But there is a catch, and a very serious catch.
‘You ask me why I do not wish to shamble down aisles at her side,’ I said. ‘I will tell you. It is because, though externally, as you say, a pippin, she is the sloppiest, mushiest, sentimentalest young Gawd-help-us who ever thought the stars were God’s daisy chain and that every time a fairy hiccoughs a wee baby is born. She is squashy and soupy. Her favourite reading is Christopher Robin and Winnie the Pooh. I can perhaps best sum it up by saying that she is the ideal mate for Gussie Fink-Nottle.’
‘I’ve never met Mr Fink-Nottle.’
‘Well, ask the man who has.’
She stood pondering. It was plain that she appreciated the gravity of the situation.
‘Then you think that, if she finds out, you will be in for it?’
‘Definitely and indubitably. I shall have no option but to take the rap. If a girl thinks you love her, and comes and says she is returning her betrothed to store and is now prepared to sign up with you, what can you do except marry her? One must be civil.’
‘Yes, I see. Difficult. But how are you going to keep her from finding out? When she hears that Mr Fink-Nottle hasn’t arrived at the Hall, she’s bound to make inquiries.’
‘And those inquiries, once made, must infallibly lead her to the awful truth? Exactly. But there is always Jeeves.’
‘You think he will be able to fix things?’
‘He never fails. He wears a number fourteen hat, eats tons of fish, and moves in a mysterious way his wonders to perform See, here he comes, looking as intelligent as dammit. Well, Jeeves? Have you speared a solution?’
‘Yes, sir. But –’
‘You see,’ I said to Corky. I paused, knitting the brow a bit. ‘Did I hear you use the word “but”, Jeeves? Why “but”?’
‘It is merely that I entertained a certain misgiving as to whether the solution which I am about to put forward would meet with your approval, sir.’
‘If it’s a solution, that’s all I want.’
‘Well, sir, to obviate the inquiries which would inevitably be set on foot, should Mr Fink-Nottle not present himself at Deverill Hall this evening, it would appear to be essential that a substitute, purporting to be Mr Fink-Nottle, should take his place.’
I reeled.
‘You aren’t suggesting that I should check in at this leper colony as Gussie?’
‘Unless you can persuade one of your friends to do so, sir.’
I laughed. One of those hollow, mirthless ones.
‘You can’t go about London asking people to pretend to be Gussie Fink-Nottle. At least, you can, I suppose, but what a hell of a life. Besides, there isn’t time to …’ I paused. ‘Catsmeat!’ I cried.
Catsmeat opened his eyes.
‘Hallo, there,’ he said, seeming much refreshed. ‘How’s it coming?’
‘It’s come. Jeeves has found the way.’
‘I thought he would. What does he suggest?’
‘He thinks … What was it, Jeeves?’
‘To obviate the inquiries which would inevitably be set on foot should Mr Fink-Nottle not present himself at Deverill Hall this evening –’
‘Follow this closely, Catsmeat.’
‘– it would appear to be essential that a substitute, purporting to be Mr Fink-Nottle, should take his place.’
Catsmeat nodded, and said he considered that very sound.
‘You mean Bertie, of course?’
I massaged his coat sleeve tenderly.
‘We thought of you,’ I said.
‘Me?’
‘Yes.’
‘You want me to say I’m Gussie Fink-Nottle?’
‘That’s right.’
‘No,’ said Catsmeat. ‘A thousand times no. What a revolting idea!’
The shuddering horror with which he spoke made me realize how deeply his experiences of the previous night must have affected him. And, mind you, I could understand his attitude. Gussie is a fellow you can take or leave alone, and anyone having him as a constant companion from eight at night till five on the following morning might well become a bit allergic to him. I began to see that a good deal of silver-tongued eloquence would be needed in order to obtain service and cooperation from C.C. Pirbright.
‘It would enable you to be beneath the same roof as Gertrude Winkworth,’ I urged.
‘Yes,’ said Corky, ‘you would be at your Gertrude’s side.’
‘Even to be at my Gertrude’s side,’ said Catsmeat firmly, ‘I won’t have people going about thinking I’m Gussie Fink-Nottle. Besides, I couldn’t get away with it. I shouldn’t be even adequate in the role. I’m much too obviously a man of intelligence and brains and gifts and all that sort of thing, and Gussie must have been widely publicized as the fat-headedest ass in creation. After five minutes’ conversation with me the old folks would penetrate the deception like a dose of salts. No, what you want if you are putting on an understudy for Gussie Fink-Nottle is someone like Gussie Fink-Nottle, so that the eye is deceived. You get the part, Bertie.’
A cry escaped me.
‘You don’t think I’m like Gussie?’
‘You might be twins.’
‘I still think you’re a chump, Catsmeat,’ said Corky. ‘If you were at Deverill Hall you could protect Gertrude from Esmond Haddock’s advances.’
‘Bertie’s attending to that. I agree that I would much enjoy a brief visit to Deverill Hall, and if only there were some other way … But I won’t say I’m Gussie Fink-Nottle.’
I bowed to the inev.
‘Right ho,’ I said, with one of those sighs. ‘In all human affairs there has got to be a goat or Patsy doing the dirty work, and in the present crisis I see it has got to be me. It generally happens that way. Whenever there is a job to be taken on of a kind calculated to make Humanity shudder, the cry goes up “Let Wooster do it.” I’m not complaining, I’m just mentioning it. Very well. No need to argue. I’ll be Gussie.’
‘Smiling, the boy fell dead. That’s the way I like to hear you talk,’ said Catsmeat. ‘On the way down be thinking out your business.’
‘What do you mean – my business?’
‘Well, for instance, would it or would it not be a good move to kiss Gussie’s girl’s godmother when you meet? Those are the little points you will have to give thought to. And now, Bertie, if you don’t mind, I’ll be pushing along to your bedroom and taking a short nap. Too many interruptions in here, and sleep is what I must have, if I am to face the world again. What was it I heard you call sleep the other day, Jeeves?’
‘Tired Nature’s sweet restorer, sir.’
‘That was it. And you said a mouthful.’
He crawled off, and Corky said she would have to be going too. A hundred things to attend to.
‘Well, it all looks pretty smooth now, thanks to your quick thinking, Jeeves,’ she said. ‘The only nuisance is that there will be disappointment in the village when they hear they’re going to get a Road Company Number Four Fink-Nottle as Pat, and not the celebrated Bertram Wooster. I rather played you up, Bertie, in the advance billing and publicity. Still, it can’t be helped. Goodbye. We shall meet at Philippi. Goodbye, Jeeves.’
‘Goodbye, miss.’
‘Here, half a second,’ I said. ‘You’re forgetting your dog.’
She paused at the door.
‘Oh, I had been meaning to tell you about that, Bertie. I want you to take him to the hall with you for a day or two, so as to give me time to prepare Uncle Sidney’s mind. He’s not too keen on dogs, and Sam will have to be broken to him gently.’
I put in an instant nolle prosequi.
‘I’m not going to appear at the hall with a dog like that. It would ruin my prestige.’
‘Mr Fink-Nottle’s prestige, you mean. And I don’t suppose he has any. As Catsmeat said, they have been told all about him, and will probably be relieved that you aren’t rolling in with half a dozen bowls of newts. Well, goodbye again.’
‘Hey!’ I yipped, but she
had gone.
I turned to Jeeves.
‘So, Jeeves!’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘What do you mean, “Yes, sir”?’
‘I was endeavouring to convey my appreciation of the fact that your position is in many respects somewhat difficult, sir. But I wonder if I might call your attention to an observation of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius. He said: “Does aught befall you? It is good. It is part of the destiny of the Universe ordained for you from the beginning. All that befalls you is part of the great web.”’
I breathed a bit stertorously.
‘He said that, did he?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Well, you can tell him from me he’s an ass. Are my things packed?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘The two-seater is at the door?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Then lead me to it, Jeeves. If I’m to get to this lazar-house before midnight, I’d better be starting.’
5
* * *
WELL, I DID get there before midnight, of course, but I was dashed late, all the same. As might have been expected on a day like this, the two-seater, usually as reliable as an Arab steed, developed some sort of pox or sickness half-way through the journey, with the result that the time schedule was shot to pieces and it was getting on for eight when I turned in at the main gates. A quick burst up the drive enabled me to punch the front-door bell at about twenty to.
I remember once when he and I arrived at a country house where the going threatened to be sticky, Jeeves, as we alighted, murmured in my ear the words ‘Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came, sir’, and at the time I could make nothing of the crack. Subsequent inquiry, however, revealed that this Roland was one of those knights of the Middle Ages who spent their time wandering to and fro, and that on fetching up one evening at a dump known as the Dark Tower he had scratched the chin a bit dubiously, not liking the look of things.
It was the same with me now. I admired Deverill Hall, I could appreciate that it was a fine old pile, with battlements and all the fixings, and if the Deverill who built it had been with me at the moment, I would have slapped him on the back and said ‘Nice work, Deverill’. But I quailed at the thought of what lay within. Behind that massive front door lurked five aunts of early Victorian vintage and an Esmond Haddock who, when he got on to the fact that I was proposing to pull a Mary’s lamb on him, was quite likely to forget the obligations of a host and break my neck. Considerations like these prevent one feasting the eye on Tudor architecture with genuine enjoyment and take from fifty to sixty per cent off the entertainment value of spreading lawns and gay flower-beds.
The door opened, revealing some sixteen stone of butler.
‘Good evening, sir,’ said this substantial specimen. ‘Mr Wooster?’
‘Fink-Nottle,’ I said hastily, to correct this impression.
As a matter of fact, it was all I could do to speak at all, for the sudden impact of Charlie Silversmith had removed the breath almost totally. He took me right back to the days when I was starting out as a flâneur and man about town and used to tremble beneath butlers’ eyes and generally feel very young and bulbous.
Older now and tougher, I am able to take most of these fauna in my stride. When they open front doors to me, I shoot my cuffs nonchalantly. ‘Aha, there, butler,’ I say. ‘How’s tricks?’ But Jeeves’s Uncle Charlie was something special. He looked like one of those steel engravings of nineteenth-century statesmen. He had a large, bald head and pale, protruding gooseberry eyes, and those eyes, resting on mine, heightened the Dark Tower feeling considerably. The thought crossed my mind that if something like this had popped out at Childe Roland, he would have clapped spurs to his charger and been off like a jack-rabbit.
Sam Goldwyn, attached by a stout cord to the windscreen, seemed to be thinking along much the same lines, for, after one startled glance at Uncle Charlie, he had thrown his head back and was now uttering a series of agitated howls. I sympathized with his distress. A South London dog belonging to the lower middle classes or, rather, definitely of the people, I don’t suppose he had ever seen a butler before, and it was a dashed shame that he should have drawn something like Uncle Charlie first crack out of the box. With an apologetic jerk of the thumb I directed the latter’s attention to him.
‘A dog,’ I said, this seeming about as good a way as any other of effecting the introductions, and Uncle Charlie gave him an austere look, as if he had found him using a fish fork for the entrée.
‘I will have the animal removed to the stables, sir,’ he said coldly, and I said Oh, thanks, that would be fine.
‘And now,’ I said, ‘I’d better be nipping along and dressing, what? I don’t want to be late for dinner.’
‘Dinner has already commenced, sir. We dine at seven-thirty punctually. If you would care to wash your hands, sir,’ he said, and indicated a door to the left.
In the circles in which I move it is pretty generally recognized that I am a resilient sort of bimbo, and in circumstances where others might crack beneath the strain, may frequently be seen rising on stepping-stones of my dead self to higher things. Look in at the Drones and ask the first fellow you meet ‘Can the fine spirit of the Woosters be crushed?’ and he will offer you attractive odds against such a contingency. However tough the going, he will say, and however numerous what are called the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, you will still find Bertram in there swinging.
But I had never before been thrust into the position of having to say I was Gussie Fink-Nottle and slap on top of that of having to dine in a strange house without dressing, and I don’t mind admitting that for an instant everything went black. It was a limp and tottering Bertram Wooster who soaped, rinsed and dried the outlying portions and followed Uncle Charlie to the dining room. And what with the agony of feeling like a tramp cyclist and the embarrassment of having to bolt my rations with everybody, or so it seemed to my inflamed imag, clicking their tongues and drumming on the table and saying to one another in undertones what a hell of a nuisance this hold-up was, because they wanted the next course to appear so that they could start digging in and getting theirs, it was not for some time that I was sufficiently restored to be able to glance around the board and take a dekko at the personnel. There had been introductions of a sort, of course – I seemed to recall Uncle Charlie saying ‘Mr Fink-Nottle’ in a reserved sort of voice, as if wishing to make it clear that it was no good blaming him – but they hadn’t really registered.
As far as the eye could reach, I found myself gazing on a surging sea of aunts. There were tall aunts, short aunts, stout aunts, thin aunts, and an aunt who was carrying on a conversation in a low voice to which nobody seemed to be paying the slightest attention. I was to learn later that this was Miss Emmeline Deverill’s habitual practice, she being the aunt of whom Corky had spoken as the dotty one. From start to finish of every meal she soliloquized. Shakespeare would have liked her.
At the top of the table was a youngish bloke in a well-cut dinner jacket which made me more than ever conscious of the travel-stained upholstery in which I had been forced to appear. E. Haddock, presumably. He was sitting next to a girl in white, so obviously the junior member of the bunch that I deduced that here we had Catsmeat’s Gertrude.
Drinking her in, I could see how Catsmeat had got that way. The daughter of Dame Daphne, relict of the late P.B. Winkworth, was slim and blonde and fragile, in sharp contradistinction to her mother, whom I had now identified as the one on my left, a rugged light-heavyweight with a touch of Wallace Beery in her make-up. Her eyes were blue, her teeth pearly, and in other respects she had what it takes. I was quite able to follow Catsmeat’s thought processes. According to his own statement, he had walked with this girl in an old garden on twilight evenings, with the birds singing sleepily in the shrubberies and the stars beginning to peep out, and no man of spirit could do that with a girl like this without going under the ether.
I was musing on these two young
hearts in springtime and speculating with a not unmanly touch of sentiment on their chances of spearing the happy ending, when the subject of the concert came up.
The conversation at the table up to this point had been pretty technical stuff, not easy for the stranger within the gates to get a toe-hold on. You know the sort of thing I mean. One aunt saying that she had had a letter from Emily by the afternoon post, and another aunt saying Had she said anything about Fred and Alice, and the first aunt saying Yes, everything was all right about Fred and Alice, because Agnes had now told Edith what Jane had said to Eleanor. All rather mystic.
But now an aunt in spectacles said she had met the vicar that evening and the poor old gook was spitting blood because his niece, Miss Pirbright, insisted on introducing into the programme of the concert what she described as a knockabout cross-talk act by Police Constable Dobbs and Agatha Worplesdon’s nephew, Mr Wooster. What a knockabout cross-talk act was, she had no idea. Perhaps you can tell us, Augustus?
I was only too glad to have the opportunity of saying a few words, for, except for a sort of simpering giggle at the outset, I hadn’t uttered since joining the party, and I felt it was about time, for Gussie’s sake, that I came out of the silence. Carry along on these lines much longer, and the whole gang would be at their desks writing letters to the Bassett entreating her to think twice before entrusting her happiness to a dumb brick who would probably dish the success of the honeymoon by dashing off in the middle of it to become a Trappist monk.
‘Oh, rather,’ I said. ‘It’s one of those Pat and Mike things. Two birds come on in green beards, armed with umbrellas, and one bird says to the other bird ‘Who was that lady I saw you coming down the street with?’ and the second bird says to the first bird ‘Faith and begob, that was no lady, that was my wife.’ And then the second bird busts the first bird over the bean with his umbrella, and the first bird, not to be behindhand, busts the second bird over the head with his umbrella. And so the long day wears on.’
The Jeeves Omnibus - Vol 3: The Mating Season / Ring for Jeeves / Very Good, Jeeves Page 24
