The Jeeves Omnibus (246 page)

The old boy swam before my eyes. He looked like two old Mr Anstruthers, both flickering at the edges.

‘What!’

‘I can understand your emotion, Mr Wooster. I can appreciate it. It is indeed rarely that one encounters such unselfish kindliness in a lad of his age. So genuinely touched was I by the goodness of heart which the episode showed that I have deviated from my original system and awarded the little fellow a bonus of fifteen marks.’

‘Fifteen!’

‘On second thoughts, I shall make it twenty. That, as you yourself suggested, is a nice, round number.’

He doddered away, and I bounded off to find Aunt Dahlia.

‘Aunt Dahlia,’ I said, ‘matters have taken a sinister turn.’

‘You bet your Sunday spats they have,’ agreed Aunt Dahlia emphatically. ‘Do you know what happened just now? That crook Snettisham, who ought to be warned off the turf and hounded out of his club, offered Bonzo ten shillings if he would burst a paper bag behind Mr Anstruther’s chair at breakfast. Thank heaven the love of a good woman triumphed again. My sweet Bonzo merely looked at him and walked away in a marked manner. But it just shows you what we are up against.’

‘We are up against worse than that, Aunt Dahlia,’ I said. And I told her what had happened.

She was stunned. Aghast, you might call it.

‘
Thomas
did that?’

‘Thos in person.’

‘Walked six miles to get you a paper?’

‘Six miles and a bit.’

‘The young hound! Good heavens, Bertie, do you realize that he may go on doing these Acts of Kindness daily – perhaps twice a day? Is there no way of stopping him?’

‘None that I can think of. No, Aunt Dahlia, I must confess it. I am baffled. There is only one thing to do. We must send for Jeeves.’

‘And about time,’ said the relative churlishly. ‘He ought to have been here from the start. Wire him this morning.’

There is good stuff in Jeeves. His heart is in the right place. The acid test does not find him wanting. Many men in his position, summoned back by telegram in the middle of their annual vacation, might have cut up rough a bit. But not Jeeves. On the following afternoon in he blew, looking bronzed and fit, and I gave him the scenario without delay.

‘So there you have it, Jeeves,’ I said, having sketched out the facts. ‘The problem is one that will exercise your intelligence to the utmost.
Rest
now, and tonight, after a light repast, withdraw to some solitary place and get down to it. Is there any particularly stimulating food or beverage you would like for dinner? Anything that you feel would give the old brain just that extra fillip? If so, name it.’

‘Thank you very much, sir, but I have already hit upon a plan which should, I fancy, prove effective.’

I gazed at the man with some awe.

‘Already?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Not
already?
’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Something to do with the psychology of the individual?’

‘Precisely, sir.’

I shook my head, a bit discouraged. Doubts had begun to creep in.

‘Well, spring it, Jeeves,’ I said. ‘But I have not much hope. Having only just arrived, you cannot possibly be aware of the frightful change that has taken place in young Thos. You are probably building on your knowledge of him, when last seen. Useless, Jeeves. Stirred by the prospect of getting his hooks on five of the best, this blighted boy has become so dashed virtuous that his armour seems to contain no chink. I mocked at his waistline and sneered at his school and he merely smiled in a pale, dying-duck sort of way. Well, that’ll show you. However, let us hear what you have to suggest.’

‘It occurred to me, sir, that the most judicious plan in the circumstances would be for you to request Mrs Travers to invite Master Sebastian Moon here for a short visit.’

I shook the onion again. The scheme sounded to me like apple sauce, and Grade A apple sauce, at that.

‘What earthly good would that do?’ I asked, not without a touch of asperity. ‘Why Sebastian Moon?’

‘He has golden curls, sir.’

‘What of it?’

‘The strongest natures are sometimes not proof against long golden curls.’

Well, it was a thought, of course. But I can’t say I was leaping about to any great extent. It might be that the sight of Sebastian Moon would break down Thos’s iron self-control to the extent of causing him to inflict mayhem on the person, but I wasn’t any too hopeful.

‘It may be so, Jeeves.’

‘I do not think I am too sanguine, sir. You must remember that
Master
Moon, apart from his curls, has a personality which is not uniformly pleasing. He is apt to express himself with a breezy candour which I fancy Master Thomas might feel inclined to resent in one some years his junior.’

I had had a feeling all along that there was a flaw somewhere, and now it seemed to me that I had spotted it.

‘But, Jeeves. Granted that little Sebastian is the pot of poison you indicate, why won’t he act just as forcibly on young Bonzo as on Thos? Pretty silly we should look if our nominee started putting it across him. Never forget that already Bonzo is twenty marks down and falling back in the betting.’

‘I do not anticipate any such contingency, sir. Master Travers is in love, and love is a very powerful restraining influence at the age of thirteen.’

‘H’m.’ I mused. ‘Well, we can but try, Jeeves.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘I’ll get Aunt Dahlia to write to Sippy tonight.’

I’m bound to say that the spectacle of little Sebastian when he arrived two days later did much to remove pessimism from my outlook. If ever there was a kid whose whole appearance seemed to call aloud to any right-minded boy to lure him into a quiet spot and inflict violence upon him, that kid was undeniably Sebastian Moon. He reminded me strongly of Little Lord Fauntleroy. I marked young Thos’s demeanour closely at the moment of their meeting and, unless I was much mistaken, there came into his eyes the sort of look which would come into those of an Indian chief – Chingachgook, let us say, or Sitting Bull – just before he started reaching for his scalping-knife. He had the air of one who is about ready to begin.

True, his manner as he shook hands was guarded. Only a keen observer could have detected that he was stirred to his depths. But I had seen, and I summoned Jeeves forthwith.

‘Jeeves,’ I said, ‘if I appeared to think poorly of that scheme of yours, I now withdraw my remarks. I believe you have found the way. I was noticing Thos at the moment of impact. His eyes had a strange gleam.’

‘Indeed, sir?’

‘He shifted uneasily on his feet and his ears wiggled. He had, in short, the appearance of a boy who was holding himself in with an effort almost too great for his frail body.’

‘Yes, sir?’

‘Yes, Jeeves. I received a distinct impression of something being on
the
point of exploding. Tomorrow I shall ask Aunt Dahlia to take the two warts for a country ramble, to lose them in some sequestered spot, and to leave the rest to Nature.’

‘It is a good idea, sir.’

‘It is more than a good idea, Jeeves,’ I said. ‘It is a pip.’

You know, the older I get the more firmly do I become convinced that there is no such thing as a pip in existence. Again and again have I seen the apparently sure thing go phut, and now it is rarely indeed that I can be lured from my aloof scepticism. Fellows come sidling up to me at the Drones and elsewhere, urging me to invest on some horse that can’t lose even if it gets struck by lightning at the starting-post, but Bertram Wooster shakes his head. He has seen too much of life to be certain of anything.

If anyone had told me that my Cousin Thos, left alone for an extended period of time with a kid of the superlative foulness of Sebastian Moon, would not only refrain from cutting off his curls with a pocket-knife and chasing him across country into a muddy pond but would actually return home carrying the gruesome kid on his back because he had got a blister on his foot, I would have laughed scornfully. I knew Thos. I knew his work. I had seen him in action. And I was convinced that not even the prospect of collecting five pounds would be enough to give him pause.

And yet what happened? In the quiet evenfall, when the little birds were singing their sweetest and all Nature seemed to whisper of hope and happiness, the blow fell. I was chatting with old Mr Anstruther on the terrace when suddenly round a bend in the drive the two kids hove in view. Sebastian, seated on Thos’s back, his hat off and his golden curls floating on the breeze, was singing as much as he could remember of a comic song, and Thos, bowed down by the burden but carrying on gamely, was trudging along, smiling that bally saintlike smile of his. He parked the kid on the front steps and came across to us.

‘Sebastian got a nail in his shoe,’ he said in a low, virtuous voice. ‘It hurt him to walk, so I gave him a piggy-back.’

I heard old Mr Anstruther draw in his breath sharply.

‘All the way home?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘In this hot sunshine?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘But was he not very heavy?’

‘He was a little, sir,’ said Thos, uncorking the saintlike once more. ‘But it would have hurt him awfully to walk.’

I pushed off. I had had enough. If ever a septuagenarian looked on the point of handing out another bonus, that septuagenarian was old Mr Anstruther. He had the unmistakable bonus glitter in his eye. I withdrew, and found Jeeves in my bedroom messing about with ties and things.

He pursed the lips a bit on hearing the news.

‘Serious, sir.’

‘Very serious, Jeeves.’

‘I had feared this, sir.’

‘Had you? I hadn’t. I was convinced Thos would have massacred young Sebastian. I banked on it. It just shows what the greed for money will do. This is a commercial age, Jeeves. When I was a boy, I would cheerfully have forfeited five quid in order to deal faithfully with a kid like Sebastian. I would have considered it money well spent.’

‘You are mistaken, sir, in your estimate of the motives actuating Master Thomas. It was not a mere desire to win five pounds that caused him to curb his natural impulses.’

‘Eh?’

‘I have ascertained the true reason for his change of heart, sir.’

I felt fogged.

‘Religion, Jeeves?’

‘No, sir. Love.’

‘Love?’

‘Yes, sir. The young gentleman confided in me during a brief conversation in the hall shortly after luncheon. We had been speaking for a while on neutral subjects, when he suddenly turned a deeper shade of pink and after some slight hesitation inquired of me if I did not think Miss Greta Garbo the most beautiful woman at present in existence.’

I clutched the brow.

‘Jeeves! Don’t tell me Thos is in love with Greta Garbo?’

‘Yes, sir. Unfortunately such is the case. He gave me to understand that it had been coming on for some time, and her last picture settled the issue. His voice shook with an emotion which it was impossible to misread. I gathered from his observations, sir, that he proposes to spend the remainder of his life trying to make himself worthy of her.’

It was a knock-out. This was the end.

‘This is the end, Jeeves,’ I said. ‘Bonzo must be a good forty marks behind by now. Only some sensational and spectacular outrage upon the public weal on the part of young Thos could have enabled
him
to wipe out the lead. And of that there is now, apparently, no chance.’

‘The eventuality does appear remote, sir.’

I brooded.

‘Uncle Thomas will have a fit when he comes back and finds Anatole gone.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Aunt Dahlia will drain the bitter cup to the dregs.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘And speaking from a purely selfish point of view, the finest cooking I have ever bitten will pass out of my life for ever, unless the Snettishams invite me in some night to take pot luck. And that eventuality is also remote.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Then the only thing I can do is square the shoulders and face the inevitable.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Like some aristocrat of the French Revolution popping into the tumbril, what? The brave smile. The stiff upper lip.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Right ho, then. Is the shirt studded?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘The tie chosen?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘The collar and evening underwear all in order?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Then I’ll have a bath and be with you in two ticks.’

It is all very well to talk about the brave smile and the stiff upper lip, but my experience – and I daresay others have found the same – is that they are a dashed sight easier to talk about than actually to fix on the face. For the next few days, I’m bound to admit, I found myself, in spite of every effort, registering gloom pretty consistently. For, as if to make things tougher than they might have been, Anatole at this juncture suddenly developed a cooking streak which put all his previous efforts in the shade.

Night after night we sat at the dinner table, the food melting in our mouths, and Aunt Dahlia would look at me and I would look at Aunt Dahlia, and the male Snettisham would ask the female Snettisham in a ghastly, gloating sort of way if she had ever tasted such cooking and the female Snettisham would smirk at the male Snettisham and say she never had in all her puff, and I would look at Aunt Dahlia and
Aunt
Dahlia would look at me and our eyes would be full of unshed tears, if you know what I mean.

And all the time old Mr Anstruther’s visit drawing to a close.

The sands running out, so to speak.

And then, on the very last afternoon of his stay, the thing happened.

It was one of those warm, drowsy, peaceful afternoons. I was up in my bedroom, getting off a spot of correspondence which I had neglected of late, and from where I sat I looked down on the shady lawn, fringed with its gay flower-beds. There was a bird or two hopping about, a butterfly or so fluttering to and fro, and an assortment of bees buzzing hither and thither. In a garden chair sat old Mr Anstruther, getting his eight hours. It was a sight which, had I had less on my mind, would no doubt have soothed the old soul a bit. The only blot on the landscape was Lady Snettisham, walking among the flower-beds and probably sketching out future menus, curse her.