The Jeeves Omnibus - Vol 1: (Jeeves & Wooster): No.1

by P. G. Wodehouse

  15

  * * *

  Development of the Butter Situation

  A BALLY MIRACLE it seemed to me at the moment, but of course there was a simple explanation.

  ‘I was hoping that you would not have left the grounds, sir,’ he said. ‘I have been searching for you for some little time. On learning that the scullerymaid had become a victim of hysterics as the result of opening the back door and observing a black man, I sprang to the conclusion that you must have been calling there, no doubt with a view to seeing me. Has something gone wrong, sir?’

  I wiped the brow.

  ‘Jeeves,’ I said, ‘I feel like a lost child that has found its mother.’

  ‘Indeed, sir?’

  ‘If you don’t mind me calling you a mother?’

  ‘Not at all, sir.’

  ‘Thank you, Jeeves.’

  ‘Then there is something wrong, sir?’

  ‘Wrong! You said it. What are those sore things people find themselves in?’

  ‘Straits, sir.’

  ‘I am in the sorest straits, Jeeves. To start with, I found that soap and water won’t get this stuff off.

  ‘No, sir. I should have informed you that butter is a sine qua non.’

  ‘Well, I was on the point of getting butter when Brinkley – my man, you know – suddenly blew in and burned the house down.’

  ‘Too bad, sir.’

  ‘The expression “Too bad” scarcely overstates it, Jeeves. It landed me in the dickens of a hole. I came here. I tried to get in touch with you. But that scullerymaid gummed up that project.’

  ‘A temperamental girl, sir. And by an unfortunate coincidence she and the cook, at the moment of your arrival, had just been occupying themselves with the Ouija board – with, I believe, some interesting results. She appears to have regarded you as a materialized spirit.’

  I quivered a bit.

  ‘If cooks would stick to their roasts and hashes,’ I said rather severely, ‘and not waste their time in psychical research, life would be a very different thing.’

  ‘Quite true, sir.’

  ‘Well, then I ran into Chuffy. He stoutly declined to lend me butter.’

  ‘Indeed, sir?’

  ‘He was in a very unpleasant mood.’

  ‘His lordship is undergoing a good deal of mental anguish at the moment, sir.’

  ‘I could see that. He left me apparently to go for a country ramble. At this time of night!’

  ‘Physical exercise is a recognized palliative when the heart is aching, sir.’

  ‘Well, I mustn’t think too harshly of Chuffy. I must always remember that he kicked Brinkley properly. It did me good to watch him. And now you’ve turned up, all is well. The happy ending, what?’

  ‘Precisely, sir. I shall be delighted to procure you butter.’

  ‘But can I still catch that 10.21?’

  ‘I fear not, sir. But I have ascertained that there is another train as late as 11.50.’

  ‘Then I’m on velvet.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  I breathed deeply. The relief was great.

  ‘I shouldn’t wonder if you couldn’t even dig me up a packet of sandwiches for the journey, what?’

  ‘Certainly, sir.’

  ‘And a drop of something?’

  ‘Undoubtedly, sir.’

  ‘Then if you happened to have such a thing as a cigarette on your person at this moment, everything would be more or less perfect.’

  ‘Turkish or Virginian, sir?’

  ‘Both.’

  There is nothing like a quiet cigarette for soothing the system. For some moments I puffed luxuriously, and my nerves, which had been sticking out of my body an inch long and curled at the ends, gradually slipped into place again. I felt restored and invigorated and in a mood for conversation.

  ‘What was all that yelling about, Jeeves?’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Just before I met Chuffy, animal cries started to proceed from somewhere in the house. It sounded like Seabury.’

  ‘It was Master Seabury, sir. He is a little fractious tonight.’

  ‘What’s biting him?’

  ‘He is somewhat acutely disappointed, sir, at having missed the negro entertainment on the yacht.’

  ‘Absolutely his own fault, the silly little geezer. If he wanted to go to Dwight’s birthday-party, he shouldn’t have started a scrap with him.’

  ‘Just so, sir.’

  ‘To attempt to touch your host for one and sixpence protection money on the eve of a birthday-party is the act of a fathead.’

  ‘Very true, sir.’

  ‘What did they do about it? He seems to have stopped yelling. Did they chloroform him?’

  ‘No, sir. I understand that steps are being taken to provide something in the nature of an alternative entertainment for the little fellow.’

  ‘How do you mean, Jeeves? Are they having the niggers up here?’

  ‘No, sir. The expense rules that project out of the sphere of practical politics. But I understand that her ladyship has induced Sir Roderick Glossop to offer his services.’

  I could not follow this.

  ‘Old Glossop?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘But what can he do?’

  ‘It appears, sir, that he has a pleasing baritone voice and as a younger man – in the days when he was a medical student – was often accustomed to render songs at smoking concerts and similar entertainments.’

  ‘Old Glossop!’

  ‘Yes, sir. I overheard him telling her ladyship so.’

  ‘Well, I would never have thought it.’

  ‘I agree that one would scarcely suspect such a thing from his bearing nowadays, sir. Tempora mutantur, nos et mutamur in illis.’

  ‘Then you mean that he is going to soothe young Seabury with song?’

  ‘Yes, sir. Accompanied by her ladyship on the piano.’

  I spotted the snag.

  ‘It won’t work, Jeeves. Reason it out for yourself.’

  ‘Sir!’

  ‘Well, here is a kid who has been looking forward to seeing a troupe of nigger minstrels do their stuff. Is he likely to accept as an adequate substitute a white-faced loony-doctor accompanied by his mother on the piano?’

  ‘Not white-faced, sir.’

  ‘What!’

  ‘No, sir. The question was debated, and it was her ladyship’s view that something in the nature of a negroid performance was indispensable. The young gentleman, when in his present frame of mind, is always extremely exigent.’

  I swallowed a puff of smoke the wrong way in my emotion.

  ‘Old Glossop isn’t blacking up?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Jeeves, pull yourself together. This can’t be true. He is blacking his face?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘It isn’t possible.’

  ‘Sir Roderick is very amenable at the moment, sir, you must remember, to any suggestion emanating from her ladyship.’

  ‘You mean he’s in love?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘And Love conquers all?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘But even so … If you were in love, Jeeves, would you black up to entertain the son of the adored object?’

  ‘No, sir. But we are not all constituted alike.’

  ‘True.’

  ‘Sir Roderick did endeavour to protest, but her ladyship overruled his objections. And, as a matter of fact, sir, I think that, on the whole, it is a good thing that she did. Sir Roderick’s kindly act will serve to heal the breach between Master Seabury and himself. I happen to know that the young gentleman has been unsuccessful in his endeavour to extract protection money from Sir Roderick, and was resenting the fact keenly.’

  ‘He tried to gouge the old boy?’

  ‘Yes, sir. For ten shillings. I have the information from the young gentleman himself.’

  ‘They all confide in you, Jeeves.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘And
old Glossop wouldn’t kick in?’

  ‘No, sir. Instead, he read the young gentleman something of a lecture. What the young gentleman described as “pi-jaws”. And I happen to know that hard feelings existed as a consequence on the latter’s side. So much so, indeed, that I received the impression that he had been planning something in the nature of a reprisal.’

  ‘He wouldn’t have the nerve to do the dirty on a future stepfather, would he?’

  ‘Young gentlemen are headstrong, sir.’

  ‘True. One recalls the case of my Aunt Agatha’s son, young Thos, and the Cabinet Minister.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘In a spirit of ill-will he marooned him on an island in the lake with a swan.’

  ‘Yes, sir.”

  ‘How is the swanning in these parts? I confess that I would like to see old Glossop shinning up something with a bilious bird after him.’

  ‘I fancy that Master Seabury’s thoughts turned more towards something on the order of a booby trap, sir.’

  ‘They would. No imagination, that kid. No vision. I’ve often noticed it. His fancy is – what’s the word?’

  ‘Pedestrian, sir?’

  ‘Exactly. With all the limitless opportunities of a large country house at his disposal, he is content to put soot and water on top of the door, a thing you could do in a suburban villa. I have never thought highly of Seabury, and this confirms my low opinion.’

  ‘Not soot and water, sir. I think what the young gentleman had in mind was the old-fashioned butter-slide, sir. He was asking me yesterday where the butter was kept, and referred guardedly to a humorous film he had seen not long ago in Bristol, in which something of that nature occurred.’

  I was disgusted. Goodness knows that any outrage perpetrated on the person of a bloke like Sir Roderick Glossop touches a ready chord in Bertram Wooster’s bosom, but a butter-slide … the lowest depths, as you might say. The merest A B C of the booby-trapping art. There isn’t a fellow at the Drones who would sink to such a thing.

  I started to utter a scornful laugh, then stopped. The word had reminded me that life was stern and earnest and that time was passing.

  ‘Butter, Jeeves! Here we are, standing idly here, talking of butter, and all the time you ought to have been racing to the larder, getting me some.’

  ‘I will go immediately, sir.’

  ‘You know where to lay your hand on it all right?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘And you’re sure it will do the trick?’

  ‘Quite sure, sir.’

  ‘Then shift-ho, Jeeves. And don’t loiter.’

  I sat down on an upturned flower-pot, and resumed my vigil. My feelings were very different now from what they had been when first I had begun to roost on this desirable property. Then, I had been a penniless outcast, so to speak, with nothing much of a future before me. Now, I could see daylight. Presently Jeeves would return with the fixings. Shortly after that, I should be the old pink-cheeked clubman once more. And, in due season, I should be safely inside the 11.50 train, on my way to London and safety.

  I was a good deal uplifted. I drank in the night air with a light heart. And it was while I was drinking it in that a sudden uproar proceeded from the house.

  Seabury appeared to be contributing most of it. He was yelling his bally head off. From time to time, one caught the fainter, yet penetrating note of the Dowager Lady Chuffnell. She seemed to be reproaching or upbraiding someone. Blending with this, there could be discerned a deeper voice, the unmistakable baritone woofle of Sir Roderick Glossop. The whole appeared to be proceeding from the drawing-room, and, except for one time when I was sauntering in Hyde Park and suddenly found myself mixed up in a Community Singing, I’ve never heard anything like it.

  It couldn’t have been very long after this when the front door was suddenly flung open. Somebody emerged. The door slammed. And then the emerger started to stump rapidly down the drive in the direction of the gates.

  There had been just a moment when the light from the hall shone upon this bloke. It had been long enough for me to identify him.

  This sudden exiter, who was now padding away into the darkness with every outward sign of being fed to the eye-teeth, was none other than Sir Roderick Glossop. And his face, I noted, was as black as the ace of spades.

  A few moments later, while I was still wondering what it was all about and generally turning the thing over in my mind, I observed Jeeves looming up on the right flank.

  I was glad to see him. I desired enlightenment.

  ‘What was all that, Jeeves?’

  ‘The disturbance, sir?’

  ‘It sounded as if little Seabury was being murdered. No such luck, I take it?’

  ‘The young gentleman was the victim of a personal assault, sir. At the hands of Sir Roderick Glossop. I was not an actual eyewitness of the episode. I derive my information from Mary, the parlourmaid, who was present in person.’

  ‘Present?’

  ‘Peeping through the door, sir. Sir Roderick’s appearance when she encountered him by chance on the stairs seems to have affected the girl powerfully, and she tells me that she had followed him about in a stealthy manner ever since, waiting to see what he would do next. I gather that his aspect fascinated her. She is inclined to be somewhat frivolous in her mental attitude, like so many of these young girls, sir.’

  ‘And what occurred?’

  ‘The affair may be said to have had its inception, sir, when Sir Roderick, passing through the hall, stepped upon the young gentleman’s butter-slide.’

  ‘Ah! So he put that project through, did he?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘And Sir Roderick came a stinker?’

  ‘He appears to have fallen with some heaviness, sir. The girl Mary spoke of it with a good deal of animation. She compared his descent to the delivery of a ton of coals. I confess the imagery somewhat surprised me, for she is not a highly imaginative girl.’

  I smiled appreciatively. The evening, I felt, might have begun rockily, but it was certainly ending well.

  ‘Incensed by this, Sir Roderick appears to have hastened to the drawing-room, where he immediately subjected Master Seabury to a severe castigation. Her ladyship vainly endeavoured to induce him to desist, but he was firm in his refusal. The upshot of the matter was a definite rift between her ladyship and Sir Roderick, the former stating that she never wished to see him again, the latter asseverating that, if he could once get safely out of this pestilential house, he would never darken its doors again.’

  ‘A real mix-up.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘And the engagement’s off?’

  ‘Yes, sir. The affection which her ladyship felt for Sir Roderick was instantaneously swept away on the tidal wave of injured mother love.’

  ‘Rather well put, Jeeves.’

  ‘Thank you, sir.

  ‘Then Sir Roderick has pushed off for ever?’

  ‘Apparently, sir.’

  ‘A lot of trouble Chuffnell Hall is seeing these days. Almost as if there was a curse on the place.’

  ‘If one were superstitious, one might certainly suppose so, sir.’

  ‘Well, if there wasn’t a curse on it before, you can bet there are about fifty-seven now. I heard old Glossop applying them as he passed.’

  ‘He was much moved, I take it, sir?’

  ‘Very much moved, Jeeves.’

  ‘So I should imagine, sir. Or he would scarcely have left the house in that condition.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Well, sir, if you consider. It will scarcely be feasible for him to return to his hotel in the existing circumstances. His appearance would excite remark. Nor, after what has occurred, can he very well return to the Hall.’

  I saw what he was driving at.

  ‘Good Lord, Jeeves! You open up a new line of thought. Let me just review this. He can’t go to his hotel – no, I see that, and he can’t crawl back to the Dowager Lady C. and ask for shelter – no
, I see that too. It’s a dead stymie. I can’t imagine what on earth he’ll do.’

  ‘It is something of a problem, sir.’

  I was silent for a moment. Pensive. And, oddly enough, for you would have thought my mood would have been one of sober joy, the heart was really rather bleeding a bit.

  ‘Do you know, Jeeves, scurvily as that man has treated me in the past, I can’t help feeling sorry for him. I do, absolutely. He’s in such an awful jam. It was bad enough for me being a black-faced wanderer, but I hadn’t the position to keep up that he has. I mean to say, the world, observing me in this condition, might quite easily just have shrugged its shoulders and murmured “Young Blood!” or words to that effect, what?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘But not with a bloke of his standing.’

  ‘Very true, sir.’

  ‘Well, well, well! Dear, dear, dear! I suppose, if you come right down to it, this is the vengeance of Heaven.’

  ‘Quite possibly, sir.’

  It isn’t often that I point the moral, but I couldn’t help doing it now.

  ‘It just shows how we ought always to be kind, even to the humblest, Jeeves. For years this Glossop has trampled on my face with spiked shoes, and see where it has landed him. What would have happened if we had been on chummy terms at this juncture? He would have been on velvet. Observing him shooting past just now, I should have stopped him. I should have called out to him “Hi, Sir Roderick, half a second. Don’t go roaming about the place in make-up. Stick around here for a while and pretty soon Jeeves will be arriving with the necessary butter, and all will be well.” Shouldn’t I have said that, Jeeves?’

  ‘Something of that general trend, no doubt, sir.’

  ‘And he would have been saved from this fearful situation, this sore strait, in which he now finds himself. I dare say that man won’t be able to get butter till well on in the morning. Not even then, if he hasn’t money on the person. And all because he wouldn’t treat me decently in the past. Makes you think a bit, that, Jeeves, what?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘But it’s no use talking about it, of course. What’s done is done.’

  ‘Very true, sir. The moving finger writes and, having writ, moves on, nor all your piety and wit can lure it back to cancel half a line, nor all your tears wash out a word of it.’