Madame Eulalie’s Rare PlumsCosmopolitan, October 1929
THERE is a ghastly moment in the year, generally about the beginning of August, when Jeeves insists on taking a holiday, the slacker, and legs it off to some seaside resort for a couple of weeks, leaving me stranded. This moment had now arrived, and we were discussing what was to be done with the young master.
“I had gathered the impression, sir,” said Jeeves, “that you were proposing to accept Mr. Sipperley’s invitation to join him at his Hampshire residence.”
I laughed. One of those bitter, rasping ones.
“Correct, Jeeves. I was. But mercifully I was enabled to discover young Sippy’s foul plot in time. Do you know what?”
“No, sir.”
“My spies informed me that Sippy’s fiancée, Miss Moon, was to be there. Also his fiancée’s mother, Mrs. Moon, and his fiancee’s small brother, Master Moon. You see the hideous treachery lurking behind the invitation?
“Obviously, my job was to be the task of keeping Mrs. Moon and little Sebastian Moon interested and amused while Sippy and his blighted girl went off for the day, roaming the pleasant woodlands and talking of this and that. I doubt if anyone has ever had a narrower escape. You remember little Sebastian?”
“Yes, sir.”
“His goggle-eyes? His golden curls?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I don’t know why it is, but I’ve never been able to bear with fortitude anything in the shape of a kid with golden curls. Confronted with one, I feel the urge to step on him or drop things on him from a height.”
“Many strong natures are affected in the same way, sir.”
“So no chez Sippy for me. Was that the front doorbell ringing?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Somebody stands without?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Better go and see who it is.”
“Yes, sir.”
He oozed off, to return a moment later bearing a telegram. I opened it, and a soft smile played about the lips.
“Amazing how often things happen as if on a cue, Jeeves. This is from Aunt Dahlia, inviting me down to her place in Worcestershire.”
“Most satisfactory, sir.”
“Yes. How I came to overlook her when searching for a haven, I can’t think. The ideal home from home. Picturesque surroundings, company’s own water and the best cook in England. You have not forgotten Anatole?”
“No, sir.”
“And above all, Jeeves, at Aunt Dahlia’s there should be an almost total shortage of blasted kids. True, there is her son Bonzo, who, I take it, will be home for the holidays, but I don’t mind Bonzo. Buzz off and send a wire, accepting.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And then shove a few necessaries together, including golf clubs and tennis racket.”
“Very good, sir. I am glad that matters have been so happily adjusted.”
I think I have mentioned before that my Aunt Dahlia stands alone in the grim regiment of my aunts as a real sort and a chirpy sportsman. She is the one, if you remember, who married old Tom Travers and, with the assistance of Jeeves, lured Mrs. Bingo Little’s French cook, Anatole, into her own employment.
To visit her is always a pleasure. She generally has some cheery birds staying with her, and there is none of that rot about getting up for breakfast which one is so sadly apt to find at country houses.
It was, accordingly, with unalloyed lightness of heart that I edged the two-seater into the garage at Brinkley Court, Worc., and strolled round to the house by way of the shrubbery and the tennis lawn, to report arrival. I had just got across the lawn when a head poked itself out of the smoking-room window and beamed at me in an amiable sort of way.
“Ah, Mr. Wooster,” it said.
“What ho,” I replied, not to be outdone in the courtesies.
It had taken me a couple of seconds to place this head. I now perceived that it belonged to a rather moth-eaten septuagenarian of the name of Anstruther, an old friend of Aunt Dahlia’s late father. I had met him at her house in London once or twice. An agreeable cove, but somewhat given to nervous breakdowns.
“Just arrived?” he asked, beaming as before.
“This minute,” I said, also beaming.
“I fancy you will find our good hostess in the drawing-room.”
“Right,” I said, and after a bit more beaming to and fro I pushed on.
Aunt Dahlia was in the drawing-room, and welcomed me with gratifying enthusiasm. She beamed, too. It was one of those big days for beamers.
“Hullo, ugly,” she said. “So here you are. Thank heaven you were able to come.”
It was the right tone, and one I should be glad to hear in others of the family circle, notably my Aunt Agatha.
“Always a pleasure to enjoy your hosp., Aunt Dahlia,” I said cordially. “I anticipate a delightful and restful visit. I see you’ve got Mr. Anstruther staying here. Anybody else?”
“Do you know Lord Snettisham?” Aunt Dahlia asked.
“I’ve met him, racing,” I answered.
“He’s here, and Lady Snettisham.”
“And Bonzo, of course?”
“Yes. And Thomas.”
“Uncle Thomas?”
“No, he’s in Scotland. Your cousin Thomas.”
“You don’t mean Aunt Agatha’s loathly son?”
“Of course I do. How many cousin Thomases do you think you’ve got, fathead? Agatha has gone to Homburg and planted the child on me.”
I was visibly agitated.
“But Aunt Dahlia! Do you realize what you’ve taken on? Have you an inkling of the scourge you’ve introduced into your home? In the society of young Thos., strong men quail. He is England’s premier fiend in human shape. There is no devilry beyond his scope.”
“That’s what I always gathered from the form book,” agreed the relative. “But just now, curse him, he’s behaving like something out of a Sunday-school story. You see, poor old Mr. Anstruther is very frail these days, and when he found he was in a house containing two small boys he acted promptly. He offered a prize of five pounds to whichever behaved best during his stay.
“The consequence is that, ever since, Thomas has had large white wings sprouting out of his shoulders.” A shadow seemed to pass across her face. She appeared embittered. “Mercenary little brute!” she said. “I never saw such a sickeningly well-behaved kid in my life. It’s enough to make one despair of human nature.”
I couldn’t follow her. “But isn’t that all to the good?” I asked.
“No, it’s not.”
“I can’t see why. Surely a smug, oily Thos. about the house is better than a Thos. raging hither and thither and being a menace to society? Stands to reason.”
“It doesn’t stand to anything of the kind. You see, Bertie, this Good Conduct prize has made things a bit complex. There are wheels within wheels. The thing stirred Jane Snettisham’s sporting blood to such an extent that she insisted on having a bet with me on the result.”
A great light shone upon me. I got what she was driving at.
“Ah!” I said. “Now I follow. Now I see. Now I comprehend. She’s betting on Thos., is she?”
“Yes. And naturally, knowing him, I thought the thing was in the bag.”
“Of course.”
“I couldn’t see myself losing. Heaven knows I have no illusions about my darling Bonzo. Bonzo is, and has been from birth, a pest. But to bet that he would nose out Thomas in a Good Conduct contest seemed to me simply money for jam.”
“Absolutely.”
“When it comes to devilry, Bonzo is just a good, ordinary selling plater, whereas Thomas is a classic yearling.”
“Exactly. I don’t see that you have any cause to worry. Thos. can’t last. He’s bound to crack.”
“Yes. But before that the mischief may be done.”
“Mischief?”
“Yes. There is dirty work afoot, Bertie,” said Aunt Dahlia gravely. “When I booked this bet, I reckoned without the hideous blackness of the Snettisham soul. Only yesterday it came to my knowledge that Jack Snettisham had been urging Bonzo to climb on the roof and boo down Mr. Anstruther’s chimney.”
“No!”
“Yes. Mr. Anstruther is very frail, poor old fellow, and it would have frightened him into a fit. On coming out of which, his first action would have been to disqualify Bonzo and declare Thomas the winner by default.”
“But Bonzo did not boo?”
“No,” said Aunt Dahlia, and a mother’s pride rang in her voice. “He firmly refused to boo. Mercifully, he is in love at the moment, and it has quite altered his nature. He scorned the tempter.”
“In love? With whom?”
“Lillian Gish. We had an old film of hers at the Bijou Dream in the village a week ago, and Bonzo saw her for the first time. He came out with a pale, set face, and ever since has been trying to lead a finer, better life. So the peril was averted.”
“That’s good.”
“Yes. But now it’s my turn. You don’t suppose I am going to take a thing like that lying down, do you? Treat me right, and I am fairness itself; but if there is going to be any of this nobbling of starters, they’ll jolly well find I can play that game, too.
“If this Good Conduct contest is to be run on rough lines, I can do my bit as well as anyone. Far too much hangs on the issue for me to handicap myself by remembering the lessons I learned at my mother’s knee.”
“Lot of money involved?”
“Much more than mere money. I’ve bet Anatole against Jane Snettisham’s kitchenmaid.”
“Great Scott! Uncle Thomas will have something to say if he comes back and finds Anatole gone.”
“And won’t he say it!”
“Pretty long odds. I mean, Anatole is famed far and wide as a hash-slinger without peer.”
“Well, Jane Snettisham’s kitchenmaid is not to be sneezed at. She is very hot stuff, they tell me, and good kitchenmaids nowadays are about as rare as original Holbeins. Besides, I had to give her a shade the better of the odds. She stood out for it.
“Well, anyway, to get back to what I was saying, if the opposition are going to place temptations in Bonzo’s path, they shall jolly well be placed in Thomas’ path, too, and plenty of them. So ring for Jeeves and let him get his brain working.”
“But I haven’t brought Jeeves.”
“You haven’t brought Jeeves?”
“No. He always takes his holiday at this time of year. He’s down at Bognor for the shrimping.”
Aunt Dahlia registered deep concern. “Then send for him at once! What earthly use do you suppose you are without Jeeves, you poor ditherer?”
I drew myself up a trifle—in fact, if I recollect rightly, to my full height. Nobody has a greater respect for Jeeves than I have, but the Wooster pride was stung.
“Jeeves isn’t the only one with brains,” I said coolly. “Leave this thing to me, Aunt Dahlia. By dinner time tonight I shall hope to have a fully matured scheme to submit for your approval. If I can’t thoroughly encompass this Thos., I’ll eat my hat.”
“About all you’ll get to eat if Anatole leaves,” said Aunt Dahlia in a manner which I did not like to see.
I was brooding pretty tensely as I left the presence. I have always had a suspicion that Aunt Dahlia, while invariably matey and bonhomous and seeming to take pleasure in my society, has a lower opinion of my intelligence than I quite like. Too often it is her practice to address me as fathead, and if I put forward any little thought or idea or fancy in her hearing it is apt to be greeted with the affectionate but jarring guffaw.
In our interview she had hinted quite plainly that she considered me negligible in a crisis which, like the present one, called for initiative and resource. It was my intention to show her how greatly she had underestimated me.
To let you see the sort of fellow I really am, I got a ripe, excellent idea before I had gone halfway down the corridor. I examined it for the space of one and a half cigarets, and could see no flaw in it, provided—I say, provided old Mr. Anstruther’s notion of what constituted bad conduct squared with mine.
The great thing on these occasions, as Jeeves will tell you, is to get a toe hold on the psychology of the individual. Study the individual, and you will bring home the bacon.
Now, I had been studying young Thos. for years, and I knew his psychology from caviar to nuts. He is one of those kids who never let the sun go down on their wrath, if you know what I mean. I mean to say, do something to annoy or offend or upset this juvenile thug and he will proceed at the earliest possible opp. to wreak a hideous vengeance upon you.
Only the previous summer, for instance, it having been drawn to his attention that the man had reported him for smoking, he had marooned a cabinet minister on an island in the lake at Aunt Agatha’s place in Hertfordshire—in the rain, mark you, and with no company but that of one of the nastiest-minded swans I have ever encountered. Well, I mean!
So now it seemed to me that a few well-chosen taunts, or gibes, directed at his more sensitive points, must infallibly induce in this Thos. a frame of mind which would lead to his working some sensational violence upon me. And if you wonder that I was willing to sacrifice myself to this frightful extent in order to do Aunt Dahlia a bit of good, I can only say that we Woosters are like that.
The one point that seemed to me to want a spot of cleaning up was this—viz: Would old Mr. Anstruther consider an outrage perpetrated on the person of Bertram Wooster a crime sufficiently black to cause him to rule Thos. out of the race? Or would he just give a senile chuckle and mumble something about boys being boys? Because, if the latter, the thing was off. I decided to have a word with the old boy to make sure.
He was still in the smoking room, looking very frail over the morning’s Times. I got to the point at once.
“What ho, Mr. Anstruther!” I said.
“I don’t like the way the American market is shaping,” he said. “I don’t like this strong bear movement.”
“No?” I said. “Well, be that as it may, about this Good Conduct prize of yours.”
“Ah, yes?”
“I don’t quite understand how you are doing the judging.”
“No? It is very simple. I have a system of daily marks. At the beginning of each day I accord the two lads twenty marks apiece. These are subjected to withdrawal either in small or large quantities according to the magnitude of the offense. To take a simple example, shouting outside my bedroom in the early morning would involve a loss of three marks; whistling two. The penalty for a more serious lapse would be correspondingly greater. Before retiring to rest at night I record the day’s marks in my little book. Simple, but, I think, ingenious, Mr. Wooster?”
“Absolutely.”
“So far the result has been extremely gratifying. Neither of the little fellows has lost a single mark.”
“I see,” I said. “Great work. And how do you react to what I might call general moral turpitude?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Well, I mean when the thing doesn’t affect you personally. Suppose one of them did something to me, for instance—set a booby trap or something? Or, shall we say, put a toad in my bed?”
He seemed shocked at the very idea. “I would certainly in such circumstances deprive the culprit of a full ten marks.”
“Only ten?”
“Fifteen, then.”
“Twenty is a nice round number.”
“Well, possibly even twenty. I have a peculiar horror of practical joking.”
“Me, too.”
“You will not fail to advise me, Mr. Wooster, should such an outrage occur?”
“You shall have the news before anyone,” I assured him.
And so out into the garden, ranging to and fro in quest of young Thos. I knew where I was now. Bertram’s feet were on solid ground.
I found him in the summerhouse, reading an improving book.
“Hullo,” he said, smiling a saintlike smile.
This scourge of humanity was a chunky kid whom a too-indulgent public had allowed to infest the country for a matter of thirteen years. His nose was snub, his eyes green, his general aspect that of one studying to be a gangster. I had never liked his looks much, and with a saintlike smile added they became ghastly to a degree.
I ran over in my mind a few assorted taunts. “Well, young Thos.,” I said. “So there you are. You’re getting as fat as a pig.”
It seemed as good an opening as any other. Experience had taught me that if there was a subject on which he was unlikely to accept persiflage in a spirit of amused geniality it was this matter of his bulging tum.
On the last occasion when I made a remark of this nature, he had replied to me, child though he was, in terms which I should have been proud to have in my own vocabulary. But now, though a sort of wistful gleam did flit for a moment into his eyes, he merely smiled in a more saintlike manner.
“Yes, I think I have been putting on a little weight,” he said gently. “I must try to get a lot of exercise while I’m here. Won’t you sit down, Bertie?” he asked, rising. “You must be tired after your journey. I’ll get you a cushion. Have you cigarets? And matches? I could bring you some from the smoking room.”
It is not too much to say that I felt baffled. In spite of what Aunt Dahlia had told me, I don’t think that until this moment I had really believed there could have been anything in the nature of a sensational change in this young plug-ugly’s attitude towards his fellows. But now, hearing him talk as if he were a combination of Boy Scout and delivery wagon, I felt baffled. However, I stuck at it in the old bulldog way.
“Are you still at that rotten kids’ school of yours?” I asked.
He might have been proof against gibes at his embonpoint, but it seemed to me incredible that he could have sold himself for gold so completely as to lie down under taunts directed at his school. I was wrong. The money-lust held him in its grip. He merely shook his head.
“I left this term. I’m going to Cheltenham next term.”
“They wear mortar boards there, don’t they?”
“Yes.”
“With pink tassels?”
“Yes.”
“What a priceless ass you’ll look!” I said, but without much hope. And I laughed heartily.
“I expect I shall,” he said, and laughed still more heartily.
“Mortar boards!”
“Ha, ha!”
“Pink tassels!”
“Ha, ha!”
I gave the thing up. “Well, teuf-teuf,” I said moodily, and withdrew.
A couple of days later I realized that the virus had gone even deeper than I had thought. The kid was irremediably sordid.
It was old Mr. Anstruther who sprang the bad news.
“Oh, Mr. Wooster,” he said, meeting me on the stairs. “You were good enough to express an interest in this little prize for Good Conduct which I am offering.”
“Oh, ah?”
“I explained to you my system of marking, I believe. Well, this morning I was impelled to vary it somewhat. The circumstances seemed to me to demand it. I happened to encounter our hostess’ nephew, the boy Thomas, returning to the house, his aspect somewhat weary, it appeared to me, and travel-stained.
“I inquired of him where he had been that early hour—it was not yet breakfast time—and he replied that he had heard you mention overnight a regret that you had omitted to order the Sporting Times to be sent to you before leaving London, and he had walked all the way to the railway station, a distance of more than three miles, to procure it for you.”
The old boy swam before my eyes. He looked like two old Mr. Anstruthers, both flickering at the edges. “What!”
“I can understand your emotion. Mr. Wooster,” said the old boy. “I can appreciate it. It is indeed rarely that one encounters such unselfish kindliness in a lad of his age. So genuinely touched was I by his goodness of heart that I have deviated from my original system and awarded the little fellow a bonus of fifteen marks.”
“Fifteen!”
“On second thoughts, I shall make it twenty. That, as you yourself suggested, is a nice round number.”
He doddered away, and I bounded off to find Aunt Dahlia.
“Aunt Dahlia,” I said, “matters have taken a sinister turn.”
“You bet your Sunday spats they have,” agreed Aunt Dahlia emphatically. “Do you know what happened just now? That crook Snettisham offered Bonzo ten shillings if he would burst a paper bag behind Mr. Anstruther’s chair at breakfast.
“Thank heaven, the love of a good woman triumphed again. My sweet Bonzo merely looked at him and walked away in a marked manner. But it just shows you what we are up against.”
“We are up against worse than that, Aunt Dahlia,” I said. And I told her what had happened.
She was stunned. Aghast, you might call it. “Thomas did that?”
“Thos. in person.”
“Walked six miles to get you a paper?”
“Six miles and a bit.”
“The young hound!”
“A blighter, beyond question.”
“Good heavens, Bertie, do you realize that he may go on doing these Acts of Kindness daily—perhaps twice a day? Is there no way of stopping him?”
“None that I can think of. No, Aunt Dahlia, I must confess it. Bertram is baffled. There is only one thing to do. We must send for Jeeves.”
“And about time,” said the relative churlishly. “He ought to have been here from the start. Wire him this morning.”
There is good stuff in Jeeves. His heart is in the right place. The acid test does not find him wanting. Many men in his position, summoned back by telegram in the middle of their annual vacation, might have cut up rough a bit. But not Jeeves. On the following afternoon in he blew, looking fit, and I gave him the scenario without delay.
“So there you have it, Jeeves,” I said, having sketched out the facts. “The problem is one that will exercise your intelligence to the utmost. Rest now, and tonight, after a light repast, get down to it.
“Is there any particularly stimulating food or beverage you would like for dinner? Anything that you feel would give the old brain just that extra fillip? If so, name it.”
“Thank you very much, sir, but I have already hit upon a plan which should, I fancy, prove effective.”
I gazed at the man with reverent awe. “Already?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Not already?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Something to do with the psychology of the individual?”
“Precisely, sir.”
I shook my head, a bit discouraged. Doubts had begun to creep in.
“Well, spring it, Jeeves,” I said. “But I have not much hope. Having only just arrived, you cannot possibly be aware of the frightful change that has taken place in young Thos. You are probably building on your knowledge of him, when last seen. Useless, Jeeves. Stirred by the prospects of getting his hooks on five of the best, this blighted boy has become so dashed virtuous that his armor seems to contain no chink.
“I mocked at his waistline and sneered at his school and he merely smiled in a pale, dying-duck sort of way. Well, that’ll show you. However, let us hear what you have to suggest.”
“It occurred to me, sir, that the most judicious plan would be for you to request Mrs. Travers to invite Master Sebastian Moon here for a short visit.”
I shook the onion again. The scheme sounded to me like pure apple sauce.
“What earthly good would that do?” I asked, not without a touch of asperity.
“He has golden curls, sir.”
“What of it?”
“The strongest natures are sometimes not proof against long golden curls.”
Well, it was a thought, of course. But I can’t say I was leaping about to any great extent. It might be that the sight of Sebastian Moon would break down Thos.’ iron self-control to the extent of causing him to inflict mayhem on the person, but I wasn’t any too hopeful.
“It may be so, Jeeves.”
“I do not think I am too sanguine, sir. You must remember that Master Moon, apart from his curls, has a personality which is not uniformly pleasing. He is apt to express himself with a breezy candor which I fancy Master Thomas might feel inclined to resent in one some years his junior.”
I had had a feeling all along that there was a flaw somewhere, and now it seemed to me that I had spotted it.
“But Jeeves. Granted that little Sebastian is the pot of poison you indicate, why won’t he act just as forcibly on young Bonzo as on Thos.? Pretty silly we should look if our nominee started putting it across him. Never forget that already Bonzo is twenty marks down and falling back in the betting.”
“I do not anticipate any such contingency, sir. He is in love, and love is a very powerful restraining influence at the age of thirteen.”
“H’m,” I mused. “Well, we can but try, Jeeves.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I’ll get Aunt Dahlia to write to Sippy tonight.”
I’m bound to say that the spectacle of little Sebastian when he arrived two days later did much to remove pessimism from my outlook. If ever there was a kid whose whole appearance seemed to call aloud to any right-minded boy to lure him into a quiet spot and inflict violence upon him, that kid was undeniably Sebastian Moon. He reminded me strongly of Little Lord Fauntleroy.
I marked young Thos.’ demeanor closely at the moment of their meeting and, unless I was much mistaken, there came into his eyes the sort of look which would come into those of an Indian chief—Chingachcook, let us say, or Sitting Bull—just before he started reaching for his scalping knife. He had the air of one who is about ready to begin.
True, his manner as he shook hands was guarded. Only a keen observer could have detected that he was stirred to his depths. But I had seen, and I summoned Jeeves forthwith.
“Jeeves,” I said, “if I appeared to think poorly of that scheme of yours, I now withdraw my remarks. I believe you have found the way. I was noticing Thos. at the moment of impact. His eyes had a strange gleam.”
“Indeed, sir?”
“He shifted uneasily on his feet and his ears wiggled. He had, in short, the appearance of a boy who was holding himself in with an effort almost too great for his frail body.”
“Yes, sir?”
“Yes, Jeeves. I received a distinct impression of something being on the point of exploding. Tomorrow I shall ask Aunt Dahlia to take the two warts for a country ramble, to lose them in some sequestered spot, and to leave the rest to Nature.”
“It is a good idea, sir.”
“It is more than a good idea, Jeeves,” I said. “It is a pip.”
You know, the older I get the more firmly do I become convinced that there is no such thing as a pip in existence. Again and again have I seen the apparently sure thing go phut, and now it is rarely indeed that Bertram Wooster can be lured from his aloof skepticism.
Fellows come sidling up to him at the Drones’ and elsewhere, urging him to invest on some horse that can’t lose even if it gets struck by lightning at the starting point, but Bertram Wooster shakes his head. He has seen too much of life to be certain of anything.
If anyone had told me that my cousin Thos., left alone for an extended period of time with a kid of the outstanding foulness of Sebastian Moon, would not only refrain from cutting off his curls with a pocketknife and chasing him across country into a muddy pond but would actually return home carrying the ghastly kid on his back because he had got a blister on his foot, I would have laughed scornfully. I knew Thos. I knew his work. I had seen him in action. And I was convinced that not even the prospect of collecting five pounds would give him pause.
And yet what happened? In the quiet evenfall, when the little birds were singing their sweetest and all Nature seemed to whisper of hope and happiness, the blow fell. I was chatting with old Mr. Anstruther on the terrace when suddenly round a bend in the drive the two kids hove in view. Sebastian, seated on Thos.’ back, his hat off and his golden curls floating on the breeze, was singing a comic song, and Thos., bowed down by the burden but carrying on gamely, was trudging along, smiling that bally saintlike smile of his.
He parked the kid on the front steps and came across to us.
“Sebastian got a nail in his shoe,” he said in a virtuous voice. “It hurt him to walk, so I gave him a piggy-back.”
I heard old Mr. Anstruther draw in his breath sharply.
“All the way home?”
“Yes, sir.”
“In this hot sunshine?”
“Yes, sir.”
“But was he not very heavy?”
“He was a little, sir,” said Thos., uncorking the saintlike once more. “But it would have hurt him awfully to walk.”
I pushed off. I had had enough. If ever a septuagenarian looked on the point of handing out another bonus, that septuagenarian was old Mr. Anstruther. I withdrew, and found Jeeves in my bedroom.
He pursed the lips a bit on hearing the news. “Serious, sir.”
“Very serious, Jeeves.”
“I had feared this, sir.”
“Had you? I hadn’t. I was convinced Thos. would have massacred young Sebastian. I banked on it. It just shows what the greed for money will do. This is a commercial age, Jeeves. When I was a boy, I would cheerfully have forfeited five quid in order to deal faithfully with a kid like Sebastian. I would have considered it money well spent.”
“You are mistaken, sir, in your estimate of the motives actuating Master Thomas. It was not a mere desire to win five pounds that caused him to curb his natural impulses. I have ascertained the true reason for his change of heart, sir.”
I felt fogged. “Not religion, Jeeves?”
“No, sir. Love.”
“Love?”
“Yes, sir. The young gentleman confided in me during a brief conversation in the hall shortly after luncheon. We had been speaking for a while on neutral subjects, when he suddenly turned a deeper shade of pink and after some slight hesitation inquired of me if I did not think Miss Greta Garbo the most beautiful woman at present in existence.”
I clutched the brow. “Jeeves! Don’t tell me Thos. is in love with Greta Garbo?”
“Yes, sir. Unfortunately such is the case. He gave me to understand that it had been coming on for some time, and her last picture settled the issue. His voice shook with an emotion which it was impossible to misread. I gathered from his observations, sir, that he proposes to spend the rest of his life trying to make himself worthy of her.”
It was a knock-out. This was the end.
“This is the end, Jeeves,” I said. “Bonzo must be a good forty marks behind by now. Only some sensational outrage upon the public weal on the part of young Thos. could have enabled him to wipe out the lead. And of that there is now, apparently, no chance.”
“The eventuality does appear remote, sir.”
I brooded. “Uncle Thomas will have a fit when he comes back and finds Anatole gone.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Aunt Dahlia will drain the bitter cup to the dregs.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And speaking from a purely selfish point of view, the finest cooking I have ever bitten will pass out of my life forever, unless the Snettishams invite me in some night to take potluck. And that eventuality is also remote.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Then the only thing I can do is square the shoulders and face the inevitable.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Like some aristocrat of the French Revolution popping into the tumbrel, what? The brave smile. The stiff upper lip.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Right ho, then. Is the shirt studded?”
“Yes, sir.”
“The tie chosen?”
“Yes, sir.”
“The collar and evening underwear all in order?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Then I’ll have a bath and be with you in two ticks.”
It is all very well to talk about the brave smile and the stiff upper lip, but my experience—and I dare say others have found the same—is that they are a dashed sight easier to talk about than actually to fix on the face. For the next few days, I’m bound to admit, I found myself, in spite of every effort, registering gloom pretty consistently. For, as if to make things tougher, Anatole at this juncture suddenly developed a cooking streak which put all his previous efforts in the shade.
Night after night we sat at the dinner table, the food melting in our mouths, and Aunt Dahlia would look at me and I would look at Aunt Dahlia, and the male Snettisham would ask the female Snettisham in a ghastly, gloating sort of way if she had ever tasted such cooking and the female Snettisham would smirk at the male Snettisham and say she never had in all her puff, and I would look at Aunt Dahlia and Aunt Dahlia would look at me and our eyes would be full of unshed tears, if you know what I mean.
And all the time old Mr. Anstruther’s visit was drawing to a close.
And then, on the very last afternoon of his stay, the thing happened.
It was one of those warm, drowsy, peaceful afternoons. I was up in my bedroom getting off a spot of correspondence, and from where I sat I looked down on the shady lawn, fringed with its gay flower beds. There was a bird or two hopping about, a butterfly or so fluttering to and fro, and an assortment of bees buzzing hither and thither. In a garden chair sat old Mr. Anstruther, getting his eight hours.
It was a sight which, had I had less on my mind, would no doubt have soothed the old soul a bit. The only blot on the landscape was Lady Snettisham, walking about and probably sketching out future menus, curse her.
And so for a time everything carried on. The birds hopped, the butterflies fluttered, the bees buzzed, and old Mr. Anstruther snored—all in accordance with the program. And I worked through a letter to my tailor to the point where I proposed to say something pretty strong about the way the right sleeve of my last coat bagged.
There was a tap on the door, and Jeeves entered, bringing the second post. I laid the letters listlessly beside me.
“Well, Jeeves,” I said somberly.
“Sir?”
“Mr. Anstruther leaves tomorrow.”
“Yes, sir.”
I gazed down at the sleeping septuagenarian. “In my young days, Jeeves,” I said, “however much I might have been in love, I could never have resisted the spectacle of an old gentleman asleep like that. I would have done something to him, no matter what the cost.”
“Indeed, sir?”
“Yes. Probably with a pea shooter. But the modern boy is degenerate. He has lost his vim. I suppose Thos. is indoors, showing Sebastian his stamp album or something. Ha!” I said, and I said it rather nastily.
“I fancy Master Thomas and Master Sebastian are playing in the stable yard, sir. I encountered Master Sebastian not long back and he informed me he was on his way thither.”
“The motion pictures, Jeeves,” I said, “are the curse of the age. But for them, if Thos. had found himself alone in a stable yard with a kid like Sebastian——”
I broke off. From some point to the southwest, out of my line of vision, there had proceeded a piercing squeal.
It cut through the air like a knife, and old Mr. Anstruther started as if it had run into the fleshy part of his leg. And the next moment Sebastian appeared, going well and followed by Thos., who was going even better.
In spite of the fact that he was hampered in his movements by a large stable bucket which he bore in his right hand, Thos. was running a great race. He had almost come up with Sebastian, when the latter, with great presence of mind, dodged behind Mr. Anstruther, and there for a moment the matter rested.
But only for a moment. Thos., for some reason plainly stirred to the depths of his being, moved adroitly to one side, and poising the bucket for an instant, discharged its contents. And Mr. Anstruther received, as far as I could gather from a distance, the entire consignment. In one second, he had become the wettest man in Worcestershire.
“Jeeves!” I cried.
“Yes, indeed, sir,” said Jeeves, and seemed to me to put the whole thing in a nutshell.
Down below, things were hotting up nicely. Old Mr. Anstruther may have been frail, but he undoubtedly had his moments. I have rarely seen a man of his years conduct himself with such a lissom abandon. There was a stick lying beside the chair, and with this in hand he went into action like a two-year-old. A moment later, he and Thos. had passed out of the picture round the house, Thos. cutting out a rare pace but, judging from the sounds of anguish, not good enough to distance the field.
The tumult and the shouting died; and after gazing for a while with considerable satisfaction at the Snettisham, who was standing there with a sandbagged look watching her nominee pass right out of the betting, I turned to Jeeves. I felt quietly triumphant. It is not often that I score off him, but now I had scored in no uncertain manner.
“You see, Jeeves,” I said, “I was right and you were wrong. Blood will tell. Once a Thos., always a Thos. Can the leopard change his spots or the Ethiopian his what not? What was that thing they used to teach us at school about expelling Nature?”
“You may expel Nature with a pitch-fork, sir, but she will always return? In the original Latin——”
“Never mind about the original Latin. The point is that I told you Thos. could not resist those curls, and he couldn’t. You would have it that he could.”
“I do not fancy it was the curls that caused the upheaval, sir. I think Master Sebastian had been speaking disparagingly of Miss Garbo.”
“Eh? Why should he do that?”
“I suggested that he should do so, sir, not long ago when I encountered him on his way to the stable yard. It was a move which he was very willing to make, as he informed me that in his opinion Miss Garbo was definitely inferior both in beauty and talent to Miss Clara Bow.”
I sank into a chair. The Wooster system can stand just so much.
“Jeeves!”
“Sir?”
“You tell me that Sebastian Moon, a stripling of such tender years that he can go about the place with long curls without causing mob violence, is in love with Clara Bow?”
“And has been for some little time, he gave me to understand, sir.”
“Jeeves, this Younger Generation is hot stuff.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Were you like that in your day?”
“No, sir.”
“Nor I, Jeeves. At the age of fourteen I once wrote to Marie Lloyd for her autograph, but apart from that my private life could bear the strictest investigation. However, that is not the point. The point is, Jeeves, that once more I must pay you a marked tribute.”
“Thank you very much, sir.”
“Once more, like the great man you are, you have stepped forward and spread sweetness and light in no uncertain measure.”
“I am glad to have given satisfaction, sir. Would you be requiring my services any further?”
“You mean you wish to return to Bognor and its shrimps? Do so, Jeeves, and stay there another fortnight, if you wish. And may success attend your net.”
“Thank you very much, sir.”
I eyed the man fixedly. His head stuck out at the back and his eyes sparkled with the light of pure intelligence. “I pity the shrimp that tries to pit its feeble cunning against you, Jeeves,” I said.
And I meant it.
Annotations to the story as collected in Very Good, Jeeves are on this site.