“You did, eh?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You thought it funny?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And your Uncle Cyril thought it funny?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Golly, what a family! Next time you meet your Uncle Cyril, Jeeves, you
can tell him from me that his sense of humour is morbid and unpleasant.”
“He is dead, sir.”
“Thank heaven for that.... Well, give me the blasted machine.”
“Very good, sir.”
“Are the tyres inflated?”
“Yes, sir.”
“The nuts firm, the brakes in order, the sprockets running true with
the differential gear?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Right ho, Jeeves.”
In Tuppy’s statement that, when at the University of Oxford, I had been
known to ride a bicycle in the nude about the quadrangle of our mutual
college, there had been, I cannot deny, a certain amount of substance.
Correct, however, though his facts were, so far as they went, he had
not told all. What he had omitted to mention was that I had invariably
been well oiled at the time, and when in that condition a chap is
capable of feats at which in cooler moments his reason would rebel.
Stimulated by the juice, I believe, men have even been known to ride
alligators.
As I started now to pedal out into the great world, I was icily sober,
and the old skill, in consequence, had deserted me entirely. I found
myself wobbling badly, and all the stories I had ever heard of nasty
bicycle accidents came back to me with a rush, headed by Jeeves’s Uncle
Cyril’s cheery little anecdote about Nicholls and Jackson.
Pounding wearily through the darkness, I found myself at a loss to
fathom the mentality of men like Jeeves’s Uncle Cyril. What on earth
he could see funny in a disaster which had apparently involved the
complete extinction of a human creature--or, at any rate, of half a
human creature and half another human creature--was more than I could
understand. To me, the thing was one of the most poignant tragedies
that had ever been brought to my attention, and I have no doubt that
I should have continued to brood over it for quite a time, had my
thoughts not been diverted by the sudden necessity of zigzagging
sharply in order to avoid a pig in the fairway.
For a moment it looked like being real Nicholls-and-Jackson stuff, but,
fortunately, a quick zig on my part, coinciding with an adroit zag on
the part of the pig, enabled me to win through, and I continued my ride
safe, but with the heart fluttering like a captive bird.
The effect of this narrow squeak upon me was to shake the nerve to the
utmost. The fact that pigs were abroad in the night seemed to bring
home to me the perilous nature of my enterprise. It set me thinking
of all the other things that could happen to a man out and about on
a velocipede without a lamp after lighting-up time. In particular, I
recalled the statement of a pal of mine that in certain sections of the
rural districts goats were accustomed to stray across the road to the
extent of their chains, thereby forming about as sound a booby trap as
one could well wish.
He mentioned, I remember, the case of a friend of his whose machine
got entangled with a goat chain and who was dragged seven miles--like
skijoring in Switzerland--so that he was never the same man again.
And there was one chap who ran into an elephant, left over from a
travelling circus.
Indeed, taking it for all in all, it seemed to me that, with the
possible exception of being bitten by sharks, there was virtually no
front-page disaster that could not happen to a fellow, once he had
allowed his dear ones to override his better judgment and shove him out
into the great unknown on a push-bike, and I am not ashamed to confess
that, taking it by and large, the amount of quailing I did from this
point on was pretty considerable.
However, in respect to goats and elephants, I must say things panned
out unexpectedly well.
Oddly enough, I encountered neither. But when you have said that you
have said everything, for in every other way the conditions could
scarcely have been fouler.
Apart from the ceaseless anxiety of having to keep an eye skinned
for elephants, I found myself much depressed by barking dogs, and
once I received a most unpleasant shock when, alighting to consult a
signpost, I saw sitting on top of it an owl that looked exactly like my
Aunt Agatha. So agitated, indeed, had my frame of mind become by this
time that I thought at first it was Aunt Agatha, and only when reason
and reflection told me how alien to her habits it would be to climb
signposts and sit on them, could I pull myself together and overcome
the weakness.
In short, what with all this mental disturbance added to the more
purely physical anguish in the billowy portions and the calves and
ankles, the Bertram Wooster who eventually toppled off at the door of
Kingham Manor was a very different Bertram from the gay and insouciant
_boulevardier_ of Bond Street and Piccadilly.
Even to one unaware of the inside facts, it would have been evident
that Kingham Manor was throwing its weight about a bit tonight. Lights
shone in the windows, music was in the air, and as I drew nearer my
ear detected the sibilant shuffling of the feet of butlers, footmen,
chauffeurs, parlourmaids, housemaids, tweenies and, I have no doubt,
cooks, who were busily treading the measure. I suppose you couldn’t sum
it up much better than by saying that there was a sound of revelry by
night.
The orgy was taking place in one of the ground-floor rooms which had
French windows opening on to the drive, and it was to these French
windows that I now made my way. An orchestra was playing something
with a good deal of zip to it, and under happier conditions I dare say
my feet would have started twitching in time to the melody. But I had
sterner work before me than to stand hoofing it by myself on gravel
drives.