The Jeeves Omnibus (69 page)

On the edge of the mob farthest away from me a gang of top-hatted chappies were starting an open-air missionary service; nearer at hand an atheist was letting himself go with a good deal of vim, though handicapped a bit by having no roof to his mouth; while in front of me there stood a little group of serious thinkers with a banner labelled ‘Heralds of the Red Dawn’; and as I came up, one of the heralds, a bearded egg in a slouch hat and a tweed suit, was slipping it into the Idle Rich with such breadth and vigour that I paused for a moment to get an earful. While I was standing there somebody spoke to me.

‘Mr Wooster, surely?’

Stout chappie. Couldn’t place him for a second. Then I got him. Bingo Little’s uncle, the one I had lunch with at the time when young Bingo was in love with that waitress at the Piccadilly bun-shop. No wonder I hadn’t recognized him at first. When I had seen him last he had been a rather sloppy old gentleman – coming down to lunch, I remember, in carpet slippers and a velvet smoking-jacket; whereas now dapper simply wasn’t the word. He absolutely gleamed
in
the sunlight in a silk hat, morning coat, lavender spats and spongebag trousers, as now worn. Dressy to a degree.

‘Oh, hallo!’ I said. ‘Going strong?’

‘I am in excellent health, I thank you. And you?’

‘In the pink. Just been over to America.’

‘Ah! Collecting local colour for one of your delightful romances?’

‘Eh?’ I had to think a bit before I got on to what he meant. ‘Oh, no,’ I said. ‘Just felt I needed a change. Seen anything of Bingo lately?’ I asked quickly, being desirous of heading the old thing off what you might call the literary side of my life.

‘Bingo?’

‘Your nephew.’

‘Oh, Richard? No, not very recently. Since my marriage a little coolness seems to have sprung up.’

‘Sorry to hear that. So you’ve married since I saw you, what? Mrs Little all right?’

‘My wife is happily robust. But – er –
not
Mrs Little. Since we last met a gracious Sovereign has been pleased to bestow on me a signal mark of his favour in the shape of – ah – a peerage. On the publication of the last Honours List I became Lord Bittlesham.’

‘By Jove! Really? I say, heartiest congratulations. That’s the stuff to give the troops, what? Lord Bittlesham?’ I said. ‘Why, you’re the owner of Ocean Breeze.’

‘Yes. Marriage has enlarged my horizon in many directions. My wife is interested in horse-racing, and I now maintain a small stable. I understand that Ocean Breeze is fancied, as I am told the expression is, for a race which will take place at the end of the month at Goodwood, the Duke of Richmond’s seat in Sussex.’

‘The Goodwood Cup. Rather! I’ve got my chemise on it for one.’

‘Indeed? Well, I trust the animal will justify your confidence. I know little of these matters myself, but my wife tells me that it is regarded in knowledgeable circles as what I believe is termed a snip.’

At this moment I suddenly noticed that the audience was gazing in our direction with a good deal of interest, and I saw that the bearded chappie was pointing at us.

‘Yes, look at them! Drink them in!’ he was yelling, his voice rising above the perpetual-motion fellow’s and beating the missionary service all to nothing. ‘There you see two typical members of the class which has down-trodden the poor for centuries. Idlers! Non-producers! Look at the tall thin one with the face like a motor-mascot. Has he ever done an honest day’s work in his life? No! A
prowler
, a trifler, and a blood-sucker! And I bet he still owes his tailor for those trousers!’

He seemed to me to be verging on the personal, and I didn’t think a lot of it. Old Bittlesham, on the other hand, was pleased and amused.

‘A great gift of expression these fellows have,’ he chuckled. ‘Very trenchant.’

‘And the fat one!’ proceeded the chappie. ‘Don’t miss him. Do you know who that is? That’s Lord Bittlesham! One of the worst. What has he ever done except eat four square meals a day? His god is his belly, and he sacrifices burnt-offerings to it. If you opened that man now you would find enough lunch to support ten working-class families for a week.’

‘You know, that’s rather well put,’ I said, but the old boy didn’t seem to see it. He had turned a brightish magenta and was bubbling like a kettle on the boil.

‘Come away, Mr Wooster,’ he said. ‘I am the last man to oppose the right of free speech, but I refuse to listen to this vulgar abuse any longer.’

We legged it with quiet dignity, the chappie pursuing us with his foul innuendoes to the last. Dashed embarrassing.

Next day I looked in at the club, and found young Bingo in the smoking-room.

‘Hallo, Bingo,’ I said, toddling over to his corner full of
bonhomie
, for I was glad to see the chump. ‘How’s the boy?’

‘Jogging along.’

‘I saw your uncle yesterday.’

Young Bingo unleashed a grin that split his face in half.

‘I know you did, you trifler. Well, sit down, old thing, and suck a bit of blood. How’s the prowling these days?’

‘Good Lord! You weren’t there!’

‘Yes, I was.’

‘I didn’t see you.’

‘Yes, you did. But perhaps you didn’t recognize me in the shrubbery.’

‘The shrubbery?’

‘The beard, my boy. Worth every penny I paid for it. Defies detection. Of course, it’s a nuisance having people shouting “Beaver!” at you all the time, but one’s got to put up with that.’

I goggled at him.

‘I don’t understand.’

‘It’s a long story. Have a martini or a small gore-and-soda, and I’ll tell you all about it. Before we start, give me your honest opinion. Isn’t she the most wonderful girl you ever saw in your puff?’

He had produced a photograph from somewhere, like a conjurer taking a rabbit out of a hat, and was waving it in front of me. It appeared to be a female of sorts, all eyes and teeth.

‘Oh, Great Scott!’ I said. ‘Don’t tell me you’re in love again.’

He seemed aggrieved.

‘What do you mean – again?’

‘Well, to my certain knowledge you’ve been in love with at least half a dozen girls since the spring, and it’s only July now. There was that waitress and Honoria Glossop and –’

‘Oh, tush! Not to say pish! Those girls? Mere passing fancies. This is the real thing.’

‘Where did you meet her?’

‘On top of a bus. Her name is Charlotte Corday Rowbotham.’

‘My God!’

‘It’s not her fault, poor child. Her father had her christened that because he’s all for the Revolution, and it seems that the original Charlotte Corday used to go about stabbing oppressors in their baths, which entitles her to consideration and respect. You must meet old Rowbotham, Bertie. A delightful chap. Wants to massacre the
bourgeosie
, sack Park Lane and disembowel the hereditary aristocracy. Well, nothing could be fairer than that, what? But about Charlotte. We were on top of the bus, and it started to rain. I offered her my umbrella, and we chatted of this and that. I fell in love and got her address, and a couple of days later I bought the beard and toddled round and met the family.’

‘But why the beard?’

‘Well, she had told me all about her father on the bus, and I saw that to get any footing at all in the home I should have to join these Red Dawn blighters; and naturally, if I was to make speeches in the park, where at any moment I might run into a dozen people I knew, something in the nature of a disguise was indicated. So I bought the beard, and, by Jove, old boy, I’ve become dashed attached to the thing. When I take it off to come in here, for instance, I feel absolutely nude. It’s done me a lot of good with old Rowbotham. He thinks I’m a Bolshevist of sorts who has to go about disguised because of the police. You really must meet old Rowbotham, Bertie. I tell you what, are you doing anything tomorrow afternoon?’

‘Nothing special. Why?’

‘Good! Then you can have us all to tea at your flat. I had promised to take the crowd to Lyons’ Popular Café after a meeting we’re holding down in Lambeth, but I can save money this way; and, believe me, laddie, nowadays, as far as I’m concerned, a penny saved is a penny earned. My uncle told you he’d got married?’

‘Yes. And he said there was a coolness between you.’

‘Coolness? I’m down to zero. Ever since he married he’s been launching out in every direction and economizing on
me
. I suppose that peerage cost the old devil the deuce of a sum. Even baronetcies have gone up frightfully nowadays, I’m told. And he’s started a racing-stable. By the way, put your last collar stud on Ocean Breeze for the Goodwood Cup. It’s a cert.’

‘I’m going to.’

‘It can’t lose. I mean to win enough on it to marry Charlotte with. You’re going to Goodwood, of course?’

‘Rather!’

‘So are we. We’re holding a meeting on Cup day just outside the paddock.’

‘But, I say, aren’t you taking frightful risks? Your uncle’s sure to be at Goodwood. Suppose he spots you? He’ll be fed to the gills if he finds out that you’re the fellow who ragged him in the park.’

‘How the deuce is he to find out? Use your intelligence, you prowling inhaler of red corpuscles. If he didn’t spot me yesterday, why should he spot me at Goodwood? Well, thanks for your cordial invitation for tomorrow, old thing. We shall be delighted to accept. Do us well, laddie, and blessings shall reward you. By the way, I may have misled you by using the word “tea”. None of your wafer slices of bread-and-butter. We’re good trenchermen, we of the Revolution. What we shall require will be something on the order of scrambled eggs, muffins, jam, ham, cake and sardines. Expect us at five sharp.’

‘But, I say, I’m not quite sure –’

‘Yes, you are. Silly ass, don’t you see that this is going to do you a bit of good when the Revolution breaks loose? When you see old Rowbotham sprinting up Piccadilly with a dripping knife in each hand, you’ll be jolly thankful to be able to remind him that he once ate your tea and shrimps. There will be four of us Charlotte, self, the old man, and Comrade Butt. I suppose he will insist on coming along.’

‘Who the devil’s Comrade Butt?’

‘Did you notice a fellow standing on my left in our little troupe yesterday? Small, shrivelled chap. Looks like a haddock with lung-trouble. That’s Butt. My rival, dash him. He’s sort of semi-engaged to Charlotte at the moment. Till I came along he was the blue-eyed boy. He’s got a voice like a foghorn, and old Rowbotham thinks a lot of him. But, hang it, if I can’t thoroughly encompass this Butt and cut him out and put him where he belongs among the discards – well, I’m not the man I was, that’s all. He may have a big voice, but he hasn’t my gift of expression. Thank heaven I was once cox of my college boat. Well, I must be pushing now. I say, you don’t know how I could raise fifty quid somehow, do you?’

‘Why don’t you work?’

‘Work?’ said young Bingo, surprised. ‘What, me? No, I shall have to think of some way. I must put at least fifty on Ocean Breeze. Well, see you tomorrow. God bless you, old sort, and don’t forget the muffins.’

I don’t know why, ever since I first knew him at school, I should have felt a rummy feeling of responsibility for young Bingo. I mean to say, he’s not my son (thank goodness) or my brother or anything like that. He’s got absolutely no claim on me at all, and yet a large-sized chunk of my existence seems to be spent in fussing over him like a bally old hen and hauling him out of the soup. I suppose it must be some rare beauty in my nature or something. At any rate, this latest affair of his worried me. He seemed to be doing his best to marry into a family of pronounced loonies, and how the deuce he thought he was going to support even a mentally afflicted wife on nothing a year beat me. Old Bittlesham was bound to knock off his allowance if he did anything of the sort and, with a fellow like young Bingo, if you knocked off his allowance, you might just as well hit him on the head with an axe and make a clean job of it.

‘Jeeves,’ I said, when I got home, ‘I’m worried.’

‘Sir?’

‘About Mr Little. I won’t tell you about it now, because he’s bringing some friends of his to tea tomorrow, and then you will be able to judge for yourself. I want you to observe closely, Jeeves, and form your decision.’

‘Very good, sir.’

‘And about the tea. Get in some muffins.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘And some jam, ham, cake, scrambled eggs, and five or six wagon-loads of sardines.’

‘Sardines, sir?’ said Jeeves, with a shudder.

‘Sardines.’

There was an awkward pause.

‘Don’t blame me, Jeeves,’ I said. ‘It isn’t my fault.’

‘No, sir.’

‘Well, that’s that.’

‘Yes, sir.’

I could see the man was brooding tensely.

I’ve found, as a general rule in life, that the things you think are going to be the scaliest nearly always turn out not so bad after all; but it wasn’t that way with Bingo’s tea-party. From the moment he invited himself I felt that the thing was going to be blue round the edges, and it was. And I think the most gruesome part of the whole affair was the fact that, for the first time since I’d known him, I saw Jeeves come very near to being rattled. I suppose there’s a chink in everyone’s armour, and young Bingo found Jeeves’s right at the drop of the flag when he breezed in with six inches or so of brown beard hanging on to his chin. I had forgotten to warn Jeeves about the beard, and it came on him absolutely out of a blue sky. I saw the man’s jaw drop, and he clutched at the table for support. I don’t blame him, mind you. Few people have ever looked fouler than young Bingo in the fungus. Jeeves paled a little; then the weakness passed and he was himself again. But I could see that he had been shaken.

Young Bingo was too busy introducing the mob to take much notice. They were a very C3 collection. Comrade Butt looked like one of the things that come out of dead trees after the rain; moth-eaten was the word I should have used to describe old Rowbotham; and as for Charlotte, she seemed to take me straight into another and a dreadful world. It wasn’t that she was exactly bad-looking. In fact, if she had knocked off starchy foods and done Swedish exercises for a bit, she might have been quite tolerable. But there was too much of her. Billowy curves. Well-nourished, perhaps, expresses it best. And, while she may have had a heart of gold, the thing you noticed about her first was that she had a tooth of gold. I know that young Bingo, when in form, could fall in love with practically anything of the other sex; but this time I couldn’t see any excuse for him at all.