Right Ho, Jeeves
He moved buoyantly from the wash-hand stand, and endeavoured to slosh
me on the back again. Foiled by my nimble footwork, he staggered to the
bed and sat down upon it.
“Braced? Did I say I could bite a tiger?”
“You did.”
“Make it two tigers. I could chew holes in a steel door. What an ass
you must have thought me out there in the garden. I see now you were
laughing in your sleeve.”
“No, no.”
“Yes,” insisted Gussie. “That very sleeve,” he said, pointing. “And I
don’t blame you. I can’t imagine why I made all that fuss about a potty
job like distributing prizes at a rotten little country grammar school.
Can you imagine, Bertie?”
“No.”
“Exactly. Nor can I imagine. There’s simply nothing to it. I just
shin up on the platform, drop a few gracious words, hand the little
blighters their prizes, and hop down again, admired by all. Not a
suggestion of split trousers from start to finish. I mean, why should
anybody split his trousers? I can’t imagine. Can you imagine?”
“No.”
“Nor can I imagine. I shall be a riot. I know just the sort of stuff
that’s needed--simple, manly, optimistic stuff straight from the
shoulder. This shoulder,” said Gussie, tapping. “Why I was so nervous
this morning I can’t imagine. For anything simpler than distributing
a few footling books to a bunch of grimy-faced kids I can’t imagine.
Still, for some reason I can’t imagine, I was feeling a little nervous,
but now I feel fine, Bertie--fine, fine, fine--and I say this to you as
an old friend. Because that’s what you are, old man, when all the smoke
has cleared away--an old friend. I don’t think I’ve ever met an older
friend. How long have you been an old friend of mine, Bertie?”
“Oh, years and years.”
“Imagine! Though, of course, there must have been a time when you were
a new friend.... Hullo, the luncheon gong. Come on, old friend.”
And, rising from the bed like a performing flea, he made for the door.
I followed rather pensively. What had occurred was, of course, so much
velvet, as you might say. I mean, I had wanted a braced Fink-Nottle--
indeed, all my plans had had a braced Fink-Nottle as their end and aim
--but I found myself wondering a little whether the Fink-Nottle now
sliding down the banister wasn’t, perhaps, a shade too braced. His
demeanour seemed to me that of a man who might quite easily throw bread
about at lunch.
Fortunately, however, the settled gloom of those round him exercised a
restraining effect upon him at the table. It would have needed a far
more plastered man to have been rollicking at such a gathering. I had
told the Bassett that there were aching hearts in Brinkley Court, and
it now looked probable that there would shortly be aching tummies.
Anatole, I learned, had retired to his bed with a fit of the vapours,
and the meal now before us had been cooked by the kitchen maid--as C3 a
performer as ever wielded a skillet.
This, coming on top of their other troubles, induced in the company a
pretty unanimous silence--a solemn stillness, as you might say--which
even Gussie did not seem prepared to break. Except, therefore, for one
short snatch of song on his part, nothing untoward marked the occasion,
and presently we rose, with instructions from Aunt Dahlia to put on
festal raiment and be at Market Snodsbury not later than 3.30. This
leaving me ample time to smoke a gasper or two in a shady bower beside
the lake, I did so, repairing to my room round about the hour of three.
Jeeves was on the job, adding the final polish to the old topper, and
I was about to apprise him of the latest developments in the matter of
Gussie, when he forestalled me by observing that the latter had only
just concluded an agreeable visit to the Wooster bedchamber.
“I found Mr. Fink-Nottle seated here when I arrived to lay out your
clothes, sir.”
“Indeed, Jeeves? Gussie was in here, was he?”
“Yes, sir. He left only a few moments ago. He is driving to the school
with Mr. and Mrs. Travers in the large car.”
“Did you give him your story of the two Irishmen?”
“Yes, sir. He laughed heartily.”
“Good. Had you any other contributions for him?”
“I ventured to suggest that he might mention to the young gentlemen
that education is a drawing out, not a putting in. The late Lord
Brancaster was much addicted to presenting prizes at schools, and he
invariably employed this dictum.”
“And how did he react to that?”
“He laughed heartily, sir.”
“This surprised you, no doubt? This practically incessant merriment, I
mean.”
“Yes, sir.”
“You thought it odd in one who, when you last saw him, was well up in
Group A of the defeatists.”
“Yes, sir.”
“There is a ready explanation, Jeeves. Since you last saw him, Gussie
has been on a bender. He’s as tight as an owl.”
“Indeed, sir?”
“Absolutely. His nerve cracked under the strain, and he sneaked into
the dining-room and started mopping the stuff up like a vacuum cleaner.
Whisky would seem to be what he filled the radiator with. I gather that
he used up most of the decanter. Golly, Jeeves, it’s lucky he didn’t
get at that laced orange juice on top of that, what?”
“Extremely, sir.”
I eyed the jug. Uncle Tom’s photograph had fallen into the fender, and
it was standing there right out in the open, where Gussie couldn’t have
helped seeing it. Mercifully, it was empty now.
“It was a most prudent act on your part, if I may say so, sir, to
dispose of the orange juice.”
I stared at the man.
“What? Didn’t you?”
“No, sir.”
“Jeeves, let us get this clear. Was it not you who threw away that
o.j.?”
“No, sir. I assumed, when I entered the room and found the pitcher
empty, that you had done so.”
We looked at each other, awed. Two minds with but a single thought.
“I very much fear, sir----”
“So do I, Jeeves.”
“It would seem almost certain----”
“Quite certain. Weigh the facts. Sift the evidence. The jug was
standing on the mantelpiece, for all eyes to behold. Gussie had been
complaining of thirst. You found him in here, laughing heartily. I
think that there can be little doubt, Jeeves, that the entire contents
of that jug are at this moment reposing on top of the existing cargo in
that already brilliantly lit man’s interior. Disturbing, Jeeves.”
“Most disturbing, sir.”
“Let us face the position, forcing ourselves to be calm. You inserted
in that jug--shall we say a tumblerful of the right stuff?”
“Fully a tumblerful, sir.”
“And I added of my plenty about the same amount.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And in two shakes of a duck’s tail Gussie, with all that lapping about
inside him, will be distributing the prizes at Market Snodsbury Grammar
School before an audience of all that is fairest and most refined in
the county.”
“Yes, sir.”
“It seems to me, Jeeves, that the ceremony may be one fraught with
considerable interest.”
“Yes, sir.”
“What, in your opinion, will the harvest be?”
“One finds it difficult to hazard a conjecture, sir.”
“You mean imagination boggles?”
“Yes, sir.”
I inspected my imagination. He was right. It boggled.
-17-
“And yet, Jeeves,” I said, twiddling a thoughtful steering wheel,
“there is always the bright side.”
Some twenty minutes had elapsed, and having picked the honest fellow
up outside the front door, I was driving in the two-seater to the
picturesque town of Market Snodsbury. Since we had parted--he to go to
his lair and fetch his hat, I to remain in my room and complete the
formal costume--I had been doing some close thinking.
The results of this I now proceeded to hand on to him.
“However dark the prospect may be, Jeeves, however murkily the
storm clouds may seem to gather, a keen eye can usually discern the
blue bird. It is bad, no doubt, that Gussie should be going, some
ten minutes from now, to distribute prizes in a state of advanced
intoxication, but we must never forget that these things cut both ways.”
“You imply, sir----”
“Precisely. I am thinking of him in his capacity of wooer. All this
ought to have put him in rare shape for offering his hand in marriage.
I shall be vastly surprised if it won’t turn him into a sort of
caveman. Have you ever seen James Cagney in the movies?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Something on those lines.”
I heard him cough, and sniped him with a sideways glance. He was
wearing that informative look of his.
“Then you have not heard, sir?”
“Eh?”
“You are not aware that a marriage has been arranged and will shortly
take place between Mr. Fink-Nottle and Miss Bassett?”
“What?”
“Yes, sir.”
“When did this happen?”
“Shortly after Mr. Fink-Nottle had left your room, sir.”
“Ah! In the post-orange-juice era?”
“Yes, sir.”
“But are you sure of your facts? How do you know?”
“My informant was Mr. Fink-Nottle himself, sir. He appeared anxious
to confide in me. His story was somewhat incoherent, but I had no
difficulty in apprehending its substance. Prefacing his remarks with
the statement that this was a beautiful world, he laughed heartily and
said that he had become formally engaged.”
“No details?”
“No, sir.”
“But one can picture the scene.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I mean, imagination doesn’t boggle.”
“No, sir.”
And it didn’t. I could see exactly what must have happened. Insert a
liberal dose of mixed spirits in a normally abstemious man, and he
becomes a force. He does not stand around, twiddling his fingers and
stammering. He acts. I had no doubt that Gussie must have reached for
the Bassett and clasped her to him like a stevedore handling a sack of
coals. And one could readily envisage the effect of that sort of thing
on a girl of romantic mind.
“Well, well, well, Jeeves.”
“Yes, sir.”
“This is splendid news.”
“Yes, sir.”
“You see now how right I was.”
“Yes, sir.”
“It must have been rather an eye-opener for you, watching me handle
this case.”
“Yes, sir.”
“The simple, direct method never fails.”
“No, sir.”
“Whereas the elaborate does.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Right ho, Jeeves.”
We had arrived at the main entrance of Market Snodsbury Grammar School.
I parked the car, and went in, well content. True, the Tuppy-Angela
problem still remained unsolved and Aunt Dahlia’s five hundred quid
seemed as far off as ever, but it was gratifying to feel that good old
Gussie’s troubles were over, at any rate.
The Grammar School at Market Snodsbury had, I understood, been built
somewhere in the year 1416, and, as with so many of these ancient
foundations, there still seemed to brood over its Great Hall, where
the afternoon’s festivities were to take place, not a little of the
fug of the centuries. It was the hottest day of the summer, and though
somebody had opened a tentative window or two, the atmosphere remained
distinctive and individual.
In this hall the youth of Market Snodsbury had been eating its daily
lunch for a matter of five hundred years, and the flavour lingered. The
air was sort of heavy and languorous, if you know what I mean, with the
scent of Young England and boiled beef and carrots.
Aunt Dahlia, who was sitting with a bevy of the local nibs in the
second row, sighted me as I entered and waved to me to join her, but I
was too smart for that. I wedged myself in among the standees at the
back, leaning up against a chap who, from the aroma, might have been a
corn chandler or something on that order. The essence of strategy on
these occasions is to be as near the door as possible.
The hall was gaily decorated with flags and coloured paper, and the
eye was further refreshed by the spectacle of a mixed drove of boys,
parents, and what not, the former running a good deal to shiny faces
and Eton collars, the latter stressing the black-satin note rather when
female, and looking as if their coats were too tight, if male. And