‘I am a shy man, Bertie. Diffidence is the price I pay for having a hyper-sensitive nature. And you know how I feel about making speeches under any conditions. The mere idea appals me. When you lugged me into that prize-giving affair at Market Snodsbury, the thought of standing on a platform, faced by a mob of pimply boys, filled me with a panic terror. It haunted my dreams. You can imagine, then, what it was like for me to have to contemplate that wedding breakfast. To the task of haranguing a flock of aunts and cousins I might have steeled myself. I don’t say it would have been easy, but I might have managed it. But to get up with Spode on one side of me and Sir Watkyn Bassett on the other … I didn’t see how I was going to face it. And then out of the night that covered me, black as the pit from pole to pole, there shone a tiny gleam of hope. I thought of Jeeves.’
His hand moved upwards, and I think his idea was to bare his head reverently. The project was, however, rendered null and void by the fact that he hadn’t a hat on.
‘I thought of Jeeves,’ he repeated, ‘and I took the train to London and placed my problem before him. I was fortunate to catch him in time.’
‘How do you mean, in time?’
‘Before he left England.’
‘He isn’t leaving England.’
‘He told me that you and he were starting off almost immediately on one of those Round-The-World cruises.’
‘Oh, no, that’s all off. I didn’t like the scheme.’
‘Does Jeeves say it’s all off?’
‘No, but I do.’
‘Oh?’
He looked at me rather oddly, and I thought he was going to say something more on the subject. But he only gave a rummy sort of short laugh, and resumed his narrative.
‘Well, as I say, I went to Jeeves, and put the facts before him. I begged him to try to find some way of getting me out of this frightful situation in which I was enmeshed – assuring him that I would not blame him if he failed to do so, because it seemed to me, after some days of reviewing this matter, that I was beyond human aid. And you will scarcely credit this, Bertie, I hadn’t got more than half-way through the glass of orange juice with which he had supplied me, when he solved the whole thing. I wouldn’t have believed it possible. I wonder what that brain of his weighs?’
‘A good bit, I fancy. He eats a lot of fish. So it was a winner, was it, this idea?’
‘It was terrific. He approached the matter from the psychological angle. In the final analysis, he said, disinclination to speak in public is due to fear of one’s audience.’
‘Well, I could have told you that.’
‘Yes, but he indicated how this might be cured. We do not, he said, fear those whom we despise. The thing to do, therefore, is to cultivate a lofty contempt for those who will be listening to one.’
‘How?’
‘Quite simple. You fill your mind with scornful thoughts about them. You keep saying to yourself: “Think of that pimple on Smith’s nose” … “Consider Jones’s flapping ears” … “Remember the time Robinson got hauled up before the beak for travelling first-class with a third-class ticket” … “Don’t forget you once saw the child Brown being sick at a children’s party” … and so on. So that when you are called upon to address Smith, Jones, Robinson and Brown, they have lost their sting. You dominate them.’
I pondered on this.
‘I see. Well, yes, it sounds good, Gussie. But would it work in practice?’
‘My dear chap, it works like a charm. I’ve tested it. You recall my speech at that dinner of yours?’
I started.
‘You weren’t despising us?’
‘Certainly I was. Thoroughly.’
‘What, me?’
‘You, and Freddie Widgeon, and Bingo Little, and Catsmeat Potter-Pirbright, and Barmy Fotheringay-Phipps, and all the rest of those present. “Worms!” I said to myself. “What a crew!” I said to myself. “There’s old Bertie,” I said to myself. “Golly!” I said to myself, “what I know about him!” With the result that I played on you as on a lot of stringed instruments, and achieved an outstanding triumph.’
I must say I was conscious of a certain chagrin. A bit thick, I mean, being scorned by a goof like Gussie – and that at a moment when he had been bursting with one’s meat and orange juice.
But soon more generous emotions prevailed. After all, I told myself, the great thing – the fundamental thing to which all other considerations must yield – was to get this Fink-Nottle safely under the wire and off on his honeymoon. And but for this advice of Jeeves’s, the muttered threats of Roderick Spode and the combined sniffing and looking over the top of the pince-nez of Sir Watkyn Bassett might well have been sufficient to destroy his morale entirely and cause him to cancel the wedding arrangements and go off hunting newts in Africa.
‘Well, yes,’ I said, ‘I see what you mean. But dash it, Gussie, conceding the fact that you might scorn Barmy Fotheringay-Phipps and Catsmeat Potter-Birbright and – stretching the possibilities a bit – me, you couldn’t despise Spode.’
‘Couldn’t I?’ He laughed a light laugh. ‘I did it on my head. And Sir Watkyn Bassett, too. I tell you, Bertie, I approach this wedding breakfast without a tremor. I am gay, confident, debonair. There will be none of that blushing and stammering and twiddling the fingers and plucking at the tablecloth which you see in most bridegrooms on these occasions. I shall look these men in the eye, and make them wilt. As for the aunts and cousins, I shall have them rolling in the aisles. The moment Jeeves spoke those words, I settled down to think of all the things about Roderick Spode and Sir Watkyn Bassett which expose them to the just contempt of their fellow men. I could tell you fifty things about Sir Watkyn alone which would make you wonder how such a moral and physical blot on the English scene could have been tolerated all these years. I wrote them down in a notebook.’
‘You wrote them down in a notebook?’
‘A small, leather-covered notebook. I bought it in the village.’
I confess that I was a bit agitated. Even though he presumably kept it under lock and key, the mere existence of such a book made one uneasy. One did not care to think what the upshot and outcome would be were it to fall into the wrong hands. A brochure like that would be dynamite.
‘Where do you keep it?’
‘In my breast pocket. Here it is. Oh, no, it isn’t. That’s funny,’ said Gussie. ‘I must have dropped it somewhere.’
4
* * *
I DON’T KNOW if you have had the same experience, but a thing I have found in life is that from time to time, as you jog along, there occur moments which you are able to recognize immediately with the naked eye as high spots. Something tells you that they are going to remain etched, if etched is the word I want, for ever on the memory and will come back to you at intervals down the years, as you are dropping off to sleep, banishing that drowsy feeling and causing you to leap on the pillow like a gaffed salmon.
One of these well-remembered moments in my own case was the time at my first private school when I sneaked down to the headmaster’s study at dead of night, my spies having informed me that he kept a tin of biscuits in the cupboard under the bookshelf; to discover, after I was well inside and a modest and unobtrusive withdrawal impossible, that the old bounder was seated at his desk and – by what I have always thought a rather odd coincidence – actually engaged in the composition of my end-of-term report, which subsequently turned out a stinker.
It was a situation in which it would be paltering with the truth to say that Bertram retained unimpaired his customary sang-froid. But I’m dashed if I can remember staring at the Rev. Aubrey Upjohn on that occasion with half the pallid horror which had shot into the map at these words of Gussie’s.
‘Dropped it?’ I quavered.
‘Yes, but it’s all right.’
‘All right?’
‘I mean, I can remember every word of it.’
‘Oh, I see. That’s fine.’
‘Yes.’
‘Was there much of it
?’
‘Oh, lots.’
‘Good stuff?’
‘Of the best.’
‘Well, that’s splendid.’
I looked at him with growing wonder. You would have thought that by this time even this pre-eminent sub-normal would have spotted the frightful peril that lurked. But no. His tortoiseshell-rimmed spectacles shone with a jovial light. He was full of élan and espièglerie, without a care in the world. All right up to the neck, but from there on pure concrete – that was Augustus Fink-Nottle.
‘Oh, yes,’ he said, ‘I’ve got it all carefully memorized, and I’m extremely pleased with it. During this past week I have been subjecting the characters of Roderick Spode and Sir Watkyn Bassett to a pitiless examination. I have probed these two gumboils to the very core of their being. It’s amazing the amount of material you can assemble, once you begin really analysing people. Have you ever heard Sir Watkyn Bassett dealing with a bowl of soup? It’s not unlike the Scottish express going through a tunnel. Have you ever seen Spode eat asparagus?’
‘No.’
‘Revolting. It alters one’s whole conception of Man as Nature’s last word.’
‘Those were two of the things you wrote in the book?’
‘I gave them about half a page. They were just trivial, surface faults. The bulk of my researches went much deeper.’
‘I see. You spread yourself?’
‘Very much so.’
‘And it was all bright, snappy stuff?’
‘Every word of it.’
‘That’s great. I mean to say, no chance of old Bassett being bored when he reads it.’
‘Reads it?’
‘Well, he’s just as likely to find the book as anyone, isn’t he?’
I remember Jeeves saying to me once, apropos of how you can never tell what the weather’s going to do, that full many a glorious morning had he seen flatter the mountain tops with sovereign eye and then turn into a rather nasty afternoon. It was the same with Gussie now. He had been beaming like a searchlight until I mentioned this aspect of the matter, and the radiance suddenly disappeared as if it had been switched off at the main.
He stood gaping at me very much as I had gaped at the Rev. A. Upjohn on the occasion to which I have alluded above. His expression was almost identical with that which I had once surprised on the face of a fish, whose name I cannot recall, in the royal aquarium at Monaco.
‘I never thought of that!’
‘Start now.’
‘Oh, my gosh!’
‘Yes.’
‘Oh, my golly!’
‘Quite.’
‘Oh, my sainted aunt!’
‘Absolutely.’
He moved to the tea table like a man in a dream, and started to eat a cold crumpet. His eyes, as they sought mine, were bulging.
‘Suppose old Bassett does find that book, what do you think will ensue?’
I could answer that one.
‘He would immediately put the bee on the wedding.’
‘You don’t really think that?’
‘I do.’
He choked over his crumpet.
‘Of course he would,’ I said. ‘You say he has never been any too sold on you as a son-in-law. Reading that book isn’t going to cause a sudden change for the better. One glimpse of it, and he will be countermanding the cake and telling Madeline that she shall marry you over his dead body. And she isn’t the sort of girl to defy a parent.’
‘Oh, my gosh!’
‘Still, I wouldn’t worry about that, old man,’ I said, pointing out the bright side, ‘because long before it happened, Spode would have broken your neck.’
He plucked feebly at another crumpet.
‘This is frightful, Bertie.’
‘Not too good, no.’
‘I’m in the soup.’
‘Up to the thorax.’
‘What’s to be done?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Can’t you think of anything?’
‘Nothing. We must just put our trust in a higher power.’
‘Consult Jeeves, you mean?’
I shook the lemon.
‘Even Jeeves cannot help us here. It is a straight issue of finding and recovering that notebook before it can get to old Bassett. Why on earth didn’t you keep it locked up somewhere?’
‘I couldn’t. I was always writing fresh stuff in it. I never knew when the inspiration would come, and I had to have it handy.’
‘You’re sure it was in your breast pocket?’
‘Quite sure.’
‘It couldn’t be in your bedroom, by any chance?’
‘No. I always kept in on me – so as to have it safe.’
‘Safe. I see.’
‘And also, as I said before, because I had constant need of it. I’m trying to think where I saw it last. Wait a minute. It’s beginning to come back. Yes, I remember. By the pump.’
‘What pump?’
‘The one in the stable yard, where they fill the buckets for the horses. Yes, that is where I saw it last, before lunch yesterday. I took it out to jot down a note about the way Sir Watkyn slopped his porridge about at breakfast, and I had just completed my critique when I met Stephanie Byng and took the fly out of her eye. Bertie!’ he cried, breaking off. A strange light had come into his spectacles. He brought his fist down with a bang on the table. Silly ass. Might have known he would upset the milk. ‘Bertie, I’ve just remembered something. It is as if a curtain had been rolled up and all was revealed. The whole scene is rising before my eyes. I took the book out, and entered the porridge item. I then put it back in my breast pocket. Where I keep my handkerchief.’
‘Well?’
‘Where I keep my handkerchief,’ he repeated. ‘Don’t you understand? Use your intelligence, man. What is the first thing you do, when you find a girl with a fly in her eye?’
I uttered an exclamash.
‘Reach for your handkerchief!’
‘Exactly. And draw it out and extract the fly with the corner of it. And if there is a small, brown leather-covered notebook alongside the handkerchief –’
‘It shoots out –’
‘And falls to earth –’
‘- you know not where.’
‘But I do know where. That’s just the point. I could lead you to the exact spot.’
For an instant I felt braced. Then moodiness returned.
‘Yesterday before lunch, you say? Then someone must have found it by this time.’
‘That’s just what I’m coming to. I’ve remembered something else. Immediately after I had coped with the fly, I recollect hearing Stephanie saying “Hallo, what’s that?” and seeing her stoop and pick something up. I didn’t pay much attention to the episode at the time, for it was just at that moment that I caught sight of Madeline. She was standing in the entrance of the stable yard, with a distant look on her face. I may mention that in order to extract the fly I had been compelled to place a hand under Stephanie’s chin, in order to steady the head.’
‘Quite.’
‘Essential on these occasions.’
‘Definitely.’
‘Unless the head is kept rigid, you cannot operate. I tried to point this out to Madeline, but she wouldn’t listen. She swept away, and I swept after her. It was only this morning that I was able to place the facts before her and make her accept my explanation. Meanwhile, I had completely forgotten the Stephanie-stooping-picking-up incident. I think it is obvious that the book is now in the possession of this Byng.’
‘It must be.’
‘Then everything’s all right. We just seek her out and ask her to hand it back, and she does so. I expect she will have got a good laugh out of it.’
‘Where is she?’
‘I seem to remember her saying something about walking down to the village. I think she goes and hobnobs with the curate. If you’re not doing anything, you might stroll and meet her.’
‘I will.’
‘Well, keep an eye open for that
Scottie of hers. It probably accompanied her.’
‘Oh, yes. Thanks.’
I remembered that he had spoken to me of this animal at my dinner. Indeed, at the moment when the sole meunière was being served, he had shown me the sore place on his leg, causing me to skip that course.
‘It biteth like a serpent.’
‘Right ho. I’ll be looking out. And I might as well start at once.’
It did not take me long to get to the end of the drive. At the gates, I paused. It seemed to me that my best plan would be to linger here until Stiffy returned. I lighted a cigarette, and gave myself up to meditation.
Although slightly easier in the mind than I had been, I was still much shaken. Until that book was back in safe storage, there could be no real peace for the Wooster soul. Too much depended on its recovery. As I had said to Gussie, if old Bassett started doing the heavy father and forbidding banns, there wasn’t a chance of Madeline sticking out her chin and riposting with a modern ‘Is zat so?’ A glance at her was enough to tell one that she belonged to that small group of girls who still think a parent should have something to say about things: and I was willing to give a hundred to eight that, in the circumstances which I had outlined, she would sigh and drop a silent tear, but that when all the smoke had cleared away Gussie would be at liberty.
I was still musing in sombre and apprehensive vein, when my meditations were interrupted. A human drama was developing in the road in front of me.
The shades of evening were beginning to fall pretty freely by now, but the visibility was still good enough to enable me to observe that up the road there was approaching a large, stout, moon-faced policeman on a bicycle. And he was, one could see, at peace with all the world. His daily round of tasks may or may not have been completed, but he was obviously off duty for the moment, and his whole attitude was that of a policeman with nothing on his mind but his helmet.
Well, when I tell you that he was riding without his hands, you will gather to what lengths the careless gaiety of this serene slop had spread.
And where the drama came in was that it was patent that his attention had not yet been drawn to the fact that he was being chivvied – in the strong, silent, earnest manner characteristic of this breed of animal – by a fine Aberdeen terrier. There he was, riding comfortably along, sniffing the fragrant evening breeze and there was the Scottie, all whiskers and eyebrows, haring after him hell-for-leather. As Jeeves said later, when I described the scene to him, the whole situation resembled some great moment in a Greek tragedy, where somebody is stepping high, wide and handsome, quite unconscious that all the while Nemesis is at his heels, and he may be right.
The Jeeves Omnibus - Vol 1: (Jeeves & Wooster): No.1 Page 28
