‘But what can I do, sir?’
‘You can get action, Jeeves. That is what is required here – sharp, decisive action. I wonder if you recall a visit we once paid to the residence of my Aunt Agatha at Woollam Chersey in the county of Herts. To refresh your memory, it was the occasion on which, in company with the Right Honourable A. B. Filmer, the Cabinet Minister, I was chivvied on to the roof of a shack on the island in the lake by an angry swan.’
‘I recall the incident vividly, sir.’
‘So do I. And the picture most deeply imprinted on my mental retina – is that the correct expression?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘– is of you facing that swan in the most intrepid “You-can’t-do-that-there-here” manner and bunging a raincoat over its head, thereby completely dishing its aims and plans and compelling it to revise its whole strategy from the bottom up. It was a beautiful bit of work. I don’t know when I have seen a finer.’
‘Thank you, sir. I am glad if I gave satisfaction.’
‘You certainly did, Jeeves, in heaping measure. And what crossed my mind was that a similar operation would make this dog feel pretty silly.’
‘No doubt, sir. But I have no raincoat.’
‘Then I would advise seeing what you can do with a sheet. And in case you are wondering if a sheet would work as well, I may tell you that just before you came into my room I had had admirable results with one in the case of Mr Spode. He just couldn’t seem to get out of the thing.’
‘Indeed, sir?’
‘I assure you, Jeeves. You could wish no better weapon than a sheet. There are some on the bed.’
‘Yes, sir. On the bed.’
There was a pause. I was loath to wrong the man, but if this wasn’t a nolle prosequi, I didn’t know one when I saw one. The distant and unenthusiastic look on his face told me that I was right, and I endeavoured to sting his pride, rather as Gussie in our pourparlers in the matter of Spode had endeavoured to sting mine.
‘Are you afraid of a tiny little dog, Jeeves?’
He corrected me respectfully, giving it as his opinion that the undersigned was not a tiny little dog, but well above the average in muscular development. In particular, he drew my attention to the animal’s teeth.
I reassured him.
‘I think you would find that if you were to make a sudden spring, his teeth would not enter into the matter. You could leap on to the bed, snatch up a sheet, roll him up in it before he knew what was happening, and there we would be.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Well, are you going to make a sudden spring?’
‘No, sir.’
A rather stiff silence ensued, during which the dog Bartholomew continued to gaze at me unwinkingly, and once more I found myself noticing – and resenting – the superior, sanctimonious expression on his face. Nothing can ever render the experience of being treed on top of a chest of drawers by an Aberdeen terrier pleasant, but it seemed to me that the least you can expect on such an occasion is that the animal will meet you half-way and not drop salt into the wound by looking at you as if he were asking if you were saved.
It was in the hope of wiping this look off his face that I now made a gesture. There was a stump of candle standing in the parent candlestick beside me, and I threw this at the little blighter. He ate it with every appearance of relish, took time out briefly in order to be sick, and resumed his silent stare. And at this moment the door opened and in came Stiffy – hours before I had expected her.
The first thing that impressed itself upon one on seeing her was that she was not in her customary buoyant spirits. Stiffy, as a rule, is a girl who moves jauntily from spot to spot – youthful elasticity is, I believe, the expression – but she entered now with a slow and dragging step like a Volga boatman. She cast a dull eye at us, and after a brief ‘Hallo, Bertie. Hallo, Jeeves,’ seemed to dismiss us from her thoughts. She made for the dressing table and having removed her hat, sat looking at herself in the mirror with sombre eyes. It was plain that for some reason the soul had got a flat tyre, and seeing that unless I opened the conversation there was going to be one of those awkward pauses, I did so.
‘What ho, Stiffy.’
‘Hallo.’
‘Nice evening. Your dog’s just been sick on the carpet.’
All this, of course, was merely by way of leading into the main theme, which I now proceeded to broach.
‘Well, Stiffy, I suppose you’re surprised to see us here?’
‘No, I’m not. Have you been looking for that book?’
‘Why, yes. That’s right. We have. Though, as a matter of fact, we hadn’t got really started. We were somewhat impeded by the bow-wow.’ (Keeping it light, you notice. Always the best way on these occasions.) ‘He took our entrance in the wrong spirit.’
‘Oh?’
‘Yes. Would it be asking too much of you to attach a stout lead to his collar, thus making the world safe for democracy?’
‘Yes, it would.’
‘Surely you wish to save the lives of two fellow creatures?’
‘No, I don’t. Not if they’re men. I loathe all men. I hope Bartholomew bites you to the bone.’
I saw that little was to be gained by approaching the matter from this angle. I switched to another point d’appui.
‘I wasn’t expecting you,’ I said. ‘I thought you had gone to the Working Men’s Institute, to tickle the ivories in accompaniment to old Stinker’s coloured lecture on the Holy Land.’
‘I did.’
‘Back early, aren’t you?’
‘Yes. The lecture was off. Harold broke the slides.’
‘Oh?’ I said, feeling that he was just the sort of chap who would break slides. ‘How did that happen?’
She passed a listless hand over the brow of the dog Bartholomew, who had stepped up to fraternize.
‘He dropped them.’
‘What made him do that?’
‘He had a shock, when I broke off our engagement.’
‘What!’
‘Yes.’ A gleam came into her eyes, as if she were reliving unpleasant scenes, and her voice took on the sort of metallic sharpness which I have so often noticed in that of my Aunt Agatha during our get-togethers. Her listlessness disappeared, and for the first time she spoke with a girlish vehemence. ‘I got to Harold’s cottage, and I went in, and after we’d talked of this and that for a while, I said “When are you going to pinch Eustace Oates’s helmet, darling?” And would you believe it, he looked at me in a horrible, sheepish, hang-dog way and said that he had been wrestling with his conscience in the hope of getting its OK, but that it simply wouldn’t hear of him pinching Eustace Oates’s helmet, so it was all off. “Oh?” I said, drawing myself up. “All off, is it? Well, so is our engagement,” and he dropped a double handful of coloured slides of the Holy Land, and I came away.’
‘You don’t mean that?’
‘Yes, I do. And I consider that I have had a very lucky escape. If he is the sort of man who is going to refuse me every little thing I ask, I’m glad I found out in time. I’m delighted about the whole thing.’
Here, with a sniff like the tearing of a piece of calico, she buried the bean in her hands, and broke into what are called uncontrollable sobs.
Well, dashed painful, of course, and you wouldn’t be far wrong in saying that I ached in sympathy with her distress. I don’t suppose there is a man in the W1 postal district of London more readily moved by a woman’s grief than myself. For two pins, if I’d been a bit nearer, I would have patted her head. But though there is this kindly streak in the Woosters, there is also a practical one, and it didn’t take me long to spot the bright side to all this.
‘Well, that’s too bad,’ I said. ‘The heart bleeds. Eh, Jeeves?’
‘Distinctly, sir.’
‘Yes, by Jove, it bleeds profusely, and I suppose that all one can say is that one hopes that Time, the great healer, will eventually stitch up the wound. However, as in these circs you will, of cours
e, no longer have any use for that notebook of Gussie’s, how about handing it over?’
‘What?’
‘I said that if your projected union with Stinker is off, you will, of course, no longer wish to keep that notebook of Gussie’s among your effects –’
‘Oh, don’t bother me about notebooks now.’
‘No, no, quite. Not for the world. All I’m saying is that if – at your leisure – choose the time to suit yourself – you wouldn’t mind slipping it across –’
‘Oh, all right. I can’t give it you now, though. It isn’t here.’
‘Not here?’
‘No. I put it … Hallo, what’s that?’
What had caused her to suspend her remarks just at the point when they were becoming fraught with interest was a sudden tapping sound. A sort of tap-tap-tap. It came from the direction of the window.
This room of Stiffy’s, I should have mentioned, in addition to being equipped with four-poster beds, valuable pictures, richly upholstered chairs and all sorts of things far too good for a young squirt who went about biting the hand that had fed her at luncheon at its flat by causing it the utmost alarm and despondency, had a balcony outside its window. It was from this balcony that the tapping sound proceeded, leading one to infer that someone stood without.
That the dog Bartholomew had reached this conclusion was shown immediately by the lissom agility with which he leaped at the window and starting trying to bite his way through. Up till this moment he had shown himself a dog of strong reserves, content merely to sit and stare, but now he was full of strange oaths. And I confess that as I watched his champing and listened to his observations I congratulated myself on the promptitude with which I had breezed on to that chest of drawers. A bone-crusher, if ever one drew breath, this Bartholomew Byng. Reluctant as one always is to criticize the acts of an all-wise Providence, I was dashed if I could see why a dog of his size should have been fitted out with the jaws and teeth of a crocodile. Still, too late of course to do anything about it now.
Stiffy, after that moment of surprised inaction which was to be expected in a girl who hears tapping sounds at her window, had risen and gone to investigate. I couldn’t see a thing from where I was sitting, but she was evidently more fortunately placed. As she drew back the curtain, I saw her clap a hand to her throat, like someone in a play, and a sharp cry escaped her, audible even above the ghastly row which was proceeding from the lips of the frothing terrier.
‘Harold!’ she yipped, and putting two and two together I gathered that the bird on the balcony must be old Stinker Pinker, my favourite curate.
It was with a sort of joyful yelp, like that of a woman getting together with her demon lover, that the little geezer had spoken his name, but it was evident that reflection now told her that after what had occurred between this man of God and herself this was not quite the tone. Her next words were uttered with a cold, hostile intonation. I was able to hear them, because she had stooped and picked up the bounder Bartholomew, clamping a hand over his mouth to still his cries – a thing I wouldn’t have done for a goodish bit of money.
‘What do you want?’
Owing to the lull in Bartholomew, the stuff was coming through well now. Stinker’s voice was a bit muffled by the intervening sheet of glass, but I got it nicely.
‘Stiffy!’
‘Well?’
‘Can I come in?’
‘No, you can’t.’
‘But I’ve brought you something.’
A sudden howl of ecstasy broke from the young pimple.
‘Harold! You angel lamb! You haven’t got it, after all?’
‘Yes.’
‘Oh, Harold, my dream of joy!’
She opened the window with eager fingers, and a cold draught came in and played about my ankles. It was not followed, as I had supposed it would be, by old Stinker. He continued to hang about on the outskirts, and a moment later his motive in doing so was made clear.
‘I say, Stiffy, old girl, is that hound of yours under control?’
‘Yes, rather. Wait a minute.’
She carried the animal to the cupboard and bunged him in, closing the door behind him. And from the fact that no further bulletins were received from him, I imagine he curled up and went to sleep. These Scotties are philosophers, well able to adapt themselves to changing conditions. They can take it as well as dish it out.
‘All clear, angel,’ she said, and returned to the window, arriving there just in time to be folded in the embrace of the incoming Stinker.
It was not easy for some moments to sort out the male from the female ingredients in the ensuing tangle, but eventually he disengaged himself and I was able to see him steadily and see him whole. And when I did so, I noticed that there was rather more of him than there had been when I had seen him last. Country butter and the easy life these curates lead had added a pound or two to an always impressive figure. To find the lean, finely trained Stinker of my nonage, I felt that one would have to catch him in Lent.
But the change in him, I soon perceived, was purely superficial. The manner in which he now tripped over a rug and cannoned into an occasional table, upsetting it with all the old thoroughness, showed me that at heart he still remained the same galumphing man with two left feet, who had always been constitutionally incapable of walking through the great Gobi desert without knocking something over.
Stinker’s was a face which in the old College days had glowed with health and heartiness. The health was still there – he looked like a clerical beetroot – but of heartiness at this moment one noted rather a shortage. His features were drawn, as if Conscience were gnawing at his vitals. And no doubt it was, for in one hand he was carrying the helmet which I had last observed perched on the dome of Constable Eustace Oates. With a quick, impulsive movement, like that of a man trying to rid himself of a dead fish, he thrust it at Stiffy, who received it with a soft, tender squeal of ecstasy.
‘I brought it,’ he said dully.
‘Oh, Harold!’
‘I brought your gloves, too. You left them behind. At least, I’ve brought one of them. I couldn’t find the other.’
‘Thank you, darling. But never mind about gloves, my wonder man. Tell me everything that happened.’
He was about to do so, when he paused, and I saw that he was staring at me with a rather feverish look in his eyes. Then he turned and stared at Jeeves. One could read what was passing in his mind. He was debating within himself whether we were real, or whether the nervous strain to which he had been subjected was causing him to see things.
‘Stiffy,’ he said, lowering his voice, ‘don’t look now, but is there something on top of that chest of drawers?’
‘Eh? Oh, yes, that’s Bertie Wooster.’
‘Oh, it is?’ said Stinker, brightening visibly. ‘I wasn’t quite sure. Is that somebody on the cupboard, too?’
‘That’s Bertie’s man Jeeves.’
‘How do you do?’ said Stinker.
‘How do you do, sir?’ said Jeeves.
We climbed down, and I came forward with outstretched hand, anxious to get the reunion going.
‘What ho, Stinker.’
‘Hallo, Bertie.’
‘Long time since we met.’
‘It is a bit, isn’t it?’
‘I hear you’re a curate now.’
‘Yes, that’s right.’
‘How are the souls?’
‘Oh, fine, thanks.’
There was a pause, and I suppose I would have gone on to ask him if he had seen anything of old So-and-so lately or knew what had become of old What’s-his-name, as one does when the conversation shows a tendency to drag on these occasions of ancient College chums meeting again after long separation, but before I could do so, Stiffy, who had been crooning over the helmet like a mother over the cot of her sleeping child, stuck it on her head with a merry chuckle, and the spectacle appeared to bring back to Stinker like a slosh in the waistcoat the realization of what he had done. You’
ve probably heard the expression ‘The wretched man seemed fully conscious of his position.’ That was Harold Pinker at this juncture. He shied like a startled horse, knocked over another table, tottered to a chair, knocked that over, picked it up and sat down, burying his face in his hands.
‘If the Infants’ Bible Class should hear of this!’ he said, shuddering strongly.
I saw what he meant. A man in his position has to watch his step. What people expect from a curate is a zealous performance of his parochial duties. They like to think of him as a chap who preaches about Hivites, Jebusites and what not, speaks the word in season to the backslider, conveys soup and blankets to the deserving bedridden, and all that sort of thing. When they find him de-helmeting policemen, they look at one another with the raised eyebrow of censure, and ask themselves if he is quite the right man for the job. That was what was bothering Stinker and preventing him being the old effervescent curate whose jolly laugh had made the last School Treat go with such a bang.
Stiffy endeavoured to hearten him.
‘I’m sorry, darling. If it upsets you, I’ll put it away.’ She crossed to the chest of drawers, and did so. ‘But why it should,’ she said, returning, ‘I can’t imagine. I should have thought it would have made you so proud and happy. And now tell me everything that happened.’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘One would like the first-hand story.’
‘Did you creep up behind him like a leopard?’ asked Stiffy.
‘Of course he did,’ I said, admonishing the silly young shrimp. ‘You don’t suppose he pranced up in full view of the fellow? No doubt you trailed him with unremitting snakiness, eh, Stinker, and did the deed when he was relaxing on a stile or somewhere over a quiet pipe?’
Stinker sat staring straight before him, that drawn look still on his face.
‘He wasn’t on the stile. He was leaning against it. After you left me, Stiffy, I went for a walk, to think things over, and I had just crossed Plunkett’s meadow and was going to climb the stile into the next one, when I saw something dark in front of me, and there he was.’
I nodded. I could visualize the scene.
‘I hope,’ I said, ‘that you remembered to give the forward shove before the upwards lift?’
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