The Jeeves Omnibus (231 page)

‘Sipperley –!’

Old Sippy reached out and patted him in a paternal manner on the back.

‘Now listen, Waterbury,’ he said, kindly. ‘You know as well as I do that I hate to turn down an old pal. But I have my duty to the paper. Still, don’t be discouraged. Keep trying, and you’ll do fine. There is a lot of promise in your stuff, but you want to study your market. Keep your eyes open and see what editors need. Now just as a suggestion, why not have a dash at a light, breezy article on pet dogs. You’ve probably noticed that the pug, once so fashionable, has been superseded by the Peke, the griffon, and the Sealyham. Work on that line and –’

The bloke Waterbury navigated towards the door.

‘I have no desire to work on that line, as you put it,’ he said, stiffly. ‘If you do not require my paper on the Elizabethan dramatists I shall no doubt be able to find another editor whose tastes are more in accord with my work.’

‘The right spirit absolutely, Waterbury,’ said Sippy, cordially. ‘Never give in. Perseverance brings home the gravy. If you get an article accepted, send another article to that editor. If you get an article refused, send that article to another editor. Carry on, Waterbury. I shall watch your future progress with considerable interest.’

‘Thank you,’ said the bloke Waterbury, bitterly. ‘This expert advice should prove most useful.’

He biffed off, banging the door behind him, and I turned to Sippy, who was swerving about the room like an exuberant snipe.

‘Sippy –’

‘Eh? What? Can’t stop, Bertie, can’t stop. Only looked in to tell you the news. I’m taking Gwendolen to tea at the Carlton. I’m the happiest man in the world, Bertie. Engaged, you know. Betrothed. All washed up and signed on the dotted line. Wedding, June the first, at eleven am sharp, at St Peter’s Eaton Square. Presents should be delivered before the end of May.’

‘But, Sippy! Come to roost for a second. How did this happen? I thought –’

‘Well, it’s a long story. Much too long to tell you now. Ask Jeeves. He came along with me, and is waiting outside. But when I found her bending over me, weeping, I knew that a word from me was all that was needed. I took her little hand in mine and –’

‘What do you mean, bending over you? Where?’

‘In your sitting room.’

‘Why?’

‘Why what?’

‘Why was she bending over you?’

‘Because I was on the floor, ass. Naturally a girl would bend over a fellow who was on the floor. Goodbye, Bertie. I must rush.’

He was out of the room before I knew he had started. I followed at a high rate of speed, but he was down the stairs before I reached the passage. I legged it after him, but when I got into the street it was empty.

No, not absolutely empty. Jeeves was standing on the pavement, gazing dreamily at a brussels sprout which lay in the fairway.

‘Mr Sipperley has this moment gone, sir,’ he said, as I came charging out.

I halted and mopped the brow.

‘Jeeves,’ I said, ‘what has been happening?’

‘As far as Mr Sipperley’s romance is concerned, sir, all, I am happy to report, is well. He and Miss Moon have arrived at a satisfactory settlement.’

‘I know. They’re engaged. But how did it happen?’

‘I took the liberty of telephoning to Mr Sipperley in your name, asking him to come immediately to the flat, sir.’

‘Oh, that’s how he came to be at the flat? Well?’

‘I then took the liberty of telephoning to Miss Moon and informing her that Mr Sipperley had met with a nasty accident. As I anticipated, the young lady was strongly moved and announced her intention of coming to see Mr Sipperley immediately. When she arrived, it required only a few moments to arrange the matter. It seems that Miss Moon has long loved Mr Sipperley, sir, and –’

‘I should have thought that, when she turned up and found he hadn’t had a nasty accident, she would have been thoroughly pipped at being fooled.’

‘Mr Sipperley had had a nasty accident, sir.’

‘He had?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Rummy coincidence. I mean, after what you were saying this morning.’

‘Not altogether, sir. Before telephoning to Miss Moon, I took the further liberty of striking Mr Sipperley a sharp blow on the head with one of your golf-clubs, which was fortunately lying in a corner of the room. The putter, I believe, sir. If you will recollect, you were practising with it this morning before you left.’

I gaped at the blighter. I had always known Jeeves for a man of infinite sagacity, sound beyond belief on any question of ties or spats; but never before had I suspected him capable of strong-arm work like this. It seemed to open up an entirely new aspect of the fellow. I can’t put it better than by saying that, as I gazed at him, the scales seemed to fall from my eyes.

‘Good heavens, Jeeves!’

‘I did it with the utmost regret, sir. It appeared to me the only course.’

‘But look here, Jeeves. I don’t get this. Wasn’t Mr Sipperley pretty shirty when he came to and found that you had been socking him with putters?’

‘He was not aware that I had done so, sir. I took the precaution of waiting until his back was momentarily turned.’

‘But how did you explain the bump on his head?’

‘I informed him that your new vase had fallen on him, sir.’

‘Why on earth would he believe that? The vase would have been smashed.’

‘The vase was smashed, sir.’

‘What!’

‘In order to achieve verisimilitude, I was reluctantly compelled to break it, sir. And in my excitement, sir, I am sorry to say I broke it beyond repair.’

I drew myself up.

‘Jeeves!’ I said.

‘Pardon me, sir, but would it not be wiser to wear a hat? There is a keen wind.’

I blinked.

‘Aren’t I wearing a hat?’

‘No, sir.’

I put up a hand and felt the lemon. He was perfectly right.

‘Nor I am! I must have left it in Sippy’s office. Wait here, Jeeves, while I fetch it.’

‘Very good, sir.’

‘I have much to say to you.’

‘Thank you, sir.’

I galloped up the stairs and dashed in at the door. And something squashy fell on my neck, and the next minute the whole world was a solid mass of flour. In the agitation of the moment I had gone in at the wrong door; and what it all boils down to is that, if any more of my pals gets inferiority complexes, they can jolly well get rid of them for themselves. Bertram is through.

THE LETTER ARRIVED
on the morning of the sixteenth. I was pushing a bit of breakfast into the Wooster face at the moment and, feeling fairly well-fortified with coffee and kippers, I decided to break the news to Jeeves without delay. As Shakespeare says, if you’re going to do a thing you might just as well pop right at it and get it over. The man would be disappointed, of course, and possibly even chagrined: but, dash it all, a splash of disappointment here and there does a fellow good. Makes him realize that life is stern and life is earnest.

‘Oh, Jeeves,’ I said.

‘Sir?’

‘We have here a communication from Lady Wickham. She has written inviting me to Skeldings for the festives. So you will see about bunging the necessaries together. We repair thither on the twenty-third. Plenty of white ties, Jeeves, also a few hearty country suits for use in the daytime. We shall be there some little time, I expect.’

There was a pause. I could feel he was directing a frosty gaze at me, but I dug into the marmalade and refused to meet it.

‘I thought I understood you to say, sir, that you proposed to visit Monte Carlo immediately after Christmas.’

‘I know. But that’s all off. Plans changed.’

‘Very good, sir.’

At this point the telephone bell rang, tiding over very nicely what had threatened to be an awkward moment. Jeeves unhooked the receiver.

‘Yes? … Yes, madam … Very good, madam. Here is Mr Wooster.’ He handed me the instrument. ‘Mrs Spenser Gregson, sir.’

You know, every now and then I can’t help feeling that Jeeves is losing his grip. In his prime it would have been with him the work of a moment to have told Aunt Agatha that I was not at home. I gave him one of those reproachful glances, and took the machine.

‘Hullo?’ I said. ‘Yes? Hullo? Hullo? Bertie speaking. Hullo? Hullo? Hullo?’

‘Don’t keep on saying Hullo,’ yipped the old relative in her customary curt manner. ‘You’re not a parrot. Sometimes I wish you were, because then you might have a little sense.’

Quite the wrong sort of tone to adopt towards a fellow in the early morning, of course, but what can one do?

‘Bertie, Lady Wickham tells me she has invited you to Skeldings for Christmas. Are you going?’

‘Rather!’

‘Well, mind you behave yourself. Lady Wickham is an old friend of mine.’

I was in no mood for this sort of thing over the telephone. Face to face, I’m not saying, but at the end of a wire, no.

‘I shall naturally endeavour, Aunt Agatha,’ I replied stiffly, ‘to conduct myself in a manner befitting an English gentleman paying a visit –’

‘What did you say? Speak up. I can’t hear.’

‘I said Right-ho.’

‘Oh? Well, mind you do. And there’s another reason why I particularly wish you to be as little of an imbecile as you can manage while at Skeldings. Sir Roderick Glossop will be there.’

‘What!’

‘Don’t bellow like that. You nearly deafened me.’

‘Did you say Sir Roderick Glossop?’

‘I did.’

‘You don’t mean Tuppy Glossop?’

‘I mean Sir Roderick Glossop. Which was my reason for saying Sir Roderick Glossop. Now, Bertie, I want you to listen to me attentively. Are you there?’

‘Yes, still here.’

‘Well, then, listen. I have at last succeeded, after incredible difficulty, and in face of all the evidence, in almost persuading Sir Roderick that you are not actually insane. He is prepared to suspend judgment until he has seen you once more. On your behaviour at Skeldings, therefore –’

But I had hung up the receiver. Shaken. That’s what I was. S to the core.

Stop me if I’ve told you this before: but, in case you don’t know, let me just mention the facts in the matter of this Glossop. He was a formidable old bird with a bald head and out-size eyebrows, by profession a loony-doctor. How it happened, I couldn’t tell you to
this
day, but I once got engaged to his daughter, Honoria, a ghastly dynamic exhibit who read Nietzsche and had a laugh like waves breaking on a stern and rock-bound coast. The fixture was scratched owing to events occurring which convinced the old boy that I was off my napper; and since then he has always had my name at the top of his list of ‘Loonies I have Lunched With’.

It seemed to me that even at Christmas time, with all the peace on earth and goodwill towards men that there is knocking about at that season, a reunion with this bloke was likely to be tough going. If I hadn’t had more than one particularly good reason for wanting to go to Skeldings, I’d have called the thing off.

‘Jeeves,’ I said, all of a twitter, ‘Do you know what? Sir Roderick Glossop is going to be at Lady Wickham’s.’

‘Very good, sir. If you have finished breakfast, I will clear away.’

Cold and haughty. No symp. None of the rallying-round spirit which one likes to see. As I had anticipated, the information that we were not going to Monte Carlo had got in amongst him. There is a keen sporting streak in Jeeves, and I knew he had been looking forward to a little flutter at the tables.

We Woosters can wear the mask. I ignored his lack of decent feeling.

‘Do so, Jeeves,’ I said proudly, ‘and with all convenient speed.’

Relations continued pretty fairly strained all through the rest of the week. There was a frigid detachment in the way the man brought me my dollop of tea in the mornings. Going down to Skeldings in the car on the afternoon of the twenty-third, he was aloof and reserved. And before dinner on the first night of my visit he put the studs in my dress-shirt in what I can only call a marked manner. The whole thing was extremely painful, and it seemed to me, as I lay in bed on the morning of the twenty-fourth, that the only step to take was to put the whole facts of the case before him and trust to his native good sense to effect an understanding.

I was feeling considerably in the pink that morning. Everything had gone like a breeze. My hostess, Lady Wickham, was a beaky female built far too closely on the lines of my Aunt Agatha for comfort, but she had seemed matey enough on my arrival. Her daughter, Roberta, had welcomed me with a warmth which, I’m bound to say, had set the old heart-strings fluttering a bit. And Sir Roderick, in the brief moment we had had together, appeared to have let the Yule-Tide Spirit soak into him to the most amazing extent. When he saw me, his mouth sort of flickered at one corner, which I took to be his idea
of
smiling, and he said ‘Ha, young man!’ Not particularly chummily, but he said it: and my view was that it practically amounted to the lion lying down with the lamb.

So, all in all, life at this juncture seemed pretty well all to the mustard, and I decided to tell Jeeves exactly how matters stood.

‘Jeeves,’ I said, as he appeared with the steaming.

‘Sir?’

‘Touching on this business of our being here, I would like to say a few words of explanation. I consider that you have a right to the facts.’

‘Sir?’

‘I’m afraid scratching that Monte Carlo trip has been a bit of a jar for you, Jeeves.’

‘Not at all, sir.’

‘Oh, yes, it has. The heart was set on wintering in the world’s good old Plague Spot, I know. I saw your eye light up when I said we were due for a visit there. You snorted a bit and your fingers twitched. I know, I know. And now that there has been a change of programme the iron has entered into your soul.’

‘Not at all, sir.’

‘Oh, yes, it has. I’ve seen it. Very well, then, what I wish to impress upon you, Jeeves, is that I have not been actuated in this matter by any mere idle whim. It was through no light and airy caprice that I accepted this invitation to Lady Wickham’s. I have been angling for it for weeks, prompted by many considerations. In the first place, does one get the Yule-Tide Spirit at a spot like Monte Carlo?’