‘Precisely, m’lord.’
‘A satisfactory state of things.’
‘Highly satisfactory, m’lord.’
‘There have been moments today, Jeeves, I don’t mind confessing, when it seemed to me that the only thing to do was to turn up the toes and say “This is the end”, but now it would take very little to start me singing like the Cherubim and Seraphim. It was the Cherubim and Seraphim who sang, wasn’t it?’
‘Yes, m’lord. Hosanna, principally.’
‘I feel a new man. The odd sensation of having swallowed a quart of butterflies, which I got when there was a burst of red fire and a roll of drums from the orchestra and that White Hunter shot up through a trap at my elbow, has passed away completely.’
‘I am delighted to hear it, m’lord.’
‘I knew you would be, Jeeves, I knew you would be. Sympathy and understanding are your middle names. And now,’ said Bill, ‘to join the ladies in the living-room and put the poor souls out of their suspense.’
Chapter 9
Arriving in the living-room, he found that the number of ladies available for being joined there had been reduced to one—reading from left to right, Jill. She was sitting on the settee twiddling an empty coffee-cup and staring before her with what are sometimes described as unseeing eyes. Her air was that of a girl who is brooding on something, a girl to whom recent happenings have given much food for thought.
‘Hullo there, darling,’ cried Bill with the animation of a shipwrecked mariner sighting a sail. After that testing session in the dining-room, almost anything that was not Captain Biggar would have looked good to him, and she looked particularly good.
Jill glanced up.
‘Oh, hullo,’ she said.
It seemed to Bill that her manner was reserved, but he proceeded with undiminished exuberance.
‘Where’s everybody?’
‘Rory and Moke are in the library, looking in at the Derby Dinner.’
‘And Mrs Spottsworth?’
‘Rosie,’ said Jill in a toneless voice, ‘has gone to the ruined chapel. I believe she is hoping to get a word with the ghost of Lady Agatha.’
Bill started. He also gulped a little.
‘Rosie?’
‘I think that is what you call her, is it not?’
‘Why—er—yes.’
‘And she calls you Billiken. Is she a very old friend?’
‘No, no. I knew her slightly at Cannes one summer.’
‘From what I heard her saying at dinner about moonlight drives and bathing from the Eden Roc, I got the impression that you had been rather intimate.’
‘Good heavens, no. She was just an acquaintance, and a pretty mere one, at that.’
‘I see.’
There was a silence.
‘I wonder if you remember,’ said Jill, at length breaking it, ‘what I was saying this evening before dinner about people not hiding things from each other, if they are going to get married?’
‘Er—yes… Yes… I remember that.’
‘We agreed that it was the only way.’
‘Yes… Yes, that’s right. So we did.’
‘I told you about Percy, didn’t I? And Charles and Squiffy and Tom and Blotto,’ said Jill, mentioning other figures of Romance from the dead past. ‘I never dreamed of concealing the fact that I had been engaged before I met you. So why did you hide this Spottsworth from me?’
It seemed to Bill that, for a pretty good sort of chap who meant no harm to anybody and strove always to do the square thing by one and all, he was being handled rather roughly by Fate this summer day. The fellow—Shakespeare, he rather thought, though he would have to check with Jeeves—who had spoken of the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, had known what he was talking about. Slings and arrows described it to a nicety.
‘I didn’t hide this Spottsworth from you!’ he cried passionately. ‘She just didn’t happen to come up. Lord love a duck, when you’re sitting with the girl you love, holding her little hand and whispering words of endearment in her ear, you can’t suddenly switch the conversation to an entirely different topic and say, “Oh, by the way, there was a woman I met in Cannes some years ago, on the subject of whom I would now like to say a few words. Let me tell you all about the time we drove to St Tropez.”’
‘In the moonlight.’
‘Was it my fault that there was a moon? I wasn’t consulted. And as for bathing from the Eden Roc, you talk as if we had had the ruddy Eden Roc to ourselves with not another human being in sight. It was not so, but far otherwise. Every time we took a dip, the water was alive with exiled Grand Dukes and stiff with dowagers of the most rigid respectability.’
‘I still think it odd you never mentioned her.’
‘I don’t.’
‘I do. And I think it still odder that when Jeeves told you this afternoon that a Mrs Spottsworth was coming here, you just said “Oh, ah?” or something and let it go as if you had never heard the name before. Wouldn’t the natural thing have been to say, “Mrs Spottsworth? Well, well, bless my soul, I wonder if that can possibly be the woman with whom I was on terms of mere acquaintanceship at Cannes a year or two ago. Did I ever tell you about her, Jill? I used to drive with her a good deal in the moonlight, though of course in quite a distant way.”’
It was Bill’s moment.
‘No,’ he thundered, ‘it would not have been the natural thing to say, “Mrs Spottsworth? Well, well,” and so on and so forth, and I’ll tell you why. When I knew her… slightly, as I say, as one does know people in places like Cannes… her name was Bessemer.’
‘Oh?’
‘Precisely. B with an E with an S with an S with an E with an M with an E with an R. Bessemer. I have still to learn how all this Spottsworth stuff arose.’
Jeeves came in. Duty called him at about this hour to collect the coffee-cups, and duty never called to this great man in vain.
His arrival broke what might be called the spell. Jill, who had more to say on the subject under discussion, withheld it. She got up and made for the french window.
‘Well, I must be getting along,’ she said, still speaking rather tonelessly.
Bill stared.
‘You aren’t leaving already?’
‘Only to go home and get some things. Moke has asked me to stay the night.’
‘Then Heaven bless Moke! Full marks for the intelligent female.’
‘You like the idea of my staying the night?’
‘It’s terrific.’
‘You’re sure I shan’t be in the way?’
‘What on earth are you talking about? Shall I come with you?’
‘Of course not. You’re supposed to be a host.’
She went out, and Bill, gazing after her fondly, suddenly stiffened. Like a delayed-action bomb, those words ‘You’re sure I shan’t be in the way?’ had just hit him. Had they been mere idle words? Or had they contained a sinister significance?
‘Women are odd, Jeeves,’ he said.
‘Yes, m’lord.’
‘Not to say peculiar. You can’t tell what they mean when they say things, can you?’
‘Very seldom, m’lord.’
Bill brooded for a moment.
‘Were you observing Miss Wyvern as she buzzed off?’
‘Not closely, m’lord.’
‘Was her manner strange, do you think?’
‘I could not say, m’lord. I was concentrating on coffee-cups.’
Bill brooded again. This uncertainty was preying on his nerves. ‘You’re sure I shan’t be in the way?’ Had there been a nasty tinkle in her voice as she uttered the words? Everything turned on that. If no tinkle, fine. But if tinkle, things did not look so good. The question, plus tinkle, could only mean that his reasoned explanation of the Spottsworth–Cannes sequence had failed to get across and that she still harboured suspicions, unworthy of her though such suspicions might be.
The irritability which good men feel on these occasions swept over him. What was the use
of being as pure as the driven snow, or possibly purer, if girls were going to come tinkling at you?
‘The whole trouble with women, Jeeves,’ he said, and the philosopher Schopenhauer would have slapped him on the back and told him he knew just how he felt, ‘is that practically all of them are dotty. Look at Mrs Spottsworth. Wacky to the eyebrows. Roosting in a ruined chapel in the hope of seeing Lady Agatha.’
‘Indeed, m’lord? Mrs Spottsworth is interested in spectres?’
‘She eats them alive. Is that balanced behaviour?’
‘Psychical research frequently has an appeal for the other sex, m’lord. My Aunt Emily—’
Bill eyed him dangerously.
‘Remember what I said about Pliny the Younger, Jeeves?’
‘Yes, m’lord.’
‘That goes for your Aunt Emily as well.’
‘Very good, m’lord.’
‘I’m not interested in your Aunt Emily.’
‘Precisely, m’lord. During her long lifetime very few people were.’
‘She is no longer with us?’
‘No, m’lord.’
‘Oh, well, that’s something,’ said Bill.
Jeeves floated out, and Bill flung himself into a chair. He was thinking once more of that cryptic speech, and now his mood had become wholly pessimistic. It was no longer any question of a tinkle or a non-tinkle. He was virtually certain that the words ‘You’re sure I shan’t be in the way?’ had been spoken through clenched teeth and accompanied by a look of infinite meaning. They had been the words of a girl who had intended to make a nasty crack.
He was passing his hands through his hair with a febrile gesture, when Monica entered from the library. She had found the celebrants at the Derby Dinner a little on the long-winded side. Rory was still drinking in every word, but she needed an intermission.
She regarded her hair-twisting brother with astonishment.
‘Good heavens, Bill! Why the agony? What’s up?’
Bill glared unfraternally.
‘Nothing’s up, confound it! Nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing!’
Monica raised her eyebrows.
‘Well, there’s no need to be stuffy about it. I was only being the sympathetic sister.’
With a strong effort Bill recovered the chivalry of the Rowcesters.
‘I’m sorry, Moke old thing. I’ve got a headache.’
‘My poor lamb!’
‘It’ll pass off in a minute.’
‘What you need is fresh air.’
‘Perhaps I do.’
‘And pleasant society. Ma Spottsworth’s in the ruined chapel. Pop along and have a chat with her.’
‘What!’
Monica became soothing.
‘Now don’t be difficult, Bill. You know as well as I do how important it is to jolly her along. A flash of speed on your part now may mean selling the house. The whole idea was that on top of my sales talk you were to draw her aside and switch on the charm. Have you forgotten what you said about cooing to her like a turtle dove? Dash off this minute and coo as you have never cooed before.’
For a long moment it seemed as though Bill, his frail strength taxed beyond its limit of endurance, was about to suffer something in the nature of spontaneous combustion. His eyes goggled, his face flushed, and burning words trembled on his lips. Then suddenly, as if Reason had intervened with a mild ‘Tut, tut’, he ceased to glare and his cheeks slowly resumed their normal hue. He had seen that Monica’s suggestion was good and sensible.
In the rush and swirl of recent events, the vitally urgent matter of pushing through the sale of his ancestral home had been thrust into the background of Bill’s mind. It now loomed up for that it was, the only existing life preserver bobbing about in the sea of troubles in which he was immersed. Clutch it, and he was saved. When you sold houses, he reminded himself, you got deposits, paid cash down. Such a deposit would be sufficient to dispose of the Biggar menace, and if the only means of securing it was to go to Rosalinda Spottsworth and coo, then go and coo he must.
Simultaneously there came to him the healing thought that if Jill had gone home to provide herself with things for the night, it would be at least half an hour before she got back, and in half an hour a determined man can do a lot of cooing.
‘Moke,’ he said, ‘you’re right. My place is at her side.’
He hurried out, and a moment later Rory appeared at the library door.
‘I say, Moke,’ said Rory, ‘can you speak Spanish?’
‘I don’t know. I’ve never tried. Why?’
‘There’s a Spaniard or an Argentine or some such bird in there telling us about his horse in his native tongue. Probably a rank outsider, still one would have been glad to hear his views. Where’s Bill? Don’t tell me he’s still in there with the White Man’s Burden?’
‘No, he came in here just now, and went out to talk to Mrs Spottsworth.’
‘I want to confer with you about old Bill,’ said Rory. ‘Are we alone and unobserved?’
‘Unless there’s someone hiding in that dower chest. What about Bill?’
‘There’s something up, old girl, and it has to do with this chap Biggar. Did you notice Bill at dinner?’
‘Not particularly. What was he doing? Eating peas with his knife?’
‘No, but every time he caught Biggar’s eye, he quivered like an Ouled Nail stomach dancer. For some reason Biggar affects him like an egg-whisk. Why? That’s what I want to know. Who is this mystery man? Why had he come here? What is there between him and Bill that makes Bill leap and quake and shiver whenever he looks at him? I don’t like it, old thing. When you married me, you never said anything about fits in the family, and I consider I have been shabbily treated. I mean to say, it’s a bit thick, going to all the trouble and expense of wooing and winning the girl you love, only to discover shortly after the honeymoon that you’ve become brother-in-law to a fellow with St Vitus’s Dance.’
Monica reflected.
‘Come to think of it,’ she said, ‘I do remember, when I told him a Captain Biggar had clocked in, he seemed a bit upset. Yes, I distinctly recall a greenish pallor and a drooping lower jaw. And I came in here just now and found him tearing his hair. I agree with you. It’s sinister.’
‘And I’ll tell you something else,’ said Rory. ‘When I left the dining-room to go and look at the Derby Dinner, Bill was all for coming too. “How about it?” he said to Biggar, and Biggar, looking very puff-faced, said “Later, perhaps. At the moment, I would like a word with you, Lord Rowcester.” In a cold, steely voice, like a magistrate about to fine you a fiver for pinching a policeman’s helmet on Boat Race night. And Bill gulped like a stricken bull pup and said “Oh, certainly, certainly” or words to that effect. It sticks out a mile that this Biggar has got something on old Bill.’
‘But what could he possibly have on him?’
‘Just the question I asked myself, my old partner of joys and sorrows, and I think I have the solution. Do you remember those stories one used to read as a kid? The Strand Magazine used to be full of them.’
‘Which stories?’
‘Those idol’s eye stories. The ones where a gang of blighters pop over to India to pinch the great jewel that’s the eye of the idol. They get the jewel all right, but they chisel one of the blighters out of his share of the loot, which naturally makes him as sore as a gum-boil, and years later he tracks the other blighters down one by one in their respectable English homes and wipes them out to the last blighter, by way of getting a bit of his own back. You mark my words, old Bill is being chivvied by this chap Biggar because he did him out of his share of the proceeds of the green eye of the little yellow god in the temple of Vishnu, and I shall be much surprised if we don’t come down to breakfast tomorrow morning and find him weltering in his blood among the kippers and sausages with a dagger of Oriental design in the small of his back.’
‘Ass!’
‘Are you addressing me?’
‘I am, and with
knobs on. Bill’s never been farther east than Frinton.’
‘He’s been to Cannes.’
‘Is Cannes east? I never know. But he’s certainly never been within smelling distance of Indian idols’ eyes.’
‘I didn’t think of that,’ said Rory.
‘Yes, that, I admit, does weaken my argument to a certain extent.’ He brooded tensely. ‘Ha! I have it now. I see it all. The rift between Bill and Biggar is due to the baby.’
‘What on earth are you talking about? What baby?’
‘Bill’s, working in close collaboration with Biggar’s daughter, the apple of Biggar’s eye, a poor, foolish little thing who loved not wisely but too well. And if you are going to say that girls are all wise nowadays, I reply “Not one brought up in the missionary school at Squalor Lumpit.” In those missionary schools they explain the facts of life by telling the kids about the bees and the flowers till the poor little brutes don’t know which is which.’
‘For heaven’s sake, Rory.’
‘Mark how it works out with the inevitability of Greek tragedy or whatever it was that was so bally inevitable. Girl comes to England, no mother to guide her, meets a handsome young Englishman, and what happens? The first false step. The remorse… too late. The little bundle. The awkward interview with Father. Father all steamed up. Curses a bit in some native dialect and packs his elephant gun and comes along to see old Bill. “Caramba!” as that Spaniard is probably saying at this moment on the television screen. Still, there’s nothing to worry about. I don’t suppose he can make him marry her. All Bill will have to do is look after the little thing’s education. Send it to school and so on. If a boy, Eton. If a girl, Roedean.’
‘Cheltenham.’
‘Oh, yes. I’d forgotten you were an Old Cheltonian. The question now arises, should young Jill be told? It hardly seems fair to allow her to rush unwarned into marriage with a rip-snorting roué like William, Earl of Rowcester.’
‘Don’t call Bill a rip-snorting roué!’
‘It is how we should describe him at Harrige’s.’
Ring For Jeeves Page 9