I
should have to check with Jeeves, but I think the word to describe the way I slept that night is “fitfully”. I turned and twisted like an adagio dancer, and no wonder, for what I have heard Jeeves call “the fell clutch of circumstance” which was clutching me was not the ordinary fell clutch which can be wriggled out of by some simple ruse such as going on a voyage round the world and not showing up again till things have blown over.I had the option, of course, of disassociating myself entirely from the cat sequence and refusing to have anything more to do with the ruddy animal, but this would mean Colonel Briscoe scratching Simla’s nomination, which would mean that a loved aunt would lose a packet and have to touch Uncle Tom to make up the deficit, which would mean upsetting the latter’s gastric juices for one didn’t know how long, which would mean him pushing his plate away untasted night after night, which would mean Anatole, temperamental like all geniuses, getting deeply offended and handing in his resignation. Ruin, desolation and despair all round, in short. Manifestly, I think it’s manifestly, the chivalry of the Woosters could not permit all that to happen.
Somehow, whatever the perils involved, the cat had to be decanted somewhere where it could find its way back to its GHQ. But who was to do the decanting? Billy Graham had made it plain that no purse of gold, however substantial, could persuade him to brave the horrors of Eggesford Court, that sinister house. Jeeves had formally declared himself a non-starter. And Aunt Dahlia was disqualified by her unfortunate inability to move from spot to spot without having twigs snap beneath her feet.
This put the issue squarely up to Bertram. And no chance for him to do a nolle prosequi, because if he did, bang went his hopes, for quite a time at least, of enjoying Anatole’s cooking. It was consequently in sombre mood that I went across to the Goose and Grasshopper for breakfast. I do not as a rule take the morning meal at six-thirty, but I had been awake since four, and the pangs of hunger could be resisted no longer.
If there was one thing I had taken for granted, it was that I would be breakfasting alone. My surprise, therefore, at finding Orlo in the dining-room, tucking into eggs and bacon, was considerable. I couldn’t imagine how he came to be in circulation at such an hour. Bird-watchers, of course, are irregular in their habits, but even if he had an appointment with a Clarkson’s warbler you would have expected him to have made it for much nearer lunch.
“Oh, hullo, Bertie,” he said. “Glad to see you.”
“You’re up early, Orlo.”
“A little before my usual time. I don’t want to keep Vanessa waiting.”
“You’ve asked her to breakfast?”
“No, she will have had breakfast. Our date was for half-past seven. She may, of course, be late. It depends on how soon she can find the key of the garage.”
“Why does she want the key of the garage?”
“To get the Bentley.”
“Why does she want the Bentley?”
“My dear Bertie, we’ve got to elope in something.”
“Elope?”
“I ought to have explained that earlier. Yes, we’re eloping, and thank goodness we’ve got a fine day for it. Ah, here are your eggs. You’ll enjoy them. They’re very good at the Goose and Grasshopper. Come, no doubt, from contented hens.”
On seating myself at the table I had ordered eggs, and, as he justly observed, they were excellent. But I dug into them listlessly. I was too bewildered to give them the detached thought they deserved.
“Do you mean to say,” I said, “that you and Vanessa are e-lop-ing?”
“The only sober sensible course to pursue. This comes as a surprise?”
“You could knock me down with a ham sandwich.”
“What seems to be puzzling you?”
“I thought you weren’t on speaking terms.”
His response was a hyenaesque guffaw. It was plain that he was feeling his oats to no little extent – quite naturally, of course, Vanessa being the tree on which the fruit of his life hung, as I have heard it described.
It made me reflect on the extraordinary extent to which tastes can differ. I, as I have shown, though momentarily attracted by her radiant beauty, had frozen in every limb at the prospect of linking my lot with hers, whereas he was obviously all for it. In just the same way my Uncle Tom dances round in circles if he can get hold at enormous expense of a silver oviform chocolate pot of the Queen Anne period which I wouldn’t be seen in public with. Curious.
He continued to guffaw.
“You aren’t up to the minute with your society gossip, Bertie. That’s all a thing of the past. Admittedly relations were at one time strained and harsh words spoken about the colour of my liver, but we had a complete reconciliation last night.”
“Oh, you met her last night?”
“Shortly after I left you. She was taking a stroll preparatory to going to bed and bedewing her pillow with salt tears.”
“Why should she do that?”
“Because she thought she was going to marry you.”
“I see. The fate that is worse than death, you might say.”
“Exactly.”
“Sorry she was troubled.”
“Quite all right. She soon got over it when I told her I had been seeing Cook and demanding my money. When she heard that I had several times thumped the table, her remorse for having called me a sleekit cowering beastie was pitiful. She compared me with heroes of old Greek legend, to their disadvantage, and, to cut a long story short, flung herself into my arms.”
“She must have got wet.”
“Very wet. But she didn’t mind that. An emotional girl wouldn’t.”
“I suppose not.”
“We then decided to elope. You may be wondering what we’re going to live on, but with my salary and a bit of money she has from the will of an aunt we shall be all right. So it was arranged that she should have an early breakfast, go to the garage, pinch the Bentley and put the other cars out of action, leaving Cook for pursuing purposes only the gardener’s Ford.”
“That ought to fix him.”
“I think so. It is an excellent car for its purpose, but scarcely adapted to chasing daughters across country. Cook will never catch up with us.”
“Though I don’t see what he could do, even if he did catch up with you.”
“You don’t? What about that hunting crop of his?”
“Ah, yes, I see what you mean.”
I don’t know if he would have developed this theme, but before he could speak there came from the street a musical tooting.
“There she is,” he said, and went out.
So did I. I had no wish to meet Vanessa. I slid out of the back door and returned to Wee Nooke.
I had picked up By Order Of The Czar and was hoping to discover what it was that he had ordered, my bet being that a lot of characters with names ending in “sky” would be off to Siberia before they knew what had hit them, when who should enter hurriedly but Orlo.
He had an envelope in his hand.
“Oh, there you are, Bertie,” he said. “I can only stop a minute. Vanessa’s out there in the car.”
“Ask her to come in.”
“She won’t come in. She says it would be too painful for you.”
“What would?”
“Meeting her, you ass. Gazing on her when you knew she is another’s.”
“Oh, I see.”
“No sense in giving yourself a lot of agony if you don’t have to.”
“Quite.”
“I wouldn’t have disturbed you, only I wanted to give you this letter. It’s a note I’ve written to Cook in place of the one Vanessa wrote last night.”
“Oh, she wrote him a note?”
“Yes.”
“To be pinned to her pincushion?”
“That was the idea. But she dropped it somewhere and couldn’t be bothered to hunt around for it. So I thought I had better send him a line. If you’re running away with a man’s
daughter, it’s only civil to let him know. And I would put the facts before him much better than she would. Girls are apt not to stick to the point when writing letters. With the best intentions in the world they ramble and embroider. A University-trained man like myself who contributes to the New Statesman does not fall into this blunder. He is concise. He is lucid.”
“I didn’t know you wrote for the New Statesman.”
“Occasional letters to the editor. And I rarely fail to enter for the weekly competitions.”
“Absorbing work.”
“Very.”
“I’m a writer of sorts myself. When my Aunt Dahlia was running that paper of hers, Milady’s Boudoir, I did a piece for it on What The Well-Dressed Man Is Wearing.”
“Did you indeed? Next time we meet you must tell me all about it. Can’t stop now.
Vanessa’s waiting and,” he added as the tooting of a horn broke the morning stillness,
“getting impatient. Here’s the letter.”
“You want me to take it to Cook?”
“What do you think I want you to do with it? Get it framed?”
And so saying he legged it like a nymph surprised while bathing, and I picked up my By Order Of The Czar. As I did so I was thinking bitterly that I wished the general public would stop regarding me as an uncomplaining Hey-You on whom all the unpleasant jobs could be shovelled off. Whenever something sticky was afoot and action had to be taken the cry was sure to go up, “Let Wooster do it”.
I have already touched on my Aunt Agatha’s tendency to unload her foul son Thos on me at all seasons. My Aunt Dahlia had blotted the sunshine from my life in the matter of the cat. And here was Orlo Porter coolly telling me to take the letter to Cook, as if entering Cook’s presence in his present difficult mood wasn’t much the same as joining Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, of whom I had read when I won that Scripture Knowledge prize at my private school, on their way to the burning fiery furnace. What, I asked myself, was to be done?
It was a dilemma which might well have baffled a lesser man, but the whole point about the Woosters is that they are not lesser men. I don’t suppose it was more than three-quarters of an hour before the solution flashed on me – viz. to write Cook’s name and address on the envelope, stick a stamp on it and post it. Having decided to do this, I returned to my reading.
But everything seemed to conspire today to prevent me making any real progress with By Order Of The Czar. Scarcely had I perused a paragraph when the door burst open and I found that I was seeing Cook after all. He was standing on the threshold looking like the Demon King in a pantomime.
With him was Major Plank.