‘Good afternoon.’
‘Good afternoon.’
Corky stood there, looking at the door, and then he turned to me and began to get it off his chest. Fortunately, he seemed to take it for granted that I knew all about what had happened, so it wasn’t as awkward as it might have been.
‘It’s my uncle’s idea,’ he said. ‘Muriel doesn’t know about it yet. The portrait’s to be a surprise for her on her birthday. The nurse takes the kid out ostensibly to get a breather, and they beat it down here. If you want an instance of the irony of fate, Bertie, get acquainted with this. Here’s the first commission I have ever had to paint a portrait, and the sitter is that human poached egg that has butted in and bounced me out of my inheritance. Can you beat it! I call it rubbing the thing in to expect me to spend my afternoons gazing into the ugly face of a little brat who to all intents and purposes has hit me behind the ear with a black-jack and swiped all I possess. I can’t refuse to paint the portrait, because if I did my uncle would stop my allowance; yet every time I look up and catch that kid’s vacant eye, I suffer agonies. I tell you, Bertie, sometimes when he gives me a patronizing glance and then turns away and is sick, as if it revolted him to look at me, I come within an ace of occupying the entire front page of the evening papers as the latest murder sensation. There are moments when I can almost see the headlines: “Promising Young Artist Beans Baby With Axe”.’
I patted his shoulder silently. My sympathy for the poor old scout was too deep for words.
I kept away from the studio for some time after that, because it didn’t seem right of me to intrude on the poor chappie’s sorrow. Besides, I’m bound to say that nurse intimidated me. She reminded me so infernally of Aunt Agatha. She was the same gimlet-eyed type.
But one afternoon Corky called me on the phone.
‘Bertie!’
‘Hallo?’
‘Are you doing anything this afternoon?’
‘Nothing special.’
‘You couldn’t come down here, could you?’
‘What’s the trouble? Anything up?’
‘I’ve finished the portrait.’
‘Good boy! Stout work!’
‘Yes.’ His voice sounded rather doubtful. ‘The fact is, Bertie, it doesn’t look quite right to me. There’s something about it – My uncle’s coming in half an hour to inspect it, and – I don’t know why it is, but I kind of feel I’d like your moral support!’
I began to see that I was letting myself in for something. The sympathetic cooperation of Jeeves seemed to me to be indicated.
‘You think he’ll cut up rough?’
‘He may.’
I threw my mind back to the red-faced chappie I had met at the restaurant, and tried to picture him cutting up rough. It was only too easy. I spoke to Corky firmly on the telephone.
‘I’ll come,’ I said.
‘Good!’
‘But only if I may bring Jeeves.’
‘Why Jeeves? What’s Jeeves got to do with it? Who wants Jeeves? Jeeves is the fool who suggested the scheme that has led –’
‘Listen, Corky, old top! If you think I am going to face that uncle of yours without Jeeves’s support, you’re mistaken. I’d sooner go into a den of wild beasts and bite a lion on the back of the neck.’
‘Oh, all right,’ said Corky. Not cordially, but he said it; so I rang for Jeeves, and explained the situation.
‘Very good, sir,’ said Jeeves.
We found Corky near the door, looking at the picture with one hand up in a defensive sort of way, as if he thought it might swing on him.
‘Stand right where you are, Bertie,’ he said, without moving. ‘Now, tell me honestly, how does it strike you?’
The light from the big window fell right on the picture. I took a good look at it. Then I shifted a bit nearer and took another look. Then I went back to where I had been at first, because it hadn’t seemed quite so bad from there.
‘Well?’ said Corky anxiously.
I hesitated a bit.
‘Of course, old man, I only saw the kid once, and then only for a moment, but – but it was an ugly sort of kid, wasn’t it, if I remember rightly?’
‘As ugly as that?’
I looked again, and honesty compelled me to be frank.
‘I don’t see how it could have been, old chap.’
Poor old Corky ran his fingers through his hair in a temperamental sort of way. He groaned.
‘You’re quite right, Bertie. Something’s gone wrong with the darned thing. My private impression is that, without knowing it, I’ve worked that stunt that Sargent used to pull – painting the soul of the sitter. I’ve got through the mere outward appearance, and have put the child’s soul on canvas.’
‘But could a child of that age have a soul like that? I don’t see how he could have managed it in the time. What do you think, Jeeves?’
‘I doubt it, sir.’
‘It – it sort of leers at you, doesn’t it?’
‘You’ve noticed that, too?’ said Corky.
‘I don’t see how one could help noticing.’
‘All I tried to do was to give the little brute a cheerful expression. But, as it has worked out, he looks positively dissipated.’
‘Just what I was going to suggest, old man. He looks as if he were in the middle of a colossal spree, and enjoying every minute of it. Don’t you think so, Jeeves?’
‘He has a decidedly inebriated air, sir.’
Corky was starting to say something, when the door opened and the uncle came in.
For about three seconds all was joy, jollity and goodwill. The old boy shook hands with me, slapped Corky on the back, said he didn’t think he had ever seen such a fine day, and whacked his leg with his stick. Jeeves had projected himself into the background, and he didn’t notice him.
‘Well, Bruce, my boy; so the portrait is really finished, is it – really finished? Well, bring it out. Let’s have a look at it. This will be a wonderful surprise for your aunt. Where is it? Let’s –’
And then he got it – suddenly, when he wasn’t set for the punch; and he rocked back on his heels.
‘Oosh!’ he exclaimed. And for perhaps a minute there was one of the scaliest silences I’ve ever run up against.
‘Is this a practical joke?’ he said at last, in a way that set about sixteen draughts cutting through the room at once.
I thought it was up to me to rally round old Corky.
‘You want to stand a bit farther away from it,’ I said.
‘You’re perfectly right!’ he snorted. ‘I do! I want to stand so far away from it that I can’t see the thing with a telescope!’ He turned on Corky like an untamed tiger of the jungle who has just located a chunk of meat. ‘And this – this – is what you have been wasting your time and my money for all these years! A painter! I wouldn’t let you paint a house of mine. I gave you this commission, thinking that you were a competent worker, and this – this – this extract from a comic supplement is the result!’ He swung towards the door, lashing his tail and growling to himself. ‘This ends it. If you wish to continue this foolery of pretending to be an artist because you want an excuse for idleness, please yourself. But let me tell you this. Unless you report at my office on Monday morning, prepared to abandon all this idiocy and start in at the bottom of the business to work your way up, as you should have done half a dozen years ago, not another cent – not another cent – not another – Boosh!’
Then the door closed and he was no longer with us. And I crawled out of the bomb-proof shelter.
‘Corky, old top!’ I whispered faintly.
Corky was standing staring at the picture. His face was set. There was a hunted look in his eye.
‘Well, that finishes it!’ he muttered brokenly.
‘What are you going to do?’
‘Do? What can I do? I can’t stick on here if he cuts off supplies. You heard what he said. I shall have to go to the office on Monday.’
I couldn’t think of a thing to sa
y. I knew exactly how he felt about the office. I don’t know when I’ve been so infernally uncomfortable. It was like hanging round trying to make conversation to a pal who’s just been sentenced to twenty years in quod.
And then a soothing voice broke the silence.
‘If I might make a suggestion, sir!’
It was Jeeves. He had slid from the shadows and was gazing gravely at the picture. Upon my word, I can’t give you a better idea of the shattering effect of Corky’s Uncle Alexander when in action than by saying that he had absolutely made me forget for the moment that Jeeves was there.
‘I wonder if I have ever happened to mention to you, sir, a Mr Digby Thistleton, with whom I was once in service? Perhaps you have met him? He was a financier. He is now Lord Bridgworth. It was a favourite saying of his that there is always a way. The first time I heard him use the expression was after the failure of a patent depilatory which he promoted.’
‘Jeeves,’ I said, ‘what on earth are you talking about?’
‘I mentioned Mr Thistleton, sir, because his was in some respects a parallel case to the present one. His depilatory failed, but he did not despair. He put it on the market again under the name of Hair-o, guaranteed to produce a full crop of hair in a few months. It was advertised, if you remember, sir, by a humorous picture of a billiard ball, before and after taking, and made such a substantial fortune that Mr Thistleton was soon afterwards elevated to the peerage for services to his Party. It seems to me that, if Mr Corcoran looks into the matter, he will find, like Mr Thistleton, that there is always a way. Mr Worple himself suggested the solution of the difficulty. In the heat of the moment he compared the portrait to an extract from a coloured comic supplement. I consider the suggestion a very valuable one, sir. Mr Corcoran’s portrait may not have pleased Mr Worple as a likeness of his only child, but I have no doubt that editors would gladly consider it as a foundation for a series of humorous drawings. If Mr Corcoran will allow me to make the suggestion, his talent has always been for the humorous. There is something about this picture – something bold and vigorous, which arrests the attention. I feel sure it would be highly popular.’
Corky was glaring at the picture, and making a sort of dry, sucking noise with his mouth. He seemed completely over-wrought.
And then suddenly he began to laugh in a wild way.
‘Corky, old man!’ I said, massaging him tenderly. I feared the poor blighter was hysterical.
He began to stagger about all over the floor.
‘He’s right! The man’s absolutely right! Jeeves, you’re a life-saver. You’ve hit on the greatest idea of the age. Report at the office on Monday! Start at the bottom of the business! I’ll buy the business if I feel like it. I know the man who runs the comic section of the Sunday Star. He’ll eat this thing. He was telling me only the other day how hard it was to get a good new series. He’ll give me anything I ask for a real winner like this. I’ve got a gold mine. Where’s my hat? I’ve got an income for life! Where’s that confounded hat? Lend me a fiver, Bertie. I want to take a taxi down to Park Row!’
Jeeves smiled paternally. Or, rather, he had a kind of paternal muscular spasm about the mouth, which is the nearest he ever gets to smiling.
‘If I might make the suggestion, Mr Corcoran – for a title of the series which you have in mind – “The Adventures of Baby Blobbs”.’
Corky and I looked at the picture, then at each other in an awed way. Jeeves was right. There could be no other title.
‘Jeeves,’ I said. It was a few weeks later, and I had just finished looking at the comic section of the Sunday Star. ‘I’m an optimist. I always have been. The older I get, the more I agree with Shakespeare and those poet Johnnies about it always being darkest before the dawn and there’s a silver lining and what you lose on the swings you make up on the roundabouts. Look at Mr Corcoran, for instance. There was a fellow, one would have said, clear up to the eyebrows in the soup. To all appearances he had got it right in the neck. Yet look at him now. Have you seen these pictures?’
‘I took the liberty of glancing at them before bringing them to you, sir. Extremely diverting.’
‘They have made a big hit, you know.’
‘I anticipated it, sir.’
I leaned back against the pillows.
‘You know, Jeeves, you’re a genius. You ought to be drawing a commission on these things.’
‘I have nothing to complain of in that respect, sir. Mr Corcoran has been most generous. I am putting out the brown suit, sir.’
‘No, I think I’ll wear the blue with the faint red stripe.’
‘Not the blue with the faint red stripe, sir.’
‘But I rather fancy myself in it.’
‘Not the blue with the faint red stripe, sir.’
‘Oh, all right, have it your own way.’
‘Very good, sir. Thank you, sir.’
3
* * *
JEEVES AND THE UNBIDDEN GUEST
I’M NOT ABSOLUTELY certain of my facts, but I rather fancy it’s Shakespeare – or, if not, it’s some equally brainy bird – who says that it’s always just when a fellow is feeling particularly braced with things in general that Fate sneaks up behind him with the bit of lead piping. And what I’m driving at is that the man is perfectly right. Take, for instance, the business of Lady Malvern and her son Wilmot. That was one of the scaliest affairs I was ever mixed up with, and a moment before they came into my life I was just thinking how thoroughly all right everything was.
I was still in New York when the thing started, and it was about the time of year when New York is at its best. It was one of those topping mornings, and I had just climbed out from under the cold shower, feeling like a million dollars. As a matter of fact, what was bucking me up more than anything was the fact that the day before I had asserted myself with Jeeves – absolutely asserted myself, don’t you know. You see, the way things had been going on I was rapidly becoming a dashed serf. The man had jolly well oppressed me. I didn’t so much mind when he made me give up one of my new suits, because Jeeves’s judgement about suits is sound and can generally be relied upon.
But I as near as a toucher rebelled when he wouldn’t let me wear a pair of cloth-topped boots which I loved like a couple of brothers. And, finally, when he tried to tread on me like a worm in the matter of a hat, I put the Wooster foot down and showed him in no uncertain manner who was who.
It’s a long story, and I haven’t time to tell you now, but the nub of the thing was that he wanted me to wear the White House Wonder – as worn by President Coolidge – when I had set my heart on the Broadway Special, much patronized by the Younger Set; and the end of the matter was that, after a rather painful scene, I bought the Broadway Special. So that’s how things were on this particular morning, and I was feeling pretty manly and independent.
Well, I was in the bathroom, wondering what there was going to be for breakfast while I massaged the spine with a rough towel and sang slightly, when there was a tap at the door. I stopped singing and opened the door an inch.
‘What ho, without there!’ I said.
‘Lady Malvern has called, sir.’
‘Eh?’
‘Lady Malvern, sir. She is waiting in the sitting-room.’
‘Pull yourself together, Jeeves, my man,’ I said rather severely, for I bar practical jokes before breakfast. ‘You know perfectly well there’s no-one waiting for me in the sitting-room. How could there be when it’s barely ten o’clock yet?’
‘I gathered from her ladyship, sir, that she had landed from an ocean liner at an early hour this morning.’
This made the thing a bit more plausible. I remembered that when I had arrived in America about a year before, the proceedings had begun at some ghastly hour like six, and that I had been shot out on to a foreign shore considerably before eight.
‘Who the deuce is Lady Malvern, Jeeves?’
‘Her ladyship did not confide in me, sir.’
‘Is she alone?’<
br />
‘Her ladyship is accompanied by a Lord Pershore, sir. I fancy that his lordship would be her ladyship’s son.’
‘Oh, well, put out rich raiment of sorts, and I’ll be dressing.’
‘Our heather-mixture lounge is in readiness, sir.’
‘Then lead me to it.’
While I was dressing I kept trying to think who on earth Lady Malvern could be. It wasn’t till I had climbed through the top of my shirt and was reaching out for the studs that I remembered.
‘I’ve placed her, Jeeves. She’s a pal of my Aunt Agatha.’
‘Indeed, sir?’
‘Yes. I met her at lunch one Sunday before I left London. A very vicious specimen. Writes books. She wrote a book on social conditions in India when she came back from the Durbar.’
‘Yes, sir? Pardon me, sir, but not that tie.’
‘Eh?’
‘Not that tie with the heather-mixture lounge, sir.’
It was a shock to me. I thought I had quelled the fellow. It was rather a solemn moment. What I mean is, if I weakened now, all my good work the night before would be thrown away. I braced myself.
‘What’s wrong with this tie? I’ve seen you give it a nasty look before. Speak out like a man! What’s the matter with it?’
‘Too ornate, sir.’
‘Nonsense! A cheerful pink. Nothing more.’
‘Unsuitable, sir.’
‘Jeeves, this is the tie I wear!’
‘Very good, sir.’
Dashed unpleasant. I could see that the man was wounded. But I was firm. I tied the tie, got into the coat and waistcoat, and went into the sitting-room.
‘Hullo-ullo-ullo!’ I said. ‘What?’
‘Ah! How do you do, Mr Wooster? You have never met my son Wilmot, I think? Motty, darling, this is Mr Wooster.’
Lady Malvern was a hearty, happy, healthy, overpowering sort of dashed female, not so very tall but making up for it by measuring about six feet from the O.P. to the Prompt Side. She fitted into my biggest armchair as if it had been built round her by someone who knew they were wearing arm-chairs tight about the hips that season. She had bright, bulging eyes and a lot of yellow hair, and when she spoke she showed about fifty-seven front teeth. She was one of those women who kind of numb a fellow’s faculties. She made me feel as if I were ten years old and had been brought into the drawing-room in my Sunday clothes to say how-d’you-do. Altogether by no means the sort of thing a chappie would wish to find in his sitting-room before breakfast.
The Jeeves Omnibus Vol. 2: Right Ho, Jeeves / Joy in the Morning / Carry On, Jeeves Page 52
