The Mating Season Page 7

  ‘I do feel a little fatigued after my journey,’ I said.

  ‘Silversmith will show you to your room,’ she replied, and I perceived that Uncle Charlie was in our midst. I had not seen or heard him arrive. Like Jeeves, he had manifested himself silently out of the void. No doubt these things run in families.

  ‘Silversmith.’

  ‘Madam?’

  ‘Show Mr Fink-Nottle to his room,’ said Dame Daphne, though I could see that she was feeling that ‘help’ would have been more the mot juste.

  ‘Very good, madam.’

  I noticed that the man was limping slightly, seeming to suggest that Sam Goldwyn had connected with his calf, but I forbore to probe and question, realizing that the subject, like the calf, might be a sore one. I followed him up the stairs to a well-appointed chamber and wished him a cheery goodnight.

  ‘Oh, Silversmith,’ I said.

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Has my man arrived?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘You might send him along.’

  ‘Very good, sir.’

  He withdrew, and a few minutes later there entered a familiar form.

  But it wasn’t the familiar form of Jeeves. It was the familiar form of Claude Cattermole Pirbright.

  CHAPTER 7

  Well, I suppose if I had been a Seigneur of the Middle Ages – somebody like Childe Roland, for instance – in the days when you couldn’t throw a brick without beaning a magician or a wizard or a sorcerer and people were always getting changed into something else, I wouldn’t have given the thing a second thought. I would just have said ‘Ah, so Jeeves has had a spell cast on him and been turned into Catsmeat, has he? Too bad. Still, that’s life’, and carried on regardless, calling for my pipe and my bowl and my fiddlers three.

  But nowadays you tend to lose this easy outlook, and it would be wilfully deceiving my public to say that I did not take it big. I stared at the man, my eyes coming out of the parent sockets like a snail’s and waving about on their stems.

  ‘Catsmeat!’ I yipped.

  He waggled his head frowningly, like a conspirator when a fellow-conspirator has said the wrong thing.

  ‘Meadowes,’ he corrected.

  ‘What do you mean, Meadowes?’

  ‘That is my name while I remain in your employment. I’m your man.’

  A solution occurred to me. I have already mentioned that the port which I had swigged perhaps a little too freely in Esmond Haddock’s society was of a fine old vintage and full of body. It now struck me that it must have had even more authority than I had supposed and that Dame Daphne Winkworth had been perfectly correct in assuming that I was scrooched. And I was about to turn my face to the wall and try to sleep it off, when he proceeded.

  ‘Your valet. Your attendant. Your gentleman’s personal gentleman. It’s quite simple. Jeeves couldn’t come.’

  ‘What!’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You mean Jeeves isn’t going to be at my side?’

  ‘That’s right. So I am taking his place. What are you doing?’

  ‘Turning my face to the wall.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Well, wouldn’t you turn your face to the wall if you were trapped in a place like this with everybody thinking you were Gussie Fink-Nottle and without Jeeves to comfort and advise? Oh, hell! Oh, blast! Oh, damn! Why couldn’t Jeeves come? Is he ill?’

  ‘I don’t think so. I speak only as a layman, of course, not as a medical man, but the last I saw of him he seemed pretty full of vitamins. Sparkling eyes. Rosy cheeks. No, Jeeves isn’t ill. What stopped him coming was the fact that his Uncle Charlie is the butler here.’

  ‘Why the devil should that stop him?’

  ‘My good Bertie, use your intelligence, if any. Uncle Charlie knows that Jeeves is your keeper. No doubt Jeeves writes him weekly letters, saying how happy he is with you and how nothing would ever induce him to switch elsewhere. Well, what would happen if he suddenly showed up in attendance on Gussie Fink-Nottle? I’ll tell you what would happen. Uncle Charlie’s suspicions would be aroused. “Something fishy here,” he would say to himself. And before you knew where you were he would be tearing off your whiskers and denouncing you. Obviously Jeeves couldn’t come.’

  I was forced to admit that there was something in this. But I still chafed.

  ‘Why didn’t he tell me?’

  ‘It only occurred to him after you had left.’

  ‘And why couldn’t he have squared Silversmith?’

  ‘That point came up when we were discussing the thing, and Jeeves said his Uncle Charlie was one of those fellows who can’t be squared. A man of very rigid principles.’

  ‘Every man has his price.’

  ‘Not Jeeves’s Uncle Charlie. My gosh, Bertie, what a lad! He received me when I arrived, and my bones turned to water. Do you remember the effect King Solomon had on the Queen of Sheba at their first meeting? My reactions were somewhat similar. “The half was not told unto me,” I said to myself. If it hadn’t been for Queenie leading me from the presence and buoying me up with a quick cooking sherry, I might have swooned in my tracks.’

  ‘Who’s Queenie?’

  ‘Haven’t you met her? The parlourmaid. Delightful girl. Engaged to the village policeman, a fellow named Dobbs. Have you ever tasted cooking sherry, Bertie? Odd stuff.’

  I felt that we were wandering from the nub. This was no time for desultory chit-chat about cooking sherry.

  ‘But, look here, dash it, I can understand Jeeves’s reasons for backing out, but I can’t see why you had to come.’

  He raised a couple of eyebrows.

  ‘You can’t see why I had to come? Didn’t you yourself say with your own lips, when we were discussing the idea of me understudying Gussie, that this was the one place where I ought to be? It’s vital that I should be on the spot, seeing Gertrude constantly, pleading with her, reasoning with her, trying to break down her sales resistance.’ He paused, and gave me a penetrating look. ‘You’ve nothing against my being here, have you?’

  ‘Well . . .’

  ‘So!’ he said, and his voice was cold and hard, like a picnic egg. ‘You have some far-fetched objection to the scheme, have you? You don’t want me to win the girl I love?’

  ‘Of course I want you to win the bally girl you love.’

  ‘Well, I can’t do it by mail.’

  ‘But I don’t see why you’ve got to be at the Hall. Why couldn’t you have stayed at the Vicarage?’

  ‘You couldn’t expect Uncle Sidney to have Corky and me on the premises. The mixture would be too rich.’

  ‘At the inn, then.’

  ‘There isn’t an inn. Only what they call beer-houses.’

  ‘You could have got a bed at a cottage.’

  ‘And shared it with the cottager? No, thanks. How many beds do you think these birds have?’

  I relapsed into a baffled silence. But it is never any good repining on these occasions. When I next spoke, I doubt if Catsmeat spotted the suspicion of a tremor in the voice. We Woosters are like that. In moments of mental anguish we resemble those Red Indians who, while getting cooked to a crisp at the stake, never failed to be the life and soul of the party.

  ‘Have you seen her?’ I asked.

  ‘Gertrude? Yes, just before I came up here. I was in the hall, and she suddenly appeared from the drawing-room.’

  ‘I suppose she was surprised.’

  ‘Surprised is right. She swayed and tottered. Queenie said “Oh, miss, are you ill?” and rushed off to get sal volatile.’

  ‘Oh, Queenie was there?’

  ‘Yes, Queenie was there with her hair in a braid. She had just been telling me how worried she was about her betrothed’s spiritual outlook. He’s an atheist.’

  ‘So Corky told me.’

  ‘And every time she tries to make him see the light, he just twirls his moustache and talks Ingersoll at her. This upsets the poor girl.’

  ‘She’s very pretty’

 
‘Extraordinarily pretty. I don’t remember ever having seen a prettier parlourmaid.’

  ‘Gertrude. Not Queenie.’

  ‘Oh, Gertrude. Well, dash it, you don’t need to tell me that. She’s the top. She begins where Helen of Troy left off’

  ‘Did you get a chance to talk to her?’

  ‘Unfortunately no. A couple of aunts came out of the drawing-room, and I had to leg it. That’s the trouble about being a valet. You can’t mix. By the way, Bertie, I’ve found out something of the utmost importance. That Lovers’ Leap binge is fixed for next Thursday. Queenie told me. She’s cutting the sandwiches. I hope you haven’t weakened? You are still in your splendid, resolute frame of mind of yesterday? I can rely on you to foil and battle that foul blot, Esmond Haddock?’

  ‘I like Esmond Haddock.’

  ‘Then you ought to be ashamed of yourself.’

  I smiled an indulgent smile.

  ‘It’s all right, Catsmeat. You can simmer down. Gertrude Winkworth means nothing to Esmond Haddock. He’s not really pursuing her with his addresses.’

  ‘Don’t be an ass. How about the Lovers’ Leap? What price the sandwiches?’

  ‘All that stuff is just to make Corky jealous.’

  ‘What!’

  ‘He thinks it will bring her round. You see, he didn’t give Corky the brush-off. You had your facts twisted. She gave him the brush-off, because they had differed on a point of policy, and she is still the lodestar of his life. I had this from his own lips. We got matey over the port. So you can cease to regard him as a menace.’

  He gaped at me. You could see hope beginning to dawn.

  ‘Is this official?’

  ‘Absolutely’

  ‘You say Corky is the lodestar of his life?’

  ‘That’s what he told me.’

  And all this rushing Gertrude is just a ruse?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  Catsmeat expelled a deep breath. It sounded like the final effort of a Dying Rooster.

  ‘My gosh, you’ve taken a weight off my mind.’

  ‘I thought you’d be pleased.’

  ‘You bet I’m pleased. Well, goodnight.’

  ‘You’re off?’

  ‘Yes, I shall leave you now, Bertie, much as I enjoy your society, because I have man’s work to do elsewhere. When I was chatting with Queenie, she happened to mention that she knows where Uncle Charlie keeps the key of the cellar. So long. I shall hope to see more of you later.’

  ‘Just a second. Will you be seeing Corky shortly?’

  ‘First thing to-morrow morning. I must let her know I’m here and put her in touch with the general situation, so that she will be warned against making any floaters. Why?’

  ‘Tell her from me that she has got to find somebody else for Pat.’

  ‘You’re walking out on the act?’

  ‘Yes, I am,’ I said, and put him abreast.

  He listened intelligently, and said he quite understood.

  ‘I see. Yes, I think you’re right. I’ll tell her.’

  He withdrew, walking on the tips of his toes and conveying in his manner the suggestion that if he had had a hat and that hat had contained roses, he would have started strewing them from it, and for a while the thought that I had been instrumental in re-sunshining a pal’s life bucked me up no little.

  But it takes more than that to buck a fellow up permanently who is serving an indeterminate sentence in a place like Deverill Hall, and it was not long before I was in sombre mood again, trying to find the bluebird but missing it by a wide margin.

  I have generally found on these occasions when the heart is heavy that the best thing to do is to curl up with a good goose-flesher and try to forget, and fortunately I had packed among my effects one called Murder At Grey stone Grange. I started to turn its pages now, and found that I couldn’t have made a sounder move. It was one of those works in which Baronets are constantly being discovered dead in libraries and the heroine can’t turn in for a night without a Thing popping through a panel in the wall of her bedroom and starting to chuck its weight about, and it was not long before I was so soothed that I was able to switch off the light and fall into a refreshing sleep, which lasted, as my refreshing sleeps always do, till the coming of the morning cup of tea.

  My last thought, just before the tired eyelids closed, was that I had had an idea that I had heard the front-door bell ring and a murmur of distant voices, seeming to indicate the blowing-in of another guest.

  It was Silversmith who brought me my tea ration, and though his manner, on the chilly side, suggested that the overnight activities of Sam Goldwyn still rankled, I had a dash at setting the conversational ball rolling. I always like, if I can, to establish matey relations between tea bringer and tea recipient.

  ‘Oh, good morning, Silversmith, good morning,’ I said. ‘What sort of a day is it, Silversmith? Fine?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘The lark on the wing and the snail on the thorn and all that?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Splendid. Oh, Silversmith,’ I said, ‘I don’t know if it was but a dream, but latish last night I fancied I heard the front-door bell doing its stuff and a good lot of off-stage talking going on. Was I right? Did someone arrive after closing time?’

  ‘Yes, sir. Mr Wooster.’

  He gave me a cold look, as if to remind me that he would prefer not to be drawn into conversation with the man responsible for introducing Sam Goldwyn into his life, and vanished, leaving not a wrack behind.

  And it was, as you may well imagine, a pensive Bertram with a puzzled frown on his face who propped himself against the pillows and sipped from the teacup. I could make nothing of this.

  ‘Mr Wooster’, the man had said, and only two explanations seemed to offer themselves – (a) that, like the fellows in the train at Wembley, I had not heard correctly and (b) that I had recently been in the presence of a butler who had been having a couple.

  Neither theory satisfied me. From boyhood up my hearing has always been of the keenest, and as for the possibility of Silversmith having had one over the eight, I dismissed that instanter. It is a very frivolous butler who gets a load before nine in the morning, and I have gone sadly astray in my delineation of character if I have given my public the impression that Jeeves’s Uncle Charlie was frivolous. You could imagine Little Lord Fauntleroy getting a skinful, but not Silversmith.

  And yet he had unquestionably said ‘Mr Wooster’.

  I was still pondering like billy-o and nowhere near spiking a plausible solution of the mystery, when the door opened and the ghost of Jeeves entered, carrying a breakfast tray.

  CHAPTER 8

  I say ‘the ghost of Jeeves’ because in that first awful moment that was what I had the apparition docketed as. The words ‘What ho! A spectre!’ trembled on my lips, and I reacted rather like the heroine of Murder At Grey stone Grange on discovering that the Thing had come to doss in her room. I don’t know if you have ever seen a ghost, but the general effect is to give you quite a start.

  Then the scent of bacon floated to the nostrils, and feeling that it was improbable that a wraith would be horsing about the place with dishes of eggs and b., I calmed down a bit. That is to say, I stopped upsetting the tea and was able to stutter. It is true that all I said was ‘Jeeves!’ but that wasn’t such bad going for one whose tongue had so recently been tangled up with the uvula, besides cleaving to the roof of the mouth.

  He dumped the tray on my lap.

  ‘Good morning, sir,’ he said. ‘I fancied that you would possibly wish to enjoy your breakfast in the privacy of your apartment, rather than make one of the party in the dining-room.’

  Cognizant as I was of the fact that in that dining-room there would be five aunts, one of them deaf, one of them dotty, one of them Dame Daphne Winkworth, and all of them totally unfit for human consumption on an empty stomach, I applauded the kindly gesture; all the more heartily because it had just occurred to me that in a house like this, whe
re things were sure to be run on old-fashioned lines rather than in a manner of keeping with the trend of modern thought, the butler probably waited at the breakfast-table.

  ‘Does he?’ I asked. ‘Does Silversmith minister to the revellers at the morning meal?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘My God!’ I said, paling beneath the tan. ‘What a man, Jeeves!’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Your Uncle Charlie.’

  ‘Ah, yes, sir. A forceful personality’

  ‘Forceful is correct. What’s that thing of Shakespeare’s about someone having an eye like Mother’s?’

  An eye like Mars, to threaten and command, is possibly the quotation for which you are groping, sir.’

  ‘That’s right. Uncle Charlie has an eye like that. You really call him Uncle Charlie?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  Amazing. To me, to think of him as Uncle Charlie is like thinking of him as Jimmy or Reggie, or, for the matter ofthat, Bertie. Used he in your younger days to dandle you on his knee?’

  ‘Quite frequently, sir.’

  And you didn’t quail? You must have been a child of blood and iron.’ I addressed myself to the platter once more. ‘Extraordinarily good bacon, this, Jeeves.’

  ‘Home cured, I understand, sir.’

  And made, no doubt, from contented pigs. Kippers, too, not to mention toast, marmalade and, unless my senses deceive me, an apple. Say what you will of Deverill Hall, its hospitality is lavish. I don’t know if you have ever noticed it, Jeeves, but a good, spirited kipper first thing in the morning seems to put heart into you.’

  ‘Very true, sir, though I myself am more partial to a slice of ham.’

  For some moments we discussed the relative merits of ham and kippers as buckers-up of the morale, there being much, of course, to be said on both sides, and then I touched on something which I had been meaning to touch on earlier. I can’t think how it came to slip my mind.

  ‘Oh, Jeeves,’ I said, ‘I knew there was something I wanted to ask you. What in the name of everything bloodsome are you doing here?’