that you would be in no real danger. Still, you were taking a chance, and thank Heaven that all has ended well. I don’t wonder you’re bucked,’ I said, interrupting him in a fresh outbreak of loo-loo-looing. ‘Anyone would be after making the sort of hit you did. You certainly wowed them.’
He paused in his curvetting to give me another incredulous look.
‘My good Gussie,’ he said, ‘you don’t think I’m floating about like this just because my song got over?’
‘Aren’t you?’
‘Certainly not.’
‘Then why do you float?’
‘Because of Corky, of course. Good Lord!’ he said, smiting his brow and seeming a moment later to wish he hadn’t, for he had caught it a rather juicy wallop. ‘Good Lord! I haven’t told you, have I? And that’ll give you a rough idea of the sort of doodah I’m in, because it was simply in order to tell you that I came here. You aren’t abreast, Gussie. You haven’t heard the big news. The most amazing front-page stuff has been happening, and you know nothing about it. Let me tell you the whole story.’
‘Do,’ I said, adding that I was agog.
He simmered down a bit, not sufficiently to enable him to take a seat but enough to make him cheese the curvetting for a while.
‘I wonder, Gussie, if you remember a conversation we had the first night you were here? To refresh your memory, it was the last time we were allowed to get at the port; the occasion when you touched up that lyric of my Aunt Charlotte’s in such a masterly way, strengthening the weak spots and making it box-office. If you recall?’
I said I recalled.
‘In the course of that conversation I told you that Corky had given me the brusheroo. If you recollect?’
I said I recollected.
‘Well, tonight – You know, Gussie,’ he said, breaking off, ‘it’s the most extraordinary sensation, swaying a vast audience …’
‘Would you call it a vast audience?’
The question seemed to ruffle him.
‘Well, the two-bob, shilling and eightpenny seats were all sold out and there must have been fully fifty threepenny standees at the back,’ he said, a bit stiffly. ‘Still, call it a fairly vast audience, if you prefer. It makes no difference to the argument. It’s the most extraordinary sensation, swaying a fairly vast audience. It does something to you. It fills you with a sense of power. It makes you feel that you’re a pretty hot number and that you aren’t going to stand any nonsense from anyone. And under the head of nonsense you find yourself classing girls giving you the brusheroo. I mention this so that you will be able to understand what follows.’
I smiled one of my subtle smiles.
‘I know what follows. You got hold of Corky and took a strong line.’
‘Why, yes,’ he said, seeming a little flattened. ‘As a matter of fact that was what I was leading up to. How did you guess?’
I smiled another subtle one.
‘I foresaw what would happen if you slew that fairly vast audience. I knew you were one of those birds on whom popular acclamation has sensational effects. Yours has been a repressed life, and you have, no doubt, a marked inferiority complex. The cheers of the multitude frequently act like a powerful drug upon bimbos with inferiority complexes.’
I had rather expected this to impress him, and it did. His lower jaw fell a notch, and he gazed at me in a reverent sort of way.
‘You’re a deep thinker, Gussie.’
‘I always have been. From a child.’
‘One wouldn’t suspect it, just to look at you.’
‘It doesn’t show on the surface. Yes,’ I said, getting back to the res, ‘matters have taken precisely the course which I anticipated. With the cheers of the multitude ringing in your ears, you came off that platform a changed man, full of yeast and breathing flame through the nostrils. You found Corky. You backed her into a corner. You pulled a dominant male on her and fixed everything up. Right?’
‘Yes, that was just what happened. Amazing how you got it all taped out.’
‘Oh, well, one studies the psychology of the individual, you know.’
‘Only I didn’t back her into a corner. She was in her car, just driving off somewhere, and I shoved my head in at the window.’
‘And –?’
‘Oh, we kidded back and forth,’ he said a little awkwardly, as if reluctant to reveal what had passed at that sacred scene. ‘I told her she was the lodestar of my life and all that sort of thing, adding that I intended to have no more rot about her not marrying me, and after a bit of pressing she came clean and admitted that I was the tree on which the fruit of her life hung.’
Those who know Bertram Wooster best are aware that he is not an indiscriminate back-slapper. He picks and chooses. But there was no question in my mind that here before me stood a back which it would be churlish not to slap. So I slapped it.
‘Nice work,’ I said. ‘Then everything’s all right?’
‘Yes,’ he assented. ‘Everything’s fine … except for one small detail.’
‘What is that in round numbers?’
‘Well, it’s a thing I don’t know if you will quite understand. To make it clear I shall have to go back to that time when we were engaged before. She severed relations then because she considered that I was a bit too much under the domination of my aunts, and she didn’t like it.’
Well, of course, I knew this, having had it from her personal lips, but I wore the mask and weighed in with a surprised ‘Really?’
‘Yes. And unfortunately she hasn’t changed her mind. Nothing doing in the orange-blossom and wedding-cake line, she says, until I have defied my aunts.’
‘Well, go ahead. Defy them.’
My words seemed to displease him. With a certain show of annoyance he picked up a statuette of a shepherdess on the mantelpiece and hurled it into the fireplace, reducing it to hash and removing it from the active list.
‘It’s all very well to say that. It’s a thing that presents all sorts of technical difficulties. You can’t just walk up to an aunt and say “I defy you”. You need a cue of some sort. I’m dashed if I know how to set about it.’
I mused.
‘I’ll tell you what,’ I said. ‘It seems to me that here is a matter on which you would do well to seek advice from Jeeves.’
‘Jeeves?’
‘My man.’
‘I thought your man’s name was Meadowes.’
‘A slip of the tongue,’ I said hastily. ‘I meant to say Wooster’s man. He is a bird of extraordinary sagacity and never fails
to deliver the goods.’
He frowned a bit.
‘Doesn’t one rather want to keep visiting valets out of this?’
‘No, one does not want to keep visiting valets out of this,’ I said firmly. ‘Not when they’re Jeeves. If you didn’t live all the year round in this rural morgue, you’d know that Jeeves isn’t so much a valet as a Mayfair consultant. The highest in the land bring their problems to him. I shouldn’t wonder if they didn’t give him jewelled snuff-boxes.’
‘And you think he would have something to suggest?’
‘He always has something to suggest.’
‘In that case,’ said Esmond Haddock, brightening, ‘I’ll go and find him.’
With a brief ‘Loo-loo-loo’ he pushed off, clicking his spurs, and I settled down to another cigarette and a pleasant reverie.
Really, I told myself, things were beginning to straighten out. Deverill Hall still housed, no doubt, its quota of tortured souls, but the figures showed a distinct downward trend. I was all right. Gussie was all right. It was only on the Catsmeat front that the outlook was still unsettled and the blue bird a bit slow in picking up its cues.
I pondered on Catsmeat’s affairs for a while, then turned to the more agreeable theme of my own, and I was still doing so, feeling more braced every moment, when the door opened.
There was no flash of pink this time, because it wasn’t Esmond home from the hunt. It was Jeeves.
‘I have extricated Mr Fink-Nottle from his beard, sir,’ he said, looking modestly pleased with himself, like a man who has fought the good fight, and I said Yes, Gussie had been paying me a neighbourly call and I had noticed the absence of the fungoid growth.
‘He told me to tell you to pack his things and send them on. He’s gone back to London.’
‘Yes, sir. I saw Mr Fink-Nottle and received his instructions in person.’
‘Did he tell you why he was going to London?’
‘No, sir.’
I hesitated. I yearned to share the good news with him, but I was asking myself if it wouldn’t involve bandying a woman’s name. And, as I have explained earlier, Jeeves and I do not bandy women’s names.
I put out a feeler.
‘You’ve been seeing a good deal of Gussie recently, Jeeves?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Constantly together, swapping ideas, what?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘I wonder if by any chance … in some moment of expansiveness, if that’s the word … he ever happened to let fall anything that gave you the impression that his heart, instead of sticking like glue to Wimbledon, had skidded a bit in another direction?’
‘Yes, sir. Mr Fink-Nottle was good enough to confide in me regarding the emotions which Miss Pirbright had aroused in his bosom. He spoke freely on the subject.’
‘Good. Then I can speak freely, too. All that’s off.’
‘Indeed, sir?’
‘Yes. He came down from that tree feeling that Corky was not the dream mate he had supposed her to be. The scales fell from his eyes. He still admires her many fine qualities and considers that she would make a good wife for Sinclair Lewis, but –’
‘Precisely, sir. I must confess that I had rather anticipated some such contingency. Mr Fink-Nottle is of the quiet, domestic type that enjoys a calm, regular life, and Miss Pirbright is perhaps somewhat –’
‘More than somewhat. Considerably more. He sees that now. He realizes that association with young Corky, though having much to be said for it, must inevitably lead in the end to a five-year stretch in Wormwood Scrubs or somewhere, and his object in going to London tonight is to get a good flying start for an early morning trip to Wimbledon Common tomorrow. He is very anxious to see Miss Bassett as soon as possible. No doubt they will breakfast together, and having downed a couple of rashers and a pot of coffee, saunter side by side through the sunlit grounds.’
‘Most gratifying, sir.’
‘Most. And I’ll tell you something else that’s gratifying. Esmond Haddock and Corky are engaged.’
‘Indeed, sir?’
‘Provisionally, perhaps I ought to say.’
And I sketched out for him the set-up at the moment of going to press.
‘I advised him to consult you,’ I said, ‘and he went off to find you. You see the posish, Jeeves? As he rightly says, however much you may want to defy a bunch of aunts, you can’t get started unless they give you something to defy them about. What we want is some situation where they’re saying “Go”, like the chap in the Bible, and instead of going he cometh. If you see what I mean?’
‘I interpret your meaning exactly, sir, and I will devote my best thought to the problem. Meanwhile, I fear I must be leaving you, sir. I promised to help my Uncle Charlie serve the refreshments in the drawing room.’
‘Scarcely your job, Jeeves?’
‘No, sir. But one is glad to stretch a point to oblige a relative.’
‘Blood is thicker than water, you mean?’
‘Precisely, sir.’
He withdrew, and about a minute later Esmond blew in again, looking baffled, like a Master of Hounds who has failed to locate the fox.
‘I can’t find the blighter,’ he said.
‘He has just this moment left. He’s gone to the drawing room to help push around the sandwiches.’
‘And that’s where we ought to be, my lad,’ said Esmond. ‘We’re a bit late.’
He was right. Silversmith, whom we encountered in the hall, informed us that he had just shown out the last batch of alien guests, the Kegley-Bassington gang, and that apart from members of the family only the vicar, Miss Pirbright and what he called ‘the young gentleman’, a very loose way of describing my cousin Thomas, remained on the burning deck. Esmond exhibited pleasure at the news, saying that now we should have a bit of elbow room.
‘Smooth work, missing those stiffs, Gussie. What England needs is fewer and better Kegley-Bassingtons. You agree with me, Silversmith?’
‘I fear I have not formulated an opinion on the subject, sir.’
‘Silversmith,’ said Esmond, ‘you’re a pompous old ass,’ and, incredible as it may seem, he poised a finger and with a cheery ‘Yoicks!’ drove it into the other’s well-covered ribs.
And it was as the stricken butler reeled back and tottered off with an incredulous stare of horror in his gooseberry eyes, no doubt to restore himself with a quick one in the pantry, that Dame Daphne came out of the drawing room.
‘Esmond!’ she said in the voice which in days gone by had reduced so many Janes and Myrtles and Gladyses to tearful pulp in the old study. ‘Where have you been?’
It was a situation which in the pre-Hallo-hallo epoch would have had Esmond Haddock tying himself in apologetic knots and perspiring at every pore: and no better evidence of the changed conditions prevailing in the soul of King’s Deverill’s Bing Crosby could have been afforded than by the fact that his brow remained unmoistened and he met her eye with a pleasant smile.
‘Oh, hallo, Aunt Daphne,’ he said. ‘Where are you off to?’
‘I am going to bed. I have a headache. Why are you so late, Esmond?’
‘Well, if you ask me,’ said Esmond cheerily, ‘I’d say it was because I didn’t arrive sooner.’
‘Colonel and Mrs Kegley-Bassington were most surprised. They could not understand why you were not here.’
Esmond uttered a ringing laugh.
‘Then they must be the most priceless fatheads,’ he said. ‘You’d think a child would have realized that the solution was that I was somewhere else. Come along, Gussie. Loo-loo-loo-loo-loo,’ he added in a dispassionate sort of way, and led me into the drawing room.
Even though the drawing room had been cleansed of Kegley-Bassingtons, it still gave the impression of being fairly well filled up. Four aunts, Corky, young Thos, Gertrude Winkworth and the Rev. Sidney Pirbright might not be absolute capacity, but it was not at all what you would call a poor house. Add Esmond and self and Jeeves and Queenie moving t
o and fro with the refreshments, and you had quite a quorum.
I had taken a couple of sandwiches (sardine) off Jeeves and was lolling back in my chair, feeling how jolly this all was, when Silversmith appeared in the doorway, still pale after his recent ordeal.
He stood to attention and inflated his chest.
‘Constable Dobbs,’ he announced.
26
* * *
THE REACTIONS OF a gaggle of coffee and sandwich chewers in the drawing room of an aristocratic home who, just as they are getting down to it, observe the local flatty muscling in through the door, vary according to what Jeeves calls the psychology of the individual. Thus, while Esmond Haddock welcomed the newcomer with a genial ‘Loo-loo-loo’, the aunts raised their eyebrows with a good deal of To-what-are-we-indebted-for-the-honour-of-this-visitness and the vicar drew himself up austerely, suggesting in his manner that one crack out of the zealous officer about Jonah and the Whale and he would know what to do about it. Gertrude Winkworth, who had been listless, continued listless, Silversmith preserved the detached air which butlers wear on all occasions, and the parlourmaid Queenie turned pale and uttered a stifled ‘Oo-er!’ giving the impression of a woman on the point of wailing for her demon lover. I, personally, put in a bit of quick gulping. The mood of bien être left me, and I was conscious of a coolness about the feet. When the run of events has precipitated, as Jeeves would say, a situation of such delicacy as existed at Deverill Hall, it jars you to find the place filling up with rozzers.
It was to Esmond Haddock that the constable directed his opening remark.
‘I’ve come on an unpleasant errand, sir,’ he said, and the chill in the Wooster feet became accentuated. ‘But before I go into that there,’ he proceeded, now addressing himself to the Rev. Sidney Pirbright, ‘there’s this here. I wonder if I might have a word with you, sir, on a spiritual subject?’
The Jeeves Omnibus - Vol 3 Page 41