Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit (11 page)

And said,

‘I say,

Doesn’t that sunset remind you

Of a slice

Of underdone roast beef?’

He
opened his eyes, which he had closed in order to render the
morceau
more
effectively.

‘Bitter,
of course.’

‘Oh,
frightfully bitter.’

‘I was
feeling bitter when I wrote it. I think you know a man named Cheesewright. It
was he I had in mind. Actually, we had never stood watching a sunset together,
but I felt it was just the sort of thing he would have said if he had been
watching a sunset, if you see what I mean. Am I right?’

‘Quite
right.’

‘A
soulless clod, don’t you think?’

‘Soulless
to the core.’

‘No
finer feelings?’

‘None.’

‘Would
I be correct in describing him as a pumpkin-headed oaf? ‘‘Quite correct.’

‘Yes,’
he said, ‘she is well out of it.’

‘She?’

‘Florence.’

‘Oh,
ah. Well out of what?’

He eyed
me speculatively, heaving gently like a saucepan of porridge about to reach the
height of its fever. I am a man who can observe and deduce, and it was plain to
me, watching him sizzle, that something had happened pretty recently in his
affairs which had churned him up like a seidlitz powder, leaving him with but
two alternatives —
(a)
to burst where he stood and
(b)
to decant
his pent-up emotions on the first human being who came along. No doubt he would
have preferred this human being to have been of a non-Wooster nature, but one
imagines that he was saying to himself that you can’t have everything and that
he was in no position to pick and choose.

He
decided on Alternative B.

‘Wooster,’
he said, placing a hand on my shoulder, ‘may I ask you a question? Has your
aunt told you that I love Florence Craye?’

‘She
did mention it, yes.’

‘I
thought she might have done. She is not what I would call a reticent woman,
though of course with many excellent qualities. I was forced to take her into
my confidence soon after my arrival here, because she asked me why the devil I
was going about looking like a dead codfish.’

‘Or
like Hamlet?’

‘Hamlet
or a dead codfish. The point is immaterial. I confessed to her that it was
because I loved Florence with a consuming passion and had discovered that she
was engaged to the oaf Cheesewright. It had been, I explained, as if I had
received a crushing blow on the head.’

‘Like
Sir Eustace Willoughby.’

‘I beg
your pardon?’

‘In
The
Mystery of the Pink Crayfish.
He was conked on the bean in his library one
night, and if you ask me it was the butler who did it. But I interrupted you.’

‘You
did.’

‘I’m
sorry. You were saying it was as if you had received a crushing blow on the
head.’

‘Exactly.
I reeled beneath the shock.’

‘Must
have been a nasty jar.’

‘It
was. I was stunned. But now … You remember that telegram your aunt gave me to
give to Florence?’

‘Ah,
yes, the telegram.’

‘It was
from Cheesewright, breaking the engagement.’

I had
no means of knowing, of course, what his form was when reeling beneath shocks,
but I doubted whether he could have put up a performance topping mine as I
heard these words. The sunset swayed before my eyes as if it were doing the
shimmy, and a bird close by which was getting outside its evening worm looked
for an instant like two birds, both flickering.

‘What!’
I gurgled, rocking on my base.

‘Yes.’

‘He’s
broken the engagement?’

‘Precisely.’

‘Oh,
golly! Why?’

He
shook his head.

‘Ah,
that I couldn’t tell you. All I know is that I found Florence in the stable
yard tickling a cat behind the ear, and I came up and said “Here’s a telegram
for you”, and she said “Really? I suppose it’s from D’Arcy”. I shuddered at the
name, and while I was shuddering, she opened the envelope. It was a long
telegram, but she had not read more than the first words when she uttered a sharp
cry. “Bad news?” I queried. Her eyes flashed, and a cold, proud look came into
her face. “Not at all,” she replied. “Splendid news. D’Arcy Cheesewright has
broken the engagement.”‘

‘Gosh!’

‘You
may well say “Gosh!”‘

‘She
didn’t tell you any more than that?’

‘No.
She said one or two incisive things about Cheesewright with which I thoroughly
concurred and strode off in the direction of the kitchen garden. And I came
away, walking, as you may well imagine, on air. I deprecate the modern tendency
to use slang, but I am not ashamed to confess that what I was saying to myself
was the word “Whoopee!” Excuse me, Wooster, I must now leave you. I can’t keep
still.’

And
with these words he pranced off like a mustang, leaving me to face the changed
conditions alone.

It was
with a brooding sense of peril that I did so. And if you are saying ‘But why,
Wooster? Surely everything is pretty smooth? What matter if the girl’s nuptials
with Cheesewright have been cancelled, when here is Percy Gorringe all ready
and eager to take up the white man’s burden?’ I reply ‘Ah, but you’ve not seen
Percy Gorringe’. I mean to say, I couldn’t picture Florence, however much on
the rebound, accepting the addresses of a man who voluntarily wore
side-whiskers and wrote poems about sunsets. Far more likely, it seemed to me,
that having a vacant date on her hands she would once again reach out for the
old and tried — viz, poor old Bertram. It was what she had done before, and
these things tend to become a habit.

I was
completely at a loss to imagine what could have caused this in-and-out running
on Stilton’s part. The thing didn’t make sense. When last seen, it will be
remembered, he had had all the earmarks of one about whom Love had twined its
silken fetters. His every word at that parting chat of ours had indicated this
beyond peradventure and doubt. Dash it, I mean, you don’t go telling people you
will break their spines in four places if they come oiling round the adored
object unless you have more than a passing fancy for the bally girl.

So what
had occurred to dim the lamp of love and all that sort of thing?

Could
it be, I asked myself, that the strain of growing that moustache had proved
too much for him? Had he caught sight of himself in the mirror about the third
day — the third day is always the danger spot — and felt that nothing in the
way of wedded bliss could make the venture worth while? Called upon to choose
between the woman he loved and a hairless upper lip, had he cracked, with the
result that the lip had had it by a landslide?

With a
view to getting the inside stuff straight from the horse’s mouth, I hurried to
the kitchen garden, where, if Percy was to be relied on, Florence would now be,
probably pacing up and down with lowered head.

She was
there with lowered head, though not actually pacing up and down. She was
bending over a gooseberry bush, eating gooseberries in an overwrought sort of
way. Seeing me, she straightened up, and I snapped into the
res
without
preamble.

‘What’s
all this I hear from Percy Gorringe?’ I said.

She swallowed
a gooseberry with a passionate gulp that spoke eloquently of the churned-up
soul, and I saw, as Percy’s words had led me to expect, that she was madder
than a wet hen. Her whole aspect was that of a girl who would have given her
year’s dress allowance for the privilege of beating G. D’Arcy Cheesewright over
the head with a parasol.

I
continued.

‘He
says there has been a rift within the lute.’

‘I beg
your pardon?’

‘You
and Stilton. According to Percy, the lute is not the lute it was. Stilton has
broken the engagement, he tells me.’

‘He
has. I’m delighted, of course.’

‘Delighted?
You like the set-up?’

‘Of
course I do. What girl would not be delighted who finds herself unexpectedly
free from a man with a pink face and a head that looks as if it had been blown
up with a bicycle pump?’

I
clutched the brow. I am a pretty astute chap, and I could see that this was not
the language of love. I mean, if you had heard Juliet saying a thing like that
about Romeo, you would have raised the eyebrows in quick concern, wondering if
all was well with the young couple.

‘But
when I saw him last, everything seemed perfectly okey-doke. I could have sworn
that, however reluctantly, he had reconciled himself to growing that
moustache.’

She
stooped and took another gooseberry.

‘It has
nothing to do with moustaches,’ she said, reappearing on the surface. ‘The
whole thing is due to the fact that D’Arcy Cheesewright is a low, mean,
creeping, crawling, slinking, spying, despicable worm,’ she proceeded, dishing
out the words from between clenched teeth. ‘Do you know what he did?’

‘I
haven’t a notion.’

She
refreshed herself with a further gooseberry and returned to the upper air,
breathing a few puffs of flame through the nostrils.

‘He
sneaked round to that night club yesterday and made inquiries.’

‘Oh, my
gosh!’

‘Yes.
You wouldn’t think a man could stoop so low, but he bribed people and was
allowed to look at the head waiter’s book and found that a table had been
reserved that night in your name. This confirmed his degraded suspicions. He
knew that I had been there with you. I suppose,’ said Florence, diving at the
gooseberry bush once more and starting to strip it of its contents, ‘a man gets
a rotten, spying mind like that from being a policeman.’

To say
that I was appalled would not be putting it any too strongly. I was, moreover,
astounded. It was a revelation to me that a puff—faced poop like Stilton could
have been capable of detective work on this uncanny scale. I had always
respected his physique, of course, but had supposed that the ability to fell an
ox with a single blow more or less let him out. Not for an instant had I
credited him with reasoning powers which might well have made Hercule Poirot
himself draw the breath in with a startled ‘What ho’. It just showed how one ought
never to underestimate a man simply because he devotes his life to shoving oars
into rivers and pulling them out again, this being about as silly a way of
passing the time as could be hit upon.

No
doubt, as Florence had said, this totally unforeseen snakiness was the result
of his having been, if only briefly, a member of the police force. One presumes
that when the neophyte has been issued his uniform and regulation boots, the
men up top take him aside and teach him a few things likely to be of use to him
in his chosen profession. Stilton, it was plain, had learned his lesson well
and, if one did but know, was probably capable of measuring blood stains and
collecting cigar ash.

However,
it was only a fleeting attention that I gave to this facet of the situation. My
thoughts were concentrated on something of far greater pith and moment, as
Jeeves would say. I allude to the position — now that the man knew all — of B.
Wooster, which seemed to me sticky to a degree. Florence, having sated herself
with gooseberries, was starting to move off, and I arrested her with a sharp
‘Hoy!’

‘That
telegram,’ I said.

‘I
don’t want to talk about it.’

‘I do.
Was there anything about me in it?’

‘Oh,
yes, quite a lot.’

I
swallowed a couple of times and passed a finger round the inside of my collar.
I had thought there might be.

‘Did he
hint at any plans he had with regard to me?’

‘He
said he was going to break your spine in five places.’

‘Five
places?’

‘I
think he said five. Don’t you let him,’ said Florence warmly, and it was nice,
of course, to know that she disapproved. ‘Breaking spines! I never heard of
such a thing. He ought to be ashamed of himself.’

And she
moved off in the direction of the house, walking like a tragedy queen on one of
her bad mornings.

What I
have heard Jeeves call the glimmering landscape was now fading on the sight,
and it was getting on for the hour when dressing-gongs are beaten. But though
I knew how rash it is ever to be late for one of Anatole’s dinners, I could not
bring myself to go in and don the soup-and-fish. I had so much to occupy the
mind that I lingered on in a sort of stupor. Winged creatures of the night kept
rolling up and taking a look at me and rolling off again, but I remained
motionless, plunged in thought. A man pursued by a thug like D’Arcy
Cheesewright has need of all the thought he can get hold of.

And
then, quite suddenly, out of the night that covered me, black as a pit from
pole to pole, there shone a gleam of light. It spread, illuminating the entire
horizon, and I realized that, taken by and large, I was sitting pretty.