‘A Mr Bingley has called to see you, sir.’
‘Ah, yes, I was expecting him.’
He popped off, and scarcely had he ceased to pollute the atmosphere when the old ancestor blew in.
She was plainly agitated, the resemblance to a cat on hot bricks being very marked. She panted a good deal, and her face had taken on the rather pretty mauve colour it always does when the soul is not at rest.
‘Bertie,’ she boomed, ‘when you went away yesterday, did you leave the door of your bedroom unlocked?’
‘Of course I didn’t.’
‘Well, Jeeves says it’s open now.’
‘It can’t be.’
‘It is. He thinks Runkle or some minion of his has skeleton-keyed the lock. Don’t yell like that, curse you.’
I might have retorted by asking her what she expected me to do when I suddenly saw all, but I was too busy seeing all to be diverted into arguments about my voice production. The awful truth had hit me as squarely between the eyes as if it had been an egg or a turnip hurled by one of the Market Snodsbury electorate.
‘Bingley!’ I ejaculated.
‘And don’t sing.’
‘I was not singing, I was ejaculating “Bingley!”, or vociferating “Bingley!” if you prefer it. You remember Bingley, the fellow who stole the club book, the chap you were going to take by the throat and shake like a rat. Aged relative, we are up against it in no uncertain manner. Bingley is the Runkle minion you alluded to. Jeeves says he dropped in to tea this afternoon. What simpler for him, having had his cuppa, than to nip upstairs and search my room? He used to be Runkle’s personal attendant, so Runkle would turn to him naturally when he needed an accomplice. Yes, I don’t wonder you’re perturbed,’ I added, for she had set the welkin ringing with one of those pungent monosyllables so often on her lips in the old Quorn-and-Pytchley days. ‘And I’ll tell you something else which will remove your last doubts, if you had any. He’s just turned up again, and Runkle has gone out to confer with him. What do you suppose they’re conferring about? Give you three guesses.’
The Quorn trains its daughters well. So does the Pytchley. She did not swoon, as many an aunt would have done in her place, merely repeated the monosyllable in a slightly lower tone – meditatively as it were, like some aristocrat of the French Revolution on being informed that the tumbril waited.
‘This tears it,’ she said, the very words such an aristocrat would have used, though speaking of course in French. ‘I’ll have to confess that I took his foul porringer.’
‘No, no, you mustn’t do that.’
‘What else is there for me to do? I can’t let you go to chokey.’
‘I don’t mind.’
‘I do. I may have my faults—’
‘No, no.’
‘Yes, yes. I am quite aware that there are blemishes in my spiritual make-up which ought to have been corrected at my finishing school, but I draw the line at letting my nephew do a stretch for pinching porringers which I pinched myself. That’s final.’
I saw what she meant, of course. Noblesse oblige, and all that. And very creditable, too. But I had a powerful argument to put forward, and I lost no time in putting it.
‘But wait, old ancestor. There’s another aspect of the matter. If it’s … what’s the expression? … if it’s bruited abroad that I’m merely an as-pure-as-the-driven-snow innocent bystander, my engagement to Florence will be on again.’
‘Your what to who?’ It should have been ‘whom’, but I let it go. ‘Are you telling me that you and Florence …’
‘She proposed to me ten minutes ago and I had to accept her because one’s either preux or one isn’t, and then Runkle butted in and pointed out to her the disadvantages of marrying someone who would shortly be sewing mailbags in Wormwood Scrubs, and she broke it off.’
The relative seemed stunned, as if she had come on something abstruse in the Observer crossword puzzle.
‘What is it about you that fascinates the girls? First Madeline Bassett, now Florence, and dozens of others in the past. You must have a magnetic personality.’
‘That would seem to be the explanation,’ I agreed. ‘Anyway, there it is. One whisper that there isn’t a stain on my character, and I haven’t a hope. The Bishop will be notified, the assistant clergy and bridesmaids rounded up, the organist will start practising “The Voice That Breathed O’er Eden”, and the limp figure you see drooping at the altar rails will be Bertram Wilberforce Wooster. I implore you, old blood relation, to be silent and let the law take its course. If it’s a choice between serving a life sentence under Florence and sewing a mailbag or two, give me the mailbags every time.’
She nodded understandingly, and said she saw what I meant.
‘I thought you would.’
‘There is much in what you say.’ She mused awhile. ‘As a matter of fact, though, I doubt if it will get as far as mailbags. I’m pretty sure what’s going to happen. Runkle will offer to drop the whole thing if I let him have Anatole.’
‘Good God!’
‘You may well say “Good God!” You know what Anatole means to Tom.’
She did not need to labour the point. Uncle Tom combines a passionate love of food with a singular difficulty in digesting it, and Anatole is the only chef yet discovered who can fill him up to the Plimsoll mark without causing the worst sort of upheaval in his gastric juices.
‘But would Anatole go to Runkle?’
‘He’d go to anyone if the price was right.’
‘None of that faithful old retainer stuff?’
‘None. His outlook is entirely practical. That’s the French in him.’
‘I wonder you’ve been able to keep him so long. He must have had other offers.’
‘I’ve always topped them. If it was simply another case of outbidding the opposition, I wouldn’t be worrying.’
‘But when Uncle Tom comes back and finds Anatole conspicuous by his absence, won’t the home be a bit in the melting pot?’
‘I don’t like to think of it.’
But she did think of it. So did I. And we were both thinking of it, when our musings were interrupted by the return of L. P. Runkle, who waddled in and fixed us with a bulging eye.
I suppose if he had been slenderer, one might have described him as a figure of doom, but even though so badly in need of a reducing diet he was near enough to being one to make my interior organs do a quick shuffle-off-to-Buffalo as if some muscular hand had stirred them up with an egg-whisk. And when he began to speak, he was certainly impressive. These fellows who have built up large commercial empires are always what I have heard Jeeves call orotund. They get that way from dominating meetings of shareholders. Having started off with ‘Oh, there you are, Mrs Travers’, he went into his speech, and it was about as orotund as anything that has ever come my way. It ran, as nearly as I can remember, as follows:
‘I was hoping to see you, Mrs Travers. In a previous conversation, you will recall that I stated uncompromisingly that your nephew Mr Wooster had purloined the silver porringer which I brought here to sell to your husband, whose absence I greatly deplore. That this was no mere suspicion has now been fully substantiated. I have a witness who is prepared to testify on oath in court that he found it in the top drawer of the chest of drawers in Mr Wooster’s bedroom, unskilfully concealed behind socks and handkerchiefs.’
Here if it had been a shareholders meeting, he would probably have been reminded of an amusing story which may be new to some of you present this afternoon, but I suppose in a private conversation he saw no need for it. He continued, still orotund.
‘The moment I report this to the police and acquaint them with the evidence at my disposal, Wooster’s arrest will follow automatically, and a sharp sentence will be the inevitable result.’
It was an unpleasant way of putting it, but I was compelled to admit that it covered the facts like a bedspread. Dust off that cell, Wormwood Scrubs, I was saying to myself, I shall soon be with you.
&nbs
p; ‘Such is the position. But I am not a vindictive man, I have no wish, if it can be avoided, to give pain to a hostess who has been to such trouble to make my visit enjoyable.’
He paused for a moment to lick his lips, and I knew he was tasting again those master-dishes of Anatole’s. And it was on Anatole that he now touched.
‘While staying here as your guest, I have been greatly impressed by the skill and artistry of your chef. I will agree not to press charges against Mr Wooster provided you consent to let this gifted man leave your employment and enter mine.’
A snort rang through the room, one of the ancestor’s finest. You might almost have called it orotund. Following it with the word ‘Ha!’, she turned to me with a spacious wave of the hand.
‘Didn’t I tell you, Bertie? Wasn’t I right? Didn’t I say the child of unmarried parents would blackmail me?’
A fellow with the excess weight of L. P. Runkle finds it difficult to stiffen all over when offended, but he stiffened as far as he could. It was as if some shareholder at the meeting had said the wrong thing.
‘Blackmail?’
‘That’s what I said.’
‘It is not blackmail. It is nothing of the sort.’
‘He is quite right, madam,’ said Jeeves, appearing from nowhere. I’ll swear he hadn’t been there half a second before. ‘Blackmail implies the extortion of money. Mr Runkle is merely extorting a cook.’
‘Exactly. A purely business transaction,’ said Runkle, obviously considering him a Daniel come to judgment.
‘It would be very different,’ said Jeeves, ‘were somebody to try to obtain money from him by threatening to reveal that while in America he served a prison sentence for bribing a juror in a case in which he was involved.’
A cry broke from L. P. Runkle’s lips, somewhat similar to the one the cat Gus had uttered when the bag of cat food fell on him. He tottered and his face would, I think, have turned ashy white if his blood pressure hadn’t been the sort that makes it pretty tough going for a face to turn ashy white. The best it could manage was something Florence would have called sallow.
The ancestor, on the other hand, had revived like a floweret beneath the watering-can. Not that she looks like a floweret, but you know what I mean.
‘What!’ she ejaculated.
‘Yes, madam, the details are all in the club book. Bingley recorded them very fully. His views were very far to the left at the time, and I think he derived considerable satisfaction from penning an exposé of a gentleman of Mr Runkle’s wealth. It is also with manifest gusto that he relates how Mr Runkle, in grave danger of a further prison sentence in connection with a real estate fraud, forfeited the money he had deposited as security for his appearance in court and disappeared.’
‘Jumped his bail, you mean?’
‘Precisely, madam. He escaped to Canada in a false beard.’
The ancestor drew a deep breath. Her eyes were glowing more like twin stars than anything. Had not her dancing days been long past, I think she might have gone into a brisk buck-and-wing. The lower limbs twitched just as if she were planning to.
‘Well,’ she said, ‘a nice bit of news that’ll be for the fellows who dole out knighthoods. “Runkle?” they’ll say. “That old lag? If we made a man like that a knight, we’d never hear the last of it. The boys on the Opposition benches would kid the pants off us.” We were discussing, Runkle, yesterday that little matter of the money you ought to have given Tuppy Glossop years ago. If you will step into my boudoir, we will go into it again at our leisure.’
17
* * *
THE FOLLOWING DAY dawned bright and clear, at least I suppose it did, but I wasn’t awake at the time. When eventually I came to life, the sun was shining, all Nature appeared to be smiling, and Jeeves was bringing in the breakfast tray. Gus the cat, who had been getting his eight hours on an adjacent armchair, stirred, opened an eye and did a sitting high jump on to the bed, eager not to miss anything that was going.
‘Good morning, Jeeves.’
‘Good morning, sir.’
‘Weather looks all right.’
‘Extremely clement, sir.’
‘The snail’s on the wing and the lark’s on the thorn, or rather the other way round, as I’ve sometimes heard you say. Are those kippers I smell?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Detach a portion for Gus, will you. He will probably like to take it from the soap dish, reserving the saucer for milk.’
‘Very good, sir.’
I sat up and eased the spine into the pillows. I was conscious of a profound peace.
‘Jeeves,’ I said, ‘I am conscious of a profound peace. I wonder if you remember me telling you a few days ago that I was having a sharp attack of euphoria?’
‘Yes, sir. I recall your words clearly. You said you were sitting on top of the world with a rainbow round your shoulder.’
‘Similar conditions prevail this morning. I thought everything went off very well last night, didn’t you?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Thanks to you.’
‘It is very kind of you to say so, sir.’
‘I take it the ancestor came to a satisfactory arrangement with Runkle?’
‘Most satisfactory, sir. Madam has just informed me that Mr Runkle was entirely cooperative.’
‘So Tuppy and Angela will be joined in holy wedlock, as the expression is?’
‘Almost immediately, I understood from Madam.’
‘And even now Ginger and M. Glendennon are probably in conference with the registrar of their choice.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘And Spode has got a black eye, which one hopes is painful. In short, on every side one sees happy endings popping up out of traps. A pity that Bingley is flourishing like a green what-is-it, but one can’t have everything.’
‘No, sir. Medio de fonte leporum surgit amari aliquid in ipsis floribus angat.’
‘I don’t think I quite followed you there, Jeeves.’
‘I was quoting from the Roman poet Lucretius, sir. A rough translation would be “From the heart of this fountain of delights wells up some bitter taste to choke them even among the flowers”.’
‘Who did you say wrote that?’
‘Lucretius, sir, 99–55 B.C.’
‘Gloomy sort of bird.’
‘His outlook was perhaps somewhat sombre, sir.’
‘Still, apart from Bingley, one might describe joy as reigning supreme.’
‘A very colourful phrase, sir.’
‘Not my own. I read it somewhere. Yes, I think we may say everything’s more or less oojah-cum-spiff. With one exception, Jeeves,’ I said, a graver note coming into my voice as I gave Gus his second helping of kipper. ‘There remains a fly in the ointment, a familiar saying meaning … well, I don’t quite know what it does mean. It seems to imply a state of affairs at which one is supposed to look askance, but why, I ask myself, shouldn’t flies be in ointment? What harm do they do? And who wants ointment, anyway? But you get what I’m driving at. The Junior Ganymede club book is still in existence. That is what tempers my ecstasy with anxiety. We have seen how packed with trinitrotoluol it is, and we know how easily it can fall into the hands of the powers of darkness. Who can say that another Bingley may not come along and snitch it from the secretary’s room? I know it is too much to ask you to burn the beastly thing, but couldn’t you at least destroy the eighteen pages in which I figure?’
‘I have already done so, sir.’
I leaped like a rising trout, to the annoyance of Gus, who had gone to sleep on my solar plexus. Words failed me, but in due season I managed three.
‘Much obliged, Jeeves.’
‘Not at all, sir.’
* * *
AUNTS AREN’T GENTLEMEN
1
* * *
MY ATTENTION WAS drawn to the spots on my chest when I was in my bath, singing, if I remember rightly, the Toreador song from the opera Carmen. They were pink in colour, rather like t
he first faint flush of dawn, and I viewed them with concern. I am not a fussy man, but I do object to being freckled like a pard, as I once heard Jeeves describe it, a pard, I take it, being something in the order of one of those dogs beginning with d.
‘Jeeves,’ I said at the breakfast table, ‘I’ve got spots on my chest.’
‘Indeed, sir?’
‘Pink.’
‘Indeed, sir?’
‘I don’t like them.’
‘A very understandable prejudice, sir. Might I enquire if they itch?’
‘Sort of.’
‘I would not advocate scratching them.’
‘I disagree with you. You have to take a firm line with spots. Remember what the poet said.’
‘Sir?’
‘The poet Ogden Nash. The poem he wrote defending the practice of scratching. Who was Barbara Frietchie, Jeeves?’
‘A lady of some prominence in the American war between the States, sir.’
‘A woman of strong character? One you could rely on?’
‘So I have always understood, sir.’
‘Well, here’s what the poet Nash wrote. “I’m greatly attached to Barbara Frietchie. I’ll bet she scratched when she was itchy.” But I shall not be content with scratching. I shall place myself in the hands of a competent doctor.’
‘A very prudent decision, sir.’
The trouble was that, except for measles when I was just starting out, I’ve always been so fit that I didn’t know any doctors. Then I remembered that my American pal, Tipton Plimsoll, with whom I had been dining last night to celebrate his betrothal to Veronica, only daughter of Colonel and Lady Hermione Wedge of Blandings Castle, Shropshire, had mentioned one who had once done him a bit of good. I went to the telephone to get his name and address.
Tipton did not answer my ring immediately, and when he did it was to reproach me for waking him at daybreak. But after he had got this off his chest and I had turned the conversation to mine he was most helpful. It was with the information I wanted that I returned to Jeeves.
The Jeeves Omnibus - Vol 5: (Jeeves & Wooster) Page 17