The Jeeves Omnibus - Vol 4: (Jeeves & Wooster): No.4 (43 page)

I endeavoured to soothe.

‘You can’t blame yourself.’

‘Yes, I can.’

‘It isn’t your fault.’

‘I invited Wilbert Cream here.’

‘Merely from a wifely desire to do Uncle Tom a bit of good.’

‘And I let Upjohn stick around, always at her elbow egging her on.’

‘Yes, Upjohn’s the bird I blame.’

‘Me, too.’

‘But for his – undue influence, do they call it? – Phyllis would have remained a bachelor or spinster or whatever it is. “Thou art the man, Upjohn!” seems to me the way to sum it up. He ought to be ashamed of himself.’

‘And am I going to tell him so! I’d give a tenner to have Aubrey Upjohn here at this moment.’

‘You can get him for nothing. He’s in Uncle Tom’s study.’

Her face lit up.

‘He is?’ She threw her head back and inflated the lungs. ‘UPJOHN!’ she boomed, rather like someone calling the cattle home across the sands of Dee, and I issued a kindly word of warning.

‘Watch that blood pressure, old ancestor.’

‘Never you mind my blood pressure. You let it alone, and it’ll leave you alone. UPJOHN!’

He appeared in the french window, looking cold and severe, as I had so often seen him look when hobnobbing with him in his study at Malvern House, self not there as a willing guest but because I’d been sent for. (‘I should like to see Wooster in my study immediately after morning prayers’ was the formula.)

‘Who is making that abominable noise? Oh, it’s you, Dahlia.’

‘Yes, it’s me.’

‘You wished to see me?’

‘Yes, but not the way you’re looking now. I’d have preferred you to have fractured your spine or at least to have broken a couple of ankles and got a touch of leprosy.’

‘My dear Dahlia!’

‘I’m not your dear Dahlia. I’m a seething volcano. Have you seen Phyllis?’

‘She has just left me.’

‘Did she tell you?’

‘That she was engaged to Wilbert Cream? Certainly.’

‘And I suppose you’re delighted?’

‘Of course I am.’

‘Yes, of course you are! I can well imagine that it’s your dearest wish to see that unfortunate muttonheaded girl become the wife of a man who lets off stink bombs in night clubs and pinches the spoons and has had three divorces already and who, if the authorities play their cards right, will end up cracking rocks in Sing-Sing. That is unless the loony-bin gets its bid in first. Just a Prince Charming, you might say.’

‘I don’t understand you.’

‘Then you’re an ass.’

‘Well, really!’ said Aubrey Upjohn, and there was a dangerous note in his voice. I could see that the relative’s manner, which was not affectionate, and her words, which lacked cordiality, were peeving him. It looked like an odds-on shot that in about another two ticks he would be giving her the Collect for the Day to write out ten times or even instructing her to bend over while he fetched his whangee. You can push these preparatory schoolmasters just so far.

‘A fine way for Jane’s daughter to end up. Mrs Broadway Willie!’

‘Broadway Willie?’

‘That’s what he’s called in the circles in which he moves, into which he will now introduce Phyllis. “Meet the moll,” he’ll say, and then he’ll teach her in twelve easy lessons how to make stink bombs, and the children, if and when, will be trained to pick people’s pockets as they dandle them on their knee. And you’ll be responsible, Aubrey Upjohn!’

I didn’t like the way things were trending. Admittedly the aged relative was putting up a great show and it was a pleasure to listen to her, but I had seen Upjohn’s lip twitch and that look of smug satisfaction come into his face which I had so often seen when he had been counsel for the prosecution in some case in which I was involved and had spotted a damaging flaw in my testimony. The occasion when I was on trial for having broken the drawing-room window with a cricket ball springs to the mind. It was plain to an eye as discerning as mine that he was about to put it across the old flesh and blood properly, making her wish she hadn’t spoken. I couldn’t see how, but the symptoms were all there.

I was right. That twitching lip had not misled me.

‘If I might be allowed to make a remark, my dear Dahlia,’ he said, ‘I think we are talking at cross purposes. You appear to be under the impression that Phyllis is marrying Wilbert’s younger brother Wilfred, the notorious playboy whose escapades have caused the family so much distress and who, as you are correct in saying, is known to his disreputable friends as Broadway Willie. Wilfred, I agree, would make – and on three successive occasions has made – a most undesirable husband, but no one to my knowledge has ever spoken a derogatory word of Wilbert. I know few young men who are more generally respected. He is a member of the faculty of one of the greatest American universities, over in this country on his sabbatical. He teaches romance languages.’

Stop me if I’ve told you this before, I rather fancy I have, but once when I was up at Oxford and chatting on the river bank with a girl called something that’s slipped my mind there was a sound of barking and a great hefty dog of the Hound of the Baskervilles type came galloping at me, obviously intent on mayhem, its whole aspect that of a dog that has no use for Woosters. And I was just commending my soul to God and thinking that this was where my new flannel trousers got about thirty bobs’ worth of value bitten out of them, when the girl, waiting till she saw the whites of its eyes, with extraordinary presence of mind opened a coloured Japanese umbrella in the animal’s face. Upon which, with a startled exclamation it did three back somersaults and retired into private life.

And the reason I bring this up now is that, barring the somersaults, Aunt Dahlia’s reaction to this communiqué was precisely that of the above hound to the Japanese umbrella. The same visible taken-aback-ness. She has since told me that her emotions were identical with those she had experienced when she was out with the Pytchley and riding over a ploughed field in rainy weather, and the horse of a sports-lover in front of her suddenly kicked three pounds of wet mud into her face.

She gulped like a bulldog trying to swallow a sirloin steak many sizes too large for its thoracic cavity.

‘You mean there are two of them?’

‘Exactly.’

‘And Wilbert isn’t the one I thought he was?’

‘You have grasped the position of affairs to a nicety. You will appreciate now, my dear Dahlia,’ said Upjohn, speaking with the same unction, if that’s the word, with which he had spoken when unmasking his batteries and presenting unshakable proof that yours was the hand, Wooster, which propelled this cricket ball, ‘that your concern, though doing you the greatest credit, has been needless. I could wish Phyllis no better husband. Wilbert has looks, brains, character … and excellent prospects,’ he added, rolling the words round his tongue like vintage port. ‘His father, I should imagine, would be worth at least twenty million dollars, and Wilbert is the elder son. Yes, most satisfactory, most …’

As he spoke, the telephone rang, and with a quick ‘Ha!’ he shot back into the study like a homing rabbit.

FOR PERHAPS A
quarter of a minute after he had passed from the scene the aged relative stood struggling for utterance. At the end of this period she found speech.

‘Of all the damn silly fatheaded things!’ she vociferated, if that’s the word. ‘With a million ruddy names to choose from, these ruddy Creams call one ruddy son Wilbert and the other ruddy son Wilfred, and both these ruddy sons are known as Willie. Just going out of their way to mislead the innocent bystander. You’d think people would have more consideration.’

Again I begged her to keep an eye on her blood pressure and not get so worked up, and once more she brushed me off, this time with a curt request that I would go and boil my head.

‘You’d be worked up if you had just been scored off by Aubrey Upjohn, with that loathsome self-satisfied look on his face as if he’d been rebuking a pimply pupil at his beastly school for shuffling his feet in church.’

‘Odd, that,’ I said, struck by the coincidence. ‘He once rebuked me for that very reason. And I had pimples.’

‘Pompous ass!’

‘Shows what a small world it is.’

‘What’s he doing here anyway? I didn’t invite him.’

‘Bung him out. I took this point up with you before, if you remember. Cast him into the outer darkness, where there is wailing and gnashing of teeth.’

‘I will, if he gives me any more of his lip.’

‘I can see you’re in a dangerous mood.’

‘You bet I’m in a dangerous … My God! He’s with us again!’

And A. Upjohn was indeed filtering through the french window. But he had lost the look of which the ancestor had complained, the one he was wearing now seeming to suggest that since last heard from something had occurred to wake the fiend that slept in him.

‘Dahlia!’ he … yes better make it vociferated once more, I’m pretty sure it’s the word I want.

The fiend that slept in Aunt Dahlia was also up on its toes. She gave him a look which, if directed at an erring member of the personnel of the Quorn or Pytchley hound ensemble, would have had that member sticking his tail between his legs and resolving for the future to lead a better life.

‘Now what?’

Just as Aunt Dahlia had done, Aubrey Upjohn struggled for utterance. Quite a bit of utterance-struggling there had been around these parts this summer afternoon.

‘I have just been speaking to my lawyer on the telephone,’ he said, getting going after a short stage wait. ‘I had asked him to make inquiries and ascertain the name of the author of that libellous attack on me in the columns of the
Thursday Review
. He did so, and has now informed me that it was the work of my former pupil, Reginald Herring.’

He paused at this point, to let us chew it over, and the heart sank. Mine, I mean. Aunt Dahlia’s seemed to be carrying on much as usual. She scratched her chin with her trowel, and said:

‘Oh, yes?’

Upjohn blinked, as if he had been expecting something better than this in the way of sympathy and concern.

‘Is that all you can say?’

‘That’s the lot.’

‘Oh? Well, I am suing the paper for heavy damages, and furthermore, I refuse to remain in the same house with Reginald Herring. Either he goes, or I go.’

There was the sort of silence which I believe cyclones drop into for a second or two before getting down to it and starting to give the populace the works. Throbbing? Yes, throbbing wouldn’t be a bad word to describe it. Nor would electric, for the matter of that, and if you care to call it ominous, it will be all right with me. It was a silence of the type that makes the toes curl and sends a shiver down the spinal cord as you stand waiting for the bang. I could see Aunt Dahlia swelling slowly like a chunk of bubble gum, and a less prudent man than Bertram Wooster would have warned her again about her blood pressure.

‘I beg your pardon?’ she said.

He repeated the key words.

‘Oh?’ said the relative, and went off with a pop. I could have told Upjohn he was asking for it. Normally as genial a soul as ever broke biscuit, this aunt, when stirred, can become the haughtiest of
grandes dames
before whose wrath the stoutest quail, and she doesn’t, like
some,
have to use a lorgnette to reduce the citizenry to pulp, she does it all with the naked eye. ‘Oh?’ she said. ‘So you have decided to revise my guest list for me? You have the nerve, the – the –’

I saw she needed helping out.

‘Audacity,’ I said, throwing her the line.

‘The audacity to dictate to me who I shall have in my house.’

It should have been ‘whom’, but I let it go.

‘You have the –’

‘Crust.’

‘– the immortal rind,’ she amended, and I had to admit it was stronger, ‘to tell me whom’ – she got it right that time – ‘I may entertain at Brinkley Court and who’ – wrong again – ‘I may not. Very well, if you feel unable to breathe the same air as my friends, you must please yourself. I believe the “Bull and Bush” in Market Snodsbury is quite comfortable.’

‘Well spoken of in the
Automobile Guide
,’ I said.

‘I shall go there,’ said Upjohn. ‘I shall go there as soon as my things are packed. Perhaps you will be good enough to tell your butler to pack them.’

He strode off, and she went into Uncle Tom’s study, me following, she still snorting. She rang the bell.

Jeeves appeared.

‘Jeeves?’ said the relative, surprised. ‘I was ringing for –’

‘It is Sir Roderick’s afternoon off, madam.’

‘Oh? Well, would you mind packing Mr. Upjohn’s things, Jeeves? He is leaving us.’

‘Very good, madam.’

‘And you can drive him to Market Snodsbury, Bertie.’

‘Right ho,’ I said, not much liking the assignment, but liking less the idea of endeavouring to thwart this incandescent aunt in her current frame of mind.

Safety first, is the Wooster slogan.

IT ISN’T MUCH
of a run from Brinkley Court to Market Snodsbury, and I deposited Upjohn at the ‘Bull and Bush’ and started m-p-h-ing homeward in what you might call a trice. We parted, of course, on rather distant terms, but the great thing when you’ve got an Upjohn on your books is to part and not be fussy about how it’s done, and had it not been for all this worry about Kipper, for whom I was now mourning in spirit more than ever, I should have been feeling fine.

I could see no happy issue for him from the soup in which he was immersed. No words had been exchanged between Upjohn and self on the journey out, but the glimpses I had caught of his face from the corner of the eyes had told me that he was grim and resolute, his supply of the milk of human kindness plainly short by several gallons. No hope, it seemed to me, of turning him from his fell purpose.

I garaged the car and went to Aunt Dahlia’s sanctum to ascertain whether she had cooled off at all since I had left her, for I was still anxious about that blood pressure of hers. One doesn’t want aunts going up in a sheet of flame all over the place.

She wasn’t there, having, I learned later, withdrawn to her room to bathe her temples with eau de Cologne and do Yogi deep-breathing, but Bobbie was, and not only Bobbie but Jeeves. He was handing her something in an envelope, and she was saying ‘Oh, Jeeves, you’ve saved a human life,’ and he was saying ‘Not at all, miss.’ The gist, of course, escaped me, but I had no leisure to probe into gists.