The Jeeves Omnibus (79 page)

‘Thank goodness,’ said Aunt Agatha, ‘arrangements have at last been made about Eustace and Claude.’

‘Arrangements?’ I said, not having the foggiest.

‘They sail on Friday for South Africa. Mr Van Alstyne, a friend of poor Emily’s, has given them berths in his firm at Johannesburg, and we are hoping that they will settle down there and do well.’

I didn’t get the thing at all.

‘Friday? The day after tomorrow, do you mean?’

‘Yes.’

‘For South Africa?’

‘Yes. They leave on the
Edinburgh Castle
.’

‘But what’s the idea? I mean, aren’t they in the middle of their term at Oxford?’

Aunt Agatha looked at me coldly.

‘Do you positively mean to tell me, Bertie, that you take so little
interest
in the affairs of your nearest relatives that you are not aware that Claude and Eustace were expelled from Oxford over a fortnight ago?’

‘No, really?’

‘You are hopeless, Bertie. I should have thought that even you –’

‘Why were they sent down?’

‘They poured lemonade on the Junior Dean of their college … I see nothing amusing in the outrage, Bertie.’

‘No, no, rather not,’ I said hurriedly. ‘I wasn’t laughing. Choking. Got something stuck in my throat, you know.’

‘Poor Emily,’ went on Aunt Agatha, ‘being one of those doting mothers who are the ruin of their children, wished to keep the boys in London. She suggested that they might cram for the Army. But I was firm. The Colonies are the only place for wild youths like Eustace and Claude. So they sail on Friday. They have been staying for the last two weeks with your Uncle Clive in Worcestershire. They will spend tomorrow night in London and catch the boat-train on Friday morning.’

‘Bit risky, isn’t it? I mean, aren’t they apt to cut loose a bit tomorrow night if they’re left all alone in London?’

‘They will not be left alone. They will be in your charge.’

‘Mine!’

‘Yes. I wish you to put them up in your flat for the night, and see that they do not miss the train in the morning.’

‘Oh, I say, no!’

‘Bertie!’

‘Well, I mean, quite jolly coves both of them, but I don’t know. They’re rather nuts, you know … Always glad to see them, of course, but when it comes to putting them up for the night –’

‘Bertie, if you are so sunk in callous self-indulgence that you cannot even put yourself to this trifling inconvenience for the sake of –’

‘Oh, all right,’ I said. ‘All right.’

It was no good arguing, of course. Aunt Agatha always makes me feel as if I had gelatine where my spine ought to be. She’s one of those forceful females. I should think Queen Elizabeth I must have been something like her. When she holds me with her glittering eye and says, ‘Jump to it, my lad’, or words to that effect, I make it so without further discussion.

When she had gone, I rang for Jeeves to break the news to him.

‘Oh, Jeeves,’ I said, ‘Mr Claude and Mr Eustace will be staying here tomorrow night.’

‘Very good, sir.’

‘I’m glad you think so. To me the outlook seems black and scaly. You know what those two lads are!’

‘Very high-spirited young gentlemen, sir.’

‘Blisters, Jeeves. Undeniable blisters. It’s a bit thick!’

‘Would there by anything further, sir?’

At that, I’m bound to say, I drew myself up a trifle haughtily. We Woosters freeze like the dickens when we seek sympathy and meet with cold reserve. I knew what was up, of course. For the last day or so there had been a certain amount of coolness in the home over a pair of jazzy spats which I had dug up while exploring in the Burlington Arcade. Some dashed brainy cove, probably the chap who invented those coloured cigarette-cases, had recently had the rather topping idea of putting out a line of spats on the same system. I mean to say, instead of the ordinary grey and white, you can now get them in your regimental or school colours. And, believe me, it would have taken a chappie of stronger fibre than I am to resist the pair of Old Etonian spats which had smiled up at me from inside the window. I was inside the shop, opening negotiations, before it had even occurred to me that Jeeves might not approve. And I must say he had taken the thing a bit hardly. The fact of the matter is, Jeeves, though in many ways the best valet in London, is too conservative. Hide-bound, if you know what I mean, and an enemy to Progress.

‘Nothing further, Jeeves,’ I said, with quiet dignity.

‘Very good, sir.’

He gave one frosty look at the spats and biffed off. Dash him!

Anything merrier and brighter than the Twins, when they curvetted into the old flat while I was dressing for dinner the next night, I have never struck in my whole puff. I’m only about half a dozen years older than Claude and Eustace, but in some rummy manner they always make me feel as if I were well on in the grandfather class and just waiting for the end. Almost before I realized they were in the place, they had collared the best chairs, pinched a couple of my special cigarettes, poured themselves out a whisky-and-soda apiece, and started to prattle with the gaiety and abandon of two birds who had achieved their life’s ambition instead of having come a most frightful purler and being under sentence of exile.

‘Hallo, Bertie, old thing,’ said Claude. ‘Jolly decent of you to put us up.’

‘Oh, no,’ I said. ‘Only wish you were staying a good long time.’

‘Hear that, Eustace? He wishes we were staying a good long time.’

‘I expect it will seem a good long time,’ said Eustace, philosophically.

‘You heard about the binge, Bertie? Our little bit of trouble, I mean?’

‘Oh, yes. Aunt Agatha was telling me.’

‘We leave our country for our country’s good,’ said Eustace.

‘And let there be no moaning at the bar,’ said Claude, ‘when I put out to sea. What did Aunt Agatha tell you?’

‘She said you poured lemonade on the Junior Dean.’

‘I wish the deuce,’ said Claude, annoyed, ‘that people would get these things right. It wasn’t the Junior Dean. It was the Senior Tutor.’

‘And it wasn’t lemonade,’ said Eustace. ‘It was soda-water. The dear old thing happened to be standing just under our window while I was leaning out with a siphon in my hand. He looked up, and – well, it would have been chucking away the opportunity of a lifetime if I hadn’t let him have it in the eyeball.’

‘Simply chucking it away,’ agreed Claude.

‘Might never have occurred again,’ said Eustace.

‘Hundred to one against it,’ said Claude.

‘Now, what,’ said Eustace, ‘do you propose to do, Bertie, in the way of entertaining the handsome guests tonight?’

‘My idea was to have a bit of dinner in the flat,’ I said. ‘Jeeves is getting it ready now.’

‘And afterwards?’

‘Well, I thought we might chat of this and that, and then it struck me that you would probably like to turn in early, as your train goes about ten or something, doesn’t it?’

The twins looked at each other in a pitying sort of way.

‘Bertie,’ said Eustace, ‘you’ve got the programme nearly right, but not quite. I envisage the evening’s events thus: We will toddle along to Ciro’s after dinner. It’s an extension night, isn’t it? Well, that will see us through till about two-thirty or three.’

‘After which, no doubt,’ said Claude, ‘the Lord will provide.’

‘But I thought you would want to get a good night’s rest.’

‘Good night’s rest!’ said Eustace. ‘My dear old chap, you don’t
for
a moment imagine that we are dreaming of going to
bed
tonight, do you?’

I suppose the fact of the matter is, I’m not the man I was. I mean, those all-night vigils don’t seem to fascinate me as they used to a few years ago. I can remember the time, when I was up at Oxford, when a Covent Garden ball till six in the morning, with breakfast at the Hammams and probably a free fight with a few selected costermongers to follow, seemed to me what the doctor ordered. But nowadays two o’clock is about my limit; and by two o’clock the twins were just settling down and beginning to go nicely.

As far as I can remember, we went on from Ciro’s to play chemmy with some fellows I don’t recall having met before, and it must have been about nine in the morning when we fetched up again at the flat. By which time, I’m bound to admit, as far as I was concerned the first careless freshness was beginning to wear off a bit. In fact, I’d just got enough strength to say goodbye to the twins, wish them a pleasant voyage and a happy and successful career in South Africa, and stagger into bed. The last I remember was hearing the blighters chanting like larks under the cold shower, breaking off from time to time to shout to Jeeves to rush along the eggs and bacon.

It must have been about one in the afternoon when I woke. I was feeling more or less like something the Pure Food Committee had rejected, but there was one bright thought which cheered me up, and that was that about now the twins would be leaning on the rail of the liner, taking their last glimpse of the dear old homeland. Which made it all the more of a shock when the door opened and Claude walked in.

‘Hallo, Bertie!’ said Claude. ‘Had a nice refreshing sleep? Now, what about a good old bite of lunch?’

I’d been having so many distorted nightmares since I had dropped off to sleep that for half a minute I thought this was simply one more of them, and the worst of the lot. It was only when Claude sat down on my feet that I got on to the fact that this was stern reality.

‘Great Scott! What on earth are you doing here?’ I gurgled.

Claude looked at me reproachfully.

‘Hardly the tone I like to hear in a host, Bertie,’ he said reprovingly. ‘Why, it was only last night that you were saying you wished I was stopping a good long time. Your dream has come true. I am.’

‘But why aren’t you on your way to South Africa?’

‘Now that,’ said Claude, ‘is a point I rather thought you would
want
to have explained. It’s like this, old man. You remember that girl you introduced me to at Ciro’s last night?’

‘Which girl?’

‘There was only one,’ said Claude coldly. ‘Only one that counted, that is to say. Her name was Marion Wardour. I danced with her a good deal, if you remember.’

I began to recollect in a hazy sort of way. Marion Wardour has been a pal of mine for some time. A very good sort. She’s playing in that show at the Apollo at the moment. I remembered now that she had been at Ciro’s with a party the night before, and the twins had insisted on being introduced.

‘We are soul-mates, Bertie,’ said Claude. ‘I found it out quite early in the
PM
, and the more thought I’ve given to the matter the more convinced I’ve become. It happens like that now and then, you know. Two hearts that beat as one, I mean, and all that sort of thing. So the long and the short of it is that I gave old Eustace the slip at Waterloo and slid back here. The idea of going to South Africa and leaving a girl like that in England doesn’t appeal to me a bit. I’m for all thinking imperially and giving the Colonies a leg-up and all that sort of thing; but it can’t be done. After all,’ said Claude reasonably, ‘South Africa has got along all right without me up to now, so why shouldn’t it stick it?’

‘But what about Van Alstyne, or whatever his name is? He’ll be expecting you to turn up.’

‘Oh, he’ll have Eustace. That’ll satisfy him. Very sound fellow, Eustace. Probably end up by being a magnate of some kind. I shall watch his future progress with considerable interest. And now you must excuse me for a moment, Bertie. I want to go and hunt up Jeeves and get him to mix me one of those pick-me-ups of his. For some reason which I can’t explain, I’ve got a slight headache this morning.’

And, believe me or believe me not, the door had hardly closed behind him when in blew Eustace with a shining morning face that made me ill to look at.

‘Oh, my aunt!’ I said.

Eustace started to giggle pretty freely.

‘Smooth work, Bertie, smooth work!’ he said. ‘I’m sorry for poor old Claude, but there was no alternative. I eluded his vigilance at Waterloo and snaked off in a taxi. I suppose the poor old ass is wondering where the deuce I’ve got to. But it couldn’t be helped. If you really seriously expected me to go slogging off to South Africa,
you
shouldn’t have introduced me to Miss Wardour last night. I want to tell you all about that, Bertie. I’m not a man,’ said Eustace, sitting down on the bed, ‘who falls in love with every girl he sees. I suppose “strong, silent”, would be the best description you could find for me. But when I do meet my affinity I don’t waste time. I –’

‘Oh, heaven! Are you in love with Marion Wardour, too?’

‘Too? What do you mean, “too”?’

I was going to tell him about Claude, when the blighter came in in person, looking like a giant refreshed. There’s no doubt that Jeeves’s pick-me-ups will produce immediate results in anything short of an Egyptian mummy. It’s something he puts in them – the Worcester sauce or something. Claude had revived like a watered flower, but he nearly had a relapse when he saw his bally brother goggling at him over the bed-rail.

‘What on earth are you doing here?’ he said.

‘What on earth are
you
doing here?’ said Eustace.

‘Have you come back to inflict your beastly society upon Miss Wardour?’

‘Is that why you’ve come back?’

They thrashed the subject out a bit further.

‘Well,’ said Claude at last. ‘I suppose it can’t be helped. If you’re here, you’re here. May the best man win!’

‘Yes, but dash it all!’ I managed to put in at this point. ‘What’s the idea? Where do you think you’re going to stay if you stick on in London?’

‘Why, here,’ said Eustace, surprised.

‘Where else?’ said Claude, raising his eyebrows.

‘You won’t object to putting us up, Bertie?’ said Eustace.

‘Not a sportsman like you,’ said Claude.

‘But, you silly asses, suppose Aunt Agatha finds out that I’m hiding you when you ought to be in South Africa? Where do I get off?’

‘Where
does
he get off?’ Claude asked Eustace.

‘Oh, I expect he’ll manage somehow,’ said Eustace to Claude.