Пэлем Грэнвил Вудхауз. Премного обязан, Дживс (engl)
Пэлем Грэнвил Вудхауз. Премного обязан, Дживс (engl)
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OCR: Rojer, 2002
(more PGW titles to come, http://rojer.bdo.ru/PGW/)
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P.G.Wodehouse. Much obliged, Jeeves
As I slid into my chair at the breakfast table and started to
deal with the toothsome eggs and bacon which Jeeves had given of
his plenty, I was conscious of a strange exhilaration, if I've got
the word right. Pretty good the set-up looked to me. Here I was,
back in the old familiar headquarters, and the thought that I had
seen the last of Totleigh Towers, of Sir Watkyn Bassett, of his
daughter Madeline and above all of the unspeakable Spode, or Lord
Sidcup as he now calls himself, was like the medium dose for adults
of one of those patent medicines which tone the system and impart a
gentle glow.
'These eggs, Jeeves,' I said. 'Very good. Very tasty.'
'Yes, sir?'
'Laid, no doubt, by contented hens. And the coffee, perfect.
Nor must I omit to give a word of praise to the bacon. I wonder if
you notice anything about me this morning.'
'You seem in good spirits, sir.'
'Yes, Jeeves, I am happy today.'
'I am very glad to hear it, sir.'
'You might say I'm sitting on top of the world with a rainbow
round my shoulder.'
'A most satisfactory state of affairs, sir.'
'What's the word I've heard you use from time to time - begins
with eu?'
'Euphoria, sir?'
'That's the one. I've seldom had a sharper attack of euphoria.
I feel full to the brim of Vitamin B. Mind you, I don't know how
long it will last. Too often it is when one feels fizziest that the
storm clouds begin doing their stuff.'
'Very true, sir. Full many a glorious morning have I seen
flatter the mountain tops with sovereign eye, kissing with golden
face the meadows green, gilding pale streams with heavenly alchemy,
Anon permit the basest clouds to ride with ugly rack on his
celestial face and from the forlorn world his visage hide, stealing
unseen to west with this disgrace.'
'Exactly,' I said. I couldn't have put it better myself. 'One
always has to budget for a change in the weather. Still, the thing
to do is to keep on being happy while you can.'
'Precisely, sir. Carpe diem, the Roman poet Horace advised. The
English poet Herrick expressed the same sentiment when he suggested
that we should gather rosebuds while we may. Your elbow is in the
butter, sir.'
'Oh, thank you, Jeeves.'Well, all right so far. Off to a nice
start. But now we come to something which gives me pause. In
recording the latest instalment of the Bertram Wooster Story, a
task at which I am about to have a pop, I don't see how I can avoid
delving into the past a good deal, touching on events which took
place in previous instalments, and explaining who's who and what
happened when and where and why, and this will make it heavy going
for those who have been with me from the start. 'Old hat' they will
cry or, if French, 'Deja vu'.
On the other hand, I must consider the new customers. I can't
just leave the poor perishers to try to puzzle things out for
themselves. If I did, the exchanges in the present case would run
somewhat as follows.
SELF: The relief I felt at having escaped from Totleigh
Towers was stupendous.
NEW C: What's Totleigh Towers?
SELF: For one thing it had looked odds on that I should have
to marry Madeline.
NEW C: Who's Madeline?
SELF: Gussie Fink-Nottle, you see, had eloped with the cook.
NEW C: Who's Gussie Fink-Nottle?
SELF: But most fortunately Spode was in the offing and scooped
her up, saving me from the scaffold.
NEW C: Who's Spode?
You see. Hopeless. Confusion would be rife, as one might put
it. The only way out that I can think of is to ask the old gang to
let their attention wander for a bit - there are heaps of things
they can be doing; washing the car, solving the crossword puzzle,
taking the dog for a run - while I place the facts before the
newcomers.
Briefly, then, owing to circumstances I needn't go into,
Madeline Bassett daughter of Sir Watkyn Bassett of Totleigh Towers,
Glos. had long been under the impression that I was hopelessly in
love with her and had given to understand that if ever she had
occasion to return her betrothed, Gussie Fink-Nottle, to store, she
would marry me. Which wouldn't have fitted in with my plans at all,
she though physically in the pin-up class, being as mushy a
character as ever broke biscuit, convinced that the stars are God's
daisy chain and that every time a fairy blows its wee nose a baby
is born. The last thing, as you can well imagine, one would want
about the home.
So when Gussie unexpectedly eloped with the cook, it looked as
though Bertram was for it. If a girl thinks you're in love with her
and says she will marry you, you can't very well voice a preference
for being dead in a ditch. Not, I mean, if you want to regard
yourself as a preux chevalier, as the expression is, which is
always my aim. But just as I was about to put in my order for
sackcloth and ashes, up, as I say, popped Spode, now going about
under the alias of Lord Sidcup. He had loved her since she was so
high but had never got around to mentioning it, and when he did so
now, they clicked immediately. And the thought that she was safely
out of circulation and no longer a menace was possibly the prime
ingredient in my current euphoria.
I think that makes everything clear to the meanest
intelligence, does it not? Right ho, so we can go ahead. Where were
we? Ah yes, I had just told Jeeves that I was sitting on top of the
world with a rainbow round my shoulder, but expressing a doubt as
to whether this state of things would last, and how well-founded
that doubt proved to be; for scarcely a forkful of eggs and b later
it was borne in upon me that life was not the grand sweet song I
had supposed it to be, but, as you might say, stern and earnest and
full of bumps.
'Was I mistaken, Jeeves,' I said, making idle conversation as I
sipped my coffee, 'or as the mists of sleep shredded away this
morning did I hear your typewriter going?'
'Yes, sir. I was engaged in composition.'
'A dutiful letter to Charlie Silversmith?' I said, alluding to
his uncle who held the post of butler at Deverill Hall, where we
had once been pleasant visitors. 'Or possibly a lyric in the manner
of the bloke who advocates gathering rosebuds?'
'Neither, sir. I was recording the recent happenings at
Totleigh Towers for the club book.'
And here, dash it, I must once more ask what I may call the old
sweats to let their attention wander while I put the new arrivals
abreast.
Jeeves, you must know (I am addressing the new arrivals),
belongs to a club for butlers and gentlemen's gentlemen round
Curzon Street way, and one of the rules there is that every member
must contribute to the club book the latest information concerning
the fellow he's working for, the idea being to inform those seeking
employment of the sort of thing they will be taking on. If a member
is contemplating signing up with someone, he looks him up in the
club book, and if he finds that he puts out crumbs for the birdies
every morning and repeatedly saves golden-haired children from
being run over by automobiles, he knows he is on a good thing and
has no hesitation in accepting office. Whereas if the book informs
him that the fellow habitually kicks starving dogs and generally
begins the day by throwing the breakfast porridge at his personal
attendant, he is warned in time to steer clear of him.
Which is all very well and one follows the train of thought,
but in my opinion such a book is pure dynamite and ought not to be
permitted. There are, Jeeves has informed me, eleven pages in it
about me; and what will the harvest be, I ask him, if it falls into
the hands of my Aunt Agatha, with whom my standing is already low.
She spoke her mind freely enough some years ago when - against my
personal wishes - I was found with twenty-three cats in my bedroom
and again when I was accused - unjustly, I need hardly say - of
having marooned A. B. Filmer, the Cabinet minister, on an island in
her lake. To what heights of eloquence would she not soar, if
informed of my vicissitudes at Totleigh Towers? The imagination
boggles, Jeeves, I tell him.
To which he replies that it won't fall into the hands of my
Aunt Agatha, she not being likely to drop in at the Junior
Ganymede, which is what his club is called, and there the matter
rests. His reasoning is specious and he has more or less succeeded
in soothing my tremors, but I still can't help feeling uneasy, and
my manner, as I addressed him now, had quite a bit of agitation in
it.
'Good Lord!' I ejaculated, if ejaculated is the word I want.
'Are you really writing up that Totleigh business?'
'Yes, sir.'
'All the stuff about my being supposed to have pinched old
Bassett's amber statuette?'
'Yes, sir.'
'And the night I spent in a prison cell? Is this necessary? Why
not let the dead past bury its dead? Why not forget all about it?'
'Impossible, sir.'
'Why impossible? Don't tell me you can't forget things. You
aren't an elephant.'
I thought I had him there, but no.
'It is my membership in the Junior Ganymede which restrains me
from obliging you, sir. The rules with reference to the club book
are very strict and the penalty for omitting to contribute to it
severe. Actual expulsion has sometimes resulted.'
'I see,' I said. I could appreciate that this put him in quite
a spot, the feudal spirit making him wish to do the square thing by
the young master, while a natural disinclination to get bunged out
of a well-loved club urged him to let the young master boil his
head. The situation seemed to me to call for what is known as a
compromise.
'Well, couldn't you water the thing down a bit? Omit one or two
of the juiciest episodes?'
'I fear not, sir. The full facts are required. The committee
insists on this.'
I suppose I ought not at this point to have expressed a hope
that his blasted committee would trip over banana skins and break
their ruddy necks, for I seemed to detect on his face a momentary
look of pain. But he was broadminded and condoned it.
'Your chagrin does not surprise me, sir. One can, however,
understand their point of view. The Junior Ganymede club book is a
historic document. It has been in existence more than eighty
years.'
'It must be the size of a house.'
'No, sir, the records are in several volumes. The present one
dates back some twelve years. And one must remember that it is not
every employer who demands a great deal of space.'
'Demands!'
'I should have said "requires". As a rule, a few lines suffice.
Your eighteen pages are quite exceptional.'
'Eighteen? I thought it was eleven.'
'You are omitting to take into your calculations the report of
your misadventures at Totleigh Towers, which I have nearly
completed. I anticipate that this will run to approximately seven.
If you will permit me, sir, I will pat your back.'
He made this kindly offer because I had choked on a swallow of
coffee. A few pats and I was myself again and more than a little
incensed, as always happens when we are discussing his literary
work. Eighteen pages, I mean to say, and every page full of stuff
calculated, if thrown open to the public, to give my prestige the
blackest of eyes. Conscious of a strong desire to kick the
responsible parties in the seat of the pants, I spoke with a
generous warmth.
'Well, I call it monstrous. There's no other word for it. Do
you know what that blasted committee of yours are inviting?
Blackmail, that's what they're inviting. Let some man of ill will
get his hooks on that book, and what'll be the upshot? Ruin,
Jeeves, that's what'll be the upshot.'
I don't know if he drew himself to his full height, because I
was lighting a cigarette at the moment and wasn't looking, but I
think he must have done, for his voice, when he spoke, was the
chilly voice of one who has drawn himself to his full height.
'There are no men of ill will in the Junior Ganymede, sir.'
I contested this statement hotly.
That's what you think. How about Brinkley?' I said, my allusion
being to a fellow the agency had sent me some years previously when
Jeeves and I had parted company temporarily because he didn't like
me playing the banjolele. 'He's a member, isn't he?'
'A county member, sir. He rarely comes to the club. In passing,
sir, his name is not Brinkley, it is Bingley.'
I waved an impatient cigarette holder. I was in no mood to
split straws. Or is it hairs?
'His name is not of the essence, Jeeves. What is of the e is
that he went off on his afternoon out, came back in an advanced
state of intoxication, set the house on fire and tried to dismember
me with a carving knife.'
'A most unpleasant experience, sir.'
'Having heard noises down below, I emerged from my room and
found him wrestling with the grandfather clock, with which he
appeared to have had a difference. He then knocked over a lamp and
leaped up the stairs at me, complete with cutlass. By a miracle I
avoided becoming the late Bertram Wooster, but only by a miracle.
And you say there are no men of ill will in the Junior Ganymede
club. Tchah!' I said. It is an expression I don't often use, but
the situation seemed to call for it.
Things had become difficult. Angry passions were rising and
dudgeon bubbling up a bit. It was fortunate that at this juncture
the telephone should have tootled, causing a diversion.
'Mrs Travers, sir,' said Jeeves, having gone to the instrument.
I had already divined who was at the other end of the wire, my
good and deserving Aunt Dahlia having a habit of talking on the
telephone with the breezy vehemence of a hog-caller in the western
states of America calling his hogs to come and get it. She got this
way through hunting a lot in her youth with the Quorn and the
Pytchley. What with people riding over hounds and hounds taking
time off to chase rabbits, a girl who hunts soon learns to make
herself audible. I believe that she, when in good voice, could be
heard in several adjoining counties.
I stepped to the telephone, well pleased. There are few males
or females whose society I enjoy more than that of this genial
sister of my late father, and it was quite a time since we had
foregathered. She lives near the town of Market Snodsbury in
Worcestershire and sticks pretty closely to the rural seat, while
I, as Jeeves had just recorded in the club book, had had my time
rather full elsewhere of late. I was smiling sunnily as I took up
the receiver. Not much good, of course, as she couldn't see me, but
it's the spirit that counts.
'Hullo, aged relative.'
'Hullo to you, you young blot. Are you sober?'
I felt a natural resentment at being considered capable of
falling under the influence of the sauce at ten in the morning, but
I reminded myself that aunts will be aunts. Show me an aunt, I've
often said, and I will show you someone who doesn't give a hoot how
much her obiter dicta may wound a nephew's sensibilities. With a
touch of hauteur I reassured her on the point she had raised and
asked her in what way I could serve her.
'How about lunch?'
'I'm not in London. I'm at home. And you can serve me, as you
call it, by coming here. Today, if possible.'
'Your words are music to my ears, old ancestor. Nothing could
tickle me pinker,' I said, for I am always glad to accept her
hospitality and to renew my acquaintance with the unbeatable
eatables dished up by her superb French chef Anatole, God's gift to
the gastric juices. I have often regretted that I have but one
stomach to put at his disposal. 'Staying how long?'
'As long as you like, my beamish boy. I'll let you know when
the time comes to throw you out. The great thing is to get you
here.'
I was touched, as who would not have been, by the eagerness she
showed for my company. Too many of my circle are apt when inviting
me to their homes to stress the fact that they are only expecting
me for the week-end and to dwell with too much enthusiasm on the
excellence of the earlier trains back to the metropolis on Monday
morning. The sunny smile widened an inch or two.
'Awfully good of you to have me, old blood relation.'
'It is, rather.'
'I look forward to seeing you.'
'Who wouldn't?'
'Each minute will seem like an hour till we meet. How's
Anatole?'
'Greedy young pig, always thinking of Anatole.'
'Difficult to help it. The taste lingers. How is his art these
days?'
'At its peak.'
'That's good.'
'Ginger says his output has been a revelation to him.'
I asked her to repeat this. It had sounded to me just as if she
had said 'Ginger says his output has been a revelation to him', and
I knew this couldn't be the case. It turned out, however, that it
was.
'Ginger?' I said, not abreast.
'Harold Winship. He told me to call him Ginger. He's staying
here. He says he's a friend of yours, which he would scarcely admit
unless he knew it could be proved against him. You do know him,
don't you? He speaks of having been at Oxford with you.'
I uttered a joyful cry, and she said if I did it again, she
would sue me, it having nearly cracked her eardrum. A notable
instance of the pot calling the kettle black, as the old saying has
it, she having been cracking mine since the start of the
proceedings.
'Know him?' I said. 'You bet I know him. We were like ...
Jeeves!'
'Sir?'
'Who were those two fellows?'
'Sir?'
'Greek, if I remember correctly. Always mentioned when the
subject of bosom pals comes up.'
'Would you be referring to Damon and Pythias, sir?'
'That's right. We were like Damon and Pythias, old ancestor.
But what's he doing chez you? I wasn't aware that you and he had
ever met.'
'We hadn't. But his mother was an old school friend of mine.'
'I see.'
'And when I heard he was standing for Parliament in the by-
election at Market Snodsbury, I wrote to him and told him to make
my house his base. Much more comfortable than dossing at a pub.'
'Oh, you've got a by-election at Market Snodsbury, have you?'
'Under full steam.'
'And Ginger's one of the candidates?'
'The Conservative one. You seem surprised.'
'I am. You might say stunned. I wouldn't have thought it was
his dish at all. How's he doing?'
'Difficult to say so far. Anyway, he needs all the help he can
get, so I want you to come and canvass for him.'
This made me chew the lower lip for a moment. One has to
exercise caution at a time like this, or where is one?
'What does it involve?' I asked guardedly. 'I shan't have to
kiss babies, shall I?'
'Of course you won't, you abysmal chump.'
'I've always heard that kissing babies entered largely into
these things.'
'Yes, but it's the candidate who does it, poor blighter. All
you have to do is go from house to house urging the inmates to vote
for Ginger.'
'Then rely on me. Such an assignment should be well within my
scope. Old Ginger!' I said, feeling emotional. 'It will warm the
what-d'you-call-its of my heart to see him again.'
'Well, you'll have the opportunity of hotting them up this very
afternoon. He's gone to London for the day and wants you to lunch
with him.'
'Does he, egad! That's fine. What time?'
'One-thirty.'
'At what spot?'
'Barribault's grill-room.'
'I'll be there. Jeeves,' I said, hanging up, 'You remember
Ginger Winship, who used to play Damon to my Pythias?'
'Yes, indeed, sir.'
'They've got an election on at Market Snodsbury, and he's
standing in the Conservative interest.'
'So I understood Madam to say, sir.'
'Oh, you caught her remarks?'
'With little or no difficulty, sir. Madam has a penetrating
voice.'
'It does penetrate, doesn't it,' I said, massaging the ear I
had been holding to the receiver. 'Good lung power.'
'Extremely, sir.'
'I wonder whether she ever sang lullabies to me in my cradle.
If so, it must have scared me cross-eyed, giving me the illusion
that the boiler had exploded. However, that is not germane to the
issue, which is that we leave for her abode this afternoon. I shall
be lunching with Ginger. In my absence, pack a few socks and
toothbrushes, will you.'
'Very good, sir,' he replied, and we did not return to the
subject of the club book.
It was with no little gusto and animation that some hours later
I set out for the tryst. This Ginger was one of my oldest buddies,
not quite so old as Kipper Herring or Catsmeat Potter-Pirbright,
with whom I had plucked the gowans fine at prep school, public
school and University, but definitely ancient. Our rooms at Oxford
had been adjacent, and it would not be too much to say that from
the moment he looked in to borrow a syphon of soda water we became
more like brothers than anything, and this state of things had
continued after we had both left the seat of learning.
For quite a while he had been a prominent member of the Drones
Club, widely known for his effervescence and vivacity, but all of a
sudden he had tendered his resignation and gone to live in the
country, oddly enough at Steeple Bumpleigh in Essex, where my Aunt
Agatha has her lair. This, somebody told me, was due to the
circumstance that he had got engaged to a girl of strong character
who disapproved of the Drones Club. You get girls like that every
now and then, and in my opinion they are best avoided.
Well, naturally this had parted us. He never came to London,
and I of course never went to Steeple Bumpleigh. You don't catch me
going anywhere near Aunt Agatha unless I have to. No sense in
sticking one's neck out. But I had missed him sorely. Oh for the
touch of a vanished hand, is how you might put it.
Arriving at Barribault's, I found him in the lobby where you
have the pre-luncheon gargle before proceeding to the grill-room,
and after the initial What-ho-ing and What-a-time-since-we-met-ing
inevitable when two vanished hands who haven't seen each other for
ages re-establish contact, he asked me if I would like one for the
tonsils.
'I won't join you,' he said. 'I'm not actually on the waggon, I
have a little light wine at dinner now and then, but my fiancee
wants me to stay off cocktails. She says they harden the arteries.'
If you are about to ask me if this didn't make me purse the
lips a bit, I can assure you that it did. It seemed to point to his
having gone and got hitched up with a popsy totally lacking in the
proper spirit, and it bore out what I had been told about her being
a girl of strong character. No one who wasn't could have dashed the
cup from his lips in this manner. She had apparently made him like
it, too, for he had spoken of her not with the sullen bitterness of
one crushed beneath the iron heel but with devotion in every
syllable. Plainly he had got it up his nose and didn't object to
being bossed.
How different from me, I reflected, that time when I was
engaged to my Uncle Percy's bossy daughter Florence Craye. It
didn't last long, because she gave me the heave-ho and got
betrothed to a fellow called Gorringe who wrote vers libre, but
while it lasted I felt like one of those Ethiopian slaves Cleopatra
used to push around, and I chafed more than somewhat. Whereas
Ginger obviously hadn't even started to chafe. It isn't difficult
to spot when a fellow's chafing, and I could detect none of the
symptoms. He seemed to think that putting the presidential veto on
cocktails showed what an angel of mercy the girl was, always
working with his good at heart.
The Woosters do not like drinking alone, particularly with a
critical eye watching them to see if their arteries are hardening,
so I declined the proffered snort -reluctantly, for I was athirst -
and came straight to the main item on the agenda paper. On my way
to Barribault's I had, as you may suppose, pondered deeply on this
business of him standing for Parliament, and I wanted to know the
motives behind the move. It looked cock-eyed to me.
'Aunt Dahlia tells me you are staying with her in order to be
handy to Market Snodsbury while giving the electors there the old
oil,' I said.
'Yes, she very decently invited me. She was at school with my
mother.'
'So she told me. I wonder if her face was as red in those days.
How do you like it there?'
'It's a wonderful place.'
'Grade A. Gravel soil, main drainage, spreading grounds and
Company's own water. And, of course, Anatole's cooking.'
'Ah!' he said, and I think he would have bared his head, only
he hadn't a hat on. 'Very gifted, that man.'
'A wizard,' I agreed. 'His dinners must fortify you for the
tasks you have to face. How's the election coming along?'
'All right.'
'Kissed any babies lately?'
'Ah!' he said again, this time with a shudder. I could see that
I had touched an exposed nerve. 'What blighters babies are, Bertie,
dribbling, as they do, at the side of the mouth. Still, it has to
be done. My agent tells me to leave no stone unturned if I want to
win the election.'
'But why do you want to win the election? I'd have thought you
wouldn't have touched Parliament with a ten-foot pole,' I said, for
I knew the society there was very mixed. 'What made you commit this
rash act?'
'My fiancee wanted me to,' he said, and as his lips framed the
word 'fiancee' his voice took on a sort of tremolo like that of a
male turtle dove cooing to a female turtle dove. 'She thought I
ought to be carving out a career for myself.'
'Do you want a career?'
'Not much, but she insisted.'
The uneasiness I had felt when he told me the beasel had made
him knock off cocktails deepened. His every utterance rendered it
more apparent to an experienced man like myself that he had run up
against something too hot to handle, and for a moment I thought of
advising him to send her a telegram saying it was all off and, this
done, to pack a suitcase and catch the next boat to Australia. But
feeling that this might give offence I merely asked him what the
procedure was when you stood for Parliament - or ran for it, as
they would say in America. Not that I particularly wanted to know,
but it was something to talk about other than his frightful
fiancee.
A cloud passed over his face, which I ought to have mentioned
earlier was well worth looking at, the eyes clear, the cheeks
tanned, the chin firm, the hair ginger and the nose shapely. It
topped off, moreover, a body which also repaid inspection, being
muscular and well knit. His general aspect, as a matter of fact,
was rather like that presented by Esmond Haddock, the squire of
Deverill Hall, where Jeeves's Uncle Charlie Silversmith drew his
monthly envelope. He had the same poetic look, as if at any moment
about to rhyme June with moon, yet gave the impression, as Esmond
did, of being able, if he cared to, to fell an ox with a single
blow. I don't know if he had ever actually done this, for one so
seldom meets an ox, but in his undergraduate days he had felled
people right and left, having represented the University in the
ring as a heavyweight a matter of three years. He may have included
oxen among his victims.
'You go through hell,' he said, the map still clouded as he
recalled the past. 'I had to sit in a room where you could hardly
breathe because it was as crowded as the Black Hole of Calcutta and
listen to addresses of welcome till midnight. After that I went
about making speeches.'
'Well, why aren't you down there, making speeches, now? Have
they given you a day off?'
'I came up to get a secretary.'
'Surely you didn't go there without one?'
'No, I had one all right, but my fiancee fired her. They had
some sort of disagreement.'
I had pursed the lips a goodish bit when he had told me about
his fiancee and the cocktails, and I pursed them to an even greater
extent now. The more I heard of this girl he had got engaged to,
the less I liked the sound of her. I was thinking how well she
would get on with Florence Craye if they happened to meet. Twin
souls, I mean to say, each what a housemaid I used to know would
have called an overbearing dishpot.
I didn't say so, of course. There is a time to call someone an
overbearing dishpot, and a time not to. Criticism of the girl he
loved might be taken in ill part, as the expression is, and you
don't want an ex-Oxford boxing Blue taking things in ill part with
you.
'Have you anyone in mind?' I asked. 'Or are you just going to a
secretary bin, accepting what they have in stock?'
'I'm hoping to get hold of an American girl I saw something of
before I left London. I was sharing a flat with Boko Fittleworth
when he was writing a novel, and she came every day and worked with
him. Boko dictates his stuff, and he said she was tops as a
shorthand typist. I have her address, but I don't know if she's
still there. I'm going round there after lunch. Her name's Magnolia
Glendennon.'
'It can't be.'
'Why not?'
'Nobody could have a name like Magnolia.'
'They could if they came from South Carolina, as she did. In
the southern states of America you can't throw a brick without
hitting a Magnolia. But I was telling you about this business of
standing for Parliament. First, of course, you have to get the
nomination.'
'How did you manage that?'
'My fiancee fixed it. She knows one of the Cabinet ministers,
and he pulled strings. A man named Filmer.'
'Not A. B. Filmer?'
'That's right. Is he a friend of yours?'
'I wouldn't say exactly a friend. I came to know him slightly
owing to being chased with him on to the roof of a sort of summer-
house by an angry swan. This drew us rather close together for the
moment, but we never became really chummy.'
'Where was this?'
'On an island on the lake at my Aunt Agatha's place at Steeple
Bumpleigh. Living at Steeple Bumpleigh, you've probably been
there.'
He looked at me with a wild surmise, much as those soldiers
Jeeves has told me about looked on each other when on a peak in
Darien, wherever that is.
'Is Lady Worpledon your aunt?'
'And how.'
'She's never mentioned it.'
'She wouldn't. Her impulse would be to hush it up.'
'Then, good Lord, she must be your cousin.'
'No, my aunt. You can't be both.'
'I mean Florence. Florence Craye, my fiancee.'
It was a shock, I don't mind telling you, and if I hadn't been
seated I would probably have reeled. Though I ought not to have
been so surprised. Florence was one of those girls who are always
getting engaged to someone, first teaming up with Stilton
Cheesewright, then me, and finally Percy Gorringe, who was
dramatizing her novel Spindrift. The play, by the way, had recently
been presented to the public at the Duke of York's theatre and had
laid an instantaneous egg, coming off on the following Saturday.
One of the critics said he had perhaps seen it at a disadvantage
because when he saw it the curtain was up. I had wondered a good
deal what effect this had had on Florence's haughty spirit.
'You're engaged to Florence?' I yipped, looking at him with a
wild surmise.
'Yes. Didn't you know?'
'Nobody tells me anything. Engaged to Florence, eh? Well,
well.'
A less tactful man than Bertram Wooster might have gone on to
add 'Oh, tough luck!' or something along those lines, for there was
no question but that the unhappy man was properly up against it,
but if there's one thing the Woosters have in heaping measure, it
is tact. I merely gripped his hand, gave it a shake and wished him
happiness. He thanked me for this.
'You're lucky,' I said, wearing the mask.
'Don't I know it!'
'She's a charming girl,' I said, still wearing as above.
'That just describes her.'
'Intellectual, too.'
'Distinctly. Writes novels.'
'Always at it.'
'Did you read Spindrift?'
'Couldn't put it down,' I said, cunningly not revealing that I
hadn't been able to take it up. 'Did you see the play?'
'Twice. Too bad it didn't run. Gorringe's adaptation was the
work of an ass.'
'I spotted him as an ass the first time I saw him.'
'It's a pity Florence didn't.'
'Yes. By the way, what became of Gorringe? When last heard of,
she was engaged to him.'
'She broke it off.'
'Very wise of her. He had long side-whiskers.'
'She considered him responsible for the failure of the play and
told him so.'
'She would.'
'What do you mean she would?'
'Her nature is so frank, honest and forthright.'
'It is, isn't it.'
'She speaks her mind.'
'Invariably.'
'It's an admirable trait.'
'Oh, most.'
'You can't get away with much with a girl like Florence.'
'No.'
We fell into a silence. He was twiddling his fingers and a sort
of what-d'you-call-it had come into his manner, as if he wanted to
say something but was having trouble in getting it out. I
remembered encountering a similar diffidence in the Rev. Stinker
Pinker when he was trying to nerve himself to ask me to come to
Totleigh Towers, and you find the same thing in dogs when they put
a paw on your knee and look up into your face but don't utter,
though making it clear that there is a subject on which they are
anxious to touch.
'Bertie,' he said at length.
'Hullo?'
'Bertie.'
'Yes?'
'Bertie.'
'Still here. Excuse me asking, but have you any cracked
gramophone record blood in you? Perhaps your mother was frightened
by one?'
And then it all came out in a rush as if a cork had been
pulled.
'Bertie, there's something I must tell you about Florence,
though you probably know it already, being a cousin of hers. She's
a wonderful girl and practically perfect in every respect, but she
has one characteristic which makes it awkward for those who love
her and are engaged to her. Don't think I'm criticizing her.'
'No, no.'
'I'm just mentioning it.'
'Exactly.'
'Well, she has no use for a loser. To keep her esteem you have
to be a winner. She's like one of those princesses in the fairy
tales who set fellows some task to perform, as it might be scaling
a mountain of glass or bringing her a hair from the beard of the
Great Cham of Tartary, and gave them the brush-off when they
couldn't make the grade.'
I recalled the princesses of whom he spoke, and I had always
thought them rather fatheads. I mean to say, what sort of
foundation for a happy marriage is the bridegroom's ability to
scale mountains of glass? A fellow probably wouldn't be called on
to do it more than about once every ten years, if that.
'Gorringe,' said Ginger, continuing, 'was a loser, and that
dished him. And long ago, someone told me, she was engaged to a
gentleman jockey and she chucked him because he took a spill at the
canal turn in the Grand National. She's a perfectionist. I admire
her for it, of course.'
'Of course.'
'A girl like her is entitled to have high standards.'
'Quite.'
'But, as I say, it makes it awkward for me. She has set her
heart on my winning this Market Snodsbury election, heaven knows
why, for I never thought she had any interest in politics, and if I
lose it, I shall lose her, too. So ...'
'Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of the
party?'
'Exactly. You are going to canvass for me. Well, canvass like a
ton of bricks, and see that Jeeves does the same. I've simply got
to win.'
'You can rely on us.'
'Thank you, Bertie, I knew I could. And now let's go in and
have a bite of lunch.'
Having restored the tissues with the excellent nourishment
which Barribault's hotel always provides and arranged that Ginger
was to pick me up in his car later in the afternoon, my own sports
model being at the vet's with some nervous ailment, we parted, he
to go in search of Magnolia Glendennon, I to walk back to the
Wooster GHQ.
It was, as you may suppose, in thoughtful mood that I made my
way through London's thoroughfares. I was reading a novel of
suspense the other day in which the heroine, having experienced a
sock in the eye or two, was said to be lost in a maze of mumbling
thoughts, and that description would have fitted me like the paper
on the wall.
My heart was heavy. When a man is an old friend and pretty
bosom at that, it depresses you to hear that he's engaged to
Florence Craye. I recalled my own emotions when I had found myself
in that unpleasant position. I had felt like someone trapped in the
underground den of the Secret Nine.
Though, mark you, there's nothing to beef about in her outer
crust. At the time when she was engaged to Stilton Cheesewright I
remember recording in the archives that she was tall and willowy
with a terrific profile and luxuriant platinum-blonde hair; the
sort of girl who might, as far as looks were concerned, have been
the star unit of the harem of one of the better-class Sultans; and
though I hadn't seen her for quite a while, I presumed that these
conditions still prevailed. The fact that Ginger, when speaking of
her, had gone so readily into his turtle dove impersonation seemed
to indicate as much.
Looks, however, aren't everything. Against this pin-up-ness of
hers you had to put the bossiness which would lead her to expect
the bloke she married to behave like a Hollywood Yes-man. From
childhood up she had been ... I can't think of the word ... begins
with an i... No, it's gone ... but I can give you the idea. When at
my private school I once won a prize for Scripture Knowledge, which
naturally involved a lot of researching into Holy Writ, and in the
course of my researches I came upon the story of the military chap
who used to say 'Come' and they cometh and 'Go' and they goeth. I
have always thought that that was Florence in a nutshell. She would
have given short shrift, as the expression is, to anyone who had
gone when she said 'Come' or the other way round. Imperious, that's
the word I was groping for. She was as imperious as a traffic cop.
Little wonder that the heart was heavy. I felt that Ginger,
mistaking it for a peach, had plucked a lemon in the garden of
love.
And then my meditations took a less sombre turn. This often
happens after a good lunch, even if you haven't had a cocktail. I
reminded myself that many married men positively enjoy being kept
on their toes by the little woman, and possibly Ginger might be one
of them. He might take the view that when the little w made him sit
up and beg and snap lumps of sugar off his nose, it was a
compliment really, because it showed that she was taking an
interest.
Feeling a bit more cheerful, I reached for my cigarette case
and was just going to open it, when like an ass I dropped it and it
fell into the road. And as I stepped from the pavement to retrieve
it there was a sudden tooting in my rear, and whirling on my axis I
perceived that in about another two ticks I was going to be rammed
amidships by a taxi.
The trouble about whirling on your axis, in case you didn't
know, is that you're liable, if not an adagio dancer, to trip over
your feet, and this was what I proceeded to do. My left shoe got
all mixed up with my right ankle, I tottered, swayed, and after a
brief pause came down like some noble tree beneath the woodman's
axe, and I was sitting there lost in a maze of numbing thoughts,
when an unseen hand attached itself to my arm and jerked me back to
safety. The taxi went on and turned the corner.
Well, of course the first thing the man of sensibility does on
these occasions is to thank his brave preserver. I turned to do
this, and blow me tight if the b.p. wasn't Jeeves. Came as a
complete surprise. I couldn't think what he was doing there, and
for an instant the idea occurred to me that this might be his
astral body.
'Jeeves!' I ejaculated. I'm pretty sure that's the word.
Anyway, I'll risk it.
'Good afternoon, sir. I trust you are not too discommoded. That
was a somewhat narrow squeak.'
'It was indeed. I don't say my whole life passed before me, but
a considerable chunk of it did. But for you -'
'Not at all, sir.'
'Yes, you and you only saved me from appearing in tomorrow's
obituary column.'
'A pleasure, sir.'
'It's amazing how you always turn up at the crucial moment,
like the United States Marines. I remember how you did when A. B.
Filmer and I were having our altercation with that swan, and there
were other occasions too numerous to mention. Well, you will
certainly get a rave notice in my prayers next time I make them.
But how do you happen to be in these parts? Where are we, by the
way?'
'This is Curzon Street, sir.'
'Of course. I'd have known that if I hadn't been musing.'
'You were musing, sir?'
'Deeply. I'll tell you about it later. This is where your club
is, isn't it?'
'Yes, sir, just round the corner. In your absence and having
completed the packing, I decided to lunch there.'
'Thank heaven you did. If you hadn't, I'd have been ... what's
that gag of yours? Something about wheels.'
'Less than the dust beneath thy chariot wheels, sir.'
'Or, rather, the cabby's chariot wheels. Why are you looking at
me with such a searching eye, Jeeves?'
'I was thinking that your misadventure had left you somewhat
dishevelled, sir. If I might suggest it, I think we should repair
to the Junior Ganymede now.'
'I see what you mean. You would give me a wash and brush-up?'
'Just so, sir.'
'And perhaps a whisky-and-soda?'
'Certainly, sir.'
'I need one sorely. Ginger's practically on the waggon, so
there were no cocktails before lunch. And do you know why he's
practically on the waggon? Because the girl he's engaged to has
made him take that foolish step. And do you know who the girl he's
engaged to is? My cousin Florence Craye.'
'Indeed, sir?'
Well, I hadn't expected him to roll his eyes and leap about,
because he never does no matter how sensational the news item, but
I could see by the way one of his eyebrows twitched and rose
perhaps an eighth of an inch that I had interested him. And there
was what is called a wealth of meaning in that 'Indeed, sir?' He
was conveying his opinion that this was a bit of luck for Bertram,
because a girl you have once been engaged to is always a lurking
menace till she gets engaged to someone else and so cannot decide
at any moment to play a return date. I got the message and
thoroughly agreed with him, though naturally I didn't say so.
Jeeves, you see, is always getting me out of entanglements with
the opposite sex, and he knows all about the various females who
from time to time have come within an ace of hauling me to the
altar rails, but of course we don't discuss them. To do so, we
feel, would come under the head of bandying a woman's name, and the
Woosters do not bandy women's names. Nor do the Jeeveses. I can't
speak for his Uncle Charlie Silversmith, but I should imagine that
he, too, has his code of ethics in this respect. These things
generally run in families.
So I merely filled him in about her making Ginger stand for
Parliament and the canvassing we were going to undertake, urging
him to do his utmost to make the electors think along the right
lines, and he said 'Yes, sir' and 'Very good, sir' and 'I quite
understand, sir', and we proceeded to the Junior Ganymede.
An extremely cosy club it proved to be. I didn't wonder that he
liked to spend so much of his leisure there. It lacked the
sprightliness of the Drones. I shouldn't think there was much bread
and sugar thrown about at lunch time, and you would hardly expect
that there would be when you reflected that the membership
consisted of elderly butlers and gentlemen's gentlemen of fairly
ripe years, but as regards comfort it couldn't be faulted. The
purler I had taken had left me rather tender in the fleshy parts,
and it was a relief after I had been washed and brushed up and was
on the spruce side once more to sink into a well-stuffed chair in
the smoking-room.
Sipping my whisky-and-s., I brought the conversation round
again to Ginger and his election, which was naturally the front
page stuff of the day.
'Do you think he has a chance, Jeeves?'
He weighed the question for a moment, as if dubious as to where
he would place his money.
'It is difficult to say, sir. Market Snodsbury, like so many
English country towns, might be described as straitlaced. It sets a
high value on respectability.'
'Well, Ginger's respectable enough.'
'True, sir, but, as you are aware, he has had a Past.'
'Not much of one.'
'Sufficient, however, to prejudice the voters, should they
learn of it.'
'Which they can't possibly do. I suppose he's in the club book
-'
'Eleven pages, sir.'
' - But you assure me that the contents of the club book will
never be revealed.'
'Never, sir. Mr Winship has nothing to fear from that quarter.'
His words made me breathe more freely.
'Jeeves,' I said, 'your words make me breathe more freely. As
you know, I am always a bit uneasy about the club book. Kept under
lock and key, is it?'
'Not actually under lock and key, sir, but it is safely
bestowed in the secretary's office.'
'Then there's nothing to worry about.'
'I would not say that, sir. Mr Winship must have had companions
in his escapades, and they might inadvertently make some reference
to them which would get into gossip columns in the Press and thence
into the Market Snodsbury journals. I believe there are two of
these, one rigidly opposed to the Conservative interest which Mr
Winship is representing. It is always a possibility, and the
results would be disastrous. I have no means at the moment of
knowing the identity of Mr Winship's opponent, but he is sure to be
a model of respectability whose past can bear the strictest
investigation.'
'You're pretty gloomy, Jeeves. Why aren't you gathering
rosebuds? The poet Herrick would shake his head.'
'I am sorry, sir. I did not know that you were taking Mr
Winship's fortunes so much to heart, or I would have been more
guarded in my speech. Is victory in the election of such importance
to him?'
'It's vital. Florence will hand him his hat if he doesn't win.'
'Surely not, sir?'
'That's what he says, and I think he's right. His observations
on the subject were most convincing. He says she's a perfectionist
and has no use for a loser. It is well established that she handed
Percy Gorringe the pink slip because the play he made of her novel
only ran three nights.'
'Indeed, sir?'
'Well-documented fact.'
'Then let us hope that what I fear will not happen, sir.'
We were sitting there hoping that what he feared would not
happen, when a shadow fell on my whisky-and-s. and I saw that we
had been joined by another member of the Junior Ganymede, a
smallish, plumpish, Gawd-help-us-ish member wearing clothes more
suitable for the country than the town and a tie that suggested
that he belonged to the Brigade of Guards, though I doubted if this
was the case. As to his manner, I couldn't get a better word for it
at the moment than 'familiar', but I looked it up later in Jeeves's
Dictionary of Synonyms and found that it had been unduly intimate,
too free, forward, lacking in proper reserve, deficient in due
respect, impudent, bold and intrusive. Well, when I tell you that
the first thing he did was to prod Jeeves in the lower ribs with an
uncouth forefinger, you will get the idea.
'Hullo, Reggie,' he said, and I froze in my chair, stunned by
the revelation that Jeeves's first name was Reginald. It had never
occurred to me before that he had a first name. I couldn't help
thinking what embarrassment would have been caused if it had been
Bertie.
'Good afternoon,' said Jeeves, and I could see that the chap
was not one of his inner circle of friends. His voice was cold, and
anyone less lacking in proper reserve and deficient in due respect
would have spotted this and recoiled.
The Gawd-help-us fellow appeared to notice nothing amiss. His
manner continued to be that of one who has met a pal of long
standing.
'How's yourself, Reggie?'
'I am in tolerably good health, thank you.'
'Lost weight, haven't you? You ought to live in the country
like me and get good country butter.' He turned to me. 'And you
ought to be more careful, cocky, dancing about in the middle of the
street like that. I was in that cab and I thought you were a goner.
You're Wooster, aren't you?'
'Yes,' I said, amazed. I hadn't known I was such a public
figure.
'Thought so. I don't often forget a face. Well, I can't stay
chatting with you. I've got to see the secretary about something.
Nice to have seen you, Reggie.'
'Goodbye.'
'Nice to have seen you, Wooster, old man.'
I thanked him, and he withdrew. I turned to Jeeves, that wild
surmise I was speaking about earlier functioning on all twelve
cylinders.
'Who was that?'
He did not reply immediately, plainly too ruffled for speech.
He had to take a sip of his liqueur brandy before he was master of
himself. His manner, when he did speak, was that of one who would
have preferred to let the whole thing drop.
'The person you mentioned at the breakfast table, sir.
Bingley,' he said, pronouncing the name as if it soiled his lips.
I was astounded. You could have knocked me down with a
toothpick.
'Bingley? I'd never have recognized him. He's changed
completely. He was quite thin when I knew him, and very gloomy, you
might say sinister. Always seemed to be brooding silently on the
coming revolution, when he would be at liberty to chase me down
Park Lane with a dripping knife.'
The brandy seemed to have restored Jeeves. He spoke now with
his customary calm.
'I believe his political views were very far to the left at the
time when he was in your employment. They changed when he became a
man of property.'
'A man of property, is he?'
'An uncle of his in the grocery business died and left him a
house and a comfortable sum of money.'
'I suppose it often happens that the views of fellows like
Bingley change when they come into money.'
'Very frequently. They regard the coming revolution from a
different standpoint.'
'I see what you mean. They don't want to be chased down Park
Lane with dripping knives themselves. Is he still a gentleman's
gentleman?'
'He has retired. He lives a life of leisure in Market
Snodsbury.'
'Market Snodsbury? That's funny.'
'Sir?'
'Odd, I mean, that he should live in Market Snodsbury.'
'Many people do, sir.'
'But when that's just where we're going. Sort of a coincidence.
His uncle's house is there, I suppose.'
'One presumes so.'
'We may be seeing something of him.'
'I hope not, sir. I disapprove of Bingley. He is dishonest. Not
a man to be trusted.'
'What makes you think so?'
'It is merely a feeling.'
Well, it was no skin off my nose. A busy man like myself hasn't
time to go about trusting Bingley. All I demanded of Bingley was
that if our paths should cross he would remain sober and keep away
from carving knives. Live and let live is the Wooster motto. I
finished my whisky-and-soda and rose.
'Well,' I said, 'there's one thing. Holding the strong
Conservative views he does, it ought to be a snip to get him to
vote for Ginger. And now we'd better be getting along. Ginger is
driving us down in his car, and I don't know when he'll be coming
to fetch us. Thanks for your princely hospitality, Jeeves. You have
brought new life to the exhausted frame.'
'Not at all, sir.'
Ginger turned up in due course, and on going out to the car I
saw that he had managed to get hold of Magnolia all right, for
there was a girl sitting in the back and when he introduced us his
'Mr Wooster, Miss Glendennon' told the story.
Nice girl she seemed to me and quite nice-looking. I wouldn't
say hers was the face that launched a thousand ships, to quote one
of Jeeves's gags, and this was probably all to the good, for
Florence, I imagine, would have had a word to say if Ginger had
returned from his travels with something in tow calculated to bring
a whistle to the lips of all beholders. A man in his position has
to exercise considerable care in his choice of secretaries, ruling
out anything that might have done well in the latest Miss America
contest. But you could certainly describe her appearance as
pleasant. She gave me the impression of being one of those quiet,
sympathetic girls whom you could tell your troubles to in the
certain confidence of having your hand held and your head patted.
The sort of girl you could go to and say 'I say, I've just
committed a murder and it's worrying me rather,' and she would
reply, 'There, there, try not to think about it, it's the sort of
thing that might happen to anybody.' The little mother, in short,
with the added attraction of being tops at shorthand and typing. I
could have wished Ginger's affairs in no better hands.
Jeeves brought out the suitcases and stowed them away, and
Ginger asked me to do the driving, as he had a lot of business to
go into with his new secretary, giving her the low-down on her
duties, I suppose. We set out, accordingly, with me and Jeeves in
front, and about the journey down there is nothing of interest to
report. I was in merry mood throughout, as always when about to get
another whack at Anatole's cooking. Jeeves presumably felt the
same, for he, like me, is one of that master skillet-wielder's
warmest admirers, but whereas I sang a good deal as we buzzed
along, he maintained, as is his custom, the silent reserve of a
stuffed frog, never joining in the chorus, though cordially invited
to.
Arriving at journey's end, we all separated. Jeeves attended to
the luggage, Ginger took Magnolia Glendennon off to his office, and
I made my way to the drawing-room, which I found empty. There
seemed to be nobody about, as so often happens when you fetch up at
a country house lateish in the afternoon. No sign of Aunt Dahlia,
nor of Uncle Tom, her mate. I toyed with the idea of going to see
if the latter was in the room where he keeps his collection of old
silver, but thought better not. Uncle Tom is one of those
enthusiastic collectors who, if in a position to grab you, detain
you for hours, talking about sconces, foliation, ribbon wreaths in
high relief and gadroon borders, and one wants as little of that
sort of thing as can be managed.
I might have gone to pay my respects to Anatole, but there
again I thought better not. He, too, is inclined to the long
monologue when he gets you in his power, his pet subject the state
of his interior. He suffers from bouts of what he calls mal au
foie, and his conversation would be of greater interest to a
medical man than to a layman like myself. I don't know why it is,
but when somebody starts talking to me about his liver I never can
listen with real enjoyment.
On the whole, the thing to do seemed to be to go for a saunter
in the extensive grounds and messuages.
It was one of those heavy, sultry afternoons when Nature seems
to be saying to itself 'Now shall I or shall I not scare the pants
off these people with a hell of a thunderstorm?', but I decided to
risk it. There's a small wooded bit not far from the house which
I've always been fond of, and thither I pushed along. This wooded
bit contains one or two rustic benches for the convenience of those
who wish to sit and meditate, and as I hove alongside the first of
these I saw that there was an expensive-looking camera on it.
It surprised me somewhat, for I had no idea that Aunt Dahlia
had taken to photography, but of course you never know what aunts
will be up to next. The thought that occurred to me almost
immediately was that if there was going to be a thunderstorm, it
would be accompanied by rain, and rain falling on a camera doesn't
do it any good. I picked the thing up, accordingly, and started off
with it to take it back to the house, feeling that the old relative
would thank me for my thoughtfulness, possibly with tears in her
eyes, when there was a sudden bellow and an individual emerged from
behind a clump of bushes. Startled me considerably, I don't mind
telling you.
He was an extremely stout individual with a large pink face and
a Panama hat with a pink ribbon. A perfect stranger to me, and I
wondered what he was doing here. He didn't look the sort of crony
Aunt Dahlia would have invited to stay, and still less Uncle Tom,
who is so allergic to guests that when warned of their approach he
generally makes a bolt for it and disappears, leaving not a wrack
behind as I have heard Jeeves put it. However, as I was saying, you
never know what aunts will be up to next and no doubt the ancestor
had had some good reason for asking the chap to come and mix, so I
beamed civilly and opened the conversation with a genial 'Hullo
there'.
'Nice day,' I said, continuing to beam civilly. 'Or, rather,
not so frightfully nice. Looks as if we were in for a
thunderstorm.'
Something seemed to have annoyed him. The pink of his face had
deepened to about the colour of his Panama hat ribbon, and both his
chins trembled slightly.
'Damn thunderstorms!' he responded - curtly, I suppose, would
be the word - and I said I didn't like them myself. It was the
lightning, I added, that I chiefly objected to.
'They say it never strikes twice in the same place, but then it
hasn't got to.'
'Damn the lightning! What are you doing with my camera?'
This naturally opened up a new line of thought.
'Oh, is this your camera?'
'Yes, it is.'
'I was taking it to the house.'
'You were, were you?'
'I didn't want it to get wet.'
'Oh? And who are you?'
I was glad he had asked me that. His whole manner had made it
plain to a keen mind like mine that he was under the impression
that he had caught me in the act of absconding with his property,
and I was glad to have the opportunity of presenting my
credentials. I could see that if we were ever to have a good laugh
together over this amusing misunderstanding, there would have to be
a certain amount of preliminary spadework.
'Wooster is the name,' I said. 'I'm my aunt's nephew. I mean,'
I went on, for those last words seemed to me not to have rung quite
right, 'Mrs Travers is my aunt.'
'You are staying in the house?'
'Yes. Just arrived.'
'Oh?' he said again, but this time in what you might call a
less hostile tone.
'Yes,' I said, rubbing it in.
There followed a silence, presumably occupied by him in turning
things over in his mind in the light of my statement and examining
them in depth and then he said 'Oh?' once more and stumped off.
I made no move to accompany him. What little I had had of his
society had been ample. As we were staying in the same house, we
would no doubt meet occasionally, but not, I resolved, if I saw him
first. The whole episode reminded me of my first encounter with Sir
Watkyn Bassett and the misunderstanding about his umbrella. That
had left me shaken, and so had this. I was glad to have a rustic
bench handy, so that I could sit and try to bring my nervous system
back into shape. The sky had become more and more inky I suppose is
the word I want and the odds on a thunderstorm shorter than ever,
but I still lingered. It was only when there came from above a
noise like fifty-seven trucks going over a wooden bridge that I
felt that an immediate move would be judicious. I rose and soon
gathered speed, and I had reached the French window of the drawing-
room and was on the point of popping through, when from within
there came the sound of a human voice. On second thoughts delete
the word 'human', for it was the voice of my recent acquaintance
with whom I had chatted about cameras.
I halted. There was a song I used to sing in my bath at one
time, the refrain or burthen of which began with the words 'I
stopped and I looked and I listened', and this was what I did now,
except for the looking. It wasn't raining, nor was there any
repetition of the trucks-going-over-a-wooden-bridge noise. It was
as though Nature had said to itself 'Oh to hell with it' and
decided that it was too much trouble to have a thunderstorm after
all. So I wasn't getting struck by lightning or even wet, which
enabled me to remain in status quo.
The camera bloke was speaking to some unseen companion, and
what he said was;
'Wooster, his name is. Says he's Mrs Travers's nephew.'
It was plain that I had arrived in the middle of a
conversation. The words must have been preceded by a query,
possibly 'Oh, by the way, do you happen to know who a tall,
slender, good-looking - I might almost say fascinating - young man
I was talking to outside there would be?', though of course
possibly not. That, at any rate, must have been the gist, and I
suppose the party of the second part had replied 'No, sorry, I
can't place him', or words to that effect. Whereupon the camera
chap had spoken as above. And as he spoke as above a snort rang
through the quiet room; a voice, speaking with every evidence of
horror and disgust, exclaimed 'Wooster!'; and I quivered from hair-
do to shoe sole. I may even have gasped, but fortunately not loud
enough to be audible beyond the French window.
For it was the voice of Lord Sidcup - or, as I shall always
think of him, no matter how many titles he may have inherited,
Spode. Spode, mark you, whom I had thought and hoped I had seen the
last of after dusting the dust of Totleigh Towers from the Wooster
feet; Spode, who went about seeking whom he might devour and from
early boyhood had been a hissing and a by-word to all right-
thinking men. Little wonder that for a moment everything seemed to
go black and I had to clutch at a passing rose bush to keep from
falling.
This Spode, I must explain for the benefit of the newcomers who
have not read the earlier chapters of my memoirs, was a character
whose path had crossed mine many a time and oft, as the expression
is, and always with the most disturbing results. I have spoken of
the improbability of a beautiful friendship ever getting under way
between me and the camera chap, but the likelihood of any such
fusion of souls, as I have heard Jeeves call it, between me and
Spode was even more remote. Our views on each other were definite.
His was that what England needed if it was to become a land fit for
heroes to live in was fewer and better Woosters, while I had always
felt that there was nothing wrong with England that a ton of bricks
falling from a height on Spode's head wouldn't cure.
'You know him?' said the camera chap.
'I'm sorry to say I do,' said Spode, speaking like Sherlock
Holmes asked if he knew Professor Moriarty. 'How did you happen to
meet him?'
'I found him making off with my camera.'
'Ha!'
'Naturally I thought he was stealing it. But if he's really Mrs
Travers's nephew, I suppose I was mistaken.'
Spode would have none of this reasoning, though it seemed
pretty sound to me. He snorted again with even more follow-through
than the first time.
'Being Mrs Travers's nephew means nothing. If he was the nephew
of an archbishop he would behave in a precisely similar manner.
Wooster would steal anything that was not nailed down, provided he
could do it unobserved. He couldn't have known you were there?'
'No. I was behind a bush.'
'And your camera looks a good one.'
'Cost me a lot of money.'
'Then of course he was intending to steal it. He must have
thought he had dropped into a bit of good luck. Let me tell you
about Wooster. The first time I met him was in an antique shop. I
had gone there with Sir Watkyn Bassett, my future father-in-law. He
collects old silver. And Sir Watkyn had propped his umbrella up
against a piece of furniture. Wooster was there, but lurking, so we
didn't see him.'
'In a dark corner, perhaps?'
'Or behind something. The first we saw of him, he was sneaking
off with Sir Watkyn's umbrella.'
'Pretty cool.'
'Oh, he's cool all right. These fellows have to be.'
'I suppose so. Must take a nerve of ice.'
To say that I boiled with justifiable indignation would not be
putting it too strongly. As I have recorded elsewhere, there was a
ready explanation of my behaviour. I had come out without my
umbrella that morning, and, completely forgetting that I had done
so, I had grasped old Bassett's, obeying the primeval instinct
which makes a man without an umbrella reach out for the nearest one
in sight, like a flower groping towards the sun. Unconsciously, as
it were.
Spode resumed. They had taken a moment off, no doubt in order
to brood on my delinquency. His voice now was that of one about to
come to the high spot in his narrative.
'You'll hardly believe this, but soon after that he turned up
at Totleigh Towers, Sir Watkyn's house in Gloucestershire.'
'Incredible!'
'I thought you'd think so.'
'Disguised, of course? A wig? A false beard? His cheeks stained
with walnut juice?'
'No, he came quite openly, invited by my future wife. She has a
sort of sentimental pity for him. I think she hopes to reform him.'
'Girls will be girls.'
'Yes, but I wish they wouldn't.'
'Did you rebuke your future wife?'
'I wasn't in a position to then.'
'Probably a wise thing, anyway. I once rebuked the girl I
wanted to marry, and she went off and teamed up with a stockbroker.
So what happened?'
'He stole a valuable piece of silver. A sort of silver cream
jug. A cow-creamer, they call it.'
'My doctor forbids me cream. You had him arrested, of course?'
'We couldn't. No evidence.'
'But you knew he had done it?'
'We were certain.'
'Well, that's how it goes. See any more of him after that?'
'This you will not believe. He came to Totleigh Towers again!'
'Impossible!'
'Once more invited by my future wife.'
'Would that be the Miss Bassett who arrived last night?'
'Yes, that was Madeline.'
'Lovely girl. I met her in the garden before breakfast. My
doctor recommends a breath of fresh air in the early morning. Did
you know she thinks those bits of mist you see on the grass are the
elves' bridal veils?'
'She has a very whimsical fancy.'
'And nothing to be done about it, I suppose. But you were
telling me about this second visit of Wooster's to Totleigh Towers.
Did he steal anything this time?'
'An amber statuette worth a thousand pounds.'
'He certainly gets around,' said the camera chap with, I
thought, a sort of grudging admiration. 'I hope you had him
arrested?'
'We did. He spent the night in the local gaol. But next morning
Sir Watkyn weakened and let him off.'
'Mistaken kindness.'
'So I thought.'
The camera chap didn't comment further on this, though he was
probably thinking that of all the soppy families introduced to his
notice the Bassetts took the biscuit.
'Well, I'm very much obliged to you,' he said, 'for telling me
about this man Wooster and putting me on my guard. I've brought a
very valuable bit of old silver with me. I am hoping to sell it to
Mr Travers. If Wooster learns of this, he is bound to try to
purloin it, and I can tell you, that if he does and I catch him,
there will be none of this nonsense of a single night in gaol. He
will get the stiffest sentence the law can provide. And now, how
about a quick game of billiards before dinner? My doctor advises a
little gentle exercise.'
'I should enjoy it.'
'Then let us be getting along.'
Having given them time to remove themselves, I went in and sank
down on a sofa. I was profoundly stirred, for if you think fellows
enjoy listening to the sort of thing Spode had been saying about
me, you're wrong. My pulse was rapid and my brow wet with honest
sweat, like the village blacksmith's. I was badly in need of
alcoholic refreshment, and just as my tongue was beginning to stick
out and blacken at the roots, shiver my timbers if Jeeves didn't
enter left centre with a tray containing all the makings. St
Bernard dogs, you probably know, behave in a similar way in the
Alps and are well thought of in consequence.
Mingled with the ecstasy which the sight of him aroused in my
bosom was a certain surprise that he should be acting as cup-
bearer. It was a job that should rightly have fallen into the
province of Seppings, Aunt Dahlia's butler.
'Hullo, Jeeves!' I ejaculated.
'Good evening, sir. I have unpacked your effects. Can I pour
you a whisky-and-soda?'
'You can indeed. But what are you doing, buttling? This
mystifies me greatly. Where's Seppings?'
'He has retired to bed, sir, with an attack of indigestion
consequent upon a too liberal indulgence in Monsieur Anatole's
cooking at lunch. I am undertaking his duties for the time being.'
'Very white of you, and very white of you to pop up at this
particular moment. I have had a shock, Jeeves.'
'I am sorry to hear that, sir.'
'Did you know Spode was here?'
'Yes, sir.'
'And Miss Bassett?'
'Yes, sir.'
'We might as well be at Totleigh Towers.'
'I can appreciate your dismay, sir, but fellow guests are
easily avoided.'
'Yes, and if you avoid them, what do they do? They go about
telling men in Panama hats you're a sort of cross between Raffles
and one of those fellows who pinch bags at railway stations,' I
said, and in a few crisp words I gave him a resume of Spode's
remarks.
'Most disturbing, sir.'
'Very. You know and I know how sound my motives were for
everything I did at Totleigh, but what if Spode tells Aunt Agatha?'
'An unlikely contingency, sir.'
'I suppose it is.'
'But I know just how you feel, sir. Who steals my purse steals
trash; 'tis something, nothing; 'twas mine, 'tis his, and has been
slave to thousands. But he who filches from me my good name robs me
of that which not enriches him and makes me poor indeed.'
'Neat, that. Your own?'
'No, sir. Shakespeare's.'
'Shakespeare said some rather good things.'
'I understand that he has given uniform satisfaction, sir.
Shall I mix you another?'
'Do just that thing, Jeeves, and with all convenient speed.'
He had completed his St Bernard act and withdrawn, and I was
sipping my second rather more slowly than the first, when the door
opened and Aunt Dahlia bounded in, all joviality and rosy
complexion.
I never see this relative without thinking how odd it is that
one sister - call her Sister A - can be so unlike another sister,
whom we will call Sister B. My Aunt Agatha, for instance, is tall
and thin and looks rather like a vulture in the Gobi desert, while
Aunt Dahlia is short and solid, like a scrum half in the game of
Rugby football. In disposition, too, they differ widely. Aunt
Agatha is cold and haughty, though presumably unbending a bit when
conducting human sacrifices at the time of the full moon, as she is
widely rumoured to do, and her attitude towards me has always been
that of an austere governess, causing me to feel as if I were six
years old and she had just caught me stealing jam from the jam
cupboard; whereas Aunt Dahlia is as jovial and bonhomous as a
pantomime dame in a Christmas pantomime. Curious.
I welcomed her with a huge 'Hello', in both syllables of which
a nephew's love and esteem could be easily detected, and went so
far as to imprint an affectionate kiss on her brow. Later I would
take her roundly to task for filling the house with Spodes and
Madeline Bassetts and bulging bounders in Panama hats, but that
could wait.
She returned my greeting with one of her uncouth hunting cries
- 'Yoicks', if I remember correctly. Apparently, when you've been
with the Quorn and the Pytchley for some time, you drop into the
habit of departing from basic English.
'So here you are, young Bertie.'
'You never spoke a truer word. Up and doing, with a heart for
any fate.'
'As thirsty as ever, I observe. I thought I would find you
tucking into the drinks.'
'Purely medicinal. I've had a shock.'
'What gave you that?'
'Suddenly becoming apprised of the fact that the blighter Spode
was my fellow guest,' I said, feeling that I couldn't have a better
cue for getting down to my recriminations. 'What on earth was the
idea of inviting a fiend in human shape like that here?' I said,
for I knew she shared my opinion of the seventh Earl of Sidcup.
'You have told me many a time and oft that you consider him one of
Nature's gravest blunders. And yet you go out of your way to court
his society, if court his society is the expression I want. You
must have been off your onion, old ancestor.'
It was a severe ticking-off, and you would have expected the
blush of shame to have mantled her cheeks, not that you would have
noticed it much, her complexion being what it was after all those
winters in the hunting field, but she was apparently imp-something,
impervious, that's the word, to remorse. She remained what Anatole
would have called as cool as some cucumbers.
'Ginger asked me to. He wanted Spode to speak for him at this
election. He knows him slightly.'
'Far the best way of knowing Spode.'
'He needs all the help he can get, and Spode's one of those
silver-tongued orators you read about. Extraordinary gift of the
gab he has. He could get into Parliament without straining a
sinew.'
I dare say she was right, but I resented any praise of Spode. I
made clear my displeasure by responding curtly:
'Then why doesn't he?'
'He can't, you poor chump. He's a lord.'
'Don't they allow lords in?'
'No, they don't.'
'I see,' I said, rather impressed by this proof that the House
of Commons drew the line somewhere. 'Well, I suppose you aren't so
much to blame as I had thought. How do you get on with him?'
'I avoid him as much as possible.'
'Very shrewd. I shall do the same. We now come to Madeline
Bassett. She's here, too. Why?'
'Oh, Madeline came along for the ride. She wanted to be near
Spode. An extraordinary thing to want, I agree. Morbid, you might
call it. Florence Craye, of course, has come to help Ginger's
campaign.'
I started visibly. In fact, I jumped about six inches, as if a
skewer or knitting-needle had come through the seat of my chair.
'You don't mean Florence is here as well?'
'With bells on. You seem perturbed.'
'I'm all of a twitter. It never occurred to me that when I came
here I would be getting into a sort of population explosion.'
'Who ever told you about population explosions?'
'Jeeves. They are rather a favourite subject of his. He says if
something isn't done pretty soon -'
'I'll bet he said, If steps are not taken shortly through the
proper channels.'
'He did, as a matter of fact. He said, If steps aren't taken
shortly through the proper channels, half the world will soon be
standing on the other half's shoulders.'
'All right if you're one of the top layer.'
'Yes, there's that, of course.'
'Though even then it would be uncomfortable. Tricky sort of
balancing act.'
'True.'
'And difficult to go for a stroll if you wanted to stretch the
legs. And one wouldn't get much hunting.'
'Not much.'
We mused for awhile on what lay before us, and I remember
thinking that present conditions, even with Spode and Madeline and
Florence on the premises, suited one better. From this to thinking
of Uncle Tom was but a step. It seemed to me that the poor old
buster must be on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Even a single
guest is sometimes too much for him.
'How,' I asked, 'is Uncle Tom bearing up under this invasion of
his cabin?'
She stared incredibly or rather incredulously.
'Did you expect to find him here playing his banjo? My poor
halfwitted child, he was off to the south of France the moment he
learned that danger threatened. I had a picture postcard from him
yesterday. He's having a wonderful time and wishes I was there.'
'And don't you mind all these blighters overrunning the place?'
'I would prefer it if they went elsewhere, but I treat them
with saintly forbearance because I feel it's all helping Ginger.'
'How do things look in that direction?'
'An even bet, I would say. The slightest thing might turn the
scale. He and his opponent are having a debate in a day or two, and
a good deal, you might say everything, depends on that.'
'Who's the opponent?'
'Local talent. A barrister.'
'Jeeves says Market Snodsbury is very straitlaced, and if the
electors found out about Ginger's past they would heave him out
without even handing him his hat.'
'Has he a past?'
'I wouldn't call it that. Pure routine, I'd describe it as. In
the days before he fell under Florence's spell he was rather apt to
get slung out of restaurants for throwing eggs at the electric fan,
and he seldom escaped unjugged on Boat Race night for pinching
policemen's helmets. Would that lose him votes?'
'Lose him votes? If it was brought to Market Snodsbury's
attention, I doubt if he would get a single one. That sort of thing
might be overlooked in the cities of the plain, but not in Market
Snodsbury. So for heaven's sake don't go babbling about it to
everyone you meet.'
'My dear old ancestor, am I likely to?'
'Very likely, I should say. You know how fat your head is.'
I would have what-d'you-call-it-ed this slur, and with
vehemence, but the adjective she had used reminded me that we had
been talking all this time and I hadn't enquired about the camera
chap.
'By the way,' I said, 'who would a fat fellow be?'
'Someone fond of starchy foods who had omitted to watch his
calories, I imagine. What on earth, if anything, are you talking
about?'
I saw that my question had been too abrupt. I hastened to
clarify it.
'Strolling in the grounds and messuages just now I encountered
an obese bird in a Panama hat with a pink ribbon, and I was
wondering who he was and how he came to be staying here. He didn't
look the sort of bloke for whom you would be putting out mats with
"Welcome" on them. He gave me the impression of being a thug of the
first order.'
My words seemed to have touched a chord. Rising nimbly, she
went to the door and opened it, then to the French window and
looked out, plainly in order to ascertain that nobody - except me,
of course - was listening. Spies in spy stories do the same kind of
thing when about to make communications which are for your ears
only.
'I suppose I'd better tell you about him,' she said.
I intimated that I would be an attentive audience.
'That's L. P. Runkle, and I want you to exercise your charm on
him, such as it is. He has to be conciliated and sucked up to.'
'Why, is he someone special?'
'You bet he's someone special. He's a big financier, Runkle's
Enterprises. Loaded with money.'
It seemed to me that these words could have but one
significance.
'You're hoping to touch him?'
'Such is indeed my aim. But not for myself. I want to get a
round sum out of him for Tuppy Glossop.'
Her allusion was to the nephew of Sir Roderick Glossop, the
well-known nerve specialist and loony doctor, once a source of
horror and concern to Bertram but now one of my leading pals. He
calls me Bertie, I call him Roddy. Tuppy, too, is one of my
immediate circle of buddies, in spite of the fact that he once
betted me I couldn't swing myself from end to end of the swimming
bath at the Drones, and when I came to the last ring I found he had
looped it back, giving me no option but to drop into the water in
faultless evening dress. This had been like a dagger in the bosom
for a considerable period, but eventually Time the great healer had
ironed things out and I had forgiven him. He has been betrothed to
Aunt Dahlia's daughter Angela for ages, and I had never been able
to understand why they hadn't got around to letting the wedding
bells get cracking. I had been expecting every day for ever so long
to be called on to weigh in with the silver fish-slice, but the
summons never came.
Naturally I asked if Tuppy was hard up, and she said he wasn't
begging his bread and nosing about in the gutters for cigarette
ends, but he hadn't enough to marry on.
'Thanks to L. P. Runkle. I'll tell you the whole story.'
'Do.'
'Did you ever meet Tuppy's late father?'
'Once. I remember him as a dreamy old bird of the absent-minded
professor type.'
'He was a chemical researcher or whatever they call it,
employed by Runkle's Enterprises, one of those fellows you see in
the movies who go about in white coats peering into test tubes. And
one day he invented what were afterwards known as Runkle's Magic
Midgets, small pills for curing headaches. You've probably come
across them.'
'I know them well. Excellent for a hangover, though not of
course to be compared with Jeeves's patent pick-me-up. They're very
popular at the Drones. I know a dozen fellows who swear by them.
There must be a fortune in them.'
'There was. They sell like warm winter woollies in Iceland.'
'Then why is Tuppy short of cash? Didn't he inherit them?'
'Not by a jugful.'
'I don't get it. You speak in riddles, aged relative,' I said,
and there was a touch of annoyance in my voice, for if there is one
thing that gives me the pip, it is an aunt speaking in riddles. 'If
these ruddy midget things belonged to Tuppy's father -'
'L. P. Runkle claimed they didn't. Tuppy's father was working
for him on a salary, and the small print in the contract read that
all inventions made on Runkle's Enterprises' time became the
property of Runkle's Enterprises. So when old Glossop died, he
hadn't much to leave his son, while L. P. Runkle went on
flourishing like a green bay tree.'
I had never seen a green bay tree, but I gathered what she
meant.
'Couldn't Tuppy sue?'
'He would have been bound to lose. A contract is a contract.'
I saw what she meant. It was not unlike that time when she was
running that weekly paper of hers, Milady's Boudoir, and I
contributed to it an article, or piece as it is sometimes called,
on What The Well-Dressed Man Is Wearing. She gave me a packet of
cigarettes for it, and it then became her property. I didn't
actually get offers for it from France, Germany, Italy, Canada and
the United States, but if I had had I couldn't have accepted them.
My pal Boko Littleworth, who makes a living by his pen, tells me I
ought to have sold her only the first serial rights, but I didn't
think of it at the time. One makes these mistakes. What one needs,
of course, is an agent.
All the same, I considered that L. P. Runkle ought to have
stretched a point and let Tuppy's father get something out of it. I
put this to the ancestor, and she agreed with me.
'Of course he ought. Moral obligation.'
'It confirms one's view that this Runkle is a stinker.'
'The stinker supreme. And he tells me he has been tipped off
that he's going to get a knighthood in the New Year's Honours.'
'How can they knight a chap like that?'
'Just the sort of chap they do knight. Prominent business man.
Big deals. Services to Britain's export trade.'
'But a stinker.'
'Unquestionably a stinker.'
'Then what's he doing here? You usually don't go out of your
way to entertain stinkers. Spode, yes. I can understand you letting
him infest the premises, much as I disapprove of it. He's making
speeches on Ginger's behalf, and according to you doing it rather
well. But why Runkle?'
She said 'Ah!', and when I asked her reason for saying 'Ah!',
she replied that she was thinking of her subtle cunning, and when I
asked what she meant by subtle cunning, she said 'Ah!' again. It
looked as if we might go on like this indefinitely, but a moment
later, having toddled to the door and opened it and to the French
window and peered out, she explained.
'Runkle came here hoping to sell Tom an old silver what not for
his collection, and as Tom had vanished and he had come a long way
I had to put him up for the night, and at dinner I suddenly had an
inspiration. I thought if I got him to stay on and plied him day
and night with Anatole's cooking, he might get into mellowed mood.'
She had ceased to speak in riddles. This time I followed her.
'So that you would be able to talk him into slipping Tuppy some
of his ill-gotten gains?'
'Exactly. I'm biding my time. When the moment comes, I shall
act like lightning. I told him Tom would be back in a day or two,
not that he will, because he won't come within fifty miles of the
place till I blow the All Clear, so Runkle consented to stay on.'
'And how's it working out?'
'The prospects look good. He mellows more with every meal.
Anatole gave us his Mignonette de poulet Petit Duc last night, and
he tucked into it like a tapeworm that's been on a diet for weeks.
There was no mistaking the gleam in his eyes as he downed the last
mouthful. A few more dinners ought to do the trick.'
She left me shortly after this to go and dress for dinner. I,
strong in the knowledge that I could get into the soup-and-fish in
ten minutes, lingered on, plunged in thought.
Extraordinary how I kept doing that as of even date. It just
shows what life is like now. I don't suppose in the old days I
would have been plunged in thought more than about once a month.
I need scarcely say that Tuppy's hard case, as outlined by the
old blood relation, had got right in amongst me. You might suppose
that a fellow capable of betting you you couldn't swing yourself
across the Drones swimming-bath by the rings and looping the last
ring back deserved no consideration, but as I say the agony of that
episode had long since abated and it pained me deeply to
contemplate the spot he was in. For though I had affected to
consider that the ancestor's scheme for melting L. P. Runkle was
the goods, I didn't really believe it would work. You don't get
anywhere filling with rich foods a bloke who wears a Panama hat
like his: the only way of inducing the L. P. Runkle type of man to
part with cash is to kidnap him, take him to the cellar beneath the
lonely mill and stick lighted matches between his toes. And even
then he would probably give you a dud cheque.
The revelation of Tuppy's hard-upness had come as quite a
surprise. You know how it is with fellows you're seeing all the
time; if you think about their finances at all, you sort of assume
they must be all right. It had never occurred to me that Tuppy
might be seriously short of doubloons, but I saw now why there had
been all this delay in assembling the bishop and assistant clergy
and getting the show on the road. I presumed Uncle Tom would brass
up if given the green light, he having the stuff in heaping
sackfuls, but Tuppy has his pride and would quite properly jib at
the idea of being supported by a father-in-law. Of course he really
oughtn't to have gone and signed Angela up with his bank balance in
such a rocky condition, but love is love. Conquers all, as the
fellow said.
Having mused on Tuppy for about five minutes, I changed gears
and started musing on Angela, for whom I had always had a cousinly
affection. A definitely nice young prune and just the sort to be a
good wife, but of course the catch is that you can't be a good wife
if the other half of the sketch hasn't enough money to marry you.
Practically all you can do is hang around and twiddle your fingers
and hope for the best. Weary waiting about sums it up, and the
whole lay-out, I felt, must be g. and wormwood for Angela, causing
her to bedew her pillow with many a salty tear.
I always find when musing that the thing to do is to bury the
face in the hands, because it seems to concentrate thought and keep
the mind from wandering off elsewhere. I did this now, and was
getting along fairly well, when I suddenly had that uncanny feeling
that I was not alone. I sensed a presence, if you would prefer
putting it that way, and I had not been mistaken. Removing the
hands and looking up, I saw that Madeline Bassett was with me.
It was a nasty shock. I won't say she was the last person I
wanted to see, Spode of course heading the list of starters with L.
P. Runkle in close attendance, but I would willingly have dispensed
with her company. However, I rose courteously, and I don't think
there was anything in my manner to suggest that I would have liked
to hit her with a brick, for I am pretty inscrutable at all times.
Nevertheless, behind my calm front there lurked the uneasiness
which always grips me when we meet.
Holding the mistaken view that I am hopelessly in love with her
and more or less pining away into a decline, this Bassett never
fails to look at me, when our paths cross, with a sort of tender
pity, and she was letting me have it now. So melting indeed was her
gaze that it was only by reminding myself that she was safely
engaged to Spode that I was able to preserve my equanimity and
sangfroid. When she had been betrothed to Gussie Fink-Nottle, the
peril of her making a switch had always been present, Gussie being
the sort of spectacled newt-collecting freak a girl might at any
moment get second thoughts about, but there was something so
reassuring in her being engaged to Spode. Because, whatever you
might think of him, you couldn't get away from it that he was the
seventh Earl of Sidcup, and no girl who has managed to hook a
seventh Earl with a castle in Shropshire and an income of twenty
thousand pounds per annum is lightly going to change her mind about
him.
Having given me the look, she spoke, and her voice was like
treacle pouring out of a jug.
'Oh, Bertie, how nice to see you again. How are you?'
'I'm fine. How are you?'
'I'm fine.'
'That's fine. How's your father?'
'He's fine.'
I was sorry to hear this. My relations with Sir Watkyn Bassett
were such that a more welcome piece of news would have been that he
had contracted bubonic plague and wasn't expected to recover.
'I heard you were here,' I said.
'Yes, I'm here.'
'So I heard. You're looking well.'
'Oh, I'm very, very well, and oh so happy.'
'That's good.'
'I wake up each morning to the new day, and I know it's going
to be the best day that ever was. Today I danced on the lawn before
breakfast, and then I went round the garden saying good morning to
the flowers. There was a sweet black cat asleep on one of the
flower beds. I picked it up and danced with it.'
I didn't tell her so, but she couldn't have made a worse social
gaffe. If there is one thing Augustus, the cat to whom she
referred, hates, it's having his sleep disturbed. He must have
cursed freely, though probably in a drowsy undertone. I suppose she
thought he was purring.
She had paused, seeming to expect some comment on her fatheaded
behaviour, so I said:
'Euphoria.'
'I what?'
'That's what it's called, Jeeves tells me, feeling like that.'
'Oh, I see. I just call it being happy, happy, happy.'
Having said which, she gave a start, quivered and put a hand up
to her face as if she were having a screen test and had been told
to register remorse.
'Oh, Bertie!'
'Hullo?'
'I'm so sorry.'
'Eh?'
'It was so tactless of me to go on about my happiness. I should
have remembered how different it was for you. I saw your face twist
with pain as I came in and I can't tell you how sorry I am to think
that it is I who have caused it. Life is not easy, is it?'
'Not very.'
'Difficult.'
'In spots.'
'The only thing is to be brave.'
'That's about it.'
'You must not lose courage. Who knows? Consolation may be
waiting for you somewhere. Some day you will meet someone who will
make you forget you ever loved me. No, not quite that. I think I
shall always be a fragrant memory, always something deep in your
heart that will be with you like a gentle, tender ghost as you
watch the sunset on summer evenings while the little birds sing
their off-to-bed songs in the shrubbery.'
'I wouldn't be surprised,' I said, for one simply has to say
the civil thing. 'You look a bit damp,' I added, changing the
subject. 'Was it raining when you were out?'
'A little, but I didn't mind. I was saying good-night to the
flowers.'
'Oh, you say good-night to them, too?'
'Of course. Their poor little feelings would be so hurt if I
didn't.'
'Wise of you to come in. Might have got lumbago.'
'That was not why I came in. I saw you through the window, and
I had a question to ask you. A very, very serious question.'
'Oh, yes?'
'But it's so difficult to know how to put it. I shall have to
ask it as they do in books. You know what they say in books.'
'What who say in books?'
'Detectives and people like that. Bertie, are you going
straight now?'
'I beg your pardon?'
'You know what I mean. Have you given up stealing things?'
I laughed one of those gay debonair ones.
'Oh, absolutely.'
'I'm so glad. You don't feel the urge any more? You've
conquered the craving? I told Daddy it was just a kind of illness.
I said you couldn't help yourself.'
I remembered her submitting this theory to him ... I was hiding
behind a sofa at the time, a thing I have been compelled to do
rather oftener than I could wish ... and Sir Watkyn had replied in
what I thought dubious taste that it was precisely my habit of
helping myself to everything I could lay my hands on that he was
criticizing.
Another girl might have left it at that, but not M. Bassett.
She was all eager curiosity.
'Did you have psychiatric treatment? Or was it will power?'
'Just will power.'
'How splendid. I'm so proud of you. It must have been a
terrible struggle.'
'Oh, so-so.'
'I shall write to Daddy and tell him -'
Here she paused and put a hand to her left eye, and it was easy
for a man of my discernment to see what had happened. The French
window being open, gnats in fairly large numbers had been coming
through and flitting to and fro. It's a thing one always has to
budget for in the English countryside. In America they have
screens, of course, which make flying objects feel pretty
nonplussed, but these have never caught on in England and the gnats
have it more or less their own way. They horse around and now and
then get into people's eyes. One of these, it was evident, had now
got into Madeline's.
I would be the last to deny that Bertram Wooster has his
limitations, but in one field of endeavour I am pre-eminent. In the
matter of taking things out of eyes I yield to no one. I know what
to say and what to do.
Counselling her not to rub it, I advanced handkerchief in hand.
I remember going into the technique of operations of this kind
with Gussie Fink-Nottle at Totleigh when he had removed a fly from
the eye of Stephanie Byng, now the Reverend Mrs Stinker Pinker, and
we were in agreement that success could be achieved only by placing
a hand under the patient's chin in order to steady the head. Omit
this preliminary and your efforts are bootless. My first move,
accordingly, was to do so and it was characteristic of Spode that
he should have chosen this moment to join us, just when we twain
were in what you might call close juxtaposition.
I confess that there have been times when I have felt more at
my ease. Spode, in addition to being constructed on the lines of a
rather oversized gorilla, has a disposition like that of a short-
tempered tiger of the jungle and a nasty mind which leads him to
fall a ready prey to what I have heard Jeeves call the green-eyed
monster which doth mock the meat it feeds on - viz. jealousy. Such
a man, finding you steadying the head of the girl he loves, is
always extremely likely to start trying to ascertain the colour of
your insides, and to avert this I greeted him with what nonchalance
I could muster.
'Oh, hullo, Spode old chap, I mean Lord Sidcup old chap. Here
we all are, what. Jeeves told me you were here, and Aunt Dahlia
says you've been knocking the voting public base over apex with
your oratory in the Conservative interest. Must be wonderful to be
able to do that. It's a gift, of course. Some have it, some
haven't. I couldn't address a political meeting to please a dying
grandmother. I should stand there opening and shutting my mouth
like a goldfish. You, on the other hand, just clear your throat and
the golden words come pouring out like syrup. I admire you
enormously.'
Conciliatory, I think you'll agree. I could hardly have given
him the old salve with a more liberal hand, and one might have
expected him to simper, shuffle his feet and mumble 'Awfully nice
of you to say so' or something along those lines. Instead of which,
all he did was come back at me with a guttural sound like an opera
basso choking on a fishbone, and I had to sustain the burden of the
conversation by myself.
'I've just been taking a gnat out of Madeline's eye.'
'Oh?'
'Dangerous devils, these gnats. Require skilled handling.'
'Oh?'
'Everything's back to normal now, I think.'
'Yes, thank you ever so much, Bertie.'
It was Madeline who said this, not Spode. He continued to gaze
at me bleakly. She went on harping on the thing.
'Bertie's so clever.'
'Oh?'
'I don't know what I would have done without him.'
'Oh?'
'He showed wonderful presence of mind.'
'Oh?'
'I feel so sorry, though, for the poor little gnat.'
'It asked for it,' I pointed out. 'It was unquestionably the
aggressor.'
'Yes, I suppose that's true, but...' The clock on the
mantelpiece caught her now de-gnatted eye, and she uttered an
agitated squeak. 'Oh, my goodness, is that the time? I must rush.'
She buzzed off, and I was on the point of doing the same, when
Spode detained me with a curt 'One moment'. There are all sorts of
ways of saying 'One moment'. This was one of the nastier ones,
spoken with an unpleasant rasping note in the voice.
'I want a word with you, Wooster.'
I am never anxious to chat with Spode, but if I had been sure
that he merely wanted to go on saying 'Oh?', I would have been
willing to listen. Something, however, seemed to tell me that he
was about to give evidence of a wider vocabulary, and I edged
towards the door.
'Some other time, don't you think?'
'Not some ruddy other time. Now.'
'I shall be late for dinner.'
'You can't be too late for me. And if you get your teeth
knocked down your throat, as you will if you don't listen
attentively to what I have to say, you won't be able to eat any
dinner.'
This seemed plausible. I decided to lend him an ear, as the
expression is. 'Say on,' I said, and he said on, lowering his voice
to a sort of rumbling growl which made him difficult to follow.
However, I caught the word 'read' and the word 'book' and perked up
a bit. If this was going to be a literary discussion, I didn't mind
exchanging views.
'Book?' I said.
'Book.'
'You want me to recommend you a good book? Well, of course, it
depends on what you like. Jeeves, for instance, is never happier
than when curled up with his Spinoza or his Shakespeare. I, on the
other hand, go in mostly for who-dun-its and novels of suspense.
For the who-dun-it Agatha Christie is always a safe bet. For the
novel of suspense ...'
Here I paused, for he had called me an opprobrious name and
told me to stop babbling, and it is always my policy to stop
babbling when a man eight foot six in height and broad in
proportion tells me to. I went into the silence, and he continued
to say on.
'I said that I could read you like a book, Wooster. I know what
your game is.'
'I don't understand you, Lord Sidcup.'
'Then you must be as big an ass as you look, which is saying a
good deal. I am referring to your behaviour towards my fiancee. I
come into this room and I find you fondling her face.'
I had to correct him here. One likes to get these things
straight.
'Only her chin.'
'Pah!' he said, or something that sounded like that.
'And I had to get a grip on it in order to extract the gnat
from her eye. I was merely steadying it.'
'You were steadying it gloatingly.'
'I wasn't!'
'Pardon me. I have eyes and can see when a man is steadying a
chin gloatingly and when he isn't. You were obviously delighted to
have an excuse for soiling her chin with your foul fingers.'
'You are wrong, Lord Spodecup.'
'And, as I say, I know what your game is. You are trying to
undermine me, to win her from me with your insidious guile, and
what I want to impress upon you with all the emphasis at my
disposal is that if anything of this sort is going to occur again,
you would do well to take out an accident policy with some good
insurance company at the earliest possible date. You probably think
that being a guest in your aunt's house I would hesitate to butter
you over the front lawn and dance on the fragments in hobnailed
boots, but you are mistaken. It will be a genuine pleasure. By an
odd coincidence I brought a pair of hobnailed boots with me!'
So saying, and recognizing a good exit line when he saw one, he
strode out, and after an interval of tense meditation I followed
him. Repairing to my bedroom, I found Jeeves there, looking
reproachful. He knows I can dress for dinner in ten minutes, but
regards haste askance, for he thinks it results in a tie which,
even if adequate, falls short of the perfect butterfly effect.
I ignored the silent rebuke in his eyes. After meeting Spode's
eyes, I was dashed if I was going to be intimidated by Jeeves's.
'Jeeves,' I said, 'you're fairly well up in Hymns Ancient and
Modern, I should imagine. Who were the fellows in the hymn who used
to prowl and prowl around?'
'The troops of Midian, sir.'
'That's right. Was Spode mentioned as one of them?'
'Sir?'
'I ask because he's prowling around as if Midian was his home
town. Let me tell you all about it.'
'I fear it will not be feasible, sir. The gong is sounding.'
'So it is. Who's sounding it? You said Seppings was in bed.'
'The parlourmaid, sir, deputizing for Mr Seppings.'
'I like her wrist work. Well, I'll tell you later.'
'Very good, sir. Pardon me, your tie.'
'What's wrong with it?'
'Everything, sir. If you will allow me.'
'All right, go ahead. But I can't help asking myself if ties
really matter at a time like this.'
There is no time when ties do not matter, sir.'
My mood was sombre as I went down to dinner. Anatole, I was
thinking, would no doubt give us of his best, possibly his Timbale
de ris de veau Toulousaine or his Sylphides a la creme
d'ecrevisses, but Spode would be there and Madeline would be there
and Florence would be there and L. P. Runkle would be there.
There was, I reflected, always something.
It has been well said of Bertram Wooster that when he sets his
hand to the plough he does not stop to pick daisies and let the
grass grow under his feet. Many men in my position, having
undertaken to canvass for a friend anxious to get into Parliament,
would have waited till after lunch next day to get rolling, saying
to themselves Oh, what difference do a few hours make and going off
to the billiard-room for a game or two of snooker. I, in sharp
contradistinction as I have heard Jeeves call it, was on my way
shortly after breakfast. It can't have been much more than a
quarter to eleven when, fortified by a couple of kippers, toast,
marmalade and three cups of coffee, I might have been observed
approaching a row of houses down by the river to which someone with
a flair for the mot juste had given the name of River Row. From
long acquaintance with the town I knew that this was one of the
posher parts of Market Snodsbury, stiff with householders likely to
favour the Conservative cause, and it was for that reason that I
was making it my first port of call. No sense, I mean, in starting
off with the less highly priced localities where everybody was
bound to vote Labour and would not only turn a deaf ear to one's
reasoning but might even bung a brick at one. Ginger no doubt had a
special posse of tough supporters, talking and spitting out of the
side of their mouths, and they would attend to the brick-bunging
portion of the electorate.
Jeeves was at my side, but whereas I had selected Number One as
my objective, his intention was to push on to Number Two. I would
then give Number Three the treatment, while he did the same to
Number Four. Talking it over, we had decided that if we made it a
double act and blew into a house together, it might give the
occupant the impression that he was receiving a visit from the
plain clothes police and excite him unduly. Many of the men who
live in places like River Row have a tendency to apoplectic fits as
the result of high living, and a voter expiring on the floor from
shock means a voter less on the voting list. One has to think of
these things.
'What beats me, Jeeves,' I said, for I was in thoughtful mood,
'is why people don't object to somebody they don't know from Adam
muscling into their homes without a ... without a what? It's on the
tip of my tongue.'
'A With-your-leave or a By-your-leave, sir?'
'That's right. Without a With-your-leave or a By-your-leave and
telling them which way to vote. Taking a liberty, it strikes me
as.'
'It is the custom at election time, sir. Custom reconciles us
to everything, a wise man once said.'
'Shakespeare?'
'Burke, sir. You will find the apothegm in his On The Sublime
And Beautiful. I think the electors, conditioned by many years of
canvassing, would be disappointed if nobody called on them.'
'So we shall be bringing a ray of sunshine into their drab
lives?'
'Something on that order, sir.'
'Well, you may be right. Have you ever done this sort of thing
before?'
'Once or twice, sir, before I entered your employment.'
'What were your methods?'
'I outlined as briefly as possible the main facets of my
argument, bade my auditors goodbye, and withdrew.'
'No preliminaries?'
'Sir?'
'You didn't make a speech of any sort before getting down to
brass tacks? No mention of Burke or Shakespeare or the poet Burns?'
'No, sir. It might have caused exasperation.'
I disagreed with him. I felt that he was on the wrong track
altogether and couldn't expect anything in the nature of a triumph
at Number Two. There is probably nothing a voter enjoys more than
hearing the latest about Burke and his On The Sublime And
Beautiful, and here he was, deliberately chucking away the
advantages his learning gave him. I had half a mind to draw his
attention to the Parable of the Talents, with which I had become
familiar when doing research for that Scripture Knowledge prize I
won at school. Time, however, was getting along, so I passed it up.
But I told him I thought he was mistaken. Preliminaries, I
maintained, were of the essence. Breaking the ice is what it's
called. I mean, you can't just barge in on a perfect stranger and
get off the mark with an abrupt 'Hoy there. I hope you're going to
vote for my candidate!' How much better to say 'Good morning, sir.
I can see at a glance that you are a man of culture, probably never
happier than when reading your Burke. I wonder if you are familiar
with his On The Sublime And Beautiful?' Then away you go, off to a
nice start.
'You must have an approach,' I said. 'I myself am all for the
jolly, genial. I propose, on meeting my householder, to begin with
a jovial "Hullo there, Mr Whatever-it-is, hullo there", thus
ingratiating myself with him from the kick-off. I shall then tell
him a funny story. Then, and only then, will I get to the nub -
waiting, of course, till he has stopped laughing. I can't fail.'
'I am sure you will not, sir. The system would not suit me, but
it is merely a matter of personal taste.'
'The psychology of the individual, what?'
'Precisely, sir. By different methods different men excel.'
'Burke?'
'Charles Churchill, sir, a poet who flourished in the early
eighteenth century. The words occur in his Epistle To William
Hogarth.'
We halted. Cutting out a good pace, we had arrived at the door
of Number One. I pressed the bell.
'Zero hour, Jeeves,' I said gravely.
'Yes, sir.'
'Carry on.'
'Very good, sir.'
'Heaven speed your canvassing.'
'Thank you, sir.'
'And mine.'
'Yes, sir.'
He pushed along and mounted the steps of Number Two, leaving me
feeling rather as I had done in my younger days at a clergyman
uncle's place in Kent when about to compete in the Choir Boys
Bicycle Handicap open to all those whose voices had not broken by
the first Sunday in Epiphany - nervous, but full of the will to
win.
The door opened as I was running through the high spots of the
laughable story I planned to unleash when I got inside. A maid was
standing there, and conceive my emotion when I recognized her as
one who had held office under Aunt Dahlia the last time I had
enjoyed the latter's hospitality; the one with whom, the old sweats
will recall, I had chewed the fat on the subject of the cat
Augustus and his tendency to pass his days in sleep instead of
bustling about and catching mice.
The sight of her friendly face was like a tonic. My morale,
which had begun to sag a bit after Jeeves had left me, rose
sharply, closing at nearly par. I felt that even if the fellow I
was going to see kicked me downstairs, she would be there to show
me out and tell me that these things are sent to try us, with the
general idea of making us more spiritual.
'Why, hullo!' I said.
'Good morning, sir.'
'We meet again.'
'Yes, sir.'
'You remember me?'
'Oh yes, sir.'
'And you have not forgotten Augustus?'
'Oh no, sir.'
'He's still as lethargic as ever. He joined me at breakfast
this morning, fust managed to keep awake while getting outside his
portion of kipper, then fell into a dreamless sleep at the end of
the bed with his head hanging down. So you have resigned your
portfolio at Aunt Dahlia's since we last met. Too bad. We shall all
miss you. Do you like it here?'
'Oh yes, sir.'
'That's the spirit. Well, getting down to business, I've come
to see your boss on a matter of considerable importance. What sort
of chap is he? Not too short-tempered? Not too apt to be cross with
callers, I hope?'
'It isn't a gentleman, sir, it's a lady. Mrs McCorkadale.'
This chipped quite a bit off the euphoria I was feeling. I had
been relying on the story I had prepared to put me over with a
bang, carrying me safely through the first awkward moments when the
fellow you've called on without an invitation is staring at you as
if wondering to what he owes the honour of this visit, and now it
would have to remain untold. It was one I had heard from Catsmeat
Potter-Pirbright at the Drones and it was essentially a conte whose
spiritual home was the smoking-room of a London club or the men's
wash-room on an American train - in short, one by no means adapted
to the ears of the gentle sex; especially a member of that sex who
probably ran the local Watch Committee.
It was, consequently, a somewhat damped Bertram Wooster whom
the maid ushered into the drawing-room, and my pep was in no way
augmented by the first sight I had of mine hostess. Mrs McCorkadale
was what I would call a grim woman. Not so grim as my Aunt Agatha,
perhaps, for that could hardly be expected, but certainly well up
in the class of Jael the wife of Heber and the Madame Whoever-it-
was who used to sit and knit at the foot of the guillotine during
the French Revolution. She had a beaky nose, tight thin lips, and
her eye could have been used for splitting logs in the teak forests
of Borneo. Seeing her steadily and seeing her whole, as the
expression is, one marvelled at the intrepidity of Mr McCorkadale
in marrying her - a man obviously whom nothing could daunt.
However, I had come there to be jolly and genial, and jolly and
genial I was resolved to be. Actors will tell you that on these
occasions, when the soul is a-twitter and the nervous system not
like mother makes it, the thing to do is to take a deep breath. I
took three, and immediately felt much better.
'Good morning, good morning, good morning,' I said. 'Good
morning,' I added, rubbing it in, for it was my policy to let there
be no stint.
'Good morning,' she replied, and one might have totted things
up as so far, so good. But if I said she said it cordially, I would
be deceiving my public. The impression I got was that the sight of
me hurt her in some sensitive spot. The woman, it was plain, shared
Spode's view of what was needed to make England a land fit for
heroes to live in.
Not being able to uncork the story and finding the way her eye
was going through me like a dose of salts more than a little trying
to my already dented sangfroid, I might have had some difficulty in
getting the conversation going, but fortunately I was full of good
material just waiting to be decanted. Over an after-dinner smoke on
the previous night Ginger had filled me in on what his crowd
proposed to do when they got down to it. They were going, he said,
to cut taxes to the bone, straighten out our foreign policy, double
our export trade, have two cars in the garage and two chickens in
the pot for everyone and give the pound the shot in the arm it had
been clamouring for for years. Than which, we both agreed, nothing
could be sweeter, and I saw no reason to suppose that the
McCorkadale gargoyle would not feel the same. I began, therefore,
by asking her if she had a vote, and she said Yes, of course, and I
said Well, that was fine, because if she hadn't had, the point of
my arguments would have been largely lost.
'An excellent thing, I've always thought, giving women the
vote,' I proceeded heartily, and she said -rather nastily, it
seemed to me - that she was glad I approved. 'When you cast yours,
if cast is the word I want, I strongly advise you to cast it in
favour of Ginger Winship.'
'On what do you base that advice?'
She couldn't have given me a better cue. She had handed it to
me on a plate with watercress round it. Like a flash I went into my
sales talk, mentioning Ginger's attitude towards taxes, our foreign
policy, our export trade, cars in the garage, chickens in the pot
and first aid for the poor old pound, and was shocked to observe an
entire absence of enthusiasm on her part. Not a ripple appeared on
the stern and rockbound coast of her map. She looked like Aunt
Agatha listening to the boy Wooster trying to explain away a
drawing-room window broken by a cricket ball.
I pressed her closely, or do I mean keenly.
'You want taxes cut, don't you?'
'I do.'
'And our foreign policy bumped up?'
'Certainly.'
'And our exports doubled and a stick of dynamite put under the
pound? I'll bet you do. Then vote for Ginger Winship, the man who
with his hand on the helm of the ship of state will steer England
to prosperity and happiness, bringing back once more the spacious
days of Good Queen Bess.' This was a line of talk that Jeeves had
roughed out for my use. There was also some rather good stuff about
this sceptred isle and this other Eden, demi-something, but I had
forgotten it. 'You can't say that wouldn't be nice,' I said.
A moment before, I wouldn't have thought it possible that she
could look more like Aunt Agatha than she had been doing, but she
now achieved this breathtaking feat. She sniffed, if not snorted,
and spoke as follows:
'Young man, don't be idiotic. Hand on the helm of the ship of
state, indeed! If Mr Winship performs the miracle of winning this
election, which he won't, he will be an ordinary humble back-
bencher, doing nothing more notable than saying "Hear, hear" when
his superiors are speaking and "Oh" and "Question" when the
opposition have the floor. As,' she went on, 'I shall if I win this
election, as I intend to.'
I blinked. A sharp 'Whatwasthatyousaid?' escaped my lips, and
she proceeded to explain or, as Jeeves would say, elucidate.
'You are not very quick at noticing things, are you? I imagine
not, or you would have seen that Market Snodsbury is liberally
plastered with posters bearing the words "Vote for McCorkadale". An
abrupt way of putting it, but one that is certainly successful in
conveying its meaning.'
It was a blow, I confess, and I swayed beneath it like an
aspen, if aspens are those things that sway. The Woosters can take
a good deal, but only so much. My most coherent thought at the
moment was that it was just like my luck, when I sallied forth as a
canvasser, to collide first crack out of the box with the rival
candidate. I also had the feeling that if Jeeves had taken on
Number One instead of Number Two, he would probably have persuaded
Ma McCorkadale to vote against herself.
I suppose if you had asked Napoleon how he had managed to get
out of Moscow, he would have been a bit vague about it, and it was
the same with me. I found myself on the front steps with only a
sketchy notion of how I had got there, and I was in the poorest of
shapes. To try to restore the shattered system I lit a cigarette
and had begun to puff, when a cheery voice hailed me and I became
aware that some foreign substance was sharing my doorstep. 'Hullo,
Wooster old chap' it was saying and, the mists clearing from before
my eyes, I saw that it was Bingley.
I gave the blighter a distant look. Knowing that this blot on
the species resided in Market Snodsbury, I had foreseen that I
might run into him sooner or later, so I was not surprised to see
him. But I certainly wasn't pleased. The last thing I wanted in the
delicate state to which the McCorkadale had reduced me was
conversation with a man who set cottages on fire and chased the
hand that fed him hither and thither with a carving knife.
He was as unduly intimate, forward, bold, intrusive and
deficient in due respect as he had been at the Junior Ganymede. He
gave my back a cordial slap and would, I think, have prodded me in
the ribs if it had occurred to him. You wouldn't have thought that
carving knives had ever come between us.
'And what are you doing in these parts, cocky?' he asked.
I said I was visiting my aunt Mrs Travers, who had a house in
the vicinity, and he said he knew the place, though he had never
met the old geezer to whom I referred.
'I've seen her around. Red-faced old girl, isn't she?'
'Fairly vermilion.'
'High blood pressure, probably.'
'Or caused by going in a lot for hunting. It chaps the cheeks.'
'Different from a barmaid. She cheeks the chaps.'
If he had supposed that his crude humour would get so much as a
simper out of me, he was disappointed. I preserved the cold
aloofness of a Wednesday matinee audience, and he proceeded.
'Yes, that might be it. She looks a sport. Making a long stay?'
'I don't know,' I said, for the length of my visits to the old
ancestor is always uncertain. So much depends on whether she throws
me out or not. 'Actually I'm here to canvass for the Conservative
candidate. He's a pal of mine.'
He whistled sharply. He had been looking repulsive and
cheerful; he now looked repulsive and grave. Seeming to realize
that he had omitted a social gesture, he prodded me in the ribs.
'You're wasting your time, Wooster, old man,' he said. 'He
hasn't an earthly.'
'No?' I quavered. It was simply one man's opinion, of course,
but the earnestness with which he had spoken was unquestionably
impressive. 'What makes you think that?'
'Never you mind what makes me think it. Take my word for it. If
you're sensible, you'll phone your bookie and have a big bet on
McCorkadale. You'll never regret it. You'll come to me later and
thank me for the tip with tears in your -'
At some point in this formal interchange of thoughts by spoken
word, as Jeeves's Dictionary of Synonyms puts it, he must have
pressed the bell, for at this moment the door opened and my old
buddy the maid appeared. Quickly adding the word 'eyes', he turned
to her.
'Mrs McCorkadale in, dear?' he asked, and having been responded
to in the affirmative he left me, and I headed for home. I ought,
of course, to have carried on along River Row, taking the odd
numbers while Jeeves attended to the even, but I didn't feel in the
vein.
I was uneasy. You might say, if you happened to know the word,
that the prognostications of a human wart like Bingley deserved
little credence, but he had spoken with such conviction, so like
someone who has heard something, that I couldn't pass them off with
a light laugh.
Brooding tensely, I reached the old homestead and found the
ancestor lying on a chaise longue, doing the Observer crossword
puzzle.
There was a time when this worthy housewife, tackling the
Observer crossword puzzle, would snort and tear her hair and fill
the air with strange oaths picked up from cronies on the hunting
field, but consistent inability to solve more than about an eighth
of the clues has brought a sort of dull resignation and today she
merely sits and stares at it, knowing that however much she licks
the end of her pencil little or no business will result.
As I came in, I heard her mutter, soliloquizing like someone in
Shakespeare, 'Measured tread of saint round St Paul's, for God's
sake', seeming to indicate that she had come up against a hot one,
and I think it was a relief to her to become aware that her
favourite nephew was at her side and that she could conscientiously
abandon her distasteful task, for she looked up and greeted me
cheerily. She wears tortoiseshell-rimmed spectacles for reading
which make her look like a fish in an aquarium. She peered at me
through these.
'Hullo, my bounding Bertie.'
'Good morning, old ancestor.'
'Up already?'
'I have been up some time.'
'Then why aren't you out canvassing? And why are you looking
like something the cat brought in?'
I winced. I had not intended to disclose the recent past, but
with an aunt's perception she had somehow spotted that in some
manner I had passed through the furnace and she would go on probing
and questioning till I came clean. Any capable aunt can give
Scotland Yard inspectors strokes and bisques in the matter of
interrogating a suspect, and I knew that all attempts at
concealment would be fruitless. Or is it bootless? I would have to
check with Jeeves.
'I am looking like something the cat brought in because I am
feeling like something the c.b. in,' I said. 'Aged relative, I have
a strange story to relate. Do you know a local blister of the name
of Mrs McCorkadale?'
'Who lives in River Row?'
'That's the one.'
'She's a barrister.'
'She looks it.'
'You've met her?'
'I've met her.'
'She's Ginger's opponent in this election.'
'I know. Is Mr McCorkadale still alive?'
'Died years ago. He got run over by a municipal tram.'
'I don't blame him. I'd have done the same myself in his place.
It's the only course to pursue when you're married to a woman like
that.'
'How did you meet her?'
'I called on her to urge her to vote for Ginger,' I said, and
in a few broken words I related my strange story.
It went well. In fact, it went like a breeze. Myself, I was
unable to see anything humorous in it, but there was no doubt about
it entertaining the blood relation. She guffawed more liberally
than I had ever heard a woman guffaw. If there had been an aisle,
she would have rolled in it. I couldn't help feeling how ironical
it was that, having failed so often to be well received when
telling a funny story, I should have aroused such gales of mirth
with one that was so essentially tragic.
While she was still giving her impersonation of a hyena which
has just heard a good one from another hyena, Spode came in,
choosing the wrong moment as usual. One never wants to see Spode,
but least of all when someone is having a hearty laugh at your
expense.
'I'm looking for the notes for my speech tomorrow,' he said.
'Hullo, what's the joke?'
Convulsed as she was, it was not easy for the ancestor to
articulate, but she managed a couple of words.
'It's Bertie.'
'Oh?' said Spode, looking at me as if he found it difficult to
believe that any word or act of mine could excite mirth and not
horror and disgust.
'He's just been calling on Mrs McCorkadale.'
'Oh?'
'And asking her to vote for Ginger Winship.'
'Oh?' said Spode again. I have already indicated that he was a
compulsive Oh-sayer. 'Well, it is what I would have expected of
him,' and with another look in which scorn and animosity were
nicely blended and a word to the effect that he might have left
those notes i