The Jeeves Omnibus - Vol 3 (7 page)

‘She’d better have the Queen Elizabeth room. It’s the best we’ve got.’

‘Yes, m’lord. I will insert a wire screen in the flue to discourage intrusion by the bats that nest there.’

‘We can’t give her a bathroom, I’m afraid.’

‘I fear not, m’lord.’

‘Still, if she can make do with a shower, she can stand under the upper hall skylight.’

Jeeves pursed his lips.

‘If I might offer the suggestion, m’lord, it is not judicious to speak in that strain. Your lordship might forget yourself and let fall some such observation in the hearing of Mrs Spottsworth.’

Jill, standing at the french window and looking out with burning eyes, had turned and was listening, electrified. The generous wrath which had caused her to allude to her betrothed as a pig in human shape had vanished completely. It could not compete with this stupendous news. As far as Jill was concerned, the war was over.

She thoroughly concurred with Jeeves’s rebuke.

‘Yes, you poor fish,’ she said. ‘You mustn’t even think like that. Oh, Bill, isn’t it wonderful! If this comes off, you’ll have money enough to buy a farm. I’m sure we’d do well running a farm, me as a vet and you with all your expert farming knowledge.’

‘My what?’

Jeeves coughed.

‘I think Miss Wyvern is alluding to the fact that you have had such wide experience working for the Agricultural Board, m’lord.’

‘Oh, ah, yes. I see what you mean. Of course, yes, the Agricultural Board. Thank you, Jeeves.’

‘Not at all, m’lord.’

Jill developed her theme.

‘If you could sting this Mrs Spottsworth for something really big, we could start a prize herd. That pays like anything. I wonder how much you could get for the place.’

‘Not much, I’m afraid. It’s seen better days.’

‘What are you going to ask?’

‘Three thousand and five pounds two shillings and sixpence.’

‘What!’

Bill blinked.

‘Sorry. I was thinking of something else.’

‘But what put an odd sum like that into your head?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘You must know.’

‘I don’t.’

‘But you must have had some
reason
.’

‘The sum in question arose in the course of his lordship’s work in connection with his Agricultural Board duties this afternoon, miss,’ said Jeeves smoothly. ‘Your lordship may recall that I observed at the time that it was a peculiar figure.’

‘So you did, Jeeves, so you did.’

‘That was why your lordship said “Three thousand and five pounds two shillings and sixpence”.’

‘Yes, that was why I said “Three thousand and five pounds two shillings and sixpence”.’

‘These momentary mental aberrations are not uncommon, I believe. If I might suggest it, m’lord, I think it would be advisable to proceed to the yew alley without further delay. Time is of the essence.’

‘Of course, yes. They’re waiting for me, aren’t they? Are you coming, Jill?’

‘I can’t, darling. I have patients to attend to. I’ve got to go all the way over to Stover to see the Mainwarings’ Peke, though I don’t suppose there’s the slightest thing wrong with it. That dog is the worst hypochondriac.’

‘Well, you’re coming to dinner all right?’

‘Of course. I’m counting the minutes. My mouth’s watering already.’

Jill went out through the french window. Bill mopped his forehead. It had been a near thing.

‘You saved me there, Jeeves,’ he said. ‘But for your quick thinking all would have been discovered.’

‘I am happy to have been of service, m’lord.’

‘Another instant, and womanly intuition would have been doing its stuff, with results calculated to stagger humanity. You eat a lot of fish, don’t you, Jeeves?’

‘A good deal, m’lord.’

‘So Bertie Wooster has often told me. You sail into the sole and sardines like nobody’s business, he says, and he attributes your giant intellect to the effects of the phosphorus. A hundred times, he says, it has enabled you to snatch him from the soup at the eleventh hour. He raves about your great gifts.’

‘Mr Wooster has always been gratifyingly appreciative of my humble efforts on his behalf, m’lord.’

‘What beats me and has always beaten me is why he ever let you go. When you came to me that day and said you were at liberty, you could have bowled me over. The only explanation I could think of was that he was off his rocker … or more off his rocker than he usually is. Or did you have a row with him and hand in your portfolio?’

Jeeves seemed distressed at the suggestion.

‘Oh, no, m’lord. My relations with Mr Wooster continue uniformly cordial, but circumstances have compelled a temporary separation. Mr Wooster is attending a school which does not permit its student body to employ gentlemen’s personal gentlemen.’

‘A school?’

‘An institution designed to teach the aristocracy to fend for itself, m’lord. Mr Wooster, though his finances are still quite sound, feels that it is prudent to build for the future, in case the social revolution should set in with even greater severity. Mr Wooster … I can hardly mention this without some display of emotion … is actually learning to darn his own socks. The course he is taking includes boot-cleaning, sock-darning, bed-making and primary-grade cooking.’

‘Golly! Well, that’s certainly a novel experience for Bertie.’

‘Yes, m’lord. Mr Wooster doth suffer a sea change into something rich and strange. I quote the Bard of Stratford. Would your lordship care for another quick whisky and soda before joining Lady Carmoyle?’

‘No, we mustn’t waste a moment. As you were saying not long ago, time is of the … what, Jeeves?’

‘Essence, m’lord.’

‘Essence? You’re sure?’

‘Yes, m’lord.’

‘Well, if you say so, though I always thought an essence was a sort of scent. Right ho, then, let’s go.’

‘Very good, m’lord.’

IT WAS WITH
her mind in something of a whirl that Mrs Spottsworth had driven away from the door of the Goose and Gherkin. The encounter with Captain C.G. Biggar had stirred her quite a good deal.

Mrs Spottsworth was a woman who attached considerable importance to what others of less sensitivity would have dismissed carelessly as chance happenings or coincidences. She did not believe in chance. In her lexicon there was no such word as coincidence. These things, she held, were
meant
. This unforeseen return into her life of the White Hunter could be explained, she felt, only on the supposition that some pretty adroit staff work had been going on in the spirit world.

It had happened at such a particularly significant moment. Only two days previously A.B. Spottsworth, chatting with her on the ouija board, had remarked, after mentioning that he was very happy and eating lots of fruit, that it was high time she thought of getting married again. No sense, A.B. Spottsworth had said, in her living a lonely life with all that money in the bank. A woman needs a mate, he had asserted, adding that Cliff Bessemer, with whom he had exchanged a couple of words that morning in the vale of light, felt the same. ‘And they don’t come more level-headed than old Cliff Bessemer,’ said A.B. Spottsworth.

And when his widow had asked ‘But, Alexis, wouldn’t you and Clifton
mind
me marrying again?’ A.B. Spottsworth had replied in his bluff way, spelling the words out carefully, ‘Of course we wouldn’t, you dumb-bell. Go to it, kid.’

And right on top of that dramatic conversation who should pop up out of a trap but the man who had loved her with a strong silent passion from the first moment they had met. It was uncanny. One would have said that passing the veil made the late Messrs Bessemer and Spottsworth clairvoyant.

Inasmuch as Captain Biggar, as we have seen, had not spoken his love but had let concealment like a worm i’ the bud feed on his tomato-coloured cheek, it may seem strange that Mrs Spottsworth should have known anything about the way he felt. But a woman
can
always tell. When she sees a man choke up and look like an embarrassed beetroot every time he catches her eye over the eland steaks and lime juice, she soon forms an adequate diagnosis of his case.

The recurrence of these phenomena during those moments of farewell outside the Goose and Gherkin showed plainly, moreover, that the passage of time had done nothing to cool off the gallant captain. She had not failed to observe the pop-eyed stare in his keen blue eyes, the deepening of the hue of his vermilion face and the way his number eleven feet had shuffled from start to finish of the interview. If he did not still consider her the tree on which the fruit of his life hung, Rosalinda Spottsworth was vastly mistaken. She was a little surprised that nothing had emerged in the way of an impassioned declaration. But how could she know that a feller had his code?

Driving through the pleasant Southmoltonshire country, she found her thoughts dwelling lingeringly on Captain C.G. Biggar.

At their very first meeting in Kenya she had found something about him that attracted her, and two days later this mild liking had become a rather fervent admiration. A woman cannot help but respect a man capable of upping with his big-bored .505 Gibbs and blowing the stuffing out of a charging buffalo. And from respect to love is as short a step as that from Harrige’s Glass Fancy Goods and Chinaware department to the Ladies’ Underclothing. He seemed to her like someone out of Ernest Hemingway, and she had always had a weakness for those rough, tough devil-may-care Hemingway characters. Spiritual herself, she was attracted by roughness and toughness in the male. Clifton Bessemer had had those qualities. So had A.B. Spottsworth. What had first impressed her in Clifton Bessemer had been the way he had swatted a charging fly with a rolled-up evening paper at the studio party where they had met, and in the case of A.B. Spottsworth the spark had been lit when she heard him one afternoon in conversation with a Paris taxi driver who had expressed dissatisfaction with the amount of his fare.

As she passed through the great gates of Rowcester Abbey and made her way up the long drive, it was beginning to seem to her that she might do considerably worse than cultivate Captain Biggar. A woman needs a protector, and what better protector can she find than a man who thinks nothing of going into tall grass after a wounded lion? True, wounded lions do not enter largely into the ordinary married life, but it is nice for a wife to know that if one does happen to
come
along, she can leave it with every confidence to her husband to handle.

It would not, she felt, be a difficult matter to arrange the necessary preliminaries. A few kind words and a melting look or two ought to be quite sufficient to bring that strong, passionate nature to the boil. These men of the wilds respond readily to melting looks.

She was just trying one out in the mirror of her car when, as she rounded a bend in the drive, Rowcester Abbey suddenly burst upon her view, and for the moment Captain Biggar was forgotten. She could think of nothing but that she had found the house of her dreams. Its mellow walls aglow in the rays of the setting sun, its windows glittering like jewels, it seemed to her like some palace of Fairyland. The little place in Pasadena, the little place in Carmel, and the little places in New York, Florida, Maine and Oregon were well enough in their way, but this outdid them all. Houses like Rowcester Abbey always look their best from outside and at a certain distance.

She stopped the car and sat there, gazing raptly.

Rory and Monica, tired of waiting in the yew alley, had returned to the house and met Bill coming out. All three had gone back into the living room, where they were now discussing the prospects of a quick sale to this female Santa Claus from across the Atlantic. Bill, though feeling a little better after his whisky and soda, was still in a feverish state. His goggling eyes and twitching limbs would have interested a Harley Street physician, had one been present to observe them.

‘Is there a hope?’ he quavered, speaking rather like an invalid on a sickbed addressing his doctor.

‘I think so,’ said Monica.

‘I don’t,’ said Rory.

Monica quelled him with a glance.

‘The impression I got at that women’s lunch in New York,’ she said, ‘was that she was nibbling. I gave her quite a blast of propaganda and definitely softened her up. All that remains now is to administer the final shove. When she arrives, I’ll leave you alone together, so that you can exercise that well-known charm of yours. Give her the old personality.’

‘I will,’ said Bill fervently. ‘I’ll be like a turtle dove cooing to a female turtle dove. I’ll play on her as on a stringed instrument.’

‘Well, mind you do, because if the sale comes off, I’m expecting a commission.’

‘You shall have it, Moke, old thing. You shall be repaid a thousandfold. In due season there will present themselves at your
front
door elephants laden with gold and camels bearing precious stones and rare spices.’

‘How about apes, ivory and peacocks?’

‘They’ll be there.’

Rory, the practical, hard-headed businessman, frowned on this visionary stuff.

‘Well, will they?’ he said. ‘The point seems to me extremely moot. Even on the assumption that this woman is weak in the head I can’t see her paying a fortune for a place like Rowcester Abbey. To start with, all the farms are gone.’

‘That’s true,’ said Bill, damped. ‘And the park belongs to the local golf club. There’s only the house and garden.’

‘The garden, yes. And we know all about the garden, don’t we? I was saying to Moke only a short while ago that whereas in the summer months the river is at the bottom of the garden –’

‘Oh, be quiet,’ said Monica. ‘I don’t see why you shouldn’t get fifteen thousand pounds, Bill. Maybe even as much as twenty.’

Bill revived like a watered flower.

‘Do you really think so?’

‘Of course she doesn’t,’ said Rory. ‘She’s just trying to cheer you up, and very sisterly of her, too. I honour her for it. Under that forbidding exterior there lurks a tender heart. But twenty thousand quid for a house from which even Reclaimed Juvenile Delinquents recoil in horror? Absurd. The thing’s a relic of the past. A hundred and forty-seven rooms!’