The Jeeves Omnibus (234 page)

‘Well, then?’

He regarded me for a moment with a fathomless eye.

‘I think the best plan, sir, would be for you to leave England, which is not pleasant at this time of the year, for some little while. I would not take the liberty of dictating your movements, sir, but as you already have accommodation engaged on the Blue Train for Monte Carlo for the day after tomorrow –’

‘But you cancelled the booking?’

‘No, sir.’

‘I thought you had.’

‘No, sir.’

‘I told you to.’

‘Yes, sir. It was remiss of me, but the matter slipped my mind.’

‘Oh?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘All right, Jeeves. Monte Carlo ho, then.’

‘Very good, sir.’

‘It’s lucky, as things have turned out, that you forgot to cancel that booking.’

‘Very fortunate indeed, sir. If you will wait here, sir, I will return to your room and procure a suit of clothes.’

ANOTHER DAY HAD
dawned all hot and fresh and, in pursuance of my unswerving policy at that time, I was singing ‘Sonny Boy’ in my bath, when there was a soft step without and Jeeves’s voice came filtering through the woodwork.

‘I beg your pardon, sir.’

I had just got to that bit about the Angels being lonely, where you need every ounce of concentration in order to make the spectacular finish, but I signed off courteously.

‘Yes, Jeeves? Say on.’

‘Mr Glossop, sir.’

‘What about him?’

‘He is in the sitting room, sir.’

‘Young Tuppy Glossop?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘In the sitting room?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Desiring speech with me?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘H’m!’

‘Sir?’

‘I only said H’m.’

And I’ll tell you why I said H’m. It was because the man’s story had interested me strangely. The news that Tuppy was visiting me at my flat, at an hour when he must have known that I would be in my bath and consequently in a strong strategic position to heave a wet sponge at him, surprised me considerably.

I hopped out with some briskness and, slipping a couple of towels about the limbs and torso, made for the sitting room. I found young Tuppy at the piano, playing ‘Sonny Boy’ with one finger.

‘What ho!’ I said, not without a certain hauteur.

‘Oh, hullo, Bertie,’ said young Tuppy. ‘I say, Bertie, I want to see you about something important.’

It seemed to me that the bloke was embarrassed. He had moved to the mantelpiece, and now he broke a vase in rather a constrained way.

‘The fact is, Bertie, I’m engaged.’

‘Engaged?’

‘Engaged,’ said young Tuppy, coyly dropping a photograph frame into the fender. ‘Practically, that is.’

‘Practically?’

‘Yes. You’ll like her, Bertie. Her name is Cora Bellinger. She’s studying for Opera. Wonderful voice she has. Also dark, flashing eyes and a great soul.’

‘How do you mean, practically?’

‘Well, it’s this way. Before ordering the trousseau, there is one little point she wants cleared up. You see, what with her great soul and all that, she has a rather serious outlook on life: and the one thing she absolutely bars is anything in the shape of hearty humour. You know, practical joking and so forth. She said if she thought I was a practical joker she would never speak to me again. And unfortunately she appears to have heard about that little affair at the Drones – I expect you have forgotten all about that, Bertie?’

‘I have not!’

‘No, no, not forgotten exactly. What I mean is, nobody laughs more heartily at the recollection than you. And what I want you to do, old man, is to seize an early opportunity of taking Cora aside and categorically denying that there is any truth in the story. My happiness, Bertie, is in your hands, if you know what I mean.’

Well, of course, if he put it like that, what could I do? We Woosters have our code.

‘Oh, all right,’ I said, but far from brightly.

‘Splendid fellow!’

‘When do I meet this blighted female?’

‘Don’t call her “this blighted female”, Bertie, old man. I have planned all that out. I will bring her round here today for a spot of lunch.’

‘What!’

‘At one-thirty. Right. Good. Fine. Thanks. I knew I could rely on you.’

He pushed off, and I turned to Jeeves, who had shimmered in with the morning meal.

‘Lunch for three today, Jeeves,’ I said.

‘Very good, sir.’

‘You know, Jeeves, it’s a bit thick. You remember my telling you about what Mr Glossop did to me that night at the Drones?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘For months I have been cherishing dreams of getting a bit of my own back. And now, so far from crushing him into the dust, I’ve got to fill him and fiancée with rich food and generally rally round and be the good angel.’

‘Life is like that, sir.’

‘True, Jeeves. What have we here?’ I asked, inspecting the tray.

‘Kippered herrings, sir.’

‘And I shouldn’t wonder,’ I said, for I was in thoughtful mood, ‘if even herrings haven’t troubles of their own.’

‘Quite possibly, sir.’

‘I mean, apart from getting kippered.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘And so it goes on, Jeeves, so it goes on.’

I can’t say I exactly saw eye to eye with young Tuppy in his admiration for the Bellinger female. Delivered on the mat at one-twenty-five, she proved to be an upstanding light-heavyweight of some thirty summers, with a commanding eye and a square chin which I, personally, would have steered clear of. She seemed to me a good deal like what Cleopatra would have been after going in too freely for the starches and cereals. I don’t know why it is, but women who have anything to do with Opera, even if they’re only studying for it, always appear to run to surplus poundage.

Tuppy, however, was obviously all for her. His whole demeanour, both before and during lunch, was that of one striving to be worthy of a noble soul. When Jeeves offered him a cocktail, he practically recoiled as from a serpent. It was terrible to see the change which love had effected in the man. The spectacle put me off my food.

At half-past two, the Bellinger left to go to a singing lesson. Tuppy trotted after her to the door, bleating and frisking a goodish bit, and then came back and looked at me in a goofy sort of way.

‘Well, Bertie?’

‘Well, what?’

‘I mean, isn’t she?’

‘Oh, rather,’ I said, humouring the poor fish.

‘Wonderful eyes?’

‘Oh, rather.’

‘Wonderful figure?’

‘Oh, quite.’

‘Wonderful voice?’

Here I was able to intone the response with a little more heartiness. The Bellinger, at Tuppy’s request, had sung us a few songs before digging in at the trough, and nobody could have denied that her pipes were in great shape. Plaster was still falling from the ceiling.

‘Terrific,’ I said.

Tuppy sighed, and, having helped himself to about four inches of whisky and one of soda, took a deep, refreshing draught.

‘Ah!’ he said. ‘I needed that.’

‘Why didn’t you have it at lunch?’

‘Well, it’s this way,’ said Tuppy. ‘I have not actually ascertained what Cora’s opinions are on the subject of taking of slight snorts from time to time, but I thought it more prudent to lay off. The view I took was that laying off would seem to indicate the serious mind. It is touch-and-go, as you might say, at the moment, and the smallest thing may turn the scale.’

‘What beats me is how on earth you expect to make her think you’ve got a mind at all – let alone a serious one.’

‘I have my methods.’

‘I bet they’re rotten.’

‘You do, do you?’ said Tuppy warmly. ‘Well, let me tell you, my lad, that that’s exactly what they’re anything but. I am handling this affair with consummate generalship. Do you remember Beefy Bingham who was at Oxford with us?’

‘I ran into him only the other day. He’s a parson now.’

‘Yes. Down in the East End. Well, he runs a Lads’ Club for the local toughs – you know the sort of thing – cocoa and backgammon in the reading room and occasional clean, bright entertainments in the Oddfellows’ Hall: and I’ve been helping him. I don’t suppose I’ve passed an evening away from the backgammon board for weeks. Cora is extremely pleased. I’ve got her to promise to sing on Tuesday at Beefy’s next clean, bright entertainment.’

‘You have?’

‘I absolutely have. And now mark my devilish ingenuity, Bertie. I’m going to sing, too.’

‘Why do you suppose that’s going to get you anywhere?’

‘Because the way I intend to sing the song I intend to sing will prove to her that there are great deeps in my nature, whose existence she has not suspected. She will see that rough, unlettered audience wiping the tears out of its bally eyes and she will say to herself ‘What ho! The old egg really has a soul!’ For it is not one of your mouldy
comic
songs, Bertie. No low buffoonery of that sort for me. It is all about Angela being lonely and what not –’

I uttered a sharp cry.

‘You don’t mean you’re going to sing “Sonny Boy”?’

‘I jolly well do.’

I was shocked. Yes, dash it, I was shocked. You see, I held strong views on ‘Sonny Boy’. I considered it a song only to be attempted by a few of the elect in the privacy of the bathroom. And the thought of it being murdered in open Oddfellows Hall by a man who could treat a pal as young Tuppy had treated me that night at the Drones sickened me. Yes, sickened me.

I hadn’t time, however, to express my horror and disgust, for at this juncture Jeeves came in.

‘Mrs Travers has just rung up on the telephone, sir. She desired me to say that she will be calling to see you in a few minutes.’

‘Contents noted, Jeeves,’ I said. ‘Now listen, Tuppy –’

I stopped. The fellow wasn’t there.

‘What have you done with him, Jeeves?’ I asked.

‘Mr Glossop has left, sir.’

‘Left? How can he have left? He was sitting there –’

‘That is the front door closing now, sir.’

‘But what made him shoot off like that?’

‘Possibly Mr Glossop did not wish to meet Mrs Travers, sir.’

‘Why not?’

‘I could not say, sir. But undoubtedly at the mention of Mrs Travers’ name he rose very swiftly.’

‘Strange, Jeeves.’

‘Yes, sir.’

I turned to a subject of more moment.

‘Jeeves,’ I said. ‘Mr Glossop proposes to sing “Sonny Boy” at an entertainment down in the East End next Tuesday.’

‘Indeed, sir?’

‘Before an audience consisting mainly of costermongers, with a sprinkling of whelk-stall owners, purveyors of blood-oranges, and minor pugilists.’

‘Indeed, sir?’

‘Make a note to remind me to be there. He will infallibly get the bird, and I want to witness his downfall.’

‘Very good, sir.’

‘And when Mrs Travers arrives, I shall be in the sitting room.’

Those who know Bertram Wooster best are aware that in his journey
through
life he is impeded and generally snootered by about as scaly a platoon of aunts as was ever assembled. But there is one exception to the general ghastliness – viz., my Aunt Dahlia. She married old Tom Travers the year Blue-bottle won the Cambridgeshire, and is one of the best. It is always a pleasure to me to chat with her, and it was with a courtly geniality that I rose to receive her as she sailed over the threshold at about two fifty-five.

She seemed somewhat perturbed, and snapped into the agenda without delay. Aunt Dahlia is one of those big, hearty women. She used to go in a lot for hunting, and she generally speaks as if she had just sighted a fox on a hillside half a mile away.

‘Bertie,’ she cried, in a manner of one encouraging a bevy of hounds to renewed efforts. ‘I want your help.’

‘And you shall have it, Aunt Dahlia,’ I replied suavely. ‘I can honestly say that there is no one to whom I would more readily do a good turn than yourself; no one to whom I am more delighted to be –’

‘Less of it,’ she begged, ‘less of it. You know that friend of yours, young Glossop?’

‘He’s just been lunching here.’

‘He has, has he? Well, I wish you’d poisoned his soup.’

‘We didn’t have soup. And, when you describe him as a friend of mine, I wouldn’t quite say the term absolutely squared with the facts. Some time ago, one night when we had been dining together at the Drones –’

At this point Aunt Dahlia – a little brusquely, it seemed to me – said that she would rather wait for the story of my life till she could get it in book-form. I could see now that she was definitely not her usual sunny self, so I shelved my personal grievances and asked what was biting her.

‘It’s that young hound Glossop,’ she said.

‘What’s he been doing?’

‘Breaking Angela’s heart.’ (Angela. Daughter of above. My cousin. Quite a good egg.)

‘Breaking Angela’s heart?’

‘Yes … Breaking … Angela’s HEART!’

‘You say he’s breaking Angela’s heart?’

She begged me in rather a feverish way to suspend the vaudeville cross-talk stuff.

‘How’s he doing that?’ I asked.

‘With his neglect. With his low, callous, double-crossing duplicity.’

‘Duplicity is the word, Aunt Dahlia,’ I said. ‘In treating of young
Tuppy
Glossop, it springs naturally to the lips. Let me just tell you what he did to me one night at the Drones. We had finished dinner –’

‘Ever since the beginning of the season, up till about three weeks ago, he was all over Angela. The sort of thing which, when I was a girl, we should have described as courting –’

‘Or wooing?’

‘Wooing or courting, whichever you like.’

‘Whichever
you
like, Aunt Dahlia,’ I said courteously.

‘Well, anyway, he haunted the house, lapped up daily lunches, danced with her half the night, and so on, till naturally the poor kid, who’s quite off her oats about him, took it for granted that it was only a question of time before he suggested that they should feed for life out of the same crib. And now he’s gone and dropped her like a hot brick, and I hear he’s infatuated with some girl he met at a Chelsea tea-party – a girl named – now, what was it?’

‘Cora Bellinger.’