The Tough Eggs were tickled by this bit of information straight from the stable. They took it up as a sort of battle-cry. Then, after about five minutes, the lights went up again, and the show was resumed.
It took ten minutes after that to get the audience back into its state of coma, but eventually they began to settle down, and everything was going nicely when a small boy with a face like a turbot edged out in front of the curtain, which had been lowered after a pretty painful scene about a wishing-ring or a fairy’s curse or something of that sort, and started to sing that song of George Thingummy’s out of Cuddle Up! You know the one I mean. ‘Always Listen to Mother, Girls!’ it’s called, and he gets the audience to join in and sing the refrain. Quite a ripeish ballad, and one which I myself have frequently sung in my bath with not a little vim; but by no means – as anyone but a perfect sapheaded prune like young Bingo would have known – by no means the sort of thing for a children’s Christmas entertainment in the old village hall. Right from the start of the first refrain the bulk of the audience had begun to stiffen in their seats and fan themselves, and the Burgess girl at the piano was accompanying in a stunned, mechanical sort of way, while the curate at her side averted his gaze in a pained manner. The Tough Eggs, however, were all for it.
At the end of the second refrain the kid stopped and began to sidle towards the wings. Upon which the following brief duologue took place:
YOUNG BINGO (Voice heard, off, ringing against the rafters): ‘Go on!’
THE KID (coyly): ‘I don’t like to.’
YOUNG BINGO (still louder): ‘Go on, you little blighter, or I’ll slay you!’
I suppose the kid thought it over swiftly and realized that Bingo, being in a position to get at him, had better be conciliated, whatever the harvest might be; for he shuffled down to the front and, having shut his eyes and giggled hysterically, said: ‘Ladies and gentlemen, I will now call upon Squire Tressidder to oblige by singing the refrain!’
You know, with the most charitable feelings towards him, there are moments when you can’t help thinking that young Bingo ought to be in some sort of a home. I suppose, poor fish, he had pictured this as the big punch of the evening. He had imagined, I take it, that the Squire would spring jovially to his feet, rip the song off his chest, and all would be gaiety and mirth. Well, what happened was simply that old Tressidder – and, mark you, I’m not blaming him – just sat where he was, swelling and turning a brighter purple every second. The lower middle classes remained in frozen silence, waiting for the roof to fall. The only section of the audience that really seemed to enjoy the idea was the Tough Eggs, who yelled with enthusiasm. It was jam for the Tough Eggs.
And then the lights went out again.
When they went up, some minutes later, they disclosed the Squire marching stiffly out at the head of his family, fed up to the eyebrows; the Burgess girl at the piano with a pale, set look; and the curate gazing at her with something in his expression that seemed to suggest that, although all this was no doubt deplorable, he had spotted the silver lining.
The show went on once more. There were great chunks of Plays-for-the-Tots dialogue, and then the girl at the piano struck up the prelude to that Orange-Girl number that’s the big hit of the Palace revue. I took it that this was to be Bingo’s smashing act one finale. The entire company was on the stage, and a clutching hand had appeared round the edge of the curtain, ready to pull at the right moment. It looked like the finale all right. It wasn’t long before I realized that it was something more. It was the finish.
I take it you know that Orange number at the Palace? It goes:
Oh, won’t you something something oranges,
My something oranges,
My something oranges;
Oh, won’t you something something something I forget,
Something something something tumty tumty yet:
Oh –
or words to that effect. It’s a dashed clever lyric, and the tune’s good, too; but the thing that made the number was the business where the girls take oranges out of their baskets, you know, and toss them lightly to the audience. I don’t know if you’ve ever noticed it, but it always seems to tickle an audience to bits when they get things thrown at them from the stage. Every time I’ve been to the Palace the customers have simply gone wild over this number.
But at the Palace, of course, the oranges are made of yellow wool, and the girls don’t so much chuck them as drop them limply into the first and second rows. I began to gather that the business was going to be treated rather differently tonight when a dashed great chunk of pips and mildew sailed past my ear and burst on the wall behind me. Another landed with a squelch on the neck of one of the Nibs in the third row. And then a third took me right on the tip of the nose, and I kind of lost interest in the proceedings for a while.
When I had scrubbed my face and got my eye to stop watering for a moment, I saw that the evening’s entertainment had begun to resemble one of Belfast’s livelier nights. The air was thick with shrieks and fruit. The kids on the stage, with Bingo buzzing distractedly to and fro in their midst, were having the time of their lives. I suppose they realized that this couldn’t go on for ever, and were making the most of their chances. The Tough Eggs had begun to pick up all the oranges that hadn’t burst and were shooting them back, so that the audience got it both coming and going. In fact, take it all round, there was a certain amount of confusion; and, just as things had begun really to hot up, out went the lights again.
It seemed to me about my time for leaving, so I slid for the door. I was hardly outside when the audience began to stream out. They surged about me in twos and threes, and I’ve never seen a public body so dashed unanimous on any point. To a man – and to a woman – they were cursing poor old Bingo; and there was a large and rapidly growing school of thought which held that the best thing to do would be to waylay him as he emerged and splash him about in the village pond a bit.
There were such a dickens of a lot of these enthusiasts and they looked so jolly determined that it seemed to me that the only matey thing to do was to go behind and warn young Bingo to turn his coat-collar up and breeze off snakily by some side exit. I went behind, and found him sitting on a box in the wings, perspiring pretty freely and looking more or less like the spot marked with a cross where the accident happened. His hair was standing up and his ears were hanging down, and one harsh word would undoubtedly have made him burst into tears.
‘Bertie,’ he said hollowly, as he saw me, ‘it was that blighter Steggles! I caught one of the kids before he could get away and got it all out of him. Steggles substituted real oranges for the balls of wool which with infinite sweat and at a cost of nearly a quid I had specially prepared. Well, I will now proceed to tear him limb from limb. It’ll be something to do.’
I hated to spoil his day-dreams, but it had to be.
‘Good heavens, man,’ I said, ‘you haven’t time for frivolous amusements now. You’ve got to get out. And quick!’
‘Bertie,’ said Bingo in a dull voice, ‘she was here just now. She said it was all my fault and that she would never speak to me again. She said she had always suspected me of being a heartless practical joker, and now she knew. She said – Oh, well, she ticked me off properly.’
‘That’s the least of your troubles,’ I said. It seemed impossible to rouse the poor zib to a sense of his position. ‘Do you realize that about two hundred of Twing’s heftiest are waiting for you outside to chuck you into the pond?’
‘No!’
‘Absolutely!’
For a moment the poor chap seemed crushed. But only for a moment. There has always been something of the good old English bulldog breed about Bingo. A strange, sweet smile flickered for an instant over his face.
‘It’s all right,’ he said. ‘I can sneak out through the cellar and climb over the wall at the back. They can’t intimidate me!’
It couldn’t have been more than a week later when Jeeves, after he had brought me my
tea, gently steered me away from the sporting page of the Morning Post and directed my attention to an announcement in the engagements and marriages column.
It was a brief statement that a marriage had been arranged and would shortly take place between the Hon. and Rev. Hubert Wingham, third son of the Right Hon. the Earl of Sturridge, and Mary, only daughter of the late Matthew Burgess, of Weatherly Court, Hants.
‘Of course,’ I said, after I had given it the east-to-west, ‘I expected this, Jeeves.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘She would never forgive him what happened that night.’
‘No, sir.’
‘Well,’ I said, as I took a sip of the fragrant and steaming, ‘I don’t suppose it will take old Bingo long to get over it. It’s about the hundred and eleventh time this sort of thing has happened to him. You’re the man I’m sorry for.’
‘Me, sir?’
‘Well, dash it all, you can’t have forgotten what a deuce of a lot of trouble you took to bring the thing off for Bingo. It’s too bad that all your work should have been wasted.’
‘Not entirely wasted, sir.’
‘Eh?’
‘It is true that my efforts to bring about the match between Mr Little and the young lady were not successful, but I still look back upon the matter with a certain satisfaction.’
‘Because you did your best, you mean?’
‘Not entirely, sir, though of course that thought also gives me pleasure. I was alluding more particularly to the fact that I found the affair financially remunerative.’
‘Financially remunerative? What do you mean?’
‘When I learned that Mr Steggles had interested himself in the contest, sir, I went shares with my friend Brookfield and bought the book which had been made on the issue by the landlord of the Cow and Horses. It has proved a highly profitable investment. Your breakfast will be ready almost immediately, sir. Kidneys on toast and mushrooms. I will bring it when you ring.’
16
* * *
The Delayed Exit of Claude and Eustace
THE FEELING I had when Aunt Agatha trapped me in my lair that morning and spilled the bad news was that my luck had broken at last. As a rule, you see, I’m not lugged into Family Rows. On the occasions when Aunt is calling to Aunt like mastodons bellowing across primeval swamps and Uncle James’s letter about Cousin Mabel’s peculiar behaviour is being shot round the family circle (‘Please read this carefully and send it on to Jane’), the clan has a tendency to ignore me. It’s one of the advantages I get from being a bachelor – and, according to my nearest and dearest, practically a half-witted bachelor at that. ‘It’s no good trying to get Bertie to take the slightest interest’ is more or less the slogan, and I’m bound to say I’m all for it. A quiet life is what I like. And that’s why I felt that the Curse had come upon me, so to speak, when Aunt Agatha sailed into my sitting-room while I was having a placid cigarette and started to tell me about Claude and Eustace.
‘Thank goodness,’ said Aunt Agatha, ‘arrangements have at last been made about Eustace and Claude.’
‘Arrangements?’ I said, not having the foggiest.
‘They sail on Friday for South Africa. Mr Van Alstyne, a friend of poor Emily’s, has given them berths in his firm at Johannesburg, and we are hoping that they will settle down there and do well.’
I didn’t get the thing at all.
‘Friday? The day after tomorrow, do you mean?’
‘Yes.’
‘For South Africa?’
‘Yes. They leave on the Edinburgh Castle.’
‘But what’s the idea? I mean, aren’t they in the middle of their term at Oxford?’
Aunt Agatha looked at me coldly.
‘Do you positively mean to tell me, Bertie, that you take so little interest in the affairs of your nearest relatives that you are not aware that Claude and Eustace were expelled from Oxford over a fortnight ago?’
‘No, really?’
‘You are hopeless, Bertie. I should have thought that even you –’
‘Why were they sent down?’
‘They poured lemonade on the Junior Dean of their college … I see nothing amusing in the outrage, Bertie.’
‘No, no, rather not,’ I said hurriedly. ‘I wasn’t laughing. Choking. Got something stuck in my throat, you know.’
‘Poor Emily,’ went on Aunt Agatha, ‘being one of those doting mothers who are the ruin of their children, wished to keep the boys in London. She suggested that they might cram for the Army. But I was firm. The Colonies are the only place for wild youths like Eustace and Claude. So they sail on Friday. They have been staying for the last two weeks with your Uncle Clive in Worcestershire. They will spend tomorrow night in London and catch the boat-train on Friday morning.’
‘Bit risky, isn’t it? I mean, aren’t they apt to cut loose a bit tomorrow night if they’re left all alone in London?’
‘They will not be left alone. They will be in your charge.’
‘Mine!’
‘Yes. I wish you to put them up in your flat for the night, and see that they do not miss the train in the morning.’
‘Oh, I say, no!’
‘Bertie!’
‘Well, I mean, quite jolly coves both of them, but I don’t know. They’re rather nuts, you know … Always glad to see them, of course, but when it comes to putting them up for the night –’
‘Bertie, if you are so sunk in callous self-indulgence that you cannot even put yourself to this trifling inconvenience for the sake of –’
‘Oh, all right,’ I said. ‘All right.’
It was no good arguing, of course. Aunt Agatha always makes me feel as if I had gelatine where my spine ought to be. She’s one of those forceful females. I should think Queen Elizabeth I must have been something like her. When she holds me with her glittering eye and says, ‘Jump to it, my lad’, or words to that effect, I make it so without further discussion.
When she had gone, I rang for Jeeves to break the news to him.
‘Oh, Jeeves,’ I said, ‘Mr Claude and Mr Eustace will be staying here tomorrow night.’
‘Very good, sir.’
‘I’m glad you think so. To me the outlook seems black and scaly. You know what those two lads are!’
‘Very high-spirited young gentlemen, sir.’
‘Blisters, Jeeves. Undeniable blisters. It’s a bit thick!’
‘Would there by anything further, sir?’
At that, I’m bound to say, I drew myself up a trifle haughtily. We Woosters freeze like the dickens when we seek sympathy and meet with cold reserve. I knew what was up, of course. For the last day or so there had been a certain amount of coolness in the home over a pair of jazzy spats which I had dug up while exploring in the Burlington Arcade. Some dashed brainy cove, probably the chap who invented those coloured cigarette-cases, had recently had the rather topping idea of putting out a line of spats on the same system. I mean to say, instead of the ordinary grey and white, you can now get them in your regimental or school colours. And, believe me, it would have taken a chappie of stronger fibre than I am to resist the pair of Old Etonian spats which had smiled up at me from inside the window. I was inside the shop, opening negotiations, before it had even occurred to me that Jeeves might not approve. And I must say he had taken the thing a bit hardly. The fact of the matter is, Jeeves, though in many ways the best valet in London, is too conservative. Hide-bound, if you know what I mean, and an enemy to Progress.
‘Nothing further, Jeeves,’ I said, with quiet dignity.
‘Very good, sir.’
He gave one frosty look at the spats and biffed off. Dash him!
Anything merrier and brighter than the Twins, when they curvetted into the old flat while I was dressing for dinner the next night, I have never struck in my whole puff. I’m only about half a dozen years older than Claude and Eustace, but in some rummy manner they always make me feel as if I were well on in the grandfather class and just waiting for the end. Almo
st before I realized they were in the place, they had collared the best chairs, pinched a couple of my special cigarettes, poured themselves out a whisky-and-soda apiece, and started to prattle with the gaiety and abandon of two birds who had achieved their life’s ambition instead of having come a most frightful purler and being under sentence of exile.
‘Hallo, Bertie, old thing,’ said Claude. ‘Jolly decent of you to put us up.’
‘Oh, no,’ I said. ‘Only wish you were staying a good long time.’
‘Hear that, Eustace? He wishes we were staying a good long time.’
‘I expect it will seem a good long time,’ said Eustace, philosophically.
‘You heard about the binge, Bertie? Our little bit of trouble, I mean?’
‘Oh, yes. Aunt Agatha was telling me.’
‘We leave our country for our country’s good,’ said Eustace.
‘And let there be no moaning at the bar,’ said Claude, ‘when I put out to sea. What did Aunt Agatha tell you?’
‘She said you poured lemonade on the Junior Dean.’
‘I wish the deuce,’ said Claude, annoyed, ‘that people would get these things right. It wasn’t the Junior Dean. It was the Senior Tutor.’
‘And it wasn’t lemonade,’ said Eustace. ‘It was soda-water. The dear old thing happened to be standing just under our window while I was leaning out with a siphon in my hand. He looked up, and – well, it would have been chucking away the opportunity of a lifetime if I hadn’t let him have it in the eyeball.’
‘Simply chucking it away,’ agreed Claude.
‘Might never have occurred again,’ said Eustace.
‘Hundred to one against it,’ said Claude.
‘Now, what,’ said Eustace, ‘do you propose to do, Bertie, in the way of entertaining the handsome guests tonight?’
‘My idea was to have a bit of dinner in the flat,’ I said. ‘Jeeves is getting it ready now.’
‘And afterwards?’
‘Well, I thought we might chat of this and that, and then it struck me that you would probably like to turn in early, as your train goes about ten or something, doesn’t it?’
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