The Jeeves Omnibus (351 page)

‘Exactly what I thought. What unidentified object we shall presumably learn in God’s good time.’

‘No doubt, sir.’

‘We must wait patiently till all is revealed.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘In the meantime, pigeonholing that for the moment, did Miss Cook and Mr Porter have their conference all right?’

‘Yes, sir, they conversed for some time.’

‘In low, throbbing voices?’

‘No, sir, the voices of both lady and gentleman became noticeably raised.’

‘Odd. I thought lovers generally whispered.’

‘Not when an argument is in progress, sir.’

‘Good Lord. Did they have an argument?’

‘A somewhat acrimonious one, sir, plainly audible in the kitchen, where I was reading the volume of Spinoza which you so kindly gave me for Christmas. The door happened to be ajar.’

‘So you were an ear-witness?’

‘Throughout, sir.’

‘Tell me all, Jeeves.’

‘Very good, sir. I must begin by explaining that Mr Cook is trustee for a sum of money left to Mr Porter by his late uncle, who appears to have been a partner of Mr Cook in various commercial enterprises.’

‘Yes, I know about that. Porter told me.’

‘Until Mr Cook releases this money Mr Porter is in no position to marry. I gathered that his present occupation is not generously paid.’

‘He’s an insurance salesman. Didn’t I tell you that I had taken out an accident policy with him?’

‘Not that I recall, sir.’

‘And a life policy as well, both for sums beyond the dreams of avarice. He talked me into it. But I mustn’t interrupt you. Go on telling me all.’

‘Very good, sir. Miss Cook was urging Mr Porter to demand an interview with her father.’

‘In order to make him cough up?’

‘Precisely, sir. “Be firm”, I heard her say. “Throw your weight about. Look him in the eye and thump the table.”’

‘She specified that?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘To which he replied?’

‘That any time he started thumping tables in the presence of Mr Cook you could certify him as mentally unbalanced and ship him off to the nearest home for the insane – or loony-bin, as he phrased it.’

‘Strange.’

‘Sir?’

‘I wouldn’t have thought Porter would have shown such what-is-it.’

‘Would pusillanimity be the word for which you are groping, sir?’

‘Quite possibly. I know it begins with pu. I said it was strange because I hadn’t supposed these knights in shining armour were afraid of anything.’

‘Apparently they make an exception in the case of Mr Cook. I gathered from your account of your visit to Eggesford Court that he is a gentleman of somewhat formidable personality.’

‘You gathered right. Ever hear of Captain Bligh of the Bounty?’

‘Yes, sir. I read the book.’

‘I saw the movie. Ever hear of Jack the Ripper?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Put them together and what have you got? Cook. It’s that hunting crop of his chiefly. You can face a man with fortitude if he has simply got the disposition of a dyspeptic rattlesnake and confines himself to coarse abuse, but put a hunting crop in his hand and that spells trouble. It was a miracle that I escaped from Eggesford Court with my trouser seat unscathed. But go on, Jeeves. What happened then?’

‘May I marshal my thoughts, sir?’

‘Certainly. Marshal them all you want.’

‘Thank you, sir. One aims at coherence.’

Marshalling his thoughts took between twenty and thirty seconds. At the end of that period he resumed his blow-by-blow report of the dust-up between Vanessa Cook and O. J. Porter, which was beginning to look like the biggest thing that had happened since Gene Tunney and Jack Dempsey had their dispute at Chicago.

‘It was almost immediately after Mr Porter’s refusal to go to Mr Cook and thump tables that Miss Cook introduced the cat into the conversation.’

‘Cat? What cat?’

‘The one you met at Eggesford Court, with which the horse Potato Chip formed such a durable friendship. Miss Cook was urging Mr Porter to purloin it.’

‘Golly!’

‘Yes, sir. The female of the species is more deadly than the male.’

Neatly put, I thought.

‘Your own?’ I said.

‘No, sir. A quotation.’

‘Well, carry on,’ I said, thinking what a lot of good things Shakespeare had said in his time. Female of species deadlier than male. You had only to think of my Aunt Agatha and spouse to realize the truth of this. ‘I get the idea, Jeeves. Porter, in possession of the cat, would have a bargaining point with Cook when it came to discussing trust funds.’

‘Precisely, sir.
Rem acu tetigisti
.’

‘So I take it that he is now at Eggesford Court putting the bite on old Captain Bligh.’

‘No, sir. His refusal to do as Miss Cook asked was unequivocal. “Not in a million years” was the expression he used.’

‘Not a very cooperative bloke, this O. J. Porter.’

‘No, sir.’

‘A bit like Balaam’s ass,’ I said, referring to one of the dramatis personae who had figured in the examination paper the time I won the Scripture Knowledge prize at my private school. ‘If you recall, it too dug in its feet and refused to play ball.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘That must have made Miss Cook as sore as a sunburned neck.’

‘I did gather from her remarks that she was displeased. She
accused
Mr Porter of being a lily-livered poltroon, and said that she never wished to speak to him again or hear from him by letter, telegram or carrier pigeon.’

‘Pretty final.’

‘Yes, sir.’

I didn’t actually heave a sigh, but I sort of half-heaved one.

To a man of sensibility there is always something sort of sad about young love coming a stinker on the rocks. Myself, I couldn’t imagine anyone wanting to marry Orlo Porter and it would have jarred me to the soles of my socks if I had had to marry Vanessa Cook, but they had unquestionably been all for teaming up, and it seemed a shame that harsh words had come between them and the altar rails.

However, there was this to be said in favour of the rift, that it would do Vanessa all the good in the world to find that she had come up against someone she couldn’t say ‘Go’ to and he goeth, as the fellow said. I mentioned this to Jeeves, and he agreed that there was that aspect to the matter.

‘Show her that she isn’t Cleopatra or somebody.’

‘Very true, sir.’

I would gladly have continued our conversation, but I knew he must be wanting to get back to his Spinoza. No doubt I had interrupted him just as Spinoza was on the point of solving the mystery of the headless body on the library floor.

‘Right ho, Jeeves,’ I said. ‘That’ll be all for the moment.’

‘Thank you, sir.’

‘If any solution of that “Has he brought it yet?” thing occurs to you, send me an inter-office memo.’

I spoke lightly, but I wasn’t feeling so dashed light. Those cryptic words of Angelica Briscoe had shaken me. They seemed to suggest that things were going on behind my back which weren’t likely to do me any good. I had suffered so much in the past from girls of Angelica’s age starting something – Stiffy Byng is a name that springs to the mind – that I have become wary and suspicious, like a fox that had had the Pytchley after it for years.

By speaking in riddles, as the expression is, A. Briscoe had given me a mystery to chew on; and while mysteries are fine in books – I am never happier than when curled up with the latest Agatha Christie – you don’t want them in your private life, for that’s how you get headaches.

I was beginning to get one now, when my mind was taken
off
the throbbing which had started. The front door was open, and through it came Vanessa Cook.

She bore traces of the recent set-to. The cheeks were flushed, the eyes glittering, and looking at the teeth one was left in no doubt that they had been well gnashed in the not too distant past. Her whole demeanour was that of a girl whose emotional nature had been stirred up as if a cyclone had hit it.

‘Bertie,’ she said.

‘Hullo?’ I said.

‘Bertie,’ she said, ‘I will be your wife.’

10

YOU WOULD HAVE
expected this to have drawn some comment from me such as ‘Oh, my God!’ or ‘You’ll be my
what
?’, but I remained
sotto voce
and the silent tomb, my eyes bulging like those of the fellows I’ve heard Jeeves mention, who looked at each other with a wild surmise, silent upon a peak in Darien.

The thing had come on me as such a complete surprise. Her rejection of my addresses at the time when I proposed to her had been so definite that it had seemed to me that all danger from that quarter had passed and that from now on we wouldn’t even be just good friends. Certainly she had given no indication that she would not prefer to be dead in a ditch rather than married to me. And now this. Is any man safe, one asked oneself. No wonder words failed me, as the expression is.

She, on the other hand, became chatty. Getting the thing off her chest seemed to have done her good. The glitter of her eyes was practically switched off, and she was not clenching her teeth any more. I don’t say that even now I would have cared to meet her down a dark alley, but there was a distinct general improvement.

‘We shall have quite a quiet wedding,’ she said. ‘Just a few people I know in London. And it may have to be even quieter than that. It all depends on Father. Your standing with him is roughly what that of a Public Enemy Number One would be at the annual Policeman’s Ball. What you did to him I don’t know, but I have never seen him a brighter mauve than when your name came up at the luncheon table. If he persists in this attitude, we shall have to elope. That will be perfectly all right with me. I suppose many people would say I was being rash, but I am prepared to take the chance. I know very little of you, true, but anyone the mention of whose name can make Father swallow his lunch the wrong way cannot be wholly bad.’

At last managing to free my tongue from the uvula with which it had become entangled, I found speech, as I dare say those Darien fellows did eventually.

‘But I don’t understand!’

‘What don’t you understand?’

‘I thought you were going to marry Orlo Porter.’

She uttered a sound rather like an elephant taking its foot out of a mud hole in a Burmese teak forest. The name appeared to have touched an exposed nerve.

‘You did, did you? You were mistaken. Would any girl with an ounce of sense marry a man who refuses to do the least little thing she asks him because he is afraid of her father? I shall always be glad to see Orlo Porter fall downstairs and break his neck. Nothing would give me greater pleasure than to read his name in
The Times
obituary column. But marry him? What an idea! No, I am quite content with you, Bertie. By the way, I do dislike that name Bertie. I think I shall call you Harold. Yes, I am perfectly satisfied with you. You have many faults, of course. I shall be pointing some of them out when I am at leisure. For one thing,’ she said, not waiting till she was at leisure, ‘you smoke too much. You must give that up when we are married. Smoking is just a habit. Tolstoy,’ she said, mentioning someone I had not met, ‘says that just as much pleasure can be got from twirling the fingers.’

My impulse was to tell her Tolstoy was off his onion, but I choked down the heated words. For all I knew, the man might be a bosom pal of hers and she might resent criticism of him, however justified. And one knew what happened to people, policemen for instance, whose criticism she resented.

‘And that silly laugh of yours, you must correct that. If you are amused, a quiet smile is ample. Lord Chesterfield said that since he had had the full use of his reason nobody had ever heard him laugh. I don’t suppose you have read Lord Chesterfield’s
Letters To His Son
?’

… Well, of course I hadn’t. Bertram Wooster does not read other people’s letters. If I were employed in the post office, I wouldn’t even read the postcards.

‘I will draft out a whole course of reading for you.’

She would probably have gone on to name a few of the authors she had in mind, but at this moment Angelica Briscoe came bursting in.

‘Has he brought it yet?’ she yipped.

Then she saw Vanessa, added the word ‘Golly’, and disappeared like an eel into mud. Vanessa followed her with an indulgent eye.

‘Eccentric child,’ she said.

I agreed that Angelica Briscoe moved in a mysterious way her wonders to perform, and shortly after Vanessa went off, leaving me to totter to a chair and bury my face in my hands.

I was doing this, and very natural, too, considering that I had just become engaged to a girl who was going to try to make me stop smoking, when from outside the front door there came the unmistakable sound of an aunt tripping over a door mat. The next moment, my late father’s sister Dahlia staggered in, pirouetted awhile, cursed a bit, recovered her equilibrium and said:

‘Has he brought it yet?’

11

I AM NOT,
I think, an irascible man, particularly in my dealings with the gentler sex, but when every ruddy female you meet bellows ‘Has he brought it yet?’ at you, it does something to your aplomb. I gave her a look which I suppose no nephew should have given an aunt, and it was with no little asperity that I said:

‘If some of you girls would stop talking as if you were characters in
By Order Of The Czar
, the world would be a better place. Brought what?’

‘The cat, of course, you poor dumb-bell,’ she responded in the breezy manner which had made her the popular toast of both the Quorn and the Pytchley fox-hunting organizations. ‘Cook’s cat. I’m kidnapping it. Or, rather, my agent is acting for me. I told him to bring it here.’

I was reft, as they say, of speech. If there is one thing that affects a nephew’s vocal cords, it is the discovery that a loved aunt is all foggy about the difference between right and wrong. Experience over the years ought to have taught me that where this aunt was concerned anything went and the sky was the limit, but nevertheless I was … I know there’s a word that just describes it … Ah, yes, I thought I’d get it … I was dumb-founded.