Aunts Aren't Gentlemen (5 page)

The afternoon had now hotted up to quite a marked extent,
and what with a substantial lunch and several beakers of
port I was more or less in the condition a python gets into after
its mid-day meal. A certain drowsiness had stolen over me, so
much so that twice in the course of my narrative the aged r.
had felt compelled to notify me that if I didn't stop yawning in
her face, she would let me have one on the side of my fat head
with the parasol with which she was shielding herself from the
rays of the sun.

There had been no diminution of this drowsiness since last
heard of, and as I bowled along the high road I was practically
in dreamland, and it occurred to me that if I didn't pause
somewhere and sleep it off, I should shortly become a menace
to pedestrians and traffic. The last thing I wanted was to come
before my late host in his magisterial capacity, charged with
having struck some citizen amidships while under the
influence of his port. Colonel Briscoe's port, I mean, not the
citizen's. Embarrassing for both of us, though in a way a
compliment to the excellence of his cellar.

The high road, like most high roads, was flanked on either
side by fields, some with cows, some without, so, the day being
as warm as it was, just dropping anchor over here or over there
meant getting as cooked to a crisp as Major Plank would have
been, had the widows and surviving relatives of the late chief
of the 'Mgombis established connection with him. What I
wanted was shade, and by great good fortune I came on a little
turning leading to wooded country, just what I needed. I drove
into this wooded country, stopped the machinery, and it
wasn't long before sleep poured over me in a healing wave, as
the expression is.

It started off by being one of those dreamless sleeps, but
after a while a nightmare took over. It seemed to me that I was
out fishing with E. Jimpson Murgatroyd in what appeared to
be tropical waters, and he caught a shark and I was having a
look at it, when it suddenly got hold of my arm. This of course
gave me a start, and I woke. And as I opened my eyes I saw
that there was something attached to my port-side biceps, but
it wasn't a shark, it was Orlo Porter.

'I beg your pardon, sir,' he was saying, 'for interrupting your
doze, but I am a bird-watcher. I was watching a Clarkson's
warbler in that thicket over there, and I was afraid your snoring
might frighten it away, so might I beg you to go easy on the
sound effects. Clarkson's warblers are very sensitive to loud
noises, and you were making yourself audible a mile off.'

Or words to that general import.

I would have replied 'Oh, hullo', or something like that, but
I was too astonished to speak, partly because I had never
suspected that Orlo Porter could be so polite, but principally
because he was there at all. I had looked on Maiden
Eggesford as somewhere where I would be free from all
human society, a haven where I would have peace perfect
peace with loved ones far away, as the hymnbook says, and it
was turning out to be a sort of meeting place of the nations.
First Plank, then Vanessa Cook, and now Orlo Porter. If this
sort of thing was going to go on, I told myself, I wouldn't be
surprised to see my Aunt Agatha come round the corner arm
in arm with E. J. Murgatroyd.

Orlo Porter seemed now to recognize me, for he started like
a native of India who sees a scorpion in his path, and went on
to say:

'Wooster, you blasted slimy creeping crawling serpent, I
might have expected this!'

It was plain that he was not glad to see me, for there was
nothing affectionate in what he said or the way he said it, but
apart from that I was unable to follow him. He had me at a
loss.

'Expected what?' I asked, hoping for footnotes.

'That you would have followed Vanessa here, your object to
steal her from me.'

This struck me as so absurd that I laughed a light laugh, and
he asked me to stop cackling like a hen whose union had been
blest – or laying a blasted egg, as he preferred to put it.

'I haven't followed anyone anywhere,' I said, trying to pour
oil on the troubled w.'s. I debated with myself whether to add
'old man', and decided not. I doubt if it would have had much
effect, anyway.

'Then why are you here?' he demanded in a voice so
fortissimo that it was obvious that he didn't give a damn if
Clarkson's warbler heard him and legged it in a panic.

I continued suave.

'The matter is susceptible of a ready explanation,' I said.
'You remember those spots of mine.'

'Don't change the subject.'

'I wasn't. Having inspected the spots, the doc advised me to
retire to the country.'

'There are plenty of other places in the country to retire to.'

'Ah,' I said, 'but my Aunt Dahlia is staying with some
people here, and I knew it would make all the difference if I
had her to exchange ideas with. Very entertaining woman, my
Aunt Dahlia. Never a dull moment when she's around.'

This, as I had foreseen, had him stymied. Something of his
belligerence left him, and I could see that he was saying to
himself, 'Can it be that I have wronged Bertram?' Then he
clouded over again.

'All this is very plausible,' he said, 'but it does not explain
why you were slinking round Eggesford Court this morning.'

I was amazed. When I was a child, my nurse told me that
there was One who was always beside me, spying out all my
ways, and that if I refused to eat my spinach I would hear about
it on Judgment Day, but it never occurred to me that she was
referring to Orlo Porter.

'How on earth do you know that?' I said – or perhaps
'gasped' would be a better word, or even 'gurgled'.

'I was watching the place through my bird-watching
binoculars, hoping to get a glimpse of the woman I love.'

This gave me the opportunity to steer the conversation into
less controversial topics.

'I had forgotten you were a bird-watcher till you reminded
me just now. You went in for it at Oxford, I remember. It isn't
a thing I would care to do myself. Not,' I hastened to add, 'that
I've anything against bird-watching. Must be most interesting,
besides keeping you' – I was about to say 'out of the public
houses' but thought it better to change it to 'out in the open
air'. 'What's the procedure?' I said. 'I suppose you lurk in a
bush till a bird comes along, and then you out with the glasses
and watch it.'

I had more to say, notably a question as to who Clarkson
was and how he came to have a warbler, but he interrupted me.

'I will tell you why you were sneaking round Eggesford
Court this morning. It was in the hope of seeing Vanessa.'

I no-noed, but he paid no attention.

'And I would like to say for your guidance, Wooster, that if
I catch you trying to inflict your beastly society on her again, I
shall have no hesitation in tearing your insides out.'

He started to walk away, paused, added over his shoulder
the words 'With my bare hands' and was gone, whether or not
to resume watching Clarkson's warbler, I had no means of
knowing. My own feeling was that any level-headed bird with
sensitive ears would have removed itself almost immediately
after he had begun to speak.

These parting remarks of O. Porter gave me, as may readily
be imagined, considerable food for thought. There
happened at the moment to be no passers-by, but if any passers
had been by, they would have noticed that my brow was
knitted and the eyes a bit glazed. This always happens when
you are turning things over in your mind and not liking the
look of them. You see the same thing in Cabinet ministers
when they are asked awkward questions in Parliament.

It was not, of course, the first time an acquaintance had
expressed a desire to delve into my interior and remove its
contents. Roderick Spode, now going about under the alias of
Lord Sidcup, had done so frequently when in the grip of the
illusion that I was trying to steal Madeline Bassett from him,
little knowing that she gave me a pain in the gizzard and that
I would willingly have run a mile in tight shoes to avoid her.

But I had never before had such a sense of imminent peril
as now. Spode might talk airily – or is it glibly? – of buttering
me over the lawn and jumping on the remains with hobnailed
boots, but it was always possible to buoy oneself up with the
thought that his bark was worse than his b. I mean to say, a
fellow like Spode has a position to keep up. He can't afford to
indulge every passing whim. If he goes buttering people over
lawns, he's in for trouble.
Debrett's Peerage
tut-tuts,
Burke's
Landed Gentry
raises its eyebrows, and as likely as not he gets
cut by the County and has to emigrate.

But Orlo Porter was under no such restraint. Being a
Communist, he was probably on palsy-walsy terms with half the
big shots at the Kremlin, and the more of the bourgeoisie he
disembowelled, the better they would be pleased. 'A young man
with the right stuff in him, this Comrade Porter. Got nice
ideas,' they would say when reading about the late Wooster. 'We
must keep an eye on him with a view to further advancement.'

Obviously, then, the above Porter having expressed himself
as he had done about Vanessa Cook, the shrewd thing for me
to do was to keep away from her. I put this up to Jeeves when
I returned, and he saw eye to eye with me.

'What are those things circumstances have, Jeeves?' I said.

'Sir?'

'You know what I mean. You talk of a something of
circumstances which leads to something. Cats enter into it, if
I'm not wrong.'

'Would concatenation be the word you are seeking?'

'That's right. It was on the tip of my tongue. Do
concatenations of circumstances arise?'

'Yes, sir.'

'Well, one has arisen now. The facts are these. When we
were in London, I formed a slight acquaintance with a Miss
Cook who turns out to be the daughter of the chap who owns
the horse which thinks so highly of that cat. She had a spot of
trouble with the police, and her father summoned her home to
see that she didn't get into more. So she is now at Eggesford
Court. Got the scenario so far?'

'Yes, sir.'

'This caused her betrothed, a man named Porter, to follow
her here in order to give her aid and comfort. Got that?'

'Yes, sir. This frequently happens when two young hearts
are sundered.'

'Well, I met him this today, and my presence in Maiden
Eggesford came as a surprise to him.'

'One can readily imagine it, sir.'

'He took it for granted that I had come in pursuit of Miss
Cook.'

'Like young Lochinvar, when he came out of the West.'

The name was new to me, but I didn't ask for further
details. I saw that he was following the plot, and it never does,
when you're telling a story, to wander off into side issues.

'And he said if I didn't desist, he would tear my insides out
with his bare hands.'

'Indeed, sir?'

'You don't know Porter, do you?'

'No, sir.'

'Well, you know Spode. Porter is Spode plus. Hasty temper.
Quick to take offence. And the muscles of his brawny arms are
strong as iron bands, as the fellow said. The last chap you'd
want to annoy. So what do you suggest?'

'I think it would be advisable to avoid the society of Miss
Cook.'

'Exactly the idea which occurred to me. And it ought not to
be difficult. The chances of Pop Cook asking me to drop in are
very slim. So if I take the high road and she takes the low road
. . . Answer that, will you, Jeeves,' I said as the telephone rang
in the hall. 'It's probably Aunt Dahlia, but it may be Porter,
and I do not wish to have speech with him.'

He went out, to return a few moments later.

'It was Miss Cook, sir, speaking from the post office. She
desired me to inform you that she would be calling on you
immediately.'

A sharp 'Lord-love-a-duck' escaped me, and I eyed him
with reproach.

'You didn't think to say I was out?'

'The lady gave me no opportunity of doing so, sir. She
delivered her message and rang off without waiting for me to
speak.'

My brow got all knitted again.

'This isn't too good, Jeeves.'

'No, sir.'

'Calling at my home address like this.'

'Yes, sir.'

'Who's to say that Orlo Porter is not lurking outside with
his bird-watching binoculars?' I said.

But before I could go into the matter in depth, the door bell
had rung, and Vanessa Cook was in my midst. Jeeves, I need
scarcely say, had vanished like a family spectre at the crack of
dawn. He always does when company arrives. I hadn't seen
him go, and I doubted if Vanessa had, but he had gone.

As I stood gazing at Vanessa, I was conscious of the
uneasiness you feel when you run up against something
particularly hot and are wondering when it is going to explode.
It was more than a year since I had seen her, except in the
distance when about to be scooped in by the police, and the
change in her appearance was calculated to curdle the blood a
bit. Her outer aspect was still that of a girl who would have
drawn whistles from susceptible members of America's armed
forces, but there was something sort of formidable about her
which had not been there before, something kind of imperious
and defiant, if you know what I mean. Due no doubt to the life
she had been leading. You can't go heading protest marches
and socking the constabulary without it showing.

Hard, that's the word I was trying for. She had always been
what they call a proud beauty, but now she was a hard one. Her
lips were tightly glued together, her chin protruding, her
whole lay-out that of a girl who intended to stand no
rannygazoo. Except that the latter was way down in Class D as
a looker, while she, as I have indicated, was the pin-up girl to
end all pin-up girls, she reminded me of my childhood dancing
mistress. The thought occurred to me that in another thirty
years or so she would look just like my Aunt Agatha, before
whose glare, as is well known, strong men curl up like rabbits.

Nor was there anything in her greeting to put me at my ease.
Having given me a nasty look as if I ranked in her esteem in
one of the lowest brackets, she said:

'I am very angry with you, Bertie.'

I didn't like the sound of this at all. It is never agreeable to
incur the displeasure of a girl with a punch like hers. I said I
was sorry to hear that, and asked what seemed to be the
trouble.

'Following me here!'

There is nothing that braces one up like being accused of
something to which you can find a ready answer. I laughed
merrily, and her reaction to my mirth was much the same as
Orlo Porter's had been, though where he had spoken of hens
laying eggs she preferred the simile of a hyena with a bone
stuck in its throat. I said I hadn't had a notion that she was in
these parts, and this time she laughed, one of those metallic
ones that are no good to man or beast.

'Oh, come!' she said. 'Oddly enough,' she added, 'although
I am furious, I can't help admiring you in a way. I am surprised
to find that you have so much initiative. It is abominable, but
it does show spirit. It makes me feel that if I had married you,
I could have made something of you.'

I shuddered from hair-do to shoe-sole. I was even more
thankful than before that she had given me the bum's rush. I
know what making something of me meant. Ten minutes after
the bishop and colleague had done their stuff she would have
been starting to mould me and jack up my soul, and I like my
soul the way it is. It may not be the sort of soul that gets crowds
cheering in the streets, but it suits me and I don't want people
fooling about with it.

'But it is quite impossible, Bertie. I love Orlo and can love
no one else.'

'That's all right. Entirely up to you. I must put you straight
on one thing, though. I really didn't know you were here.'

'Are you trying to make me believe that it was a pure
coincidence –'

'No, not that. More what I would call a concatenation of
circumstances. My doctor ordered me a quiet life in the
country, and I chose Maiden Eggesford because my aunt is
staying with some people here and I thought it would be nice
being near her. A quiet life in the country can be a bit too quiet
if you don't know anybody. She got me this cottage.'

You might have thought that that would have cleaned
everything up and made life one grand sweet song, as the
fellow said, but no, she went on looking puff-faced. No
pleasing some girls.

'So I was wrong in thinking that you had initiative,' she said,
and if her lip didn't curl scornfully, I don't know a scornfully
curling lip when I see one. 'You are just an ordinary footling
member of the bourgeoisie that Orlo dislikes so much.'

'A typical young man about town, some authorities say.'

'I don't suppose you have ever done anything worthwhile in
your life.'

I could have made her look pretty silly at this juncture by
revealing that I had won a Scripture Knowledge prize at my
private school, a handsomely bound copy of a devotional work
whose name has escaped me, and that when Aunt Dahlia was
running that
Milady's Boudoir
paper of hers I contributed to it
an article, or piece as we writers call it, on What The Well-
Dressed Man Is Wearing, but I let it go, principally because
she had gone on speaking and it is practically impossible to cut
in on a woman who has gone on speaking. They get the stuff
out so damn quick that the slower male hasn't a hope.

'But the matter of your wasted life is beside the point. God
made you, and presumably he knew what he was doing, so we
need not go into that. What you will want to hear is my reason
for coming to see you.'

'Any time you're passing,' I said in my polished way, but she
took no notice and continued.

'Father's friend, Major Plank, who is staying with us, was
talking at lunch about someone named Wooster who had
called this morning, and when Father turned purple and
choked on his lamb cutlet I knew it must be you. You are the
sort of young man he dislikes most.'

'Do young men dislike him?'

'Invariably. Father is and always has been a cross between
Attila the Hun and a snapping-turtle. Well, having found that
you were in Maiden Eggesford I came to ask you to do
something for me.'

'Anything I can.'

'It's quite simple. I shall of course be writing to Orlo, but I
don't want him to send his letters to the Court because Father,
in addition to resembling a snapping-turtle, is a man of low
cunning who wouldn't hesitate to intercept and destroy them,
and he always gets down to breakfast before I do, which gives
him a strategical advantage. By the time I got to the table the
cream of my correspondence would be in his trouser pocket.
So I am going to tell Orlo to address his letters care of you, and
I will call for them every afternoon.'

I never heard a proposition I liked the sound of less. The
idea of her calling at the cottage daily, with Orlo Porter,
already heated to boiling point, watching its every move, froze
my young blood and made my two eyes, like stars, start from
their spheres, as I have heard Jeeves put it. It was with infinite
relief that I realized a moment later that my fears were
groundless, there being no need for correspondence between
the parties of the first and second part.

'But he's here,' I said.

'Here?
In Maiden Eggesford?'

'Right plump spang in Maiden Eggesford.'

'Are you being funny, Bertie?'

'Of course I'm not being funny. If I were being funny, I'd
have had you in convulsions from the outset. I tell you he's
here. I met him this afternoon. He was watching a Clarkson's
warbler. Arising from which, you don't happen to have any
data relating to Clarkson, do you? I've been wondering who he
was and how he got a warbler.'

She ignored my observation. This generally happens with
me. Show me a woman, I sometimes say, and I will show you
someone who is going to ignore my observations.

Looking at her closely, I noted a change in her aspect. I have
said that her face had hardened as the result of going about the
place socking policemen, but now it had got all soft. And while
her two eyes didn't actually start from their spheres, they
widened to about the size of regulation golf balls, and a tender
smile lit up her map. She said, 'Well, strike me pink!' or words
to that effect.

'So he has come! He has followed me!' She spoke as if it had
given her no end of a kick that he had done this. Apparently it
wasn't being followed that she objected to; it just had to be the
right chap. 'Like some knight in shining armour riding up on
his white horse.'

Here would have been a chance to give Jeeves's friend who
came out of the West a plug by saying that Orlo reminded me
of him, but I had to give it a miss because I couldn't remember
the fellow's name.

'I wonder how he managed to get away from his job,' I said.

'He was on his annual two weeks' holiday. That is how he
came to be at that protest march. He and I were heading the
procession.'