The Jeeves Omnibus (19 page)

‘Yes, sir.”

‘How is the swanning in these parts? I confess that I would like to see old Glossop shinning up something with a bilious bird after him.’

‘I fancy that Master Seabury’s thoughts turned more towards something on the order of a booby trap, sir.’

‘They would. No imagination, that kid. No vision. I’ve often noticed it. His fancy is – what’s the word?’

‘Pedestrian, sir?’

‘Exactly. With all the limitless opportunities of a large country house at his disposal, he is content to put soot and water on top of the door, a thing you could do in a suburban villa. I have never thought highly of Seabury, and this confirms my low opinion.’

‘Not soot and water, sir. I think what the young gentleman had in mind was the old-fashioned butter-slide, sir. He was asking me yesterday where the butter was kept, and referred guardedly to a humorous film he had seen not long ago in Bristol, in which something of that nature occurred.’

I was disgusted. Goodness knows that any outrage perpetrated on the person of a bloke like Sir Roderick Glossop touches a ready chord in Bertram Wooster’s bosom, but a butter-slide … the lowest depths, as you might say. The merest A B C of the booby-trapping art. There isn’t a fellow at the Drones who would sink to such a thing.

I started to utter a scornful laugh, then stopped. The word had reminded me that life was stern and earnest and that time was passing.

‘Butter, Jeeves! Here we are, standing idly here, talking of butter, and all the time you ought to have been racing to the larder, getting me some.’

‘I will go immediately, sir.’

‘You know where to lay your hand on it all right?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘And you’re sure it will do the trick?’

‘Quite sure, sir.’

‘Then shift-ho, Jeeves. And don’t loiter.’

I sat down on an upturned flower-pot, and resumed my vigil. My feelings were very different now from what they had been when first I had begun to roost on this desirable property. Then, I had been a penniless outcast, so to speak, with nothing much of a future before me. Now, I could see daylight. Presently Jeeves would return with the fixings. Shortly after that, I should be the old pink-cheeked clubman once more. And, in due season, I should be safely inside the 11.50 train, on my way to London and safety.

I was a good deal uplifted. I drank in the night air with a light heart. And it was while I was drinking it in that a sudden uproar proceeded from the house.

Seabury appeared to be contributing most of it. He was yelling his bally head off. From time to time, one caught the fainter, yet penetrating note of the Dowager Lady Chuffnell. She seemed to be reproaching or upbraiding someone. Blending with this, there could be discerned a deeper voice, the unmistakable baritone woofle of Sir Roderick Glossop. The whole appeared to be proceeding from the drawing-room, and, except for one time when I was sauntering in Hyde Park and suddenly found myself mixed up in a Community Singing, I’ve never heard anything like it.

It couldn’t have been very long after this when the front door was suddenly flung open. Somebody emerged. The door slammed. And then the emerger started to stump rapidly down the drive in the direction of the gates.

There had been just a moment when the light from the hall shone upon this bloke. It had been long enough for me to identify him.

This sudden exiter, who was now padding away into the darkness with every outward sign of being fed to the eye-teeth, was none other than Sir Roderick Glossop. And his face, I noted, was as black as the ace of spades.

A few moments later, while I was still wondering what it was all
about
and generally turning the thing over in my mind, I observed Jeeves looming up on the right flank.

I was glad to see him. I desired enlightenment.

‘What was all that, Jeeves?’

‘The disturbance, sir?’

‘It sounded as if little Seabury was being murdered. No such luck, I take it?’

‘The young gentleman
was
the victim of a personal assault, sir. At the hands of Sir Roderick Glossop. I was not an actual eyewitness of the episode. I derive my information from Mary, the parlourmaid, who was present in person.’

‘Present?’

‘Peeping through the door, sir. Sir Roderick’s appearance when she encountered him by chance on the stairs seems to have affected the girl powerfully, and she tells me that she had followed him about in a stealthy manner ever since, waiting to see what he would do next. I gather that his aspect fascinated her. She is inclined to be somewhat frivolous in her mental attitude, like so many of these young girls, sir.’

‘And what occurred?’

‘The affair may be said to have had its inception, sir, when Sir Roderick, passing through the hall, stepped upon the young gentleman’s butter-slide.’

‘Ah! So he put that project through, did he?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘And Sir Roderick came a stinker?’

‘He appears to have fallen with some heaviness, sir. The girl Mary spoke of it with a good deal of animation. She compared his descent to the delivery of a ton of coals. I confess the imagery somewhat surprised me, for she is not a highly imaginative girl.’

I smiled appreciatively. The evening, I felt, might have begun rockily, but it was certainly ending well.

‘Incensed by this, Sir Roderick appears to have hastened to the drawing-room, where he immediately subjected Master Seabury to a severe castigation. Her ladyship vainly endeavoured to induce him to desist, but he was firm in his refusal. The upshot of the matter was a definite rift between her ladyship and Sir Roderick, the former stating that she never wished to see him again, the latter asseverating that, if he could once get safely out of this pestilential house, he would never darken its doors again.’

‘A real mix-up.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘And the engagement’s off?’

‘Yes, sir. The affection which her ladyship felt for Sir Roderick was instantaneously swept away on the tidal wave of injured mother love.’

‘Rather well put, Jeeves.’

‘Thank you, sir.

‘Then Sir Roderick has pushed off for ever?’

‘Apparently, sir.’

‘A lot of trouble Chuffnell Hall is seeing these days. Almost as if there was a curse on the place.’

‘If one were superstitious, one might certainly suppose so, sir.’

‘Well, if there wasn’t a curse on it before, you can bet there are about fifty-seven now. I heard old Glossop applying them as he passed.’

‘He was much moved, I take it, sir?’

‘Very much moved, Jeeves.’

‘So I should imagine, sir. Or he would scarcely have left the house in that condition.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Well, sir, if you consider. It will scarcely be feasible for him to return to his hotel in the existing circumstances. His appearance would excite remark. Nor, after what has occurred, can he very well return to the Hall.’

I saw what he was driving at.

‘Good Lord, Jeeves! You open up a new line of thought. Let me just review this. He can’t go to his hotel – no, I see that, and he can’t crawl back to the Dowager Lady C. and ask for shelter – no, I see that too. It’s a dead stymie. I can’t imagine what on earth he’ll do.’

‘It is something of a problem, sir.’

I was silent for a moment. Pensive. And, oddly enough, for you would have thought my mood would have been one of sober joy, the heart was really rather bleeding a bit.

‘Do you know, Jeeves, scurvily as that man has treated me in the past, I can’t help feeling sorry for him. I do, absolutely. He’s in such an awful jam. It was bad enough for me being a black-faced wanderer, but I hadn’t the position to keep up that he has. I mean to say, the world, observing me in this condition, might quite easily just have shrugged its shoulders and murmured “Young Blood!” or words to that effect, what?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘But not with a bloke of his standing.’

‘Very true, sir.’

‘Well, well, well! Dear, dear, dear! I suppose, if you come right down to it, this is the vengeance of Heaven.’

‘Quite possibly, sir.’

It isn’t often that I point the moral, but I couldn’t help doing it now.

‘It just shows how we ought always to be kind, even to the humblest, Jeeves. For years this Glossop has trampled on my face with spiked shoes, and see where it has landed him. What would have happened if we had been on chummy terms at this juncture? He would have been on velvet. Observing him shooting past just now, I should have stopped him. I should have called out to him “Hi, Sir Roderick, half a second. Don’t go roaming about the place in make-up. Stick around here for a while and pretty soon Jeeves will be arriving with the necessary butter, and all will be well.” Shouldn’t I have said that, Jeeves?’

‘Something of that general trend, no doubt, sir.’

‘And he would have been saved from this fearful situation, this sore strait, in which he now finds himself. I dare say that man won’t be able to get butter till well on in the morning. Not even then, if he hasn’t money on the person. And all because he wouldn’t treat me decently in the past. Makes you think a bit, that, Jeeves, what?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘But it’s no use talking about it, of course. What’s done is done.’

‘Very true, sir. The moving finger writes and, having writ, moves on, nor all your piety and wit can lure it back to cancel half a line, nor all your tears wash out a word of it.’

‘Quite. And now, Jeeves, the butter. I must be getting about my business.’

He sighed in a respectful sort of way.

‘I am extremely sorry to be obliged to inform you, sir, that, owing to Master Seabury having used it all for his slide, there is no butter in the house.’

I STOOD THERE
with my hand out, frozen to the spot. The faculties seemed numbed. I remember once, when I was in New York, one of those sad-eyed Italian kids who whizz about Washington Square on roller skates suddenly projected himself with extraordinary violence at my waistcoat as I strolled to and fro, taking the air. He reached journey’s end right on the third button from the top, and I had much the same sensation now as I had had then. A sort of stricken feeling. Stunned. Breathless. As if somebody had walloped the old soul unexpectedly with a sandbag.

‘What!’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘No butter?’

‘No butter, sir.’

‘But, Jeeves, this is frightful.’

‘Most disturbing, sir.’

If Jeeves has a fault, it is that his demeanour on these occasions too frequently tends to be rather more calm and unemotional than one could wish. One lodges no protest, as a rule, because he generally has the situation well in hand and loses no time in coming before the Board with one of his ripe solutions. But I have often felt that I could do with a little more leaping about with rolling eyeballs on his part, and I felt it now. At a moment like the present, the adjective ‘disturbing’ seemed to me to miss the facts by about ten parasangs.

‘But what shall I do?’

‘I fear that it will be necessary to postpone the cleansing of your face till a later date, sir. I shall be in a position to supply you with butter tomorrow.’

‘But tonight?’

‘Tonight, I am afraid, sir, you must be content to remain
in statu quo
.’

‘Eh?’

‘A Latin expression, sir.’

‘You mean nothing can be done till tomorrow?’

‘I fear not, sir. It is vexing.’

‘You would go so far as to describe it as that?’

‘Yes, sir. Most vexing.’

I breathed a bit tensely.

‘Oh, well, just as you say, Jeeves.’

I pondered.

‘And what do I do in the meantime?’

‘As you have had a somewhat trying evening, I think it would be best, sir, if you were to get a good sleep.’

‘On the lawn?’

‘If I might make the suggestion, sir, I think you would be more comfortable in the Dower House. It is only a short distance across the park, and it is unoccupied.’

‘It can’t be. They wouldn’t leave it empty.’

‘One of the gardeners is acting as caretaker while her ladyship and Master Seabury are visiting the Hall, but at this hour he is always down at the “Chuffnell Arms” in the village. It would be quite simple for you to effect an entrance and establish yourself in one of the upper rooms without his cognizance. And tomorrow morning I could join you there with the necessary materials.’

I confess it wasn’t my idea of a frightfully large evening.

‘You’ve nothing brighter to suggest?’

‘No, sir.’

‘You wouldn’t consider letting me have your bed for the night?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Then I might as well be moving.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Good night, Jeeves,’ I said moodily.

‘Good night, sir.’

It didn’t take me long to get to the Dower House, and the trip seemed shorter than it actually was, because my mind was occupied in transit with a sort of series of silent Hymns of Hate directed at the various blokes who had combined to land me in what Jeeves would have called this vexing situation – featuring little Seabury.

The more I thought of this stripling, the more the iron entered into my soul. And one result of my meditations regarding him was to engender – I think it’s engender – an emotion towards Sir Roderick Glossop which came pretty near to being a spirit of kindliness.

You know how it is. You go along for years looking on a fellow as a blister and a menace to the public weal, and then one day you
suddenly
hear of some decent thing he’s done and it makes you feel there must be good in the chap, after all. It was so in the matter of this Glossop. I had suffered much at his hands since first our paths had crossed. In the human Zoo which Fate has caused to centre about Bertram Wooster, he had always ranked high up among the more vicious specimens – many good judges, indeed, considering that he even competed for the blue ribbon with that great scourge of modern times, my Aunt Agatha. But now, reviewing his recent conduct, I must admit that I found myself definitely softening towards him.

Nobody, I reasoned, who could slosh young Seabury like that could be altogether bad. There must be fine metal somewhere among the dross. And I actually went so far as to say to myself with something of a rush of emotion that, if ever things so shaped themselves that I could go freely about my affairs again, I would look the man up and endeavour to fraternize with him. I had even reached the stage of toying with the idea of a nice little lunch, with him on one side of the table and me on the other, sucking down some good, dry vintage wine and chatting like old friends, when I found that I had arrived at the outskirts of the Dower House.