The Jeeves Omnibus (49 page)

A sort of dull, bruised feeling weighed me down as I mused on this latest manifestation of Harold Pinker’s goofiness, as if a strong hand had whanged me over the cupola with a blackjack. There was such a sort of hideous ingenuity in the way he thought up new methods of inviting ruin.

‘He would!’

‘What do you mean, he would?’

‘Well, he did, didn’t he?’

‘That’s not the same as saying he would – in a beastly, sneering, supercilious tone, as if you were so frightfully hot yourself. I can’t understand you, Bertie – the way you’re always criticizing poor Harold. I thought you were so fond of him.’

‘I love him like a b. But that doesn’t alter my opinion that of all the pumpkin-headed foozlers who ever preached about Hivites and Jebusites, he is the foremost.’

‘He isn’t half as pumpkin-headed as you.’

‘He is, at a conservative estimate, about twenty-seven times as pumpkin-headed as me. He begins where I leave off. It may be a strong thing to say, but he’s more pumpkin-headed than Gussie.’

With a visible effort, she swallowed the rising choler.

‘Well, never mind about that. The point is that Eustace Oates is on my trail, and I’ve got to look slippy and find a better safe-deposit vault for that helmet than my chest of drawers. Before I know where I am, the Ogpu will be searching my room. Where would be a good place, do you think?’

I dismissed the thing wearily.

‘Oh, dash it, use your own judgement. To return to the main issue, where is that notebook?’

‘Oh, Bertie, you’re a perfect bore about that notebook. Can’t you talk of anything else?’

‘No, I can’t. Where is it?’

‘You’re going to laugh when I tell you.’

I gave her an austere look.

‘It is possible that I may some day laugh again – when I have got well away from this house of terror, but there is a fat chance of my doing so at this early date. Where is that book?’

‘Well, if you really must know, I hid it in the cow-creamer.’

Everyone, I imagine, has read stories in which things turned black and swam before people. As I heard these words, Stiffy turned black and swam before me. It was as if I had been looking at a flickering negress.

‘You – what?’

‘I hid it in the cow-creamer.’

‘What on earth did you do that for?’

‘Oh, I thought I would.’

‘But how am I to get it?’

A slight smile curved the young pimple’s mobile lips.

‘Oh, dash it, use your own judgement,’ she said. ‘Well, see you soon, Bertie.’

She biffed off, and I leaned limply against the banisters, trying to rally from this frightful wallop. But the world still flickered, and a few moments later I became aware that I was being addressed by a flickering butler.

‘Excuse me, sir. Miss Madeline desired me to say that she would be glad if you could spare her a moment.’

I gazed at the man dully, like someone in a prison cell when the jailer has stepped in at dawn to notify him that the firing squad is ready. I knew what this meant, of course. I had recognized this butler’s voice for what it was – the voice of doom. There could be only one thing that Madeline Bassett would be glad if I could spare her a moment about.

‘Oh, did she?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Where is Miss Bassett?’

‘In the drawing-room, sir.’

‘Right ho.’

I braced myself with the old Wooster grit. Up came the chin, back went the shoulders.

‘Lead on,’ I said to the butler, and the butler led on.

THE SOUND OF
soft and wistful music percolating through the drawing-room door as I approached did nothing to brighten the general outlook: and when I went in and saw Madeline Bassett seated at the piano, drooping on her stem a goodish deal, the sight nearly caused me to turn and leg it. However, I fought down the impulse and started things off with a tentative ‘What ho.’

The observation elicited no immediate response. She had risen, and for perhaps half a minute stood staring at me in a sad sort of way, like the Mona Lisa on one of the mornings when the sorrows of the world had been coming over the plate a bit too fast for her. Finally, just as I was thinking I had better try to fill in with something about the weather, she spoke.

‘Bertie –’

It was, however, only a flash in the pan. She blew a fuse, and silence supervened again.

‘Bertie –’

No good. Another wash-out.

I was beginning to feel the strain a bit. We had had one of these deaf-mutes-getting-together sessions before, at Brinkley Court, in the summer, but on that occasion I had been able to ease things along by working in a spot of stage business during the awkward gaps in the conversation. Our previous chat as you may or possibly may not recall, had taken place in the Brinkley dining-room in the presence of a cold collation, and it had helped a lot being in a position to bound forward at intervals with a curried egg or a cheese straw. In the absence of these foodstuffs, we were thrown back a good deal on straight staring, and this always tends to embarrass.

Her lips parted. I saw that something was coming to the surface. A couple of gulps, and she was off to a good start.

‘Bertie, I wanted to see you … I asked you to come … because I wanted to say … I wanted to tell you … Bertie, my engagement to Augustus is at an end.’

‘Yes.’

‘You knew?’

‘Oh, rather. He told me.’

‘Then you know why I asked you to come here. I wanted to say –’

‘Yes.’

‘That I’m willing –’

‘Yes.’

‘To make you happy.’

She appeared to be held up for a moment by a slight return of the old tonsil trouble, but after another brace of gulps she got it out.

‘I will be your wife, Bertie.’

I suppose that after this most chaps would have thought it scarcely worthwhile to struggle against the inev., but I had a dash at it. With such vital issues at stake, one would have felt a chump if one had left any stone unturned.

‘Awfully decent of you,’ I said civilly. ‘Deeply sensible of the honour, and what not. But have you thought? Have you reflected? Don’t you feel you’re being a bit rough on poor old Gussie?’

‘What! After what happened this evening?’

‘Ah, I wanted to talk to you about that. I always think, don’t you, that it is as well on these occasions, before doing anything drastic, to have a few words with a seasoned man of the world and get the real low-down. You wouldn’t like later on to have to start wringing your hands and saying “Oh, if I had only known!” In my opinion, the whole thing should be re-examined with a view to threshing out. If you care to know what I think, you’re wronging Gussie.’

‘Wronging him? When I saw him with my own eyes –’

‘Ah, but you haven’t got the right angle. Let me explain.’

‘There can be no explanation. We will not talk about it any more, Bertie. I have blotted Augustus from my life. Until tonight I saw him only through the golden mist of love, and thought him the perfect man. This evening he revealed himself as what he really is – a satyr.’

‘But that’s just what I’m driving at. That’s just where you’re making your bloomer. You see –’

‘We will not talk about it any more.’

‘But –’

‘Please!’

‘Oh, right ho.’

I tuned out. You can’t make any headway with that
tout comprendre, c’est tout pardonner
stuff if the girl won’t listen.

She turned the bean away, no doubt to hide a silent tear, and there ensued a brief interval during which she swabbed the eyes with a pocket handkerchief and I, averting my gaze, dipped the beak into a jar of
pot-pourri
which stood on the piano.

Presently, she took the air again.

‘It is useless, Bertie. I know, of course, why you are speaking like this. It is that sweet, generous nature of yours. There are no lengths to which you will not go to help a friend, even though it may mean the wrecking of your own happiness. But there is nothing you can say that will change me. I have finished with Augustus. From tonight he will be to me merely a memory – a memory that will grow fainter and fainter through the years as you and I draw ever closer together. You will help me to forget. With you beside me, I shall be able in time to exorcize Augustus’s spell … And now I suppose I had better go and tell Daddy.’

I started. I could still see Pop Bassett’s face when he had thought that he was going to draw me for a nephew. It would be a bit thick, I felt, while he was still quivering to the roots of the soul at the recollection of that hair’s-breadth escape, to tell him that I was about to become his son-in-law. I was not fond of Pop Bassett, but one has one’s humane instincts.

‘Oh, my aunt!’ I said. ‘Don’t do that!’

‘But I must. He will have to know that I am to be your wife. He is expecting me to marry Augustus three weeks from tomorrow.’

I chewed this over. I saw what she meant, of course. You’ve got to keep a father posted about these things. You can’t just let it all slide and have the poor old egg rolling up to the church in a topper and a buttonhole, to find that the wedding is off and nobody bothered to mention it to him.

‘Well, don’t tell him tonight,’ I urged. ‘Let him simmer a bit. He’s just had a pretty testing shock.’

‘A shock?’

‘Yes. He’s not quite himself.’

A concerned look came into her eyes, causing them to bulge a trifle.

‘So I was right. I thought he was not himself, when I met him coming out of the library just now. He was wiping his forehead and making odd little gasping noises. And when I asked him if anything was the matter, he said that we all had our cross to bear in this world, but that he supposed he ought not to complain, because things were not so bad as they might have been. I couldn’t think
what
he meant. He then said he was going to have a warm bath and take three aspirins and go to bed. What was it? What had happened?’

I saw that to reveal the full story would be to complicate an already fairly well complicated situation. I touched, accordingly, on only one aspect of it.

‘Stiffy had just told him she wanted to marry the curate.’

‘Stephanie? The curate? Mr Pinker?’

‘That’s right. Old Stinker Pinker. And it churned him up a good deal. He appears to be a bit allergic to curates.’

She was breathing emotionally, like the dog Bartholomew just after he had finished eating the candle.

‘But … But …’

‘Yes?’

‘But does Stephanie love Mr Pinker?’

‘Oh, rather. No question about that.’

‘But then –’

I saw what was in her mind, and nipped in promptly.

‘Then there can’t be anything between her and Gussie, you were going to say? Exactly. This proves it, doesn’t it? That’s the very point I’ve been trying to work the conversation round to from the start.’

‘But he –’

‘Yes, I know he did. But his motives in doing so were as pure as the driven snow. Purer, if anything. I’ll tell you all about it, and I am prepared to give you a hundred to eight that when I have finished you will admit that he was more to be pitied than censured.’

Give Bertram Wooster a good, clear story to unfold, and he can narrate it well. Starting at the beginning with Gussie’s aghastness at the prospect of having to make a speech at the wedding breakfast, I took her step by step through the subsequent developments, and I may say that I was as limpid as dammit. By the time I had reached the final chapter, I had her a bit squiggle-eyed but definitely wavering on the edge of conviction.

‘And you say Stephanie has hidden this notebook in Daddy’s cow-creamer?’

‘Plumb spang in the cow-creamer.’

‘But I never heard such an extraordinary story in my life.’

‘Bizarre, yes, but quite capable of being swallowed, don’t you think? What you have got to take into consideration is the psychology of the individual. You may say that you wouldn’t have a psychology like Stiffy’s if you were paid for it, but it’s hers all right.’

‘Are you sure you are not making all this up, Bertie?’

‘Why on earth?’

‘I know your altruistic nature so well.’

‘Oh, I see what you mean. No, rather not. This is the straight official stuff. Don’t you believe it?’

‘I shall, if I find the notebook where you say Stephanie put it. I think I had better go and look.’

‘I would.’

‘I will.’

‘Fine.’

She hurried out, and I sat down at the piano and began to play ‘Happy Days are Here Again’ with one finger. It was the only method of self-expression that seemed to present itself. I would have preferred to get outside a curried egg or two, for the strain had left me weak, but, as I have said, there were no curried eggs present.

I was profoundly braced. I felt like some Marathon runner who, after sweating himself to the bone for hours, at length breasts the tape. The only thing that kept my bracedness from being absolutely unmixed was the lurking thought that in this ill-omened house there was always the chance of something unforeseen suddenly popping up to mar the happy ending. I somehow couldn’t see Totleigh Towers throwing in the towel quite so readily as it appeared to be doing. It must, I felt, have something up its sleeve.

Nor was I wrong. When Madeline Bassett returned a few minutes later, there was no notebook in her hand. She reported total inability to discover so much as a trace of a notebook in the spot indicated. And, I gathered from her remarks, she had ceased entirely to be a believer in that notebook’s existence.

I don’t know if you have ever had a bucket of cold water right in the mazzard. I received one once in my boyhood through the agency of a groom with whom I had had some difference of opinion. That same feeling of being knocked endways came over me now.

I was at a loss and nonplussed. As Constable Oates had said, the first move the knowledgeable bloke makes when rummy goings-on are in progress is to try to spot the motive, and what Stiffy’s motive could be for saying the notebook was in the cow-creamer, when it wasn’t, I was unable to fathom. With a firm hand this girl had pulled my leg, but why – that was the point that baffled – why had she pulled my leg?

I did my best.

‘Are you sure you really looked?’