The Jeeves Omnibus - Vol 3 (43 page)

Not too bad, it seemed to me, considering that the material had had to be thrown together rather against time, and I was hoping for the bright smile and the cordial ‘Why, yes, to be sure, a capital idea’.
Instead
of which, she waggled her head in a slow, mournful sort of way, and a teardrop stood in her eye.

‘Oh, Bertie!’ she said.

I have always found it difficult to think of just the right come-back when people say ‘Oh, Bertie!’ to me. My Aunt Agatha is always doing it, and she has me stymied every time. I found myself stymied now. It is true that this ‘Oh, Bertie!’ of the Bassett’s differed in many respects from Aunt Agatha’s ‘Oh, Bertie!’ its tone being one of soupiness rather than asperity, but the effect was the same. I stood there at a loss.

‘Oh, Bertie!’ she said again. ‘Do you read Rosie M. Banks’s novels?’ she asked.

I was a bit surprised at her changing the subject like this, but equally relieved. A talk about current literature, I felt, might ease the strain. These booksy chats often do.

‘Not very frequently,’ I said. ‘They sell like hot cakes, Bingo tells me.’

‘You have not read
Mervyn Keene, Clubman
?’

‘No, I missed that. Good stuff?’

‘It is very, very beautiful.’

‘I must put it on my library list.’

‘You are sure you have not read it?’

‘Oh, quite. As a matter of fact, I’ve always steered rather clear of Mrs Bingo’s stuff. Why?’

‘It seemed such an extraordinary coincidence … Shall I tell you the story of Mervyn Keene?’

‘Do.’

She took time out to gulp a bit. Then she carried on in a low voice with a goodish amount of throb to it.

‘He was young and rich and handsome, an officer in the Coldstream Guards and the idol of all who knew him. Everybody envied him.’

‘I don’t wonder, the lucky stiff.’

‘But he was not really to be envied. There was a tragedy in his life. He loved Cynthia Grey, the most beautiful girl in London, but just as he was about to speak his love, he found that she was engaged to Sir Hector Mauleverer, the explorer.’

‘Dangerous devils, these explorers. You want to watch them like hawks. In these circs, of course, he would have refrained from speaking his love? Kept it under his hat, I suppose, what?’

‘Yes, he spoke no word of love. But he went on worshipping her, outwardly gay and cheerful, inwardly gnawed by a ceaseless pain. And then one night her brother Lionel, a wild young man who
had
unfortunately got into bad company, came to his rooms and told him that he had committed a very serious crime and was going to be arrested, and he asked Mervyn to save him by taking the blame himself. And, of course, Mervyn said he would.’

‘The silly ass! Why?’

‘For Cynthia’s sake. To save her brother from imprisonment and shame.’

‘But it meant going to chokey himself. I suppose he overlooked that?’

‘No. Mervyn fully realized what must happen. But he confessed to the crime and went to prison. When he came out, grey and broken, he found that Cynthia had married Sir Hector and he went out to the South Sea Islands and became a beachcomber. And time passed. And then one day Cynthia and her husband arrived at the island on their travels and stayed at Government House, and Mervyn saw her drive by, and she was just as beautiful as ever, and their eyes met, but she didn’t recognize him, because of course he had a beard and his face was changed because he had been living the pace that kills, trying to forget.’

I remembered a good one I had read somewhere about the pace that kills nowadays being the slow, casual walk across a busy street, but I felt that this was not the moment to spring it.

‘He found out that she was leaving next morning, and he had nothing to remember her by, so he broke into Government House in the night and took from her dressing table the rose she had been wearing in her hair. And Cynthia found him taking it, and, of course, she was very upset when she recognized him.’

‘Oh, she recognized him this time? He’d shaved, had he?’

‘No, he still wore his beard, but she knew him when he spoke her name, and there was a very powerful scene in which he told her how he had always loved her and had come to steal her rose, and she told him that her brother had died and confessed on his death-bed that it was he who had been guilty of the crime for which Mervyn had gone to prison. And then Sir Hector came in.’

‘Good situation. Strong.’

‘And, of course, he thought Mervyn was a burglar, and he shot him, and Mervyn died with the rose in his hand. And, of course, the sound of the shot roused the house, and the Governor came running in and said: “Is anything missing?” And Cynthia in a low, almost inaudible voice said: “Only a rose.” That is the story of Mervyn Keene, Clubman.’

Well, it was difficult, of course, to
know
quite what comment to make. I said ‘Oh, ah!’ but I felt at the time that it could have been improved on. The fact is, I was feeling a bit stunned. I had always known in a sort of vague, general way that Mrs Bingo wrote the world’s worst tripe – Bingo generally changes the subject nervously if anyone mentions the little woman’s output – but I had never supposed her capable of bilge like this.

But the Bassett speedily took my mind off literary criticism. She had resumed her saucerlike stare, and the teardrop in the eye was now more noticeable than ever.

‘Oh, Bertie,’ she said, and her voice, like Cynthia’s, was low and almost inaudible, ‘I ought to have given you my photograph long ago. I blame myself. But I thought it would be too painful for you, too sad a reminder of all that you had lost. I see now that I was wrong. You found the strain too great to bear. At all costs you had to have it. So you stole into the house, like Mervyn Keene, and took it.’

‘What!’

‘Yes, Bertie. There need be no pretences between you and me. And don’t think I am angry. I am touched, more deeply touched than I can say, and oh, so, so sorry. How sad life is!’

I was with her there.

‘You betcher,’ I said.

‘You saw my friend Hilda Gudgeon. There is another tragedy. Her whole happiness has been ruined by a wretched quarrel with the man she loves, a man called Harold Anstruther. They were playing in the Mixed Doubles in a tennis tournament not long ago and – according to her – I don’t understand tennis very well – he insisted on hogging the game, as she calls it. I think she means that when the ball came near her and she was going to strike it, he rushed across and struck it himself, and this annoyed her very much. She complained to him, and he was very rude and said she was a rabbit and had better leave everything to him, and she broke off the engagement directly the game was finished. And now she is broken-hearted.’

I must say she didn’t sound very broken-hearted. Just as the Bassett said these words, there came from without the uproar of someone singing, and I identified the voice as that of the solid school friend. She was rendering that old number ‘Give yourself a pat on the back’, and the general effect was of an exhilarated foghorn. The next moment, she came leaping into the room, and I have never seen anything more radiant. If she hadn’t had the white, woolly dog in her arms, I wouldn’t have recognized the sombre female of so short a while ago.

‘Hi, Madeline,’ she cried. ‘What do you think I found on the
breakfast
table? A grovelling letter from the boy friend, no less. He’s surrendered unconditionally. He says he must have been mad to call me a rabbit. He says he can never forgive himself, but can I forgive him. Well, I can answer that one. I’m going to forgive him the day after tomorrow. Not earlier, because we must have discipline.’

‘Oh, Hilda! How glad I am!’

‘I’m pretty pleased about it myself. Good old Harold! A king among men, but, of course, needs keeping in his place from time to time and has to be taught what’s what. But I mustn’t run on about Harold. What I came to tell you was that there’s a fellow outside in a car who says he wants to see you.’

‘To see me?’

‘So he says. Name of Pirbright.’

Madeline turned to me.

‘Why, it must be your friend Claude Pirbright, Bertie. I wonder what he wants. I’d better go and see.’ She threw a quick glance at the solid girl, and seeing that she had stepped through the french window, no doubt to give the gardener the devil about something, came to me and pressed my hand. ‘You must be brave, Bertie,’ she said in a low, roopy voice. ‘Some day another girl will come into your life and you will be happy. When we are both old and grey, we shall laugh together over all this … laugh, but I think with a tear behind the smile.’

She popped off, leaving me feeling sick. The solid girl, whom I had dimly heard telling the gardener he needn’t be afraid of breaking that spade by leaning on it, came back and immediately proceeded, in which I considered an offensively familiar manner, to give me a hearty slap on the back.

‘Well, Wooster, old bloke,’ she said.

‘Well, Gudgeon, old bird,’ I replied courteously.

‘Do you know, Wooster, I keep feeling there’s something familiar about your name? I must have heard Harold mention it. Do you know Harold Anstruther?’

I had recognized the name directly I heard Madeline Bassett utter it. Beefy Anstruther had been my partner at Rackets my last year at Oxford, when I had represented the establishment at that sport. I revealed this to the solid girl, and she slapped my back again.

‘I thought I wasn’t wrong. Harold speaks very highly of you, Wooster, old-timer, and I’ll tell you something. I have a lot of influence with Madeline, and I’ll exert it on your behalf. I’ll talk to her like a mother. Dash it all, we can’t have her marrying a pill like Gussie Fink-Nottle, when there’s a Rackets Blue on her waiting
list
. Courage, Wooster, old cock. Courage and patience. Come and have a bit of breakfast.’

‘Thanks awfully, no,’ I said, though I needed it sorely. ‘I must be getting along.’

‘Well, if you won’t, you won’t. But I will. I’m going to have the breakfast of a lifetime. I haven’t felt so roaring fit since I won the tennis singles at Roedean.’

I had braced myself for another slap on the back, but with a swift change of policy she prodded me in the ribs, depriving me of what little breath her frightful words had left inside me. At the thought of what might result from a girl of her dominating personality talking to Madeline Bassett like a mother, I had wilted where I stood. It was with what are called leaden steps that I passed through the french window and made my way to the road. I was anxious to intercept Catsmeat when he drove out, so that I might learn from him the result of his interview.

And, of course, when he did drive out, he was hareing along at such a pace that it was impossible to draw myself to his attention. He vanished over the skyline as if he had been competing in some event at Brooklands, leaving me standing.

In sombre mood, bowed down with dark forebodings, I went off to get a bit of breakfast and catch a train back to King’s Deverill.

THE BLOKES WHO
run the railway don’t make it easy for you to get from Wimbledon to King’s Deverill, feeling no doubt – and I suppose it’s a kindly thought – that that abode of thugs and ghouls is a place you’re better away from. You change twice before you get to Basingstoke and then change again and take the branch line. And once you’re on the branch line, it’s quicker to walk.

The first person I saw when I finally tottered out at journey’s end, feeling as if I had been glued to the cushioned seat since early boyhood and a bit surprised that I hadn’t put out tendrils like a Virginia creeper, was my cousin Thomas. He was buying motion-picture magazines at the bookstall.

‘Oh, hallo,’ I said. ‘So you got here all right?’

He eyed me coldly and said ‘Crumbs!’ a word of which he is far too fond. This Thos is one of those tough, hardboiled striplings, a sort of juvenile James Cagney with a touch of Edward G. Robinson. He has carroty hair and a cynical expression, and his manner is supercilious. You would think that anyone conscious of having a mother like my Aunt Agatha and knowing it could be proved against him, would be crushed and apologetic, but this is not the case. He swanks about the place as if he’d bought it, and in conversation with a cousin lacks tact and is apt to verge on the personal.

He became personal now, on the subject of my appearance, which I must confess was not spruce. Night travel in milk trains always tends to remove the gloss, and you can’t hobnob with beetles in bushes and remain dapper.

‘Crumbs!’ he said. ‘You look like something the cat brought in.’

You see what I mean? The wrong note. In no frame of mind to bandy words, I clouted the child moodily on the head and passed on. And as I emerged into the station yard, somebody yoo-hooed and I saw Corky sitting in her car.

‘Hallo, Bertie,’ she said. ‘Where did you spring from, moon of my delight?’ She looked about her in a wary and conspiratorial manner, as if she had been registering snakiness in a spy
film
. ‘Did you see what was in the station?’ she asked, lowering the voice.

‘I did.’

‘Jeeves delivered him as per memo last night. Uncle Sidney looked a little taken aback for a moment, and seemed as if he were on the point of saying some of the things he gave up saying when he took Orders, but everything has turned out for the best. He loves his game of chess, and it seems that Thomas is the undisputed champion of his school, brimming over with gambits and openings and things, so they get along fine. And I love him. What a sympathetic, sweet-natured boy he is, Bertie.’

I blinked.

‘You are speaking of my cousin Thomas?’

‘He’s so
loyal
. When I told him about the heel Dobbs arresting Sam Goldwyn, he simply boiled with generous indignation. He says he’s going to cosh him.’

‘To what him?’

‘It’s something people do to people in detective stories. You use a small but serviceable rubber bludgeon.’

‘He hasn’t got a small but serviceable rubber bludgeon.’

‘Yes, he has. He bought it in Seven Dials when he was staying at your flat. His original idea was to employ it on a boy called Stinker at Bramley-on-Sea, but it is now earmarked for Dobbs.’