‘All the same,’ he said, ‘I find it curious that she should have confided in you. It suggests an intimacy.’
‘Oh, I wouldn’t call it that. Girls I hardly know confide in me. They look upon me as a father figure.’
‘Father figure my foot. Any girl who takes you for a father figure ought to have her head examined.’
‘Well, let us say a brother figure. They know their secrets are safe with good old Bertie.’
‘I’m not so sure you are good old Bertie. More like a snake who goes about the place robbing men of the women they love, if you ask me.’
‘Certainly not,’ I protested, learning for the first time that this was what snakes did.
‘Well, it looks fishy to me,’ he said. Then to my relief he changed the subject. ‘Do you know a man named Spofforth?’
I said No, I didn’t think so.
‘P. B. Spofforth. Big fellow with a clipped moustache.’
‘No, I’ve never met him.’
‘And you won’t for some time. He’s in hospital.’
‘Too bad. What sent him there?’
‘I did. He kissed the woman I love at the annual picnic of the Slade Social and Outing Club. Have you ever kissed the woman I love, Wooster?’
‘Good Lord, no.’
‘Be careful not to. Did she make a long stay at your cottage?’
‘No, very short. In and out like a flash. Just had time to say you were like a knight in shining armour riding up on a white horse and to tell me to tell you to show up at my address tomorrow at three on the dot, and she was off.’
This seemed to soothe him. He went on brooding but now not so much like Jack the Ripper getting up steam for his next murder. He was not, however, quite satisfied.
‘I don’t call it much of an idea meeting at your cottage,’ he said.
‘Why not?’
‘We shall have you underfoot all the time.’
‘Oh, that’s all right, Comrade. I shall be going for a walk.’
‘Ah,’ he said, brightening visibly. ‘Going for a walk, eh? Just the thing to do. Capital exercise. Bring the roses to your cheeks. Take your time. Don’t hurry back. They tell me there are beauty spots around here well worth seeing.’
And on this cordial note we parted, he to go to the bar for another gin and ginger, I to go back and tell Vanessa that the pourparlers had been completed and that he would be at the starting post at three pip-emma on the morrow.
‘How did he look?’ she asked, all eagerness.
It was a little difficult to answer this, because he had looked like a small-time gangster with a painful gumboil, but I threw together a tactful word or two which, as Jeeves would say, gave satisfaction, and she buzzed off.
Jeeves came shimmering in shortly after she had left. He seemed a shade perturbed.
‘We were interrupted in our recent conversation, sir.’
‘We were, Jeeves, and I am glad to say that I no longer need your advice. During your absence the situation has become clarified. A meeting has been arranged and will shortly take place, in fact here at this cottage at three o’clock tomorrow afternoon. I, not wishing to intrude, shall be going for a walk.’
‘Extremely gratifying, sir,’ he said, and I agreed with him that he had tetigisti-ed the rem acu.
9
* * *
AT FIVE MINUTES to three on the following afternoon I had girded my loins and was preparing to iris out, when Vanessa Cook arrived. The sight of me appeared to displease her. She frowned as if I were something that didn’t smell just right, and said:
‘Haven’t you gone yet?’
I considered this a shade brusque, even for a proud beauty, but, true to my resolve to be preux, I responded suavely:
‘Just going.’
‘Well, go,’ she said, and I went.
The street outside was as usual, offering little entertainment to the sightseer. A few centenarians were dotted about, exchanging reminiscences of the Boer War, and the eye detected a dog which had interested itself in something it had found in the gutter, but otherwise it was empty. I walked down it and had a look at the Jubilee watering-trough and was walking back on the other side, thinking how pleased E. J. Murgatroyd would be if he could see me, when I caught sight of the shop which acted as a post office and remembered that Jeeves had told me that in addition to selling stamps, picture postcards, socks, boots, overalls, pink sweets, yellow sweets, string, cigarettes and stationery it ran a small lending library.
I went in. I had come away rather short of reading matter, and it never does to neglect one’s intellectual side.
Like all village lending libraries, this one had not bothered much about keeping itself up to date, and I was hesitating between By Order Of The Czar and The Mystery Of A Hansom Cab, which seemed the best bets, when the door opened to Angelica Briscoe, the personable wench I had met at lunch. The vicar’s daughter, if you remember.
Her behaviour on seeing me was peculiar. She suddenly became all conspiratorial, as if she had been a Nihilist in By Order Of The Czar meeting another Nihilist. I had not yet read that opus, but I assumed that it was full of Nihilists who were always meeting other Nihilists and plotting dark plots with them. She clutched my arm and lowering her voice to a sinister whisper said:
‘Has he brought it yet?’
I missed her drift by a wide margin. I like to think of myself as a polished man of the world who can kid back and forth with a pretty girl as well as the next chap, but I must confess that my only response to this query was a silent goggle. It struck me as unusual that a vicar’s daughter should be a member of a secret society, but I could think of no other explanation for her words. They had sounded like a secret code, the sort of thing you haven’t a hope of making sense of if you aren’t a unit of The Uncanny Seven in good standing with all your dues paid up.
Eventually I found speech. Not much of it, but some.
‘Eh?’ I said.
She seemed to feel that her question had been answered. Her manner changed completely. She dropped the By Order Of The Czar stuff and became the nice girl who in all probability played the organ in her father’s church.
‘I see he hasn’t. But of course one has to give him time for a job like that.’
‘Like what?’
‘I can’t explain. Here’s Father.’
And the Reverend Briscoe ambled in, his purpose, as it appeared immediately, to purchase half a pound of the pink sweets and half a pound of the yellow as a present for the more deserving of his choir boys. His presence choked the personable wench off from further revelations, and the only conversation that followed had to do with the weather, the condition of the church roof and how-well-your-aunt-is-looking-it-was-such-a-pleasure-seeing-her-again. And after a few desultory exchanges I left them and resumed my walk.
It is always difficult to estimate the time two sundered hearts, unexpectedly reunited, will require for picking up the threads. To be on the safe side I gave Orlo and Vanessa about an hour and a half, and when I returned to the cottage I found I had called my shots correctly. Both had legged it.
I was still much perplexed by that utterance of Angelica Briscoe’s. The more I brooded on it, the more cryptic, if that’s the word, it became. ‘Has he brought it yet?’, I mean to say. Has who? Brought what? I called Jeeves in, to see what he made of it.
‘Tell me, Jeeves,’ I said. ‘Suppose you were in a shop taking By Order Of The Czar out of the lending library and a clergyman’s daughter came in and without so much as a preliminary “Hullo, there”, said to you, “Has he brought it yet?”, what interpretation would you place on those words?’
He pondered, this way and that dividing the swift mind, as I have heard him put it.
‘“Has he brought it yet”, sir?’
‘Just that.’
‘I should reach the conclusion that the lady was expecting a male acquaintance to have arrived or to be arriving shortly bearing some unidentified object.
‘Exactly what I
thought. What unidentified object we shall presumably learn in God’s good time.’
‘No doubt, sir.’
‘We must wait patiently till all is revealed.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘In the meantime, pigeonholing that for the moment, did Miss Cook and Mr Porter have their conference all right?’
‘Yes, sir, they conversed for some time.’
‘In low, throbbing voices?’
‘No, sir, the voices of both lady and gentleman became noticeably raised.’
‘Odd. I thought lovers generally whispered.’
‘Not when an argument is in progress, sir.’
‘Good Lord. Did they have an argument?’
‘A somewhat acrimonious one, sir, plainly audible in the kitchen, where I was reading the volume of Spinoza which you so kindly gave me for Christmas. The door happened to be ajar.’
‘So you were an ear-witness?’
‘Throughout, sir.’
‘Tell me all, Jeeves.’
‘Very good, sir. I must begin by explaining that Mr Cook is trustee for a sum of money left to Mr Porter by his late uncle, who appears to have been a partner of Mr Cook in various commercial enterprises.’
‘Yes, I know about that. Porter told me.’
‘Until Mr Cook releases this money Mr Porter is in no position to marry. I gathered that his present occupation is not generously paid.’
‘He’s an insurance salesman. Didn’t I tell you that I had taken out an accident policy with him?’
‘Not that I recall, sir.’
‘And a life policy as well, both for sums beyond the dreams of avarice. He talked me into it. But I mustn’t interrupt you. Go on telling me all.’
‘Very good, sir. Miss Cook was urging Mr Porter to demand an interview with her father.’
‘In order to make him cough up?’
‘Precisely, sir. “Be firm”, I heard her say. “Throw your weight about. Look him in the eye and thump the table.”’
‘She specified that?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘To which he replied?’
‘That any time he started thumping tables in the presence of Mr Cook you could certify him as mentally unbalanced and ship him off to the nearest home for the insane – or loony-bin, as he phrased it.’
‘Strange.’
‘Sir?’
‘I wouldn’t have thought Porter would have shown such what-is-it.’
‘Would pusillanimity be the word for which you are groping, sir?’
‘Quite possibly. I know it begins with pu. I said it was strange because I hadn’t supposed these knights in shining armour were afraid of anything.’
‘Apparently they make an exception in the case of Mr Cook. I gathered from your account of your visit to Eggesford Court that he is a gentleman of somewhat formidable personality.’
‘You gathered right. Ever hear of Captain Bligh of the Bounty?’
‘Yes, sir. I read the book.’
‘I saw the movie. Ever hear of Jack the Ripper?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Put them together and what have you got? Cook. It’s that hunting crop of his chiefly. You can face a man with fortitude if he has simply got the disposition of a dyspeptic rattlesnake and confines himself to coarse abuse, but put a hunting crop in his hand and that spells trouble. It was a miracle that I escaped from Eggesford Court with my trouser seat unscathed. But go on, Jeeves. What happened then?’
‘May I marshal my thoughts, sir?’
‘Certainly. Marshal them all you want.’
‘Thank you, sir. One aims at coherence.’
Marshalling his thoughts took between twenty and thirty seconds. At the end of that period he resumed his blow-by-blow report of the dust-up between Vanessa Cook and O. J. Porter, which was beginning to look like the biggest thing that had happened since Gene Tunney and Jack Dempsey had their dispute at Chicago.
‘It was almost immediately after Mr Porter’s refusal to go to Mr Cook and thump tables that Miss Cook introduced the cat into the conversation.’
‘Cat? What cat?’
‘The one you met at Eggesford Court, with which the horse Potato Chip formed such a durable friendship. Miss Cook was urging Mr Porter to purloin it.’
‘Golly!’
‘Yes, sir. The female of the species is more deadly than the male.’
Neatly put, I thought.
‘Your own?’ I said.
‘No, sir. A quotation.’
‘Well, carry on,’ I said, thinking what a lot of good things Shakespeare had said in his time. Female of species deadlier than male. You had only to think of my Aunt Agatha and spouse to realize the truth of this. ‘I get the idea, Jeeves. Porter, in possession of the cat, would have a bargaining point with Cook when it came to discussing trust funds.’
‘Precisely, sir. Rem acu tetigisti.’
‘So I take it that he is now at Eggesford Court putting the bite on old Captain Bligh.’
‘No, sir. His refusal to do as Miss Cook asked was unequivocal. “Not in a million years” was the expression he used.’
‘Not a very cooperative bloke, this O. J. Porter.’
‘No, sir.’
‘A bit like Balaam’s ass,’ I said, referring to one of the dramatis personae who had figured in the examination paper the time I won the Scripture Knowledge prize at my private school. ‘If you recall, it too dug in its feet and refused to play ball.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘That must have made Miss Cook as sore as a sunburned neck.’
‘I did gather from her remarks that she was displeased. She accused Mr Porter of being a lily-livered poltroon, and said that she never wished to speak to him again or hear from him by letter, telegram or carrier pigeon.’
‘Pretty final.’
‘Yes, sir.’
I didn’t actually heave a sigh, but I sort of half-heaved one.
To a man of sensibility there is always something sort of sad about young love coming a stinker on the rocks. Myself, I couldn’t imagine anyone wanting to marry Orlo Porter and it would have jarred me to the soles of my socks if I had had to marry Vanessa Cook, but they had unquestionably been all for teaming up, and it seemed a shame that harsh words had come between them and the altar rails.
However, there was this to be said in favour of the rift, that it would do Vanessa all the good in the world to find that she had come up against someone she couldn’t say ‘Go’ to and he goeth, as the fellow said. I mentioned this to Jeeves, and he agreed that there was that aspect to the matter.
‘Show her that she isn’t Cleopatra or somebody.’
‘Very true, sir.’
I would gladly have continued our conversation, but I knew he must be wanting to get back to his Spinoza. No doubt I had interrupted him just as Spinoza was on the point of solving the mystery of the headless body on the library floor.
‘Right ho, Jeeves,’ I said. ‘That’ll be all for the moment.’
‘Thank you, sir.’
‘If any solution of that “Has he brought it yet?” thing occurs to you, send me an inter-office memo.’
I spoke lightly, but I wasn’t feeling so dashed light. Those cryptic words of Angelica Briscoe had shaken me. They seemed to suggest that things were going on behind my back which weren’t likely to do me any good. I had suffered so much in the past from girls of Angelica’s age starting something – Stiffy Byng is a name that springs to the mind – that I have become wary and suspicious, like a fox that had had the Pytchley after it for years.
By speaking in riddles, as the expression is, A. Briscoe had given me a mystery to chew on; and while mysteries are fine in books – I am never happier than when curled up with the latest Agatha Christie – you don’t want them in your private life, for that’s how you get headaches.
I was beginning to get one now, when my mind was taken off the throbbing which had started. The front door was open, and through it came Vanessa Cook.
She b
ore traces of the recent set-to. The cheeks were flushed, the eyes glittering, and looking at the teeth one was left in no doubt that they had been well gnashed in the not too distant past. Her whole demeanour was that of a girl whose emotional nature had been stirred up as if a cyclone had hit it.
‘Bertie,’ she said.
‘Hullo?’ I said.
‘Bertie,’ she said, ‘I will be your wife.’
10
* * *
YOU WOULD HAVE expected this to have drawn some comment from me such as ‘Oh, my God!’ or ‘You’ll be my what?’, but I remained sotto voce and the silent tomb, my eyes bulging like those of the fellows I’ve heard Jeeves mention, who looked at each other with a wild surmise, silent upon a peak in Darien.
The thing had come on me as such a complete surprise. Her rejection of my addresses at the time when I proposed to her had been so definite that it had seemed to me that all danger from that quarter had passed and that from now on we wouldn’t even be just good friends. Certainly she had given no indication that she would not prefer to be dead in a ditch rather than married to me. And now this. Is any man safe, one asked oneself. No wonder words failed me, as the expression is.
She, on the other hand, became chatty. Getting the thing off her chest seemed to have done her good. The glitter of her eyes was practically switched off, and she was not clenching her teeth any more. I don’t say that even now I would have cared to meet her down a dark alley, but there was a distinct general improvement.
‘We shall have quite a quiet wedding,’ she said. ‘Just a few people I know in London. And it may have to be even quieter than that. It all depends on Father. Your standing with him is roughly what that of a Public Enemy Number One would be at the annual Policeman’s Ball. What you did to him I don’t know, but I have never seen him a brighter mauve than when your name came up at the luncheon table. If he persists in this attitude, we shall have to elope. That will be perfectly all right with me. I suppose many people would say I was being rash, but I am prepared to take the chance. I know very little of you, true, but anyone the mention of whose name can make Father swallow his lunch the wrong way cannot be wholly bad.’
The Jeeves Omnibus - Vol 5: (Jeeves & Wooster) Page 23
