“The wind?”
Aunt Dahlia’s eyes met mine.
“Don’t try me too high,” she begged. “Not now, precious.” And, indeed,
even as I spoke, it did strike me that the night was pretty still.
Uncle Tom said we must get in through a window. Aunt Dahlia sighed a
bit.
“How? Could Lloyd George do it, could Winston do it, could Baldwin do
it? No. Not since you had those bars of yours put on.”
“Well, well, well. God bless my soul, ring the bell, then.”
“The fire bell?”
“The door bell.”
“To what end, Thomas? There’s nobody in the house. The servants are all
at Kingham.”
“But, confound it all, we can’t stop out here all night.”
“Can’t we? You just watch us. There is nothing--literally
nothing--which a country house party can’t do with Attila here
operating on the premises. Seppings presumably took the back-door key
with him. We must just amuse ourselves till he comes back.”
Tuppy made a suggestion:
“Why not take out one of the cars and drive over to Kingham and get the
key from Seppings?”
It went well. No question about that. For the first time, a smile lit
up Aunt Dahlia’s drawn face. Uncle Tom grunted approvingly. Anatole
said something in Provençal that sounded complimentary. And I thought I
detected even on Angela’s map a slight softening.
“A very excellent idea,” said Aunt Dahlia. “One of the best. Nip round
to the garage at once.”
After Tuppy had gone, some extremely flattering things were said about
his intelligence and resource, and there was a disposition to draw
rather invidious comparisons between him and Bertram. Painful for me,
of course, but the ordeal didn’t last long, for it couldn’t have been
more than five minutes before he was with us again.
Tuppy seemed perturbed.
“I say, it’s all off.”
“Why?”
“The garage is locked.”
“Unlock it.”
“I haven’t the key.”
“Shout, then, and wake Waterbury.”
“Who’s Waterbury?”
“The chauffeur, ass. He sleeps over the garage.”
“But he’s gone to the dance at Kingham.”
It was the final wallop. Until this moment, Aunt Dahlia had been able
to preserve her frozen calm. The dam now burst. The years rolled
away from her, and she was once more the Dahlia Wooster of the old
yoicks-and-tantivy days--the emotional, free-speaking girl who had so
often risen in her stirrups to yell derogatory personalities at people
who were heading hounds.
“Curse all dancing chauffeurs! What on earth does a chauffeur want
to dance for? I mistrusted that man from the start. Something told
me he was a dancer. Well, this finishes it. We’re out here till
breakfast-time. If those blasted servants come back before eight
o’clock, I shall be vastly surprised. You won’t get Seppings away from
a dance till you throw him out. I know him. The jazz’ll go to his head,
and he’ll stand clapping and demanding encores till his hands blister.
Damn all dancing butlers! What is Brinkley Court? A respectable English
country house or a crimson dancing school? One might as well be living
in the middle of the Russian Ballet. Well, all right. If we must stay
out here, we must. We shall all be frozen stiff, except”--here she
directed at me not one of her friendliest glances----“except dear
old Attila, who is, I observe, well and warmly clad. We will resign
ourselves to the prospect of freezing to death like the Babes in the
Wood, merely expressing a dying wish that our old pal Attila will see
that we are covered with leaves. No doubt he will also toll that fire
bell of his as a mark of respect--And what might you want, my good man?”
She broke off, and stood glaring at Jeeves. During the latter portion
of her address, he had been standing by in a respectful manner,
endeavouring to catch the speaker’s eye.
“If I might make a suggestion, madam.”
I am not saying that in the course of our long association I have
always found myself able to view Jeeves with approval. There are
aspects of his character which have frequently caused coldnesses to
arise between us. He is one of those fellows who, if you give them a
thingummy, take a what-d’you-call-it. His work is often raw, and he has
been known to allude to me as “mentally negligible”. More than once, as
I have shown, it has been my painful task to squelch in him a tendency
to get uppish and treat the young master as a serf or peon.
These are grave defects.
But one thing I have never failed to hand the man. He is magnetic.
There is about him something that seems to soothe and hypnotize. To the
best of my knowledge, he has never encountered a charging rhinoceros,
but should this contingency occur, I have no doubt that the animal,
meeting his eye, would check itself in mid-stride, roll over and lie
purring with its legs in the air.
At any rate he calmed down Aunt Dahlia, the nearest thing to a charging
rhinoceros, in under five seconds. He just stood there looking
respectful, and though I didn’t time the thing--not having a stop-watch
on me--I should say it wasn’t more than three seconds and a quarter
before her whole manner underwent an astounding change for the better.
She melted before one’s eyes.
“Jeeves! You haven’t got an idea?”
“Yes, madam.”
“That great brain of yours has really clicked as ever in the hour of
need?”
“Yes, madam.”
“Jeeves,” said Aunt Dahlia in a shaking voice, “I am sorry I spoke so
abruptly. I was not myself. I might have known that you would not come
simply trying to make conversation. Tell us this idea of yours, Jeeves.
Join our little group of thinkers and let us hear what you have to
say. Make yourself at home, Jeeves, and give us the good word. Can you
really get us out of this mess?”
“Yes, madam, if one of the gentlemen would be willing to ride a
bicycle.”
“A bicycle?”
“There is a bicycle in the gardener’s shed in the kitchen garden,
madam. Possibly one of the gentlemen might feel disposed to ride over
to Kingham Manor and procure the back-door key from Mr. Seppings.”
“Splendid, Jeeves!”
“Thank you, madam.”
“Wonderful!”
“Thank you, madam.”
“Attila!” said Aunt Dahlia, turning and speaking in a quiet,
authoritative manner.
I had been expecting it. From the very moment those ill-judged
words had passed the fellow’s lips, I had had a presentiment that a
determined effort would be made to elect me as the goat, and I braced
myself to resist and obstruct.
And as I was about to do so, while I was in the very act of summoning
up all my eloquence to protest that I didn’t know how to ride a bike
and couldn’t possibly learn in the brief time at my disposal, I’m
dashed if the man didn’t go and nip me in the bud.
“Yes, madam, Mr. Wooster would perform the task admirably. He is an
expert cyclist. He has often boasted to me of his triumphs on the
wheel.”
I hadn’t. I hadn’t done anything of the sort. It’s simply monstrous
how one’s words get twisted. All I had ever done was to mention to
him--casually, just as an interesting item of information, one day in
New York when we were watching the six-day bicycle race--that at the
age of fourteen, while spending my holidays with a vicar of sorts who
had been told off to teach me Latin, I had won the Choir Boys’ Handicap
at the local school treat.
A different thing from boasting of one’s triumphs on the wheel.
I mean, he was a man of the world and must have known that the form of
school treats is never of the hottest. And, if I’m not mistaken, I had
specifically told him that on the occasion referred to I had received
half a lap start and that Willie Punting, the odds-on favourite to whom
the race was expected to be a gift, had been forced to retire, owing
to having pinched his elder brother’s machine without asking the elder
brother, and the elder brother coming along just as the pistol went
and giving him one on the side of the head and taking it away from
him, thus rendering him a scratched-at-the-post non-starter. Yet, from
the way he talked, you would have thought I was one of those chaps in
sweaters with medals all over them, whose photographs bob up from time
to time in the illustrated press on the occasion of their having ridden
from Hyde Park Corner to Glasgow in three seconds under the hour, or
whatever it is.
And as if this were not bad enough, Tuppy had to shove his oar in.
“That’s right,” said Tuppy. “Bertie has always been a great cyclist. I
remember at Oxford he used to take all his clothes off on bump-supper
nights and ride around the quad, singing comic songs. Jolly fast he
used to go too.”
“Then he can go jolly fast now,” said Aunt Dahlia with animation. “He
can’t go too fast for me. He may also sing comic songs, if he likes....
And if you wish to take your clothes off, Bertie, my lamb, by all means
do so. But whether clothed or in the nude, whether singing comic songs
or not singing comic songs, get a move on.”