Fine Weather, Jeeves, page 20
The crowd thought he had dried up.
‘Suck a lozenge,’ shouted someone.
Comrade Butt pulled himself together with a jerk, and even from where I stood I could see the nasty gleam in his eye.
‘Ah,’ he yelled, ‘you may mock, comrades; you may jeer and sneer; and you may scoff; but let me tell you that the movement is spreading every day and every hour. Yes, even amongst the so-called upper classes it’s spreading. Perhaps you’ll believe me when I tell you that here, today, on this very spot, we have in our little band one of our most earnest workers, the nephew of that very Lord Bittlesham whose name you were hooting but a moment ago.’
And before old Bingo had a notion of what was up, he had reached out a hand and grabbed the beard. It came off all in one piece, and, well as Bingo’s speech had gone, it was simply nothing compared with the hit made by this bit of business. I heard old Bittlesham give one short, sharp snort of amazement at my side, and then any remarks he may have made were drowned in thunders of applause.
I’m bound to say that in this crisis young Bingo acted with a good deal of decision and character. To grab Comrade Butt by the neck and try to twist his head off was with him the work of a moment. But before he could get any results the sad policeman, brightening up like magic, had charged in, and the next minute he was shoving his way back through the crowd, with Bingo in his right hand and Comrade Butt in his left.
‘Let me pass, sir, please,’ he said, civilly, as he came up against old Bittlesham, who was blocking the gangway.
‘Eh?’ said old Bittlesham, still dazed.
At the sound of his voice young Bingo looked up quickly from under the shadow of the policeman’s right hand, and as he did so all the stuffing seemed to go out of him with a rush. For an instant he drooped like a bally lily, and then shuffled brokenly on. His air was the air of a man who has got it in the neck properly.
Sometimes when Jeeves has brought in my morning tea and shoved it on the table beside my bed, he drifts silently from the room and leaves me to go to it: at other times he sort of shimmies respectfully in the middle of the carpet, and then I know that he wants a word or two. On the day after I had got back from Goodwood I was lying on my back, staring at the ceiling, when I noticed that he was still in my midst.
‘Oh, hallo,’ I said. ‘Yes?’
‘Mr Little called earlier in the morning, sir.’
‘Oh, by Jove, what? Did he tell you about what happened?’
‘Yes, sir. It was in connection with that that he wished to see you. He proposes to retire to the country and remain there for some little while.’
‘Dashed sensible.’
‘That was my opinion, also, sir. There was, however, a slight financial difficulty to be overcome. I took the liberty of advancing him ten pounds on your behalf to meet current expenses. I trust that meets with your approval, sir?’
‘Oh, of course. Take a tenner off the dressing table.’
‘Very good, sir.’
‘Jeeves,’ I said.
‘Sir?’
‘What beats me is how the dickens the thing happened. I mean, how did the chappie Butt ever get to know who he was?’
Jeeves coughed.
‘There, sir, I fear I may have been somewhat to blame.’
‘You? How?’
‘I fear I may carelessly have disclosed Mr Little’s identity to Mr Butt on the occasion when I had that conversation with him.’
I sat up.
‘What?’
‘Indeed, now that I recall the incident, sir, I distinctly remember saying that Mr Little’s work for the Cause really seemed to me to deserve something in the nature of public recognition. I greatly regret having been the means of bringing about a temporary estrangement between Mr Little and his lordship. And I am afraid there is another aspect to the matter. I am also responsible for the breaking off of relations between Mr Little and the young lady who came to tea here.’
I sat up again. It’s a rummy thing, but the silver lining had absolutely escaped my notice till then.
‘Do you mean to say it’s off?’
‘Completely, sir. I gathered from Mr Little’s remarks that his hopes in the direction may now be looked on as definitely quenched. If there were no other obstacle, the young lady’s father, I am informed by Mr Little, now regards him as a spy and a deceiver.’
‘Well, I’m dashed!’
‘I appear inadvertently to have caused much trouble, sir.’
‘Jeeves!’ I said.
‘Sir?’
‘How much money is there on the dressing table?’
‘In addition to the ten-pound note which you instructed me to take, sir, there are two five-pound notes, three one-pounds, a ten-shillings, two half-crowns, a florin, four shillings, a sixpence, and a halfpenny, sir.’
‘Collar it all,’ I said. ‘You’ve earned it.’
August
The Great Sermon Handicap
After Goodwood’s over, I generally find that I get a bit restless. I’m not much of a lad for the birds and the trees and the great open spaces as a rule, but there’s no doubt that London’s not at its best in August, and rather tends to give me the pip and make me think of popping down into the country till things have bucked up a trifle. London, about a couple of weeks after that spectacular finish of young Bingo’s which I’ve just been telling you about, was empty and smelled of burning asphalt. All my pals were away, most of the theatres were shut, and they were taking up Piccadilly in large spadefuls.
It was most infernally hot. As I sat in the old flat one night trying to muster up energy enough to go to bed, I felt I couldn’t stand it much longer: and when Jeeves came in with the tissue-restorers on a tray I put the thing to him squarely.
‘Jeeves,’ I said, wiping the brow and gasping like a stranded goldfish, ‘it’s beastly hot.’
‘The weather is oppressive, sir.’
‘Not all the soda, Jeeves.’
‘No, sir.’
‘I think we’ve had about enough of the metrop for the time being, and require a change. Shift ho, I think, Jeeves, what?’
‘Just as you say, sir. There is a letter on the tray, sir.’
‘By Jove, Jeeves, that was practically poetry. Rhymed, did you notice?’ I opened the letter. ‘I say, this is rather extraordinary.’
‘Sir?’
‘You know Twing Hall?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Well, Mr Little is there.’
‘Indeed, sir?’
‘Absolutely in the flesh. He’s had to take another of those tutoring jobs.’
After that fearful mix-up at Goodwood, when young Bingo Little, a broken man, had touched me for a tenner and whizzed silently off into the unknown, I had been all over the place, asking mutual friends if they had heard anything of him, but nobody had. And all the time he had been at Twing Hall. Rummy. And I’ll tell you why it was rummy. Twing Hall belongs to old Lord Wickhammersley, a great pal of my guv’nor’s when he was alive, and I have a standing invitation to pop down there when I like. I generally put in a week or two some time in the summer, and I was thinking of going there before I read the letter.
‘And, what’s more, Jeeves, my cousin Claude, and my cousin Eustace – you remember them?’
‘Very vividly, sir.’
‘Well, they’re down there, too, reading for some exam or other with the vicar. I used to read with him myself at one time. He’s known far and wide as a pretty hot coach for those of fairly feeble intellect. Well, when I tell you he got me through Smalls, you’ll gather that he’s a bit of a hummer. I call this most extraordinary.’
I read the letter again. It was from Eustace. Claude and Eustace are twins, and more or less generally admitted to be the curse of the human race.
The Vicarage,
Twing, Glos.
DEAR BERTIE – Do you want to make a bit of money? I hear you had a bad Goodwood, so you probably do. Well, come down here quick and get in on the biggest sporting event of the season. I’ll explain when I see you, but you can take it from me it’s all right.
Claude and I are with a reading party at old Heppenstall’s. There are nine of us, not counting your pal Bingo Little, who is tutoring the kid up at the Hall.
Don’t miss this golden opportunity, which may never occur again. Come and join us.
Yours,
EUSTACE
I handed this to Jeeves. He studied it thoughtfully.
‘What do you make of it? A rummy communication, what?’
‘Very high-spirited young gentlemen, sir, Mr Claude and Mr Eustace. Up to some game, I should be disposed to imagine.’
‘Yes. But what game, do you think?’
‘It is impossible to say, sir. Did you observe that the letter continues over the page?’
‘Eh, what?’ I grabbed the thing. This was what was on the other side of the last page:
SERMON HANDICAP
RUNNERS AND BETTING
PROBABLE STARTERS
Rev. Joseph Tucker (Badgwick), scratch.
Rev. Leonard Starkie (Stapleton), scratch.
Rev. Alexander Jones (Upper Bingley), receives three minutes.
Rev. W. Dix (Little Clickton-in-the-Wold), receives five minutes.
Rev. Francis Heppenstall (Twing), receives eight minutes.
Rev. Cuthbert Dibble (Boustead Parva), receives nine minutes.
Rev. Orlo Hough (Boustead Magna), receives nine minutes.
Rev. J. J. Roberts (Fale-by-the-Water), receives ten minutes.
Rev. G. Hayward (Lower Bingley), receives twelve minutes.
Rev. James Bates (Gandle-by-the-Hill), receives fifteen minutes.
(The above have arrived.)
Prices. – 5-2, Tucker, Starkie; 3-1, Jones; 9-2, Dix; 6-1, Heppenstall, Dibble, Hough; 100-8 any other.
It baffled me.
‘Do you understand it, Jeeves?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Well, I think we ought to have a look into it, anyway, what?’
‘Undoubtedly, sir.’
‘Right ho, then. Pack our spare dickey and a toothbrush in a neat brown-paper parcel, send a wire to Lord Wickhammersley to say we’re coming, and buy two tickets on the five-ten at Paddington tomorrow.’
The five-ten was late as usual, and everybody was dressing for dinner when I arrived at the Hall. It was only by getting into my evening things in record time and taking the stairs to the dining room in a couple of bounds that I managed to dead heat with the soup. I slid into the vacant chair, and found that I was sitting next to old Wickhammersley’s youngest daughter, Cynthia.
‘Oh, hallo, old thing,’ I said.
Great pals we’ve always been. In fact, there was a time when I had an idea I was in love with Cynthia. However, it blew over. A dashed pretty and lively and attractive girl, mind you, but full of ideals and all that. I may be wronging her, but I have an idea that she’s the sort of girl who would want a fellow to carve out a career and what not. I know I’ve heard her speak favourably of Napoleon. So what with one thing and another the jolly old frenzy sort of petered out, and now we’re just pals. I think she’s a topper, and she thinks me next door to a loony, so everything’s nice and matey.
‘Well, Bertie, so you’ve arrived?’
‘Oh, yes, I’ve arrived. Yes, here I am. I say, I seem to have plunged into the middle of quite a young dinner party. Who are all these coves?’
‘Oh, just people from round about. You know most of them. You remember Colonel Willis, and the Spencers—’
‘Of course, yes. And there’s old Heppenstall. Who’s the other clergyman next to Mrs Spencer?’
‘Mr Hayward, from Lower Bingley.’
‘What an amazing lot of clergymen there are round here. Why, there’s another, next to Mrs Willis.’
‘That’s Mr Bates, Mr Heppenstall’s nephew. He’s an assistant master at Eton. He’s down here during the summer holidays, acting as locum tenens for Mr Spettigue, the rector of Gandle-by-the-Hill.’
‘I thought I knew his face. He was in his fourth year at Oxford when I was a fresher. Rather a blood. Got his rowing blue and all that.’ I took another look round the table, and spotted young Bingo. ‘Ah, there he is,’ I said. ‘There’s the old egg.’
‘There’s who?’
‘Young Bingo Little. Great pal of mine. He’s tutoring your brother, you know.’
‘Good gracious! Is he a friend of yours?’
‘Rather! Known him all my life.’
‘Then tell me, Bertie, is he at all weak in the head?’
‘Weak in the head?’
‘I don’t mean simply because he’s a friend of yours. But he’s so strange in his manner.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Well, he keeps looking at me so oddly.’
‘Oddly? How? Give me an imitation.’
‘I can’t in front of all these people.’
‘Yes, you can. I’ll hold my napkin up.’
‘All right, then. Quick. There!’
Considering that she had only about a second and a half to do it in, I must say it was a jolly fine exhibition. She opened her mouth and eyes pretty wide and let her jaw drop sideways, and managed to look so like a dyspeptic calf that I recognised the symptoms immediately.
‘Oh, that’s all right,’ I said. ‘No need to be alarmed. He’s simply in love with you.’
‘In love with me. Don’t be absurd.’
‘My dear old thing, you don’t know young Bingo. He can fall in love with anybody.’
‘Thank you!’
‘Oh, I didn’t mean it that way, you know. I don’t wonder at his taking to you. Why, I was in love with you myself once.’
‘Once? Ah! And all that remains now are the cold ashes? This isn’t one of your tactful evenings, Bertie.’
‘Well, my dear sweet thing, dash it all, considering that you gave me the bird and nearly laughed yourself into a permanent state of hiccoughs when I asked you—’
‘Oh, I’m not reproaching you. No doubt there were faults on both sides. He’s very good-looking, isn’t he?’
‘Good-looking? Bingo? Bingo good-looking? No, I say, come now, really!’
‘I mean, compared with some people,’ said Cynthia.
Some time after this, Lady Wickhammersley gave the signal for the females of the species to leg it, and they duly stampeded. I didn’t get a chance of talking to young Bingo when they’d gone, and later, in the drawing room, he didn’t show up. I found him eventually in his room, lying on the bed with his feet on the rail, smoking a toofah. There was a notebook on the counterpane beside him.
‘Hallo, old scream,’ I said.
‘Hallo, Bertie,’ he replied, in what seemed to me rather a moody, distrait sort of manner.
‘Rummy finding you down here. I take it your uncle cut off your allowance after that Goodwood binge and you had to take this tutoring job to keep the wolf from the door?’
‘Correct,’ said young Bingo tersely.
‘Well, you might have let your pals know where you were.’
He frowned darkly.
‘I didn’t want them to know where I was. I wanted to creep away and hide myself. I’ve been through a bad time, Bertie, these last weeks. The sun ceased to shine—’
‘That’s curious. We’ve had gorgeous weather in London.’
‘The birds ceased to sing—’
‘What birds?’
‘What the devil does it matter what birds?’ said young Bingo, with some asperity. ‘Any birds. The birds round about here. You don’t expect me to specify them by their pet names, do you? I tell you, Bertie, it hit me hard at first, very hard.’
‘What hit you?’ I simply couldn’t follow the blighter.
‘Charlotte’s calculated callousness.’
‘Oh, ah!’ I’ve seen poor old Bingo through so many unsuccessful love affairs that I’d almost forgotten there was a girl mixed up with that Goodwood business. Of course! Charlotte Corday Rowbotham. And she had given him the raspberry, I remembered, and gone off with Comrade Butt.
‘I went through torments. Recently, however, I’ve – er – bucked up a bit. Tell me, Bertie, what are you doing down here? I didn’t know you knew these people.’
‘Me? Why, I’ve known them since I was a kid.’
Young Bingo put his feet down with a thud.
‘Do you mean to say you’ve known Lady Cynthia all that time?’
‘Rather! She can’t have been seven when I met her first.’
‘Good Lord!’ said young Bingo. He looked at me for the first time as though I amounted to something, and swallowed a mouthful of smoke the wrong way. ‘I love that girl, Bertie,’ he went on, when he’d finished coughing.
‘Yes. Nice girl, of course.’
He eyed me with pretty deep loathing.
‘Don’t speak of her in that horrible casual way. She’s an angel. An angel! Was she talking about me at all at dinner, Bertie?’
‘Oh, yes.’
‘What did she say?’
‘I remember one thing. She said she thought you good-looking.’
Young Bingo closed his eyes in a sort of ecstasy. Then he picked up the notebook.
‘Pop off now, old man, there’s a good chap,’ he said, in a hushed, far-away voice. ‘I’ve got a bit of writing to do.’
‘Writing?’
‘Poetry, if you must know. I wish the dickens,’ said young Bingo, not without some bitterness, ‘she had been christened something except Cynthia. There isn’t a dam’ word in the language it rhymes with. Ye gods, how I could have spread myself if she had only been called Jane!’
Bright and early next morning, as I lay in bed blinking at the sunlight on the dressing table and wondering when Jeeves was going to show up with a cup of tea, a heavy weight descended on my toes, and the voice of young Bingo polluted the air. The blighter had apparently risen with the lark.
‘Leave me,’ I said, ‘I would be alone. I can’t see anybody till I’ve had my tea.’
‘When Cynthia smiles,’ said young Bingo, ‘the skies are blue; the world takes on a roseate hue; birds in the garden trill and sing, and Joy is king of everything, when Cynthia smiles.’ He coughed, changing gears. ‘When Cynthia frowns—’
