P G Wodehouse - Much Obliged Jeeves Read online

  'Difficult to say so far. Anyway, he needs all the help he can get, so I want you to come and canvass for him.'

  This made me chew the lower lip for a moment. One has to exercise caution at a time like this, or where is one ?

  'What does it involve?' I asked guardedly. 'I shan't have to kiss babies, shall I?'

  'Of course you won't, you abysmal chump.'

  'I've always heard that kissing babies entered largely into- these things.'

  'Yes, but it's the candidate who does it, poor blighter. All you have to do is go from house to house urging the inmates to vote for Ginger.'

  'Then rely on me. Such an assignment should be well within my scope. Old Ginger! ' I said, feeling emotional. 'It will warm the what-d'you-call-its of my heart to see him again.'

  'Well, you'll have the opportunity of hotting them up this very afternoon. He's gone to London for the day and wants you to lunch with him.'

  'Does he, egadl That's fine. What time?'

  'One-thirty.'

  'At what spot?'

  'Barribault's grillroom.'

  'I'll be there. Jeeves,' I said, hanging up, 'You remember Ginger Winship, who used to play Damon to my Pythias?'

  'Yes, indeed sir.'

  'They've got an election on at Market Snodsbury, and he's standing in the Conservative interest.'

  'So I understood Madam to say, sir.'

  'Oh, you caught her remarks?'

  'With little or no difficulty, sir. Madam has a penetrating voice.'

  'It does penetrate, doesn't it,' I said, massaging the ear I had been holding to the receiver. 'Good lung power.'

  'Extremely, sir.'

  'I wonder whether she ever sang lullabies to me in my cradle. If so, it must have scared me cross-eyed, giving me the illusion that the boiler had exploded. However, that is not germane to the issue, which is that we leave for her abode this afternoon. I shall be lunching with Ginger. In my absence, pack a few socks and toothbrushes, will you.'

  'Very good, sir,' he replied, and we did not return to the subject of the club book.

  CHAPTER Three

  It was with no little gusto and animation that some hours later I set out for the tryst. This Ginger was one of my oldest buddies, not quite so old as Kipper Herring or Catsmeat Potter-Pirbright, with whom I had plucked the gowans fine at prep school, public school and University, but definitely ancient. Our rooms at Oxford had been adjacent, and it would not be too much to say that from the moment he looked in to borrow a syphon of soda water we became more like brothers than anything, and this state of things had continued after we had both left the seat of learning.

  For quite a while he had been a prominent member of the Drones Club, widely known for his effervescence and vivacity, but all of a sudden he had tendered his resignation and gone to live in the country, oddly enough at Steeple Bumpleigh in Essex, where my Aunt Agatha has her lair. This, somebody told me, was due to the circumstance that he had got engaged to a girl of strong character who disapproved of the Drones Club. You get girls like that every now and then, and in my opinion they are best avoided.

  Well, naturally this had parted us. He never came to London, and I of course never went to Steeple Bumpleigh. You don't catch me going anywhere near Aunt Agatha unless I have to. No sense in sticking one's neck out. But I had missed him sorely. Oh for the touch of a vanished hand, is how you might put it.

  Arriving at Barribault's, I found him in the lobby where you have the pre-luncheon gargle before proceeding to the grillroom, and after the initial What-ho-ing and What-a-time-since-we-met-ing inevitable when two vanished hands who haven't seen each other for ages re-establish contact he asked me if I would like one for the tonsils.

  'I won't join you,' he said. 'I'm not actually on the wagon, I have a little light wine at dinner now and then, but my fiancee wants me to stay off cocktails. She says they harden the arteries.'

  If you are about to ask me if this didn't make me purse the lips a bit, I can assure you that it did. It seemed to point to his having gone and got hitched up with a popsy totally lacking in the proper spirit, and it bore out what I had been told about her being a girl of strong character. No one who wasn't could have dashed the cup from his lips in this manner. She had apparently made him like it, too, for he had spoken of her not with the sullen bitterness of one crushed beneath the iron heel but with devotion in every syllable. Plainly he had got it up his nose and didn't object to being bossed.

  How different from me, I reflected, that time when I was engaged to my Uncle Percy's bossy daughter Florence Craye. It didn't last long, because she gave me the heave-ho and got betrothed to a fellow called Gorringe who wrote vers libre, but while it lasted I felt like one of those Ethiopian slaves Cleopatra used to push around, and I chafed more than somewhat. Whereas Ginger obviously hadn't even started to chafe. It isn't difficult to spot when a fellow's chafing, and I could detect none of the symptoms. He seemed to think that putting the presidential veto on cocktails showed what an angel of mercy the girl was, always working with his good at heart.

  The Woosters do not like drinking alone, particularly with a critical eye watching them to see if their arteries are hardening, so I declined the proffered snort --reluctantly, for I was athirst-- and came straight to the main item on the agenda paper. On my way to Barribault's I had, as you may suppose, pondered deeply on this business of him standing for Parliament, and I wanted to know the motives behind the move. It looked cockeyed to me.

  'Aunt Dahlia tells me you are staying with her in order to be handy to Market Snodsbury while giving the electors there the old oil,' I said.

  'Yes, she very decently invited me. She was at school with my mother.'

  'So she told me. I wonder if her face was as red in those days. How do you like it there?'

  'It's a wonderful place.'

  'Grade A. Gravel soil, main drainage, spreading grounds and Company's own water. And, of course, Anatole's cooking.'

  'Ah! ' he said, and I think he would have bared his head, only he hadn't a hat on. 'Very gifted, that man.'

  'A wizard,' I agreed. 'His dinners must fortify you for the tasks you have to face. How's the election coming along? '

  'All right.'

  'Kissed any babies lately ? '

  'Ah! ' he said again, this time with a shudder. I could see that I had touched an exposed nerve. 'What blighters babies are, Bertie, dribbling, as they do, at the side of the mouth. Still, it has to be done. My agent tells me to leave no stone unturned if I want to win the election.'

  'But why do you want to win the election? I'd have thought you wouldn't have touched Parliament with a ten-foot pole,' I said, for I knew the society there was very mixed. 'What made you commit this rash act?'

  'My fiancee wanted me to,' he said, and as his lips framed the word 'fiancee' his voice took on a sort of tremolo like that of a male turtle dove cooing to a female turtle dove. 'She thought I ought to be carving out a career for myself.'

  'Do you want a career?'

  'Not much, but she insisted.'

  The uneasiness I had felt when he told me the beazel had made him knock off cocktails deepened. His every utterance rendered it more apparent to an experienced man like myself that he had run up against something too hot to handle, and for a moment I thought of advising him to send her a telegram saying it was all off and, this done, to pack a suitcase and catch the next boat to Australia. But feeling that this might give offence I merely asked him what the procedure was when you stood for Parliament -- or ran for it, as they would say in America. Not that I particularly wanted to know, but it was something to talk about other than his frightful fiancee.

  A cloud passed over his face, which I ought to have mentioned earlier was well worth looking at, the eyes clear, the cheeks tanned, the chin firm, the hair ginger and the nose shapely. It topped off, moreover, a body which also repaid inspection, being muscular and well knit. His general aspect, as a matter of fact, was rather like that presented by Esmond Haddock, the
squire of Deverill Hall, where Jeeves's Uncle Charlie Silversmith drew his monthly envelope. He had the same poetic look, as if at any moment about to rhyme June with moon, yet gave the impression, as Esmond did, of being able, if he cared to, to fell an ox with a single blow. I don't know if he had ever actually done this, for one so seldom meets an ox, but in his undergraduate days he had felled people right and left, having represented the University in the ring as a heavyweight a matter of three years. He may have included oxen among his victims.

  'You go through hell,' he said, the map still clouded as he recalled the past. 'I had to sit in a room where you could hardly breathe because it was as crowded as the Black Hole of Calcutta and listen to addresses of welcome till midnight. After that I went about making speeches.'

  'Well, why aren't you down there, making speeches, now? Have they given you a day off?'

  'I came up to get a secretary.'

  'Surely you didn't go there without one?'

  'No, I had one all right, but my fiancee fired her. They had some sort of disagreement.'

  I had pursed the lips a goodish bit when he had told me about his fiancee and the cocktails, and I pursed them to an even greater extent now. The more I heard of this girl he had got engaged to, the less I liked the sound of her. I was thinking how well she would get on with Florence Craye if they happened to meet. Twin souls, I mean to say, each what a housemaid I used to know would have called an overbearing dishpot.

  I didn't say so, of course. There is a time to call someone an overbearing dishpot, and a time not to. Criticism of the girl he loved might be taken in ill part, as the expression is, and you don't want an exOxford boxing Blue taking things in ill part with you.

  'Have you anyone in mind? ' I asked. 'Or are you just going to a secretary bin, accepting what they have in stock?'

  'I'm hoping to get hold of an American girl I saw something of before I left London. I was sharing a flat with Boko Fittleworth when he was writing a novel, and she came every day and worked with him. Boko dictates his stuff, and he said she was tops as a shorthand typist. I have her address, but I don't know if she's still there. I'm going round there after lunch. Her name's Magnolia Glendennon.'

  'It can't be.'

  'Why not? '

  'Nobody could have a name like Magnolia.'

  'They could if they came from South Carolina, as she did. In the southern states of America you can't throw a brick without hitting a Magnolia. But I was telling you about this business of standing for Parliament. First, of course, you have to get the nomination.'

  'How did you manage that?'

  'My fiancee fixed it. She knows one of the Cabinet ministers, and he pulled strings. A man named Filmer.'

  'Not A. B. Filmer?'

  'That's right. Is he a friend of yours? '

  'I wouldn't say exactly a friend. I came to know him slightly owing to being chased with him on to the roof of a sort of summerhouse by an angry swan. This drew us rather close together for the moment, but we never became really chummy.'

  'Where was this?'

  'On an island on the lake at my Aunt Agatha's place at Steeple Bumpleigh. Living at Steeple Bumpleigh, you've probably been there.'

  He looked at me with a wild surmise, much as those soldiers Jeeves has told me about looked on each other when on a peak in Darien, wherever that is.

  'Is Lady Worpledon your aunt?'

  'And how.'

  'She's never mentioned it.'

  'She wouldn't. Her impulse would be to hush it up.'

  'Then, good Lord, she must be your cousin.'

  'No, my aunt. You can't be both.'

  'I mean Florence. Florence Craye, my fiancee.'

  It was a shock, I don't mind telling you, and if I hadn't been seated I would probably have reeled. Though I ought not to have been so surprised. Florence was one of those girls who are always getting engaged to someone, first teaming up with Stilton Cheesewright, then me, and finally Percy Gorringe, who was dramatizing her novel Spindrift. The play, by the way, had recently been presented to the public at the Duke of York's theatre and had laid an instantaneous egg, coming off on the following Saturday. One of the critics said he had perhaps seen it at a disadvantage because when he saw it the curtain was up. I had wondered a good deal what effect this had had on Florence's haughty spirit

  . 'You're engaged to Florence?' I yipped, looking at him with a wild surmise.

  'Yes. Didn't you know?'

  'Nobody tells me anything. Engaged to Florence, eh? Well, well.'

  A less tactful man than Bertram Wooster might have gone on to add 'oh, tough luck I ' or something along those lines, for there was no question but that the unhappy man was properly up against it, but if there's one thing the Woosters have in heaping measure, it is tact. I merely gripped his hand, gave it a shake and wished him happiness. He thanked me for this.

  'You're lucky,' I said, wearing the mask.

  'Don't I know it!'

  'She's a charming girl,' I said, still wearing as above.

  'That just describes her.'

  'Intellectual, too.'

  'Distinctly. Writes novels.'

  'Always at it.'

  'Did you read Spindrift?'

  'Couldn't put it down,' I said, cunningly not revealing that I hadn't been able to take it up. 'Did you see the play?'

  'Twice. Too bad it didn't run. Gorringe's adaptation was the work of an ass.'

  'I spotted him as an ass the first time I saw him.'

  'It's a pity Florence didn't.'

  'Yes. By the way, what became of Gorringe? When last heard of, she was engaged to him.'

  'She broke it off.'

  'Very wise of her. He had long side-whiskers.'

  'She considered him responsible for the failure of the play and told him so.'

  'She would.'

  'What do you mean she would?'

  'Her nature is so frank, honest and forthright.'

  'It is, isn't it.'

  'She speaks her mind.'

  'Invariably.'

  'It's an admirable trait.'

  'Oh, most.'

  'You can't get away with much with a girl like Florence.'

  'No.'

  We fell into a silence. He was twiddling his fingers and a sort of what-d'you-call-it had come into his manner, as if he wanted to say something but was having trouble in getting it out. I remembered encountering a similar diffidence in the Rev. Stinker Pinker when he was trying to nerve himself to ask me to come to Totleigh Towers, and you find the same thing in dogs when they put a paw on your knee and look up into your face but don't utter, though making it clear that there is a subject on which they are anxious to touch.

  'Bertie,' he said at length.

  'Hullo?'

  'Bertie.'

  'Yes?'

  'Bertie.'

  'Still here. Excuse me asking, but have you any cracked gramophone record blood in you? Perhaps your mother was frightened by one?'

  And then it all came out in a rush as if a cork had been pulled.

  'Bertie, there's something I must tell you about Florence, though you probably know it already, being a cousin of hers. She's a wonderful girl and practically perfect in every respect, but she has one characteristic which makes it awkward for those who love her and are engaged to her. Don't think I'm criticizing her.'

  'No, no.'

  'I'm just mentioning it.'

  'Exactly.'

  'Well, she has no use for a loser. To keep her esteem you have to be a winner. She's like one of those princesses in the fairy tales who set fellows some task to perform, as it might be scaling a mountain of glass or bringing her a hair from the beard of the Great Cham of Tartary, and gave them the brush-off when they couldn't make the grade.'

  I recalled the princesses of whom he spoke, and I had always thought them rather fatheads. I mean to say, what sort of foundation for a happy marriage is the bridegroom's ability to scale mountains of glass? A fellow probably wouldn't be called on to do it more than
about once every ten years, if that.

  'Gorringe,' said Ginger, continuing, 'was a loser, and that dished him. And long ago, someone told me, she was engaged to a gentleman jockey and she chucked him because he took a spill at the canal turn in the Grand National. She's a perfectionist. I admire her for it, of course.'

  'Of course.'

  'A girl like her is entitled to have high standards.'

  'Quite.'

  'But, as I say, it makes it awkward for me. She has set her heart on my winning this Market Snodsbury election, heaven knows why, for I never thought she had any interest in politics, and if I lose it, I shall lose her, too. So--'

  'Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of the party?'

  'Exactly. You are going to canvass for me. Well, canvass like a ton of bricks, and see that Jeeves does the same. I've simply got to win.'

  'You can rely on us.'

  'Thank you, Bertie, I knew I could. And now let's go in and have a bite of lunch.'

  CHAPTER Four

  Having restored the tissues with the excellent nourishment which Barribault's hotel always provides and arranged that Ginger was to pick me up in his car later in the afternoon, my own sports model being at the vet's with some nervous ailment, we parted, he to go in search of Magnolia Glendennon, I to walk back to the Wooster G.H.Q.

  It was, as you may suppose, in thoughtful mood that I made my way through London's thoroughfares. I was reading a novel of suspense the other day in which the heroine, having experienced a sock in the eye or two, was said to be lost in a maze of mumbling thoughts, and that description would have fitted me like the paper on the wall.

  My heart was heavy. When a man is an old friend and pretty bosom at that, it depresses you to hear that he's engaged to Florence Craye. I recalled my own emotions when I had found myself in that unpleasant pos tion. I had felt like someone trapped in the underground den of the Secret Nine.

  Though, mark you, there's nothing to beef about in her outer crust. At the time when she was engaged to Stilton Cheesewright I remember recording in the archives that she was tall and willowy with a terrific profile and luxuriant platinum-blonde hair; the sort of girl who might, as far as looks were concerned, have been the star unit of the harem of one of the better class Sultans; and though I hadn't seen her for quite a while, I presumed that these conditions still prevailed. The fact that Ginger, when speaking of her, had gone so readily into his turtle dove impersonation seemed to indicate as much.