The Jeeves Omnibus (317 page)

‘Good heavens! What curate?’

‘There’s only one in these parts, isn’t there?’

‘You mean you were assaulted by Mr. Pinker? You astound me, Roderick.’

Spode spoke with genuine feeling.

‘Not half as much as he astounded
me
. He was more or less of a revelation to me, I don’t mind telling you, because I didn’t know curates had left hooks like that. He’s got a knack of feinting you off balance and then coming in with a sort of corkscrew punch which it’s impossible not to admire. I must get him to teach it to me some time.’

‘You speak as though you bore him no animosity.’

‘Of course I don’t. A very pleasant little scrap with no ill feeling on either side. I’ve nothing against Pinker. The one I’ve got it in for is the cook. She beaned me with a china basin. From behind, of all unsporting things. If you’ll excuse me, I’ll go and have a word with that cook.’

He was so obviously looking forward to telling Emerald Stoker what he thought of her that it gave me quite a pang to have to break it to him that his errand would be bootless.

‘You can’t,’ I pointed out. ‘She is no longer with us.’

‘Don’t be an ass. She’s in the kitchen, isn’t she?’

‘I’m sorry, no. She’s eloped with Gussie Fink-Nottle. A wedding has been arranged and will take place as soon as the Archbish of Canterbury lets him have a special licence.’

Spode reeled. He had only one eye to stare at me with, but he got all the mileage out of it that was possible.

‘Is that true?’

‘Absolutely.’

‘Well, that makes up for everything. If Madeline’s back in circulation … Thank you for telling me, Wooster, old chap.’

‘Don’t mention it, Spode, old man, or, rather, Lord Sidcup, old man.’

For the first time Pop Bassett appeared to become aware that the slight, distinguished-looking young fellow standing on one leg by the sofa was Bertram.

‘Mr. Wooster,’ he said. Then he stopped, swallowed once or twice and groped his way to the table where the drinks were. His manner
was
feverish. Having passed a liberal snootful down the hatch, he was able to resume. ‘I have just seen Madeline.’

‘Oh, yes?’ I said courteously. ‘How is she?’

‘Off her head, in my opinion. She says she is going to marry you.’

Well, I had more or less steeled myself to something along these lines, so except for quivering like a stricken blancmange and letting my lower jaw fall perhaps six inches I betrayed no sign of discomposure, in which respect I differed radically from Spode, who reeled for the second time and uttered a cry like that of a cinnamon bear that has stubbed its toe on a passing rock.

‘You’re joking!’

Pop Bassett shook his head regretfully. His face was haggard.

‘I wish I were, Roderick. I am not surprised that you are upset. I feel the same myself. I am distraught. I can see no light on the horizon. When she told me, it was as if I had been struck by a thunderbolt.’

Spode was staring at me, aghast. Even now, it seemed, he was unable to take in the full horror of the situation. There was incredulity in his one good eye.

‘But she can’t marry
that
!’

‘She seems resolved to.’

‘But he’s worse than that fishfaced blighter.’

‘I agree with you. Far worse. No comparison.’

‘I’ll go and talk to her,’ said Spode, and left us before I could express my resentment at being called
that
.

It was perhaps fortunate that only half a minute later Stiffy and Stinker entered, for if I had been left alone with Pop Bassett, I would have been hard put to it to hit on a topic of conversation calculated to interest, elevate and amuse.

STINKER’S NOSE, AS
was only to be expected, had swollen a good deal since last heard from, but he seemed in excellent spirits, and Stiffy couldn’t have been merrier and brighter. Both were obviously thinking in terms of the happy ending, and my heart bled freely for the unfortunate young slobs. I had observed Pop Bassett closely while Spode was telling him about Stinker’s left hook, and what I had read on his countenance had not been encouraging.

These patrons of livings with vicarages to bestow always hold rather rigid views as regards the qualifications they demand from the curates they are thinking of promoting to fields of higher activity, and left hooks, however adroit, are not among them. If Pop Bassett had been a fight promoter on the look-out for talent and Stinker a promising novice anxious to be put on his next programme for a six-round preliminary bout, he would no doubt have gazed on him with a kindly eye. As it was, the eye he was now directing at him was as cold and bleak as if an old crony had been standing before him in the dock, charged with having moved pigs without a permit or failed to abate a smoky chimney. I could see trouble looming, and I wouldn’t have risked a bet on the happy e. even at the most liberal odds.

The stickiness of the atmosphere, so patent to my keener sense, had not communicated itself to Stiffy. No voice was whispering in her ear that she was about to be let down with a thud which would jar her to the back teeth. She was all smiles and viv-whatever-the-word-is, plainly convinced that the signing on the dotted line was now a mere formality.

‘Here we are, Uncle Watkyn,’ she said, beaming freely.

‘So I see.’

‘I’ve brought Harold.’

‘So I perceive.’

‘We’ve talked it over, and we think we ought to have the thing embodied in the form of a letter.’

Pop Bassett’s eye grew colder and bleaker, and the feeling I had that we were all back in Bosher Street police court deepened. Nothing,
it
seemed to me, was needed to complete the illusion except a magistrate’s clerk with a cold in the head, a fug you could cut with a knife and a few young barristers hanging about hoping for dock briefs.

‘I fear I do not understand you,’ he said.

‘Oh, come, Uncle Watkyn, you know you’re brighter than that. I’m talking about Harold’s vicarage.’

‘I was not aware that Mr. Pinker had a vicarage.’

‘The one you’re going to give him, I mean.’

‘Oh?’ said Pop Bassett, and I have seldom heard an ‘Oh?’ that had a nastier sound. ‘I have just seen Roderick,’ he added, getting down to the
res
.

At the mention of Spode’s name Stiffy giggled, and I could have told her it was a mistake. There is a time for girlish frivolity, and a time when it is misplaced. It had not escaped my notice that Pop Bassett had begun to swell like one of those curious circular fish you catch down in Florida, and in addition to this he was rumbling as I imagine volcanoes do before starting in on the neighbouring householders and making them wish they had settled elsewhere.

But even now Stiffy seemed to have no sense of impending doom. She uttered another silvery laugh. I’ve noticed this slowness in getting hep to atmospheric conditions in other girls. The young of the gentler sex never appear to realize that there are moments when the last thing required by their audience is the silvery laugh.

‘I’ll bet he had a shiner.’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘Was his eye black?’

‘It was.’

‘I thought it would be. Harold’s strength is as the strength of ten, because his heart is pure. Well, how about that embodying letter? I have a fountain pen. Let’s get the show on the road.’

I was expecting Pop Bassett to give an impersonation of a bomb falling on an ammunition dump, but he didn’t. Instead, he continued to exhibit that sort of chilly stiffness which you see in magistrates when they’re fining people five quid for boyish peccadilloes.

‘You appear to be under a misapprehension, Stephanie,’ he said in the metallic voice he had once used when addressing the prisoner Wooster. ‘I have no intention of entrusting Mr. Pinker with a vicarage.’

Stiffy took it big. She shook from wind-swept-hair-do to shoe-sole, and if she hadn’t clutched at Stinker’s arm might have taken a toss. One could understand her emotion. She had been coasting along, confident that she had it made, and suddenly out of a blue and smiling
sky
these words of doom. No doubt it was the suddenness and unexpectedness of the wallop that unmanned her, if you can call it unmanning when it happens to a girl. I suppose she was feeling very much as Spode had felt when Emerald Stoker’s basin had connected with his occiput. Her eyes bulged, and her voice came out in a passionate squeak.

‘But, Uncle Watkyn! You promised!’

I could have told her she was wasting her breath trying to appeal to the old buzzard’s better feelings, because magistrates, even when ex, don’t have any. The tremolo in her voice might have been expected to melt what is usually called a heart of stone, but it had no more effect on Pop Bassett than the chirping of the household canary.

‘Provisionally only,’ he said. ‘I was not aware, when I did so, that Mr. Pinker had brutally assaulted Roderick.’

At these words Stinker, who had been listening to the exchanges in a rigid sort of way, creating the illusion that he had been stuffed by a good taxidermist, came suddenly to life, though as all he did was make a sound like the last drops of water going out of a bath tub, it was hardly worth the trouble and expense. He succeeded, however, in attracting Pop Bassett’s attention, and the latter gave him the eye.

‘Yes, Mr. Pinker?’

It was a moment or two before Stinker followed up the gurgling noise with speech. And even then it wasn’t much in the way of speech. He said:

‘I – er – He – er –’

‘Proceed, Mr. Pinker.’

‘It was – I mean it wasn’t –’

‘If you could make yourself a little plainer, Mr. Pinker, it would be of great assistance to our investigations into the matter under discussion. I must confess to finding you far from lucid.’

It was the type of crack he had been accustomed in the old Bosher Street days to seeing in print with ‘laughter’ after it in brackets, but on this occasion it fell flatter than a Dover sole. It didn’t get a snicker out of me, nor out of Stinker, who merely knocked over a small china ornament and turned a deeper vermilion, while Stiffy came back at him in great shape.

‘There’s no need to talk like a magistrate, Uncle Watkyn.’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘In fact, it would be better if you stopped talking at all and let me explain. What Harold’s trying to tell you is that he didn’t brutally assault Roderick, Roderick brutally assaulted him.’

‘Indeed? That was not the way I heard the story.’

‘Well, it’s the way it happened.’

‘I am perfectly willing to hear your version of the deplorable incident.’

‘All right, then. Here it comes. Harold was cooing to Roderick like a turtle dove, and Roderick suddenly hauled off and plugged him squarely on the beezer. If you don’t believe me, take a look at it. The poor angel spouted blood like a Versailles fountain. Well, what would you have expected Harold to do? Turn the other nose?’

‘I would have expected him to remember his position as a clerk in holy orders. He should have complained to me, and I would have seen to it that Roderick made ample apology.’

A sound like the shot heard round the world rang through the room. It was Sniffy snorting.

‘Apology!’ she cried, having got the snort out of her system. ‘What’s the good of apologies? Harold took the only possible course. He sailed in and laid Roderick out cold, as anyone would have done in his place.’

‘Anyone who had not his cloth to think of.’

‘For goodness’ sake, Uncle Watkyn, a fellow can’t be thinking of cloth all the time. It was an emergency. Roderick was murdering Gussie Fink-Nottle.’

‘And Mr. Pinker
stopped
him? Great heavens!’

There was a pause while Pop Bassett struggled with his feelings. Then Stiffy, as Stinker had done with Spode, had a shot at the honeyed word. She had spoken of Stinker cooing to Spode like a turtle dove, and if memory served me aright that was just how he had cooed, and it was of a cooing turtle dove that she now reminded me. Like most girls, she can always get a melting note into her voice if she thinks there’s any percentage to be derived from it.

‘It’s not like you, Uncle Watkyn, to go back on your solemn promise.’

I could have corrected her there. I would have thought it was just like him.

‘I can’t believe it’s really you who’s doing this cruel thing to me. It’s so unlike you. You have always been so kind to me. You have made me love and respect you. I have come to look on you as a second father. Don’t louse the whole thing up now.’

A powerful plea, which with any other man would undoubtedly have brought home the bacon. With Pop Bassett it didn’t get to first base. He had been looking like a man with no bowels – of compassion, I mean of course – and he went on looking like one.

‘If by that peculiar expression you intend to imply that you are expecting me to change my mind and give Mr. Pinker this vicarage,
I
must disappoint you. I shall do no such thing. I consider that he has shown himself unfit to be a vicar, and I am surprised that after what has occurred he can reconcile it with his conscience to continue his duties as a curate.’

Strong stuff, of course, and it drew from Stinker what may have been a hollow groan or may have been a hiccup. I myself looked coldly at the old egg and I rather think I curled my lip, though I should say it was very doubtful if he noticed my scorn, for his attention was earmarked for Stiffy. She had turned almost as scarlet as Stinker, and I heard a distinct click as her front teeth met. It was through these teeth (clenched) that she spoke.

‘So that’s how you feel about it?’

‘It is.’

‘Your decision is final?’

‘Quite final.’

‘Nothing will move you?’

‘Nothing.’

‘I see,’ said Stiffy, having chewed the lower lip for a space in silence. ‘Well, you’ll be sorry.’

‘I disagree with you.’

‘You will. Just wait. Bitter remorse is coming to you, Uncle Watkyn. Never underestimate the power of a woman,’ said Stiffy, and with a choking sob – though there again it may have been a hiccup – she rushed from the room.

She had scarcely left us when Butterfield entered, and Pop Bassett eyed him with the ill-concealed petulance with which men of testy habit eye butlers who butt in at the wrong moment.