The Jeeves Omnibus - Vol 4: (Jeeves & Wooster): No.4

by P. G. Wodehouse

  ‘Very civil.’

  ‘She thanked me and said she would be glad if I would do so, and for awhile we talked of neutral subjects. One topic led to another, and eventually I asked her to be my wife.’

  ‘’At-a-boy!’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘I only said “’At-a-boy!”’

  ‘Why did you say “’At-a-boy!”?’

  ‘Sort of cheering you on, as it were.’

  ‘I see. Cheering me on. The expression is a corruption, one assumes, of the phrase “That is the boy” and signifies friendly encouragement?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Then I am surprised in the circumstances – and may I say more than a little disgusted – to hear it from your lips, Wooster. It would have been in better taste to have refrained from cheap taunts and jeers.’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘If you have triumphed, that is no reason why you should mock those who have been less fortunate.’

  ‘I’m sorry. If you could give me a few footnotes …’

  He tchah-ed impatiently.

  ‘I told you that I asked Florence to be my wife, and I also told you that she said something which shocked me profoundly. It was that she was engaged to you.’

  I got it now. I saw what he was driving at.

  ‘Oh, ah, yes, of course. Quite. Yes, we would appear to be betrothed.’

  ‘When did this happen, Wooster?’

  ‘Fairly recently.’

  He snorted.

  ‘Very recently, I should imagine, seeing that it was only yesterday that she was engaged to Cheesewright. It’s all most confusing,’ said Percy peevishly. ‘It makes one’s head swim. One doesn’t know where one is.’

  I could see his point.

  ‘Bit of a mix-up,’ I agreed.

  ‘It’s bewildering. I cannot think what she can possibly see in you.’

  ‘No. Very odd, the whole thing.’

  He brooded darkly for a while.

  ‘Her recent infatuation for Cheesewright,’ he said, teeing off again, ‘one could dimly understand. Whatever his mental defects, he is a vigorous young animal, and it is not uncommon to find girls of intellect attracted by vigorous young animals. Bernard Shaw made this the basis of this early novel, Cashel Byron’s Profession. But you! It’s inexplicable. A mere weedy butterfly.’

  ‘Would you call me a weedy butterfly?’

  ‘If you can think of a better description, I shall be happy to hear it. I am unable to discern in you the slightest vestige of charm, the smallest trace of any quality that could reasonably be expected to appeal to a girl like Florence. It amazes one that she should wish to have you permanently about the house.’

  I don’t know if you would call me a touchy man. As a rule, I should say not. But it is not pleasant to find yourself chalked up on the slate as a weedy butterfly, and I confess that I spoke a little shortly.

  ‘Well, there it is,’ I said, and went into the silence. And as he, too, seemed disinclined for chit-chat, we stood for some moments like a couple of Trappist monks who have run into each other by chance at the dog races. And I think I would pretty soon have nodded curtly and removed myself, had he not arrested me with an exclamation similar in tone and volume to the one which Stilton had uttered on finding me festooned with hat-boxes in Florence’s cupboard. He was looking at me through the windshields with what appeared to be concern, if not horror. It puzzled me. It couldn’t have taken him all this time, I felt, to notice the moustache.

  ‘Wooster! Good gracious! You are not wearing a hat!’

  ‘I don’t much in the country.’

  ‘But in this hot sun! You might get sunstroke. You ought not to take such risks.’

  I must say I was touched by this solicitude. Much of the pique I had been feeling left me. It isn’t many fellows, I mean to say, who get all worked up about the well-being of birds who are virtually strangers. It just showed, I thought, that a man may talk a lot of rot about weedy butterflies and still have a tender heart beneath what I should imagine was pretty generally recognized as a fairly repulsive exterior.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ I said, soothing his alarm.

  ‘But I do worry,’ he responded sharply. ‘I feel very strongly that you ought either to get a hat or else stay in the shade. I don’t want to appear fussy, but your health is naturally a matter of the greatest concern to me. You see, I have drawn you in the Drones Club Darts sweep.’

  This got right past me. I could make nothing of it. It sounded to me like straight delirium.

  ‘You’ve what? How do you mean you’ve drawn me in the Drones Club Darts sweep?’

  ‘I put it badly. I was agitated. What I should have said was that I have bought you from Cheesewright. He has sold me the ticket bearing your name. So can you wonder that it makes me nervous when I see you going about in this hot sun without a hat?’

  In a career liberally spotted with nasty shocks I have had occasion to do quite a bit of reeling and tottering from time to time, but I have seldom reeled and tottered more heartily than I did on hearing these frightful words. I had addressed Aunt Dahlia on the previous night, if you remember, as a fluttering aspen. The description would have fitted me at this moment like the paper on the wall.

  This surge of emotion will, I think, be readily understood. My whole foreign policy, as I have made clear, had been built on the fact that I had bottled Stilton up good and proper, and it now appeared, dash it, that I hadn’t bottled him up at all. He was once more in the position of an Assyrian fully licensed to come down like a wolf on the fold with his cohorts all gleaming with purple and gold, and the realization that his thirst for vengeance was so pronounced that, rather than forgo his war aims, he was prepared to sacrifice fifty-six quid and a bender was one that froze the marrow.

  ‘There must be a lot of hidden good in Cheesewright,’ proceeded Percy. ‘I confess frankly that I misjudged him, and, if I had not already returned the galley proofs, I would withdraw that “Caliban at Sunset” thing of mine from Parnassus. He tells me that you are a certain winner of this Darts contest, and yet he voluntarily offered to sell me for quite a trivial sum the ticket bearing your name, because, he said, he had taken a great fancy to me and would like to do me a good turn. A big, generous, warm-hearted gesture, and one that restores one’s faith in human nature. By the way, Cheesewright is looking for you. He wants to see you about something.’

  He repeated his advice with ref. to the hat and moved off, and for quite a while I stood where I was, rigid to the last limb, my numbed bean trying to grapple with this hideous problem which had arisen. It was plain that some diabolically clever counter-move would have to be made and made slippily, but what diabolically clever counter-move? There was what is called the rub.

  You see, it wasn’t as if I could just leg it from the danger zone, which was what I would have liked to do. It was imperative that I be among those present at Brinkley Court when Spode arrived this evening. Airily though Aunt Dahlia had spoken of making the man play ball, it was quite conceivable that the programme might blow a fuse, in which event the presence on the spot of a quick-thinking nephew would be of the essence. The Woosters do not desert aunts in the time of need.

  Eliminating, therefore, the wings of the dove, for which I would gladly have been in the market, what other course presented itself? I freely own that for five minutes or so the thing had me snookered.

  But it has often been said of Bertram Wooster that in moments of intense peril he has an uncanny knack of getting inspiration, and this happened now. Suddenly a thought came like a full-blown rose, flushing the brow, and I picked up the feet and lit out for the stables, where my two-seater was housed. It might be that Jeeves had not yet started on the long trail that led to the Junior Ganymede Club, and, if he hadn’t, I saw the way out.

  16

  * * *

  IF YOU ARE one of the better element who are never happier than when curled up with the works of B. Wooster, you possibly came across a previous s
lab of these reminiscences of mine in which I dealt with a visit Jeeves and I paid to Deverill Hall, the rural seat of Esmond Haddock, J.P., and will recall that while under the Haddock roof Jeeves found my Aunt Agatha’s son Thos in possession of what is known as a cosh and very prudently impounded it, feeling – as who wouldn’t? – that it was the last thing that ought to be at the disposal of that homicidal young thug. The thought which had flushed my brow in the manner described was: Had Jeeves still got it? Everything turned on that.

  I found him, richly apparelled and wearing the bowler hat, at the wheel of the car, on the point of putting foot to self-starter. Another moment, and I should have been too late. Racing up, I inaugurated the quiz without delay.

  ‘Jeeves,’ I said, ‘throw your mind back to that time we stayed at Deverill Hall. Are you throwing?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Then continue to follow me closely. My Aunt Agatha’s son, young Thos, was there.’

  ‘Precisely, sir.’

  ‘With the idea of employing it on a schoolmate of his called Stinker, who had incurred his displeasure for some reason, he had purchased before leaving London a cosh.’

  ‘Or blackjack, to use the American term.’

  ‘Never mind American terms, Jeeves. You took the weapon from him.’

  ‘I deemed it wisest, sir.’

  ‘It was wisest. No argument about that. Let a plugugly like young Thos loose in the community with a cosh, and you are inviting disasters and … what’s the word? Something about cats.’

  ‘Cataclysms, sir?’

  ‘That’s it. Cataclysms. Unquestionably you did the right thing. But all that is beside the point. What I am leading up to is this. That cosh, where is it?’

  ‘Among my effects at the apartment, sir.’

  ‘I’ll drive with you to London and pick it up.’

  ‘I could bring it with me on my return, sir.’

  I did a brief dance step. On his return, forsooth! When would that be? Late at night, probably, because the gang at a hot spot like the Junior Ganymede don’t break up a party at the end of lunch. I know what happens when these wild butlers let themselves go. They sit around till all hours, drinking deep and singing close harmony and generally whooping it up like a bunch of the boys in the Malemute saloon. It would mean that for the whole of the long summer day I should be defenceless, an easy prey for a Stilton who, as I had just been informed, was prowling about, seeking whom he might devour.

  ‘That’s no good, Jeeves. I require it immediately. Not tonight, not a week from Wednesday, but at the earliest possible moment. I am being hotly pursued by Cheesewright, Jeeves.’

  ‘Indeed, sir?’

  ‘And if I am to stave off the Cheesewright challenge, I shall have need of a weapon. His strength is as the strength of ten, and unarmed I should be corn before his sickle.’

  ‘Extremely well put, sir, if I may say so, and your diagnosis of the situation is perfectly accurate. Mr. Cheesewright’s robustness would enable him to crush you like a fly.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘He would obliterate you with a single blow. He would break you in two with his bare hands. He would tear you limb from limb.’

  I frowned slightly. I was glad to see that he appreciated the gravity of the situation, but these crude physical details seemed to me uncalled for.

  ‘No need to make a production number of it, Jeeves,’ I said with a touch of coldness. ‘What I am driving at is that, armed with the cosh, I can face the blighter without a tremor. You agree?’

  ‘Most decidedly, sir.’

  ‘Then shift-ho,’ I said, and hurled myself into the vacant seat.

  This cosh of which I have been speaking was a small rubber bludgeon which at first sight you might have supposed unequal to the task of coping with an adversary of Stilton Cheesewright’s tonnage. In repose, I mean to say, it didn’t look like anything so frightfully hot. But I had seen it in action and was hep to what Florence would have called its latent potentialities. At Deverill Hall one night, for the soundest of reasons but too long to go into here, Jeeves had had occasion to bean a policeman with it – Constable Dobbs, a zealous officer – and the smitten slop had dropped as the gentle rain from heaven upon the place beneath.

  There is a song, frequently sung by curates at village concerts, which runs:

  I fear no foe in shining armour,

  Though his lance be bright and keen.

  Or is it ‘swift and keen’? I can’t remember. Not that it matters. The point is that those words summed up my attitude to a nicety. They put what I was feeling in a nutshell. With that cosh on my person, I should feel debonair and confident, no matter how many Cheesewrights came bounding at me with slavering jaws.

  Everything went according to plan. After an agreeable drive we dropped anchor at the door of Berkeley Mansions and made our way to the flat. There, as foreshadowed, was the cosh. Jeeves handed it over, I thanked him in a few well-chosen words, he went off to his orgy, and I, after a bite of lunch at the Drones, settled myself in the two-seater and turned its nose Worcestershirewards.

  The first person I met as I passed through the portals of Brinkley Court some hours later was Aunt Dahlia. She was in the hall, pacing up and down like a distraught tigress. Her exuberance of the morning had vanished completely, leaving her once more the haggard aunt of yesterday, and I was conscious of a quick pang of concern.

  ‘Golly!’ I said. ‘What’s up, old relative? Don’t tell me that scheme of yours didn’t work?’

  She kicked morosely at a handy chair, sending it flying into the unknown.

  ‘It hasn’t had a chance to work.’

  ‘Why not? Didn’t Spode turn up?’

  She gazed about her with sombre eyes, apparently in the hope of finding another chair to kick. There not being one in her immediate sphere of influence, she kicked the sofa.

  ‘He turned up all right, and what happened? Before I could draw him aside and get so much as a word in, Tom swooped on him and took him off to the collection room to look at his foul silver. They’ve been in there for more than an hour, and how much longer they’re going to be, Heaven knows.’

  I pursed the lips. One ought, I felt, to have anticipated something of this sort.

  ‘Can’t you detach him?’

  ‘No human power can detach a man to whom Tom is talking about his silver collection. He holds him with a glittering eye. All I can hope is that he will be so wrapped up in the silver end of the thing that he’ll forget all about the necklace.’

  The last thing a nephew of the right sort wants to do is to shove a wallowing aunt still more deeply beneath the surface of the slough of despond than she is already, but I had to shake my head at this.

  ‘I doubt it.’

  She gave the sofa another juicy one.

  ‘So do I doubt it. That’s why I’m going steadily cuckoo and may at any moment start howling like a banshee. Sooner or later he’ll remember to take Spode to the safe, and what I am saying to myself is When? When? I feel like … who was the man who sat with a sword dangling over him, suspended by a hair, wondering how long it was going to be before it dropped and gave him a nasty flesh wound?’

  She had me there. Nobody I had met. Certainly not one of the fellows at the Drones.

  ‘I couldn’t tell you, I’m afraid. Jeeves might know.’

  At the mention of that honoured name her eyes lit up.

  ‘Jeeves! Of course! He’s the man I want. Where is he?’

  ‘In London. He asked me if he could take the day off. It was the Junior Ganymede monthly luncheon today.’

  She uttered a cry which might have been the howl of the banshee to which she had alluded, and gave me the sort of look which in the old tally-ho days she would have given a mentally deficient hound which she had observed suspending its professional activities in order to chase a rabbit.

  ‘You let Jeeves go away at a time like this, when one has never needed him more?’

  ‘I hadn’t the heart
to refuse. He was taking the chair. He’ll be back soon.’

  ‘By which time …’

  She would have spoken further … a good deal further, if I read aright the message in her eyes … but before she could get going something whiskered came down the stairs and Percy was with us.

  Seeing me, he halted abruptly.

  ‘Wooster!’ His agitation was very marked. ‘Where have you been all day, Wooster?’

  I told him I had driven to London, and he drew his breath in with a hiss.

  ‘In this hot weather? It can’t be good for you. You must not overtax yourself, Wooster. You must husband your strength.’

  He had chosen the wrong moment for horning in. The old relative turned on him as if he had been someone she had observed heading off the fox, if not shooting it.

  ‘Gorringe, you ghastly sheepfaced fugitive from Hell,’ she thundered, forgetting, or so I imagine, that she was a hostess, ‘get out of here, blast you! We’re in conference.’

  I suppose mixing with editors of poetry magazines toughens a fellow, rendering him impervious to verbal assault, for Percy, who might well have been expected to wilt, didn’t wilt by a damn sight but drew himself up to his full height, which was about six feet two, and came back at her strongly.

  ‘I am sorry to have intruded at an unseasonable moment, Mrs. Travers,’ he said, with a simple dignity that became him well, ‘but I have a message for you from Moth-aw, Moth-aw would like to speak to you. She desired me to ask if it would be convenient if she came to your room.’

  Aunt Dahlia flung her hands up emotionally. I could understand how she felt. The last thing a woman wants, when distraught, is a chat with someone like Ma Trotter.

  ‘Not now!’

  ‘Later, perhaps?’

  ‘Is it important?’

  ‘I received the impression that it was most important.’

  Aunt Dahlia heaved a deep sigh, the sigh of a woman who feels that they are coming over the plate too fast for her.

  ‘Oh, all right. Tell her I’ll see her in half an hour. I’m going back to the collection room, Bertie. It’s just possible that Tom may have run down by now. But one last word,’ she added, as she moved away. ‘The next subhuman gargoyle that comes butting in and distracting my thoughts when I am trying to wrestle with vital problems takes his life in his hands. Let him make his will and put in his order for lilies!’