The Jeeves Omnibus - Vol 2: (Jeeves & Wooster): No. 2 (30 page)

I was about to mount the stairs when a sudden ‘What ho!’ from my rear caused me to turn. Tuppy was standing in the hall. He had apparently been down to the cellar for reinforcements, for there were a couple of bottles under his arm.

‘Hullo, Bertie,’ he said. ‘You back?’ He laughed amusedly. ‘You look like the Wreck of the Hesperus. Get run over by a steamroller or something?’

At any other time I might have found his coarse badinage hard to bear. But such was my uplifted mood that I waved it aside and slipped him the good news.

‘Tuppy, old man, the Bassett’s going to marry Gussie Fink-Nottle.’

‘Tough luck on both of them, what?’

‘But don’t you understand? Don’t you see what this means? It means that Angela is once more out of pawn, and you have only to play your cards properly –’

He bellowed rollickingly. I saw now that he was in the pink. As a matter of fact, I had noticed something of the sort directly I met him, but had attributed it to alcoholic stimulant.

‘Good Lord! You’re right behind the times, Bertie. Only to be expected, of course, if you will go riding bicycles half the night. Angela and I made it up hours ago.’

‘What?’

‘Certainly. Nothing but a passing tiff. All you need in these matters is a little give and take, a bit of reasonableness on both sides. We got together and talked things over. She withdrew my double chin. I conceded her shark. Perfectly simple. All done in a couple of minutes.’

‘But –’

‘Sorry, Bertie. Can’t stop chatting with you all night. There is a rather impressive beano in progress in the dining-room, and they are waiting for supplies.’

Endorsement was given to this statement by a sudden shout from the apartment named. I recognized – as who would not – Aunt Dahlia’s voice:

‘Glossop!’

‘Hallo?’

‘Hurry up with that stuff.’

‘Coming, coming.’

‘Well, come, then. Yoicks! Hard for-rard!’

‘Tallyho, not to mention tantivy. Your aunt,’ said Tuppy, ‘is a bit above herself. I don’t know all the facts of the case, but it appears that Anatole gave notice and has now consented to stay on, and also your uncle has given her a cheque for that paper of hers. I didn’t get the details, but she is much braced. See you later. I must rush.’

To say that Bertram was now definitely nonplussed would be but to state the simple truth. I could make nothing of this. I had left Brinkley Court a stricken home, with hearts bleeding wherever you looked, and I had returned to find it a sort of earthly paradise. It baffled me.

I bathed bewilderedly. The toy duck was still in the soap dish, but I was too preoccupied to give it a thought. Still at a loss, I returned to my room, and there was Jeeves. And it is proof of my fogged condish that my first words to him were words not of reproach and stern recrimination but of inquiry:

‘I say, Jeeves!’

‘Good evening, sir. I was informed that you had returned. I trust you had an enjoyable ride.’

At any other moment, a crack like that would have woken the fiend in Bertram Wooster. I barely noticed it. I was intent on getting to the bottom of this mystery.

‘But I say, Jeeves, what?’

‘Sir?’

‘What does all this mean?’

‘You refer, sir –’

‘Of course I refer. You know what I’m talking about. What has been happening here since I left? The place is positively stiff with happy endings.’

‘Yes, sir. I am glad to say that my efforts have been rewarded.’

‘What do you mean, your efforts? You aren’t going to try to make
out
that that rotten fire-bell scheme of yours had anything to do with it?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Don’t be an ass, Jeeves. It flopped.’

‘Not altogether, sir. I fear, sir, that I was not entirely frank with regard to my suggestion of ringing the fire bell. I had not really anticipated that it would in itself produce the desired results. I had intended it merely as a preliminary to what I might describe as the real business of the evening.’

‘You gibber, Jeeves.’

‘No, sir. It was essential that the ladies and gentlemen should be brought from the house, in order that, once out of doors, I could ensure that they remained there for the necessary period of time.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘My plan was based on psychology, sir.’

‘How?’

‘It is a recognized fact, sir, that there is nothing that so satisfactorily unites individuals who have been so unfortunate as to quarrel amongst themselves as a strong mutual dislike for some definite person. In my own family, if I may give a homely illustration, it was a generally accepted axiom that in times of domestic disagreement it was necessary only to invite my Aunt Annie for a visit to heal all breaches between the other members of the household. In the mutual animosity excited by Aunt Annie, those who had become estranged were reconciled almost immediately. Remembering this, it occurred to me that were you, sir, to be established as the person responsible for the ladies and gentlemen being forced to spend the night in the garden, everybody would take so strong a dislike to you that in this common sympathy they would sooner or later come together.’

I would have spoken, but he continued:

‘And such proved to be the case. All, as you see, sir, is now well. After your departure on the bicycle, the various estranged parties agreed so heartily in their abuse of you that the ice, if I may use the expression, was broken, and it was not long before Mr Glossop was walking beneath the trees with Miss Angela, telling her anecdotes of your career at the university in exchange for hers regarding your childhood; while Mr Fink-Nottle, leaning against the sun-dial, held Miss Bassett enthralled with stories of your schooldays. Mrs Travers, meanwhile, was telling Monsieur Anatole –’

I found speech.

‘Oh?’ I said. ‘I see. And now, I suppose, as the result of this dashed psychology of yours, Aunt Dahlia is so sore with me that it
will
be years before I can dare to show my face here again – years, Jeeves, during which, night after night, Anatole will be cooking those dinners of his –’

‘No, sir. It was to prevent any such contingency that I suggested that you should bicycle to Kingham Manor. When I informed the ladies and gentlemen that I had found the key, and it was borne in upon them that you were having that long ride for nothing, their animosity vanished immediately, to be replaced by cordial amusement. There was much laughter.’

‘There was, eh?’

‘Yes, sir. I fear you may possibly have to submit to a certain amount of good-natured chaff, but nothing more. All, if I may say so, is forgiven, sir.’

‘Oh?’

‘Yes, sir.’

I mused awhile.

‘You certainly seem to have fixed things.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Tuppy and Angela are once more betrothed. Also Gussie and the Bassett. Uncle Tom appears to have coughed up that money for
Milady’s Boudoir
. And Anatole is staying on.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘I suppose you might say that all’s well that ends well.’

‘Very apt, sir.’

I mused again.

‘All the same, your methods are a bit rough, Jeeves.’

‘One cannot make an omelette without breaking eggs, sir.’

I started.

‘Omelette! Do you think you could get me one?’

‘Certainly, sir.’

‘Together with half a bot. of something?’

‘Undoubtedly, sir.’

‘Do so, Jeeves, and with all speed.’

I climbed into bed and sank back against the pillows. I must say that my generous wrath had ebbed a bit. I was aching the whole length of my body, particularly toward the middle, but against this you had to set the fact that I was no longer engaged to Madeline Bassett. In a good cause one is prepared to suffer. Yes, looking at the thing from every angle, I saw that Jeeves had done well, and it was with an approving beam that I welcomed him as he returned with the needful.

He did not check up with this beam. A bit grave, he seemed
to
me to be looking, and I probed the matter with a kindly query:

‘Something on our mind, Jeeves?’

‘Yes, sir. I should have mentioned it earlier, but in the evening’s disturbance it escaped my memory. I fear I have been remiss, sir.’

‘Yes, Jeeves?’ I said, champing contentedly.

‘In the matter of your mess jacket, sir.’

A nameless fear shot through me, causing me to swallow a mouthful of omelette the wrong way.

‘I am sorry to say, sir, that while I was ironing it this afternoon I was careless enough to leave the hot instrument upon it. I very much fear that it will be impossible for you to wear it again, sir.’

One of those old pregnant silences filled the room.

‘I am extremely sorry, sir.’

For a moment, I confess, that generous wrath of mine came bounding back, hitching up its muscles and snorting a bit through the nose, but, as we say on the Riviera,
à quoi sert-il
? There was nothing to be gained by g. w. now.

We Woosters can bite the bullet. I nodded moodily and speared another slab of omelette.

‘Right ho, Jeeves.’

‘Very good, sir.’

The world of which I have been writing ever since I was so high, the world of the Drones Club and the lads who congregate there was always a small world – one of the smallest I ever met, as Bertie Wooster would say. It was bounded on the east by St. James’s Street, on the west by Hyde Park Corner, by Oxford Street on the north and by Piccadilly on the south. And now it is not even small, it is non-existent. It has gone with the wind and is one with Nineveh and Tyre. In a word, it has had it.

This is pointed out to me every time a new book of mine dealing with the Drones Club of Jeeves and Bertie is published in England. ‘Edwardian!’ the critics hiss at me. (It is not easy to hiss the word Edwardian, containing as it does no sibilant, but they manage it.) And I shuffle my feet and blush a good deal and say, ‘Yes, I suppose you’re right’. After all, I tell myself, there has been no generic term for the type of young man who figures in my stories since he used to be called a knut in the pre-first-war days, which certainly seems to suggest that the species has died out like the macaronis of the Regency and the whiskered mashers of the Victorian age.

But sometimes I am in more defiant mood. Mine, I protest, are historical novels. Nobody objects when an author writes the sort of things that begin, ‘More skilled though I am at wielding the broadsword than the pen, I will set down for all to read the tale of how I, plain John Blunt, did follow my dear liege to the wars when Harry, yclept the Fifth, sat on our English throne’.

Then why am I not to be allowed to set down for all to read the tale of how the Hon. J. Blunt got fined five pounds by the beak at Bosher Street Police Court for disorderly conduct on Boat Race Night? Unfair discrimination is the phrase that springs to the lips.

I suppose one thing that makes these drones of mine seem creatures of a dead past is that with the exception of Oofy Prosser, the club millionaire, they are genial and good tempered, friends of all the world. In these days when everbody hates everybody else, anyone who is not snarling at something – or at everything – is an
anachronism.
The Edwardian knut was never an angry young man. He would get a little cross, perhaps, if his man Meadowes sent him out some morning with odd spats on, but his normal outlook on life was sunny. He was a humble, kindly soul, who knew he was a silly ass but hoped you wouldn’t mind. He liked everybody, and most people liked him. Portrayed on the stage by George Grossmith and G. P. Huntley, he was a lovable figure, warming the hearts of all. You might disapprove of him not being a world’s worker, but you could not help being fond of him.

Though, as a matter of fact, many of the members of my Drones Club
are
world’s workers. Freddie Threepwood is a vice-president at Donaldson’s Dog Joy Inc. of Long Island City, U.S.A., and sells as smart a dog-biscuit as the best of them. Bingo Little edits
Wee Tots
, the popular journal for the nursery and the home, Catsmeat Potter-Pirbright has played the juvenile in a number of West End comedies, generally coming on early in Act One with a cheery ‘Tennis, anyone?’, and even Bertie Wooster once wrote an article on ‘What the Well-Dressed Man is Wearing’ for his Aunt Dahlia’s weekly,
Milady’s Boudoir
.

Two things caused the decline of the drone or knut, the first of which was that hard times hit younger sons. Most knuts were younger sons, and in the reign of good King Edward the position of the younger son in aristocratic families was … what’s the word, Jeeves? Anomolous? You’re sure? Right ho, anomolous. Thank you, Jeeves. Putting it another way, he was a trifle on the superfluous side, his standing about that of the litter of kittens which the household cat deposits in the drawer where you keep your clean shirts.

What generally happened was this. An Earl, let us say, begat an heir. So far, so good. One can always do with an heir. But then – these Earls never know when to stop – he absent-mindedly, as it were, begat a second son and this time was not any too pleased about the state of affairs. It was difficult to see how to fit him in. But there he was, requiring his calories just the same as if he had been first in succession. It made the Earl feel that he was up against something hard to handle.

‘Can’t let Algy starve,’ he said to himself, and forked out a monthly allowance. And so there came into being a group of ornamental young men whom the ravens fed. Like the lilies of the field, they toiled not neither did they spin but lived quite contentedly on the paternal dole. Their wants were few. Provided they could secure the services of a tailor who was prepared to accept charm of manner as a substitute for ready cash – and it was extraordinary how full London was of
altruistic
tailors in the early nineteen hundreds – they asked for little more. In short, so long as the ravens continued to do their stuff, they were in that blissful condition known as sitting pretty.

Then the economic factor reared its ugly head. Income tax and super-tax shot up like rocketing pheasants, and the Earl found himself doing some constructive thinking. A bright idea occurred to him and the more he turned it over in his mind, the better he liked it.