The Mating Season Page 10

  The obvious procedure, of course, when the morale is being given the sleeve across the windpipe like this, is to get in touch with Jeeves and see what he has to suggest. So, encountering the parlourmaid, Queenie, in the passage outside my room after lunch, I inquired as to his whereabouts.

  ‘I say,’ I said, ‘I wonder if you happen to know where Jeeves is? Wooster’s man, you know.’

  She stood staring at me goofily. Her eyes, normally like twin stars, were dull and a bit reddish about the edges, and I should have described her face as drawn. The whole set-up, in short, seeming to indicate that here one had a parlourmaid who had either gone off her onion or was wrestling with a secret sorrow.

  ‘Sir?’ she said, in a tortured sort of voice.

  I repeated my remarks, and this time they penetrated.

  ‘Mr Jeeves isn’t here, sir. Mr Wooster let him go to London. There was a lecture he wanted to be at.’

  ‘Oh thanks,’ I said, speaking dully, for this was a blow. ‘You don’t know when he’ll be back?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘I see. Thanks.’

  I went on into my room and took a good, square look at the situation.

  If you ask any of the nibs who move in diplomatic circles and are accustomed to handling tricky affairs of state, he will tell you that when matters have reached a deadlock, it is not a bit of good just sitting on the seat of the pants and rolling the eyes up to heaven – you have got to turn stones and explore avenues and take prompt steps through the proper channels. Only thus can you hope to find a formula. And it seemed to me, musing tensely, that in the present crisis something constructive might be accomplished by rounding up Corky and giving her a straight-from-the-shoulder talk, pointing out the frightful jeopardy in which she was placing an old friend and dancing-class buddy by allowing Gussie to spend his time frisking and bleating round her.

  I left the room, accordingly, and a few minutes later might have been observed stealing through the sunlit grounds en route for the village. In fact, I was observed, and by Dame Daphne Winkworth. I was nearing the bottom of the drive and in another moment should have won through to safety, when somebody called my name – or, rather, Gussie’s name – and I saw the formidable old egg standing in the rose garden. From the fact that she had a syringe in her hand I deduced that she was in the process of doing the local green-fly a bit of no good.

  ‘Come here, Augustus,’ she said.

  It was the last thing I would have done, if given the choice, for even at the best of times this dangerous specimen put the wind up me pretty vertically, and she was now looking about ten degrees more forbidding than usual. Her voice was cold and her eye was cold, and I didn’t like the way she was toying with that syringe. It was plain that for some reason I had fallen in her estimation to approximately the level of a green-fly, and her air was that of a woman who for two pins would press the trigger and let me have a fluid ounce of whatever the hell-brew was squarely in the mazzard.

  ‘Oh, hallo,’ I said, trying to be debonair but missing by a mile. ‘Squirting the rose trees?’

  ‘Don’t talk to me about rose trees!’

  ‘Oh, no, rather not,’ I said. Well, I hadn’t wanted to particularly. Just filling in with ad lib stuff.

  ‘Augustus, what is this I hear?’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘You would do better to beg Madeline’s.’

  Mystic stuff. I didn’t get it. The impression I received was of a Dame of the British Empire talking through the back of her neck.

  ‘When I was in the house just now,’ she proceeded, ‘a telegram arrived for you from Madeline. It was telephoned from the post office. Sometimes they telephone, and sometimes they deliver personally’

  ‘I see. According to the whim of the moment.’

  ‘Please do not interrupt. This time it happened that the message was telephoned, and as I was passing through the hall when the bell rang, I took it down.’

  ‘Frightfully white of you,’ I said, feeling that I couldn’t go wrong in giving her the old oil.

  I had gone wrong, however. She didn’t like it. She frowned, raised the syringe, then, as if remembering in time that she was a Deverill, lowered it again.

  ‘I have already asked you not to interrupt. I took down the message, as I say, and I have it here. No,’ she said, having searched through her costume, ‘I must have left it on the hall table. But I can tell you its contents. Madeline says she has not received a single letter from you since you arrived at the Hall, and she wishes to know why. She is greatly distressed at your abominable neglect, and I am not surprised. You know how sensitive she is. You ought to have been writing to her every day. I have no words to express what I think of your heartless behaviour. That is all, Augustus,’ she said, and dismissed me with a gesture of loathing, as if I had been a green-fly that had fallen short of even the very moderate level of decency of the average run-of-the-mill green-fly. And I tottered off and groped my way to a rustic bench and sank onto it.

  The information which she had sprung on me had, I need scarcely say, affected me like the impact behind the ear of a stocking full of wet sand. Only once in my career had I experienced an emotion equally intense, on the occasion when Freddie Widgeon at the Drones, having possessed himself of a motor horn, stole up behind me as I crossed Dover Street in what is known as a reverie and suddenly tooted the apparatus in my immediate ear.

  It had never so much as occurred to me to suppose that Gussie was not writing daily letters to the Bassett. It was what he had come to this Edgar Allen Poe residence to do, and I had taken it for granted that he was doing it. I didn’t need a diagram to show me what the run of events would be, if he persisted in this policy of ca’canny. A spot more silence on his part, and along would come La Bassett in person to investigate, and the thought of what would happen then froze the blood and made the toes curl.

  I suppose it may have been for a matter of about ten minutes that I sat there inert, the jaw drooping, the eyes staring sightlessly at the surrounding scenery. Then I pulled myself together and resumed my journey. It has been well said of Bertram Wooster that though he may sink onto rustic benches and for a while give the impression of being licked to a custard, the old spirit will always come surging back sooner or later.

  As I walked, I was thinking hard and bitter thoughts of Corky, the fons et origo, if you know what I mean by fons et origo, of all the trouble. It was she who, by shamelessly flirting with him, by persistently giving him the flashing smile and the quick sidelong look out of the corner of the eye, had taken Gussie’s mind off his job and slowed him up as our correspondent on the spot. Oh, Woman, Woman, I said to myself, not for the first time, feeling that the sooner the sex was suppressed, the better it would be for all of us.

  At the age of eight, in the old dancing-class days, incensed by some incisive remarks on her part about my pimples, of which I had a notable collection at that time, I once forgot myself to the extent of socking Corky Pirbright on the top-knot with a wooden dumb-bell, and until this moment I had always regretted the unpleasant affair, considering my action a blot on an otherwise stainless record and, no matter what the provocation, scarcely the behaviour of a preux chevalier. But now, as I brooded on the Delilah stuff she was pulling, I found myself wishing I could do it again.

  I strode on, rehearsing in my mind some opening sentence to be employed when we should meet, and not far from the Vicarage came upon her seated at the wheel of her car by the side of the road.

  But when I confronted her and said I wanted a word with her, she regretted that it couldn’t be managed at the moment. It was, she explained, her busy afternoon. In pursuance of her policy of being the Little Mother to her uncle, the sainted Sidney, she was about to take a bowl of strengthening soup to one of his needy parishioners.

  ‘A Mrs Clara Wellbeloved, if you want to keep the record straight,’ she proceeded. ‘She lives in one of those picturesque cottages off the High Street. And it’s no good you waiting,
because after delivering the bouillon I sit and talk to her about Hollywood. She’s a great fan, and it takes hours. Some other time, my lamb.’

  ‘Listen, Corky –’

  ‘You are probably saying to yourself “Where’s the soup?” I unfortunately forgot to bring it along, and Gussie has trotted back for it. What a delightful man he is, Bertie. So kind. So helpful. Always on hand to run errands, when required, and with a fund of good stories about newts. I’ve given him my autograph. Speaking of autographs, I heard from your cousin Thomas this morning.’

  ‘Never mind about young Thos. What I want –’

  She broke into speech again, as girls always do. I have had a good deal of experience of this tendency on the part of the female sex to refrain from listening when you talk to them, and it has always made me sympathize with those fellows who tried to charm the deaf adder and had it react like a Wednesday matinée audience.

  ‘You remember I gave him fifty of my autographs, and he expected to sell them to his playmates at sixpence apiece? Well, he tells me that he got a bob, not sixpence, which will give you a rough idea of how I stand with the boys at Bramley-on-Sea. He says a genuine Ida Lupino only fetches ninepence.’

  ‘Listen, Corky –’

  ‘He wants to come and spend his midterm holiday at the Vicarage, and, of course, I’ve written to say that I shall be delighted. I don’t think Uncle Sidney is too happy at the prospect, but it’s good for a clergyman to have these trials. Makes him more spiritual, and consequently hotter at his job.’

  ‘Listen, Corky. What I want to talk to you about –’

  ‘Ah, here’s Gussie,’ she said, once more doing the deaf adder.

  Gussie came bounding up with a look of reverent adoration on his face and a steaming can in his hands. Corky gave him a dazzling smile which seemed to go through him like a red-hot bullet through a pat of butter, and stowed the can away in the rumble seat.

  ‘Thank you, Gussie darling,’ she said. ‘Well, good-bye all. I must rush.’

  She drove off, Gussie standing gaping after her transfixed, like a goldfish staring at an ant’s egg. He did not, however, remain transfixed long, because I got him between the third and fourth ribs with a forceful finger, causing him to come to life with a sharp ‘Ouch!’

  ‘Gussie,’ I said, getting down to brass tacks and beating about no bushes. ‘What’s all this about you not writing to Madeline?’

  ‘Madeline?’

  ‘Madeline.’

  ‘Oh, Madeline?’

  ‘Yes, Madeline. You ought to have been writing to her every day’

  This seemed to annoy him.

  ‘How on earth could I write to her every day? What chance do I get to write letters when my time is all taken up with memorizing my lines in this cross-talk act and thinking up effective business? I haven’t a moment.’

  ‘Well, you’ll jolly well have to find a moment. Do you realize she’s started sending telegrams about it? You must write to-day without fail.’

  ‘What, to Madeline?’

  ‘Yes, blast you, to Madeline.’

  I was surprised to see that he was glowering sullenly through his windshields.

  ‘I’ll be blowed if I write to Madeline,’ he said, and would have looked like a mule if he had not looked so like a fish. ‘I’m teaching her a lesson.’

  ‘You’re what?’

  ‘Teaching her a lesson. I’m not at all pleased with Madeline. She wanted me to come to this ghastly house, and I consented on the understanding that she would come, too, and give me moral support. It was a clear-cut gentlemen’s agreement. And at the last moment she coolly backed out on the flimsy plea that some school friend of hers at Wimbledon needed her. I was extremely annoyed, and I let her see it. She must be made to realize that she can’t do that sort of thing. So I’m not writing to her. It’s a sort of system.’

  I clutched at the brow. The mice in my interior had now got up an informal dance and were buck-and-winging all over the place like a bunch of Nijinskys.

  ‘Gussie,’ I said, ‘once and for all, will you or will you not go back to the house and compose an eight-page letter breathing love in every syllable?’

  ‘No, I won’t,’ he said and left me flat.

  Baffled and despondent, I returned to the Hall. And the first person I saw there was Catsmeat. He was in my room, lying on the bed with one of my cigarettes in his mouth.

  There was a sort of dreamy look on his dial, as if he were thinking of Gertrude Winkworth.

  CHAPTER 11

  Observing me, he switched off the dreamy look.

  ‘Oh, hallo, Bertie,’ he said. ‘I wanted to see you.’

  ‘Oh, yes?’ I riposted, quick as a flash, and I meant it to sting, for I was feeling a bit fed up with Catsmeat.

  I mean, of his own free will he had taken on the job of valeting me, and in his capacity of my gentleman’s personal gentleman should have been in and out all the time, brushing here a coat, pressing there a trouser and generally making himself useful, and I hadn’t set eyes on him since the night we had arrived. One frowns on this absenteeism.

  ‘I wanted to tell you the good news.’

  I laughed hollowly.

  ‘Good news? Is there such a thing?’

  ‘You bet there’s such a thing. Things are looking up. The sun is smiling through. I believe I’m going to swing this Gertrude deal. Owing to the footling social conventions which prevent visiting valets hobnobbing with the daughter of the house, I haven’t seen her, of course, to speak to, but I’ve been sending her notes by Jeeves and she has been sending me notes by Jeeves, and in her latest she shows distinct signs of yielding to my prayers. I think about two more communications, if carefully worded, should do the trick. Don’t actually buy the fish-slice yet, but be prepared.’

  My pique vanished. As I have said before, the Woosters are fairminded. I knew what a dickens of a sweat these love letters are, a whole-time job calling for incessant concentration. If Catsmeat had been tied up with a lot of correspondence of this type, he wouldn’t have had much time for attending to my wardrobe, of course. You can’t press your suit and another fellow’s trousers simultaneously.

  ‘Well, that’s fine,’ I said, pleased to learn that, though the general outlook was so scaly, someone was getting a break. ‘I shall watch your future progress with considerable interest. But pigeon-holing your love life for the moment, Catsmeat, a most frightful thing has happened, and I should be glad if you could come across with anything in the aid-and-comfort line. That criminal lunatic Gussie –’

  ‘What’s he been doing?’

  ‘It’s what he’s not been doing that’s the trouble. You could have flattened me with a toothpick just now when I found out that he hasn’t written a single line to Madeline Bassett since he got here. And, what’s more, he says he isn’t going to write to her. He says he’s teaching her a lesson,’ I said, and in a few brief words placed the facts before him.

  He looked properly concerned. Catsmeat’s is a kindly and feeling heart, readily moved by the spectacle of an old friend splashing about in the gumbo, and he knows how I stand with regard to Madeline Bassett, because she told him the whole story one day when they met at a bazaar and the subject of me happened to come up.

  ‘This is rather serious,’ he said.

  ‘You bet it’s serious. I’m shaking like a leaf.’

  ‘Girls of the Madeline Bassett type attach such importance to the daily letter.’

  ‘Exactly. And if it fails to arrive, they come and make inquiries on the spot.’

  ‘And you say Gussie was not to be moved?’

  ‘Not an inch. I pleaded with him, I may say passionately, but he put his ears back and refused to co-operate.’

  Catsmeat pondered.

  ‘I think I know what’s behind all this. The trouble is that Gussie at the moment is slightly off his rocker.’

  ‘What do you mean, at the moment? And why slightly?’

  ‘He’s infatuated with Corky. Sorry to
use such long words. I mean he’s got a crush on her.’

  ‘I know he has. So does everybody else for miles around. His crush is the favourite topic of conversation when aunt meets aunt.’

  ‘There has been comment in the servants’ hall, too.’

  ‘I’m not surprised. I’ll bet they’re discussing the thing in Basingstoke.’

  ‘You can’t blame him, of course.’

  ‘Yes, I can.’

  ‘I mean, it isn’t his fault, really. This is springtime, Bertie, the mating season, when, as you probably know, a livelier iris gleams upon the burnished dove and a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love. The sudden impact plumb spang in the middle of spring, of a girl like Corky on a fathead like Gussie, weakened by constantly swilling orange juice, must have been terrific. Corky, when she’s going nicely, bowls over the strongest. No one knows that better than you. You were making a colossal ass of yourself over her at one time.’

  ‘No need to rake up the dead past.’

  ‘I only raked it up to drive home my point, which is that he is more to be pitied than censured.’

  ‘She’s the one that wants censuring. Why does she encourage him?’

  ‘I don’t think she encourages him. He just adheres.’

  ‘She does encourage him. I’ve seen her doing it. She deliberately turns on the charm and gives him the old personality. Don’t tell me that a girl like Corky, accustomed to giving Hollywood glamour men the brusheroo, couldn’t put Gussie on ice, if she wanted to.’

  ‘But she doesn’t.’

  ‘That’s what I’m beefing about.’

  ‘And I’ll tell you why she doesn’t. I haven’t actually asked her, but I’m pretty sure she’s working this Gussie continuity with the idea of sticking the harpoon into Esmond Haddock. To show him that if he doesn’t want her, there are others who do.’

  ‘But he does want her.’

  ‘She doesn’t know that. Unless you’ve told her.’

  ‘I haven’t.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I wasn’t sure if it would be the correct procedure. You see, he dished out all that stuff about his inner feelings under the seal of the confessional, as you might say, and he said he didn’t want it to go any further. “This must go no further,” he said. On the other hand, a word in season might quite easily reunite a couple of sundered hearts. The whole thing is extraordinarily moot.’