A Few Quick Ones (10 page)

"Of course not, if you don't want me to. Sealed lips, you suggest?"

"Precisely."

"Right ho."

"Thank you, thank you. I am infinitely grateful. Well, it is a little late and one might as well be turning in, I suppose, so I will say good-night," he said, and having done so, buzzed up the stairs like a homing rabbit. And scarcely had he buzzed, when I found Aunt Dahlia and Jeeves at my side.

"Oh, there you are," I said.

"Yes, here we are," replied the relative with a touch of asperity. "What's kept you all this time?"

"I would have made it snappier, but I was somewhat impeded in my movements by pards."

"By what?"

"Bearded pards. Shakespeare. Right, Jeeves ?"

"Perfectly correct, sir. Shakespeare, speaks of the soldier as bearded like the pard."

"And," said Aunt Dahlia, "full of strange oaths. Some of which you will shortly hear, if you don't tell us what you're babbling about."

"Oh, didn't I mention that? I've been chatting with Edward Fothergill."

"Bertie, you're blotto."

"Not blotto, old flesh and blood, but much shaken. Aunt Dahlia, I have an amazing story to relate." I related my amazing story.

"And so," I concluded, "we learn once again the lesson never, however dark the outlook, to despair. The storm clouds lowered, the skies were black, but now what do we see? The sun shining and the blue bird back once more at the old stand. La Fothergill wanted the Venus expunged, and it has been expunged. Voila!" I said, becoming a bit Parisian.

"And when she finds that owing to your fatheadedness Everard's very valuable picture has also been expunged ?"

I h'med. I saw what she had in mind.

"Yes, there's that," I agreed.

"She'll be madder than a wet hen. There isn't a chance now that she'll let me have that serial."

"I'm afraid not, I had overlooked that. I withdraw what I said about the sun and the blue bird."

She inflated her lungs, and it could have been perceived by the dullest eye that she was about to begin.

"Bertie…"

Jeeves coughed that soft cough of his, the one that sounds like a sheep clearing its throat on a distant mountain side.

"I wonder if I might make a suggestion, madam?"

"Yes, Jeeves? Remind me," said the relative, giving me a burning glance, "to go on with what I was saying later. You have the floor, Jeeves."

"Thank you, madam. It was merely that it occurs to me as a passing thought that there is a solution of the difficulty that confronts us. If Mr. Wooster were to be found here lying stunned, the window broken and both pictures removed, Mrs. Fothergill could, I think, readily be persuaded that he found miscreants making a burglarious entry and while endeavouring to protect her property was assaulted and overcome by them. She would, one feels, be grateful."

Aunt Dahlia came up like a rocket from the depths of gloom in which she had been wallowing. Her face, always red owing to hunting in all weathers in her youth, took on a deeper vermilion.

"Jeeves, you've hit it! I see what you mean. She would be so all over him for his plucky conduct that she couldn't decently fail to come through about the serial."

"Precisely, madam."

"Thank you, Jeeves."

"Not at all, madam."

"When, many years hence, you hand in your dinner pail, you must have your brain pickled and presented to the nation. It's a colossal scheme, don't you think, Bertie?"

I had been listening to the above exchange of remarks without a trace of Aunt Dahlia's enthusiasm, for I had spotted the flaw in the thing right away - to wit, the fact that I was not lying stunned. I now mentioned this.

"Oh, that?" said Aunt Dahlia. "We can arrange that. I could give you a tap on the head with…with what, Jeeves ?"

"The gong stick suggests itself, madam."

"That's right, with the gong stick. And there we'll be."

"Well, good-night, all," I said. "I'm turning in."

She stared at me like an aunt unable to believe her ears.

"You mean you won't play ball?"

"I do."

"Think well, Bertram Wooster. Reflect what the harvest will be. Not a smell of Anatole's cooking will you get for months and months and months. He will dish up his Sylphides a la creme d'Ecrevisses and his Timbales de Ris de Veau Toulousaines and what not, but you will not be there to dig in and get yours. This is official."

I drew myself to my full height.

"There is no terror, Aunt Dahlia, in your threats, for…how does it go, Jeeves?"

"For you are armed so strong in honesty, sir, that they pass by you like the idle wind, which you respect not."

"Exactly. I have been giving considerable thought to this matter of Anatole's cooking, and I have reached the conclusion that the thing is one that cuts both ways. Heaven, of course, to chew his smoked offerings, but what of the waistline? The last time I enjoyed your hospitality for the summer months, I put on a full inch round the middle. I am better without Anatole's cooking. I don't want to look like Uncle George."

I was alluding to the present Lord Yaxley, a prominent London clubman who gets more prominent yearly, especially seen sideways.

"So," I continued, "agony though it may be, I am prepared to kiss those Timbales of which you speak goodbye, and I, therefore, meet your suggestion of giving me taps on the head with the gong stick with a resolute nolle prosequi"

"That is your last word, is it?"

"It is," I said, and it was, for as I turned on my heel something struck me a violent blow on the back hair, and I fell like some monarch of the forest beneath the axe of the woodman.

What's that word I'm trying to think of? Begins with a "c". Chaotic, that's the one. For some time after that conditions were chaotic. The next thing I remember with any clarity is finding myself in bed with a sort of booming noise going on close by. This, the mists having lifted, I was able to diagnose as Aunt Dahlia talking. Hers is a carrying voice. She used, as I have mentioned, to go in a lot for hunting, and though I have never hunted myself, I understand that the whole essence of the thing is to be able to make yourself heard across three ploughed fields and a spinney.

"Bertie," she was saying, "I wish you would listen and not let your attention wander. I've got news that will send you dancing about the house."

"It will be some little time," I responded coldly, "before I go dancing about any ruddy houses. My head - "

"Yes, of course. A little the worse for wear, no doubt. But don't let's go off into side issues, I want to tell you the final score. The dirty work is attributed on all sides to the gang, probably international, which has been lifting pictures in these parts of late. Cornelia Fothergill is lost in admiration of your intrepid behaviour, as Jeeves foresaw she would be, and she's giving me the serial on easy terms. You were right about the blue bird. It's singing."

 "So is my head."

"I'll bet it is, and as you would say, the heart bleeds. But we all have to make sacrifices at these times. You can't make an omelette without breaking eggs."

"Your own?"

"No, Jeeves's. He said it in a hushed voice as he stood viewing the remains."

"He did, did he? Well, I trust in future…Oh, Jeeves," I said, as he entered carrying what looked like a cooling drink.

"Sir?"

"This matter of eggs and omelettes. From now on, if you could see your way to cutting, out the former and laying off the latter, I should be greatly obliged."

"Very good, sir," said the honest fellow. "I will bear it in mind."

5

The Word in Season

AMONG the names on the list of candidates up for election at the Drones Club there appeared, proposed by R. P. Little and seconded by an influential Crumpet, that of

LITTLE, ALGERNON AUBREY

and several of the Eggs, Beans and Piefaces who had gathered about the notice board were viewing it with concern. In every club you will find an austere conservative element that looks askance at the unusual and irregular.

"He can't do that there here," said an Egg, putting into words the sentiment of this
bloc.
"Hoy!" he went on, addressing the Crumpet, who had entered as he spoke. "What about this nominee of Bingo Little's?"

"Yes," said a Bean. "He can try as much as he likes to cloud the issue by calling him 'Algernon Aubrey’, as if he were a brother or cousin or something, but the stark fact remains that the above is his baby. We don't want infants mewling and puking about the Drones."

"Keep it clean," urged a Pieface.

"Shakespeare," explained the Bean.

"Oh, Shakespeare? Sorry. No," said the Pieface, "we don't want any bally babies here."

A grave look came into the Crumpet's face.

"You want this one," he said. "You can't afford to do without him. Recent events have convinced Bingo that this offspring of his is a Grade A mascot, and he feels that the club should have the benefit of his services. Having heard his story, I agree with him. This half-portion's knack of doing the right thing at the right time is uncanny. I believe the child is almost human."

His eloquence was not without its effect. But though some of the malcontents wavered, the Egg remained firm.

"That's all very well, but the question that presents itself is - Where will this stop? What guarantee have we that if we elect this juvenile, Bingo won't start trying to ring in his old nurse or his Uncle Wilberforce, or the proprietor of that children's paper he's editor of - what's his name - Purkiss?"

"I don't know about the nurse or his Uncle Wilberforce," said the Crumpet, "but you need have no anxiety concerning Henry Cuthbert Purkiss. Bingo's relations with his overlord are at the moment formal, even distant. Owing to Purkiss, he recently had to undergo a mental strain almost without parallel in his experience. And though, thanks to this beneficent baby's faultless sense of timing, he was enabled to emerge from the soup which was lashing angrily about his ankles, he finds it difficult to forgive. He expressly stated to me that if Henry Cuthbert Purkiss were to step on a banana skin. and strain a ligament, it would be all right with him."

"What did Purkiss do?"

"It was what he didn't do. He refused to pay ten quid for Bingo's story, and this at a crisis in Bingo's affairs when only ten quid could save him from the fate that is worse than death - viz. having the wife of his bosom draw in her breath sharply and look squiggle-eyed at him. He had been relying on Purkiss to do the square thing, and Purkiss let him down."

Here briefly (said the Crumpet) are the facts. As most of you are probably aware, Bingo buzzed off a couple of years ago and went and married the eminent female novelist Rosie M. Banks, authoress of
Only A Factory Girl, Mervyn Keene, Clubman,
'
Twas Once in May
and other stearine works of fiction, and came a day when there burst on the London scene a bouncing baby of the name of Algernon Aubrey. Very pleasant for all concerned, of course, but the catch is that this sort of thing puts ideas in the heads of female novelists. As they sat at dinner one night, Mrs. Bingo looked up from her portion of steak and French fried, and said:

"Oh, sweetie-pie,
”
for it is thus that she habitually addresses the other half of the sketch, "you haven't forgotten it's Algy's birthday on the twenty-third? Just think! He'll be one year old."

"Pretty senile, pretty senile," said Bingo. "Silver threads among the gold, what? We must give him a rattle or something."

"We can do better than rattles. Shall I tell you the wonderful thing I've thought of?"

"Say on, old partner in sickness and in health."

And Mrs. Bingo said that she had decided to start a wee little deposit account for Algernon Aubrey at the local bank. She was going to pay in ten pounds, and her mother was going to pay in ten pounds, and so was the child's maternal aunt Isabel, and what a lovely surprise it would be for the young buster, when he got older, to find that all unknown his dear ones had been working on his behalf, bumping up his holdings like billy-o. And Bingo, mellowed by a father's love, got the party spirit and said that if that was the trend affairs were taking, blow him tight if he didn't chip in and add to the kitty his own personal tenner.

Upon which, Mrs. Bingo said: "Oh, sweet-ie
pie
!" And kissed him with a good deal of fervour, and the curtain of Act One falls on a happy and united home.

Now, though at the moment when he made this fine gesture Bingo actually had ten quid in his possession, having touched Purkiss for an advance on his salary, one would have expected him, thinking things over in the cold grey light of the morning after, to kick himself soundly for having been such an ass as to utter those unguarded words, committing him as they did to a course of conduct which would strip him of his last bean. But such was not the case. Still mellowed by a father's love, all he thought next day was that as a gift to a superchild like Algernon Aubrey a tenner was a bit on the cheeseparing side. Surely twenty would be far more suitable. And he could pick that up by slapping his ten on Hot Potato in the two-thirty at Haydock Park. At dinner on the previous night he had burned his mouth by incautiously placing in it a fried spud about ninety degrees Fahrenheit warmer than he had supposed it to be, and he is always far too inclined to accept omens like this as stable information. He made the investment, accordingly, and at two-forty-five was informed by the club tape that he was now penniless.

Well, as you can readily imagine, it did not take him long to perceive that a crisis of the first magnitude had been precipitated. Mrs. Bingo, a charming woman but deficient in sporting blood, had strictly forbidden him ever to venture money on the speed and endurance of racehorses, and the discovery that he had once more been chancing his arm would be bound to lead to an unpleasant scene, from which he shrank. As every young husband knows, there is nothing less agreeable than having the little woman bring her teeth together with a sharp click and after saying "Oh, how
could
you?" follow it up with about two thousand words of the kind that go through the soul like a bullet through butter.