The Jeeves Omnibus (247 page)

And so for a time everything carried on. The birds hopped, the butterflies fluttered, the bees buzzed, and old Mr Anstruther snored – all in accordance with the programme. And I worked through a letter to my tailor to the point where I proposed to say something pretty strong about the way the right sleeve of my last coat bagged.

There was a tap on the door, and Jeeves entered, bringing the second post. I laid the letters listlessly on the table beside me.

‘Well, Jeeves,’ I said sombrely.

‘Sir?’

‘Mr Anstruther leaves tomorrow.’

‘Yes, sir.’

I gazed down at the sleeping septuagenarian.

‘In my young days, Jeeves,’ I said, ‘however much I might have been in love, I could never have resisted the spectacle of an old gentleman asleep like that in a deck-chair. I would have done
something
to him, no matter what the cost.’

‘Indeed, sir?’

‘Yes. Probably with a pea-shooter. But the modern boy is degenerate. He has lost his vim. I suppose Thos is indoors on this lovely afternoon, showing Sebastian his stamp-album or something. Ha!’ I said, and I said it rather nastily.

‘I fancy Master Thomas and Master Sebastian are playing in the stable-yard, sir. I encountered Master Sebastian not long back and he informed me he was on his way thither.’

‘The motion pictures, Jeeves,’ I said, ‘are the curse of the age. But
for
them, if Thos had found himself alone in a stable-yard with a kid like Sebastian –’

I broke off. From some point to the south-west, out of my line of vision, there had proceeded a piercing squeal.

It cut through the air like a knife, and old Mr Anstruther leaped up as if it had run into the fleshy part of his leg. And the next moment little Sebastian appeared, going well and followed at a short interval by Thos, who was going even better. In spite of the fact that he was hampered in his movements by a large stable-bucket which he bore in his right hand, Thos was running a great race. He had almost come up with Sebastian, when the latter, with great presence of mind, dodged behind Mr Anstruther, and there for a moment the matter rested.

But only for a moment. Thos, for some reason plainly stirred to the depths of his being, moved adroitly to one side and, poising the bucket for an instant, discharged its contents. And Mr Anstruther, who had just moved to the same side, received, as far as I could gather from a distance, the entire consignment. In one second, without any previous training or upbringing, he had become the wettest man in Worcestershire.

‘Jeeves!’ I cried.

‘Yes, indeed, sir,’ said Jeeves, and seemed to me to put the whole thing in a nutshell.

Down below, things were hotting up nicely. Old Mr Anstruther may have been frail, but he undoubtedly had his moments. I have rarely seen a man of his years conduct himself with such a lissom abandon. There was a stick lying beside the chair, and with this in hand he went into action like a two-year-old. A moment later, he and Thos had passed out of the picture round the side of the house, Thos cutting out a rare pace but, judging from the sounds of anguish, not quite good enough to distance the field.

The tumult and the shouting died; and, after gazing for a while with considerable satisfaction at the Snettisham, who was standing there with a sand-bagged look watching her nominee pass right out of the betting, I turned to Jeeves. I felt quietly triumphant. It is not often that I score off him, but now I had scored in no uncertain manner.

‘You see, Jeeves,’ I said, ‘I was right and you were wrong. Blood will tell. Once a Thos, always a Thos. Can the leopard change his spots or the Ethiopian his what-not? What was that thing they used to teach us at school about expelling Nature?’

‘You may expel Nature with a pitchfork, sir, but she will always return? In the original Latin –’

‘Never mind about the original Latin. The point is that I told you Thos could not resist those curls, and he couldn’t. You would have it that he could.’

‘I do not fancy it was the curls that caused the upheaval, sir.’

‘Must have been.’

‘No, sir. I think Master Sebastian had been speaking disparagingly of Miss Garbo.’

‘Eh? Why would he do that?’

‘I suggested that he should do so, sir, not long ago when I encountered him on his way to the stable-yard. It was a move which he was very willing to take, as he informed me that in his opinion Miss Garbo was definitely inferior both in beauty and talent to Miss Clara Bow, for whom he has long nourished a deep regard. From what we have just witnessed, sir, I imagine that Master Sebastian must have introduced the topic into the conversation at an early point.’

I sank into a chair. The Wooster system can stand just so much.

‘Jeeves!’

‘Sir?’

‘You tell me that Sebastian Moon, a stripling of such tender years that he can go about the place with long curls without causing mob violence, is in love with Clara Bow?’

‘And has been for some little time, he gave me to understand, sir.’

‘Jeeves, this Younger Generation is hot stuff.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Were you like that in your day?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Nor I, Jeeves. At the age of fourteen I once wrote to Marie Lloyd for her autograph, but apart from that my private life could bear the strictest investigation. However, that is not the point. The point is, Jeeves, that once more I must pay you a marked tribute.’

‘Thank you very much, sir.’

‘Once more you have stepped forward like the great man you are and spread sweetness and light in no uncertain measure.’

‘I am glad to have given satisfaction, sir. Would you be requiring my services any further?’

‘You mean you wish to return to Bognor and its shrimps? Do so, Jeeves, and stay there another fortnight, if you wish. And may success attend your net.’

‘Thank you very much, sir.’

I eyed the man fixedly. His head stuck out at the back, and his eyes sparkled with the light of pure intelligence.

‘I am sorry for the shrimp that tries to pit its feeble cunning against you, Jeeves,’ I said.

And I meant it.

IN THE AUTUMN
of the year in which Yorkshire Pudding won the Manchester November Handicap, the fortunes of my old pal Richard (‘Bingo’) Little seemed to have reached their – what’s the word I want? He was, to all appearances, absolutely on plush. He ate well, slept well, was happily married; and, his Uncle Wilberforce having at last handed in his dinner-pail, respected by all, had come into possession of a large income and a fine old place in the country about thirty miles from Norwich. Buzzing down there for a brief visit, I came away convinced that, if ever a bird was sitting on top of the world, that bird was Bingo.

I had to come away because the family were shooting me off to Harrogate to chaperone my Uncle George, whose liver had been giving him the elbow again. But, as we sat pushing down the morning meal on the day of my departure, I readily agreed to play a return date as soon as ever I could fight my way back to civilization.

‘Come in time for the Lakenham races,’ urged young Bingo. He took aboard a second cargo of sausages and bacon, for he had always been a good trencherman and the country air seemed to improve his appetite. ‘We’re going to motor over with a luncheon basket, and more or less revel.’

I was just about to say that I would make a point of it, when Mrs Bingo, who was opening letters behind the coffee-apparatus, suddenly uttered a pleased yowl.

‘Oh, sweetie-lambkin!’ she cried.

Mrs B., if you remember, before her marriage, was the celebrated female novelist, Rosie M. Banks, and it is in some such ghastly fashion that she habitually addresses the other half of the sketch. She has got that way, I take it, from a life-time of writing heart-throb fiction for the masses. Bingo doesn’t seem to mind. I suppose, seeing that the little woman is the author of such outstanding bilge as
Mervyn
Keene
, Clubman
and
Only A Factory Girl
, he is thankful it isn’t anything worse.

‘Oh, sweetie-lambkin, isn’t that lovely?’

‘What?’

‘Laura Pyke wants to come here.’

‘Who?’

‘You must have heard me speak of Laura Pyke. She was my dearest friend at school. I simply worshipped her. She always had such a wonderful mind. She wants us to put her up for a week or two.’

‘Right ho. Bung her in.’

‘You’re sure you don’t mind?’

‘Of course not. Any pal of yours –’

‘Darling!’ said Mrs Bingo, blowing him a kiss.

‘Angel!’ said Bingo, going on with the sausages.

All very charming, in fact. Pleasant domestic scene, I mean. Cheery give-and-take in the home and all that. I said as much to Jeeves as we drove off.

‘In these days of unrest, Jeeves,’ I said, ‘with wives yearning to fulfil themselves and husbands slipping round the corner to do what they shouldn’t, and the home, generally speaking, in the melting-pot, as it were, it is nice to find a thoroughly united couple.’

‘Decidedly agreeable, sir.’

‘I allude to the Bingos – Mr and Mrs.’

‘Exactly, sir.’

‘What was it the poet said of couples like the Bingeese?’

‘“Two minds but with a single thought, two hearts that beat as one,” sir.’

‘A dashed good description, Jeeves.’

‘It has, I believe, given uniform satisfaction, sir.’

And yet, if I had only known, what I had been listening to that am was the first faint rumble of the coming storm. Unseen, in the background, Fate was quietly slipping the lead into the boxing-glove.

I managed to give Uncle George a miss at a fairly early date and, leaving him wallowing in the waters, sent a wire to the Bingos, announcing my return. It was a longish drive and I fetched up at my destination only just in time to dress for dinner. I had done a quick dash into the soup and fish and was feeling pretty good at the prospect of a cocktail and the well-cooked, when the door opened and Bingo appeared.

‘Hello, Bertie,’ he said. ‘Ah, Jeeves.’

He spoke in one of those toneless voices: and, catching Jeeves’s eye as I adjusted the old cravat, I exchanged a questioning glance with it. From its expression I gathered that the same thing had struck him that had struck me – viz., that our host, the young Squire, was none too chirpy. The brow was furrowed, the eye lacked that hearty sparkle, and the general bearing and demeanour were those of a body discovered after being several days in the water.

‘Anything up, Bingo?’ I asked, with the natural anxiety of a boyhood friend. ‘You have a mouldy look. Are you sickening for some sort of plague?’

‘I’ve got it.’

‘Got what?’

‘The plague.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘She’s on the premises now,’ said Bingo, and laughed in an unpleasant, hacking manner, as if he were missing on one tonsil.

I couldn’t follow him. The old egg seemed to me to speak in riddles.

‘You seem to me, old egg,’ I said, ‘to speak in riddles. Don’t you think he speaks in riddles, Jeeves?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘I’m talking about the Pyke,’ said Bingo.

‘What pike?’

‘Laura Pyke. Don’t you remember –?’

‘Oh, ah. Of course. The school chum. The seminary crony. Is she still here?’

‘Yes, and looks like staying for ever. Rosie’s absolutely potty about her. Hangs on her lips’

‘The glamour of the old days still persists, eh?’

‘I should say it does,’ said young Bingo ‘This business of schoolgirl friendships beats me. Hypnotic is the only word. I can’t understand it. Men aren’t like that. You and I were at school together, Bertie, but, my gosh, I don’t look on you as a sort of mastermind.’

‘You don’t?’

‘I don’t treat your lightest utterance as a pearl of wisdom.’

‘Why not?’

‘Yet Rosie does with this Pyke. In the hands of the Pyke she is mere putty. If you want to see what was once a first-class Garden of Eden becoming utterly ruined as a desirable residence by the machinations of a Serpent, take a look round this place.’

‘Why, what’s the trouble?’

‘Laura Pyke,’ said young Bingo with intense bitterness, ‘is a food
crank
, curse her. She says we all eat too much and eat it too quickly and, anyway, ought not to be eating it at all but living on parsnips and similar muck. And Rosie, instead of telling the woman not to be a fathead, gazes at her in wide-eyed admiration, taking it in through the pores. The result is that the cuisine of this house has been shot to pieces, and I am starving on my feet. Well, when I tell you that it’s weeks since a beefsteak pudding raised its head in the home, you’ll understand what I mean.’

At this point the gong went. Bingo listened with a moody frown.

‘I don’t know why they still bang that damned thing,’ he said. ‘There’s nothing to bang it for. By the way, Bertie, would you like a cocktail?’

‘I would.’

‘Well, you won’t get one. We don’t have cocktails anymore. The girl friend says they corrode the stomach tissues.’

I was appalled. I had had no idea that the evil had spread as far as this.

‘No cocktails!’

‘No. And you’ll be dashed lucky if it isn’t a vegetarian dinner.’

‘Bingo,’ I cried, deeply moved, ‘you must act. You must assert yourself. You must put your foot down. You must take a strong stand. You must be master in the home.’

He looked at me, a long, strange look.

‘You aren’t married, are you, Bertie?’

‘You know I’m not.’

‘I should have guessed it, anyway. Come on.’

Well, the dinner wasn’t absolutely vegetarian, but when you had said that you had said everything. It was sparse, meagre, not at all the jolly, chunky repast for which the old tum was standing up and clamouring after its long motor ride. And what there was of it was turned to ashes in the mouth by the conversation of Miss Laura Pyke.

In happier circs, and if I had not been informed in advance of the warped nature of her soul, I might have been favourably impressed by this female at the moment of our meeting. She was really rather a good-looking girl, a bit strong in the face but nevertheless quite reasonably attractive. But had she been a thing of radiant beauty, she could never have clicked with Bertram Wooster. Her conversation was of a kind which would have queered Helen of Troy with any right-thinking man.