Right Ho, Jeeves
socialistic legislation and what will become of us all.”
I could readily believe it. This Tom has a peculiarity I’ve noticed in
other very oofy men. Nick him for the paltriest sum, and he lets out
a squawk you can hear at Land’s End. He has the stuff in gobs, but he
hates giving up.
“If it wasn’t for Anatole’s cooking, I doubt if he would bother to
carry on. Thank God for Anatole, I say.”
I bowed my head reverently.
“Good old Anatole,” I said.
“Amen,” said Aunt Dahlia.
Then the look of holy ecstasy, which is always the result of letting
the mind dwell, however briefly, on Anatole’s cooking, died out of her
face.
“But don’t let me wander from the subject,” she resumed. “I was telling
you of the way hell’s foundations have been quivering since I got home.
First the prize-giving, then Tom, and now, on top of everything else,
this infernal quarrel between Angela and young Glossop.”
I nodded gravely. “I was frightfully sorry to hear of that. Terrible
shock. What was the row about?”
“Sharks.”
“Eh?”
“Sharks. Or, rather, one individual shark. The brute that went for the
poor child when she was aquaplaning at Cannes. You remember Angela’s
shark?”
Certainly I remembered Angela’s shark. A man of sensibility does not
forget about a cousin nearly being chewed by monsters of the deep. The
episode was still green in my memory.
In a nutshell, what had occurred was this: You know how you aquaplane.
A motor-boat nips on ahead, trailing a rope. You stand on a board,
holding the rope, and the boat tows you along. And every now and then
you lose your grip on the rope and plunge into the sea and have to swim
to your board again.
A silly process it has always seemed to me, though many find it
diverting.
Well, on the occasion referred to, Angela had just regained her board
after taking a toss, when a great beastly shark came along and cannoned
into it, flinging her into the salty once more. It took her quite a bit
of time to get on again and make the motor-boat chap realize what was
up and haul her to safety, and during that interval you can readily
picture her embarrassment.
According to Angela, the finny denizen kept snapping at her ankles
virtually without cessation, so that by the time help arrived, she was
feeling more like a salted almond at a public dinner than anything
human. Very shaken the poor child had been, I recall, and had talked of
nothing else for weeks.
“I remember the whole incident vividly,” I said. “But how did that
start the trouble?”
“She was telling him the story last night.”
“Well?”
“Her eyes shining and her little hands clasped in girlish excitement.”
“No doubt.”
“And instead of giving her the understanding and sympathy to which
she was entitled, what do you think this blasted Glossop did? He sat
listening like a lump of dough, as if she had been talking about the
weather, and when she had finished, he took his cigarette holder out of
his mouth and said, ‘I expect it was only a floating log’!”
“He didn’t!”
“He did. And when Angela described how the thing had jumped and snapped
at her, he took his cigarette holder out of his mouth again, and said,
‘Ah! Probably a flatfish. Quite harmless. No doubt it was just trying
to play.’ Well, I mean! What would you have done if you had been
Angela? She has pride, sensibility, all the natural feelings of a good
woman. She told him he was an ass and a fool and an idiot, and didn’t
know what he was talking about.”
I must say I saw the girl’s viewpoint. It’s only about once in a
lifetime that anything sensational ever happens to one, and when it
does, you don’t want people taking all the colour out of it. I remember
at school having to read that stuff where that chap, Othello, tells the
girl what a hell of a time he’d been having among the cannibals and
what not. Well, imagine his feelings if, after he had described some
particularly sticky passage with a cannibal chief and was waiting for
the awestruck “Oh-h! Not really?”, she had said that the whole thing
had no doubt been greatly exaggerated and that the man had probably
really been a prominent local vegetarian.
Yes, I saw Angela’s point of view.
“But don’t tell me that when he saw how shirty she was about it, the
chump didn’t back down?”
“He didn’t. He argued. And one thing led to another until, by easy
stages, they had arrived at the point where she was saying that she
didn’t know if he was aware of it, but if he didn’t knock off starchy
foods and do exercises every morning, he would be getting as fat as
a pig, and he was talking about this modern habit of girls putting
make-up on their faces, of which he had always disapproved. This
continued for a while, and then there was a loud pop and the air was
full of mangled fragments of their engagement. I’m distracted about it.
Thank goodness you’ve come, Bertie.”
“Nothing could have kept me away,” I replied, touched. “I felt you
needed me.”
“Yes.”
“Quite.”
“Or, rather,” she said, “not you, of course, but Jeeves. The minute
all this happened, I thought of him. The situation obviously cries out
for Jeeves. If ever in the whole history of human affairs there was a
moment when that lofty brain was required about the home, this is it.”
I think, if I had been standing up, I would have staggered. In fact,
I’m pretty sure I would. But it isn’t so dashed easy to stagger when
you’re sitting in an arm-chair. Only my face, therefore, showed how
deeply I had been stung by these words.
Until she spoke them, I had been all sweetness and light--the
sympathetic nephew prepared to strain every nerve to do his bit. I now
froze, and the face became hard and set.
“Jeeves!” I said, between clenched teeth.
“Oom beroofen,” said Aunt Dahlia.
I saw that she had got the wrong angle.
“I was not sneezing. I was saying ‘Jeeves!’”
“And well you may. What a man! I’m going to put the whole thing up to
him. There’s nobody like Jeeves.”
My frigidity became more marked.
“I venture to take issue with you, Aunt Dahlia.”
“You take what?”
“Issue.”
“You do, do you?”
“I emphatically do. Jeeves is hopeless.”
“What?”
“Quite hopeless. He has lost his grip completely. Only a couple of days
ago I was compelled to take him off a case because his handling of it
was so footling. And, anyway, I resent this assumption, if assumption
is the word I want, that Jeeves is the only fellow with brain. I object
to the way everybody puts things up to him without consulting me and
letting me have a stab at them first.”
She seemed about to speak, but I checked her with a gesture.
“It is true that in the past I have sometimes seen fit to seek Jeeves’s
advice. It is possible that in the future I may seek it again. But I
claim the right to have a pop at these problems, as they arise, in
person, without having everybody behave as if Jeeves was the only
onion in the hash. I sometimes feel that Jeeves, though admittedly not
unsuccessful in the past, has been lucky rather than gifted.”
“Have you and Jeeves had a row?”
“Nothing of the kind.”
“You seem to have it in for him.”
“Not at all.”
And yet I must admit that there was a modicum of truth in what she
said. I had been feeling pretty austere about the man all day, and I’ll
tell you why.
You remember that he caught that 12.45 train with the luggage, while
I remained on in order to keep a luncheon engagement. Well, just
before I started out to the tryst, I was pottering about the flat, and
suddenly--I don’t know what put the suspicion into my head, possibly
the fellow’s manner had been furtive--something seemed to whisper to me
to go and have a look in the wardrobe.
And it was as I had suspected. There was the mess-jacket still on its
hanger. The hound hadn’t packed it.
Well, as anybody at the Drones will tell you, Bertram Wooster is a
pretty hard chap to outgeneral. I shoved the thing in a brown-paper
parcel and put it in the back of the car, and it was on a chair in the
hall now. But that didn’t alter the fact that Jeeves had attempted to
do the dirty on me, and I suppose a certain what-d’you-call-it had
crept into my manner during the above remarks.
“There has been no breach,” I said. “You might describe it as a passing
coolness, but no more. We did not happen to see eye to eye with regard
to my white mess-jacket with the brass buttons and I was compelled to
assert my personality. But----”
“Well, it doesn’t matter, anyway. The thing that matters is that you
are talking piffle, you poor fish. Jeeves lost his grip? Absurd. Why,
I saw him for a moment when he arrived, and his eyes were absolutely
glittering with intelligence. I said to myself ‘Trust Jeeves,’ and I
intend to.”
“You would be far better advised to let me see what I can accomplish,
Aunt Dahlia.”
“For heaven’s sake, don’t you start butting in. You’ll only make
matters worse.”
“On the contrary, it may interest you to know that while driving here I
concentrated deeply on this trouble of Angela’s and was successful in
formulating a plan, based on the psychology of the individual, which I
am proposing to put into effect at an early moment.”
“Oh, my God!”
“My knowledge of human nature tells me it will work.”
“Bertie,” said Aunt Dahlia, and her manner struck me as febrile, “lay
off, lay off! For pity’s sake, lay off. I know these plans of yours. I
suppose you want to shove Angela into the lake and push young Glossop
in after her to save her life, or something like that.”
“Nothing of the kind.”
“It’s the sort of thing you would do.”
“My scheme is far more subtle. Let me outline it for you.”
“No, thanks.”
“I say to myself----”
“But not to me.”
“Do listen for a second.”
“I won’t.”
“Right ho, then. I am dumb.”
“And have been from a child.”
I perceived that little good could result from continuing the
discussion. I waved a hand and shrugged a shoulder.
“Very well, Aunt Dahlia,” I said, with dignity, “if you don’t want to
be in on the ground floor, that is your affair. But you are missing an
intellectual treat. And, anyway, no matter how much you may behave like
the deaf adder of Scripture which, as you are doubtless aware, the more
one piped, the less it danced, or words to that effect, I shall carry
on as planned. I am extremely fond of Angela, and I shall spare no
effort to bring the sunshine back into her heart.”
“Bertie, you abysmal chump, I appeal to you once more. Will you please
lay off? You’ll only make things ten times as bad as they are already.”
I remember reading in one of those historical novels once about a
chap--a buck he would have been, no doubt, or a macaroni or some
such bird as that--who, when people said the wrong thing, merely
laughed down from lazy eyelids and flicked a speck of dust from the
irreproachable Mechlin lace at his wrists. This was practically what
I did now. At least, I straightened my tie and smiled one of those
inscrutable smiles of mine. I then withdrew and went out for a saunter
in the garden.
And the first chap I ran into was young Tuppy. His brow was furrowed,
and he was moodily bunging stones at a flowerpot.
-8-
I think I have told you before about young Tuppy Glossop. He was the
fellow, if you remember, who, callously ignoring the fact that we had
been friends since boyhood, betted me one night at the Drones that I
could swing myself across the swimming bath by the rings--a childish
feat for one of my lissomeness--and then, having seen me well on the
way, looped back the last ring, thus rendering it necessary for me to
drop into the deep end in formal evening costume.
To say that I had not resented this foul deed, which seemed to me
deserving of the title of the crime of the century, would be paltering
with the truth. I had resented it profoundly, chafing not a little at