The Jeeves Omnibus (209 page)

There was a sort of dreamy look on his dial, as if he were thinking of Gertrude Winkworth.

OBSERVING ME, HE
switched off the dreamy look.

‘Oh, hallo, Bertie,’ he said. ‘I wanted to see you.’

‘Oh, yes?’ I riposted, quick as a flash, and I meant it to sting, for I was feeling a bit fed up with Catsmeat.

I mean of his own free will he had taken on the job of valeting me, and in his capacity of my gentleman’s personal gentleman should have been in and out all the time, brushing here a coat, pressing there a trouser and generally making himself useful, and I hadn’t set eyes on him since the night we had arrived. One frowns on this absenteeism.

‘I wanted to tell you the good news.’

I laughed hollowly.

‘Good news? Is there such a thing?’

‘You bet there’s such a thing. Things are looking up. The sun is smiling through. I believe I’m going to swing this Gertrude deal. Owing to the footling social conventions which prevent visiting valets hobnobbing with the daughter of the house, I haven’t seen her, of course, to speak to, but I’ve been sending her notes by Jeeves and she has been sending me notes by Jeeves, and in her latest she shows distinct signs of yielding to my prayers. I think about two more communications, if carefully worded, should do the trick. Don’t actually buy the fish-slice yet, but be prepared.’

My pique vanished. As I have said before, the Woosters are fair-minded. I knew what a dickens of a sweat these love letters are, a whole-time job calling for incessant concentration. If Catsmeat had been tied up with a lot of correspondence of this type, he wouldn’t have had much time for attending to my wardrobe, of course. You can’t press your suit and another fellow’s trousers simultaneously.

‘Well, that’s fine,’ I said, pleased to learn that, though the general outlook was so scaly, someone was getting a break. ‘I shall watch your future progress with considerable interest. But pigeon-holing your love life for the moment, Catsmeat, a most frightful thing has happened, and I should be glad if you could come across
with
anything in the aid-and-comfort line. That criminal lunatic Gussie –’

‘What’s he been doing?’

‘It’s what he’s not been doing that’s the trouble. You could have flattened me with a toothpick just now when I found out that he hasn’t written a single line to Madeline Bassett since he got here. And, what’s more, he says he isn’t going to write to her. He says he’s teaching her a lesson,’ I said, and in a few brief words placed the facts before him.

He looked properly concerned. Catsmeat’s is a kindly and feeling heart, readily moved by the spectacle of an old friend splashing about in the gumbo, and he knows how I stand with regard to Madeline Bassett, because she told him the whole story one day when they met at a bazaar and the subject of me happened to come up.

‘This is rather serious,’ he said.

‘You bet it’s serious. I’m shaking like a leaf.’

‘Girls of the Madeline Bassett type attach such importance to the daily letter.’

‘Exactly. And if it fails to arrive, they come and make inquiries on the spot.’

‘And you say Gussie was not to be moved?’

‘Not an inch. I pleaded with him, I may say passionately, but he put his ears back and refused to cooperate.’

Catsmeat pondered.

‘I think I know what’s behind all this. The trouble is that Gussie at the moment is slightly off his rocker.’

‘What do you mean, at the moment? And why slightly?’

‘He’s infatuated with Corky. Sorry to use such long words. I mean he’s got a crush on her.’

‘I know he has. So does everybody else for miles around. His crush is the favourite topic of conversation when aunt meets aunt.’

‘There has been comment in the servants’ hall, too.’

‘I’m not surprised. I’ll bet they’re discussing the thing in Basingstoke.’

‘You can’t blame him, of course.’

‘Yes, I can.’

‘I mean, it isn’t his fault, really. This is spring-time, Bertie, the mating season, when, as you probably know, a livelier iris gleams upon the burnished dove and a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love. The sudden impact plumb span in the middle of spring, of a girl like Corky on a fathead like Gussie, weakened by constantly swilling orange juice, must have been terrific. Corky,
when
she’s going nicely, bowls over the strongest. No one knows that better than you. You were making a colossal ass of yourself over her at one time.’

‘No need to rake up the dead past.’

‘I only raked it up to drive home my point, which is that he is more to be pitied than censured.’

‘She’s the one that wants censuring. Why does she encourage him?’

‘I don’t think she encourages him. He just adheres.’

‘She does encourage him. I’ve seen her doing it. She deliberately turns on the charm and gives him the old personality. Don’t tell me that a girl like Corky, accustomed to giving Hollywood glamour men the brusheroo, couldn’t put Gussie on ice, if she wanted to.’

‘But she doesn’t.’

‘That’s what I’m beefing about.’

‘And I’ll tell you why she doesn’t. I haven’t actually asked her, but I’m pretty sure she’s working this Gussie continuity with the idea of sticking the harpoon into Esmond Haddock. To show him that if he doesn’t want her, there are others who do.’

‘But he does want her.’

‘She doesn’t know that. Unless you’ve told her.’

‘I haven’t.’

‘Why not?’

‘I wasn’t sure if it would be the correct procedure. You see, he dished out all that stuff about his inner feelings under the seal of the confessional, as you might say, and he said he didn’t want it to go any further. “This must go no further,” he said. On the other hand, a word in season might quite easily reunite a couple of sundered hearts. The whole thing is extraordinarily moot.’

‘I’d go ahead and tell her. Bung in the word in season. I’m all for reuniting sundered hearts.’

‘Me, too. But I think we’ve left it too late. Already the Bassett is burning up the wires with telegrams asking what it’s all about. A hot one just arrived. I found it on the hall table when I came in. It was the telegram of a girl on the verge of becoming fed to the eye teeth. I tell you, Catsmeat, I see no ray of light. I’m sunk.’

‘No, you’re not.’

‘I am. When I told Gussie about this telegram, urging upon him that now was the time for all good men to come to the aid of the party, he merely as I say, stuck his ears back and said he was teaching the girl a lesson and not a smell of a letter should she get from him till that
lesson
had been learned. The man’s
non compos
, and I repeat that I see no ray of light.’

‘It seems to me it’s all quite simple.’

‘You mean you have something to suggest?’

‘Of course I’ve something to suggest. I always have something to suggest. The thing’s obvious. If Gussie won’t write to this girl, you must write to her yourself.’

‘But she doesn’t want to hear from me. She wants to hear from Gussie.’

‘And so she will, bless her heart. Gussie has sprained his wrist, so had to dictate the letter to you.’

‘Gussie hasn’t sprained his wrist.’

‘Pardon me. He gave it a nasty wrench while stopping a runaway horse and at great personal risk saving a little child from a hideous death. A golden-haired child, if you will allow yourself to be guided by me, with blue eyes, pink cheeks and a lisp. I think a lisp is good box-office?’

I gasped. I had got his drift.

‘Catsmeat, this is terrific! You’ll write the thing?’

‘Of course. It’ll be pie. I’ve been writing Gertrude that sort of letter since I was so high.’

He seated himself at the table, took pen and paper and immediately became immersed in composition, as the expression is. I could see that it had been no idle boast on his part that the thing would be pie. He didn’t even seem to have to stop and think. In almost no time he was handing me the finished script and bidding me get a jerk on and copy it out.

‘It ought to go off at once, every moment being vital. Trot down to the post office with it yourself. Then she’ll get it first thing in the morning. And now, Bertie, I must leave you. I promised to play gin rummy with Queenie, and I am already late. She wants cheering up, poor child. You’ve heard about her tragedy? The severing of her engagement to the flatty Dobbs?’

‘No, really? Is her engagement off? Then that’s why she was looking like that, I suppose. I ran into her after lunch,’ I explained, ‘and I got the impression that the heart was heavy. What went wrong?’

‘She didn’t like him being an atheist, and he wouldn’t stop being an atheist, and finally he said something about Jonah and the Whale which it was impossible for her to overlook. This morning, she returned the ring, his letters and a china ornament with “A Present From Blackpool” on it, which he bought her last summer while visiting relatives in the north. It’s hit her pretty hard, I’m afraid.
She’s
passing through the furnace. She loves him madly and yearns to be his, but she can’t take that stuff about Jonah and the Whale. One can only hope that gin rummy will do something to ease the pain. Right ho, Bertie, get on with that letter. It’s not actually one of my best, perhaps, because I was working against time and couldn’t prune and polish, but I think you’ll like it.’

He was correct. I studied the communication carefully, and was enchanted with its virtuosity. If it wasn’t one of his best, his best must have been pretty good, and I was not surprised that upon receipt of a series Gertrude Winkworth was weakening. There are letters which sow doubts as to whether this bit here couldn’t have been rather more neatly phrased and that bit there gingered up a trifle, and other letters of which you say to yourself ‘This is the goods. Don’t alter a word’. This was one of the latter letters. He had got just the right modest touch into the passage about the runaway horse, and the lisping child was terrific. She stuck out like a sore thumb and hogged the show. As for the warmer portions about missing Madeline every minute and wishing she were here so that he could fold her in his arms and what not, they simply couldn’t have been improved upon.

I copied the thing out, stuffed it in an envelope and took it down to the post office. And scarcely had it plopped into the box, when I was hailed from behind by a musical soprano and, turning, saw Corky heaving alongside.

I FELT PROFOUNDLY
bucked. The very girl I wanted to see. I grabbed her by the arm, so that she couldn’t do another of her sudden sneaks.

‘Corky,’ I said, ‘I want a long, heart to heart talk with you.’

‘Not about Hollywood?’

‘No, not about Hollywood.’

‘Thank God. I don’t think I could have stood any more Hollywood chatter this afternoon. I wouldn’t have believed,’ she said, proceeding, as always, to collar the conversation, ‘that anybody except Louella Parsons and Hedda Hopper could be such an authority on the film world as is Mrs Clara Wellbeloved. She knows much more about it than I do, and I’ll have been moving in celluloid circles two years come Lammas Eve. She knows exactly how many times everybody’s been divorced and why, how much every picture for the last twenty years has grossed, and how many Warner brothers there are. She even knows how many times Artie Shaw has been married, which I’ll bet he couldn’t tell you himself. She asked if I had ever married Artie Shaw, and when I said No, seemed to think I was pulling her leg or must have done it without noticing. I tried to explain that when a girl goes to Hollywood she doesn’t
have
to marry Artie Shaw, it’s optional, but I don’t think I convinced her. A very remarkable old lady, but a bit exhausting after the first hour or two. Did you say you wanted to speak to me about something.’

‘Yes, I did.’

‘Well, why don’t you?’

‘Because you won’t let me get a word in edgeways.’

‘Oh, have I been talking? I’m sorry. What’s on your mind, my king?’

‘Gussie.’

‘Fink-Nottle?’

‘Fink-Nottle is correct.’

‘The whitest man I know.’

‘The fatheadest man you know. Listen, Corky, I’ve just been talking to Catsmeat –’

‘Did he tell you that he expects shortly to persuade Gertrude Winkworth to elope with him?’

‘Yes.’

She smiled in a steely sort of way, like one of those women in the Old Testament who used to go about driving spikes into people’s heads.

‘I’m just waiting for that to happen,’ she said, ‘so that I can get a good laugh out of seeing Esmond’s face when he finds out that his Gertrude has gone off with another. Most amusing it will be. Ha, ha,’ she added.

That ‘Ha, ha’, so like the expiring quack of a duck dying of a broken heart, told me all I wanted to know. I saw that Catsmeat had not erred in his diagnosis of his young shrimp’s motives in giving Gussie the old treatment, and I had no option but to slip her the lowdown without further delay. I tapped her on the shoulder, and bunged in the word in season.

‘Corky,’ I said, ‘you’re a chump. You’ve got a completely wrong angle on this Haddock. So far from being enamoured of Gertrude Winkworth, I don’t suppose he would care, except in a distant, cousinly way, if she choked on a fish-bone. You are the lodestar of his life.’

‘What!’

‘I had it from his own lips. He was a bit pickled at the time, which makes it all the more impressive, because
in vino
what’s-the-word.’

Her eyes had lighted up. She gave a quick gulp.

‘He said I was the lodestar of his life?’

‘With a “still” in front of the “lodestar”. “Mark this,” he said, helping himself to port, of which he was already nearly full. “Though she has given me the brusheroo, she is still the lodestar of my life.”’

‘Bertie, if you’re kidding –’

‘Of course I’m not.’

‘I hope you’re not, because if you are I shall put the curse of the Pirbrights on you, and it’s not at all the sort of curse you will enjoy. Tell me more.’

I told her more. In fact I told her all. When I had finished, she laughed like a hyaena and also, for girls never make sense, let fall a pearly tear or two.