The Jeeves Omnibus (251 page)

‘Well, “a’ that,” then, if you prefer it.’

‘I have no preference in the matter, sir. It is simply that the poet Burns –’

‘Never mind about the poet Burns.’

‘No, sir.’

‘Forget the poet Burns.’

‘Very good, sir.’

‘Expunge the poet Burns from your mind.’

‘I will do so immediately, sir.’

‘What we have to consider is not the poet Burns but the Aunt Agatha. She will kick, Jeeves.’

‘Very probably, sir.’

‘And, what’s worse, she will lug me into the mess. There is only one thing to be done. Pack the toothbrush and let us escape while we may, leaving no address.’

‘Very good, sir.’

At this moment the bell rang.

‘Ha!’ I said. ‘Someone at the door.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Probably Uncle George back again. I’ll answer it. You go and get ahead with the packing.’

‘Very good, sir.’

I sauntered along the passage, whistling carelessly, and there on the mat was Aunt Agatha. Herself. Not a picture.

A nasty jar.

‘Oh, hullo!’ I said, it seeming but little good to tell her I was out of town and not expected back for some weeks.

‘I wish to speak to you, Bertie,’ said the Family Curse. ‘I am greatly upset.’

She legged it into the sitting room and volplaned into a chair. I followed, thinking wistfully of Jeeves packing in the bedroom. That
suitcase
would not be needed now. I knew what she must have come about.

‘I’ve just seen Uncle George,’ I said, giving her a lead.

‘So have I,’ said Aunt Agatha, shivering in a marked manner. ‘He called on me while I was still in bed to inform me of his intention of marrying some impossible girl from South Norwood.’

‘East Dulwich, the
cognoscenti
informed me.’

‘Well, East Dulwich, then. It is the same thing. But who told you?’

‘Jeeves.’

‘And how, pray, does Jeeves come to know all about it?’

‘There are very few things in this world, Aunt Agatha,’ I said gravely, ‘that Jeeves doesn’t know all about. He’s met the girl.’

‘Who is she?’

‘One of the waitresses at the Buffers.’

I had expected this to register and it did. The relative let out a screech rather like the Cornish Express going through a junction.

‘I take it from your manner, Aunt Agatha,’ I said, ‘that you want this thing stopped.’

‘Of course it must be stopped.’

‘Then there is but one policy to pursue. Let me ring for Jeeves and ask his advice.’

Aunt Agatha stiffened visibly. Very much the
grande dame
of the old
régime
.

‘Are you seriously suggesting that we should discuss this intimate family matter with your man-servant?’

‘Absolutely. Jeeves will find the way.’

‘I have always known that you were an imbecile, Bertie,’ said the flesh-and-blood, now down at about three degrees Fahrenheit, ‘but I did suppose that you had some proper feeling, some pride, some respect for your position.’

‘Well, you know what the poet Burns says.’

She squelched me with a glance.

‘Obviously the only thing to do,’ she said, ‘is to offer this girl money.’

‘Money?’

‘Certainly. It will not be the first time your uncle has made such a course necessary.’

We sat for a bit, brooding. The family always sits brooding when the subject of Uncle George’s early romance comes up. I was too young to be actually in on it at the time, but I’ve had the details frequently from many sources, including Uncle George. Let him get
even
the slightest bit pickled, and he will tell you the whole story, sometimes twice in an evening. It was a barmaid at the Criterion, just before he came into the title. Her name was Maudie and he loved her dearly, but the family would have none of it. They dug down into the sock and paid her off. Just one of those human-interest stories, if you know what I mean.

I wasn’t so sold on this money-offering scheme.

‘Well, just as you like, of course,’ I said, ‘but you’re taking an awful chance. I mean, whenever people do it in novels and plays, they always get the dickens of a welt. The girl gets the sympathy of the audience every time. She just draws herself up and looks at them with clear, steady eyes, causing them to feel not a little cheesy. If I were you, I would sit tight and let Nature take its course.’

‘I don’t understand you.’

‘Well, consider for a moment what Uncle George looks like. No Greta Garbo, believe me. I should simply let the girl go on looking at him. Take it from me, Aunt Agatha, I’ve studied human nature and I don’t believe there’s a female in the world who could see Uncle George fairly often in those waistcoats he wears without feeling that it was due to her better self to give him the gate. Besides, this girl sees him at meal-times, and Uncle George with his head down among the food-stuffs is a spectacle which –’

‘If it is not troubling you too much, Bertie, I should be greatly obliged if you would stop drivelling.’

‘Just as you say. All the same, I think you’re going to find it dashed embarrassing, offering this girl money.’

‘I am not proposing to do so.
You
will undertake the negotiations.’

‘Me?’

‘Certainly. I should think a hundred pounds would be ample. But I will give you a blank cheque, and you are at liberty to fill it in for a higher sum if it becomes necessary. The essential point is that, cost what it may, your uncle must be released from this entanglement.’

‘So you’re going to shove this off on me?’

‘It is quite time you did something for the family.’

‘And when she draws herself up and looks at me with clear, steady eyes, what do I do for an encore?’

‘There is no need to discuss the matter any further. You can get down to East Dulwich in half an hour. There is a frequent service of trains. I will remain here to await your report.’

‘But, listen!’

‘Bertie, you will go and see this woman immediately.’

‘Yes, but dash it!’

‘Bertie!’

I threw in the towel.

‘Oh, right ho, if you say so.’

‘I do say so.’

‘Oh, well, in that case, right ho.’

I don’t know if you have ever tooled off to East Dulwich to offer a strange female a hundred smackers to release your Uncle George. In case you haven’t, I may tell you that there are plenty of things that are lots better fun. I didn’t feel any too good driving to the station. I didn’t feel any too good in the train. And I didn’t feel any too good as I walked to Kitchener Road. But the moment when I felt least good was when I had actually pressed the front-door bell and a rather grubby-looking maid had let me in and shown me down a passage and into a room with pink paper on the walls, a piano in the corner and a lot of photographs on the mantelpiece.

Barring a dentist’s waiting-room, which it rather resembles, there isn’t anything that quells the spirit much more than one of these suburban parlours. They are extremely apt to have stuffed birds in glass cases standing about on small tables, and if there is one thing which gives the man of sensibility that sinking feeling it is the cold, accusing eye of a ptarmigan or whatever it may be that has had its interior organs removed and sawdust substituted.

There were three of these cases in the parlour of Wistaria Lodge, so that, wherever you looked, you were sure to connect. Two were singletons, the third a family group, consisting of a father bullfinch, a mother bullfinch, and little Master Bullfinch, the last-named of whom wore an expression that was definitely that of a thug, and did more to damp my
joie de vivre
than all the rest of them put together.

I had moved to the window and was examining the aspidistra in order to avoid this creature’s gaze, when I heard the door open and, turning, found myself confronted by something which, since it could hardly be the girl, I took to be the aunt.

‘Oh, what ho,’ I said. ‘Good morning.’

The words came out rather roopily, for I was feeling a bit on the stunned side. I mean to say, the room being so small and this exhibit so large, I had got that sensation of wanting air. There are some people who don’t seem to be intended to be seen close to, and this aunt was one of them. Billowy curves, if you know what I mean. I should think that in her day she must have been a very handsome
girl
, though even then on the substantial side. By the time she came into my life, she had taken on a good deal of excess weight. She looked like a photograph of an opera singer of the ’eighties. Also the orange hair and the magenta dress.

However, she was a friendly soul. She seemed glad to see Bertram. She smiled broadly.

‘So here you are at last!’ she said.

I couldn’t make anything of this.

‘Eh?’

‘But I don’t think you had better see my niece just yet. She’s just having a nap.’

‘Oh, in that case –’

‘Seems a pity to wake her, doesn’t it?’

‘Oh, absolutely,’ I said, relieved.

‘When you get the influenza, you don’t sleep at night, and then if you doze off in the morning – well, it seems a pity to wake someone, doesn’t it?’

‘Miss Platt has influenza?’

‘That’s what we think it is. But, of course, you’ll be able to say. But we needn’t waste time. Since you’re here, you can be taking a look at my knee.’

‘Your knee?’

I am all for knees at their proper time and, as you might say, in their proper place, but somehow this didn’t seem the moment. However, she carried on according to plan.

‘What do you think of that knee?’ she asked, lifting the seven veils.

Well, of course, one has to be polite.

‘Terrific!’ I said.

‘You wouldn’t believe how it hurts me sometimes.’

‘Really?’

‘A sort of shooting pain. It just comes and goes. And I’ll tell you a funny thing.’

‘What’s that?’ I said, feeling I could do with a good laugh.

‘Lately I’ve been having the same pain just here, at the end of the spine.’

‘You don’t mean it!’

‘I do. Like red-hot needles. I wish you’d have a look at it.’

‘At your spine?’

‘Yes.’

I shook my head. Nobody is fonder of a bit of fun than myself, and I am all for Bohemian camaraderie and making a party go,
and
all that. But there is a line, and we Woosters know when to draw it.

‘It can’t be done,’ I said austerely. ‘Not spines. Knees, yes. Spines, no,’ I said.

She seemed surprised.

‘Well,’ she said, ‘you’re a funny sort of doctor, I must say.’

I’m pretty quick, as I said before, and I began to see that something in the nature of a misunderstanding must have arisen.

‘Doctor?’

‘Well, you call yourself a doctor, don’t you?’

‘Did you think I was a doctor?’

‘Aren’t you a doctor?’

‘No. Not a doctor.’

We had got it straightened out. The scales had fallen from our eyes. We knew where we were.

I had suspected that she was a genial soul. She now endorsed this view. I don’t think I have ever heard a woman laugh so heartily.

‘Well, that’s the best thing!’ she said, borrowing my handkerchief to wipe her eyes. ‘Did you ever! But, if you aren’t the doctor, who are you?’

‘Wooster’s the name. I came to see Miss Platt.’

‘What about?’

This was the moment, of course, when I should have come out with the cheque and sprung the big effort. But somehow I couldn’t make it. You know how it is. Offering people money to release your uncle is a scaly enough job at best, and when the atmosphere’s not right the shot simply isn’t on the board.

‘Oh, just came to see her, you know.’ I had rather a bright idea. ‘My uncle heard she was seedy, don’t you know, and asked me to look in and make enquiries,’ I said.

‘Your uncle?’

‘Lord Yaxley.’

‘Oh! So you are Lord Yaxley’s nephew?’

‘That’s right. I suppose he’s always popping in and out here, what?’

‘No. I’ve never met him.’

‘You haven’t?’

‘No. Rhoda talks a lot about him, of course, but for some reason she’s never so much as asked him to look in for a cup of tea.’

I began to see that this Rhoda knew her business. If I’d been a girl with someone wanting to marry me and knew that there was an exhibit like this aunt hanging around the home, I, too, should have thought
twice
about inviting him to call until the ceremony was over and he had actually signed on the dotted line. I mean to say, a thoroughly good soul – heart of gold beyond a doubt – but not the sort of thing you wanted to spring on Romeo before the time was ripe.

‘I suppose you were all very surprised when you heard about it?’ she said.

‘Surprised is right.’

‘Of course, nothing is definitely settled yet.’

‘You don’t mean that? I thought –’

‘Oh, no. She’s thinking it over.’

‘I see.’

‘Of course, she feels it’s a great compliment. But then sometimes she wonders if he isn’t too old.’

‘My Aunt Agatha has rather the same idea.’

‘Of course, a title
is
a title.’

‘Yes, there’s that. What do you think about it yourself?’

‘Oh, it doesn’t matter what I think. There’s no doing anything with girls these days, is there?’

‘Not much.’

‘What I often say is, I wonder what girls are coming to. Still, there it is.’

‘Absolutely.’

There didn’t seem much reason why the conversation shouldn’t go on for ever. She had the air of a woman who had settled down for the day. But at this point the maid came in and said the doctor had arrived.

I got up.

‘I’ll be tooling off, then.’

‘If you must.’

‘I think I’d better.’

‘Well, pip pip.’

‘Toodle-oo,’ I said, and out into the fresh air.

Knowing what was waiting for me at home, I would have preferred to have gone to the club and spent the rest of the day there. But the thing had to be faced.

‘Well?’ said Aunt Agatha, as I trickled into the sitting room.

‘Well, yes and no,’ I replied.

‘What do you mean? Did she refuse the money?’

‘Not exactly.’

‘She accepted it?’

‘Well, there again, not precisely.’