Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit (2 page)

‘One of
your best and brightest, Jeeves,’ I said, refilling the glass. ‘The weeks among
the shrimps have not robbed your hand of its cunning.’

He did
not reply. Speech seemed to have been wiped from his lips, and I saw, as I had
foreseen would happen, that his gaze was riveted on the upper slopes of my
mouth. It was a cold, disapproving gaze, such as a fastidious luncher who was
not fond of caterpillars might have directed at one which he had discovered in
his portion of salad, and I knew that the clash of wills for which I had been
bracing myself was about to raise its ugly head.

I spoke
suavely but firmly. You can’t beat suave firmness on these occasions, and
thanks to that life-giving special I was able to be as firmly suave as billy-o.
There was no mirror in the sitting-room, but had there been, and had I caught a
glimpse of myself in it, I have no doubt I should have seen something closely
resembling a haughty seigneur of the old régime about to tell the domestic
staff just where it got off.

‘Something
appears to be arresting your attention, Jeeves. Is there a smut on my nose?’

His
manner continued frosty. There are moments when he looks just like a governess,
one of which was this one.

‘No,
sir. It is on the upper lip. A dark stain like mulligatawny soup.’

I gave
a careless nod.

‘Ah,
yes,’ I said. ‘The moustache. That is what you are alluding to, is it not? I
grew it while you were away. Rather natty, don’t you think?’

‘No,
sir, I do not.’

I
moistened my lips with the special, still suave to the gills. I felt strong and
masterful.

‘You
dislike the little thing?’

‘Yes,
sir.’

‘You
don’t feel it gives me a sort of air? A… how shall I put it? … A kind of
diablerie?’

‘No,
sir.’

‘You
hurt and disappoint me, Jeeves,’ I said, sipping a couple of sips and getting
suaver all the time. ‘I could understand your attitude if the object under
advisement were something bushy and waxed at the ends like a sergeant-major’s,
but it is merely the delicate wisp of vegetation with which David Niven has for
years been winning the applause of millions. When you see David Niven on the
screen, you don’t recoil in horror, do you?’

‘No,
sir. His moustache is very becoming to Mr. Niven.’

‘But
mine isn’t to me?’

‘No,
sir.’

It is
at moments like this that a man realizes that the only course for him to
pursue, if he is to retain his self-respect, is to unship the velvet hand in
the iron glove, or, rather, the other way about. Weakness at such a time is
fatal.

There
are limits, I mean to say, and sharply defined limits at that, and these limits
I felt that he had passed by about a mile and a quarter. I yield to nobody in
my respect for Jeeves’s judgment in the matter of socks, shoes, shirts, hats
and cravats, but I was dashed if I was going to have him muscling in and trying
to edit the Wooster face. I finished my special and spoke in a quiet, level
voice.

‘I am
sorry, Jeeves. I had hoped for your sympathy and co-operation, but if you are
unable to see your way to sympathizing and cooperating, so be it. Come what may,
however, I shall maintain the
status quo.
It is
status quos
that
people maintain, isn’t it? I have been put to considerable trouble and anxiety
growing this moustache, and I do not propose to hew it off just because certain
prejudiced parties, whom I will not specify, don’t know a good thing when they
see one.
J
‘y
suis, j’y reste,
Jeeves,’ I said, becoming a bit
Parisian.

Well,
after this splendid exhibition of resolution on my part I suppose there was
nothing much the chap could have said except ‘Very good, sir’ or something of
that sort, but, as it happened, he hadn’t time to say even that, for the final
word had scarcely left my lips when the front-door bell tootled. He shimmered
out, and a moment later shimmered in again.

‘Mr.
Cheesewright,’ he announced.

And in
clumped the massive form of the bird to whom he alluded. The last person I had
expected to see, and, for the matter of that, about the last one I wanted to.

2

I don’t know if you have
had the same experience, but I have always found that there are certain blokes
whose mere presence tends to make me ill at ease, inducing the nervous laugh,
the fiddling with the tie and the embarrassed shuffling of the feet. Sir
Roderick Glossop, the eminent loony doctor, until circumstances so arranged themselves
that I was enabled to pierce the forbidding exterior and see his better, softer
side, was one of these. J. Washburn Stoker, with his habit of kidnapping people
on his yacht and throwing his weight about like a pirate of the Spanish Main,
was another. And a third is this G. D’Arcy (‘Stilton’) Cheesewright. Catch
Bertram Wooster
vis-à-vis
with him, and you do not catch him at his
best.

Considering
that he and I have known each other since, as you might say, we were so high,
having been at private school, Eton and Oxford together, we ought, I suppose,
to be like Damon and what’s-his—name, but we aren’t by any means. I generally
refer to him in conversation as ‘that blighter Stilton’, while he, I have been
informed by usually reliable sources, makes no secret of his surprise and
concern that I am still on the right side of the walls of Colney Hatch or some
similar institution. When we meet, there is always a certain stiffness and what
Jeeves would call an imperfect fusion of soul.

One of
the reasons for this is, I think, that Stilton used to be a policeman. He
joined the Force on coming down from Oxford with the idea of rising to a
position of eminence at Scotland Yard, a thing you find a lot of the fellows
you know doing these days. True, he turned in his truncheon and whistle shortly
afterwards because his uncle wanted him to take up another walk in life, but
these rozzers, even when retired, never quite shake off that ‘Where were you on
the night of June the fifteenth?’ manner, and he seldom fails, when we run into
one another, to make me feel like a rat of the Underworld detained for
questioning in connection with some recent smash-and-grab raid.

Add the
fact that this uncle of his wins his bread as a magistrate at one of the London
police courts, and you will understand why I avoid him as much as possible and
greatly prefer him elsewhere. The man of sensibility shrinks from being
closeted with an ex-bluebottle with magistrate blood in him.

In my
demeanour, accordingly, as I rose to greet him, a close observer would have
noted more than a touch of that To-what-am-I-indebted-for-the-honour-of-this-visit
stuff. I was at a loss to imagine what he was doing invading my privacy like
this, and another thing that had fogged me was why, having invaded it, he was
standing staring at me in a stern, censorious sort of way, as if the sight of
me had got right in amongst him, revolting his finest feelings. I might have
been some dreg of society whom he had caught in the act of slipping a couple of
ounces of cocaine to some other dreg.

‘Ho!’
he said, and this alone would have been enough to tell an intelligent
bystander, had there been one, that he had spent some time in the ranks of the
Force. One of the first things the Big Four teach the young recruit is to say
‘Ho!’ ‘I thought as much,’ he went on, knitting the brow. ‘Swilling cocktails,
eh?’

This
was the moment when, had conditions been normal, I would no doubt have laughed
nervously, fingered the tie and shuffled the feet, but with two of Jeeves’s
specials under my belt, still exercising their powerful spell, I not only
remained intrepid but retorted with considerable spirit, putting him right in
his place.

‘I fail
to understand you, officer,’ I said coldly. ‘Correct me if I am wrong, but I
believe this is the hour when it is customary for an English gentleman to
partake of a short snifter. Will you join me?’

His lip
curled. Most unpleasant. These coppers are bad enough when they leave their
lips
in statu quo.

‘No, I
won’t,’ he replied, curtly and offensively.
‘I
don’t want to ruin my
constitution. What do you suppose those things are going to do to your eye and
your power of control? How can you expect to throw doubles if you persist in
stupefying yourself with strong drink? It’s heart—breaking.’

I saw
all. He was thinking of the Darts sweep.

The
annual Darts sweep is one of the high spots of life at the Drones Club. It
never fails to stir the sporting instincts of the members, causing them to roll
up in dense crowds and purchase tickets at ten bob a go, with the result that
the sum in the kitty is always colossal. This time my name had been drawn by
Stilton, and as Horace Pendlebury-Davenport, last year’s winner, had gone and
got married and at his wife’s suggestion resigned his membership, the thing was
pretty generally recognized as a sitter for me, last year’s runner—up.
‘Wooster,’ the word flew to and fro, ‘is the deadest of snips. He throws a
beautiful dart.’

So I
suppose it was only natural in a way that, standing, if all went well, to scoop
in a matter of fifty-six pounds ten shillings, Stilton should feel that it was
his mission in life to see that I kept at the peak of my form. But that didn’t
make this incessant surveillance of his easier to endure. Ever since he had
glanced at his ticket, seen that it bore the name Wooster, and learned that I
was a red-hot favourite for the tourney, his attitude towards me had been that
of an official at Borstal told off to keep an eye on a more than ordinarily up-and-coming
juvenile delinquent. He had a way of looming up beside me at the club, sniffing
quickly at my glass and giving me an accusing look, coupled with a sharp
whistling intake of the breath, and here he was now doing the same thing in my
very home. It was worse than being back in a Little Lord Fauntleroy suit and
ringlets and having a keen-eyed nurse always at one’s elbow, watching one’s
every move like a bally hawk.

I was
about to say how deeply I resented being tailed up in this manner, when he
resumed.

‘I have
come here tonight to talk seriously to you, Wooster,’ he said, frowning in a
most unpleasant manner. ‘I am shocked at the casual, frivolous way in which you
are treating this Darts tournament. You seem not to be taking the most
elementary precautions to ensure victory on the big day. It’s the old, old story.
Over-confidence. All these fatheads keep telling you you’re sure to win, and
you suck it down like one of your beastly cocktails. Well, let me tell you
you’re living in a fool’s paradise. I happened to look in at the Drones this
afternoon, and Freddie Widgeon was at the Darts board, stunning all beholders
with a performance that took the breath away. His accuracy was sensational.’

I waved
a hand and tossed the head. In fact, I suppose you might say I bridled. He had
wounded my amour propre.

‘Tchah!’
I said, registering scorn.

‘Eh?’

‘I said
“Tchah!” With ref. to F. Widgeon. I know his form backwards. Flashy, but no
staying power. The man will be less than the dust beneath my chariot wheels.’

‘That’s
what you think. As I said before, over-confidence. You can take it from me that
Freddie is a very dangerous competitor. I happen to know that he has been in
strict training for weeks. He’s knocked off smoking and has a cold bath every
morning. Did you have a cold bath this morning?’

‘Certainly
not. What do you suppose the hot tap’s for?’

‘Do you
do Swedish exercises before breakfast?’

‘I
wouldn’t dream of such a thing. Leave these excesses to the Swedes, I say.’

‘No,’
said Stilton bitterly. ‘All you do is riot and revel and carouse. I am told
that you were at that party of Catsmeat Potter-Pirbright’s last night. You
probably reeled home at three in the morning, rousing the neighbourhood with
drunken shouts.’

I
raised a haughty eyebrow. This police persecution was intolerable.

‘You
would scarcely expect me, constable,’ I said coldly, ‘to absent myself from the
farewell supper of a boyhood friend who is leaving for Hollywood in a day or
two and may be away from civilization for years. Catsmeat would have been
pained to his foundations if I had oiled out. And it wasn’t three in the
morning, it was two-thirty.’

‘Did
you drink anything?’

‘The
merest sip.’

‘And
smoke?’

‘The
merest cigar.’

‘I
don’t believe you. I’ll bet, if the truth was known,’ said Stilton morosely,
intensifying the darkness of his frown, ‘you lowered yourself to the level of
the beasts of the field. I’ll bet you whooped it up like a sailor in a
Marseilles bistro. And from the fact that there is a white tie round your neck
and a white waistcoat attached to your foul stomach at this moment I gather
that you are planning to be off shortly to some other nameless orgy.’

I
laughed one of my quiet laughs. The word amused me.

‘Orgy,
eh? I’m giving dinner to some friends of my Aunt Dahlia’s, and she strictly
warned me to lay off the old Falernian because my guests are teetotallers. When
the landlord fills the flowing bowl, it will be with lemonade, barley water, or
possibly lime juice. So much for your nameless orgies.’