The Jeeves Omnibus (330 page)

Conciliatory, I think you’ll agree. I could hardly have given him the old salve with a more liberal hand, and one might have expected him to simper, shuffle his feet and mumble ‘Awfully nice of you to say so’ or something along those lines. Instead of which, all he did was come back at me with a guttural sound like an opera basso choking on a fishbone, and I had to sustain the burden of the conversation by myself.

‘I’ve just been taking a gnat out of Madeline’s eye.’

‘Oh?’

‘Dangerous devils, these gnats. Require skilled handling.’

‘Oh?’

‘Everything’s back to normal now, I think.’

‘Yes, thank you ever so much, Bertie.’

It was Madeline who said this, not Spode. He continued to gaze at me bleakly. She went on harping on the thing.

‘Bertie’s so clever.’

‘Oh?’

‘I don’t know what I would have done without him.’

‘Oh?’

‘He showed wonderful presence of mind.’

‘Oh?’

‘I feel so sorry, though, for the poor little gnat.’

‘It asked for it,’ I pointed out. ‘It was unquestionably the aggressor.’

‘Yes, I suppose that’s true, but …’ The clock on the mantelpiece caught her now de-gnatted eye, and she uttered an agitated squeak. ‘Oh, my goodness, is that the time? I must rush.’

She buzzed off, and I was on the point of doing the same, when Spode detained me with a curt ‘One moment’. There are all sorts of ways of saying ‘One moment’. This was one of the nastier ones, spoken with an unpleasant rasping note in the voice.

‘I want a word with you, Wooster.’

I am never anxious to chat with Spode, but if I had been sure that he merely wanted to go on saying ‘Oh?’, I would have been willing to listen. Something, however, seemed to tell me that he was about to give evidence of a wider vocabulary, and I edged towards the door.

‘Some other time, don’t you think?’

‘Not some ruddy other time. Now.’

‘I shall be late for dinner.’

‘You can’t be too late for me. And if you get your teeth knocked down your throat, as you will if you don’t listen attentively to what I have to say, you won’t be able to eat any dinner.’

This seemed plausible. I decided to lend him an ear, as the expression is. ‘Say on,’ I said, and he said on, lowering his voice to a sort of rumbling growl which made him difficult to follow. However, I caught the word ‘read’ and the word ‘book’ and perked up a bit. If this was going to be a literary discussion, I didn’t mind exchanging views.

‘Book?’ I said.

‘Book.’

‘You want me to recommend you a good book? Well, of course, it depends on what you like. Jeeves, for instance, is never happier than when curled up with his Spinoza or his Shakespeare. I, on the other hand, go in mostly for who-dun-its and novels of suspense. For the who-dun-it Agatha Christie is always a safe bet. For the novel of suspense …’

Here I paused, for he had called me an opprobrious name and told me to stop babbling, and it is always my policy to stop babbling when a man eight foot six in height and broad in proportion tells me to. I went into the silence, and he continued to say on.

‘I said that I could read you like a book, Wooster. I know what your game is.’

‘I don’t understand you, Lord Sidcup.’

‘Then you must be as big an ass as you look, which is saying a good deal. I am referring to your behaviour towards my fiancée. I come into this room and I find you fondling her face.’

I had to correct him here. One likes to get these things straight.

‘Only her chin.’

‘Pah!’ he said, or something that sounded like that.

‘And I had to get a grip on it in order to extract the gnat from her eye. I was merely steadying it.’

‘You were steadying it gloatingly.’

‘I wasn’t!’

‘Pardon me. I have eyes and can see when a man is steadying a chin gloatingly and when he isn’t. You were obviously delighted to have an excuse for soiling her chin with your foul fingers.’

‘You are wrong, Lord Spodecup.’

‘And, as I say, I know what your game is. You are trying to undermine me, to win her from me with your insidious guile, and what I want to impress upon you with all the emphasis at my disposal is that if anything of this sort is going to occur again, you would do well to take out an accident policy with some good insurance company at the earliest possible date. You probably think that being a guest in your aunt’s house I would hesitate to butter you over the front lawn and dance on the fragments in hobnailed boots, but you are mistaken. It will be a genuine pleasure. By an odd coincidence I brought a pair of hobnailed boots with me!’

So saying, and recognizing a good exit line when he saw one, he strode out, and after an interval of tense meditation I followed him. Repairing to my bedroom, I found Jeeves there, looking reproachful. He knows I can dress for dinner in ten minutes, but regards haste askance, for he thinks it results in a tie which, even if adequate, falls short of the perfect butterfly effect.

I ignored the silent rebuke in his eyes. After meeting Spode’s eyes, I was dashed if I was going to be intimidated by Jeeves’s.

‘Jeeves,’ I said, ‘you’re fairly well up in Hymns Ancient and Modern, I should imagine. Who were the fellows in the hymn who used to prowl and prowl around?’

‘The troops of Midian, sir.’

‘That’s right. Was Spode mentioned as one of them?’

‘Sir?’

‘I ask because he’s prowling around as if Midian was his home town. Let me tell you all about it.’

‘I fear it will not be feasible, sir. The gong is sounding.’

‘So it is. Who’s sounding it? You said Seppings was in bed.’

‘The parlourmaid, sir, deputizing for Mr Seppings.’

‘I like her wrist work. Well, I’ll tell you later.’

‘Very good, sir. Pardon me, your tie.’

‘What’s wrong with it?’

‘Everything, sir. If you will allow me.’

‘All right, go ahead. But I can’t help asking myself if ties really matter at a time like this.’

‘There is no time when ties do not matter, sir.’

My mood was sombre as I went down to dinner. Anatole, I was thinking, would no doubt give us of his best, possibly his Timbale de ris de veau Toulousaine or his Sylphides à la crème d’écrevisses, but Spode would be there and Madeline would be there and Florence would be there and L. P. Runkle would be there.

There was, I reflected, always something.

8

IT HAS BEEN
well said of Bertram Wooster that when he sets his hand to the plough he does not stop to pick daisies and let the grass grow under his feet. Many men in my position, having undertaken to canvass for a friend anxious to get into Parliament, would have waited till after lunch next day to get rolling, saying to themselves Oh, what difference do a few hours make and going off to the billiard-room for a game or two of snooker. I, in sharp contradistinction as I have heard Jeeves call it, was on my way shortly after breakfast. It can’t have been much more than a quarter to eleven when, fortified by a couple of kippers, toast, marmalade and three cups of coffee, I might have been observed approaching a row of houses down by the river to which someone with a flair for the
mot juste
had given the name of River Row. From long acquaintance with the town I knew that this was one of the posher parts of Market Snodsbury, stiff with householders likely to favour the Conservative cause, and it was for that reason that I was making it my first port of call. No sense, I mean, in starting off with the less highly priced localities where everybody was bound to vote Labour and would not only turn a deaf ear to one’s reasoning but might even bung a brick at one. Ginger no doubt had a special posse of tough supporters, talking and spitting out of the side of their mouths, and they would attend to the brick-bunging portion of the electorate.

Jeeves was at my side, but whereas I had selected Number One as my objective, his intention was to push on to Number Two. I would then give Number Three the treatment, while he did the same to Number Four. Talking it over, we had decided that if we made it a double act and blew into a house together, it might give the occupant the impression that he was receiving a visit from the plain clothes police and excite him unduly. Many of the men who live in places like River Row have a tendency to apoplectic fits as the result of high living, and a
voter
expiring on the floor from shock means a voter less on the voting list. One has to think of these things.

‘What beats me, Jeeves,’ I said, for I was in thoughtful mood, ‘is why people don’t object to somebody they don’t know from Adam muscling into their homes without a … without a what? It’s on the tip of my tongue.’

‘A With-your-leave or a By-your leave, sir?’

‘That’s right. Without a With-your-leave or a By-your-leave and telling them which way to vote. Taking a liberty, it strikes me as.’

‘It is the custom at election time, sir. Custom reconciles us to everything, a wise man once said.’

‘Shakespeare?’

‘Burke, sir. You will find the apothegm in his
On The Sublime And Beautiful
. I think the electors, conditioned by many years of canvassing, would be disappointed if nobody called on them.’

‘So we shall be bringing a ray of sunshine into their drab lives?’

‘Something on that order, sir.’

‘Well, you may be right. Have you ever done this sort of thing before?’

‘Once or twice, sir, before I entered your employment.’

‘What were your methods?’

‘I outlined as briefly as possible the main facets of my argument, bade my auditors goodbye, and withdrew.’

‘No preliminaries?’

‘Sir?’

‘You didn’t make a speech of any sort before getting down to brass tacks? No mention of Burke or Shakespeare or the poet Burns?’

‘No, sir. It might have caused exasperation.’

I disagreed with him. I felt that he was on the wrong track altogether and couldn’t expect anything in the nature of a triumph at Number Two. There is probably nothing a voter enjoys more than hearing the latest about Burke and his
On The Sublime And Beautiful
, and here he was, deliberately chucking away the advantages his learning gave him. I had half a mind to draw his attention to the Parable of the Talents, with which I had become familiar when doing research for that Scripture Knowledge prize I won at school. Time, however, was getting along, so I passed it up. But I told him I thought he was mistaken. Preliminaries, I maintained, were of the essence.
Breaking the ice is what it’s called. I mean, you can’t just barge in on a perfect stranger and get off the mark with an abrupt ‘Hoy there. I hope you’re going to vote for my candidate!’ How much better to say ‘Good morning, sir. I can see at a glance that you are a man of culture, probably never happier than when reading your Burke. I wonder if you are familiar with his
On The Sublime And Beautiful
?’ Then away you go, off to a nice start.

‘You must have an approach,’ I said. ‘I myself am all for the jolly, genial. I propose, on meeting my householder, to begin with a jovial “Hullo there, Mr Whatever-it-is, hullo there”, thus ingratiating myself with him from the kick-off. I shall then tell him a funny story. Then, and only then, will I get to the nub – waiting, of course, till he has stopped laughing. I can’t fail.’

‘I am sure you will not, sir. The system would not suit me, but it is merely a matter of personal taste.’

‘The psychology of the individual, what?’

‘Precisely, sir. By different methods different men excel.’

‘Burke?’

‘Charles Churchill, sir, a poet who flourished in the early eighteenth century. The words occur in his
Epistle To William Hogarth
.’

We halted. Cutting out a good pace, we had arrived at the door of Number One. I pressed the bell.

‘Zero hour, Jeeves,’ I said gravely.

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Carry on.’

‘Very good, sir.’

‘Heaven speed your canvassing.’

‘Thank you, sir.’

‘And mine.’

‘Yes, sir.’

He pushed along and mounted the steps of Number Two, leaving me feeling rather as I had done in my younger days at a clergyman uncle’s place in Kent when about to compete in the Choir Boys Bicycle Handicap open to all those whose voices had not broken by the first Sunday in Epiphany – nervous, but full of the will to win.

The door opened as I was running through the high spots of the laughable story I planned to unleash when I got inside. A maid was standing there, and conceive my emotion when I recognized her as one who had held office under Aunt Dahlia
the
last time I had enjoyed the latter’s hospitality; the one with whom, the old sweats will recall, I had chewed the fat on the subject of the cat Augustus and his tendency to pass his days in sleep instead of bustling about and catching mice.

The sight of her friendly face was like a tonic. My morale, which had begun to sag a bit after Jeeves had left me, rose sharply, closing at nearly par. I felt that even if the fellow I was going to see kicked me downstairs, she would be there to show me out and tell me that these things are sent to try us, with the general idea of making us more spiritual.

‘Why, hullo!’ I said.

‘Good morning, sir.’

‘We meet again.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘You remember me?’

‘Oh yes, sir.’

‘And you have not forgotten Augustus?’

‘Oh no, sir.’

‘He’s still as lethargic as ever. He joined me at breakfast this morning. Just managed to keep awake while getting outside his portion of kipper, then fell into a dreamless sleep at the end of the bed with his head hanging down. So you have resigned your portfolio at Aunt Dahlia’s since we last met. Too bad. We shall all miss you. Do you like it here?’

‘Oh yes, sir.’

‘That’s the spirit. Well, getting down to business, I’ve come to see your boss on a matter of considerable importance. What sort of chap is he? Not too short-tempered? Not too apt to be cross with callers, I hope?’

‘It isn’t a gentleman, sir, it’s a lady. Mrs McCorkadale.’

This chipped quite a bit off the euphoria I was feeling. I had been relying on the story I had prepared to put me over with a bang, carrying me safely through the first awkward moments when the fellow you’ve called on without an invitation is staring at you as if wondering to what he owes the honour of this visit, and now it would have to remain untold. It was one I had heard from Catsmeat Potter-Pirbright at the Drones and it was essentially a
conte
whose spiritual home was the smoking-room of a London club or the men’s wash-room on an American train – in short, one by no means adapted to the ears of the gentler sex; especially a member of that sex who probably ran the local Watch Committee.