The Jeeves Omnibus (336 page)

‘Yes? You hesitate, Jeeves, Mr Runkle is what?’

‘The expression I am trying to find eludes me, sir. It is one I have sometimes heard you use to indicate a deficiency of sweetness and light in some gentleman of your acquaintance. You have employed it of Mr Spode or, as I should say, Lord Sidcup and, in the days before your association with him took on its present cordiality, of Mr Glossop’s uncle, Sir Roderick. It is on the tip of my tongue.’

‘A stinker?’

No, he said, it wasn’t a stinker.

‘A tough baby?’

‘No.’

‘A twenty-minute egg?’

‘That was it, sir. Mr Runkle is a twenty-minute egg.’

‘But have you seen enough of him to judge? After all, you’ve only just met him.’

‘Yes, sir, that is true, but Bingley, on learning that he was a guest of Madam’s, told me a number of stories illustrative of his hardhearted and implacable character. Bingley was at one time in his employment.’

‘Good lord, he seems to have been employed by everyone.’

‘Yes, sir, he was inclined to flit. He never remained in one post for long.’

‘I don’t wonder.’

‘But his relationship with Mr Runkle was of more extended
duration.
He accompanied him to the United States of America some years ago and remained with him for several months.’

‘During which period he found him a twenty-minute egg?’

‘Precisely, sir. So I very much fear that Madam’s efforts will produce no satisfactory results. Would it be a large sum of money that she is hoping to persuade Mr Runkle to part with?’

‘Pretty substantial, I gather. You see, what Tuppy’s father invented were those Magic Midget things, and Runkle must have made a packet out of them. I suppose she aims at a fifty-fifty split.’

‘Then I am forced to the opinion that a hundred to one against is more the figure a level-headed turf accountant would place upon the likelihood of her achieving her objective.’

Not encouraging, you’ll agree. In fact, you might describe it as definitely damping. I would have called him a pessimist, only I couldn’t think of the word, and while I was trying to hit on something other than ‘Gloomy Gus’, which would scarcely have been a fitting way to address one of his dignity, Florence came in through the French window and he of course shimmered off. When our conversations are interrupted by the arrival of what you might call the quality, he always disappears like a family spectre vanishing at dawn.

Except at meals I hadn’t seen anything of Florence till now, she, so to speak, having taken the high road while I took the low road. What I mean to say is that she was always in Market Snodsbury, bustling about on behalf of the Conservative candidate to whom she was betrothed, while I, after that nerve-racking encounter with the widow of the late McCorkadale, had given up canvassing in favour of curling up with a good book. I had apologized to Ginger for this … is pusillanimity the word? … and he had taken it extraordinarily well, telling me it was perfectly all right and he wished he could do the same.

She was looking as beautiful as ever, if not more so, and at least ninety-six per cent of the members of the Drones Club would have asked nothing better than to be closeted with her like this. I, however, would willingly have avoided the tête-à-tête, for my trained senses told me that she was in one of her tempers, and when this happens the instinct of all but the hardiest is to climb a tree and pull it up after them. The overbearing dishpotness to which I alluded earlier and which is so marked a feature of her make-up was plainly to the fore. She said, speaking abruptly:

‘What are you doing in here on a lovely day like this, Bertie?’

I explained that I had been in conference with Aunt Dahlia, and she riposted that the conference was presumably over by now, Aunt D being conspicuous by her absence, so why wasn’t I out getting fresh air and sunshine.

‘You’re much too fond of frowsting indoors. That’s why you have that sallow look.’

‘I didn’t know I had a sallow look.’

‘Of course you have a sallow look. What else did you expect? You look like the underside of a dead fish.’

My worst fears seemed to be confirmed. I had anticipated that she would work off her choler on the first innocent bystander she met, and it was just my luck that this happened to be me. With bowed head I prepared to face the storm, and then to my surprise she changed the subject.

‘I’m looking for Harold,’ she said.

‘Oh, yes?’

‘Have you seen him.’

‘I don’t think I know him.’

‘Don’t be a fool. Harold Winship.’

‘Oh, Ginger,’ I said, enlightened. ‘No, he hasn’t swum into my ken. What do you want to see him about? Something important?’

‘It is important to me, and it ought to be to him. Unless he takes himself in hand, he is going to lose this election.’

‘What makes you think that?’

‘His behaviour at lunch today.’

‘Oh, did he take you to lunch? Where did you go? I had mine at a pub, and the garbage there had to be chewed to be believed. But perhaps you went to a decent hotel?’

‘It was the Chamber of Commerce luncheon at the Town Hall. A vitally important occasion, and he made the feeblest speech I have ever heard. A child with water on the brain could have done better. Even you could have done better.’

Well, I suppose placing me on a level of efficiency with a water-on-the-brained child was quite a stately compliment coming from Florence, so I didn’t go further into the matter, and she carried on, puffs of flame emerging from both nostrils.

‘Er, er, er!’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘He kept saying Er. Er, er, er. I could have thrown a coffee spoon at him.’

Here, of course, was my chance to work in the old gag about to err being human, but it didn’t seem to me the moment. Instead, I said:

‘He was probably nervous.’

‘That was his excuse. I told him he had no right to be nervous.’

‘Then you’ve seen him?’

‘I saw him.’

‘After the lunch?’

‘Immediately after the lunch.’

‘But you want to see him again?’

‘I do.’

‘I’ll go and look for him, shall I?’

‘Yes, and tell him to meet me in Mr Travers’s study. We shall not be interrupted there.’

‘He’s probably sitting in the summerhouse by the lake.’

‘Well, tell him to stop sitting and come to the study,’ she said, for all the world as if she had been Arnold Abney M.A. announcing that he would like to see Wooster after morning prayers. Quite took me back to the old days.

To get to the summerhouse you have to go across the lawn, the one Spode was toying with the idea of buttering me over, and the first thing I saw as I did so, apart from the birds, bees, butterflies, and what-not which put in their leisure hours there, was L. P. Runkle lying in the hammock wrapped in slumber, with Aunt Dahlia in a chair at his side. When she sighted me, she rose, headed in my direction and drew me away a yard or two, at the same time putting a finger to her lips.

‘He’s asleep,’ she said.

A snore from the hammock bore out the truth of this, and I said I could see he was and what a revolting spectacle he presented, and she told me for heaven’s sake not to bellow like that. Somewhat piqued at being accused of bellowing by a woman whose lightest whisper was like someone calling the cattle home across the sands of Dee, I said I wasn’t bellowing, and she said ‘Well, don’t.’

‘He may be in a nasty mood if he’s woken suddenly.’

It was an astute piece of reasoning, speaking well for her grasp of strategy and tactics, but with my quick intelligence I spotted a flaw in it to which I proceeded to call her attention.

‘On the other hand, if you don’t wake him, how can you plead Tuppy’s cause?’

‘I said suddenly, ass. It’ll be all right if I let Nature take its course.’

‘Yes, you may have a point there. Will Nature be long about it, do you think?’

‘How do I know?’

‘I was only wondering. You can’t sit there the rest of the afternoon.’

‘I can if necessary.’

‘Then I’ll leave you to it. I’ve got to go and look for Ginger. Have you seen him?’

‘He came by just now with his secretary on his way to the summerhouse. He told me he had some dictation to do. Why do you want him?’

‘I don’t particularly, though always glad of his company. Florence told me to find him. She has been giving him hell and is anxious to give him some more. Apparently—’

Here she interrupted me with a sharp ‘Hist!’, for L. P. Runkle had stirred in his sleep and it looked as if life was returning to the inert frame. But it proved to be a false alarm, and I resumed my remarks.

‘Apparently he failed to wow the customers at the Chamber of Commerce lunch, where she had been counting on him being a regular … who was the Greek chap?’

‘Bertie, if I wasn’t afraid of waking Runkle, I’d strike you with a blunt instrument, if I had a blunt instrument. What Greek chap?’

‘That’s what I’m asking you. He chewed pebbles.’

‘Do you mean Demosthenes?’

‘You may be right. I’ll take it up later with Jeeves. Florence was expecting Ginger to be a regular Demosthenes, if that was the name, which seems unlikely, though I was at school with a fellow called Gianbattista, and he let her down, and this has annoyed her. You know how she speaks her mind, when annoyed.’

‘She speaks her mind much too much,’ said the relative severely. ‘I wonder Ginger stands it.’

It so happened that I was in a position to solve the problem that was perplexing her. The facts governing the relationship of guys and dolls had long been an open book to me. I had given deep thought to the matter, and when I give deep thought to a matter perplexities are speedily ironed out.

‘He stands it, aged relative, because he loves her, and you wouldn’t be far wrong in saying that love conquers all. I know
what
you mean, of course. It surprises you that a fellow of his thews and sinews should curl up in a ball when she looks squiggle-eyed at him and receive her strictures, if that’s the word I want, with the meekness of a spaniel rebuked for bringing a decaying bone into the drawing-room. What you overlook is the fact that in the matter of finely chiselled profile, willowy figure and platinum-blonde hair she is well up among the top ten, and these things weigh with a man like Ginger. You and I, regarding Florence coolly, pencil her in as too bossy for human consumption, but he gets a different slant. It’s the old business of what Jeeves calls the psychology of the individual. Very possibly the seeds of rebellion start to seethe within him when she speaks her mind, but he catches sight of her sideways or gets a glimpse of her hair, assuming for purposes of argument that she isn’t wearing a hat, or notices once again that she has as many curves as a scenic railway, and he feels that it’s worth putting up with a spot of mind-speaking in order to make her his own. His love, you see, is not wholly spiritual. There’s a bit of the carnal mixed up in it.’

I would have spoken further, for the subject was one that always calls out the best in me, but at this point the old ancestor, who had been fidgeting for some time, asked me to go and drown myself in the lake. I buzzed off, accordingly, and she returned to her chair beside the hammock, brooding over L. P. Runkle like a mother over her sleeping child.

I don’t suppose she had observed it, for aunts seldom give much attention to the play of expression on the faces of their nephews, but all through these exchanges I had been looking grave, making it pretty obvious that there was something on my mind. I was thinking of what Jeeves had said about the hundred to one which a level-headed bookie would wager against her chance of extracting money from a man so liberally equipped with one-way pockets as L. P. Runkle, and it pained me deeply to picture her dismay and disappointment when, waking from his slumbers, he refused to disgorge. It would be a blow calculated to take all the stuffing out of her, she having been so convinced that she was on a sure thing.

I was also, of course, greatly concerned about Ginger. Having been engaged to Florence myself, I knew what she could do in the way of ticking off the errant male, and the symptoms seemed to point to the probability that on the present occasion she would eclipse all previous performances. I had not failed to
interpret
the significance of that dark frown, that bitten lip and those flashing eyes, nor the way the willowy figure had quivered, indicating, unless she had caught a chill, that she was as sore as a sunburned neck. I marvelled at the depths to which my old friend must have sunk as an orator in order to get such stark emotions under way, and I intended – delicately, of course – to question him about this.

I had, however, no opportunity to do so, for on entering the summerhouse the first thing I saw was him and Magnolia Glendennon locked in an embrace so close that it seemed to me that only powerful machinery could unglue them.

13

IN TAKING THIS
view, however, I was in error, for scarcely had I uttered the first yip of astonishment when the Glendennon popsy, echoing it with a yip of her own such as might have proceeded from a nymph surprised while bathing, disentangled herself and came whizzing past me, disappearing into the great world outside at a speed which put her in the old ancestor’s class as a sprinter on the flat. It was as though she had said ‘Oh for the wings of a dove’ and had got them.

I, meanwhile, stood rooted to the s, the mouth slightly ajar and the eyes bulging to their fullest extent. What’s that word beginning with dis? Disembodied? No, not disembodied. Distemper? No, not distemper. Disconcerted, that’s the one. I was disconcerted. I should imagine that if you happened to wander by accident into the steam room of a Turkish bath on Ladies’ Night, you would have emotions very similar to those I was experiencing now.

Ginger, too, seemed not altogether at his ease. Indeed, I would describe him as definitely taken aback. He breathed heavily, as if suffering from asthma; the eye with which he regarded me contained practically none of the chumminess you would expect to see in the eye of an old friend; and his voice, when he spoke, resembled that of an annoyed cinnamon bear. Throaty, if you know what I mean, and on the peevish side. His opening words consisted of a well-phrased critique of my tactlessness in selecting that particular moment for entering the summerhouse. He wished, he said, that I wouldn’t creep about like a ruddy detective. Had I, he asked, got my magnifying glass with me and did I propose to go around on all fours, picking up small objects and putting them away carefully in an envelope? What, he enquired, was I doing here, anyway?