‘And yet now she has absolutely insisted on my scratching all previous engagements and buzzing down to Woollam Chersey. She must have some sinister reason of which we know nothing. Can you blame me, Jeeves, if the heart is heavy?’
‘No, sir. Excuse me, sir, I fancy I heard the front-door bell.’
He shimmered out, and I took another listless stab at the e. and bacon.
‘A telegram, sir,’ said Jeeves, re-entering the presence.
‘Open it, Jeeves, and read contents. Who is it from?’
‘It is unsigned, sir.’
‘You mean there’s no name at the end of it?’
‘That is precisely what I was endeavouring to convey, sir.’
‘Let’s have a look.’
I scanned the thing. It was a rummy communication. Rummy. No other word.
As follows:
Remember when you come here absolutely vital meet perfect strangers.
We Woosters are not very strong in the head, particularly at breakfast-time; and I was conscious of a dull ache between the eyebrows.
‘What does it mean, Jeeves?’
‘I could not say, sir.’
‘It says “come here”. Where’s here?’
‘You will notice the message was handed in at Woollam Chersey, sir.’
‘You’re absolutely right. At Woollam, as you very cleverly spotted, Chersey. This tells us something, Jeeves.’
‘What, sir?’
‘I don’t know. It couldn’t be from my Aunt Agatha, do you think?’
‘Hardly, sir.’
‘No; you’re right again. Then all we can say is that some person unknown, resident at Woollam Chersey, considers it absolutely vital for me to meet perfect strangers. But why should I meet perfect strangers, Jeeves?’
‘I could not say, sir.’
‘And yet, looking at it from another angle, why shouldn’t I?’
‘Precisely, sir.’
‘Then what it comes to is that the thing is a mystery which time alone can solve. We must wait and see, Jeeves.’
‘The very expression I was about to employ, sir.’
I hit Woollam Chersey at about four o’clock, and found Aunt Agatha in her lair, writing letters. And, from what I know of her, probably offensive letters, with nasty postscripts. She regarded me with not a fearful lot of joy.
‘Oh, there you are, Bertie.’
‘Yes, here I am.’
‘There’s a smut on your nose.’
I plied the handkerchief.
‘I am glad you have arrived so early. I want to have a word with you before you meet Mr Filmer.’
‘Who?’
‘Mr Filmer, the Cabinet Minister. He is staying in the house. Surely even you must have heard of Mr Filmer?’
‘Oh, rather,’ I said, though as a matter of fact the bird was completely unknown to me. What with one thing and another, I’m not frightfully up in the personnel of the political world.
‘I particularly wish you to make a good impression on Mr Filmer.’
‘Right-ho.’
‘Don’t speak in that casual way, as if you supposed that it was perfectly natural that you would make a good impression upon him. Mr Filmer is a serious-minded man of high character and purpose, and you are just the type of vapid and frivolous wastrel against which he is most likely to be prejudiced.’
Hard words, of course, from one’s own flesh and blood, but well in keeping with past form.
‘You will endeavour, therefore, while you are here not to display yourself in the rôle of a vapid and frivolous wastrel. In the first place, you will give up smoking during your visit.’
‘Oh, I say!’
‘Mr Filmer is president of the Anti-Tobacco League. Nor will you drink alcoholic stimulants.’
‘Oh, dash it!’
‘And you will kindly exclude from your conversation all that is suggestive of the bar, the billiardroom, and the stage door. Mr Filmer will judge you largely by your conversation.’
I rose to a point of order.
‘Yes, but why have I got to make an impression on this – on Mr Filmer?’
‘Because,’ said the old relative, giving me the eye, ‘I particularly wish it.’
Not, perhaps, a notably snappy come-back as come-backs go; but it was enough to show me that that was more or less that; and I beetled out with an aching heart.
I headed for the garden, and I’m dashed if the first person I saw wasn’t young Bingo Little.
Bingo Little and I have been pals practically from birth. Born in the same village within a couple of days of one another, we went through kindergarten, Eton, and Oxford together; and, grown to riper years we have enjoyed in the old metrop. full many a first-class binge in each other’s society. If there was one fellow in the world, I felt, who could alleviate the horrors of this blighted visit of mine, that bloke was young Bingo Little.
But how he came to be there was more than I could understand. Some time before, you see, he had married the celebrated authoress, Rosie M. Banks; and the last I had seen of him he had been on the point of accompanying her to America on a lecture tour. I distinctly remembered him cursing rather freely because the trip would mean his missing Ascot.
Still, rummy as it might seem, here he was. And aching for the sight of a friendly face, I gave tongue like a bloodhound.
‘Bingo!’
He spun round; and, by Jove, his face wasn’t friendly after all. It was what they call contorted. He waved his arms at me like a semaphore.
‘Sh!’ he hissed. ‘Would you ruin me?’
‘Eh?’
‘Didn’t you get my telegram?’
‘Was that your telegram?’
‘Of course it was my telegram.’
‘Then why didn’t you sign it?’
‘I did sign it.’
‘No, you didn’t. I couldn’t make out what it was all about.’
‘Well, you got my letter.’
‘What letter?’
‘My letter.’
‘I didn’t get any letter.’
‘Then I must have forgotten to post it. It was to tell you that I was down here tutoring your Cousin Thomas, and that it was essential that, when we met, you should treat me as a perfect stranger.’
‘But why?’
‘Because, if your aunt supposed that I was a pal of yours, she would naturally sack me on the spot.’
‘Why?’
Bingo raised his eyebrows.
‘Why? Be reasonable, Bertie. If you were your aunt, and you knew the sort of chap you were, would you let a fellow you knew to be your best pal tutor your son?’
This made the old head swim a bit, but I got his meaning after awhile, and I had to admit that there was much rugged good sense in what he said. Still, he hadn’t explained what you might call the nub or gist of the mystery.
‘I thought you were in America,’ I said.
‘Well, I’m not.’
‘Why not?’
‘Never mind why not. I’m not.’
‘But why have you taken a tutoring job?’
‘Never mind why, I have my reasons. And I want you to get it into your head, Bertie – to get it right through the concrete – that you and I must not be seen hobnobbing. Your foul cousin was caught smoking in the shrubbery the day before yesterday, and that has made my position pretty tottery, because your aunt said that, if I had exercised an adequate surveillance over him, it couldn’t have happened. If, after that, she finds out I’m a friend of yours, nothing can save me from being shot out. And it is vital that I am not shot out.’
‘Why?’
‘Never mind why.’
At this point he seemed to think he heard somebody coming, for he suddenly leaped with incredible agility into a laurel bush. And I toddled along to consult Jeeves about these rummy happenings.
‘Jeeves,’ I said, repairing to the bedroom, where he was unpacking my things, ‘you remember that telegram?’
‘Yes, sir.’
�
�It was from Mr Little. He’s here, tutoring my young Cousin Thomas.’
‘Indeed, sir?’
‘I can’t understand it. He appears to be a free agent, if you know what I mean; and yet would any man who was a free agent wantonly came to a house which contained my Aunt Agatha?’
‘It seems peculiar, sir.’
‘Moreover, would anybody of his own free will and as a mere pleasure-seeker tutor my Cousin Thomas, who is notoriously a tough egg and a fiend in human shape?’
‘Most improbable, sir.’
‘These are deep waters, Jeeves.’
‘Precisely, sir.’
‘And the ghastly part of it all is that he seems to consider it necessary, in order to keep his job, to treat me like a long-lost leper. Thus killing my only chance of having anything approaching a decent time in this abode of desolation. For do you realize, Jeeves, that my aunt says I mustn’t smoke while I’m here?’
‘Indeed, sir?’
‘Nor drink.’
‘Why is this, sir?’
‘Because she wants me – for some dark and furtive reason which she will not explain – to impress a fellow named Filmer.’
‘Too bad, sir. However, many doctors, I understand, advocate such abstinence as the secret of health. They say it promotes a freer circulation of the blood and insures the arteries against premature hardening.’
‘Oh, do they? Well, you can tell them next time you see them that they are silly asses.’
‘Very good, sir.’
And so began what, looking back along a fairly eventful career, I think I can confidently say was the scaliest visit I have ever experienced in the course of my life. What with the agony of missing the lifegiving cocktail before dinner; the painful necessity of being obliged, every time I wanted a quiet cigarette, to lie on the floor in my bedroom and puff the smoke up the chimney; the constant discomfort of meeting Aunt Agatha round unexpected corners; and the fearful strain on the morale of having to chum with the Right Hon. A. B. Filmer, it was not long before Bertram was up against it to an extent hitherto undreamed of.
I played golf with the Right Hon. every day, and it was only by biting the Wooster lip and clenching the fists till the knuckles stood out white under the strain that I managed to pull through. The Right Hon. punctuated some of the ghastliest golf I have ever seen with a flow of conversation which, as far as I was concerned, went completely over the top; and, all in all, I was beginning to feel pretty sorry for myself when, one night as I was in my room listlessly donning the soup-and-fish in preparation for the evening meal, in trickled young Bingo and took my mind off my own troubles.
For when it is a question of a pal being in the soup, we Woosters no longer think of self; and that poor old Bingo was knee-deep in the bisque was made plain by his mere appearance – which was that of a cat which has just been struck by a half-brick and is expecting another shortly.
‘Bertie,’ said Bingo, having sat down on the bed and diffused silent gloom for a moment, ‘how is Jeeves’s brain these days?’
‘Fairly strong on the wing, I fancy. How is the grey matter, Jeeves? Surging about pretty freely?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Thank Heaven for that,’ said young Bingo, ‘for I require your soundest counsel. Unless right-thinking people take strong steps through the proper channels, my name will be mud.’
‘What’s wrong, old thing?’ I asked, sympathetically.
Bingo plucked at the coverlet.
‘I will tell you,’ he said. ‘I will also now reveal why I am staying in this pest-house, tutoring a kid who requires not education in the Greek and Latin languages but a swift slosh on the base of the skull with a black-jack. I came here, Bertie, because it was the only thing I could do. At the last moment before she sailed to America, Rosie decided that I had better stay behind and look after the Peke. She left me a couple of hundred quid to see me through till her return. This sum, judiciously expended over the period of her absence, would have been enough to keep Peke and self in moderate affluence. But you know how it is.’
‘How what is?’
‘When someone comes slinking up to you in the club and tells you that some cripple of a horse can’t help winning even if it develops lumbago and the botts ten yards from the starting-post. I tell you, I regarded the thing as a cautious and conservative investment.’
‘You mean you planked the entire capital on a horse?’
Bingo laughed bitterly.
‘If you could call the thing a horse. If it hadn’t shown a flash of speed in the straight, it would have got mixed up with the next race. It came in last, putting me in a dashed delicate position. Somehow or other I had to find the funds to keep me going, so that I could win through till Rosie’s return without her knowing what had occurred. Rosie is the dearest girl in the world; but if you were a married man, Bertie, you would be aware that the best of wives is apt to cut up rough if she finds that her husband has dropped six weeks’ housekeeping money on a single race. Isn’t that so, Jeeves?’
‘Yes, sir. Women are odd in that respect.’
‘It was a moment for swift thinking. There was enough left from the wreck to board the Peke out at a comfortable home. I signed him up for six weeks at the Kosy Komfort Kennels at Kingsbridge, Kent, and tottered out, a broken man, to get a tutoring job. I landed the kid Thomas. And here I am.’
It was a sad story, of course, but it seemed to me that, awful as it might be to be in constant association with my Aunt Agatha and young Thos, he had got rather well out of a tight place.
‘All you have to do,’ I said, ‘is to carry on here for a few weeks more, and everything will be oojah-cum-spiff.’
Bingo barked bleakly.
‘A few weeks more! I shall be lucky if I stay two days. You remember I told you that your aunt’s faith in me as a guardian of her blighted son was shaken a few days ago by the fact that he was caught smoking. I now find that the person who caught him smoking was the man Filmer. And ten minutes ago young Thomas told me that he was proposing to inflict some hideous revenge on Filmer for having reported him to your aunt. I don’t know what he is going to do, but if he does it, out I inevitably go on my left ear. Your aunt thinks the world of Filmer, and would sack me on the spot. And three weeks before Rosie gets back!’
I saw all.
‘Jeeves,’ I said.
‘Sir?’
‘I see all. Do you see all?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Then flock round.’
‘I fear, sir –’
Bingo gave a low moan.
‘Don’t tell me, Jeeves,’ he said, brokenly, ‘that nothing suggests itself.’
‘Nothing at the moment, I regret to say sir.’
Bingo uttered a stricken woofle like a bull-dog that has been refused cake.
‘Well, then, the only thing I can do, I suppose,’ he said sombrely, ‘is not to let the pie-faced little thing out of my sight for a second.’
‘Absolutely,’ I said. ‘Ceaseless vigilance, eh, Jeeves?’
‘Precisely, sir.’
‘But meanwhile, Jeeves,’ said Bingo in a low, earnest voice, ‘you will be devoting your best thought to the matter, won’t you?’
‘Most certainly, sir.’
‘Thank you, Jeeves.’
‘Not at all, sir.’
I will say for young Bingo that, once the need for action arrived, he behaved with an energy and determination which compelled respect. I suppose there was not a minute during the next two days when the kid Thos was able to say to himself, ‘Alone at last!’ But on the evening of the second day Aunt Agatha announced that some people were coming over on the morrow for a spot of tennis, and I feared that the worst must now befall.
Young Bingo, you see, is one of those fellows who, once their fingers close over the handle of a tennis racket, fall into a sort of trance in which nothing outside the radius of the lawn exists for them. If you came up to Bingo in the middle of a set and told him that panthers were devouri
ng his best friend in the kitchen garden, he would look at you and say, ‘Oh, ah?’ or words to that effect. I knew that he would not give a thought to young Thomas and the Right Hon. till the last ball had bounced, and, as I dressed for dinner that night, I was conscious of an impending doom.
‘Jeeves,’ I said, ‘have you ever pondered on Life?’
‘From time to time, sir, in my leisure moments.’
‘Grim, isn’t it, what?’
‘Grim, sir?’
‘I mean to say, the difference between things as they look and things as they are.’
‘The trousers perhaps a half-inch higher, sir. A very slight adjustment of the braces will effect the necessary alteration. You were saying, sir?’
‘I mean, here at Woollam Chersey we have apparently a happy, care-free country-house party. But beneath the glittering surface, Jeeves, dark currents are running. One gazes at the Right Hon. wrapping himself round the salmon mayonnaise at lunch, and he seems a man without a care in the world. Yet all the while a dreadful fate is hanging over him, creeping nearer and nearer. What exact steps do you think the kid Thomas intends to take?’
‘In the course of an informal conversation which I had with the young gentleman this afternoon, sir, he informed me that he had been reading a romance entitled Treasure Island, and had been much struck by the character and actions of a certain Captain Flint. I gathered that he was weighing the advisability of modelling his own conduct on that of the Captain.’
‘But, good heavens, Jeeves! If I remember Treasure Island, Flint was the bird who went about hitting people with a cutlass. You don’t think young Thomas would bean Mr Filmer with a cutlass?’
‘Possibly he does not possess a cutlass, sir.’
‘Well, with anything.’
‘We can but wait and see, sir. The tie, if I might suggest it, sir, a shade more tightly knotted. One aims at the perfect butterfly effect. If you will permit me –’
‘What do ties matter, Jeeves, at a time like this? Do you realize that Mr Little’s domestic happiness is hanging in the scale?’
‘There is no time, sir, at which ties do not matter.’
I could see the man was pained, but I did not try to heal the wound. What’s the word I want? Preoccupied. I was too preoccupied, don’t you know. And distrait. Not to say careworn. I was still careworn when, next day at half-past two, the revels commenced on the tennis lawn. It was one of those close, baking days, with thunder rumbling just round the corner; and it seemed to me that there was a brooding menace in the air.
The Jeeves Omnibus - Vol 3: The Mating Season / Ring for Jeeves / Very Good, Jeeves Page 44
