Right Ho, Jeeves
on me--I should say it wasn’t more than three seconds and a quarter
before her whole manner underwent an astounding change for the better.
She melted before one’s eyes.
“Jeeves! You haven’t got an idea?”
“Yes, madam.”
“That great brain of yours has really clicked as ever in the hour of
need?”
“Yes, madam.”
“Jeeves,” said Aunt Dahlia in a shaking voice, “I am sorry I spoke so
abruptly. I was not myself. I might have known that you would not come
simply trying to make conversation. Tell us this idea of yours, Jeeves.
Join our little group of thinkers and let us hear what you have to
say. Make yourself at home, Jeeves, and give us the good word. Can you
really get us out of this mess?”
“Yes, madam, if one of the gentlemen would be willing to ride a
bicycle.”
“A bicycle?”
“There is a bicycle in the gardener’s shed in the kitchen garden,
madam. Possibly one of the gentlemen might feel disposed to ride over
to Kingham Manor and procure the back-door key from Mr. Seppings.”
“Splendid, Jeeves!”
“Thank you, madam.”
“Wonderful!”
“Thank you, madam.”
“Attila!” said Aunt Dahlia, turning and speaking in a quiet,
authoritative manner.
I had been expecting it. From the very moment those ill-judged
words had passed the fellow’s lips, I had had a presentiment that a
determined effort would be made to elect me as the goat, and I braced
myself to resist and obstruct.
And as I was about to do so, while I was in the very act of summoning
up all my eloquence to protest that I didn’t know how to ride a bike
and couldn’t possibly learn in the brief time at my disposal, I’m
dashed if the man didn’t go and nip me in the bud.
“Yes, madam, Mr. Wooster would perform the task admirably. He is an
expert cyclist. He has often boasted to me of his triumphs on the
wheel.”
I hadn’t. I hadn’t done anything of the sort. It’s simply monstrous
how one’s words get twisted. All I had ever done was to mention to
him--casually, just as an interesting item of information, one day in
New York when we were watching the six-day bicycle race--that at the
age of fourteen, while spending my holidays with a vicar of sorts who
had been told off to teach me Latin, I had won the Choir Boys’ Handicap
at the local school treat.
A different thing from boasting of one’s triumphs on the wheel.
I mean, he was a man of the world and must have known that the form of
school treats is never of the hottest. And, if I’m not mistaken, I had
specifically told him that on the occasion referred to I had received
half a lap start and that Willie Punting, the odds-on favourite to whom
the race was expected to be a gift, had been forced to retire, owing
to having pinched his elder brother’s machine without asking the elder
brother, and the elder brother coming along just as the pistol went
and giving him one on the side of the head and taking it away from
him, thus rendering him a scratched-at-the-post non-starter. Yet, from
the way he talked, you would have thought I was one of those chaps in
sweaters with medals all over them, whose photographs bob up from time
to time in the illustrated press on the occasion of their having ridden
from Hyde Park Corner to Glasgow in three seconds under the hour, or
whatever it is.
And as if this were not bad enough, Tuppy had to shove his oar in.
“That’s right,” said Tuppy. “Bertie has always been a great cyclist. I
remember at Oxford he used to take all his clothes off on bump-supper
nights and ride around the quad, singing comic songs. Jolly fast he
used to go too.”
“Then he can go jolly fast now,” said Aunt Dahlia with animation. “He
can’t go too fast for me. He may also sing comic songs, if he likes....
And if you wish to take your clothes off, Bertie, my lamb, by all means
do so. But whether clothed or in the nude, whether singing comic songs
or not singing comic songs, get a move on.”
I found speech:
“But I haven’t ridden for years.”
“Then it’s high time you began again.”
“I’ve probably forgotten how to ride.”
“You’ll soon get the knack after you’ve taken a toss or two. Trial and
error. The only way.”
“But it’s miles to Kingham.”
“So the sooner you’re off, the better.”
“But----”
“Bertie, dear.”
“But, dash it----”
“Bertie, darling.”
“Yes, but dash it----”
“Bertie, my sweet.”
And so it was arranged. Presently I was moving sombrely off through the
darkness, Jeeves at my side, Aunt Dahlia calling after me something
about trying to imagine myself the man who brought the good news from
Ghent to Aix. The first I had heard of the chap.
“So, Jeeves,” I said, as we reached the shed, and my voice was cold
and bitter, “this is what your great scheme has accomplished! Tuppy,
Angela, Gussie and the Bassett not on speaking terms, and self faced
with an eight-mile ride----”
“Nine, I believe, sir.”
“--a nine-mile ride, and another nine-mile ride back.”
“I am sorry, sir.”
“No good being sorry now. Where is this foul bone-shaker?”
“I will bring it out, sir.”
He did so. I eyed it sourly.
“Where’s the lamp?”
“I fear there is no lamp, sir.”
“No lamp?”
“No, sir.”
“But I may come a fearful stinker without a lamp. Suppose I barge into
something.”
I broke off and eyed him frigidly.
“You smile, Jeeves. The thought amuses you?”
“I beg your pardon, sir. I was thinking of a tale my Uncle Cyril used
to tell me as a child. An absurd little story, sir, though I confess
that I have always found it droll. According to my Uncle Cyril, two
men named Nicholls and Jackson set out to ride to Brighton on a tandem
bicycle, and were so unfortunate as to come into collision with a
brewer’s van. And when the rescue party arrived on the scene of the
accident, it was discovered that they had been hurled together with
such force that it was impossible to sort them out at all adequately.
The keenest eye could not discern which portion of the fragments was
Nicholls and which Jackson. So they collected as much as they could,
and called it Nixon. I remember laughing very much at that story when I
was a child, sir.”
I had to pause a moment to master my feelings.
“You did, eh?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You thought it funny?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And your Uncle Cyril thought it funny?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Golly, what a family! Next time you meet your Uncle Cyril, Jeeves, you
can tell him from me that his sense of humour is morbid and unpleasant.”
“He is dead, sir.”
“Thank heaven for that.... Well, give me the blasted machine.”
“Very good, sir.”
“Are the tyres inflated?”
“Yes, sir.”
“The nuts firm, the brakes in order, the sprockets running true with
the differential gear?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Right ho, Jeeves.”
In Tuppy’s statement that, when at the University of Oxford, I had been
known to ride a bicycle in the nude about the quadrangle of our mutual
college, there had been, I cannot deny, a certain amount of substance.
Correct, however, though his facts were, so far as they went, he had
not told all. What he had omitted to mention was that I had invariably
been well oiled at the time, and when in that condition a chap is
capable of feats at which in cooler moments his reason would rebel.
Stimulated by the juice, I believe, men have even been known to ride
alligators.
As I started now to pedal out into the great world, I was icily sober,
and the old skill, in consequence, had deserted me entirely. I found
myself wobbling badly, and all the stories I had ever heard of nasty
bicycle accidents came back to me with a rush, headed by Jeeves’s Uncle
Cyril’s cheery little anecdote about Nicholls and Jackson.
Pounding wearily through the darkness, I found myself at a loss to
fathom the mentality of men like Jeeves’s Uncle Cyril. What on earth
he could see funny in a disaster which had apparently involved the
complete extinction of a human creature--or, at any rate, of half a
human creature and half another human creature--was more than I could
understand. To me, the thing was one of the most poignant tragedies
that had ever been brought to my attention, and I have no doubt that
I should have continued to brood over it for quite a time, had my
thoughts not been diverted by the sudden necessity of zigzagging
sharply in order to avoid a pig in the fairway.
For a moment it looked like being real Nicholls-and-Jackson stuff, but,
fortunately, a quick zig on my part, coinciding with an adroit zag on
the part of the pig, enabled me to win through, and I continued my ride
safe, but with the heart fluttering like a captive bird.
The effect of this narrow squeak upon me was to shake the nerve to the
utmost. The fact that pigs were abroad in the night seemed to bring
home to me the perilous nature of my enterprise. It set me thinking
of all the other things that could happen to a man out and about on
a velocipede without a lamp after lighting-up time. In particular, I
recalled the statement of a pal of mine that in certain sections of the
rural districts goats were accustomed to stray across the road to the
extent of their chains, thereby forming about as sound a booby trap as
one could well wish.
He mentioned, I remember, the case of a friend of his whose machine
got entangled with a goat chain and who was dragged seven miles--like
skijoring in Switzerland--so that he was never the same man again.
And there was one chap who ran into an elephant, left over from a
travelling circus.
Indeed, taking it for all in all, it seemed to me that, with the
possible exception of being bitten by sharks, there was virtually no
front-page disaster that could not happen to a fellow, once he had
allowed his dear ones to override his better judgment and shove him out
into the great unknown on a push-bike, and I am not ashamed to confess
that, taking it by and large, the amount of quailing I did from this
point on was pretty considerable.
However, in respect to goats and elephants, I must say things panned
out unexpectedly well.
Oddly enough, I encountered neither. But when you have said that you
have said everything, for in every other way the conditions could
scarcely have been fouler.
Apart from the ceaseless anxiety of having to keep an eye skinned
for elephants, I found myself much depressed by barking dogs, and
once I received a most unpleasant shock when, alighting to consult a
signpost, I saw sitting on top of it an owl that looked exactly like my
Aunt Agatha. So agitated, indeed, had my frame of mind become by this
time that I thought at first it was Aunt Agatha, and only when reason
and reflection told me how alien to her habits it would be to climb
signposts and sit on them, could I pull myself together and overcome
the weakness.
In short, what with all this mental disturbance added to the more
purely physical anguish in the billowy portions and the calves and
ankles, the Bertram Wooster who eventually toppled off at the door of
Kingham Manor was a very different Bertram from the gay and insouciant
_boulevardier_ of Bond Street and Piccadilly.
Even to one unaware of the inside facts, it would have been evident
that Kingham Manor was throwing its weight about a bit tonight. Lights
shone in the windows, music was in the air, and as I drew nearer my
ear detected the sibilant shuffling of the feet of butlers, footmen,
chauffeurs, parlourmaids, housemaids, tweenies and, I have no doubt,
cooks, who were busily treading the measure. I suppose you couldn’t sum
it up much better than by saying that there was a sound of revelry by
night.
The orgy was taking place in one of the ground-floor rooms which had
French windows opening on to the drive, and it was to these French
windows that I now made my way. An orchestra was playing something
with a good deal of zip to it, and under happier conditions I dare say