The Jeeves Omnibus (114 page)

‘
Why
can’t I?’ he said to his Countess as they sat one night trying to balance the budget.

‘Why can’t you what?’ said the Countess.

‘Let Algy starve.’

‘Algy who?’

‘Our Algy.’

‘You mean our second son, the Hon. Algernon Blair Worthington ffinch-ffinch?’

‘That’s right. He’s getting into my ribs to the tune of a cool thousand a year because I felt I couldn’t let him starve. The point I’m making is why
not
let the young blighter starve?’

‘It’s a thought,’ the Countess agreed. ‘Yes, a very sound scheme. We all eat too much these days, anyway.’

So the ravens were retired from active duty, and Algy, faced with the prospect of not getting his three square meals a day unless he worked for them, hurried out and found a job, with the result that as of even date any poor hack like myself who, wishing to turn an honest penny, writes stories about him and all the other Algys, Freddies, Claudes and Berties, automatically becomes Edwardian.

The second thing that led to the elimination of the knut was the passing of the spat. In the brave old days spats were the hallmark of the young-feller-me-lad-about-town, the foundation stone on which his whole policy was based, and it is sad to reflect that a generation has arisen which does not know what spats were. I once wrote a book called
Young Men in Spats
. I could not use that title today.

Spatterdashes was, I believe, their full name, and they were made of white cloth and buttoned round the ankles, partly no doubt to protect the socks from getting dashed with spatter but principally because they lent a sort of gay
diablerie
to the wearer’s appearance. The monocle might or might not be worn, according to taste, but spats, like the tightly rolled umbrella, were obligatory. I was never myself by knut standards really dressy as a young man (
circa
1905), for a certain anaemia of the exchequer compelled me to go about my social duties in my brother’s cast-off frock coat and trousers, neither of which fitted me, and a top hat bequeathed to me by an
uncle
with head some sizes larger than mine, but my umbrella was always rolled tight as a drum and though spats cost money I had mine all right. There they were, white and gleaming, fascinating the passers-by and causing seedy strangers who hoped for largesse to address me as ‘Captain’ and sometimes even as ‘M’lord’. Many a butler at the turn of the century, opening the door to me and wincing visibly at the sight of my topper, would lower his eyes, see the spats and give a little sigh of relief, as much as to say, ‘Not quite what we are accustomed to at the northern end, perhaps, but unexceptionable to the south’.

Naturally, if you cut off a fellow’s allowance, he cannot afford spats, and without spats he is a spent force. Deprived of these indispensable adjuncts, the knut threw in the towel and called it a day.

But I have not altogether lost hope of a sensational revival of knuttery. Already one sees signs of a coming renaissance. To take but one instance, the butler is creeping back. Extinct, it seemed, only a few short years ago, he is now repeatedly seen in his old haunts like some shy bird which, driven from its native marshes by alarums and excursions, stiffens the sinews, summons up the blood and decides to give the old home another try. True, he wants a bit more than in the golden age, but pay his price and he will buttle. In hundreds of homes there is buttling going on just as of yore. Who can say that ere long spats and knuts and all the old bung-ho-ing will not be flourishing again?

When that happens, I shall look my critics in the eye and say, ‘Edwardian? Where do you get that “Edwardian” stuff? I write of life as it is lived today.’

P.G. Wodehouse

AFTER THE THING
was over, when peril had ceased to loom and happy endings had been distributed in heaping handfuls and we were driving home with our hats on the side of our heads, having shaken the dust of Steeple Bumpleigh from our tyres, I confessed to Jeeves that there had been moments during the recent proceedings when Bertram Wooster, though no weakling, had come very near to despair.

‘Within a toucher, Jeeves.’

‘Unquestionably affairs had developed a certain menacing trend, sir.’

‘I saw no ray of hope. It looked to me as if the bluebird had thrown in the towel and formally ceased to function. And yet here we are, all boomps-a-daisy. Makes one think a bit, that.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘There’s an expression on the tip of my tongue which seems to me to sum the whole thing up. Or, rather, when I say an expression, I mean a saying. A wheeze. A gag. What I believe, is called a saw. Something about Joy doing something.’

‘Joy cometh in the mornings, sir?’

‘That’s the baby. Not one of your things, is it?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Well, it’s dashed good,’ I said.

And I still think that there can be no neater way of putting in a nutshell the outcome of the super-sticky affair of Nobby Hopwood, Stilton Cheesewright, Florence Craye, my Uncle Percy, J. Chichester Clam, Edwin the Boy Scout and old Boko Fittleworth – or, as my biographers will probably call it, the Steeple Bumpleigh Horror.

Even before the events occurred which I am about to relate, the above hamlet had come high up on my list of places to be steered sedulously clear of. I don’t know if you have ever seen one of those old maps where they mark a spot with a cross and put ‘Here be dragons’ or ‘Keep ye eye skinned for hippogriffs’, but I had always
felt
that some such kindly warning might well have been given to pedestrians and traffic with regard to this Steeple Bumpleigh.

A picturesque settlement, yes. None more so in all Hampshire. It lay embowered, as I believe the expression is, in the midst of smiling fields and leafy woods, hard by a willow-fringed river, and you couldn’t have thrown a brick in it without hitting a honeysuckle-covered cottage or beaning an apple-cheeked villager. But you remember what the fellow said – it’s not a bally bit of use every prospect pleasing if man is vile, and the catch about Steeple Bumpleigh was that it contained Bumpleigh Hall, which in its turn contained my Aunt Agatha and her second husband.

And when I tell you that this second h. was none other than Percival, Lord Worplesdon, and that he had with him his daughter Florence and his son Edwin, the latter as pestilential a stripling as ever wore khaki shorts and went spooring or whatever it is that these Boy Scouts do, you will understand why I had always declined my old pal Boko Fittleworth’s invitations to visit him at the bijou residence he maintained in those parts.

I had also had to be similarly firm with Jeeves, who had repeatedly hinted his wish that I should take a cottage there for the summer months. There was, it appeared, admirable fishing in the river, and he is a man who dearly loves to flick the baited hook. ‘No, Jeeves,’ I had been compelled to say, ‘much though it pains me to put a stopper on your simple pleasures, I cannot take the risk of running into that gang of pluguglies. Safety first.’ And he had replied, ‘Very good, sir,’ and there the matter had rested.

But all the while, unsuspected by Bertram, the shadow of Steeple Bumpleigh was creeping nearer and nearer, and came a day when it tore off its whiskers and pounced.

Oddly enough, the morning on which this major disaster occurred was one that found me completely, even exuberantly, in the pink. No inkling of the soup into which I was to be plunged came to mar my perfect
bien être
. I had slept well, shaved well and shower-bathed well, and it was with a merry cry that I greeted Jeeves as he brought in the coffee and kippers.

‘Odd’s boddikins, Jeeves,’ I said, ‘I am in rare fettle this a.m. Talk about exulting in my youth! I feel up and doing, with a heart for any fate, as Tennyson says.’

‘Longfellow, sir.’

‘Or, if you prefer it, Longfellow. I am in no mood to split hairs. Well, what’s the news?’

‘Miss Hopwood called while you were still asleep, sir.’

‘No, really? I wish I’d seen her.’

‘The young lady was desirous of entering your room and rousing you with a wet sponge, but I dissuaded her. I considered it best that your repose should not be disturbed.’

I applauded this watch-dog spirit, showing as it did both the kindly heart and the feudal outlook, but continued to tut-tut a bit at having missed the young pipsqueak, with whom my relations had always been of the matiest. This Zenobia (‘Nobby’) Hopwood was old Worplesdon’s ward, as I believe it is called. A pal of his, just before he stopped ticking over some years previously, had left him in charge of his daughter. I don’t know how these things are arranged – no doubt documents have to be drawn up and dotted lines signed on – but, whatever the procedure, the upshot was as I have stated. When all the smoke had cleared away, my Uncle Percy was Nobby’s guardian.

‘Young Nobby, eh? When did she blow into the great city?’ I asked. For, on becoming Uncle Percy’s ward, she had of course joined the strength at his Steeple Bumpleigh lair, and it was only rarely nowadays that she came to London.

‘Last night, sir.’

‘Making a long stay?’

‘Only until tomorrow, sir.’

‘Hardly worthwhile 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 Rogue Gallery than her step-son 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 Cheesewright 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 by 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 to your door in a plain van without delay. You’re sure you’ve got the name right? Spinoza?’