“Don’t be frivolous, my dear old butler,” I said. “I haven’t ridden
nine miles on a push-bike to listen to you trying to be funny. You’ve
got it in your trousers pocket.”
“No, sir. I left it with Mr. Jeeves.”
“You did--what?”
“Yes, sir. Before I came away. Mr. Jeeves said that he wished to walk
in the garden before retiring for the night. He was to place the key on
the kitchen window-sill.”
I stared at the man dumbly. His eye was clear, his hand steady. He had
none of the appearance of a butler who has had a couple.
“You mean that all this while the key has been in Jeeves’s
possession?”
“Yes, sir.”
I could speak no more. Emotion had overmastered my voice. I was at
a loss and not abreast; but of one thing, it seemed to me, there
could be no doubt. For some reason, not to be fathomed now, but most
certainly to be gone well into as soon as I had pushed this infernal
sewing-machine of mine over those nine miles of lonely, country road
and got within striking distance of him, Jeeves had been doing the
dirty. Knowing that at any given moment he could have solved the whole
situation, he had kept Aunt Dahlia and others roosting out on the front
lawn _en déshabille_ and, worse still, had stood calmly by and watched
his young employer set out on a wholly unnecessary eighteen-mile
bicycle ride.
I could scarcely believe such a thing of him. Of his Uncle Cyril, yes.
With that distorted sense of humour of his, Uncle Cyril might quite
conceivably have been capable of such conduct. But that it should be
Jeeves--
I leaped into the saddle and, stifling the cry of agony which rose to
the lips as the bruised person touched the hard leather, set out on the
homeward journey.
-23-
I remember Jeeves saying on one occasion--I forgot how the subject
had arisen--he may simply have thrown the observation out, as he does
sometimes, for me to take or leave--that hell hath no fury like a
woman scorned. And until tonight I had always felt that there was a
lot in it. I had never scorned a woman myself, but Pongo Twistleton
once scorned an aunt of his, flatly refusing to meet her son Gerald at
Paddington and give him lunch and see him off to school at Waterloo,
and he never heard the end of it. Letters were written, he tells me,
which had to be seen to be believed. Also two very strong telegrams
and a bitter picture post card with a view of the Little Chilbury War
Memorial on it.
Until tonight, therefore, as I say, I had never questioned the accuracy
of the statement. Scorned women first and the rest nowhere, was how it
had always seemed to me.
But tonight I revised my views. If you want to know what hell can
really do in the way of furies, look for the chap who has been
hornswoggled into taking a long and unnecessary bicycle ride in the
dark without a lamp.
Mark that word “unnecessary”. That was the part of it that really
jabbed the iron into the soul. I mean, if it was a case of riding to
the doctor’s to save the child with croup, or going off to the local
pub to fetch supplies in the event of the cellar having run dry, no
one would leap to the handlebars more readily than I. Young Lochinvar,
absolutely. But this business of being put through it merely to gratify
one’s personal attendant’s diseased sense of the amusing was a bit too
thick, and I chafed from start to finish.
So, what I mean to say, although the providence which watches over
good men saw to it that I was enabled to complete the homeward journey
unscathed except in the billowy portions, removing from my path all
goats, elephants, and even owls that looked like my Aunt Agatha, it
was a frowning and jaundiced Bertram who finally came to anchor at the
Brinkley Court front door. And when I saw a dark figure emerging from
the porch to meet me, I prepared to let myself go and uncork all that
was fizzing in the mind.
“Jeeves!” I said.
“It is I, Bertie.”
The voice which spoke sounded like warm treacle, and even if I had not
recognized it immediately as that of the Bassett, I should have known
that it did not proceed from the man I was yearning to confront. For
this figure before me was wearing a simple tweed dress and had employed
my first name in its remarks. And Jeeves, whatever his moral defects,
would never go about in skirts calling me Bertie.
The last person, of course, whom I would have wished to meet after a
long evening in the saddle, but I vouchsafed a courteous “What ho!”
There was a pause, during which I massaged the calves. Mine, of course,
I mean.
“You got in, then?” I said, in allusion to the change of costume.
“Oh, yes. About a quarter of an hour after you left Jeeves went
searching about and found the back-door key on the kitchen window-sill.”
“Ha!”
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“I thought you said something.”
“No, nothing.”
And I continued to do so. For at this juncture, as had so often
happened when this girl and I were closeted, the conversation once
more went blue on us. The night breeze whispered, but not the Bassett.
A bird twittered, but not so much as a chirp escaped Bertram. It was
perfectly amazing, the way her mere presence seemed to wipe speech from
my lips--and mine, for that matter, from hers. It began to look as if
our married life together would be rather like twenty years among the
Trappist monks.
“Seen Jeeves anywhere?” I asked, eventually coming through.
“Yes, in the dining-room.”
“The dining-room?”
“Waiting on everybody. They are having eggs and bacon and champagne....
What did you say?”
I had said nothing--merely snorted. There was something about the
thought of these people carelessly revelling at a time when, for all
they knew, I was probably being dragged about the countryside by goats
or chewed by elephants, that struck home at me like a poisoned dart.
It was the sort of thing you read about as having happened just before
the French Revolution--the haughty nobles in their castles callously
digging in and quaffing while the unfortunate blighters outside were
suffering frightful privations.
The voice of the Bassett cut in on these mordant reflections:
“Bertie.”
“Hullo!”
Silence.
“Hullo!” I said again.
No response. Whole thing rather like one of those telephone
conversations where you sit at your end of the wire saying: “Hullo!
Hullo!” unaware that the party of the second part has gone off to tea.
Eventually, however, she came to the surface again:
“Bertie, I have something to say to you.”
“What?”
“I have something to say to you.”
“I know. I said ‘What?’”
“Oh, I thought you didn’t hear what I said.”
“Yes, I heard what you said, all right, but not what you were going to
say.”
“Oh, I see.”
“Right-ho.”
So that was straightened out. Nevertheless, instead of proceeding she
took time off once more. She stood twisting the fingers and scratching
the gravel with her foot. When finally she spoke, it was to deliver an
impressive boost:
“Bertie, do you read Tennyson?”
“Not if I can help.”
“You remind me so much of those Knights of the Round Table in the
‘Idylls of the King’.”
Of course I had heard of them--Lancelot, Galahad and all that lot, but
I didn’t see where the resemblance came in. It seemed to me that she
must be thinking of a couple of other fellows.
“How do you mean?”
“You have such a great heart, such a fine soul. You are so generous, so
unselfish, so chivalrous. I have always felt that about you--that you
are one of the few really chivalrous men I have ever met.”
Well, dashed difficult, of course, to know what to say when someone is
giving you the old oil on a scale like that. I muttered an “Oh, yes?”
or something on those lines, and rubbed the billowy portions in some
embarrassment. And there was another silence, broken only by a sharp
howl as I rubbed a bit too hard.
“Bertie.”
“Hullo?”