Thank You, Jeeves, Page 2

  The sight of him reminded me that I was in the market for a country cottage and that here was the very chap to supply same.

  I wonder if I have ever told you about Chuffy? Stop me if I have. He's a fellow I've known more or less all my life, he and self having been at private school, Eton and Oxford together. We don't see a frightful lot of one another nowadays, however, as he spends most of his time down at Chuffnell Regis on the coast of Somersetshire, where he owns an enormous great place with about a hundred and fifty rooms and miles of rolling parkland.

  Don't run away, however, on the strength of this, with the impression that Chuffy is one of my wealthier cronies. He's dashed hard up, poor bloke, like most fellows who own land, and only lives at Chuffnell Hall because he's stuck with it and can't afford to live anywhere else. If somebody came to him and offered to buy the place, he would kiss him on both cheeks. But who wants to buy a house that size in these times? He can't even let it. So he sticks on there most of the year, with nobody to talk to except the local doctor and parson and his Aunt Myrtle and her twelve-year-old son, Seabury, who live at the Dower House in the park. A pretty mouldy existence for one who at the University gave bright promise of becoming one of the lads.

  Chuffy also owns the village of Chuffnell Regis – not that that does him much good, either. I mean to say, the taxes on the estate and all the expenses of repairs and what not come to pretty nearly as much as he gets out of the rents, making the thing more or less of a washout. Still, he is the landlord, and, as such, would doubtless have dozens of cottages at his disposal and probably only too glad of the chance of easing one of them off on to a reputable tenant like myself.

  'You're the very chap I wanted to see, Chuffy,' I said accordingly, after our initial what-ho-ing. 'Come right along with me to the Drones for a bite of lunch. I can put a bit of business in your way.'

  He shook his head, wistfully, I thought.

  'I'd like it, Bertie, but I'm due at the Carlton in five minutes. I'm lunching with a man.'

  'Give him a miss.'

  'I couldn't.'

  'Well, bring him along, then, and we'll make it a threesome.'

  Chuffy smiled rather wanly.

  'I don't think you'd enjoy it, Bertie. He's Sir Roderick Glossop.'

  I goggled. It's always a bit of a shock, when you've just parted from Bloke A, to meet Bloke B and have Bloke B suddenly bring Bloke A into the conversation.

  'Sir Roderick Glossop?'

  'Yes.'

  'But I didn't know you knew him.'

  'I don't, very well. Just met him a couple of times. He's a great friend of my Aunt Myrtle.'

  'Ah! that explains it. I saw her dining with him last night.'

  'Well, if you come to the Carlton, you'll see me lunching with him to-day.'

  'But, Chuffy, old man, is this wise? Is this prudent? It's an awful ordeal breaking bread with this man. I know. I've done it.'

  'I dare say, but I've got to go through with it. I had an urgent wire from him yesterday, telling me to come up and see him without fail, and what I'm hoping is that he wants to take the Hall for the summer or knows somebody who does. He would hardly wire like that unless there was something up. No, I shall have to stick it, Bertie. But I'll tell you what I will do. I'll dine with you to-morrow night.'

  I would have been all for it, of course, had the circs been different, but I had to refuse. I had formed my plans and made my arrangements and they could not be altered.

  'I'm sorry, Chuffy. I'm leaving London to-morrow.'

  'You are?'

  'Yes. The management of the building where I reside has offered me the choice between clearing out immediately or ceasing to play the banjolele. I elected to do the former. I am going to take a cottage in the country somewhere, and that's what I meant when I said I could put business in your way. Can you let me have a cottage?'

  'I can give you your choice of half a dozen.'

  'It must be quiet and secluded. I shall be playing the banjolele a good deal.'

  'I've got the very shack for you. On the edge of the harbour and not a neighbour within a mile except Police Sergeant Voules. And he plays the harmonium. You could do duets.'

  'Fine!'

  'And there's a troupe of nigger minstrels down there this year. You could study their technique.'

  'Chuffy, it sounds like heaven. And we shall be able to see something of each other for a change.'

  'You don't come playing your damned banjolele at the Hall.'

  'No, old man. But I'll drop over to lunch with you most days.'

  'Thanks.'

  'Don't mention it.'

  'By the way, what has Jeeves got to say about all this? I shouldn't have thought he would have cared about leaving London.'

  I stiffened a little.

  'Jeeves has nothing to say on that or any other subject. We have parted brass-rags.'

  'What!'

  I had anticipated that the news would stagger him.

  'Yes,' I said, 'from now on, Jeeves will take the high road and I'll take the low road. He had the immortal rind to tell me that if I didn't give up my banjolele he would resign. I accepted his portfolio.'

  'You've really let him go?'

  'I have.'

  'Well, well, well!'

  I waved a hand nonchalantly.

  'These things happen,' I said. 'I'm not pretending I'm pleased, of course, but I can bite the bullet. My self-respect would not permit me to accept the man's terms. You can push a Wooster just so far. "Very good, Jeeves," I said to him. "So be it. I shall watch your future career with considerable interest." And that was that.'

  We walked on for a bit in silence.

  'So you've parted with Jeeves, have you?' said Chuffy, in a thoughtful sort of voice. 'Well, well, well! Any objection to my looking in and saying good-bye to him?'

  'None whatever.'

  'It would be a graceful act.'

  'Quite.'

  'I've always admired his intellect.'

  'Me too. No one more.'

  'I'll go round to the flat after lunch.'

  'Follow the green line,' I said, and my manner was airy and even careless. This parting of the ways with Jeeves had made me feel a bit as if I had just stepped on a bomb and was trying to piece myself together again in a bleak world, but we Woosters can keep the stiff upper lip.

  I lunched at the Drones and spent the afternoon there. I had much to think of. Chuffy's news that there was a troupe of nigger minstrels performing on the Chuffnell Regis sands had definitely weighed the scale down on the side of the advantages of the place. The fact that I would be in a position to forgather with these experts and possibly pick up a hint or two from their banjoist on fingering and execution enabled me to bear with fortitude the prospect of being in a spot where I would probably have to meet the Dowager Lady Chuffnell and her son Seabury pretty frequently. I had often felt how tough it must be for poor old Chuffy having this pair of pustules popping in and out all the time. And in saying this I am looking straight at little Seabury, a child who should have been strangled at birth. I have no positive proof, but I have always been convinced that it was he who put the lizard in my bed the last time I stayed at the Hall.

  But, as I say, I was prepared to put up with this couple in return for the privilege of being in close communication with a really hot banjoist, and most of these nigger minstrel chaps can pick the strings like nobody's business. It was not, therefore, the thought of them which, as I returned to the flat to dress for dinner, was filling me with a strange moodiness.

  No. We Woosters can be honest with ourselves. What was giving me the pip was the reflection that Jeeves was about to go out of my life. There never had been anyone like Jeeves, I felt, as I climbed sombrely into the soup and fish, and there never would be. A wave of not unmanly sentiment poured over me. I was conscious of a pang. And when my toilet was completed and I stood before the mirror, surveying that perfectly pressed coat, those superbly creased trousers, I came to a swift decision.

/>   Abruptly, I went into the sitting-room and leaned on the bell.

  'Jeeves,' I said. A word.'

  'Yes, sir?'

  'Jeeves,' I said, 'touching on our conversation this morning.'

  'Yes, sir?'

  'Jeeves,' I said, 'I have been thinking things over. I have come to the conclusion that we have both been hasty. Let us forget the past. You may stay on.'

  'It is very kind of you, sir, but ... are you still proposing to continue the study of that instrument?'

  I froze.

  'Yes, Jeeves, I am.'

  'Then I fear, sir ...'

  It was enough. I nodded haughtily.

  'Very good, Jeeves. That is all. I will, of course, give you an excellent recommendation.'

  'Thank you, sir. It will not be necessary. This afternoon I entered the employment of Lord Chuffnell.'

  I started.

  'Did Chuffy sneak round here this afternoon and scoop you in?'

  'Yes, sir. I go with him to Chuffnell Regis in about a week's time.'

  'You do, do you? Well, it may interest you to know that I repair to Chuffnell Regis to-morrow.'

  'Indeed, sir?'

  'Yes. I have taken a cottage there. We shall meet at Philippi, Jeeves.'

  'Yes, sir.'

  'Or am I thinking of some other spot?'

  'No, sir, Philippi is correct.'

  'Very good, Jeeves.'

  'Very good, sir.'

  Such, then, is the sequence of events which led up to Bertram Wooster, on the morning of July the fifteenth, standing at the door of Seaview Cottage, Chuffnell Regis, surveying the scene before him through the aromatic smoke of a meditative cigarette.

  3 RE-ENTER THE DEAD PAST

  You know, the longer I live, the more I feel that the great wheeze in life is to be jolly well sure what you want and not let yourself be put off by pals who think they know better than you do. When I had announced at the Drones, my last day in the metropolis, that I was retiring to this secluded spot for an indeterminate period, practically everybody had begged me, you might say with tears in their eyes, not to dream of doing such a cloth-headed thing. They said I should be bored stiff.

  But I had carried on according to plan, and here I was, on the fifth morning of my visit, absolutely in the pink and with no regrets whatsoever. The sun was shining. The sky was blue. And London seemed miles away – which it was, of course. I wouldn't be exaggerating if I said that a great peace enveloped the soul.

  A thing I never know when I'm telling a story is how much scenery to bung in. I've asked one or two scriveners of my acquaintance, and their views differ. A fellow I met at a cocktail party in Bloomsbury said that he was all for describing kitchen sinks and frowsty bedrooms and squalor generally, but the beauties of Nature, no. Whereas, Freddie Oaker, of the Drones, who does tales of pure love for the weeklies under the pen-name of Alicia Seymour, once told me that he reckoned that flowery meadows in springtime alone were worth at least a hundred quid a year to him.

  Personally, I've always rather barred long descriptions of the terrain, so I will be on the brief side. As I stood there that morning, what the eye rested on was the following. There was a nice little splash of garden, containing a bush, a tree, a couple of flower beds, a lily pond with a statue of a nude child with a bit of a tummy on him, and to the right a hedge. Across this hedge, Brinkley, my new man, was chatting with our neighbour, Police Sergeant Voules, who seemed to have looked in with a view to selling eggs.

  There was another hedge straight ahead, with the garden gate in it, and over this one espied the placid waters of the harbour, which was much about the same as any other harbour, except that some time during the night a whacking great yacht had rolled up and cast anchor in it. And of all the objects under my immediate advisement I noted this yacht with the most pleasure and approval. White in colour, in size resembling a young liner, it lent a decided tone to the Chuffnell Regis foreshore.

  Well, such was the spreading prospect. Add a cat sniffing at a snail on the path and me at the door smoking a gasper, and you have the complete picture.

  No, I'm wrong. Not quite the complete picture, because I had left the old two-seater in the road, and I could just see the top part of it. And at this moment the summer stillness was broken by the tooting of its horn, and I buzzed to the gate with all possible speed for fear some fiend in human shape was scratching my paint. Arriving at destination, I found a small boy in the front seat, pensively squeezing the bulb, and was about to administer one on the side of the head when I recognized Chuffy's cousin, Seabury, and stayed the hand.

  'Hallo,' he said.

  'What ho,' I replied.

  My manner was reserved. The memory of that lizard in my bed still lingered. I don't know if you have ever leaped between the sheets, all ready for a spot of sleep, and received an unforeseen lizard up the left pyjama leg? It is an experience that puts its stamp on a man. And while, as I say, I had no legal proof that this young blighter had been the author of the outrage, I entertained suspicions that were tantamount to certainty. So now I not only spoke with a marked coldness but also gave him the fairly frosty eye.

  It didn't seem to jar him. He continued to regard me with that supercilious gaze which had got him so disliked among the right-minded. He was a smallish, freckled kid with aeroplane ears, and he had a way of looking at you as if you were something he had run into in the course of a slumming trip. In my Rogues Gallery of repulsive small boys I suppose he would come about third – not quite so bad as my Aunt Agatha's son, Young Thos., or Mr Blumenfeld's Junior, but well ahead of little Sebastian Moon, my Aunt Dahlia's Bonzo, and the field.

  After staring at me for a moment as if he were thinking that I had changed for the worse since he last saw me, he spoke.

  'You're to come to lunch.'

  'Is Chuffy back, then?'

  'Yes.'

  Well, of course, if Chuffy had returned, I was at his disposal. I shouted over the hedge to Brinkley that I would be absent from the midday meal and climbed into the car and we rolled off.

  'When did he get back?'

  'Last night.'

  'Shall we be lunching alone?'

  'No.'

  'Who's going to be there?'

  'Mother and me and some people.'

  'A party? I'd better go back and put on another suit.'

  'No.'

  'You think this one looks all right?'

  'No, I don't. I think it looks rotten. But there isn't time.'

  This point settled, he passed into the silence for awhile. A brooding kid. He came out of it to give me some local gossip.

  'Mother and I are living at the Hall again.'

  'What!'

  'Yes. There's a smell at the Dower House.'

  'Even though you've left it?' I said, in my keen way.

  He was not amused.

  'You needn't try to be funny. If you really want to know, I expect it's my mice.'

  'Your what?'

  'I've started breeding mice and puppies. And, of course, they niff a bit,' he added in a dispassionate sort of way. 'But mother thinks it's the drains. Can you give me five shillings?'

  I simply couldn't follow his train of thought. The way his conversation flitted about gave me that feeling you get in dreams sometimes.

  'Five shillings?'

  'Five shillings.'

  'What do you mean, five shillings?'

  'I mean five shillings.'

  'I dare say. But what I want to know is how have we suddenly got on to the subject? We were discussing mice, and you introduce this five shillings motif

  'I want five shillings.'

  'Admitting that you may possibly want that sum, why the dickens should I give it to you?'

  'For protection.'

  'What!'

  'Protection.'

  'What from?'

  'Just protection.'

  'You don't get any five shillings out of me.'

  'Oh, all right.'

  He sat silent for a spac
e.

  'Things happen to guys that don't kick in their protection money,' he said dreamily.

  And on this note of mystery the conversation concluded, for we were moving up the drive of the Hall and on the steps I perceived Chuffy standing. I stopped the car and got out.

  'Hallo, Bertie,' said Chuffy.

  'Welcome to Chuffnell Hall,' I replied. I looked round. The kid had vanished. 'I say, Chuffy,' I said, 'young blighted Seabury. What about him?'

  'What about him?'

  'Well, if you ask me, I should say he had gone off his rocker. He's just been trying to touch me for five bob and babbling about protection.'

  Chuffy laughed heartily, looking bronzed and fit.

  'Oh, that. That's his latest idea.'

  'How do you mean?'

  'He's been seeing gangster films.'

  The scales fell from my eyes.

  'He's turned racketeer?'

  'Yes. Rather amusing. He goes round collecting protection money from everybody according to their means. Makes a good thing out of it, too. Enterprising kid. I'd pay up if I were you. I have.'

  I was shocked. Not so much at the information that the foul child had given this additional evidence of a diseased mind as that Chuffy should be exhibiting this attitude of amused tolerance. I eyed him keenly. Right from the start this morning I had thought his manner strange. Usually, when you meet him, he is brooding over his financial situation and is rather apt to greet you with the lack-lustre eye and the careworn frown. He had been like that five days ago in London. What, then, had caused him to beam all over the place like this and even to go so far as to speak of little Seabury with what amounted to something perilously near to indulgent affection? I sensed a mystery and decided to apply the acid test.

  'How is your Aunt Myrtle?'

  'She's fine.'

  'Living at the Hall now, I hear.'

  'Yes.'

  'Indefinitely?'

  'Oh, yes.'

  It was enough.

  One of the things, I must mention, which have always made poor old Chuffy's lot so hard is his aunt's attitude towards him. She has never quite been able to get over that matter of the succession. Seabury, you see, was not the son of Chuffy's late uncle, the fourth Baron: he was simply something Lady Chuffnell had picked up en route in the course of a former marriage and, consequently, did not come under the head of what the Peerage calls 'issue'. And, in matters of succession, if you aren't issue, you haven't a hope. When the fourth Baron pegged out, accordingly, it was Chuffy who copped the title and estates. All perfectly square and above board, of course, but you can't get women to see these things, and the relict's manner, Chuffy has often told me, was consistently unpleasant. She had a way of clasping Seabury in her arms and looking reproachfully at Chuffy as if he had slipped over a fast one on mother and child. Nothing actually said, you understand, but her whole attitude that of a woman who considers she has been the victim of sharp practice.