Vastly different was the Gussie who stood before me now. Self-confidence seemed to ooze from the fellow’s every pore. His face was flushed, there was a jovial light in his eyes, the lips were parted in a swashbuckling smile. And when with a genial hand he sloshed me on the back before I could sidestep, it was as if I had been kicked by a mule.
‘Well, Bertie,’ he proceeded, as blithely as a linnet without a thing on his mind, ‘you will be glad to hear that you were right. Your theory has been tested and proved correct. I feel like a fighting cock.’
My brain ceased to reel. I saw all.
‘Have you been having a drink?’
‘I have. As you advised. Unpleasant stuff. Like medicine. Burns your throat, too, and makes one as thirsty as the dickens. How anyone can mop it up, as you do, for pleasure, beats me. Still, I would be the last to deny that it tunes up the system. I could bite a tiger.’
‘What did you have?’
‘Whisky. At least, that was the label on the decanter, and I have no reason to suppose that a woman like your aunt – staunch, true-blue, British – would deliberately deceive the public. If she labels her decanters Whisky, then I consider that we know where we are.’
‘A whisky and soda, eh? You couldn’t have done better.’
‘Soda?’ said Gussie thoughtfully. ‘I knew there was something I had forgotten.’
‘Didn’t you put any soda in it?’
‘It never occurred to me. I just nipped into the dining-room and drank out of the decanter.’
‘How much?’
‘Oh, about ten swallows. Twelve, maybe. Or fourteen. Say sixteen medium-sized gulps. Gosh, I’m thirsty.’
He moved over to the washstand and drank deeply out of the water bottle. I cast a covert glance at Uncle Tom’s photograph behind his back. For the first time since it had come into my life, I was glad that it was so large. It hid its secret well. If Gussie had caught sight of that jug of orange juice, he would unquestionably have been on to it like a knife.
‘Well, I’m glad you’re feeling braced,’ I said.
He moved buoyantly from the washstand, and endeavoured to slosh me on the back again. Foiled by my nimble footwork, he staggered to the bed and sat down upon it.
‘Braced? Did I say I could bite a tiger?’
‘You did.’
‘Make it two tigers. I could chew holes in a steel door. What an ass you must have thought me out there in the garden. I see now you were laughing in your sleeve.’
‘No, no.’
‘Yes,’ insisted Gussie. ‘That very sleeve,’ he said, pointing. ‘And I don’t blame you. I can’t imagine why I made all that fuss about a potty job like distributing prizes at a rotten little country grammar school. Can you imagine, Bertie?’
‘No.’
‘Exactly. Nor can I imagine. There’s simply nothing to it. I just shin up on the platform, drop a few gracious words, hand the little blighters their prizes, and hop down again, admired by all. Not a suggestion of split trousers from start to finish. I mean, why should anybody split his trousers? I can’t imagine. Can you imagine?’
‘No.’
‘Nor can I imagine. I shall be a riot. I know just the sort of stuff that’s needed – simple, manly, optimistic stuff straight from the shoulder. This shoulder,’ said Gussie, tapping. ‘Why I was so nervous this morning I can’t imagine. For anything simpler than distributing a few footling books to a bunch of grimy-faced kids I can’t imagine. Still, for some reason I can’t imagine, I was feeling a little nervous, but now I feel fine, Bertie – fine, fine, fine – and I say this to you as an old friend. Because that’s what you are, old man, when all the smoke has cleared away – an old friend. I don’t think I’ve ever met an older friend. How long have you been an old friend of mine, Bertie?’
‘Oh, years and years.’
‘Imagine! Though, of course, there must have been a time when you were a new friend … Hallo, the luncheon gong. Come on, old friend.’
And, rising from the bed like a performing flea, he made for the door.
I followed rather pensively. What had occurred was, of course, so much velvet, as you might say. I mean, I had wanted a braced Fink-Nottle – indeed, all my plans had had a braced Fink-Nottle as their end and aim – but I found myself wondering a little whether the Fink-Nottle now sliding down the banister wasn’t, perhaps, a shade too braced. His demeanour seemed to me that of a man who might quite easily throw bread about at lunch.
Fortunately, however, the settled gloom of those round him exercised a restraining effect upon him at the table. It would have needed a far more plastered man to have been rollicking at such a gathering. I had told the Bassett that there were aching hearts in Brinkley Court, and it now looked probable that there would shortly be aching tummies. Anatole, I learned, had retired to his bed with a fit of the vapours, and the meal now before us had been cooked by the kitchen maid – as C3 a performer as ever wielded a skillet.
This, coming on top of their other troubles, induced in the company a pretty unanimous silence – a solemn stillness, as you might say – which even Gussie did not seem prepared to break. Except, therefore, for one short snatch of song on his part, nothing untoward marked the occasion, and presently we rose, with instructions from Aunt Dahlia to put on festal raiment and be at Market Snodsbury not later than 3.30. This leaving me ample time to smoke a gasper or two in a shady bower beside the lake, I did so, repairing to my room round about the hour of three.
Jeeves was on the job, adding the final polish to the old topper, and I was about to apprise him of the latest developments in the matter of Gussie, when he forestalled me by observing that the latter had only just concluded an agreeable visit to the Wooster bedchamber.
‘I found Mr Fink-Nottle seated here when I arrived to lay out your clothes, sir.’
‘Indeed, Jeeves? Gussie was in here, was he?’
‘Yes, sir. He left only a few moments ago. He is driving to the school with Mr and Mrs Travers in the large car.’
‘Did you give him your story of the two Irishmen?’
‘Yes, sir. He laughed heartily.’
‘Good. Had you any other contributions for him?’
‘I ventured to suggest that he might mention to the young gentlemen that education is a drawing out, not a putting in. The late Lord Brancaster was much addicted to presenting prizes at schools, and he invariably employed this dictum.’
‘And how did he react to that?’
‘He laughed heartily, sir.’
‘This surprised you, no doubt? This practically incessant merriment, I mean.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘You thought it odd in one who, when you last saw him, was well up in Group A of the defeatists.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘There is a ready explanation, Jeeves. Since you last saw him, Gussie has been on a bender. He’s as tight as an owl.’
‘Indeed, sir?’
‘Absolutely. His nerve cracked under the strain, and he sneaked into the dining-room and started mopping the stuff up like a vacuum cleaner. Whisky would seem to be what he filled the radiator with. I gather that he used up most of the decanter. Golly, Jeeves, it’s lucky he didn’t get at that laced orange juice on top of that, what?’
‘Extremely, sir.’
I eyed the jug. Uncle Tom’s photograph had fallen into the fender, and it was standing there right out in the open, where Gussie couldn’t have helped seeing it. Mercifully, it was empty now.
‘It was a most prudent act on your part, if I may say so, sir, to dispose of the orange juice.’
I stared at the man.
‘What? Didn’t you?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Jeeves, let us get this clear. Was it not you who threw away that o.j.?’
‘No, sir. I assumed, when I entered the room and found the pitcher empty, that you had done so.’
We looked at each other, awed. Two minds with but a single thought.
‘I very much fear, sir �
��’
‘So do I, Jeeves.’
‘It would seem almost certain –’
‘Quite certain. Weigh the facts. Sift the evidence. The jug was standing on the mantelpiece, for all eyes to behold. Gussie had been complaining of thirst. You found him in here, laughing heartily. I think that there can be little doubt, Jeeves, that the entire contents of that jug are at this moment reposing on top of the existing cargo in that already brilliantly lit man’s interior. Disturbing, Jeeves.’
‘Most disturbing, sir.’
‘Let us face the position, forcing ourselves to be calm. You inserted in that jug – shall we say a tumblerful of the right stuff?’
‘Fully a tumblerful, sir.’
‘And I added of my plenty about the same amount.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘And in two shakes of a duck’s tail Gussie, with all that lapping about inside him, will be distributing the prizes at Market Snodsbury Grammar School before an audience of all that is fairest and most refined in the county.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘It seems to me, Jeeves, that the ceremony may be one fraught with considerable interest.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘What, in your opinion, will the harvest be?’
‘One finds it difficult to hazard a conjecture, sir.’
‘You mean imagination boggles?’
‘Yes, sir.’
I inspected my imagination. He was right. It boggled.
17
* * *
‘AND YET, JEEVES,’ I said, twiddling a thoughtful steering wheel, ‘there is always the bright side.’
Some twenty minutes had elapsed, and, having picked the honest fellow up outside the front door, I was driving in the two-seater to the picturesque town of Market Snodsbury. Since we had parted – he to go to his lair and fetch his hat, I to remain in my room and complete the formal costume – I had been doing some close thinking.
The results of this I now proceeded to hand on to him.
‘However dark the prospect may be, Jeeves, however murkily the storm clouds may seem to gather, a keen eye can usually discern the bluebird. It is bad, no doubt, that Gussie should be going, some ten minutes from now, to distribute prizes in a state of advanced intoxication, but we must never forget that these things cut both ways.’
‘You imply, sir –’
‘Precisely. I am thinking of him in his capacity of wooer. All this ought to have put him in rare shape for offering his hand in marriage. I shall be vastly surprised if it won’t turn him into a sort of caveman. Have you ever seen James Cagney in the movies?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Something on those lines.’
I heard him cough, and sniped him with a sideways glance. He was wearing that informative look of his.
‘Then you have not heard, sir?’
‘Eh?’
‘You are not aware that a marriage has been arranged and will shortly take place between Mr Fink-Nottle and Miss Bassett?’
‘What?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘When did this happen?’
‘Shortly after Mr Fink-Nottle had left your room, sir.’
‘Ah! In the post-orange-juice era?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘But are you sure of your facts? How do you know?’
‘My informant was Mr Fink-Nottle himself, sir. He appeared anxious to confide in me. His story was somewhat incoherent, but I had no difficulty in apprehending its substance. Prefacing his remarks with the statement that this was a beautiful world, he laughed heartily and said that he had become formally engaged.’
‘No details?’
‘No, sir.’
‘But one can picture the scene.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘I mean, imagination doesn’t boggle.’
‘No, sir.’
And it didn’t. I could see exactly what must have happened. Insert a liberal dose of mixed spirits in a normally abstemious man, and he becomes a force. He does not stand around, twiddling his fingers and stammering. He acts. I had no doubt that Gussie must have reached for the Bassett and clasped her to him like a stevedore handling a sack of coals. And one could readily envisage the effect of that sort of thing on a girl of romantic mind.
‘Well, well, well, Jeeves.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘This is splendid news.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘You see now how right I was.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘It must have been rather an eye-opener for you, watching me handle this case.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘The simple, direct method never fails.’
‘No, sir.’
‘Whereas the elaborate does.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Right ho, Jeeves.’
We had arrived at the main entrance of Market Snodsbury Grammar School. I parked the car, and went in, well content. True, the Tuppy-Angela problem still remained unsolved and Aunt Dahlia’s five hundred quid seemed as far off as ever, but it was gratifying to feel that good old Gussie’s troubles were over, at any rate.
The Grammar School at Market Snodsbury had, I understood, been built somewhere in the year 1416, and, as with so many of these ancient foundations, there still seemed to brood over its Great Hall, where the afternoon’s festivities were to take place, not a little of the fug of the centuries. It was the hottest day of the summer, and though somebody had opened a tentative window or two, the atmosphere remained distinctive and individual.
In this hall the youth of Market Snodsbury had been eating its daily lunch for a matter of five hundred years, and the flavour lingered. The air was sort of heavy and languorous, if you know what I mean, with the scent of Young England and boiled beef and carrots.
Aunt Dahlia, who was sitting with a bevy of the local nibs in the second row, sighted me as I entered and waved to me to join her, but I was too smart for that. I wedged myself in among the standees at the back, leaning up against a chap who from the aroma, might have been a corn chandler or something of that order. The essence of strategy on these occasions is to be as near the door as possible.
The hall was gaily decorated with flags and coloured paper, and the eye was further refreshed by the spectacle of a mixed drove of boys, parents, and what not, the former running a good deal to shiny faces and Eton collars, the latter stressing the black-satin note rather when female, and looking as if their coats were too tight, if male. And presently there was some applause – sporadic, Jeeves has since told me it was – and I saw Gussie being steered by a bearded bloke in a gown to a seat in the middle of the platform.
And I confess that as I beheld him and felt that there but for the grace of God went Bertram Wooster, a shudder ran through the frame. It all reminded me so vividly of the time I had addressed that girls’ school.
Of course, looking at it dispassionately, you may say that for horror and peril there is no comparison between an almost human audience like the one before me and a mob of small girls with pigtails down their backs, and this, I concede, is true. Nevertheless, the spectacle was enough to make me feel like a fellow watching a pal going over Niagara Falls in a barrel, and the thought of what I had escaped caused everything for a moment to go black and swim before my eyes.
When I was able to see clearly once more, I perceived that Gussie was now seated. He had his hands on his knees, with his elbows out at right angles, like a negro minstrel of the old school about to ask Mr Bones why a chicken crosses the road, and he was staring before him with a smile so fixed and pebble-beached that I should have thought that anybody could have guessed that there sat one in whom the old familiar juice was splashing up against the back of the front teeth.
In fact, I saw Aunt Dahlia, who, having assisted at so many hunting dinners in her time, is second to none as a judge of the symptoms, give a start and gaze long and earnestly. And she was just saying something to Uncle Tom on her left when the bearded bloke stepped to the foo
tlights and started making a speech. From the fact that he spoke as if he had a hot potato in his mouth without getting the raspberry from the lads in the ringside seats, I deduced that he must be the headmaster.
With his arrival in the spotlight, a sort of perspiring resignation seemed to settle on the audience. Personally, I snuggled up against the chandler and let my attention wander. The speech was on the subject of the doings of the school during the past term, and this part of a prize giving is always apt rather to fail to grip the visiting stranger. I mean, you know how it is. You’re told that J. B. Brewster has won an Exhibition for Classics at Cat’s, Cambridge, and you feel that it’s one of those stories where you can’t see how funny it is unless you really know the fellow. And the same applies to G. Bullett being awarded the Lady Jane Wix Scholarship at the Birmingham College of Veterinary Science.
In fact, I and the corn chandler, who was looking a bit fagged I thought, as if he had had a hard morning chandling the corn, were beginning to doze lightly when things suddenly brisked up, bringing Gussie into the picture for the first time.
‘Today,’ said the bearded bloke, ‘we are all happy to welcome as the guest of the afternoon Mr Fitz-Wattle –’
At the beginning of the address, Gussie had subsided into a sort of daydream, with his mouth hanging open. About halfway through, faint signs of life had begun to show. And for the last few minutes he had been trying to cross one leg over the other and failing and having another shot and failing again. But only now did he exhibit any real animation. He sat up with a jerk.
‘Fink-Nottle,’ he said, opening his eyes.
‘Fitz-Nottle.’
‘Fink-Nottle.’
‘I should say Fink-Nottle.’
‘Of course you should, you silly ass,’ said Gussie genially. ‘All right, get on with it.’
And closing his eyes, he began trying to cross his legs again.
The Jeeves Omnibus Vol. 2: Right Ho, Jeeves / Joy in the Morning / Carry On, Jeeves Page 16
