The Jeeves Omnibus - Vol 4: (Jeeves & Wooster): No.4 (49 page)

‘Dilemmas, sir.’

‘That’s right. I’m on the horns of a dilemma. Shall I, I ask myself, go and see what I can accomplish in the way of running repairs on the lute, or would it be more prudent to stay put and let nature take its course, trusting to Time, the great healer, to do its stuff?’

‘If I might make a suggestion, sir?’

‘Press on, Jeeves.’

‘Would it not be possible for you to go to Totleigh Towers, but to decline to carry out Miss Byng’s wishes?’

I weighed this. It was, I could see, a thought.

‘Issue a
nolle prosequi
, you mean? Tell her to go and boil her head?’

‘Precisely, sir.’

I eyed him reverently.

‘Jeeves,’ I said, ‘as always, you have found the way. I’ll wire Miss Bassett asking if I can come, and I’ll wire Aunt Dahlia that I can’t give her lunch, as I’m leaving town. And I’ll tell Stiffy that whatever she has in mind, she gets no service and co-operation from me. Yes, Jeeves, you’ve hit it. I’ll go to Totleigh, though the flesh creeps at the prospect. Pop Bassett will be there. Spode will be there. Stiffy will be there. The dog Bartholomew will be there. It makes one wonder why so much fuss has been made about those half-a-league half-a-league half-a-league-onward bimbos who rode into the Valley of Death. They weren’t going to find Pop Bassett at the other end. Ah well, let us hope for the best.’

‘The only course to pursue, sir.’

‘Stiff upper lip, Jeeves, what?’

‘Indubitably, sir. That, if I may say so, is the spirit.’

AS STINKER HAD
predicted, Madeline Bassett placed no obstacle in the way of my visiting Totleigh Towers. In response to my invitation-cadging missive she gave me the green light, and an hour or so after her telegram had arrived Aunt Dahlia rang up from Brinkley, full of eagerness to ascertain what the hell, she having just received my wire saying that owing to absence from the metropolis I would be unable to give her the lunch for which she had been budgeting.

Her call came as no surprise. I had anticipated that there might be a certain liveliness on the Brinkley front. The old flesh-and-blood is a genial soul who loves her Bertram dearly, but she is a woman of imperious spirit. She dislikes having her wishes thwarted, and her voice came booming at me like a pack of hounds in full cry.

‘Bertie, you foul young blot on the landscape!’

‘Speaking.’

‘I got your telegram.’

‘I thought you would. Very efficient, the gramming service.’

‘What do you mean, you’re leaving town? You never leave town except to come down here and wallow in Anatole’s cooking.’

Her allusion was to her peerless French chef, at the mention of whose name the mouth starts watering automatically. God’s gift to the gastric juices I have sometimes called him.

‘Where are you going?’

My mouth having stopped watering, I said I was going to Totleigh Towers, and she uttered an impatient snort.

‘There’s something wrong with this blasted wire. It sounded as if you were saying you were going to Totleigh Towers.’

‘I am.’

‘To Totleigh
Towers
?’

‘I leave this afternoon.’

‘What in the world made them invite you?’

‘They didn’t. I invited myself.’

‘You mean you’re deliberately seeking the society of Sir Watkyn Bassett? You must be more of an ass than even I have ever thought
you.
And I speak as a woman who has just had the old bounder in her hair for more than a week.’

I saw her point, and hastened to explain.

‘I admit Pop Bassett is a bit above the odds,’ I said, ‘and unless one is compelled by circumstances it is always wisest not to stir him, but a sharp crisis has been precipitated in my affairs. All is not well between Gussie Fink-Nottle and Madeline Bassett. Their engagement is tottering toward the melting pot, and you know what that engagement means to me. I’m going down there to try to heal the rift.’

‘What can you do?’

‘My role, as I see it, will be that of what the French call the
raisonneur
.’

‘And what does that mean?’

‘Ah, there you have me, but that’s what Jeeves says I’ll be.’

‘Are you taking Jeeves with you?’

‘Of course. Do I ever stir foot without him?’

‘Well, watch out, that’s all I say to you, watch out. I happen to know that Bassett is making overtures to him.’

‘How do you mean, overtures?’

‘He’s trying to steal him from you.’

I reeled, and might have fallen, had I not been sitting at the time.

‘Incredulous!’

‘If you mean incredible, you’re wrong. I told you how he had fallen under Jeeves’s spell when he was here. He used to follow him with his eyes as he buttled, like a cat watching a duck, as Anatole would say. And one morning I heard him making him a definite proposition. Well? What’s the matter with you? Have you fainted?’

I told her that my momentary silence had been due to the fact that her words had stunned me, and she said she didn’t see why, knowing Bassett, I should be so surprised.

‘You can’t have forgotten how he tried to steal Anatole. There isn’t anything to which that man won’t stoop. He has no conscience whatsoever. When you get to Totleigh, go and see someone called Plank and ask him what he thinks of Sir Watkyn ruddy Bassett. He chiselled this poor devil Plank out of a … Oh, hell!’ said the aged relative as a voice intoned ‘Thur-ree minutes’, and she hung up, having made my flesh creep as nimbly as if she had been my guardian angel, on whose talent in that direction I have already touched.

It was still creeping with undiminished gusto as I steered the sports model along the road to Totleigh-in-the-Wold that afternoon. I was convinced, of course, that Jeeves would never dream of severing
relations
with the old firm, and when urged to do so by this blighted Bassett would stop his ears like the deaf adder, which, as you probably know, made a point of refusing to hear the voice of the charmer, charm he never so wisely. But the catch is that you can be convinced about a thing and nevertheless get pretty jumpy when you muse on it, and it was in no tranquil mood that I eased the Arab steed through the gates of Totleigh Towers and fetched up at the front door.

I don’t know if you happen to have come across a hymn, the chorus of which goes:

Tum tumty tumty tumty

Tum tiddly om pom isle,

Where every prospect pleases

And only man is vile

or words to that effect, but the description would have fitted Totleigh Towers like the paper on the wall. Its façade, its spreading grounds, rolling parkland, smoothly shaven lawns and what not were all just like Mother makes, but what percentage was there in that, when you knew what was waiting for you inside? It’s never a damn bit of use a prospect pleasing, if the gang that goes with it lets it down.

This lair of old Bassett’s was one of the fairly stately homes of England – not a show place like the joints you read about with three hundred and sixty-five rooms, fifty-two staircases and twelve courtyards, but definitely not a bungalow. He had bought it furnished some time previously from a Lord somebody who needed cash, as so many do these days.

Not Pop Bassett, though. In the evening of his life he had more than a sufficiency. It would not be going too far, indeed, to describe him as stinking rich. For a great part of his adult life he had been a metropolitan police magistrate, and in that capacity once fined me five quid for a mere light-hearted peccadillo on Boat Race Night, when a mild reprimand would more than have met the case. It was shortly after this that a relative died and left him a vast fortune. That, at least, was the story given out. What really happened, of course, was that all through his years as a magistrate he had been trousering the fines, amassing the stuff in sackfuls. Five quid here, five quid there, it soon mounts up.

We had made goodish going on the road, and it wasn’t more than about four-forty when I rang the front-door bell. Jeeves took the car to the stables, and the butler – Butterfield was his name, I remembered – led me to the drawing-room.

‘Mr. Wooster,’ he said, loosing me in.

I was not surprised to find tea in progress, for I had heard the clinking of cups. Madeline Bassett was at the controls, and she extended a drooping hand to me.

‘Bertie! How nice to see you.’

I can well imagine that a casual observer, if I had confided to him my qualms at the idea of being married to this girl, would have raised his eyebrows and been at a loss to understand, for she was undeniably an eyeful, being slim, svelte and bountifully equipped with golden hair and all the fixings. But where the casual observer would have been making his bloomer was in overlooking that squashy soupiness of hers, that subtle air she had of being on the point of talking babytalk. She was the sort of girl who puts her hands over a husband’s eyes, as he is crawling in to breakfast with a morning head, and says ‘Guess who?’

I once stayed at the residence of a newly-married pal of mine, and his bride had had carved in large letters over the fireplace in the drawing-room, where it was impossible to miss it, the legend ‘Two Lovers Built This Nest’, and I can still recall the look of dumb anguish in the other half of the sketch’s eyes every time he came in and saw it. Whether Madeline Bassett, on entering the marital state, would go to such an awful extreme, one could not say, but it seemed most probable, and I resolved that when I started trying to reconcile her and Gussie, I would not scamp my work but would give it everything I had.

‘You know Mr. Pinker,’ she said, and I perceived that Stinker was present. He was safely wedged in a chair and hadn’t, as far as I could see, upset anything yet, but he gave me the impression of a man who was crouching for the spring and would begin to operate shortly. There was a gate-leg table laden with muffins and cucumber sandwiches which I foresaw would attract him like a magnet.

On seeing me, he had started visibly, dropping a plate with half a muffin on it, and his eyes had widened. I knew what he was thinking, of course. He supposed that my presence must be due to a change of heart. Rejoice with me, for I have found the sheep which was lost, he was no doubt murmuring to himself. I mourned in spirit a bit for the poor fish, knowing what a nasty knock he had coming to him when he got on to it that nothing was going to induce me to undertake whatever the foul commission might be that Stiffy had earmarked for me. On that point I was resolved to be firm, no matter what spiritual agonies he and she suffered in the process. I had long since learned that the secret of a happy and successful life was to steer clear of any project masterminded by that young scourge of the species.

The conversation that followed was what you might call … I’ve forgotten the word, but it begins with a d. I mean, with Stinker within
earshot
Madeline and I couldn’t get down to brass tacks, so we just chewed the fat … desultory, that’s the word I wanted. We just chewed the fat in a desultory way. Stinker said he was there to talk over the forthcoming school treat with Sir Watkyn, and I said ‘Oh, is there a school treat coming up?’ and Madeline said it was taking place the day after tomorrow and owing to the illness of the vicar Mr. Pinker would be in sole charge, and Stinker winced a bit, as if he didn’t like the prospect much.

Madeline asked if I had had a nice drive down, and I said ‘Oh, splendid.’ Stinker said Stiffy would be so pleased I had come, and I smiled one of my subtle smiles. And then Butterfield came in and said Sir Watkyn could see Mr. Pinker now, and Stinker oozed off. And the moment the door had closed behind curate and butler, Madeline clasped her hands, gave me one of those squashy looks, and said:

‘Oh, Bertie, you should not have come here. I had not the heart to deny your pathetic request – I knew how much you yearned to see me again, however briefly, however hopelessly – but was it
wise
? Is it not merely twisting the knife in the wound? Will it not simply cause you needless pain to be near me, knowing we can never be more than just good friends? It is useless, Bertie. You must not hope. I love Augustus.’

Her words, as you may well imagine, were music to my e. She wouldn’t, I felt, have come out with anything as definite as this if there had been a really serious spot of trouble between her and Gussie. Obviously that crack of his about her making him sick had been a mere passing what-d’you-call-it, the result of some momentary attack of the pip caused possibly by her saying he smoked too much or something of the sort. Anyway, whatever it was that had rifted the lute was now plainly forgotten and forgiven, and I was saying to myself that, the way things looked, I ought to be able to duck out of here immediately after breakfast tomorrow, when I noticed that a look of pain had spread over her map and that the eyes were dewy.

‘It makes me so sad to think of your hopeless love, Bertie,’ she said, adding something which I didn’t quite catch about moths and stars. ‘Life is so tragic, so cruel. But what can I do?’

‘Not a thing,’ I said heartily. ‘Just carry on regardless.’

‘But it breaks my heart.’

And with these words she burst into what are sometimes called uncontrollable sobs. She sank into her chair, covering her face with her hands, and it seemed to me that the civil thing to do was to pat her head. This project I now carried out, and I can see, looking back,
that
it was a mistake. I remember Monty Bodkin of the Drones, who once patted a weeping female on the head, unaware that his betrothed was standing in his immediate rear, drinking the whole thing in, telling me that the catch in this head-patting routine is that, unless you exercise the greatest care, you forget to take your hand off. You just stand there resting it on the subject’s bean, and this is apt to cause spectators to purse their lips.

Monty fell into this error and so did I. And the lip-pursing was attended to by Spode, who chanced to enter at this moment. Seeing the popsy bathed in tears, he quivered from stem to stern.

‘Madeline!’ he yipped. ‘What’s the matter?’

‘It is nothing, Roderick, nothing,’ she replied chokingly.