The Jeeves Omnibus (147 page)

The moment I saw the man standing there, registering respectful attention, a weight seemed to roll off my mind. I felt like a lost child who spots his father in the offing.

‘Jeeves,’ I said, ‘we want your advice.’

‘Very good, sir.’

I boiled down Corky’s painful case into a few well-chosen words.

‘So you see what it amounts to, Jeeves. We want you to suggest some way by which Mr Worple can make Miss Singer’s acquaintance without getting on to the fact that Mr Corcoran already knows her. Understand?’

‘Perfectly, sir.’

‘Well, try to think of something.’

‘I have thought of something already, sir.’

‘You have!’

‘The scheme I would suggest cannot fail of success, but it has what may seem to you a drawback, sir, in that it requires a certain financial outlay.’

‘He means,’ I translated to Corky, ‘that he has got a pippin of an idea, but it’s going to cost a bit.’

Naturally the poor chap’s face dropped, for this seemed to dish the whole thing. But I was still under the influence of the girl’s melting gaze, and I saw that this was where I started in as the knight-errant.

‘You can count on me for all that sort of thing, Corky,’ I said. ‘Only too glad. Carry on, Jeeves.’

‘I would suggest, sir, that Mr Corcoran take advantage of Mr Worple’s attachment to ornithology.’

‘How on earth did you know that he was fond of birds?’

‘It is the way these New York apartments are constructed, sir. Quite unlike our London houses. The partitions between the rooms are of the flimsiest nature. With no wish to overhear, I have sometimes heard Mr Corcoran expressing himself with a generous strength on the subject I have mentioned.’

‘Oh! Well?’

‘Why should not the young lady write a small volume, to be entitled – let us say –
The Children’s Book of American Birds
and dedicate it to Mr Worple? A limited edition could be published at Your expense, sir, and a great deal of the book would, of course, be given over to eulogistic remarks concerning Mr Worple’s own larger treatise on the same subject. I should recommend the dispatching of a presentation copy to Mr Worple, immediately on publication, accompanied by a letter in which the young lady asks to be allowed to make the acquaintance of one to whom she owes so much. This would, I fancy, produce the desired result, but as I say, the expense involved would be considerable.’

I felt like the proprietor of a performing dog on the vaudeville stage when the tyke has just pulled off his trick without a hitch. I had betted on Jeeves all along, and I had known that he wouldn’t let me down. It beats me sometimes why a man with his genius is satisfied to hang around pressing my clothes and what not. If I had half Jeeves’s brain I should have a stab at being Prime Minister or something.

‘Jeeves,’ I said, ‘that is absolutely ripping! One of your very best efforts.’

‘Thank you, sir.’

The girl made an objection.

‘But I’m sure I couldn’t write a book about anything. I can’t even write good letters.’

‘Muriel’s talents,’ said Corky, with a little cough, ‘lie more in the direction of the drama, Bertie. I didn’t mention it before, but one of our reasons for being a trifle nervous as to how Uncle Alexander will receive the news is that Muriel is in the chorus of that show
Choose Your Exit
at the Manhattan. It’s absurdly unreasonable, but we both feel that the fact might increase Uncle Alexander’s natural tendency to kick like a steer.’

I saw what he meant. I don’t know why it is – one of these psychology sharps could explain it, I suppose – but uncles and aunts, as a class, are always dead against the drama, legitimate or otherwise. They don’t seem able to stick it at any price.

But Jeeves had a solution, of course.

‘I fancy it would be a simple matter, sir, to find some impecunious
author
who would be glad to do the actual composition of the volume for a small fee. It is only necessary that the young lady’s name should appear on the title page.’

‘That’s true,’ said Corky. ‘Sam Patterson would do it for a hundred dollars. He writes a novelette, three short stories, and ten thousand words of a serial for one of the all-fiction magazines under different names every month. A little thing like this would be nothing to him. I’ll get after him right away.’

‘Fine!’

‘Will that be all, sir?’ said Jeeves. ‘Very good, sir. Thank you, sir.’

I always used to think that publishers has to be devilish intelligent fellows, loaded down with the grey matter; but I’ve got their number now. All a publisher has to do is to write cheques at intervals, while a lot of deserving and industrious chappies rally round and do the real work. I know, because I have been one myself. I simply sat tight in the old flat with a fountain-pen, and in due season a topping, shiny book came along.

I happened to be down at Corky’s place when the first copies of
The Children’s Book of American Birds
bobbed up. Muriel Singer was there, and we were talking of things in general when there was a bang at the door and the parcel was delivered.

It was certainly some book. It had a red cover with a fowl of some species on it, and underneath the girl’s name in gold letters. I opened a copy at random.

‘Often of a spring morning,’ it said at the top of page twenty-one, ‘as you wander through the fields, you will hear the sweet-toned, carelessly-flowing warble of the purple finch linnet. When you are older you must read all about him in Mr Alexander Worple’s wonderful book,
American Birds
.’

You see. A boost for the uncle right away. And only a few pages later there he was in the limelight again in connexion with the yellow-billed cuckoo. It was great stuff. The more I read, the more I admired the chap who had written it and Jeeves’s genius in putting us on to the wheeze. I didn’t see how the uncle could fail to drop. You can’t call a chap the world’s greatest authority on the yellow-billed cuckoo without rousing a certain disposition towards chumminess in him.

‘It’s a cert!’ I said.

‘An absolute cinch!’ said Corky.

And a day or two later he meandered up the Avenue to my flat to tell me that all was well. The uncle had written Muriel a letter so dripping with the milk of human kindness that if he hadn’t known
Mr
Worple’s handwriting Corky would have refused to believe him the author of it. Any time it suited Miss Singer to call, said the uncle, he would be delighted to make her acquaintance.

Shortly after this I had to go out of town. Divers sound sportsmen had invited me to pay visits to their country places, and it wasn’t for several months that I settled down in the city again. I had been wondering a lot, of course, about Corky, whether it all turned out right, and so forth, and my first evening in New York, happening to pop into a quiet sort of little restaurant which I go to when I don’t feel inclined for the bright lights, I found Muriel Singer there, sitting by herself at a table near the door. Corky, I took it, was out telephoning. I went up and passed the time of day.

‘Well, well, well, what?’ I said.

‘Why, Mr Wooster! How do you do?’

‘Corky around?’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘You’re waiting for Corky, aren’t you?’

‘Oh, I didn’t understand. No, I’m not waiting for him.’

It seemed to me that there was a sort of something in her voice, a kind of thingummy, you know.

‘I say, you haven’t had a row with Corky, have you?’

‘A row.’

‘A spat, don’t you know – little misunderstanding – faults on both sides – er – and all that sort of thing.’

‘Why, whatever makes you think that?’

‘Oh, well, as it were, what? What I mean is – I thought you usually dined with him before you went to the theatre.’

‘I’ve left the stage now.’

Suddenly the whole thing dawned on me. I had forgotten what a long time I had been away.

‘Why, of course, I see now! You’re married!’

‘Yes.’

‘How perfectly topping! I wish you all kinds of happiness.’

‘Thank you so much. Oh, Alexander,’ she said, looking past me, ‘this is a friend of mine – Mr Wooster.’

I spun round. A bloke with a lot of stiff grey hair and a red sort of healthy face was standing there. Rather a formidable Johnnie, he looked, though peaceful at the moment.

‘I want you to meet my husband, Mr Wooster. Mr Wooster is a friend of Bruce’s, Alexander.’

The old boy grasped my hand warmly, and that was all that
kept
me from hitting the floor in a heap. The place was rocking. Absolutely.

‘So you know my nephew, Mr Wooster?’ I heard him say. ‘I wish you would try to knock a little sense into him and make him quit this playing at painting. But I have an idea that he is steadying down. I noticed it first that night he came to dinner with us, my dear, to be introduced to you. He seemed altogether quieter and more serious. Something seemed to have sobered him. Perhaps you will give us the pleasure of your company at dinner tonight, Mr Wooster? Or have you dined?’

I said I had. What I needed then was air, not dinner. I felt that I wanted to get into the open and think this thing out.

When I reached my flat I heard Jeeves moving about in his lair. I called him.

‘Jeeves,’ I said, ‘now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of the party. A stiff b-and-s first of all, and then I’ve a bit of news for you.’

He came back with a tray and a long glass.

‘Better have one yourself, Jeeves. You’ll need it.’

‘Later on, perhaps, thank you, sir.’

‘All right. Please yourself. But you’re going to get a shock. You remember my friend, Mr Corcoran?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘And the girl who was to slide gracefully into his uncle’s esteem by writing the book on birds?’

‘Perfectly, sir.’

‘Well, she’s slid. She’s married the uncle.’

He took it without blinking. You can’t rattle Jeeves.

‘That was always a development to be feared, sir.’

‘You don’t mean to tell me that you were expecting it?’

‘It crossed my mind as a possibility.’

‘Did it, by Jove! Well, I think you might have warned us!’

‘I hardly liked to take the liberty, sir.’

Of course, as I saw after I had had a bite to eat and was in a calmer frame of mind, what had happened wasn’t my fault, if you came down to it. I couldn’t be expected to foresee that the scheme, in itself a cracker-jack, would skid into the ditch as it had done; but all the same I’m bound to admit that I didn’t relish the idea of meeting Corky again until time, the great healer, had been able to get in a bit of soothing work. I cut Washington Square out absolutely for the next few months. I gave it the complete miss-in-baulk. And then, just when
I
was beginning to think I might safely pop down in that direction and gather up the dropped threads, so to speak, time, instead of working the healing wheeze, went and pulled the most awful bone and put the lid on it. Opening the paper one morning, I read that Mrs Alexander Worple had presented her husband with a son and heir.

I was so dashed sorry for poor old Corky that I hadn’t the heart to touch my breakfast. I was bowled over. Absolutely. It was the limit.

I hardly knew what to do. I wanted, of course, to rush down to Washington Square and grip the poor blighter silently by the hand; and then, thinking it over, I hadn’t the nerve. Absent treatment seemd the touch. I gave it him in waves.

But after a month or so I began to hesitate again. It struck me that it was playing it a bit low-down on the poor chap, avoiding him like this just when he probably wanted his pals to surge round him most. I pictured him sitting in his lonely studio with no company but his bitter thoughts, and the pathos of it got me to such an extent that I bounded straight into a taxi and told the driver to go all out for the studio.

I rushed in, and there was Corky, hunched up at the easel, painting away, while on the model throne sat a severe-looking female of middle age, holding a baby.

A fellow has to be ready for that sort of thing.

‘Oh, ah!’ I said, and started to back out.

Corky looked over his shoulder.

‘Hallo, Bertie. Don’t go. We’re just finishing for the day. That will be all this afternoon,’ he said to the nurse, who got up with the baby and decanted it into a perambulator which was standing in the fairway.

‘At the same hour tomorrow, Mr Corcoran?’

‘Yes, please.’

‘Good afternoon.’

‘Good afternoon.’

Corky stood there, looking at the door, and then he turned to me and began to get it off his chest. Fortunately, he seemed to take it for granted that I knew all about what had happened, so it wasn’t as awkward as it might have been.

‘It’s my uncle’s idea,’ he said. ‘Muriel doesn’t know about it yet. The portrait’s to be a surprise for her on her birthday. The nurse takes the kid out ostensibly to get a breather, and they beat it down here. If you want an instance of the irony of fate, Bertie, get acquainted with this. Here’s the first commission I have ever had to paint a portrait, and the sitter is that human poached egg
that
has butted in and bounced me out of my inheritance. Can you beat it! I call it rubbing the thing in to expect me to spend my afternoons gazing into the ugly face of a little brat who to all intents and purposes has hit me behind the ear with a black-jack and swiped all I possess. I can’t refuse to paint the portrait, because if I did my uncle would stop my allowance; yet every time I look up and catch that kid’s vacant eye, I suffer agonies. I tell you, Bertie, sometimes when he gives me a patronizing glance and then turns away and is sick, as if it revolted him to look at me, I come within an ace of occupying the entire front page of the evening papers as the latest murder sensation. There are moments when I can almost see the headlines: “Promising Young Artist Beans Baby With Axe”.’

I patted his shoulder silently. My sympathy for the poor old scout was too deep for words.

I kept away from the studio for some time after that, because it didn’t seem right of me to intrude on the poor chappie’s sorrow. Besides, I’m bound to say that nurse intimidated me. She reminded me so infernally of Aunt Agatha. She was the same gimlet-eyed type.