Right Ho, Jeeves
personal well-being of F. Widgeon.
As far as any idea of doing the delicately nurtured a bit of good went,
he tells me, he was prepared to stand underneath and catch them in
blankets, but no more.
Why, then, should this not be so with Augustus Fink-Nottle and
Hildebrand Glossop?
Such were my thoughts as I stood toying with the rope, and I believe
I should have turned the whole thing up, had it not been that at this
juncture there floated into my mind a picture of the Bassett hearing
that bell for the first time. Coming as a wholly new experience, it
would probably startle her into a decline.
And so agreeable was this reflection that I waited no longer, but
seized the rope, braced the feet and snapped into it.
Well, as I say, I hadn’t been expecting that bell to hush things up to
any great extent. Nor did it. The last time I had heard it, I had been
in my room on the other side of the house, and even so it had hoiked
me out of bed as if something had exploded under me. Standing close to
it like this, I got the full force and meaning of the thing, and I’ve
never heard anything like it in my puff.
I rather enjoy a bit of noise, as a general rule. I remember Cats-meat
Potter-Pirbright bringing a police rattle into the Drones one night and
loosing it off behind my chair, and I just lay back and closed my eyes
with a pleasant smile, like someone in a box at the opera. And the same
applies to the time when my Aunt Agatha’s son, young Thos., put a match
to the parcel of Guy Fawkes Day fireworks to see what would happen.
But the Brinkley Court fire bell was too much for me. I gave about half
a dozen tugs, and then, feeling that enough was enough, sauntered round
to the front lawn to ascertain what solid results had been achieved.
Brinkley Court had given of its best. A glance told me that we were
playing to capacity. The eye, roving to and fro, noted here Uncle
Tom in a purple dressing gown, there Aunt Dahlia in the old blue and
yellow. It also fell upon Anatole, Tuppy, Gussie, Angela, the Bassett
and Jeeves, in the order named. There they all were, present and
correct.
But--and this was what caused me immediate concern--I could detect no
sign whatever that there had been any rescue work going on.
What I had been hoping, of course, was to see Tuppy bending
solicitously over Angela in one corner, while Gussie fanned the Bassett
with a towel in the other. Instead of which, the Bassett was one of the
group which included Aunt Dahlia and Uncle Tom and seemed to be busy
trying to make Anatole see the bright side, while Angela and Gussie
were, respectively, leaning against the sundial with a peeved look and
sitting on the grass rubbing a barked shin. Tuppy was walking up and
down the path, all by himself.
A disturbing picture, you will admit. It was with a rather imperious
gesture that I summoned Jeeves to my side.
“Well, Jeeves?”
“Sir?”
I eyed him sternly. “Sir?” forsooth!
“It’s no good saying ‘Sir?’ Jeeves. Look round you. See for yourself.
Your scheme has proved a bust.”
“Certainly it would appear that matters have not arranged themselves
quite as we anticipated, sir.”
“We?”
“As I had anticipated, sir.”
“That’s more like it. Didn’t I tell you it would be a flop?”
“I remember that you did seem dubious, sir.”
“Dubious is no word for it, Jeeves. I hadn’t a scrap of faith in the
idea from the start. When you first mooted it, I said it was rotten,
and I was right. I’m not blaming you, Jeeves. It is not your fault that
you have sprained your brain. But after this--forgive me if I hurt your
feelings, Jeeves----I shall know better than to allow you to handle any
but the simplest and most elementary problems. It is best to be candid
about this, don’t you think? Kindest to be frank and straightforward?”
“Certainly, sir.”
“I mean, the surgeon’s knife, what?”
“Precisely, sir.”
“I consider----”
“If you will pardon me for interrupting you, sir, I fancy Mrs. Travers
is endeavouring to attract your attention.”
And at this moment a ringing “Hoy!” which could have proceeded only
from the relative in question, assured me that his view was correct.
“Just step this way a moment, Attila, if you don’t mind,” boomed that
well-known--and under certain conditions, well-loved--voice, and I
moved over.
I was not feeling unmixedly at my ease. For the first time it was
beginning to steal upon me that I had not prepared a really good story
in support of my questionable behaviour in ringing fire bells at such
an hour, and I have known Aunt Dahlia to express herself with a hearty
freedom upon far smaller provocation.
She exhibited, however, no signs of violence. More a sort of frozen
calm, if you know what I mean. You could see that she was a woman who
had suffered.
“Well, Bertie, dear,” she said, “here we all are.”
“Quite,” I replied guardedly.
“Nobody missing, is there?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Splendid. So much healthier for us out in the open like this than
frowsting in bed. I had just dropped off when you did your bell-ringing
act. For it was you, my sweet child, who rang that bell, was it not?”
“I did ring the bell, yes.”
“Any particular reason, or just a whim?”
“I thought there was a fire.”
“What gave you that impression, dear?”
“I thought I saw flames.”
“Where, darling? Tell Aunt Dahlia.”
“In one of the windows.”
“I see. So we have all been dragged out of bed and scared rigid because
you have been seeing things.”
Here Uncle Tom made a noise like a cork coming out of a bottle, and
Anatole, whose moustache had hit a new low, said something about “some
apes” and, if I am not mistaken, a “_rogommier_”--whatever that is.
“I admit I was mistaken. I am sorry.”
“Don’t apologize, ducky. Can’t you see how pleased we all are? What
were you doing out here, anyway?”
“Just taking a stroll.”
“I see. And are you proposing to continue your stroll?”
“No, I think I’ll go in now.”
“That’s fine. Because I was thinking of going in, too, and I don’t
believe I could sleep knowing you were out here giving rein to that
powerful imagination of yours. The next thing that would happen
would be that you would think you saw a pink elephant sitting on the
drawing-room window-sill and start throwing bricks at it.... Well, come
on, Tom, the entertainment seems to be over.... But wait. The newt king
wishes a word with us.... Yes, Mr. Fink-Nottle?”
Gussie, as he joined our little group, seemed upset about something.
“I say!”
“Say on, Augustus.”
“I say, what are we going to do?”
“Speaking for myself, I intend to return to bed.”
“But the door’s shut.”
“What door?”
“The front door. Somebody must have shut it.”
“Then I shall open it.”
“But it won’t open.”
“Then I shall try another door.”
“But all the other doors are shut.”
“What? Who shut them?”
“I don’t know.”
I advanced a theory!
“The wind?”
Aunt Dahlia’s eyes met mine.
“Don’t try me too high,” she begged. “Not now, precious.” And, indeed,
even as I spoke, it did strike me that the night was pretty still.
Uncle Tom said we must get in through a window. Aunt Dahlia sighed a
bit.
“How? Could Lloyd George do it, could Winston do it, could Baldwin do
it? No. Not since you had those bars of yours put on.”
“Well, well, well. God bless my soul, ring the bell, then.”
“The fire bell?”
“The door bell.”
“To what end, Thomas? There’s nobody in the house. The servants are all
at Kingham.”
“But, confound it all, we can’t stop out here all night.”
“Can’t we? You just watch us. There is nothing--literally
nothing--which a country house party can’t do with Attila here
operating on the premises. Seppings presumably took the back-door key
with him. We must just amuse ourselves till he comes back.”
Tuppy made a suggestion:
“Why not take out one of the cars and drive over to Kingham and get the
key from Seppings?”
It went well. No question about that. For the first time, a smile lit
up Aunt Dahlia’s drawn face. Uncle Tom grunted approvingly. Anatole
said something in Provençal that sounded complimentary. And I thought I
detected even on Angela’s map a slight softening.
“A very excellent idea,” said Aunt Dahlia. “One of the best. Nip round
to the garage at once.”
After Tuppy had gone, some extremely flattering things were said about
his intelligence and resource, and there was a disposition to draw
rather invidious comparisons between him and Bertram. Painful for me,
of course, but the ordeal didn’t last long, for it couldn’t have been
more than five minutes before he was with us again.
Tuppy seemed perturbed.
“I say, it’s all off.”
“Why?”
“The garage is locked.”
“Unlock it.”
“I haven’t the key.”
“Shout, then, and wake Waterbury.”
“Who’s Waterbury?”
“The chauffeur, ass. He sleeps over the garage.”
“But he’s gone to the dance at Kingham.”
It was the final wallop. Until this moment, Aunt Dahlia had been able
to preserve her frozen calm. The dam now burst. The years rolled
away from her, and she was once more the Dahlia Wooster of the old
yoicks-and-tantivy days--the emotional, free-speaking girl who had so
often risen in her stirrups to yell derogatory personalities at people
who were heading hounds.
“Curse all dancing chauffeurs! What on earth does a chauffeur want
to dance for? I mistrusted that man from the start. Something told
me he was a dancer. Well, this finishes it. We’re out here till
breakfast-time. If those blasted servants come back before eight
o’clock, I shall be vastly surprised. You won’t get Seppings away from
a dance till you throw him out. I know him. The jazz’ll go to his head,
and he’ll stand clapping and demanding encores till his hands blister.
Damn all dancing butlers! What is Brinkley Court? A respectable English
country house or a crimson dancing school? One might as well be living
in the middle of the Russian Ballet. Well, all right. If we must stay
out here, we must. We shall all be frozen stiff, except”--here she
directed at me not one of her friendliest glances----“except dear
old Attila, who is, I observe, well and warmly clad. We will resign
ourselves to the prospect of freezing to death like the Babes in the
Wood, merely expressing a dying wish that our old pal Attila will see
that we are covered with leaves. No doubt he will also toll that fire
bell of his as a mark of respect--And what might you want, my good man?”
She broke off, and stood glaring at Jeeves. During the latter portion
of her address, he had been standing by in a respectful manner,
endeavouring to catch the speaker’s eye.
“If I might make a suggestion, madam.”
I am not saying that in the course of our long association I have
always found myself able to view Jeeves with approval. There are
aspects of his character which have frequently caused coldnesses to
arise between us. He is one of those fellows who, if you give them a
thingummy, take a what-d’you-call-it. His work is often raw, and he has
been known to allude to me as “mentally negligible”. More than once, as
I have shown, it has been my painful task to squelch in him a tendency
to get uppish and treat the young master as a serf or peon.
These are grave defects.
But one thing I have never failed to hand the man. He is magnetic.
There is about him something that seems to soothe and hypnotize. To the
best of my knowledge, he has never encountered a charging rhinoceros,
but should this contingency occur, I have no doubt that the animal,
meeting his eye, would check itself in mid-stride, roll over and lie
purring with its legs in the air.
At any rate he calmed down Aunt Dahlia, the nearest thing to a charging
rhinoceros, in under five seconds. He just stood there looking
respectful, and though I didn’t time the thing--not having a stop-watch