The Jeeves Omnibus (315 page)

Gussie once told me that when he, Gussie, was introduced to him, Bassett, as the fellow who was to marry his, Bassett’s, offspring, he, Bassett, had stared at him with his jaw dropping and then in a sort of strangled voice had said ‘
What!
’ Incredulously, if you see what I mean, as if he were hoping that they were just playing a jolly practical joke on him and that in due course the real chap would jump out from behind a chair and say ‘April fool!’ And when he, Bassett, at last got on to it that there was no deception and that Gussie was really what he had drawn, he went off into a corner and sat there motionless, refusing to speak when spoken to.

Little wonder, then, that Stiffy’s announcement had bucked him up like a dose of Doctor Somebody’s Tonic Swamp Juice, which acts directly on the red corpuscles and imparts a gentle glow.

‘Eloped?’ he gurgled.

‘That’s right.’

‘With the cook?’

‘With none other. That’s why I said there wasn’t going to be any dinner. We shall have to make do with hard-boiled eggs, if there are any left over from the treat.’

The mention of hard-boiled eggs made Pop Bassett wince for a moment, and one could see that his thoughts had flitted back to the tea tent, but he was far too happy to allow sad memories to trouble him for long. With a wave of the hand he dismissed dinner as something that didn’t matter one way or the other. The Bassetts, the wave suggested, could rough it if they had to.

‘Are you sure of your facts, my dear?’

‘I met them as they were starting off. Gussie said he hoped I wouldn’t mind him borrowing my car.’

‘You reassured him, I trust?’

‘Oh, yes. I said “That’s all right, Gussie. Help yourself.”’

‘Good girl. Good girl. An excellent response. Then they have really gone?’

‘With the wind.’

‘And they plan to get married?’

‘As soon as Gussie can get a special licence. You have to apply to the Archbishop of Canterbury, and I’m told he stings you for quite a bit.’

‘Money well spent.’

‘That’s how Gussie feels. He told me he was dropping the cook at Bertie’s aunt’s place and then going on to London to confer with the Archbish. He’s full of zeal.’

This extraordinary statement that Gussie was landing Emerald Stoker on Aunt Dahlia brought my head up with a jerk. I found myself speculating on how the old flesh-and-blood was going to take the intrusion, and it gave me rather an awed feeling to think how deep Gussie’s love for his Em must be, to make him face such fearful risks. The aged relative has a strong personality and finds no difficulty, when displeased, in reducing the object of her displeasure to a spot of grease in a matter of minutes. I am told that sportsmen whom in her hunting days she had occasion to rebuke for riding over hounds were never the same again and for months would go about in a sort of stupor, starting at sudden noises.

My head being now up, I was able to see Pop Bassett, and I found that he was regarding me with an eye so benevolent that I could hardly believe that this was the same ex-magistrate with whom I had so recently been hobnobbing, if you can call it hobnobbing when a couple of fellows sit in a couple of chairs for twenty minutes without saying a word to each other. It was plain that joy had made him the friend of all the world, even to the extent of allowing him to look at Bertram without a shudder. He was more like something out of Dickens than anything human.

‘Your glass is empty, Mr. Wooster,’ he cried buoyantly, ‘may I refill it?’

I said he might. I had had two, which is generally my limit, but with my aplomb shattered as it was I felt that a third wouldn’t hurt. Indeed, I would have been willing to go even more deeply into the thing. I once read about a man who used to drink twenty-six martinis before dinner, and the conviction was beginning to steal over me that he had had the right idea.

‘Roderick tells me,’ he proceeded, as sunny as if a crack of his had been greeted with laughter in court, ‘that the reason you were unable to be with us at the school treat this afternoon was that urgent family business called you to Brinkley Court. I trust everything turned out satisfactorily?’

‘Oh yes, thanks.’

‘We all missed you, but business before pleasure, of course. How was your uncle? You found him well, I hope?’

‘Yes, he was fine.’

‘And your aunt?’

‘She had gone to London.’

‘Indeed? You must have been sorry not to have seen her. I know few women I admire more. So hospitable. So breezy. I have seldom enjoyed anything more than my recent visit to her house.’

I think his exuberance would have led him to continue in the same strain indefinitely, but at this point Stiffy came out of the thoughtful silence into which she had fallen. She had been standing there regarding him with a speculative eye, as if debating within herself whether or not to start something, and now she gave the impression that her mind was made up.

‘I’m glad to see you so cheerful, Uncle Watkyn. I was afraid my news might have upset you.’

‘Upset me!’ said Pop Bassett incredulously. ‘Whatever put that idea in your head?’

‘Well, you’re short one son-in-law.’

‘It is precisely that that has made this the happiest day of my life.’

‘Then you can make it the happiest of mine,’ said Stiffy, striking while the iron was h. ‘By giving Harold that vicarage.’

Most of my attention, as you may well imagine, being concentrated on contemplating the soup in which I was immersed, I cannot say whether or not Pop Bassett hesitated, but if he did, it was only for an instant. No doubt for a second or two the vision of that hard-boiled egg rose before him and he was conscious again of the resentment he had been feeling at Stinker’s failure to keep a firm hand on the junior members of his flock, but the thought that Augustus Fink-Nottle was not to be his son-in-law drove the young cleric’s shortcomings from his mind. Filled with the milk of human kindness so nearly to the brim that you could almost hear it sloshing about inside him, he was in no shape to deny anyone anything. I really believe that if at this point in the proceedings I had tried to touch him for a fiver, he would have parted without a cry.

‘Of course, of course, of course, of course,’ he said, carolling like one of Jeeves’s larks on the wing. ‘I am sure that Pinker will make an excellent vicar.’

‘The best,’ said Stiffy. ‘He’s wasted as a curate. No scope. Running under wraps. Unleash him as a vicar, and he’ll be the talk of the Established Church. He’s as hot as a pistol.’

‘I have always had the highest opinion of Harold Pinker.’

‘I’m not surprised. All the nibs feel the same. They know he’s got what it takes. Very sound on doctrine, and can preach like a streak.’

‘Yes, I enjoy his sermons. Manly and straightforward.’

‘That’s because he’s one of these healthy outdoor open air men. Muscular Christianity, that’s his dish. He used to play football for England.’

‘Indeed?’

‘He was what’s called a prop forward.’

‘Really?’

At the words ‘prop forward’ I had, of course, started visibly. I hadn’t known that that’s what Stinker was, and I was thinking how ironical life could be. I mean to say, there was Plank searching high and low for a forward of this nature, saying to himself that he would pretty soon have to give up the hopeless quest, and here was I in a position to fill the bill for him, but owing to the strained condition of our relations unable to put him on to this good thing. Very sad, I felt, and the thought occurred to me, as it had often done before, that one ought to be kind even to the very humblest, because you never know when they may not come in useful.

‘Then may I tell Harold that the balloon’s going up?’ said Stiffy.

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘I mean it’s official about this vicarage?’

‘Certainly, certainly, certainly.’

‘Oh, Uncle Watkyn! How can I thank you?’

‘Quite all right, my dear,’ said Pop Bassett, more Dickensy than ever. ‘And now,’ he went on, parting from his moorings and making for the door, ‘you will excuse me, Stephanie, and you, Mr. Wooster. I must go to Madeline and –’

‘Congratulate her?’

‘I was about to say dry her tears.’

‘If any.’

‘You think she will not be in a state of dejection?’

‘Would any girl be, who’s been saved by a miracle from having to marry Gussie Fink-Nottle?’

‘True. Very true,’ said Pop Bassett, and he was out of the room like one of those wing threequarters who, even if they can’t learn to give the reverse pass, are fast.

If there had been any uncertainty as to whether Sir Watkyn Bassett had done a buck-and-wing dance, there was none about Stiffy doing one now. She pirouetted freely, and the dullest eye could discern that it was only the fact that she hadn’t one on that kept her from strewing
roses
from her hat. I had seldom seen a young shrimp so above herself. And I, having Stinker’s best interests at heart, packed all my troubles in the old kitbag for the time being and rejoiced with her. If there’s one thing Bertram Wooster is and always has been nippy at, it’s forgetting his personal worries when a pal is celebrating some stroke of good fortune.

For some time Stiffy monopolized the conversation, not letting me get a word in edgeways. Women are singularly gifted in this respect. The frailest of them has the lung power of a gramophone record and the flow of speech of a Regimental Sergeant Major. I have known my Aunt Agatha to go on calling me names long after you would have supposed that both breath and inventiveness would have given out.

Her theme was the stupendous bit of good luck which was about to befall Stinker’s new parishioners, for they would be getting not only the perfect vicar, a saintly character who would do the square thing by their souls, but in addition the sort of vicar’s wife you dream about. It was only when she paused after drawing a picture of herself doling out soup to the deserving poor and asking in a gentle voice after their rheumatism that I was able to rise to a point of order. In the midst of all the joyfulness and back-slapping a sobering thought had occurred to me.

‘I agree with you,’ I said, ‘that this would appear to be the happy ending, and I can quite see how you have arrived at the conclusion that it’s the maddest merriest day of all the glad new year, but there’s something you ought to give a thought to, and it seems to me you’re overlooking it.’

‘What’s that? I didn’t think I’d missed anything.’

‘This promise of Pop Bassett’s to give you the vicarage.’

‘All in order, surely? What’s your kick?’

‘I was only thinking that, if I were you, I’d get it in writing.’

This stopped her as if she had bumped into a prop forward. The ecstatic animation faded from her face, to be replaced by the anxious look and the quick chewing of the lower lip. It was plain that I had given her food for thought.

‘You don’t think Uncle Watkyn would double-cross us?’

‘There are no limits to what your foul Uncle Watkyn can do, if the mood takes him,’ I responded gravely. ‘I wouldn’t trust him an inch. Where’s Stinker?’

‘Out on the lawn, I think.’

‘Then get hold of him and bring him here and have Pop Bassett embody the thing in the form of a letter.’

‘I suppose you know you’re making my flesh creep?’

‘Merely pointing out the road to safety.’

She mused awhile, and the lower lip got a bit more chewing done to it.

‘All right,’ she said at length. ‘I’ll fetch Harold.’

‘And it wouldn’t hurt to bring a couple of lawyers, too,’ I said as she whizzed past me.

It was about five minutes later, as I was falling into a reverie and brooding once more on the extreme stickiness of my affairs, that Jeeves came in and told me I was wanted on the telephone.

I PALED BENEATH
my tan.

‘Who is it, Jeeves?’

‘Mrs. Travers, sir.’

Precisely what I had feared. It was, as I have indicated, an easy drive from Totleigh Towers to Brinkley Court and in his exhilarated state Gussie would no doubt have kept a firm foot on the accelerator and given the machine all the gas at his disposal. I presumed that he and girl friend must have just arrived, and that this telephone call was Aunt Dahlia what-the-helling. Knowing how keenly the old bean resented being the recipient of anything in the nature of funny business, into which category Gussie’s butting in uninvited with his Em in attendance would unquestionably fall, I braced myself for the coming storm with as much fortitude as I could muster.

You might say, of course, that his rash act was no fault of mine and had nothing to do with me, but it’s practically routine for aunts to blame nephews for everything that happens. It seems to be what nephews are for. It was only by an oversight, I have always felt, that my Aunt Agatha omitted to hold me responsible a year or two ago when her son, young Thos, nearly got sacked from the scholastic institution which he attends for breaking out at night in order to go and shy for coconuts at the local amusement park.

‘How did she seem, Jeeves?’

‘Sir?’

‘Did she give you the impression that she was splitting a gusset?’

‘Not particularly, sir. Mrs. Travers’s voice is always robust. Would there be any reason why she should be splitting the gusset to which you refer?’

‘You bet there would. No time to tell you now, but the skies are darkening and the air is full of V-shaped depressions off the coast of Iceland.’

‘I am sorry, sir.’

‘Nor are you the only one. Who was the fellow – or fellows, for I believe there was more than one – who went into the burning fiery furnace?’

‘Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, sir.’

‘That’s right. The names were on the tip of my tongue. I read about them when I won my Scripture Knowledge prize at school. Well, I know just how they must have felt. Aunt Dahlia?’ I said, for I had now reached the instrument.

I had been expecting to have my ear scorched with well-chosen words, but to my surprise she seemed in merry mood. There was no suggestion of recrimination in her voice.

‘Hullo there, you young menace to western civilization,’ she boomed. ‘How are you? Still ticking over?’