Aunts Aren't Gentlemen (7 page)

You would have expected this to have drawn some
comment from me such as 'Oh, my God!' or 'You'll be my
What
?', but I remained
sotto voce
and the silent tomb, my eyes
bulging like those of the fellows I've heard Jeeves mention,
who looked at each other with a wild surmise, silent upon a
peak in Darien.

The thing had come on me as such a complete surprise. Her
rejection of my addresses at the time when I proposed to her
had been so definite that it had seemed to me that all danger
from that quarter had passed and that from now on we
wouldn't even be just good friends. Certainly she had given no
indication that she would not prefer to be dead in a ditch
rather than married to me. And now this. Is any man safe, one
asked oneself. No wonder words failed me, as the expression
is.

She, on the other hand, became chatty. Getting the thing
off her chest seemed to have done her good. The glitter of her
eyes was practically switched off, and she was not clenching
her teeth any more. I don't say that even now I would have
cared to meet her down a dark alley, but there was a distinct
general improvement.

'We shall have quite a quiet wedding,' she said. 'Just a few
people I know in London. And it may have to be even quieter
than that. It all depends on Father. Your standing with him is
roughly what that of a Public Enemy Number One would be
at the annual Policeman's Ball. What you did to him I don't
know, but I have never seen him a brighter mauve than when
your name came up at the luncheon table. If he persists in this
attitude, we shall have to elope. That will be perfectly all right
with me. I suppose many people would say I was being rash,
but I am prepared to take the chance. I know very little of you,
true, but anyone the mention of whose name can make Father
swallow his lunch the wrong way cannot be wholly bad.'

At last managing to free my tongue from the uvula with
which it had become entangled, I found speech, as I dare say
those Darien fellows did eventually.

'But I don't understand!'

'What don't you understand?'

'I thought you were going to marry Orlo Porter.'

She uttered a sound rather like an elephant taking its foot
out of a mud hole in a Burmese teak forest. The name
appeared to have touched an exposed nerve.

'You did, did you? You were mistaken. Would any girl with
an ounce of sense marry a man who refuses to do the least little
thing she asks him because he is afraid of her father? I shall
always be glad to see Orlo Porter fall downstairs and break his
neck. Nothing would give me greater pleasure than to read his
name in
The Times
obituary column. But marry him? What an
idea! No, I am quite content with you, Bertie. By the way, I do
dislike that name Bertie. I think I shall call you Harold. Yes, I
am perfectly satisfied with you. You have many faults, of
course. I shall be pointing some of them out when I am at
leisure. For one thing,' she said, not waiting till she was at
leisure, 'you smoke too much. You must give that up when we
are married. Smoking is just a habit. Tolstoy,' she said,
mentioning someone I had not met, 'says that just as much
pleasure can be got from twirling the fingers.'

My impulse was to tell her Tolstoy was off his onion, but I
choked down the heated words. For all I knew, the man might
be a bosom pal of hers and she might resent criticism of him,
however justified. And one knew what happened to people,
policemen for instance, whose criticism she resented.

'And that silly laugh of yours, you must correct that. If you
are amused, a quiet smile is ample. Lord Chesterfield said that
since he had had the full use of his reason nobody had ever
heard him laugh. I don't suppose you have read Lord
Chesterfield's
Letters To His Son
?'

. . .
Well, of course I hadn't. Bertram Wooster does not read
other people's letters. If I were employed in the post office, I
wouldn't even read the postcards.

'I will draft out a whole course of reading for you.'

She would probably have gone on to name a few of the
authors she had in mind, but at this moment Angelica Briscoe
came bursting in.

'Has he brought it yet?' she yipped.

Then she saw Vanessa, added the word 'Golly', and disappeared
like an eel into mud. Vanessa followed her with an
indulgent eye.

'Eccentric child,' she said.

I agreed that Angelica Briscoe moved in a mysterious way
her wonders to perform, and shortly after Vanessa went off,
leaving me to totter to a chair and bury my face in my hands.

I was doing this, and very natural, too, considering that I
had just become engaged to a girl who was going to try to make
me stop smoking, when from outside the front door there
came the unmistakable sound of an aunt tripping over a door
mat. The next moment, my late father's sister Dahlia
staggered in, pirouetted awhile, cursed a bit, recovered her
equilibrium and said:

'Has he brought it yet?'

I am not, I think, an irascible man, particularly in my dealings
with the gentler sex, but when every ruddy female you meet
bellows 'Has he brought it yet?' at you, it does something to your
aplomb. I gave her a look which I suppose no nephew should
have given an aunt, and it was with no little asperity that I said:

'If some of you girls would stop talking as if you were
characters in
By Order Of The Czar,
the world would be a better
place. Brought what?'

'The cat, of course, you poor dumb-bell,' she responded in
the breezy manner which had made her the popular toast of
both the Quorn and the Pytchley fox-hunting organizations.
'Cook's cat. I'm kidnapping it. Or, rather, my agent is acting
for me. I told him to bring it here.'

I was reft, as they say, of speech. If there is one thing that
affects a nephew's vocal cords, it is the discovery that a loved
aunt is all foggy about the difference between right and wrong.
Experience over the years ought to have taught me that where
this aunt was concerned anything went and the sky was the
limit, but nevertheless I was . . . I know there's a word that just
describes it . . . Ah, yes, I thought I'd get it . . . I was
dumbfounded.

Well, of course, what every woman wants when she has a
tale to tell is a dumbfounded audience, and it did not surprise
me when she took advantage of my silence to carry on.
Naturally aware that her goings-on required a bit of
explanation, she made quite a production number of it. I won't
say that she omitted no detail however slight, but she certainly
didn't condense. She started off at ?? m.p.h. thus:

'I must begin by making clear to the meanest intelligence –
yours, to take an instance at random– how extremely sticky my
position was on coming to stay with the Briscoes. Jimmy,
when inviting me to Eggesford Hall, had written in the most
enthusiastic terms of his horse Simla's chances in the
forthcoming race. He said he was a snip and putting a large bet
on him would be like finding money in the street. And I, poor
weak woman, allowed myself to be persuaded. I wagered
everything I possessed, down to my more intimate garments.
It was only after I got here and canvassed local opinion that I
realized that Simla was not a snip or anything like a snip.
Cook's Potato Chip was just as fast and had just as much
staying power. In fact, the thing would probably end in a dead-heat
unless, get this, Bertie, unless one of the two animals blew
up in its training. And then you came along with your special
information about Potato Chip not being able to keep his
mind on the race without this cat there to egg him on, and a
bright light shone on me. "Out of the mouths of babes and
sucklings!" I said to myself. "Out of the mouths of babes and
sucklings!" '

I could have wished that she had phrased it differently, but
there was no chance of telling her so. When the aged relative
collars the conversation, she collars it.

'I was saying,' she proceeded, 'that I wagered on Simla
everything I possessed. Correction. Change that to considerably
more than I possessed. If I lost, it would mean touching
Tom for a goodish bit before I could brass up, and you know
how parting with money always gives him indigestion. You
can picture my state of mind. If it hadn't been for Angelica
Briscoe, I think I would have had a nervous breakdown. There
were moments when only my iron will kept me from shooting
up to the ceiling, shrieking like a banshee. The suspense was
so terrific.'

I was still dumbfounded, but I managed to say 'Angelica
Briscoe?', at a loss to see where she got into the act, and the
speaker spoke on.

'Don't tell me you've forgotten her. I would have thought by
this time you would have asked her to marry you, which seems
to be your normal practice five minutes after you've met any
girl who isn't actually repulsive. But I suppose you couldn't see
straight after all that port. Angelica, daughter of the Rev.
Briscoe. I had a long talk with her after you had left, and I
found that she, too, had betted heavily on Simla and was
wondering how she could pay up if he lost. I told her about the
cat and she was enthusiastically in favour of stealing it, and she
solved the problem which had been bothering me, the
question of how it could be done. You see, it's not a job that's
up everybody's street. Mine, for instance. You have to be like
one of those Red Indians I used to read about in Fenimore
Cooper's books when I was a child, the fellows who never let a
twig snap beneath their feet, and I'm not built for that.'

There was justice in this. I believe the old relative was
sylphlike in her youth, but the years have brought with them a
certain solidity, and any twig trodden on by her in the evening
of her life would go off like the explosion of a gas main.

'But Angelica pointed the way. There's a girl, that Angelica.
Only a clergyman's daughter, but with all the executive
qualities of a great statesman. She didn't hesitate a moment.
Her face lighting up and her eyes sparkling. She said:

'"This is a job for Billy Graham."'

I could not follow her here. The name was familiar to me,
but I never associated it with proficiency in the art of removing
cats from Spot A to Spot B, especially cats belonging to
someone else. Indeed, I should have thought that that was the
sort of activity Mr Graham would rather have frowned on,
being in his particular line of business.

I mentioned this to the old ancestor, and she told me I had
fallen into a natural error.

'His real name is Herbert Graham, but everyone calls him
Billy.'

'Why?'

'Rustic humour. There's a lot of that around here. He's the
king of the local poachers, and you don't find any twigs
snapping beneath
his
feet. All the gamekeepers for miles
around have been trying for years to catch him with the goods,
but they haven't a hope. It is estimated that seventy-six point
eight per cent of the beer sold in the Goose and Grasshopper
is bought by haggard gamekeepers trying to drown their
sorrows after being baffled by Billy. I have this on the authority
of Angelica, who is a great buddy of his. She told him about
our anxiety, and he said he would attend to the matter
immediately. He is particularly well situated to carry out
operations at the Court, as his niece Marlene is the scullery
maid there, so it arouses no suspicion if he is caught hanging
around. He can always say he has come to see if she's getting
on all right. Really, the whole thing has worked out so
smoothly that one feels one is being watched over by
Providence.'

I went on being appalled. Her scheme of engaging the
services of a hired bravo who would probably blackmail her for
the rest of her life shook me to the core. As for Angelica
Briscoe, one asked oneself what clergymen's daughters were
coming to.

I tried to reason with her.

'You can't do this, old blood relation. It's as bad as nobbling
a horse.'

If you think that caused the blush of shame to mantle her
cheek, you don't know much about aunts.

'Well, isn't nobbling a horse an ordinary business precaution
everyone would take if only they could manage it?' she
riposted.

The Woosters never give up. I tried again.

'How about the purity of the turf ?'

'No good to me. I like my turf impure. More genuine
excitement.'

'What would the Quorn say of this? Or, for the matter of
that, the Pytchley?'

'They would send me a telegram wishing me luck. You
don't understand these small country meetings. It's not like
Epsom or Ascot. A little finesse from time to time is taken for
granted. It's expected of you. A couple of years ago Jimmy had
a horse called Poonah running at Bridmouth, and a minion of
Cook's got hold of the jockey on the eve of the race, lured him
into the Goose and Grasshopper and filled him up with strong
drink, sending him to the starting post next day with such a
hangover that all he wanted to do was sit down and cry. He
came in fifth, sobbing bitterly, and went to sleep before he was
out of the saddle. Of course Jimmy guessed what had
happened, but nothing was ever said about it. No hard feelings
on either side. It wasn't till Jimmy fined Cook for moving pigs
without a permit that relations became strained.'

I put another point, a shrewd one.

'What happens if this fellow of yours does get caught? His
first move will be to give you away, blackening your reputation
in Maiden Eggesford beyond repair.'

'He's never caught. He's the local Scarlet Pimpernel. And
nothing could blacken my reputation in Maiden Eggesford.
I'm much too much the popular pet ever since I sang "Every
Nice Girl Loves A Sailor" at the village concert last year. I had
them rolling in the aisles. Three encores, and so many bows
that I got a crick in the back.'

'Spare me the tale of your excesses,' I said distantly.

'I wore a sailor suit.'

'Please,' I said, revolted.

'And you ought to have seen the notice I got in the
Bridmouth Argus,
with which is incorporated the
Somerset
Farmer
and the
South Country Intelligencer.
But I can't stop
here all day listening to you. Elsa's got some bores coming to
tea and wants me to rally round. Entertain the cat when it
arrives. I gather that it is rather the Bohemian type and
probably prefers whisky, but try it with a spot of milk.'

And with these words she exited left centre, as full of beans
as any aunt that ever stepped.

Jeeves entered. He had his arms full.

'We appear to have this cat, sir,' he said.

I gave him a look, lacklustre to the last drop.

'So he brought it?'

'Yes, sir. A few moments ago.'

'To the back door?'

'Yes, sir. He showed a proper feeling in that.'

'Is he here now?'

'No, sir. He has gone to the Goose and Grasshopper.'

I got down to the
res.
This was no time for beating about the
bush. I needed his advice, and I needed it quick.

'I take it, Jeeves,' I said, 'that seeing the cat at this address
you have put two and two together, as the expression is, and
realize that there has been dirty work at the crossroads?'

'Yes, sir. I had the advantage of hearing Mrs Travers's
observations. She is a lady with a very carrying voice.'

'That expresses it to a nicety. I believe that when hunting in
her younger days she could make herself heard in several
adjoining counties.'

'I can readily credit it, sir.'

'Well, if you know all about it, there's no need to explain the
situation. The problem that confronts us now is where do we
go from here?'

'Sir?'

'You know what I mean. I can't just sit here . . . what's the
word?'

'Supinely, sir?'

'That's it. I can't just sit here supinely and allow the rannygazoo
to proceed unchecked. The honour of the Woosters is
at stake.'

'You are blameless, sir. You did not purloin the cat.'

'No, but a member of my family did. By the way, could she
get jugged if the crime were brought home to her?'

'It is difficult to say without consulting a competent legal
authority. But an unpleasant scandal would inevitably result.'

'You mean her name would become a hissing and a byword?'

'Substantially that, sir.'

'With disastrous effects on Uncle Tom's digestion. That's
bad, Jeeves. We can't have that. You know how he is after the
mildest lobster. We must return this cat to Cook.'

'It would seem advisable, sir.'

'You wouldn't care to do it?'

'No, sir.'

'It would be the feudal thing to do.'

'No doubt, sir.'

'One of those vassals in the Middle Ages would have
jumped to it.'

'Very possibly, sir.'

'It would take you ten minutes. You could go in the car.'

'I fear that I must continue to plead a
nolle prosequi,
sir.'

'Then I shall have to see what I can do. Leave me, Jeeves, I
want to think.'

'Very good, sir. Would a whisky and soda be of assistance?'

'
Rem acu tetigisti
,' I said.

Left alone, I gave my problem the cream of the Wooster
brain for some time, but without avail, as they say. Try as I
would I couldn't seem to hit on a method of getting the cat
back to square one which didn't involve a meeting with Pop
Cook and his hunting crop, and I didn't want that whistling
about my legs. Courageous though the Woosters are, there are
things from which they shrink.

I was still thinking when there was a cheery cry from
without and the blood froze in my veins as Plank came
bounding in.