CHAPTER 20
I
t was but a troubled slumber that I enjoyed that night, much disturbed by dreams of Uncle Percy chasing me with his hunting crop. Waking next morning, I found that though the heart was leaden, the weather conditions were of the best and brightest. The sun shone, the sky was blue, and in the trees outside my window the ear detected the twittering of a covey or platoon of the local fowls of the air.
But though all Nature smiled, there was, as I have indicated, no disposition on the part of Bertram to follow its example. I got no kick from the shining sun, no uplift from the azure firmament, as it is sometimes called: while as for the twittering birds their heartiness in the circumstances seemed overdone and in dubious taste. When you’re faced with the sort of ordeal I was faced with, there is but little satisfaction to be derived from the thought that you’ve got a nice day for it.
My watch showed me that the hour was considerably less advanced than my customary one for springing from between the sheets, and it is possible that, had the burden on the soul been lighter, I might have turned over and got another forty minutes. But the realization of what dark deeds must be done ere this day’s sun should have set – or, for the matter of that, ere this day’s lunch should have been eaten – forbade sleep. I rose, accordingly, and assembling sponge and towel was about to proceed to the bathroom for a bit of torso sluicing, when my eye was caught by a piece of paper protruding from beneath the door. I picked it up, and found it to be the material which Boko had sat up on the previous night composing for my benefit – the few things, if you remember, which he wanted me to say to Uncle Percy. And as my eye flitted over it, the persp. started out on my brow and I sank back on the bed, appalled. It was as if I had scooped in a snake.
I think that in an earlier chronicle I related how, when a growing boy at my private school, I once sneaked down at dead of night to the study of the headmaster, the Rev. Aubrey Upjohn, in order to pinch a few mixed biscuits from the store which I had been informed that he maintained in the cupboard there; and how, having got well ahead with the work in hand, I discovered that their proprietor was also among those present, seated at his desk regarding my activities with a frosty eye.
The reason I bring this up again is that on the occasion to which I allude, after a brief pause – on my side, of embarrassment, on his of working up steam – the Rev. Aubrey had started to give a sort of character sketch of the young Wooster, which until now I had always looked upon as the last word in scholarly invective. It was the kind of thing a minor prophet of the Old Testament might have thrown together on one of his bilious mornings, and, as I say, I considered it to have set up a mark at which other orators would shoot in vain. I had been wrong. This screed of Boko’s left it nowhere. Boko began where the Rev. Aubrey Upjohn left off.
Typewritten, with single spaces, I suppose the stuff ran to about six hundred words, and of all those six hundred words I don’t think there were more than half a dozen which I could have brought myself to say to a man of Uncle Percy’s calibre, unless primed to the back teeth with the raw spirit. And Boko, you will recall, was expecting me to deliver my harangue at ten o’clock in the morning.
To shoot out of my room into his, bubbling over with expostulations and what not, was with me the work of an instant. But the eloquent outburst which I had been planning was rendered null and void by the fact that he was not there, and an inquiry of an aged female whom I found messing about in the kitchen elicited the information that he had gone for a swim in the river. Repairing thither, I perceived him splashing about in midstream with many a merry cry.
But once more I was obliged to choke back the burning words. A second glance, revealing a pink, porpoise-like object at his side, told me that he was accompanied by Stilton. It was to Steeple Bumpleigh’s zealous police constable that the merry cries were addressed, and I deemed it wisest to leave my presence unrevealed. It seemed to me that a chat with Stilton at this particular juncture could be fraught with neither pleasure nor profit.
I pushed along the bank, therefore, pondering deeply, and I hadn’t gone far when there came to my ears the swish of a fishing line, and there was Jeeves, harrying the finny denizens like nobody’s business. I might have known that his first act on finding himself established in Steeple Bumpleigh would have been to head for the fluid and cast a fly or two.
As it was to this fly-caster that I owed my present hideous predicament, you will not be surprised to learn that my manner, as I came abreast, was on the distant side.
‘Ah, Jeeves,’ I said.
‘Good morning, sir,’ he responded. ‘A lovely day.’
‘Lovely for some of us, perhaps, Jeeves,’ I said coldly, ‘but not for the Last of the Woosters, who, thanks to you, is faced by a binge beside which all former binges fade into insignificance.’
‘Sir?’
‘It’s no good saying “Sir?” You know perfectly well what I mean. Entirely through your instrumentality, I shall shortly be telling Uncle Percy things about himself which will do something to his knotted and combined locks which at the moment has slipped my memory.’
‘Make his knotted and combined locks to part and each particular hair to stand on end like quills upon the fretful porpentine, sir.’
‘Porpentine?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘That can’t be right. There isn’t such a thing. However, let that pass. The point is that you have let me in for the ghastly task of ticking Uncle Percy off, and I want to know what you did it for. Was it kind, Jeeves? Was it feudal?’
He registered surprise. Mild surprise, of course. He never goes as far as the other sort. One eyebrow flickered a little, and the tip of the nose moved slightly.
You are alluding to the suggestion I offered Mr Fittleworth, sir?’
‘That is the suggestion I am alluding to, Jeeves.’
‘But surely, sir, if you have decided to fall in with the scheme, it was entirely your kind heart that led you to do so? It would have been optional for you to have declined to lend your assistance.’
‘Ha!’
‘Sir?’
‘I said “Ha!” Jeeves. And I meant “Ha!” Do you know what happened last night?’
‘So much happened last night, sir.’
‘True. Among other things, I got properly biffed over the coconut by young Edwin with his Scout’s stick, he thinking I was a burglar.’
‘Indeed, sir?’
‘We then fell into conversation, and he informed me that he had found the brooch which we assumed to have perished in the flames and had delivered it to Lady Florence, telling her it was a birthday present from me.’
‘Indeed, sir?’
‘It just turned the scale. She had a frightful row with Stilton, gave him the air for saying derogatory things about modern enlightened thought, and is now betrothed once more to the toad beneath the harrow whom you see before you.’
I thought he was going to say ‘Indeed, sir?’ again, in which case I might easily have forgotten all the decencies of civilized life and dotted him one. At the last moment, however, he checked the utterance and merely pursed his lips in a grave and sympathetic manner. A vast improvement.
‘And the reason I consented to sit in on this scheme of yours was that Boko confided to me last night that he had a simple infallible remedy for getting out of being engaged to this specific girl, and he won’t tell me what it is till I have interviewed Uncle Percy.’
‘I see, sir.’
‘I must learn it at all costs. It’s no use my trying the Stilton method and saying nasty things about modern enlightened thought, because I couldn’t think of any. It is the Boko way or nothing. You don’t happen to know what it was that made Lady Florence sever her relations with him, do you?’
‘No, sir. Indeed, it is news to me that Mr Fittleworth was affianced to her ladyship.’
‘Oh, yes. He was affianced to her, all right. Post-Wooster, but pre-Stilton. And something occurred, an imbroglio of some description, took place, and the thing was instantly broken off. Just like magic, he said. I gathered that it was something he did. But what could it have been?’
‘I fear I am unable to hazard a conjecture, sir. Would you wish me to institute inquiries among the domestic staff at the Hall?’
‘An excellent idea, Jeeves.’
‘It is possible that some member of that unit may have become cognisant of the facts.’
‘The thing was probably the talk of the Housekeeper’s Room for days. Sound the butler. Question the cook.’
‘Very good, sir.’
‘Or try Lady Florence’s personal maid. Somebody is sure to know. There’s not much that domestic staffs don’t become cognisant of.’
‘No, sir. One has usually found them well informed.’
‘And bear in mind that speed is essential. If you can hand me the data before I see Uncle Percy – that is to say, any time up to ten o’clock, for which hour the kick-off is slated – 1 shall be in a position to edge out of giving him that straight talk, at the thought of which I don’t mind telling you that the flesh creeps. As for the happiness of Boko and soulmate, I am all for giving that a boost, of course, but I feel that it can be done by other and less drastic methods. So lose no time, Jeeves, in instituting those inquiries.’
‘Very good, sir.’
‘Be at the main gate of the Hall from half-past nine onwards. I shall be arriving about then, and shall expect your report. Try not to fail me, Jeeves. Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of the party. If I could show you that list Boko drafted out of the things he wants me to say – I unfortunately left it in my room, where it fell from my nerveless fingers – your knotted and combined locks would part all right, believe me. You’re sure it’s porpentine?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Very odd. But I suppose half the time Shakespeare just shoved down anything that came into his head.’
Having been
en route
for the bathroom at the moment when I buzzed off to seek audience of Boko, I was still, of course, in the ordinary slumberwear of the English gentleman, plus a dressing-gown, and it was some little time, accordingly, after I had returned to the house, before I showed up in the dining-salon. I found Boko there, getting outside a breakfast egg. I asked him if he knew what a porpentine was, and he said to hell with all porpentines and had I got that sheet of instructions all right and, if so, what did I think of it.
To this, my reply was that I certainly had jolly well got it and that it had frozen me to the marrow. No human power, I added, would induce me to pass on to Uncle Percy even a skeleton outline of the document’s frightful contents.
‘Frightful contents?’
‘That was what I said.’
He seemed wounded, and murmured something about the artist and destructive criticism.
‘I thought it was particularly good stuff. Crisp, terse and telling. The subject inspired me, and I was under the impression that I had given of my best. Still, if you feel that I stressed the personal note a bit too much, you can modify it here and there, if you like – preserving the substance, of course.’
‘As a matter of fact,’ I said, thinking it best to prepare him, ‘you mustn’t be surprised, Boko, if at the last moment I change my plans and decide to give the whole thing a miss.’
‘What!’
‘I am toying with the idea.’
‘Well, I’m blowed! Is this—?’
‘Yes, it is.’
‘You don’t know what I was going to say.’
‘Yes, I do. You were going to say “Is this Bertie Wooster speaking?”’
‘Quite right. I was. Well, is it?’
‘Yes.’
His table talk then took on a rather acid tone, touching disparagingly on so-called friends who, supposed by him hitherto to be staunch and true, turned out to his disappointment to be lily-livered poltroons lacking even the meagre courage of a rabbit.
‘Where are the boys of the bulldog breed? That’s what I want to know,’ he concluded, plainly chagrined. ‘Well, you understand clearly what this means. Fail me, and not an inkling of the Fittleworth secret do you get.’
I smiled subtly, and helped myself to a slice of ham. He little knew, I felt.
‘I shall watch you walking up the aisle with Florence Craye, and not stir a finger to save you. In fact, you will hear a voice singing “Oh, perfect love” rather louder than the rest of the congregation, and it will be mine. Reconsider, Bertie. That is what I advise.’
‘Well, of course,’ I said, ‘I don’t say I will back out of the assignment. I only say I may.’
This calmed him somewhat, and he softened – saying that he was sure that when the hour struck, my better self would prevail. And a bit later, we parted with mutual good wishes.
For it had been arranged that we should proceed to the Hall separately. In his case, Boko felt, not without some reason, that there was need for stealth, lest he be fallen upon and slung out. He proposed, therefore, to circle round the outskirts till he found a gap in the hedge and then approach the study by a circuitous route, keeping well in the shelter of the bushes and not letting a twig snap beneath his feet.
I set out by myself, accordingly, and arriving at the main entrance found Jeeves waiting for me in the drive. It needed but a glance to inform me that the man had good tidings. I can always tell. He doesn’t exactly smile on these occasions, because he never does, but the lips twitch slightly at the corners and the eye is benevolent.
I gave tongue eagerly.
‘Well, Jeeves?’
‘I have the data you require, sir.’
‘Splendid fellow! You saw the butler? You probed the cook?’
‘Actually, it was from the boy who cleans the knives and boots that I secured the information, sir. A young fellow of the name of Erbut.’
‘How did he come to be our special correspondent?’
‘It appears that he was actually an eye-witness of the scene, sir, sheltered in the obscurity of a neighbouring bush, where he had been enjoying a surreptitious cigarette. From this point of vantage he was enabled to view the entire proceedings.’