‘And what were they? Tell me all, Jeeves, omitting no detail, however slight.’
‘Well, sir, the first thing that attracted the lad’s attention was the approach of Master Edwin.’
‘He comes into it, does he?’
‘Yes, sir. His role, as you will see, is an important one. Master Edwin, Erbut reports, was advancing through the undergrowth, his gaze fixed upon the ground. He seemed to be tracking something.’
‘Spooring, no doubt. It is a practice to which these Scouts are much addicted.’
‘So I understand, sir. His movements, Erbut noted, were being observed with a sisterly indulgence by Lady Florence, who was cutting flowers in an adjacent border.’
‘She was watching him, eh?’
‘Yes, sir. Simultaneously, Mr Fittleworth appeared, following the young gentleman.’
‘Spooring the spoorer?’
‘Yes, sir. Erbut describes his manner as keen and purposeful. That, at least, was his meaning, though the actual phrasing of his statement was different. These knives and boots boys seldom express themselves well.’
‘I’ve often noticed it. Rotten vocabularies. Go on, Jeeves. I’m all agog. Boko, you say, was trailing Edwin. Why?’
‘That was what Erbut appears to have asked himself, sir.’
‘He was mystified?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘I don’t blame him. I’m mystified myself. I gather, of course, that the plot thickens, but I’m dashed if I can see where it’s heading.’
‘It was not long before Mr Fittleworth’s motives were abundantly clear, sir. As Master Edwin approached the flower bed, he suddenly accelerated his movements—’
‘Edwin did?’
‘No, sir. Mr Fittleworth. He bounded forward at the young gentleman, and taking advantage of the fact that the latter, in the course of his spooring, had just adopted a stooping posture, proceeded to deliver a forceful kick upon his person—’
‘Golly, Jeeves!’
‘– causing him to fly through the air and fall at Lady Florence’s feet. Her ladyship, horrified and incensed, rebuked Mr Fittleworth sharply, demanding an immediate explanation of this wanton assault. The latter endeavoured to justify his action by accusing Master Edwin of having tampered with his patent egg boiler, so disorganizing the mechanism that a new-laid egg had flown from its base and struck him on the tip of the nose. Her ladyship, however, was unable to see her way to accepting this as a palliation of what had occurred, and shortly afterwards announced that the betrothal was at an end.’
I drew in the breath. The scales had fallen from my eyes. I saw all. So that was the Fittleworth remedy – booting young Edwin! No wonder Boko had spoken of it as simple and efficacious. All you needed was a good stout shoe and a sister’s love.
I heard Jeeves cough.
‘If you will glance to your left, sir,’ he said, ‘you will observe that Master Edwin has just entered the drive and is stooping over some object on the ground that appears to have engaged his attention.’
CHAPTER 21
I
got the gist. The significance of his words was not lost upon me. The grave, encouraging look with which he had accompanied the news bulletin would alone have been enough to enable me to sense the underlying message he was trying to convey. It was the sort of look a Roman father might have given his son, when handing him shield and spear and pushing him off to battle, and it ought, I suppose, to have stirred me like a bugle.
Nevertheless, I found myself hesitating. After that sock on the head he had given me on the previous night, the thought of kicking young Edwin was one that presented many attractions, of course, and there was no question but that the child had been asking for some such little personal attention for years. But there’s something rather embarrassing about doing that sort of thing in cold blood. Difficult, I felt, to lead up to it neatly in the course of conversation. (‘Hullo, Edwin. How are you? Lovely day.
Biff.
’ You see what I mean. Not easy.)
In Boko’s case, of course, the whole set-up had been entirely different, for he had been in the grip of the berserk fury which comes upon a man when he is hit on the tip of the nose with new-laid eggs. This had enabled him, so to speak, to get a running start.
And so I fingered the chin dubiously.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Yes, there he is, Jeeves – and, as you say, stooping. But do you really advise—’
‘I do, sir.’
‘What, now?’
‘Yes, sir. There is a tide in the affairs of men which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune. Omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and in miseries.’
‘Oh, rather. Quite. No argument about that. But—’
‘If what you are trying to say, sir, is that it is of the essence that Lady Florence be present, to observe the proceedings as she did in the case of Mr Fittleworth, I fully concur. I would suggest that I go and inform her ladyship that you are waiting on the drive and would be glad of a word with her.’
I still hesitated. It was one of those cases where you approve the broad, general principle of an idea, but can’t help being in a bit of a twitter at the prospect of putting it into practical effect. I explained this to Jeeves, and he said that much the same thing had bothered Hamlet.
‘Your irresolution is quite understandable, sir. Between the acting of a dreadful thing and the first motion, all the interim is like a phantasma or a hideous dream. The genius and the mortal instruments are then in council; and that state of man, like to a little kingdom, suffers then the nature of an insurrection.’
‘Absolutely,’ I said. He puts these things well.
‘If it would assist you to stiffen the sinews and summon up the blood, sir, may I remind you that it is very nearly ten o’clock, and that only the promptest action along the lines I have indicated can enable you to avoid appearing in his lordship’s study at that hour.’
He had found the talking-point. I hesitated no longer.
‘You’re right, Jeeves. How long do you think it will be necessary to detain young Edwin in conversation before you can bring Lady Florence on stage?’
‘Not more than a few minutes, sir. I happen to know that her ladyship is at the moment in her private apartment, engaged upon literary work. There will be but a brief interval before she appears.’
‘Then tally ho!’
‘Very good, sir.’
He flickered off upon his mission, while I, having summoned up the blood a bit and stiffened the sinews as far as was possible at such short notice, squared the shoulders and headed for where Edwin was squatting. The weather continued uniformly fine. The sun shone, and a blackbird, I remember, was singing in an adjoining thicket. No reason why it shouldn’t have been, of course. I mention the fact merely to stress the general peace and tranquillity of everything. And I must say it did strike me as a passing thought that the sort of setting a job like this really needed was a blasted heath at midnight, with a cold wind whistling in the bushes and three witches doing their stuff at the cauldron.
However, one can’t have everything, and I doubt if an observer would have noted any diffidence in Bertram’s bearing as he advanced upon his prey. Bertram, I rather fancy he would have thought, was in pretty good form.
I hove to at the stripling’s side.
‘Hullo, young Edwin,’ I said.
His gaze had been riveted on the ground, but at the sound of the familiar voice a couple of pink-rimmed eyes came swivelling round in my direction. He looked up at me like a ferret about to pass the time of day with another ferret.
‘Hullo, Bertie. I say, Bertie, I did another act of kindness this morning.’
‘Oh, yes?’
‘I finished pasting the notices of Florence’s novel in her album. That puts me all right up to last Wednesday.’
‘Good work. You’re catching up. And what do you think you’re doing now?’
‘I’m studying ants. Do you know anything about ants, Bertie?’
‘Only from meeting them at picnics.’
‘I’ve been reading up about them. Very interesting.’
‘Vastly, I shouldn’t wonder.’
I was glad the topic had been introduced, for it promised to be one that would carry us along nicely until Florence’s arrival on the scene. It was obvious that the young squirt was bulging with information about these industrious little creatures and asked nothing better than to be allowed to impart it.
‘Did you know ants can talk?’
‘Talk?’
‘In a sort of way. To other ants, of course. They do it by tapping their heads on a leaf. How’s your head this morning, Bertie? I nearly forgot to ask.’
‘Still on the tender side.’
‘I thought it would be. Coo! That was funny last night, wasn’t it? I laughed for hours, when I got to bed.’
He emitted a ringing guffaw, and at the raucous sound any spark of compunction that might have been lingering in my bosom was quenched. A boy to whom the raising of a lump the size of a golf ball on the Wooster bean was a subject for heartless mirth deserved all that boot toe could do to him. For the first time, I found myself contemplating the task before me with real fire and enthusiasm – almost, as you might say, in a missionary spirit. I mean, I felt what a world of good a swift kick in the pants would do to this child. It might prove to be the turning-point in his life.
‘You laughed, did you?’
‘Rather!’
‘Ha!’ I said, and ground a few teeth.
The maddening thing was, of course, that though I was now keyed up to give of my best, and though the position he had assumed for this ant-studying session of his was the exact position demanded by the run of the scenario, I was debarred from getting action. You might have compared me to a greyhound on the leash. Until Florence came along, I could not fulfil myself. As Jeeves had said, her presence was of the essence. I scanned the horizon for a sight of her, like a shipwrecked mariner hoping for a sail, but she did not appear, and in the meantime we went on talking about ants, Edwin saying that they were members of the Hymenoptera family and self replying, ‘Well, well. Quite the nibs, eh?’
‘They are characterized by unusual distinctness of the three regions of the body – head, thorax and abdomen – and by the stack or petiole of the abdomen having one or two scales or nodes, so that the abdomen moves very freely on the truck or thorax.’
You wouldn’t fool me?’
‘The female, after laying her eggs, feeds the larvae with food regurgitated from her stomach.’
‘Try to keep it clean, my lad.’
‘Both males and females are winged.’
‘And why not?’
‘But the female pulls off its wings and runs about without them.’
‘I question that. I doubt if even an ant would be such an ass.’
‘It’s quite true. It says so in the book. Have you ever seen ants fight?’
‘Not that I remember.’
‘They rise on their hind legs and curve the abdomen.’
And, to my consternation and chagrin, whether because it was his intention to illustrate or because he found his squatting position cramping to the limbs, this was just what he did himself. He rose on his hind legs, and stood facing me, curving the abdomen – at the exact moment when I perceived Florence emerging from the house and walking briskly in our direction.
It was a crisis at which a less resourceful man might have supposed that all was lost. But the Woosters are quick thinkers.
‘Hullo!’ I said.
‘What’s the matter?’
‘Have you dropped a sixpence?’
‘No.’
‘Somebody has. Look.’
‘Where?’
‘Under that bush,’ I said, and pointed to a shrub of sorts on the edge of the drive.
As you probably conjecture, in saying this I was descending to subterfuge, and anybody knowing Bertram Wooster and his rigid principles might have supposed that such wilful tampering with the truth would have caused the blush of shame to mantle his cheek. Not so, however. If there was a flush to be noted, it was the flush of excitement and triumph.
For my subtle appeal to the young blister’s cupidity had not failed to achieve its end. Already, he was down on all fours, and if I had posed him with my own hands I could not have obtained better results. His bulging shorts seemed to smile up at me in a sort of inviting, welcoming way.
As Jeeves had rightly said, there is a tide in the affairs of men which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune. I drew back the leg, and let him have it just where the pants were tightest.
It was a superb effort. Considering that I hadn’t kicked anyone since the distant days of school, you might have thought that the machinery would have got rusty. But no. All the old skill still lingered. My timing was perfect, and so was my follow through. He disappeared into the bush, travelling as if out of a gun, and as he did so Florence’s voice spoke.
‘Ah!’ she said.
There was no mistaking the emotion that animated the ejaculation. It was stiff with it. But with a dazed sensation of something having gone wrong I realized that it was not the emotion I had anticipated. Horror was completely absent, nor had there come through anything in the nature of indignation and sisterly resentment. Astounding as it may seem, joy was the predominating note. One might go further and say ecstasy. Her ‘Ah!’ in short, had been practically equivalent to ‘Whoopee!’ and I could make nothing of it.
‘Thank you, Bertie!’ she said. ‘It was just what I was going to do myself. Edwin, come here!’
Down in the forest something stirred. It was the prudent child wriggling his way through the bush in a diametrically opposite direction. There came the sound of a faint and distant ‘Coo!’ and he was gone, leaving not a wrack behind.
Florence was gazing at me, a cordial and congratulatory light in her eyes, a happy smile playing about her lips.
‘Thank you, Bertie!’ she said again, once more with that wealth of emotion in her voice. ‘I would like to skin him! I have just been looking at my album of press clippings, and he has gone and pasted in half the reviews of “Spindrift” wrong side up. I believe he did it on purpose. It’s a pity I couldn’t catch him, but there it is. I can’t tell you how grateful I am, Bertie, for what you did. What gave you the idea?’