The Jeeves Omnibus (121 page)

‘Pah!’

‘No, not pah.
Quo
. That’s the word I’m trying to think of. You can’t plead with an uncle by marriage unless you’re
in statu quo
.’

It seemed to me a pretty good and reasonable explanation, and I was distressed, accordingly, to observe that he was sneering unpleasantly.

‘I don’t believe a word of it. You plead? What’s the good of you pleading? As if anything you could say would have any weight with anybody. I repeat – clear out. Otherwise –’

He didn’t mention what would happen otherwise, but the menacing way in which he hopped on his bicycle and pedalled off spoke louder than words. I don’t think I have ever seen anyone pedal with a more sinister touch to the ankle work.

I was still looking after him, feeling a little weak, when from the opposite or Wee Nooke direction there came the ting of another bicycle bell and, swivelling round, I perceived Florence approaching. As perfect an instance of one damn’ thing after another as I have ever experienced.

In sharp contradistinction to those of Stilton, her eyes were shining with a welcoming light. She hopped off as she reached the car, and flashed a bright smile at me.

‘Oh, here you are, Bertie. I have just been putting a few flowers in Wee Nooke for you.’

I thanked her, but with a sinking heart. I hadn’t liked that smile, and I didn’t like the idea of her sweating about strewing flowers in my path. The note struck seemed to me altogether too matey. Then I reminded myself that if she was betrothed to Stilton there could be no real cause for alarm. After all, her father had married my aunt, which made us sort of cousins, and there was nothing necessarily sinister in a bit of cousinly bustling about. Blood, I mean to say, when you come right down to it, being thicker than water.

‘Frightfully decent of you,’ I said. ‘I’ve just been having a chat with Stilton.’

‘Stilton?’

‘Your affianced.’

‘Oh, D’Arcy? Why do you call him Stilton?’

‘Boyish nickname. We were at school together.’

‘Oh? Then perhaps you can tell me if he was always such a perfect imbecile as he is today.’

I didn’t like this. It didn’t seem the language of love.

‘In what sense do you use the word “imbecile”?’

‘I use it as the only possible description of a man who, with a wealthy uncle willing and anxious to do everything for him, deliberately elects to become a common constable.’

‘Why did he?’ I asked. ‘Become a common constable, I mean.’

‘He says that every man ought to stand on his own feet and earn a living.’

‘Conscientious.’

‘Rubbish.’

‘You don’t think it does him credit?’

‘No, I don’t. I think he’s a perfect idiot.’

There was a pause. It was plain that his behaviour rankled, and it seemed to me what was required here was a strong boost for the young copper. For I need scarcely say that, now that I was face to face again with this girl, all thought of carrying on with the promotion of
that
Save Stilton Cheesewright campaign was farther from my mind than ever.

‘I should have thought you would have been rather bucked about it all. As giving evidence of Soul, I mean.’

‘Soul?’

‘It shows he’s got a great soul.’

‘I should be extremely surprised to find that he has any soul above those great, clodhopping boots he wears. He is just pigheaded. I have reasoned with him over and over again. His uncle wants him to stand for Parliament and is prepared to pay all his expenses and to finance him generously for the rest of his life, but no, he just looks mulish and talks about earning his living. I am sick and tired of the whole thing, and I really don’t know what I shall do about it. Well, goodbye, Bertie, I must be getting along,’ she concluded abruptly, as if she found the subject too painful to dwell on, and was off – just at the very moment when I had remembered that it was her birthday and that I had a brooch in my pocket to deliver to her from Aunt Agatha.

I could have called her back, I suppose, but somehow didn’t feel in the mood. Her words had left me shaking in every limb. The revelation of the flimsiness of the foundations on which the Florence-Stilton romance appeared to be founded had appalled me, and I had to remain
in statu quo
and smoke a couple of cigarettes before I felt strong enough to resume my journey.

Then, feeling a little better and trying to tell myself that this was just a passing tiff and that matters would speedily adjust themselves, I pushed on and in another couple of minutes was coming to anchor abaft Wee Nooke.

WEE NOOKE PROVED TO
be a decentish little shack, situated in agreeable surroundings. A bit Ye Olde, but otherwise all right. It had a thatched roof and a lot of those windows with small leaded panes, and there was a rockery in the front garden. It looked, in short, as I subsequently learned was the case, as if it had formerly been inhabited by an elderly female of good family who kept cats.

I had walked in and deposited the small suitcase in the hall, when, as I stood gazing about me and inhaling the fug which always seems to linger about these antique interiors, I became aware that there was more in this joint than met the eye. In a word, I suddenly found myself speculating on the possibility of it not only being fuggy, but haunted.

What started this train of thought was the fact that odd noises were in progress somewhere near at hand, here a bang and there a crash, suggesting the presence of a poltergeist or what not.

The sounds seemed to proceed from the other side of a door at the end of the hall, and I was hastening thither to investigate, for I was dashed if I was going to have poltergeists lounging about the place as if it belonged to them, when I took a toss over a pail which had been placed in the fairway. And I had just picked myself up, rubbing the spot, when the door opened and there entered a small boy with a face like a ferret. He was wearing the uniform of a Boy Scout, and I had no difficulty, in spite of the fact that his features were liberally encrusted with dirt, in identifying him as Florence’s little brother Edwin – the child at whom Boko Fittleworth was accustomed to throw china ornaments.

‘Oh, hullo, Bertie,’ he said, grinning all over his loathsome face.

‘Hullo, you frightful young squirt,’ I responded civilly. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘Tidying up.’

I touched on a point of absorbing interest.

‘Was it you who left that bally pail there?’

‘Where?’

‘In the middle of the hall.’

‘Coo! Yes, I remember now. I put it there to be out of the way.’

‘I see. Well, you’ll be amused to learn that I’ve nearly broken my leg.’

He started. A fanatic gleam came into his eyes. He looked like a boy confronted with an unexpected saucer of ice cream.

‘I say! Have you really? This is a bit of bunce. I can give you first aid.’

‘No, you jolly well can’t.’

‘But if you’ve bust your leg –’

‘I haven’t bust my leg.’

‘You said you had.’

‘A mere figure of speech.’

‘Well, you may have sprained your ankle.’

‘I haven’t sprained my ankle.’

‘I can do first aid for contusions.’

‘I haven’t any contusions. Stand back!’ I cried, for I was prepared to defend myself with iron resolution.

There was a pause. His manner was that of one who finds the situation at a deadlock. My spirited attitude had plainly disconcerted him.

‘Can’t I bandage you?’

‘You’ll get a thick ear, if you try.’

‘You may get gangrene.’

‘I anticipate no such contingency.’

‘You’ll look silly if you get gangrene.’

‘No, I shan’t. I shall look fine.’

‘I knew a chap who bumped his leg, and it turned black and had to be cut off at the knee.’

‘You do seem to mix with the most extraordinary people.’

‘I could turn the cold tap on it.’

‘No, you couldn’t.’

Again, that baffled air came into his demeanour. I had nonplussed him.

‘Then I’ll be getting back to the kitchen,’ he said. ‘I’m going to do the chimney. It needs a jolly good cleaning out. This place would have been in a fearful mess, if it hadn’t been for me,’ he added, with a smugness which jarred upon my sensibilities.

‘How do you mean, if it hadn’t been for you?’ I riposted, in my keen way. ‘I’ll bet you’ve been spreading ruin and desolation on all sides.’

‘I’ve been tidying up,’ he said, with a touch of pique. ‘Florence put some flowers for you in the sitting-room.’

‘I know. She told me.’

‘I fetched the water. Well, I’ll go and do that chimney, shall I?’

‘Do it, if it pleases you, till your eyes bubble,’ I said, and dismissed him with a cold gesture.

Now, I don’t know how you would have made a cold gesture – no doubt people’s methods vary – but the way I did it was by raising the right arm in a sort of salute and allowing it to fall to my side. And, as it fell, I became aware of something missing. The coat pocket against which the wrist impinged should have contained a small, solid object – to wit, the package containing the brooch which Aunt Agatha had told me to convey to Florence for her birthday. And it didn’t. The pocket was empty.

And at the same moment the kid Edwin said ‘Coo!’ and stooped, and came up holding the thing.

‘Did you drop this?’ he asked.

Any doubts that may have lingered in the child’s mind as to my having broken my leg must have been dispelled by the spring I made. I flew through the air with the greatest of ease. A panther could not have moved more nippily. I wrenched the thing from his grasp, and once more pocketed it.

He seemed intrigued.

‘What was it?’

‘A brooch. Birthday present for Florence.’

‘Shall I take it to her?’

‘No, thanks.’

‘I will, if you like.’

‘No, thanks.’

‘It would save you trouble.’

Had the circumstances been other than they were, I might have found this benevolence of his cloying – so much so, indeed, as to cause me to kick him in the pants. But he had rendered me so signal a service that I merely smiled warmly at the young blister, a thing I hadn’t done for years.

‘No, thanks,’ I said. ‘I don’t let it out of my hands. I will run across and deliver it this evening. Well, well, young Edwin,’ I continued affably, ‘a smart piece of work, that. They train you sprouts to keep your eyes open. Tell me, how have you been all this while? All right? No colds, colics or other juvenile ailments? Splendid. I should hate to feel that you had been suffering in any way. It was decent of you to suggest putting my leg under the tap. Greatly appreciated. I wish I had a drink to offer you. You must come up and see me some time, when I am more settled.’

And on this cordial note our interview terminated. I tottered out into the garden, and for a space stood leaning on the front gate, for my spine was still feeling a bit jellified and I needed support.

I say my spine had become as jelly, and if you knew my Aunt Agatha you would agree that so it jolly well might.

This relative is a woman who, like Napoleon, if it was Napoleon, listens to no excuses for failure, however sound. If she gives you a brooch to take to a stepdaughter, and you lose it, it is no sort of use trying to tell her that the whole thing was an Act of God, caused by your tripping over unforeseen pails and having the object jerked out of your pocket. Pawn though you may have been in the hands of Fate, you get put through it just the same.

If I had not recovered this blighted trinket, I should never have heard the last of it. The thing would have marked an epoch. World-shaking events would have been referred to as having happened ‘about the time Bertie lost that brooch’ or ‘just after Bertie made such an idiot of himself over Florence’s birthday present’. Aunt Agatha is like an elephant – not so much to look at, for in appearance she resembles more a well-bred vulture, but because she never forgets.

Leaning on the gate, I found myself seething with kindly feelings towards young Edwin. I wondered how I could ever have gone so astray in my judgement as to consider him a ferret-faced little son of a what not. And I was just going to debate in my mind the idea of buying him some sort of a gift as a reward for his admirable behaviour, when there was a loud explosion and, turning, I saw that Wee Nooke had gone up in flames.

It gave me quite a start.

WELL, EVERYBODY ENJOYS
a good fire, of course, and for a while it was in a purely detached and appreciative spirit that I stood eyeing the holocaust. I felt that this was going to be value for money. Already the thatched roof was well ablaze, and it seemed probable that before long the whole edifice, being the museum piece it was, all dry rot and what not, would spit on its hands and really get down to it. And so, as I say, for about the space of two shakes of a duck’s tail I stood watching it with quiet relish.

Then, putting a bit of a damper on the festivities, there came floating into my mind a rather disturbing thought – to wit, that the last I had seen of young Edwin, he had been seeping back into the kitchen. Presumably, therefore, he was still on the premises, and the conclusion to which one was forced was that, unless somebody took prompt steps through the proper channels, he was likely ’ere long to be rendered unfit for human consumption. This was followed by a second and still more disturbing thought that the only person in a position to do the necessary spot of fireman-save-my-child-ing was good old Wooster.

I mused. I suppose you would call me a fairly intrepid man, taken by and large, but I’m bound to admit I wasn’t any too keen on the thing. Apart from anything else, my whole attitude towards the stripling who was faced with the prospect of being grilled on both sides had undergone another quick change.

When last heard from, if you remember, I had been thinking kindly thoughts of young Edwin and even going to the length of considering buying him some inexpensive present. But now I found myself once more viewing him with the eye of censure. I mean to say, it was perfectly obvious to the meanest intelligence that it was owing to some phonus-bolonus on his part that the conflagration had been unleashed, and I was conscious of a strong disposition to leave well alone.