‘Last night, sir.’
‘Making a long stay?’
‘Only until to-morrow, sir.’
‘Hardly worth while sweating up just for a day, I should have thought.’
‘I understand that she came because her ladyship desired her company, sir.’
I quailed a bit.
‘You don’t mean Aunt Agatha’s in London?’
‘Merely passing through, sir,’ replied the honest fellow, calming my apprehensions. ‘Her ladyship is on her way to minister to Master Thomas, who has contracted mumps at his school.’
His allusion was to the old relative’s son by her first marriage, one of our vilest citizens. Many good judges rank him even higher in England’s Rogues’ Gallery than her stepson Edwin. I was rejoiced to learn that he had got mumps, and toyed for a moment with a hope that Aunt Agatha would catch them from him.
‘And what had Nobby to say for herself?’
‘She was regretting that she saw so little of you nowadays, sir.’
‘Quite mutual, the agony, Jeeves. There are few better eggs than this Hopwood.’
‘She expressed a hope that you might shortly see your way to visiting Steeple Bumpleigh.’
I shook the head.
‘Out of the q., Jeeves.’
‘The young lady tells me the fish are biting well there just now.’
‘No, Jeeves. I’m sorry. Not even if they bite like serpents do I go near Steeple Bumpleigh.’
‘Very good, sir.’
He spoke sombrely, and I endeavoured to ease the strain by asking for another cup of coffee.
‘Was Nobby alone?’
‘No, sir. There was a gentleman with her, who spoke as if he were acquainted with you. Miss Hopwood addressed him as Stilton.’
‘Big chap?’
‘Noticeably well developed, sir.’
‘With a head like a pumpkin?’
‘Yes, sir. There was a certain resemblance to the vegetable.’
‘It must have been a companion of my earlier years named G. D’Arcy Cheesewright. In our whimsical way we used to call him Stilton. I haven’t seen him for ages. He lives in the country somewhere, and to hobnob with Bertram Wooster it is imperative that you stick around the metropolis. Odd, him knowing Nobby.’
‘I gathered from the young lady’s remarks that Mr Cheese-wright is also a resident of Steeple Bumpleigh, sir.’
‘Really? It’s a small world, Jeeves.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘I don’t know when I’ve seen a smaller,’ I said, and would have gone more deeply into the subject, but at this juncture the telephone tinkled out a summons, and he shimmered off to answer it. Through the door, which he had chanced to leave ajar, the ear detected a good deal of Yes-my-lord-ing and Very-good-my-lord-ing, seeming to indicate that he had hooked one of the old nobility.
‘Who was it?’ I asked, as he filtered in again.
‘Lord Worplesdon, sir.’
It seems almost incredible to me, looking back, that I should have received this news item with nothing more than a mildly surprised ‘Oh, ah?’ Amazing, I mean, that I shouldn’t have spotted the sinister way in which what you might call the Steeple Bumpleigh note had begun to intrude itself like some creeping fog or miasma, and trembled in every limb, asking myself what this portended. But so it was. The significance of the thing failed to penetrate and, as I say, I oh-ahed with merely a faint spot of surprise.
‘The call was for me, sir. His lordship wishes me to go to his office immediately.’
‘He wants to see you?’
‘Such was the impression I gathered, sir.’
‘Did he say why?’
‘No, sir. Merely that the matter was of considerable urgency.’
I mused, thoughtfully champing a kipper. It seemed to me that there could be but one solution.
‘Do you know what I think, Jeeves? He’s in a spot of some kind and needs your counsel.’
‘It may be so, sir.’
‘I’ll bet it’s so. He must know all about your outstanding gifts. You can’t go on as you have gone on so long, dishing out aid and comfort to all and sundry, without acquiring a certain reputation, if only in the family circle. Grab your hat and race along. I shall be all agog to learn the inside story. What sort of a day is it?’
‘Extremely clement, sir.’
‘Sunshine and all that?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘I thought as much. That must be why I’m feeling so dashed fit. Then I think I’ll take myself for an airing. Tell me,’ I said, for I was a trifle remorseful at having had to adopt that firm attitude about going to Steeple Bumpleigh and wished to bring back into his life the joy which my refusal to allow him to get in among the local fish had excluded from it, ‘is there any little thing I can do for you while I’m out?’
‘Sir?’
‘Any little gift you would like, I mean?’
‘It is extremely kind of you, sir.’
‘Not at all, Jeeves. The sky is the limit. State your desire.’
‘Well, sir, there has recently been published a new and authoritatively annotated edition of the works of the philosopher Spinoza. Since you are so generous, I would appreciate that very much.’
You shall have it. It shall be delivered at your door in a plain van without delay. You’re sure you’ve got the name right? Spinoza?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘It doesn’t sound probable, but no doubt you know best. Spinoza, eh? Is he the Book Society’s Choice of the Month?’
‘I believe not, sir.’
‘Well, he’s the only fellow I ever heard of who wasn’t. Right ho. I’ll see to it instanter.’
And presently, having assembled the hat, the gloves and the neatly rolled u., I sauntered forth.
As I made my way to the bookery, I found my thoughts turning once more, as you may readily imagine, to this highly suggestive business of old Worplesdon. The thing intrigued me. I found it difficult to envisage what possible sort of a jam a man like that could have got himself into.
When, about eighteen months before, news had reached me through well-informed channels that my Aunt Agatha, for many years a widow, or derelict, as I believe it is called, was about to take another pop at matrimony, my first emotion, as was natural in the circumstances, had been a gentle pity for the unfortunate goop slated to step up the aisle with her – she, as you are aware, being my tough aunt, the one who eats broken bottles and conducts human sacrifices by the light of the full moon.
But when details began to come in, and I discovered that the bimbo who had drawn the short straw was Lord Worplesdon, the shipping magnate, this tender commiseration became sensibly diminished. The thing, I felt, would be no walkover. Even if in the fulness of time she wore him down and at length succeeded in making him jump through hoops, she would know she had been in a fight.
For he was hot stuff, this Worplesdon. I had known him all my life. It was he who at the age of fifteen – when I was fifteen, I mean, of course – found me smoking one of his special cigars in the stable yard and chased me a mile across difficult country with a hunting crop. And though with advancing years our relations had naturally grown more formal, I had never been able to think of him without getting goose pimples. Given the choice between him and a hippogriff as a companion for a walking tour, I would have picked the hippogriff every time.
It was not easy to see how such a man of blood and iron could have been reduced to sending out S O S’s for Jeeves, and I was reflecting on the possibility of compromising letters in the possession of gold-digging blondes, when I reached my destination and started to lodge my order.
‘Good morning, good morning,’ I said. ‘I want a book.’
Of course, I ought to have known that it’s silly to try to buy a book when you go to a book shop. It merely startles and bewilders the inmates. The motheaten old bird who had stepped forward to attend to me ran true to form.
‘A book, sir?’ he said, with ill-concealed astonishment.
‘Spinoza,’ I replied, specifying.
This had him rocking back on his heels.
‘Did you say Spinoza, sir?’
‘Spinoza was what I said.’
He seemed to be feeling that if we talked this thing out long enough as man to man, we might eventually hit upon a formula.
‘You do not mean “The Spinning Wheel”?’
‘No.’
‘It would not be “The Poisoned Pin”?’
‘It would not.’
‘Or “With Gun and Camera in Little Known Borneo”?’ he queried, trying a long shot.
‘Spinoza,’ I repeated firmly. That was my story, and I intended to stick to it.
He sighed a bit, like one who feels that the situation has got beyond him.
‘I will go and see if we have it in stock, sir. But possibly this may be what you are requiring. Said to be very clever.’
He pushed off, Spinoza-ing under his breath in a hopeless sort of way, leaving me clutching a thing called ‘Spindrift’.
It looked pretty foul. Its jacket showed a female with a green, oblong face sniffing at a purple lily, and I was just about to fling it from me and start a hunt for that ‘Poisoned Pin’ of which he had spoken, when I became aware of someone Good-gracious-Bertie-ing and, turning, found that the animal cries proceeded from a tall girl of commanding aspect who had oiled up behind me.
‘Good gracious, Bertie! Is it really you?’
I emitted a sharp gurgle, and shied like a startled mustang. It was old Worplesdon’s daughter, Florence Craye.
And I’ll tell you why, on beholding her, I shied and gurgled as described. I mean, if there’s one thing I bar, it’s the sort of story where people stagger to and fro, clutching their foreheads and registering strong emotion, and not a word of explanation as to what it’s all about till the detective sums up in the last chapter.
Briefly, then, the reason why this girl’s popping up had got in amongst me in this fashion was that we had once been engaged to be married, and not so dashed long ago, either. And though it all came out all right in the end, the thing being broken off and self saved from the scaffold at the eleventh hour, it had been an extraordinarily narrow squeak and the memory remained green. The mere mention of her name was still enough to make me call for a couple of quick ones, so you can readily appreciate my agitation at bumping into her like this absolutely in the flesh.
I swayed in the breeze, and found myself a bit stumped for the necessary dialogue.
‘Oh, hullo,’ I said.
Not good, of course, but the best I could do.
CHAPTER 2
S
canning the roster of the females I’ve nearly got married to in my time, we find the names of some tough babies. The eye rests on that of Honoria Glossop, and a shudder passes through the frame. So it does when we turn to the B’s and come upon Madeline Bassett. But, taking everything into consideration and weighing this and that, I have always been inclined to consider Florence Craye the top. In the face of admittedly stiff competition, it is to her that I would award the biscuit.
Honoria Glossop was hearty, yes. Her laugh was like a steam-riveting machine, and from a child she had been a confirmed back-slapper. Madeline Bassett was soppy, true. She had large, melting eyes and thought the stars were God’s daisy chain. These are grave defects, but to do this revolting duo justice neither had tried to mould me, and that was what Florence Craye had done from the start, seeming to look on Bertram Wooster as a mere chunk of plasticine in the hands of the sculptor.
The root of the trouble was that she was one of those intellectual girls, steeped to the gills in serious purpose, who are unable to see a male soul without wanting to get behind it and shove. We had scarcely arranged the preliminaries before she was checking up on my reading, giving the bird to ‘Blood on the Banisters’, which happened to be what I was studying at the moment, and substituting for it a thing called ‘Types of Ethical Theory’. Nor did she attempt to conceal the fact that this was a mere pipe opener and that there was worse to come.
Have you ever dipped into ‘Types of Ethical Theory’? The volume is still on my shelves. Let us open it and see what it has to offer. Yes, here we are.
Of the two antithetic terms in the Greek philosophy one only was real and selfsubsisting; that is to say, Ideal Thought as opposed to that which it has to penetrate and mould. The other, corresponding to our Nature, was in itself phenomenal, unreal, without any permanent footing, having no predicates that held true for two moments together; in short, redeemed from negation only by including indwelling realities appearing through.
Right. You will have got the idea, and will, I think, be able to understand why the sight of her made me give at the knees somewhat. Old wounds had been reopened.
None of the embarrassment which was causing the Wooster toes to curl up inside their neat suède shoes like the tendrils of some sensitive plant seemed to be affecting this chunk of the dead past. Her manner, as always, was brisk and aunt-like. Even at the time when I had fallen beneath the spell of that profile of hers, which was a considerable profile and tended to make a man commit himself to statements which he later regretted, I had always felt that she was like someone training on to be an aunt.
‘And how are you, Bertie?’
‘Oh, fine, thanks.’
‘I have just run up to London to see my publisher. Fancy meeting you, and in a book shop, of all places. What are you buying? Some trash, I suppose?’
Her gaze, which had been resting on me in a rather critical and censorious way, as if she was wondering how she could ever have contemplated linking her lot to anything so sub-human, now transferred itself to the volume in my hand. She took it from me, her lip curling in faint disgust, as if she wished she had had a pair of tongs handy.
And then, as she looked at it, her whole aspect suddenly altered. She switched off the curling lip. She smiled a pleased smile. The eye softened. A blush mantled the features. She positively giggled.
‘Oh, Bertie!’
The gist got past me. ‘Oh, Bertie!’ was a thing she had frequently said to me in the days when we had been affianced, but always with that sort of nasty ring in the voice which made you feel that she had been on the point of expressing her exasperation with something a good deal fruitier but had remembered her ancient lineage just in time. This current ‘Oh, Bertie!’ was quite different. Practically a coo. As it might have been one turtle dove addressing another turtle dove.