Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit (27 page)

‘Is
that right?’

‘Yes,
sir. I can guarantee the efficacy of the preparation.’

L.G.
Trotter emitted a loud ‘Woof!’

‘Let’s
go,’ he said briefly.

‘I’ll
come with you and hold your hand,’ said Aunt Dahlia. ‘Just one word,’ I said,
as the procession started to file out. ‘On swallowing the stuff you will have
the momentary illusion that you have been struck by lightning. Pay no attention.
It’s all part of the treatment. But watch the eyeballs, as they are liable,
unless checked, to start from the parent sockets and rebound from the opposite
wall.’

They
passed from the room, and I was alone with Florence.

22

It’s an odd thing, but it
hadn’t occurred to me in the rush and swirl of recent events that, with people
drifting off in twos and threes and —in the case of Spode — in ones, the time
must inevitably come when this beasel and I would be left face to face in what
is called a
solitude
à
deux.
And now that this unpleasant state
of affairs had come about, it was difficult to know how to start the
conversation. However, I had a pop at it, the same pop I had had when finding myself
closeted with L.G. Trotter.

‘Can I
get you a sausage?’ I said.

She
waved it away. It was plain that the unrest in her soul could not be lulled
with sausages.

‘Oh,
Bertie,’ she said, and paused.

‘Or a
slice of ham?’

She
shook her head. Ham appeared to be just as much a drug in the market as
sausages.

‘Oh, Bertie,’
she said again.

‘Right
opposite you,’ I said encouragingly.

‘Bertie,
I don’t know what to do.’

She
signed off once more, and I stood there waiting for something to emerge. A
half-formed idea of offering her a kipper I dismissed. Too silly, I mean, keeping
on suggesting items on the menu like a waiter trying to help a customer make up
his mind.

‘I feel
awful!’ she said.

‘You
look fine,’ 1 assured her, but she dismissed the pretty compliment with
another wave of the hand.

She was
silent again for a moment, and then it came out with a rush.

‘It’s
about Percy.’

I was
nibbling a slice of toast as she spoke, but lowered it courteously.

‘Percy?’
I said.

‘Oh,
Bertie,’ she proceeded, and from the way her nose wiggled I could see that she
was in quite a state. ‘All that that happened just now … when he said that
about not disappointing the woman he loved … when I realized what he had done
… just for me …

‘I know
what you mean,’ I said. ‘Very white.’

‘Something
happened to me. It was as though for the first time I was seeing the real
Percy. I had always admired his intellect, of course, but now it was different.
I seemed to be gazing into his naked soul, and what I saw there …’

‘Pretty
good, was it?’ I queried, helping the thing along.

She
drew a deep breath.

‘I was
overcome. I was stunned. I realized that he was just like Rollo Beaminster.’

For a
moment I was not abreast. Then I remembered.

‘Oh,
ah, yes. You didn’t get around to telling me much about Rollo, except that he
was in a wild mood.’

‘Oh,
that was quite early in the story, before he and Sylvia came together again.’

‘They
came together, did they?’

‘Yes.
She gazed into his naked soul and knew that there could be no other man for
her.’

I have
already stressed the fact that I was mentally at my brightest this morning, and
hearing these words I got the distinct idea that she was feeling pretty
pro—Percy as of even date. I might be wrong, of course, but I didn’t think so,
and it seemed to me that this was a good thing that wanted pushing along. There
is, as Jeeves had so neatly put it, a tide in the affairs of men which, taken
at the flood, leads on to fortune.

‘I
say,’ I said, ‘here’s a thought. Why don’t you marry Percy?’ She started. I saw
that she was trembling. She moved, she stirred, she seemed to feel the rush of
life along her keel. In her eyes, as she gazed at me, it wasn’t difficult to
spot the light of hope.

‘But
I’m engaged to you,’ she faltered, rather giving the impression that she could
have kicked herself for being such a chump.

‘Oh,
that can be readily adjusted,’ I said heartily. ‘Call it off, is my advice. You
don’t want a weedy butterfly like me about the home, you want something more in
the nature of a soul-mate, a chap with a number nine hat you can sit and hold
hands and talk about T.S. Eliot with. And Percy fills the bill.’

She
choked a bit. The light of hope was now very pronounced.

‘Bertie!
You will release me?’

‘Certainly,
certainly. Frightful wrench, of course, and all that sort of thing, but
consider it done.’

‘Oh,
Bertie!’

She
flung herself upon me and kissed me. Unpleasant, of course, but these things
have to be faced. As I once heard Anatole remark, one must learn to take a few
roughs with a smooth.

We were
still linked together in a close embrace, when the silence —we were embracing
fairly silently — was broken by what sounded like the heart-cry of one of the
local dogs which had bumped its nose against the leg of the table.

It
wasn’t a dog. It was Percy. He was standing there looking overwrought, and I
didn’t blame him. Agony, of course, if you love a girl, to come into a room and
find her all tangled up with another fellow.

He
pulled himself together with a powerful effort.

‘Go
on,’ he said, ‘go on. I’m sorry I interrupted you.’

He
broke off with a choking gulp, and I could see it was quite a surprise to him
when Florence, abruptly detaching herself from me, did a jack-rabbit leap that
was almost in the Cheesewright-Wooster class and hurled herself into his arms.

‘Eh,
what?’ he said, plainly missing the gist.

‘I love
you, Percy!’

‘You
do?’ His face lit up for an instant. Then there was a black-out. ‘But you’re
engaged to Wooster,’ he said moodily, eyeing me in a manner that seemed to
suggest that in his opinion it was fellows like me who caused half the trouble
in the world.

I moved
over to the table and took another slice of toast. Cold, of course, but I
rather like cold toast, provided there’s plenty of butter.

‘No,
that’s off,’ I said. ‘Carry on, old sport. You have the green light.’

Florence’s
voice shook.

‘Bertie
has released me, Percy. I was kissing him because I was so grateful. When I
told him I loved you, he released me.’

You
could see that Percy was impressed.

‘I say!
That was very decent of him.’

‘He’s
like that. Bertie is the soul of chivalry.’

‘He
certainly is. I’m amazed. Nobody would think it, to look at him.’

I was
getting about fed up with people saying nobody would think it, to look at me,
and it is quite possible that I might at this point have said something a bit
biting … I don’t know what, but something. But before I could assemble the
makings Florence suddenly uttered something that was virtually tantamount to a
wail of anguish.

‘But,
Percy, what are we to do? I’ve only a small dress allowance.’

I
didn’t follow the trend of her thought. Nor did Percy. Cryptic, I considered
it, and I could see he thought so, too.

‘What’s
that got to do with it?’ he said.

Florence
wrung her hands, a thing I’ve often heard about but never seen done. It’s a
sort of circular movement, starting from the wrists.

‘I
mean, I haven’t any money and you haven’t any money, except what your
stepfather is going to pay you when you join the business. We should have to
live in Liverpool. I can’t live in Liverpool!’

Well,
of course, lots of people do, or so I have been given to understand, but I saw
what she meant. Her heart was in London’s Bohemia — Bloomsbury, Chelsea,
sandwiches and absinthe in the old studio, all that sort of thing, and she
hated to give it up. I don’t suppose they have studios up Liverpool way.

“Myes,’
said Percy.

‘You see
what I mean?’

‘Oh,
quite,’ said Percy.

He was
plainly ill at ease. A strange light had come into his tortoiseshell-rimmed
spectacles, and his whiskers quivered gently. For a moment he stood there
letting ‘I dare not’ wait upon ‘I would’. Then he spoke.

‘Florence,
I have a confession to make. I hardly know how to tell you. The truth is that
my financial position is reasonably sound. I am not a rich man, but I have a
satisfactory income, quite large enough to support the home. I have no
intention of going to Liverpool.’

Florence
goggled. I have an idea that she was thinking, early though it was, that he had
had one over the eight. Her air was that of a girl on the point of asking him
to say ‘Theodore Oswaldtwistle, the thistle sifter, in sifting a sack of thistles
thrust three thorns through the thick of his thumb’. However, all she said was:

‘But,
Percy darling, you surely can’t make much out of your poetry?’ He twiddled his
fingers for a moment. You could see he was trying to nerve himself to reveal
something he would much have preferred to keep under his hat. I have had the
same experience when had up on the carpet by my Aunt Agatha.

‘I
don’t,’ he said. ‘I only got fifteen shillings for that “Caliban at Sunset”
thing of mine in
Parnassus,
and I had to fight like a tiger to get that.
The editress wanted to beat me down to twelve-and-six. But I have a … an
alternative source of revenue.’

‘I
don’t understand.’

He
bowed his head.

‘You
will. My receipts from this — er — alternative source of revenue amounted last
year to nearly eight hundred pounds, and this year it should be double that,
for my agent has succeeded in establishing me in the American market. Florence,
you will shrink from me, but I have to tell you. I write detective stories
under the pseudonym of Rex West.’

I
wasn’t looking at Florence, so I don’t know if she shrank from him, but I
certainly didn’t. I stared at him, agog.

‘Rex
West? Lord-love-a-duck! Did you write
The Mystery of the Pink Crayfish?’
I
gasped.

He
bowed his head again.

‘I did.
And
Murder in Mauve, The Case of the Poisoned Doughnut
and
Inspector
Biffen Views the Body.’

I
hadn’t happened to get hold of those, but I assured him that I would lose no
time in putting them on my library list, and went on to ask a question which
had been occupying my mind for quite a while.

‘Then
who was it who bumped off Sir Eustace Willoughby Bart, with the blunt
instrument?’

In a
low, toneless voice he said:

‘Burwash,
the butler.’

I
uttered a cry.

‘As I
suspected! As I suspected from the first!’

I would
have probed further into this Art of his, asking him how he thought up these
things and did he work regular hours or wait for inspiration, but Florence had
taken the floor again. So far from shrinking from him, she was nestling in his
arms and covering his face with burning kisses.

‘Percy!’
She was all over the blighter. ‘I think it’s wonderful! How frightfully clever
of you!’

He
tottered.

‘You
aren’t revolted?’

‘Of
course I’m not. I’m tremendously pleased. Are you working on something now?’

‘A
novelette. I think of calling it
Blood Will Tell.
It will run to about
thirty thousand words. My agent says these American magazines like what they
call one-shotters — a colloquial expression, I imagine, for material of a
length suitable for publication in a single issue.’

‘You
must tell me all about it,’ said Florence, taking his arm and heading for the french
window.

‘Hey,
just a moment,’ I said.

‘Yes?’
said Percy, turning. ‘What is it, Wooster? Talk quickly. I am busy.’

‘May I
have your autograph?’

He
beamed.

‘You really
want it?’

‘I am a
great admirer of your work.’

‘That
is the boy!’ said Percy.

He
wrote it on the back of an envelope, and they went out hand in hand, these two
young folks starting on the long journey together. And I, feeling a bit peckish
after this emotional scene, sat down and had another go at the sausages and
bacon.

I was
still thus engaged when the door opened and Aunt Dahlia came in. A glance was
enough to tell me that all was well with the aged relative. On a previous
occasion I have described her face as shining like the seat of a bus-driver’s
trousers. It was doing so now. If she had been going to be Queen of the May,
she could not have looked chirpier.