Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit (19 page)

My
first emotion on beholding him was one of surprise, a feeling that of all the
in-and—out performers I had ever met he was the most unpredictable. I mean, you
couldn’t tell from one minute to another what aspect he was going to present to
the world, for he switched from Stormy to Set Fair and from Set Fair to Stormy
like a barometer with something wrong with its works. At dinner on the previous
night he had been all gaiety and effervescence, and here he was now, only a few
hours later, once more giving that impersonation of a dead codfish which had
caused Aunt Dahlia to take so strong a line with him. Fixing me with
lack-lustre eyes, if lack-lustre is the word I want, and wasting no time on
preliminary pip-pippings and pourparlers, he started straight off cleansing his
bosom of the perilous stuff that weighs upon the heart.

‘Wooster,’
he said, ‘Florence has just told me a story that shocked me!’

Well,
difficult to know what to say to that, of course. One’s impulse was to ask what
story, adding that if it was the one about the bishop and the lady
snake-charmer, one had heard it. And one could, no doubt, have shoved in a
thoughtful word or two deploring the growing laxity of speech of the modern
girl. I merely said ‘Oh, ah?’ and waited for further details.

His
eye, as Florence’s had done on the previous night, rolled in a fine frenzy and
glanced from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven. You could see the thing had
upset him.

‘Shortly
after breakfast,’ he continued, retrieving the eye and fixing it on me once
more, ‘finding her alone in the herbaceous border, cutting flowers, I hastened
up and asked if I might be allowed to hold the basket.’

‘Very
civil.’

‘She
thanked me and said she would be glad if I would do so, and for awhile we
talked of neutral subjects. One topic led to another, and eventually I asked
her to be my wife.’

“At-a-boy!’

‘I beg
your pardon?’

‘I only
said “‘At—a—boy!”‘

‘Why
did you say “‘At-a-boy!”?’

‘Sort
of cheering you on, as it were.’

‘I see.
Cheering me on. The expression is a corruption, one assumes, of the phrase
“That is the boy” and signifies friendly encouragement?’

‘That’s
right.’

‘Then I
am surprised in the circumstances — and may I say more than a little disgusted
— to hear it from your lips, Wooster. It would have been in better taste to
have refrained from cheap taunts and jeers.’

‘Eh?’

‘If you
have triumphed, that is no reason why you should mock those who have been less
fortunate.’

‘I’m
sorry. If you could give me a few footnotes …’

He
tchah-ed impatiently.

‘I told
you that I asked Florence to be my wife, and I also told you that she said
something which shocked me profoundly. It was that she was engaged to you.’

I got
it now. I saw what he was driving at.

‘Oh,
ah, yes, of course. Quite. Yes, we would appear to be betrothed.’

‘When
did this happen, Wooster?’

‘Fairly
recently.’

He
snorted.

‘Very
recently, I should imagine, seeing that it was only yesterday that she was
engaged to Cheesewright. It’s all most confusing,’ said Percy peevishly. ‘It
makes one’s head swim. One doesn’t know where one is.’

I could
see his point.

‘Bit of
a mix-up,’ I agreed.

‘It’s
bewildering. I cannot think what she can possibly see in you. ‘‘No. Very odd,
the whole thing.’

He
brooded darkly for a while.

‘Her
recent infatuation for Cheesewright,’ he said, teeing off again, ‘one could
dimly understand. Whatever his mental defects, he is a vigorous young animal,
and it is not uncommon to find girls of intellect attracted by vigorous young
animals. Bernard Shaw made this the basis of this early novel,
Cashel
Byron’s Profession.
But
you!
It’s inexplicable. A mere weedy
butterfly.’

‘Would
you call me a weedy butterfly?’

‘If you
can think of a better description, I shall be happy to hear it. I am unable to
discern in you the slightest vestige of charm, the smallest trace of any
quality that could reasonably be expected to appeal to a girl like Florence. It
amazes one that she should wish to have you permanently about the house.’

I don’t
know if you would call me a touchy man. As a rule, I should say not. But it is
not pleasant to find yourself chalked up on the slate as a weedy butterfly, and
I confess that I spoke a little shortly.

‘Well,
there it is,’ I said, and went into the silence. And as he, too, seemed
disinclined for chit-chat, we stood for some moments like a couple of Trappist
monks who have run into each other by chance at the dog races. And I think I
would pretty soon have nodded curtly and removed myself, had he not arrested me
with an exclamation similar in tone and volume to the one which Stilton had
uttered on finding me festooned with hat-boxes in Florence’s cupboard. He was looking
at me through the windshields with what appeared to be concern, if not horror.
It puzzled me. It couldn’t have taken him all this time, I felt, to notice the
moustache.

‘Wooster!
Good gracious! You are not wearing a hat!’

‘I
don’t much in the country.’

‘But in
this hot sun! You might get sunstroke. You ought not to take such risks.’

I must
say I was touched by this solicitude. Much of the pique I had been feeling left
me. It isn’t many fellows, I mean to say, who get all worked up about the
well-being of birds who are virtually strangers. It just showed, I thought,
that a man may talk a lot of rot about weedy butterflies and still have a
tender heart beneath what I should imagine was pretty generally recognized as a
fairly repulsive exterior.

‘Don’t
worry,’ I said, soothing his alarm.

‘But I
do worry,’ he responded sharply. ‘I feel very strongly that you ought either to
get a hat or else stay in the shade. I don’t want to appear fussy, but your
health is naturally a matter of the greatest concern to me. You see, I have
drawn you in the Drones Club Darts sweep.’

This
got right past me. I could make nothing of it. It sounded to me like straight
delirium.

‘You’ve
what? How do you mean you’ve drawn me in the Drones Club Darts sweep?’

‘I put
it badly. I was agitated. What I should have said was that I have bought you
from Cheesewright. He has sold me the ticket bearing your name. So can you
wonder that it makes me nervous when I see you going about in this hot sun
without a hat?’

In a
career liberally spotted with nasty shocks I have had occasion to do quite a
bit of reeling and tottering from time to time, but I have seldom reeled and
tottered more heartily than I did on hearing these frightful words. I had
addressed Aunt Dahlia on the previous night, if you remember, as a fluttering
aspen. The description would have fitted me at this moment like the paper on
the wall.

This
surge of emotion will, I think, be readily understood. My whole foreign policy,
as I have made clear, had been built on the fact that I had bottled Stilton up
good and proper, and it now appeared, dash it, that I hadn’t bottled him up at
all. He was once more in the position of an Assyrian fully licensed to come
down like a wolf on the fold with his cohorts all gleaming with purple and
gold, and the realization that his thirst for vengeance was so pronounced that,
rather than forgo his war aims, he was prepared to sacrifice fifty-six quid and
a bender was one that froze the marrow.

‘There
must be a lot of hidden good in Cheesewright,’ proceeded Percy. ‘I confess
frankly that I misjudged him, and, if I had not already returned the galley
proofs, I would withdraw that “Caliban at Sunset” thing of mine from
Parnassus.
He tells me that you are a certain winner of this Darts contest, and yet he
voluntarily offered to sell me for quite a trivial sum the ticket bearing your
name, because, he said, he had taken a great fancy to me and would like to do
me a good turn. A big, generous, warm-hearted gesture, and one that restores
one’s faith in human nature. By the way, Cheesewright is looking for you. He
wants to see you about something.’

He
repeated his advice with ref. to the hat and moved off, and for quite a while I
stood where I was, rigid to the last limb, my numbed bean trying to grapple
with this hideous problem which had arisen. It was plain that some diabolically
clever counter-move would have to be made and made slippily, but what
diabolically clever counter-move? There was what is called the rub.

You see,
it wasn’t as if I could just leg it from the danger zone, which was what I
would have liked to do. It was imperative that I be among those present at
Brinkley Court when Spode arrived this evening. Airily though Aunt Dahlia had
spoken of making the man play ball, it was quite conceivable that the programme
might blow a fuse, in which event the presence on the spot of a quick-thinking
nephew would be of the essence. The Woosters do not desert aunts in the time of
need.

Eliminating,
therefore, the wings of the dove, for which I would gladly have been in the
market, what other course presented itself? I freely own that for five minutes
or so the thing had me snookered.

But it
has often been said of Bertram Wooster that in moments of intense peril he has
an uncanny knack of getting inspiration, and this happened now. Suddenly a
thought came like a full-blown rose, flushing the brow, and I picked up the
feet and lit out for the stables, where my two-seater was housed. It might be
that Jeeves had not yet started on the long trail that led to the Junior Ganymede
Club, and, if he hadn’t, I saw the way out.

16

If you are one of the
better element who are never happier than when curled up with the works of B.
Wooster, you possibly came across a previous slab of these reminiscences of
mine in which I dealt with a visit Jeeves and I paid to Deverill Hall, the
rural seat of Esmond Haddock, J.P., and will recall that while under the
Haddock roof Jeeves found my Aunt Agatha’s son Thos in possession of what is
known as a cosh and very prudently impounded it, feeling — as who wouldn’t? — that
it was the last thing that ought to be at the disposal of that homicidal young
thug. The thought which had flushed my brow in the manner described was: Had
Jeeves still got it? Everything turned on that.

I found
him, richly apparelled and wearing the bowler hat, at the wheel of the car, on
the point of putting foot to self—starter. Another moment, and I should have
been too late. Racing up, I inaugurated the quiz without delay.

‘Jeeves,’
I said, ‘throw your mind back to that time we stayed at Deverill Hall. Are you
throwing?’

‘Yes,
sir.’

‘Then
continue to follow me closely. My Aunt Agatha’s son, young Thos, was there.’

‘Precisely,
sir.’

‘With
the idea of employing it on a schoolmate of his called Stinker, who had
incurred his displeasure for some reason, he had purchased before leaving
London a cosh.’

‘Or
blackjack, to use the American term.’

‘Never
mind American terms, Jeeves. You took the weapon from him.’

‘I
deemed it wisest, sir.’

‘It was
wisest. No argument about that. Let a plug-ugly like young Thos loose in the
community with a cosh, and you are inviting disasters and … what’s the word? Something
about cats.’

‘Cataclysms,
sir?’

‘That’s
it. Cataclysms. Unquestionably you did the right thing. But all that is beside
the point. What I am leading up to is this. That cosh, where is it?’

‘Among
my effects at the apartment, sir.’

‘I’ll
drive with you to London and pick it up.’

‘I
could bring it with me on my return, sir.’

I did a
brief dance step. On his return, forsooth! When would that be? Late at night,
probably, because the gang at a hot spot like the Junior Ganymede don’t break
up a party at the end of lunch. I know what happens when these wild butlers let
themselves go. They sit around till all hours, drinking deep and singing close
harmony and generally whooping it up like a bunch of the boys in the Malemute
saloon. It would mean that for the whole of the long summer day I should be
defenceless, an easy prey for a Stilton who, as I had just been informed, was
prowling about, seeking whom he might devour.

‘That’s
no good, Jeeves. I require it immediately. Not tonight, not a week from
Wednesday, but at the earliest possible moment. I am being hotly pursued by
Cheesewright, Jeeves.’

‘Indeed,
sir?’

‘And if
I am to stave off the Cheesewright challenge, I shall have need of a weapon.
His strength is as the strength of ten, and unarmed I should be corn before his
sickle.’

‘Extremely
well put, sir, if I may say so, and your diagnosis of the situation is
perfectly accurate. Mr. Cheesewright’s robustness would enable him to crush you
like a fly.’