Jeeves—my man, you know—is really a most extraordinary chap. So
capable. Honestly, I shouldn’t know what to do without him. On broader
lines he’s like those chappies who sit peering sadly over the marble
battlements at the Pennsylvania Station in the place marked
“Inquiries.” You know the Johnnies I mean. You go up to them and say:
“When’s the next train for Melonsquashville, Tennessee?” and they
reply, without stopping to think, “Two-forty-three, track ten, change
at San Francisco.” And they’re right every time. Well, Jeeves gives you
just the same impression of omniscience.
As an instance of what I mean, I remember meeting Monty Byng in Bond
Street one morning, looking the last word in a grey check suit, and I
felt I should never be happy till I had one like it. I dug the address
of the tailors out of him, and had them working on the thing inside the
hour.
“Jeeves,” I said that evening. “I’m getting a check suit like that one
of Mr. Byng’s.”
“Injudicious, sir,” he said firmly. “It will not become you.”
“What absolute rot! It’s the soundest thing I’ve struck for years.”
“Unsuitable for you, sir.”
Well, the long and the short of it was that the confounded thing came
home, and I put it on, and when I caught sight of myself in the glass I
nearly swooned. Jeeves was perfectly right. I looked a cross between a
music-hall comedian and a cheap bookie. Yet Monty had looked fine in
absolutely the same stuff. These things are just Life’s mysteries, and
that’s all there is to it.
But it isn’t only that Jeeves’s judgment about clothes is infallible,
though, of course, that’s really the main thing. The man knows
everything. There was the matter of that tip on the “Lincolnshire.” I
forget now how I got it, but it had the aspect of being the real,
red-hot tabasco.
“Jeeves,” I said, for I’m fond of the man, and like to do him a good
turn when I can, “if you want to make a bit of money have something on
Wonderchild for the ‘Lincolnshire.’”
He shook his head.
“I’d rather not, sir.”
“But it’s the straight goods. I’m going to put my shirt on him.”
“I do not recommend it, sir. The animal is not intended to win. Second
place is what the stable is after.”
Perfect piffle, I thought, of course. How the deuce could Jeeves know
anything about it? Still, you know what happened. Wonderchild led till
he was breathing on the wire, and then Banana Fritter came along and
nosed him out. I went straight home and rang for Jeeves.
“After this,” I said, “not another step for me without your advice.
From now on consider yourself the brains of the establishment.”
“Very good, sir. I shall endeavour to give satisfaction.”
And he has, by Jove! I’m a bit short on brain myself; the old bean
would appear to have been constructed more for ornament than for use,
don’t you know; but give me five minutes to talk the thing over with
Jeeves, and I’m game to advise any one about anything. And that’s why,
when Bruce Corcoran came to me with his troubles, my first act was to
ring the bell and put it up to the lad with the bulging forehead.
“Leave it to Jeeves,” I said.
I first got to know Corky when I came to New York. He was a pal of my
cousin Gussie, who was in with a lot of people down Washington Square
way. I don’t know if I ever told you about it, but the reason why I
left England was because I was sent over by my Aunt Agatha to try to
stop young Gussie marrying a girl on the vaudeville stage, and I got
the whole thing so mixed up that I decided that it would be a sound
scheme for me to stop on in America for a bit instead of going back and
having long cosy chats about the thing with aunt. So I sent Jeeves out
to find a decent apartment, and settled down for a bit of exile. I’m
bound to say that New York’s a topping place to be exiled in. Everybody
was awfully good to me, and there seemed to be plenty of things going
on, and I’m a wealthy bird, so everything was fine. Chappies introduced
me to other chappies, and so on and so forth, and it wasn’t long before
I knew squads of the right sort, some who rolled in dollars in houses
up by the Park, and others who lived with the gas turned down mostly
around Washington Square—artists and writers and so forth. Brainy
coves.
Corky was one of the artists. A portrait-painter, he called himself,
but he hadn’t painted any portraits. He was sitting on the side-lines
with a blanket over his shoulders, waiting for a chance to get into the
game. You see, the catch about portrait-painting—I’ve looked into the
thing a bit—is that you can’t start painting portraits till people come
along and ask you to, and they won’t come and ask you to until you’ve
painted a lot first. This makes it kind of difficult for a chappie.
Corky managed to get along by drawing an occasional picture for the
comic papers—he had rather a gift for funny stuff when he got a good
idea—and doing bedsteads and chairs and things for the advertisements.
His principal source of income, however, was derived from biting the
ear of a rich uncle—one Alexander Worple, who was in the jute business.
I’m a bit foggy as to what jute is, but it’s apparently something the
populace is pretty keen on, for Mr. Worple had made quite an indecently
large stack out of it.
Now, a great many fellows think that having a rich uncle is a pretty
soft snap: but, according to Corky, such is not the case. Corky’s uncle
was a robust sort of cove, who looked like living for ever. He was
fifty-one, and it seemed as if he might go to par. It was not this,
however, that distressed poor old Corky, for he was not bigoted and had
no objection to the man going on living. What Corky kicked at was the
way the above Worple used to harry him.
Corky’s uncle, you see, didn’t want him to be an artist. He didn’t
think he had any talent in that direction. He was always urging him to
chuck Art and go into the jute business and start at the bottom and
work his way up. Jute had apparently become a sort of obsession with
him. He seemed to attach almost a spiritual importance to it. And what
Corky said was that, while he didn’t know what they did at the bottom
of the jute business, instinct told him that it was something too
beastly for words. Corky, moreover, believed in his future as an
artist. Some day, he said, he was going to make a hit. Meanwhile, by
using the utmost tact and persuasiveness, he was inducing his uncle to
cough up very grudgingly a small quarterly allowance.
He wouldn’t have got this if his uncle hadn’t had a hobby. Mr. Worple
was peculiar in this respect. As a rule, from what I’ve observed, the
American captain of industry doesn’t do anything out of business hours.
When he has put the cat out and locked up the office for the night, he
just relapses into a state of coma from which he emerges only to start
being a captain of industry again. But Mr. Worple in his spare time was
what is known as an ornithologist. He had written a book called
_American Birds_, and was writing another, to be called _More American
Birds_. When he had finished that, the presumption was that he would
begin a third, and keep on till the supply of American birds gave out.
Corky used to go to him about once every three months and let him talk
about American birds. Apparently you could do what you liked with old
Worple if you gave him his head first on his pet subject, so these
little chats used to make Corky’s allowance all right for the time
being. But it was pretty rotten for the poor chap. There was the
frightful suspense, you see, and, apart from that, birds, except when
broiled and in the society of a cold bottle, bored him stiff.
To complete the character-study of Mr. Worple, he was a man of
extremely uncertain temper, and his general tendency was to think that
Corky was a poor chump and that whatever step he took in any direction
on his own account, was just another proof of his innate idiocy. I
should imagine Jeeves feels very much the same about me.
So when Corky trickled into my apartment one afternoon, shooing a girl
in front of him, and said, “Bertie, I want you to meet my fiancée, Miss
Singer,” the aspect of the matter which hit me first was precisely the
one which he had come to consult me about. The very first words I spoke
were, “Corky, how about your uncle?”
The poor chap gave one of those mirthless laughs. He was looking
anxious and worried, like a man who has done the murder all right but
can’t think what the deuce to do with the body.
“We’re so scared, Mr. Wooster,” said the girl. “We were hoping that you
might suggest a way of breaking it to him.”
Muriel Singer was one of those very quiet, appealing girls who have a
way of looking at you with their big eyes as if they thought you were
the greatest thing on earth and wondered that you hadn’t got on to it
yet yourself. She sat there in a sort of shrinking way, looking at me
as if she were saying to herself, “Oh, I do hope this great strong man
isn’t going to hurt me.” She gave a fellow a protective kind of
feeling, made him want to stroke her hand and say, “There, there,
little one!” or words to that effect. She made me feel that there was
nothing I wouldn’t do for her. She was rather like one of those
innocent-tasting American drinks which creep imperceptibly into your
system so that, before you know what you’re doing, you’re starting out
to reform the world by force if necessary and pausing on your way to
tell the large man in the corner that, if he looks at you like that,
you will knock his head off. What I mean is, she made me feel alert and
dashing, like a jolly old knight-errant or something of that kind. I
felt that I was with her in this thing to the limit.
“I don’t see why your uncle shouldn’t be most awfully bucked,” I said
to Corky. “He will think Miss Singer the ideal wife for you.”
Corky declined to cheer up.
“You don’t know him. Even if he did like Muriel he wouldn’t admit it.
That’s the sort of pig-headed guy he is. It would be a matter of
principle with him to kick. All he would consider would be that I had
gone and taken an important step without asking his advice, and he
would raise Cain automatically. He’s always done it.”