Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit (4 page)

The
almost universal practice of the inmates being to attend some form of musical
entertainment after dinner, the smoking-room was empty when I arrived, and it
would not be too much to say that five minutes later, a cigarette between my
lips and a brimming flagon at my side, I was enveloped in a deep peace. The
strained nerves had relaxed. The snootered soul was at rest.

It
couldn’t last, of course. These lulls in life’s battle never do. Came a moment
when I had that eerie feeling that I was not alone and, looking round, found
myself gazing at G. D’Arcy Cheesewright.

4

This Cheesewright, I should
perhaps have mentioned earlier, is a bimbo who from the cradle up has devoted
himself sedulously to aquatic exercise. He was Captain of Boats at Eton. He
rowed four years for Oxford. He sneaks off each summer at the time of Henley
Regatta and sweats lustily with his shipmates on behalf of the Leander Club.
And if he ever goes to New York, I have no doubt he will squander a fortune
sculling about the lake in Central Park at twenty-five cents a throw. It is
only rarely that the oar is out of his hand.

Well,
you can’t do that sort of thing without developing the thews and sinews, and
all this galley-slave stuff has left him extraordinarily robust. His chest is
broad and barrel-like and the muscles of his brawny arms strong as iron bands.
I remember Jeeves once speaking of someone of his acquaintance whose strength
was as the strength of ten, and the description would have fitted Stilton
nicely. He looks like an all—in wrestler.

Being a
pretty broad—minded chap and realizing that it takes all sorts to make a world,
I had always till now regarded this beefiness of his with kindly toleration.
The way I look at it is, if blighters want to be beefy, let them be beefy. Good
luck to them, say I. What I did not like at the moment of going to press was
the fact that in addition to bulging in all directions with muscle he was
glaring at me in a highly sinister manner, his air that of one of those Fiends
with Hatchet who are always going about the place Slaying Six. He was plainly
much stirred about something, and it would not be going too far to say that, as
I caught his eye, I wilted where I sat.

Thinking
that it must be the circumstance of his having found me restoring the tissues
with a spot of the right stuff that was causing his chagrin, I was about to say
that the elixir in my hand was purely medicinal and had been recommended by a
prominent Harley Street physician when he spoke.

‘If
only I could make up my mind!’

‘About
what, Stilton?’

‘About
whether to break your foul neck or not.’

I did a
bit more wilting. It seemed to me that I was alone in a deserted smoking-room
with a homicidal loony. It is a type of loony I particularly bar, and the
homicidal loony I like least is one with a forty-four chest and biceps in
proportion. His fingers, I noticed, were twitching, always a bad sign. ‘Oh, for
the wings of a dove’ about summed up my feelings as I tried not to look at
them.

‘Break
my foul neck?’ I said, hoping for further information. ‘Why?’

‘You
don’t know?’

‘I
haven’t the foggiest.’

‘Ho!’

He
paused at this point to dislodge a fly which had sauntered in through the open
window and become mixed up with his vocal cords. Having achieved his object, he
resumed.

‘Wooster!’

‘Still
here, old man.’

‘Wooster,’
said Stilton, and if he wasn’t grinding his teeth, I don’t know a ground tooth
when I see one, ‘what was the thought behind that moustache of yours? Why did
you grow it?’

‘Well,
rather difficult to say, of course. One gets these whims.’ I scratched the chin
a moment.

‘I
suppose I felt it might brighten things up,’ I hazarded.

‘Or had
you an ulterior motive? Was it part of a subtle plot for stealing Florence from
me?’

‘My
dear Stilton!’

‘It all
looks very fishy to me. Do you know what happened just now, when we left my
uncle’s?’

‘I’m
sorry, no. I’m a stranger in these parts myself.’

He
ground a few more teeth.

‘I will
tell you. I saw Florence home in a cab, and all the way there she was raving
about that moustache of yours. It made me sick to listen to her.’

I
weighed the idea of saying something to the effect that girls would be girls
and must be expected to have their simple enthusiasms, but decided better not.

‘When
we got off at her door and I turned after paying the driver, I found she was
looking at me intently, examining me from every angle, her eyes fixed on my
face.’

‘You
enjoyed that, of course?’

‘Shut
up. Don’t interrupt me.’

‘Right
ho. I only meant it must have been pretty gratifying.’

He
brooded for a space. Whatever had happened at that lovers’ get-together, one
could see that the memory of it was stirring him like a dose of salts.

‘A
moment later,’ he said, and paused, wrestling with his feelings. ‘A moment
later,’ he went on, finding speech again, ‘she announced that she wished me to
grow a moustache, too. She said — I quote her words — that when a man has a
large pink face and a head like a pumpkin, a little something around the upper
lip often does wonders in the way of easing the strain. Would you say my head
was like a pumpkin, Wooster?’

‘Not a
bit, old man.’

‘Not
like a pumpkin?’

‘No,
not like a pumpkin. A touch of the dome of St. Paul’s, perhaps. ‘‘Well, that is
what she compared it to, and she said that if I split it in the middle with a
spot of hair, the relief to pedestrians and traffic would be enormous. She’s
crazy. I wore a moustache my last year at Oxford, and it looked frightful. Nearly
as loathsome as yours. Moustache forsooth!’ said Stilton, which surprised me,
for I hadn’t supposed he knew words like “forsooth”. ‘“I wouldn’t grow a
moustache to please a dying grandfather,” I told her. “A nice fool I’d look
with a moustache,” I said. “It’s how you look without one,” she said. “Is that
so?” I said. “Yes, it is,” she said. “Oh?” I said. “Yes,” she said. “Ho!” I
said, and she said “Ho to you!”’

If she
had added ‘With knobs on’, it would, of course, have made it stronger, but I
must say I was rather impressed by Florence’s work as described in this slice
of dialogue. It seemed to me snappy and forceful. I suppose girls learn this
sort of cut-and-thrust stuff at their finishing schools. And Florence, one must
remember, had been moving a good deal of late in Bohemian circles — Chelsea
studios and the rooms of the intelligentsia in Bloomsbury and places like that
— where the repartee is always of a high order.

‘So
that was that,’ proceeded Stilton, having brooded for a space. ‘One thing led
to another, hot words passed to and fro, and it was not long before she was
returning the ring and saying she would be glad to have her letters back at my
earliest convenience.’

I tut-tutted.
He asked me rather abruptly not to tut-tut, so I stopped tut-tutting,
explaining that my reason for having done so was that his tragic tale had moved
me deeply.

‘My
heart aches for you,’ I said.

‘It
does, does it?’

‘Profusely.’

‘Ho!’

‘You
doubt my sympathy?’

‘You
bet I doubt your ruddy sympathy. I told you just now that I was trying to make
up my mind, and what I’m trying to make it up about is this. Had you foreseen
that that would happen? Did your cunning fiend’s brain spot what was bound to
occur if you grew a moustache and flashed it on Florence?’

I tried
to laugh lightly, but you know how it is with these light laughs, they don’t
always come out just the way you would wish. Even to me it sounded more like a
gargle.

‘Am I
right? Was that the thought that came into your cunning fiend’s brain?’

‘Certainly
not. As a matter of fact, I haven’t got a cunning fiend’s brain.’

‘Jeeves
has. The plot could have been his. Was it Jeeves who wove this snare for my
feet?’

‘My
dear chap! Jeeves doesn’t weave snares for feet. He would consider it a liberty.
Besides, I told you he is the spearhead of the movement which disapproves of my
moustache.’

‘I see
what you mean. Yes, on second thoughts I am inclined to acquit Jeeves of
complicity. The evidence points to your having thought up the scheme yourself.’

‘Evidence?
How do you mean, evidence?’

‘When
we were at your flat and I said I was expecting Florence, I noticed a very
significant thing — your face lit up.’

‘It
didn’t’

‘Pardon
me. I know when a face lights up and when it doesn’t. I could read you like a
book. You were saying to yourself, “This is the moment! This is where I spring
it on her!”‘

‘Nothing
of the sort. If my face lit up — which I gravely doubt —it was merely because I
reasoned that as soon as she arrived you would be leaving.’

‘You
wanted me to leave?’

‘I did.
You were taking up space which I required for other purposes.’

It was
plausible, of course, and I could see it shook him. He passed a hamlike hand,
gnarled with toiling at the oar, across his brow.

‘Well,
I shall have to think it over. Yes, yes, I shall have to think it over.’

‘Go
away and start now, is what I would suggest.’

‘I
will. I shall be scrupulously fair. I shall weigh this and that. But if I find
my suspicions are correct, I shall know what to do about it.’

And
with these ominous words he withdrew, leaving me not a little bowed down with
weight of woe. For apart from the fact that when a bird of Stilton’s impulsive
temperament gets it into his nut that you have woven snares for his feet,
practically anything can happen in the way of violence and mayhem, it gave me
goose pimples to think of Florence being at large once more. It was with heavy
heart that I finished my whisky and splash and tottered home. ‘Wooster,’ a
voice seemed to be whispering in my ear, ‘things are getting hot, old sport.’

Jeeves
was at the telephone when I reached the sitting-room.

‘I am
sorry,’ he was saying, and I noticed that he was just as suave and firm as I
had been at our recent get-together. ‘No, please, further discussion is
useless. I am afraid you must accept my decision as final. Good night.’

From
the fact that he had not chucked in a lot of ‘sirs’ I presumed that he had been
talking to some pal of his, though from the curtness of his tone probably not
the one whose strength was as the strength of ten.

‘What
was that, Jeeves?’ I asked. ‘A little tiff with one of the boys at the club?’

‘No,
sir. I was speaking to Mr. Percy Gorringe, who rang up shortly before you
entered. Affecting to be yourself, I informed him that his request for a
thousand pounds could not be entertained. I thought that this might spare you
discomfort and embarrassment.’

I must
say I was touched. After being worsted in that clash of wills of ours, one
might have expected him to show dudgeon and be loath to do the feudal thing by
the young master. But Jeeves and I, though we may have our differences — as it
might be on the subject of lip—joy —do not allow them to rankle.

‘Thank
you, Jeeves.’

‘Not at
all, sir.

‘Lucky
you came back in time to do the needful. Did you enjoy yourself at the club?’

‘Very
much, sir.‘

‘More
than I did at mine.

‘Sir?’

‘I ran
into Stilton Cheesewright there and found him in difficult mood. Tell me,
Jeeves, what do you do at this Junior Ganymede of yours?’

‘Well,
sir, many of the members play a sound game of bridge. The conversation, too,
rarely fails to touch a high level of interest. And should one desire more
frivolous entertainment, there are the club books.’

‘The…
Oh, yes, I remember.’

Perhaps
you do, too, if you happened to be around when I was relating the doings at
Totleigh Towers, the country seat of Sir Watkyn Bassett, when this club book
had enabled me to put it so crushingly across the powers of darkness in the
shape of Roderick Spode. Under Rule Eleven at the Junior Ganymede, you may
recall, members are required to supply intimate details concerning their
employers for inclusion in the volume, and its pages revealed that Spode, who
was an amateur Dictator of sorts, running a gang called the Black Shorts, who
went about in black footer bags shouting ‘Heil, Spode!’, also secretly designed
ladies’ underclothing under the trade name of Eulalie Sœurs. Armed with this
knowledge, I had had, of course, little difficulty in reducing him to the level
of a third-class power. These Dictators don’t want a thing like that’ to get
spread about.

But
though the club book had served me well on that occasion, I was far from
approving of it. Mine has been in many ways a chequered career, and it was not
pleasant to think that full details of episodes I would prefer to be buried in
oblivion were giving a big laugh daily to a bunch of valets and butlers.