THE HERO’S REWARD
I don’t know if you’ve noticed it, but it’s rummy how nothing in
this world ever seems to be absolutely perfect. The drawback to this
otherwise singularly fruity binge was, of course, the fact that Jeeves
wouldn’t be on the spot to watch me in action. Still, apart from
that there wasn’t a flaw. The beauty of the thing was, you see, that
nothing could possibly go wrong. You know how it is, as a rule, when
you want to get Chappie A on Spot B at exactly the same moment when
Chappie C is on Spot D. There’s always a chance of a hitch. Take the
case of a general, I mean to say, who’s planning out a big movement.
He tells one regiment to capture the hill with the windmill on it at
the exact moment when another regiment is taking the bridgehead or
something down in the valley; and everything gets all messed up. And
then, when they’re chatting the thing over in camp that night, the
colonel of the first regiment says, “Oh, sorry! Did you say the hill
with the windmill? I thought you said the one with the flock of sheep.”
And there you are! But in this case, nothing like that could happen,
because Oswald and Bingo would be on the spot right along, so that all
I had to worry about was getting Honoria there in due season. And I
managed that all right, first shot, by asking her if she would come for
a stroll in the grounds with me, as I had something particular to say
to her.
She had arrived shortly after lunch in the car with the Braythwayt
girl. I was introduced to the latter, a tallish girl with blue eyes and
fair hair. I rather took to her--she was so unlike Honoria--and, if I
had been able to spare the time, I shouldn’t have minded talking to
her for a bit. But business was business--I had fixed it up with Bingo
to be behind the bushes at three sharp, so I got hold of Honoria and
steered her out through the grounds in the direction of the lake.
“You’re very quiet, Mr. Wooster,” she said.
Made me jump a bit. I was concentrating pretty tensely at the moment.
We had just come in sight of the lake, and I was casting a keen eye
over the ground to see that everything was in order. Everything
appeared to be as arranged. The kid Oswald was hunched up on the
bridge; and, as Bingo wasn’t visible, I took it that he had got into
position. My watch made it two minutes after the hour.
“Eh?” I said. “Oh, ah, yes. I was just thinking.”
“You said you had something important to say to me.”
“Absolutely!” I had decided to open the proceedings by sort of paving
the way for young Bingo. I mean to say, without actually mentioning his
name, I wanted to prepare the girl’s mind for the fact that, surprising
as it might seem, there was someone who had long loved her from afar
and all that sort of rot. “It’s like this,” I said. “It may sound rummy
and all that, but there’s somebody who’s frightfully in love with you
and so forth--a friend of mine, you know.”
“Oh, a friend of yours?”
“Yes.”
She gave a kind of a laugh.
“Well, why doesn’t he tell me so?”
“Well, you see, that’s the sort of chap he is. Kind of shrinking,
diffident kind of fellow. Hasn’t got the nerve. Thinks you so much
above him, don’t you know. Looks on you as a sort of goddess. Worships
the ground you tread on, but can’t whack up the ginger to tell you so.”
“This is very interesting.”
“Yes. He’s not a bad chap, you know, in his way. Rather an ass,
perhaps, but well-meaning. Well, that’s the posish. You might just bear
it in mind, what?”
“How funny you are!”
She chucked back her head and laughed with considerable vim. She had a
penetrating sort of laugh. Rather like a train going into a tunnel. It
didn’t sound over-musical to me, and on the kid Oswald it appeared to
jar not a little. He gazed at us with a good deal of dislike.
“I wish the dickens you wouldn’t make that row,” he said. “Scaring all
the fish away.”
It broke the spell a bit. Honoria changed the subject.
“I do wish Oswald wouldn’t sit on the bridge like that,” she said. “I’m
sure it isn’t safe. He might easily fall in.”
“I’ll go and tell him,” I said.
* * * * *
I suppose the distance between the kid and me at this juncture was
about five yards, but I got the impression that it was nearer a
hundred. And, as I started to toddle across the intervening space,
I had a rummy feeling that I’d done this very thing before. Then I
remembered. Years ago, at a country-house party, I had been roped in
to play the part of a butler in some amateur theatricals in aid of
some ghastly charity or other; and I had had to open the proceedings by
walking across the empty stage from left upper entrance and shoving a
tray on a table down right. They had impressed it on me at rehearsals
that I mustn’t take the course at a quick heel-and-toe, like a chappie
finishing strongly in a walking-race; and the result was that I kept
the brakes on to such an extent that it seemed to me as if I was never
going to get to the bally table at all. The stage seemed to stretch
out in front of me like a trackless desert, and there was a kind
of breathless hush as if all Nature had paused to concentrate its
attention on me personally. Well, I felt just like that now. I had a
kind of dry gulping in my throat, and the more I walked the farther
away the kid seemed to get, till suddenly I found myself standing just
behind him without quite knowing how I’d got there.
“Hallo!” I said, with a sickly sort of grin--wasted on the kid, because
he didn’t bother to turn round and look at me. He merely wiggled his
left ear in a rather peevish manner. I don’t know when I’ve met anybody
in whose life I appeared to mean so little.
“Hallo!” I said. “Fishing?”
I laid my hand in a sort of elder-brotherly way on his shoulder.
“Here, look out!” said the kid, wobbling on his foundations.
It was one of those things that want doing quickly or not at all.
I shut my eyes and pushed. Something seemed to give. There was a
scrambling sound, a kind of yelp, a scream in the offing, and a splash.
And so the long day wore on, so to speak.
I opened my eyes. The kid was just coming to the surface.
“Help!” I shouted, cocking an eye on the bush from which young Bingo
was scheduled to emerge.
Nothing happened. Young Bingo didn’t emerge to the slightest extent
whatever.
“I say! Help!” I shouted again.
I don’t want to bore you with reminiscences of my theatrical career,
but I must just touch once more on that appearance of mine as the
butler. The scheme on that occasion had been that when I put the tray
on the table the heroine would come on and say a few words to get me
off. Well, on the night the misguided female forgot to stand by, and
it was a full minute before the search-party located her and shot her
on to the stage. And all that time I had to stand there, waiting. A
rotten sensation, believe me, and this was just the same, only worse.
I understood what these writer-chappies mean when they talk about time
standing still.
Meanwhile, the kid Oswald was presumably being cut off in his prime,
and it began to seem to me that some sort of steps ought to be taken
about it. What I had seen of the lad hadn’t particularly endeared him
to me, but it was undoubtedly a bit thick to let him pass away. I don’t
know when I have seen anything more grubby and unpleasant than the lake
as viewed from the bridge; but the thing apparently had to be done. I
chucked off my coat and vaulted over.
It seems rummy that water should be so much wetter when you go into it
with your clothes on than when you’re just bathing, but take it from
me that it is. I was only under about three seconds, I suppose, but I
came up feeling like the bodies you read of in the paper which “had
evidently been in the water several days.” I felt clammy and bloated.
At this point the scenario struck another snag. I had assumed that
directly I came to the surface I should get hold of the kid and steer
him courageously to shore. But he hadn’t waited to be steered. When I
had finished getting the water out of my eyes and had time to take a
look round, I saw him about ten yards away, going strongly and using,
I think, the Australian crawl. The spectacle took all the heart out
of me. I mean to say, the whole essence of a rescue, if you know what
I mean, is that the party of the second part shall keep fairly still
and in one spot. If he starts swimming off on his own account and can
obviously give you at least forty yards in the hundred, where are you?
The whole thing falls through. It didn’t seem to me that there was
much to be done except get ashore, so I got ashore. By the time I had
landed, the kid was half-way to the house. Look at it from whatever
angle you like, the thing was a wash-out.
I was interrupted in my meditations by a noise like the Scotch express
going under a bridge. It was Honoria Glossop laughing. She was standing
at my elbow, looking at me in a rummy manner.
“Oh, Bertie, you are funny!” she said. And even in that moment there
seemed to me something sinister in the words. She had never called me
anything except “Mr. Wooster” before. “How wet you are!”
“Yes, I am wet.”
“You had better hurry into the house and change.”
“Yes.”
I wrung a gallon or two of water out of my clothes.
“You _are_ funny!” she said again. “First proposing in that
extraordinary roundabout way, and then pushing poor little Oswald into
the lake so as to impress me by saving him.”
I managed to get the water out of my throat sufficiently to try to
correct this fearful impression.
“No, no!”
“He said you pushed him in, and I saw you do it. Oh, I’m not angry,
Bertie. I think it was too sweet of you. But I’m quite sure it’s time
that I took you in hand. You certainly want someone to look after you.
You’ve been seeing too many moving-pictures. I suppose the next thing
you would have done would have been to set the house on fire so as to
rescue me.” She looked at me in a proprietary sort of way. “I think,”
she said, “I shall be able to make something of you, Bertie. It is
true yours has been a wasted life up to the present, but you are still
young, and there is a lot of good in you.”
“No, really there isn’t.”
“Oh, yes, there is. It simply wants bringing out. Now you run straight
up to the house and change your wet clothes, or you will catch cold.”
And, if you know what I mean, there was a sort of motherly note in her
voice which seemed to tell me, even more than her actual words, that I
was for it.
* * * * *
As I was coming downstairs after changing, I ran into young Bingo,
looking festive to a degree.
“Bertie!” he said. “Just the man I wanted to see. Bertie, a wonderful
thing has happened.”
“You blighter!” I cried. “What became of you? Do you know----?”
“Oh, you mean about being in those bushes? I hadn’t time to tell you
about that. It’s all off.”
“All off?”
“Bertie, I was actually starting to hide in those bushes when the most
extraordinary thing happened. Walking across the lawn I saw the most
radiant, the most beautiful girl in the world. There is none like her,
none. Bertie, do you believe in love at first sight? You do believe in
love at first sight, don’t you, Bertie, old man? Directly I saw her,
she seemed to draw me like a magnet. I seemed to forget everything. We
two were alone in a world of music and sunshine. I joined her. I got
into conversation. She is a Miss Braythwayt, Bertie--Daphne Braythwayt.
Directly our eyes met, I realised that what I had imagined to be my
love for Honoria Glossop had been a mere passing whim. Bertie, you do
believe in love at first sight, don’t you? She is so wonderful, so
sympathetic. Like a tender goddess----”
At this point I left the blighter.
* * * * *
Two days later I got a letter from Jeeves.
“ ... The weather,” it ended, “continues fine. I have had one
exceedingly enjoyable bathe.”
I gave one of those hollow, mirthless laughs, and went downstairs to
join Honoria. I had an appointment with her in the drawing-room. She
was going to read Ruskin to me.