And as if this were not bad enough, Tuppy had to shove his oar in.
‘That’s right,’ said Tuppy. ‘Bertie has always been a great cyclist. I remember at Oxford he used to take all his clothes off on bump-supper nights and ride around the quad, singing comic songs. Jolly fast he used to go too.’
‘Then he can go jolly fast now,’ said Aunt Dahlia with animation. ‘He can’t go too fast for me. He may also sing comic songs, if he likes … And if you wish to take your clothes off, Bertie, my lamb, by all means do so. But whether clothed or in the nude, whether singing comic songs or not singing comic songs, get a move on.’
I found speech:
‘But I haven’t ridden for years.’
‘Then it’s high time you began again.’
‘I’ve probably forgotten how to ride.’
‘You’ll soon get the knack after you’ve taken a toss or two. Trial and error. The only way.’
‘But it’s miles to Kingham.’
‘So the sooner you’re off, the better.’
‘But –’
‘Bertie, dear.’
‘But, dash it –’
‘Bertie, darling.’
‘Yes, but dash it –’
‘Bertie, my sweet.’
And so it was arranged. Presently I was moving sombrely off through the darkness, Jeeves at my side, Aunt Dahlia calling after me something about trying to imagine myself the man who brought the good news from Ghent to Aix. The first I had heard of the chap.
‘So, Jeeves,’ I said, as we reached the shed, and my voice was cold and bitter, ‘this is what your great scheme has accomplished! Tuppy, Angela, Gussie and the Bassett not on speaking terms, and self faced with an eight-mile ride –’
‘Nine, I believe, sir.’
‘– a nine-mile ride, and another nine-mile ride back.’
‘I am sorry, sir.’
‘No good being sorry now. Where is this foul boneshaker?’
‘I will bring it out, sir.’
He did so. I eyed it sourly.
‘Where’s the lamp?’
‘I fear there is no lamp, sir.’
‘No lamp?’
‘No, sir.’
‘But I may come a fearful stinker without a lamp. Suppose I barge into something?’
I broke off and eyed him frigidly.
‘You smile, Jeeves. The thought amuses you?’
‘I beg your pardon, sir. I was thinking of a tale my Uncle Cyril used to tell me as a child. An absurd little story, sir, though I confess that I have always found it droll. According to my Uncle Cyril, two men named Nicholls and Jackson set out to ride to Brighton on a tandem bicycle, and were so unfortunate as to come into collision with a brewer’s van. And when the rescue party arrived on the scene of the accident, it was discovered that they had been hurled together with such force that it was impossible to sort them out at all adequately. The keenest eye could not discern which portion of the fragments was Nicholls and which Jackson. So they collected as much as they could, and called it Nixon. I remember laughing very much at that story when I was a child, sir.’
I had to pause a moment to master my feelings.
‘You did, eh?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘You thought it funny?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘And your Uncle Cyril thought it funny?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Golly, what a family! Next time you meet your Uncle Cyril, Jeeves, you can tell him from me that his sense of humour is morbid and unpleasant.’
‘He is dead, sir.’
‘Thank heaven for that … Well, give me the blasted machine.’
‘Very good, sir.’
‘Are the tyres inflated?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘The nuts firm, the brakes in order, the sprockets running true with the differential gear?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Right ho, Jeeves.’
In Tuppy’s statement that, when at the University of Oxford, I had been known to ride a bicycle in the nude about the quadrangle of our mutual college, there had been, I cannot deny, a certain amount of substance. Correct, however, though his facts were, so far as they went, he had not told all. What he had omitted to mention was that I had invariably been well oiled at the time, and when in that condition a chap is capable of feats at which in cooler moments his reason would rebel.
Stimulated by the juice, I believe, men have even been known to ride alligators.
As I started now to pedal out into the great world, I was icily sober, and the old skill, in consequence, had deserted me entirely. I found myself wobbling badly, and all the stories I had ever heard of nasty bicycle accidents came back to me with a rush, headed by Jeeves’s Uncle Cyril’s cheery little anecdote about Nicholls and Jackson.
Pounding wearily through the darkness, I found myself at a loss to fathom the mentality of men like Jeeves’s Uncle Cyril. What on earth he could see funny in a disaster which had apparently involved the complete extinction of a human creature – or, at any rate, of half a human creature and half another human creature – was more than I could understand. To me, the thing was one of the most poignant tragedies that had ever been brought to my attention, and I have no doubt that I should have continued to brood over it for quite a time, had my thoughts not been diverted by the sudden necessity of zigzagging sharply in order to avoid a pig in the fairway.
For a moment it looked like being real Nicholis-and-Jackson stuff, but, fortunately, a quick zig on my part, coinciding with an adroit zag on the part of the pig, enabled me to win through, and I continued to ride safe, but with the heart fluttering like a captive bird.
The effect of this narrow squeak upon me was to shake the nerve to the utmost. The fact that pigs were abroad in the night seemed to bring home to me the perilous nature of my enterprise. It set me thinking of all the other things that could happen to a man out and about on a velocipede without a lamp after lighting-up time. In particular, I recalled the statement of a pal of mine that in certain sections of the rural districts goats were accustomed to stray across the road to the extent of their chains, thereby forming about as sound a booby trap as one could well wish.
He mentioned, I remember, the case of a friend of his whose machine got entangled with a goat chain and who was dragged seven miles – like skijoring in Switzerland – so that he was never the same man again. And there was one chap who ran into an elephant, left over from a travelling circus.
Indeed, taking it for all in all, it seemed to me that, with the possible exception of being bitten by sharks, there was virtually no front-page disaster that could not happen to a fellow, once he had allowed his dear ones to override his better judgment and shove him out into the great unknown on a push-bike, and I am not ashamed to confess that, taking it by and large, the amount of quailing I did from this point on was pretty considerable.
However, in respect to goats and elephants, I must say things panned out unexpectedly well.
Oddly enough, I encountered neither. But when you have said that you have said everything, for in every other way the conditions could scarcely have been fouler.
Apart from the ceaseless anxiety of having to keep an eye skinned for elephants, I found myself much depressed by barking dogs, and once I received a most unpleasant shock when, alighting to consult a signpost, I saw sitting on top of it an owl that looked exactly like my Aunt Agatha. So agitated, indeed, had my frame of mind become by this time that I thought at first it was Aunt Agatha, and only when reason and reflection told me how alien to her habits it would be to climb signposts and sit on them, could I pull myself together and overcome the weakness.
In short, what with all this mental disturbance added to the more purely physical anguish in the billowy portions and the calves and ankles, the Bertram Wooster who eventually toppled off at the door of Kingham Manor was a very different Bertram from the gay and insouciant boulevardier of Bond Street and Piccadilly.
Even to one una
ware of the inside facts, it would have been evident that Kingham Manor was throwing its weight about a bit tonight. Lights shone in the windows, music was in the air, and as I drew nearer my ear detected the sibilant shuffling of the feet of butlers, footmen, chauffeurs, parlourmaids, housemaids, tweenies and, I have no doubt, cooks, who were busily treading the measure. I suppose you couldn’t sum it up much better than by saying that there was a sound of revelry by night.
The orgy was taking place in one of the ground-floor rooms which had french windows opening on to the drive, and it was to these french windows that I now made my way. An orchestra was playing something with a good deal of zip to it, and under happier conditions I dare say my feet would have started twitching in time to the melody. But I had sterner work before me than to stand hoofing it by myself on gravel drives.
I wanted that back-door key, and I wanted it instanter.
Scanning the throng within, I found it difficult for a while to spot Seppings. Presently, however, he hove in view, doing fearfully lissom things in midfloor. I ‘Hi-Seppings!’-ed a couple of times, but his mind was too much on his job to be diverted, and it was only when the swirl of the dance had brought him within prodding distance of my forefinger that a quick one to the lower ribs enabled me to claim his attention.
The unexpected buffet caused him to trip over his partner’s feet, and it was with marked austerity that he turned. As he recognized Bertram, however, coldness melted, to be replaced by astonishment.
‘Mr Wooster!’
I was in no mood for bandying words.
‘Less of the “Mr Wooster” and more back-door keys,’ I said curtly. ‘Give me the key of the back door, Seppings.’
He did not seem to grasp the gist.
‘The key of the back door, sir?’
‘Precisely. The Brinkley Court back-door key.’
‘But it is at the Court, sir.’
I clicked the tongue, annoyed.
‘Don’t be frivolous, my dear old butler,’ I said. ‘I haven’t ridden nine miles on a push-bike to listen to you trying to be funny. You’ve got it in your trousers pocket.’
‘No, sir. I left it with Mr Jeeves.’
‘You did – what?’
‘Yes, sir. Before I came away. Mr Jeeves said that he wished to walk in the garden before retiring for the night. He was to place the key on the kitchen windowsill.’
I stared at the man dumbly. His eye was clear, his hand steady. He had none of the appearance of a butler who has had a couple.
‘You mean that all this while the key has been in Jeeves’s possession?’
‘Yes, sir.’
I could speak no more. Emotion had overmastered my voice. I was at a loss and not abreast; but of one thing, it seemed to me, there could be no doubt. For some reason, not to be fathomed now, but most certainly to be gone well into as soon as I had pushed this infernal sewing-machine of mine over those nine miles of lonely country road and got within striking distance of him, Jeeves had been doing the dirty. Knowing that at any given moment he could have solved the whole situation, he had kept Aunt Dahlia and others roosting out on the front lawn en déshabille and, worse still, had stood calmly by and watched his young employer set out on a wholly unnecessary eighteen-mile bicycle ride.
I could scarcely believe such a thing of him. Of his Uncle Cyril, yes. With that distorted sense of humour of his, Uncle Cyril might quite conceivably have been capable of such conduct. But that it should be Jeeves –
I leaped into the saddle and, stifling the cry of agony which rose to the lips as the bruised person touched the hard leather, set out on the homeward journey.
23
* * *
I REMEMBER JEEVES saying on one occasion – I forget how the subject had arisen – he may simply have thrown the observation out, as he does sometimes, for me to take or leave – that hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. And until tonight I had always felt that there was a lot in it. I had never scorned a woman myself, but Pongo Twistleton once scorned an aunt of his, flatly refusing to meet her son Gerald at Paddington and give him lunch and see him off to school at Waterloo, and he never heard the end of it. Letters were written, he tells me, which had to be seen to be believed. Also two very strong telegrams and a bitter picture postcard with a view of the Little Chilbury War Memorial on it.
Until tonight, therefore, as I say, I had never questioned the accuracy of the statement. Scorned women first and the rest nowhere, was how it had always seemed to me.
But tonight I revised my views. If you want to know what hell can really do in the way of furies, look for the chap who has been hornswoggled into taking a long and unnecessary bicycle ride in the dark without a lamp.
Mark that word ‘unnecessary’. That was the part of it that really jabbed the iron into the soul. I mean, if it was a case of riding to the doctor’s to save the child with croup, or going off to the local pub to fetch supplies in the event of the cellar having run dry, no-one would leap to the handlebars more readily than I. Young Lochinvar, absolutely. But this business of being put through it merely to gratify one’s personal attendant’s diseased sense of the amusing was a bit too thick, and I chafed from start to finish.
So, what I mean to say, although the providence which watches over good men saw to it that I was enabled to complete the homeward journey unscathed except in the billowy portions, removing from my path all goats, elephants, and even owls that looked like my Aunt Agatha, it was a frowning and jaundiced Bertram who finally came to anchor at the Brinkley Court front door. And when I saw a dark figure emerging from the porch to meet me, I prepared to let myself go and uncork all that was fizzing in the mind.
‘Jeeves!’ I said.
‘It is I, Bertie.’
The voice which spoke sounded like warm treacle, and even if I had not recognized it immediately as that of the Bassett, I should have known that it did not proceed from the man I was yearning to confront. For this figure before me was wearing a simple tweed dress and had employed my first name in its remarks. And Jeeves, whatever his moral defects, would never go about in skirts calling me Bertie.
The last person, of course, whom I would have wished to meet after a long evening in the saddle, but I vouchsafed a courteous ‘What ho!’
There was a pause, during which I massaged the calves. Mine, of course, I mean.
‘You got in, then?’ I said, in allusion to the change of costume.
‘Oh, yes. About a quarter of an hour after you left Jeeves went searching about and found the back-door key on the kitchen windowsill.’
‘Ha!’
‘What?’
‘Nothing.’
‘I thought you said something.’
‘No, nothing.’
And I continued to do so. For at this juncture, as had so often happened when this girl and I were closeted, the conversation once more went blue on us. The night breeze whispered, but not the Bassett. A bird twittered, but not so much as a chirp escaped Bertram. It was perfectly amazing, the way her mere presence seemed to wipe speech from my lips – and mine, for that matter, from hers. It began to look as if our married life together would be rather like twenty years among the Trappist monks.
‘Seen Jeeves anywhere?’ I asked, eventually coming through.
‘Yes, in the dining-room.’
‘The dining-room?’
‘Waiting on everybody. They are having eggs and bacon and champagne … What did you say?’
I had said nothing – merely snorted. There was something about the thought of these people carelessly revelling at a time when, for all they knew, I was probably being dragged about the countryside by goats or chewed by elephants, that struck home at me like a poisoned dart. It was the sort of thing you read about as having happened just before the French Revolution – the haughty nobles in their castles callously digging in and quaffing while the unfortunate blighters outside were suffering frightful privations.
The voice of the Bassett cut in on these mordant reflect
ions:
‘Bertie.’
‘Hallo!’
Silence.
‘Hallo!’ I said again.
No response. Whole thing rather like one of those telephone conversations where you sit at your end of the wire saying: ‘Hallo! Hallo!’ unaware that the party of the second part has gone off to tea.
Eventually, however, she came to the surface again:
‘Bertie, I have something to say to you.’
‘What?’
‘I have something to say to you.’
‘I know. I said “What?” ’
‘Oh, I thought you didn’t hear what I said.’
‘Yes, I heard what you said, all right, but not what you were going to say.’
‘Oh, I see.’
‘Right ho.’
So that was straightened out. Nevertheless, instead of proceeding she took time off once more. She stood twisting the fingers and scratching the gravel with her foot. When finally she spoke, it was to deliver an impressive boost:
‘Bertie, do you read Tennyson?’
‘Not if I can help.’
‘You remind me so much of those Knights of the Round Table in the Idylls of the King.’
Of course I had heard of them – Lancelot, Galahad and all that lot, but I didn’t see where the resemblance came in. It seemed to me that she must be thinking of a couple of other fellows.
‘How do you mean?’
‘You have such a great heart, such a fine soul. You are so generous, so unselfish, so chivalrous. I have always felt that about you – that you are one of the few really chivalrous men I have ever met.’
Well, dashed difficult, of course, to know what to say when someone is giving you the old oil on a scale like that. I muttered an ‘Oh, yes?’ or something on those lines, and rubbed the billowy portions in some embarrassment. And there was another silence, broken only by a sharp howl as I rubbed a bit too hard.
The Jeeves Omnibus Vol. 2: Right Ho, Jeeves / Joy in the Morning / Carry On, Jeeves Page 23
