5

The Pride of the Woosters is Wounded

If there’s one thing I like, it’s a quiet life. I’m not one of those fellows who feel restless and depressed if things aren’t happening to them all the time. Give me regular meals, a good show with decent music now and then, and one or two friends to talk to, and I ask no more.

I’d returned from Roville with a sort of feeling that from now on nothing could upset me. Aunt Agatha, I imagined, would require at least a year to recover from the Hemmingway affair: and apart from Aunt Agatha there isn’t anybody who really annoys me. It seemed to me that the skies were blue, so to speak, and no clouds in sight.

But … Well, look here, what happened was this, and I ask you if it wasn’t enough to rattle anybody.

Once a year Jeeves takes a couple of weeks’ vacation and goes to the sea or somewhere to restore his forces. It’s pretty bad for me, of course, while he’s away. But nothing to do; and he usually manages to find a decent fellow to look after me in his absence.

Well, the time had come again, and Jeeves was in the kitchen giving a new servant few tips about his duties. I was looking for a stamp or something, and I wanted to ask him for it. The silly ass had left the kitchen door open, and I heard his voice.

“You will find Mr Wooster,” he was saying to the new servant, “an exceedingly pleasant and amiable young gentleman, but not intelligent. By no means intelligent. Mentally he is negligible—quite negligible.”

Well, I mean to say, what!

I called for my hat and stick and went out. But I have good memory, if you know what I mean. We Woosters do not forget anything. At least, we do—appointments, and people’s birthdays, and letters to post, and all that—but not an absolute insult like the above.

I dropped in at the oyster-bar at Buck’s. I needed something strong at the moment, because I was on my way to lunch with Aunt Agatha. A frightful ordeal, believe me or believe me not, even though I thought that after what had happened at Roville she would be in a subdued and amiable mood. Suddenly a muffled voice hailed me from the north-east, and, turning round, I saw young Bingo Little propped up in a corner, eating a huge chunk of bread and cheese.

“Hallo-allo-allo!” I said. “Haven’t seen you for ages. You’ve not been in here lately, have you?”

“No. I’ve been living out in the country.”

“Eh?” I said, for Bingo’s hatred for the country was well known. “And where?”

“Down in Hampshire, at a place called Ditteredge.”

“No, really? I know some people who’ve got a house there. The Glossops. Have you met them?”

“Why, that’s where I’m staying!” said young Bingo. “I’m tutoring the Glossop kid.”

“What for?” I said. I couldn’t see young Bingo as a tutor. Though, of course, he got a degree at Oxford.

“What for? For money, of course! An absolute champion came last in the second race at Haydock Park,” said young Bingo, with some bitterness, “and I dropped my entire month’s allowance. I went to the agents and got a job. I’ve been down there three weeks.”

“I haven’t met the Glossop kid.”

“Don’t!” advised Bingo, briefly.

“The only one of the family I really know is the girl.”

I had hardly spoken these words when the most extraordinary change came over young Bingo’s face. His eyes bulged, his cheeks flushed, and his Adam’s apple hopped about like one of those rubber balls on the top of the fountain in a shooting-gallery.

“Oh, Bertie!” he said, in a strangled sort of voice.

I looked at the poor guy anxiously. I knew that he was always falling in love with someone, but it didn’t seem possible that even he could have fallen in love with Honoria Glossop. To me the girl was simply nothing more nor less than a pot of poison. One of those dashed large, brainy, strenuous, dynamic girls you see so many of these days. She had been at Girton, where, in addition to enlarging her brain to the most frightful extent, she had gone in for every kind of sport and developed the physique of a wrestler. The effect she had on me whenever she appeared was to make me want to slide into a cellar and lie low till she went away.

But there was no mistaking it. The love light was in the blighter’s eyes.

“I worship her, Bertie! I worship the very ground she treads on!” continued the patient, in a loud, penetrating voice. Fred Thompson and one or two fellows had come in, and McGarry, the fellow behind the bar, was listening very attentively. But Bingo did not care. He always reminds me of the hero of a musical comedy who takes the centre of the stage, gathers the boys round him in a circle, and tells them all about his love at the top of his voice.

“Have you told her?”

“No, I haven’t the nerve. But we walk together in the garden most evenings, and it sometimes seems to me that there is a look in her eyes.”

“I know that look. Like a sergeant-major.”

“Nothing of the kind! Like a tender goddess.”

“Half a second, old thing,” I said. “Are you sure we’re talking about the same girl? The one I mean is Honoria. Perhaps there’s a younger sister or something I’ve not heard of?”

“Her name is Honoria,” bawled Bingo reverently.

“And she reminds you a tender goddess?”

“She does.”

“God bless you!” I said.

“She walks in beauty like the night of cloudless climes and starry skies; and all that’s best of dark and bright meet in her aspect and her eyes. Another bit of bread and cheese,” he said to the lad behind the bar.

“You’re keeping your strength up,” I said.

“This is my lunch. I’ve got to meet Oswald at Waterloo at one-fifteen, to catch the train back. I brought him up to town to see the dentist.”

“Oswald? Is that the kid?”

“Yes. Very pestilential.”

“Pestilential! That reminds me, I’m lunching with my Aunt Agatha. I’ll have to run away, or I’ll be late.”

I hadn’t seen Aunt Agatha since that little affair of the pearls; and, while I didn’t anticipate any great pleasure from eating something in her society, I must say that there was one topic of conversation I felt confident she wouldn’t touch on, and that was the subject of my matrimonial future.

But I don’t understand women. At all. We’d hardly exchanged a word about the weather, when she told me:

“Bertie,” she said, “I’ve been thinking again about you and how necessary it is that you should get married. I admit that I was dreadfully mistaken in my opinion of that terrible, hypocritical girl at Roville, but this time there is no danger of an error. By great good luck I have found the very wife for you, a girl whom I have only recently met, but whose family is above suspicion. She has plenty of money, too, though that does not matter in your case. The great point is that she is strong, self-reliant and sensible, and will counterbalance the deficiencies and weaknesses of your character. She has met you; and, while there is naturally much in you of which she disapproves, she does not dislike you. I know this, for I have talked to her—guardedly, of course—and I am sure you have only to make the first advance—”

“Who is it?” I would have said it long before, but the shock had made me swallow a bit of roll the wrong way. “Who is it?”

“Sir Roderick Glossop’s daughter, Honoria.”

“No, no!” I cried.

“Don’t be silly, Bertie. She is just the wife for you.”

“Yes, but look here—”

“She will mould you.”

“But I don’t want to be moulded.”

Aunt Agatha looked at me strictly.

“Bertie! I hope you are not going to be troublesome.”

“Well, but I mean—”

“Lady Glossop has very kindly invited you to Ditteredge Hall for a few days. I told her you would be delighted to come down tomorrow.”

“I’m sorry, but I’ve got an important engagement tomorrow.”

“What engagement?”

““Well—er—”

“You have no engagement. And, even if you had, you must put it off. I shall be very seriously annoyed, Bertie, if you do not go to Ditteredge Hall tomorrow.”

“Oh, right!” I said.

I felt the old fighting spirit of the Woosters reasserted itself. And I wanted to shoe Jeeves that I could act without a bit of help from him. Ordinarily, of course, I should have consulted him and trusted to him to solve the difficulty; but after what I had heard him saying in the kitchen, I didn’t want to demean myself. When I got home I addressed him:

“Jeeves,” I said, “I’m in a bit of a difficulty.”

“I’m sorry to hear that, sir.”

“Yes, quite a bad hole.”

“If I could be of any assistance, sir—”

“Oh, no. No, no. Thanks very much, but no, no. I won’t trouble you. I’ve no doubt I shall be able to manage it myself.”

“Very good, sir.”

So that was that.

Honoria was away when I got to Ditteredge on the following afternoon. Her mother told me that she was staying with some people named Braythwayt in the neighbourhood, and would be back next day, bringing the daughter of the house with her for a visit. She said I would find Oswald in the park.

Rather decent, the parks at Ditteredge. A couple of terraces, a bit of lawn with a cedar on it, a bit of shrubbery, and finally a small but goodish lake with a stone bridge running across it. I’d walked round the shrubbery and found young Bingo leaning against the bridge smoking a cigarette. Sitting on the stonework, fishing, was a kid whom I took to be that pestilential Oswald.

Bingo was both surprised and delighted to see me, and introduced me to the kid. If the latter was surprised and delighted too, he concealed it like a diplomat. He just looked at me, raised his eyebrows slightly, and went on fishing. He was one of those supercilious striplings who give you the impression that you went to the wrong school and that your clothes don’t fit.

“This is Oswald,” said Bingo.

“Nice to meet you,” I replied cordially, “How are you?”

“Oh, all right,” said the kid.

“Nice place.”

“Oh, all right,” said the kid.

“Having a good time fishing?”

“Oh, all right,” said the kid.

Young Bingo invited me to walk a little.

“Oh, that Oswald’s is so talkative! Does it make your head ache sometimes?” I asked.

Bingo sighed.

“It’s a hard job.”

“What’s a hard job?”

“Loving him.”

“Do you love him?” I asked, surprised. I shouldn’t have thought it could be done.

“I try to,” said young Bingo, “for Her sake. She’s coming back tomorrow, Bertie.”

“So I heard.”

“She is coming, my love, my own—”

“Absolutely,” I said. “But about young Oswald once more. Do you have to be with him all day? How do you manage it?”

“Oh, he doesn’t give much trouble. When we aren’t working he sits on that bridge all the time, trying to catch tiddlers.”

“Why don’t you shove him in?”

“Shove him in?”

“It seems to me reasonable,” I said, regarding the stripling’s back with dislike. “It would wake him up a bit.”

Bingo shook his head.

“Your proposition attracts me,” he said, “but I’m afraid it can’t be done. You see, She would never forgive me. She is devoted to the little brute.”

“Oh Lord!” I cried. “Bingo, what would Jeeves have done?”

“How do you mean, what would Jeeves have done?”

“I mean what would he have advised in a case like yours? I mean you want to make an impression upon Honoria Glossop and all that. Jeeves would have got me to lure Honoria on to the bridge somehow; then, at the proper time, he would have told me to shove the kid in, the kid would have fallen into the water; and then you would have appeared and saved him out. How about it?”

“Have you invented this yourself, Bertie?” said young Bingo, in a hushed sort of voice.

“Yes, I have. Jeeves isn’t the only fellow with ideas.”

“But it’s absolutely wonderful.”

“Just a suggestion.”

“The only objection I can see is that it would be awkward for you. I mean to say, suppose the kid turned round and said you had shoved him in, that would make you unpopular with Her.”

“I don’t mind.”

The man was deeply moved.

“Bertie, this is noble.”

“No, no.”

He clasped my hand silently, then chuckled.

“Now what?” I said.

“I was only thinking,” said young Bingo, “about wet Oswald! Oh, happy day!”