The Jeeves Omnibus - Vol 3 (79 page)

‘Darling!’ she said.

‘Darling!’ said Bingo.

‘Angel!’ said Mrs Bingo.

‘Precious!’ said Bingo. ‘Come along, Bertie, let’s get at that car.’

He was silent till he had fetched the tin of petrol and filled the tank and screwed the cap on again. Then he drew a deep breath.

‘Bertie,’ he said, ‘I am ashamed to admit it, but occasionally in the course of a lengthy acquaintance there have been moments when I have temporarily lost faith in Jeeves.’

‘My dear chap!’ I said, shocked.

‘Yes, Bertie, there have. Sometimes my belief in him has wobbled. I have said to myself, “Has he the old speed, the ancient vim?” I shall never say it again. From now on, childlike trust. It was his idea, Bertie, that if a couple of women headed for tea suddenly found the cup snatched from their lips, so to speak, they would turn and rend one another. Observe the result.’

‘But, dash it, Jeeves couldn’t have known that the car would break down.’

‘On the contrary. He let all the petrol out of the tank when you sent him to fetch the machine – all except just enough to carry it well into the wilds beyond the reach of human aid. He foresaw what would happen. I tell you, Bertie, Jeeves stands alone.’

‘Absolutely.’

‘He’s a marvel.’

‘A wonder.’

‘A wizard.’

‘A stout fellow,’ I agreed. ‘Full of fat-soluble vitamins.’

‘The exact expression,’ said young Bingo. ‘And now let’s go and tell Rosie the car is fixed, and then home to the tankard of ale.’

‘Not the tankard of ale, old man,’ I said firmly. ‘The hot Scotch-and-water with a spot of lemon in it.’

‘You’re absolutely right,’ said Bingo. ‘What a flair you have in these matters, Bertie. Hot Scotch-and-water it is.’

ASK ANYONE AT
the Drones, and they will tell you that Bertram Wooster is a fellow whom it is dashed difficult to deceive. Old Lynx-Eye is about what it amounts to. I observe and deduce. I weigh the evidence and draw my conclusions. And that is why Uncle George had not been in my midst more than about two minutes before I, so to speak, saw all. To my trained eye the thing stuck out a mile.

And yet it seemed so dashed absurd. Consider the facts, if you know what I mean.

I mean to say, for years, right back to the time when I first went to school, this bulging relative had been one of the recognized eyesores of London. He was fat then, and day by day in every way has been getting fatter ever since, till now tailors measure him just for the sake of the exercise. He is what they call a prominent London clubman – one of those birds in tight morning-coats and grey toppers whom you see toddling along St James’s Street on fine afternoons, puffing a bit as they make the grade. Slip a ferret into any good club between Piccadilly and Pall Mall, and you would start half a dozen Uncle Georges.

He spends his time lunching and dining at the Buffers and, between meals, sucking down spots in the smoking room and talking to anyone who will listen about the lining of his stomach. About twice a year his liver lodges a formal protest and he goes off to Harrogate or Carlsbad to get planed down. Then back again and on with the programme. The last bloke in the world, in short, who you would think would ever fall a victim to the divine pash. And yet, if you will believe me, that was absolutely the strength of it.

This old pestilence blew in on me one morning at about the hour of the after-breakfast cigarette.

‘Oh, Bertie,’ he said.

‘Hullo?’

‘You know those ties you’ve been wearing. Where did you get them?’

‘Blucher’s, in the Burlington Arcade.’

‘Thanks.’

He walked across to the mirror and stood in front of it, gazing at himself in an earnest manner.

‘Smut on your nose?’ I asked courteously.

Then I suddenly perceived that he was wearing a sort of horrible simper, and I confess it chilled the blood to no little extent. Uncle George, with face in repose, is hard enough on the eye. Simpering, he goes right above the odds.

‘Ha!’ he said.

He heaved a long sigh, and turned away. Not too soon, for the mirror was on the point of cracking.

‘I’m not so old,’ he said, in a musing sort of voice.

‘So old as what?’

‘Properly considered, I’m in my prime. Besides, what a young and inexperienced girl needs is a man of weight and years to lean on. The sturdy oak, not the sapling.’

It was at this point that, as I said above, I saw all.

‘Great Scott, Uncle George!’ I said. ‘You aren’t thinking of getting married?’

‘Who isn’t?’ he said.

‘You aren’t,’ I said.

‘Yes, I am. Why not?’

‘Oh, well –’

‘Marriage is an honourable state.’

‘Oh, absolutely.’

‘It might make you a better man, Bertie.’

‘Who says so?’

‘I say so. Marriage might turn you from frivolous young scallywag into – er – a non-scallywag. Yes, confound you, I
am
thinking of getting married, and if Agatha comes sticking her oar in I’ll – I’ll – well, I shall know what to do about it.’

He exited on the big line, and I rang the bell for Jeeves. The situation seemed to me one that called for a cosy talk.

‘Jeeves,’ I said.

‘Sir?’

‘You know my Uncle George?’

‘Yes, sir. His lordship has been familiar to me for some years.’

‘I don’t mean do you know my Uncle George. I mean do you know what my Uncle George is thinking of doing?’

‘Contracting a matrimonial alliance, sir.’

‘Good Lord! Did he tell you?’

‘No, sir. Oddly enough, I chance to be acquainted with the other party in the matter.’

‘The girl?’

‘The young person, yes, sir. It was from her aunt, with whom she resides, that I received the information that his lordship was contemplating matrimony.’

‘Who is she?’

‘A Miss Platt, sir. Miss Rhoda Platt. Of Wistaria Lodge, Kitchener Road, East Dulwich.’

‘Young?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘The old fathead!’

‘Yes, sir. The expression is one which I would, of course, not have ventured to employ myself, but I confess to thinking his lordship somewhat ill-advised. One must remember, however, that it is not unusual to find gentlemen of a certain age yielding to what might be described as a sentimental urge. They appear to experience what I may term a sort of Indian summer, a kind of temporarily renewed youth. The phenomenon is particularly noticeable, I am given to understand, in the United States of America among the wealthier inhabitants of the city of Pittsburgh. It is notorious, I am told, that sooner or later, unless restrained, they always endeavour to marry chorus-girls. Why this should be so, I am at a loss to say, but –’

I saw that this was going to take some time. I tuned out.

‘From something in Uncle George’s manner, Jeeves, as he referred to my Aunt Agatha’s probable reception of the news, I gather that this Miss Platt is not of the
noblesse
.’

‘No, sir. She is a waitress at his lordship’s club.’

‘My God! The proletariat!’

‘The lower middle classes, sir.’

‘Well, yes, by stretching it a bit, perhaps. Still, you know what I mean.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Rummy thing, Jeeves,’ I said thoughtfully, ‘this modern tendency to marry waitresses. If you remember, before he settled down, young Bingo Little was repeatedly trying to do it.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Odd!’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Still, there it is, of course. The point to be considered now is,
what
will Aunt Agatha do about this? You know her, Jeeves. She is not like me. I’m broad-minded. If Uncle George wants to marry waitresses, let him, say I. I hold that the rank is but the penny stamp –’

‘Guinea stamp, sir.’

‘All right, guinea stamp. Though I don’t believe there is such a thing. I shouldn’t have thought they came higher than five bob. Well, as I was saying, I maintain that the rank is but the guinea stamp and a girl’s a girl for all that.’

‘“For
a
’ that,” sir. The poet Burns wrote in the North British dialect.’

‘Well, “a’ that,” then, if you prefer it.’

‘I have no preference in the matter, sir. It is simply that the poet Burns –’

‘Never mind about the poet Burns.’

‘No, sir.’

‘Forget the poet Burns.’

‘Very good, sir.’

‘Expunge the poet Burns from your mind.’

‘I will do so immediately, sir.’

‘What we have to consider is not the poet Burns but the Aunt Agatha. She will kick, Jeeves.’

‘Very probably, sir.’

‘And, what’s worse, she will lug me into the mess. There is only one thing to be done. Pack the toothbrush and let us escape while we may, leaving no address.’

‘Very good, sir.’

At this moment the bell rang.

‘Ha!’ I said. ‘Someone at the door.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Probably Uncle George back again. I’ll answer it. You go and get ahead with the packing.’

‘Very good, sir.’

I sauntered along the passage, whistling carelessly, and there on the mat was Aunt Agatha. Herself. Not a picture.

A nasty jar.

‘Oh, hullo!’ I said, it seeming but little good to tell her I was out of town and not expected back for some weeks.

‘I wish to speak to you, Bertie,’ said the Family Curse. ‘I am greatly upset.’

She legged it into the sitting room and volplaned into a chair. I followed, thinking wistfully of Jeeves packing in the bedroom. That
suitcase
would not be needed now. I knew what she must have come about.

‘I’ve just seen Uncle George,’ I said, giving her a lead.

‘So have I,’ said Aunt Agatha, shivering in a marked manner. ‘He called on me while I was still in bed to inform me of his intention of marrying some impossible girl from South Norwood.’

‘East Dulwich, the
cognoscenti
informed me.’

‘Well, East Dulwich, then. It is the same thing. But who told you?’

‘Jeeves.’

‘And how, pray, does Jeeves come to know all about it?’

‘There are very few things in this world, Aunt Agatha,’ I said gravely, ‘that Jeeves doesn’t know all about. He’s met the girl.’

‘Who is she?’

‘One of the waitresses at the Buffers.’

I had expected this to register and it did. The relative let out a screech rather like the Cornish Express going through a junction.

‘I take it from your manner, Aunt Agatha,’ I said, ‘that you want this thing stopped.’

‘Of course it must be stopped.’

‘Then there is but one policy to pursue. Let me ring for Jeeves and ask his advice.’

Aunt Agatha stiffened visibly. Very much the
grande dame
of the old
régime
.

‘Are you seriously suggesting that we should discuss this intimate family matter with your man-servant?’

‘Absolutely. Jeeves will find the way.’

‘I have always known that you were an imbecile, Bertie,’ said the flesh-and-blood, now down at about three degrees Fahrenheit, ‘but I did suppose that you had some proper feeling, some pride, some respect for your position.’

‘Well, you know what the poet Burns says.’

She squelched me with a glance.

‘Obviously the only thing to do,’ she said, ‘is to offer this girl money.’

‘Money?’

‘Certainly. It will not be the first time your uncle has made such a course necessary.’

We sat for a bit, brooding. The family always sits brooding when the subject of Uncle George’s early romance comes up. I was too young to be actually in on it at the time, but I’ve had the details frequently from many sources, including Uncle George. Let him get
even
the slightest bit pickled, and he will tell you the whole story, sometimes twice in an evening. It was a barmaid at the Criterion, just before he came into the title. Her name was Maudie and he loved her dearly, but the family would have none of it. They dug down into the sock and paid her off. Just one of those human-interest stories, if you know what I mean.

I wasn’t so sold on this money-offering scheme.

‘Well, just as you like, of course,’ I said, ‘but you’re taking an awful chance. I mean, whenever people do it in novels and plays, they always get the dickens of a welt. The girl gets the sympathy of the audience every time. She just draws herself up and looks at them with clear, steady eyes, causing them to feel not a little cheesy. If I were you, I would sit tight and let Nature take its course.’

‘I don’t understand you.’

‘Well, consider for a moment what Uncle George looks like. No Greta Garbo, believe me. I should simply let the girl go on looking at him. Take it from me, Aunt Agatha, I’ve studied human nature and I don’t believe there’s a female in the world who could see Uncle George fairly often in those waistcoats he wears without feeling that it was due to her better self to give him the gate. Besides, this girl sees him at meal-times, and Uncle George with his head down among the food-stuffs is a spectacle which –’

‘If it is not troubling you too much, Bertie, I should be greatly obliged if you would stop drivelling.’

‘Just as you say. All the same, I think you’re going to find it dashed embarrassing, offering this girl money.’

‘I am not proposing to do so.
You
will undertake the negotiations.’

‘Me?’

‘Certainly. I should think a hundred pounds would be ample. But I will give you a blank cheque, and you are at liberty to fill it in for a higher sum if it becomes necessary. The essential point is that, cost what it may, your uncle must be released from this entanglement.’

‘So you’re going to shove this off on me?’

‘It is quite time you did something for the family.’

‘And when she draws herself up and looks at me with clear, steady eyes, what do I do for an encore?’

‘There is no need to discuss the matter any further. You can get down to East Dulwich in half an hour. There is a frequent service of trains. I will remain here to await your report.’

‘But, listen!’

‘Bertie, you will go and see this woman immediately.’

‘Yes, but dash it!’

‘Bertie!’