Pelham Wodehouse - Right Ho, Jeeves

Jeeves was on the job, adding the final polish to the old topper, and I was about to apprise him of the latest developments in the matter of Gussie, when he forestalled me by observing that the latter had only just concluded an agreeable visit to the Wooster bedchamber.

“I found Mr. Fink-Nottle seated here when I arrived to lay out your clothes, sir.”

“Indeed, Jeeves? Gussie was in here, was he?”

“Yes, sir. He left only a few moments ago. He is driving to the school with Mr. and Mrs. Travers in the large car.”

“Did you give him your story of the two Irishmen?”

“Yes, sir. He laughed heartily.”

“Good. Had you any other contributions for him?”

“I ventured to suggest that he might mention to the young gentlemen that education is a drawing out, not a putting in. The late Lord Brancaster was much addicted to presenting prizes at schools, and he invariably employed this dictum.”

“And how did he react to that?”

“He laughed heartily, sir.”

“This surprised you, no doubt? This practically incessant merriment, I mean.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You thought it odd in one who, when you last saw him, was well up in Group A of the defeatists.”

“Yes, sir.”

“There is a ready explanation, Jeeves. Since you last saw him, Gussie has been on a bender. He's as tight as an owl.”

“Indeed, sir?”

“Absolutely. His nerve cracked under the strain, and he sneaked into the dining-room and started mopping the stuff up like a vacuum cleaner. Whisky would seem to be what he filled the radiator with. I gather that he used up most of the decanter. Golly, Jeeves, it's lucky he didn't get at that laced orange juice on top of that, what?”

“Extremely, sir.”

I eyed the jug. Uncle Tom's photograph had fallen into the fender, and it was standing there right out in the open, where Gussie couldn't have helped seeing it. Mercifully, it was empty now.

“It was a most prudent act on your part, if I may say so, sir, to dispose of the orange juice.”

I stared at the man.

“What? Didn't you?”

“No, sir.”

“Jeeves, let us get this clear. Was it not you who threw away that o.j.?”

“No, sir. I assumed, when I entered the room and found the pitcher empty, that you had done so.”

We looked at each other, awed. Two minds with but a single thought.

“I very much fear, sir—”

“So do I, Jeeves.”

“It would seem almost certain—”

“Quite certain. Weigh the facts. Sift the evidence. The jug was standing on the mantelpiece, for all eyes to behold. Gussie had been complaining of thirst. You found him in here, laughing heartily. I think that there can be little doubt, Jeeves, that the entire contents of that jug are at this moment reposing on top of the existing cargo in that already brilliantly lit man's interior. Disturbing, Jeeves.”

“Most disturbing, sir.”

“Let us face the position, forcing ourselves to be calm. You inserted in that jug—shall we say a tumblerful of the right stuff?”

“Fully a tumblerful, sir.”

“And I added of my plenty about the same amount.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And in two shakes of a duck's tail Gussie, with all that lapping about inside him, will be distributing the prizes at Market Snodsbury Grammar School before an audience of all that is fairest and most refined in the county.”

“Yes, sir.”

“It seems to me, Jeeves, that the ceremony may be one fraught with considerable interest.”

“Yes, sir.”

“What, in your opinion, will the harvest be?”

“One finds it difficult to hazard a conjecture, sir.”

“You mean imagination boggles?”

“Yes, sir.”

I inspected my imagination. He was right. It boggled.

“And yet, Jeeves,” I said, twiddling a thoughtful steering wheel, “there is always the bright side.”

Some twenty minutes had elapsed, and having picked the honest fellow up outside the front door, I was driving in the two-seater to the picturesque town of Market Snodsbury. Since we had parted—he to go to his lair and fetch his hat, I to remain in my room and complete the formal costume—I had been doing some close thinking.

The results of this I now proceeded to hand on to him.

“However dark the prospect may be, Jeeves, however murkily the storm clouds may seem to gather, a keen eye can usually discern the blue bird. It is bad, no doubt, that Gussie should be going, some ten minutes from now, to distribute prizes in a state of advanced intoxication, but we must never forget that these things cut both ways.”

“You imply, sir—”

“Precisely. I am thinking of him in his capacity of wooer. All this ought to have put him in rare shape for offering his hand in marriage. I shall be vastly surprised if it won't turn him into a sort of caveman. Have you ever seen James Cagney in the movies?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Something on those lines.”

I heard him cough, and sniped him with a sideways glance. He was wearing that informative look of his.

“Then you have not heard, sir?”

“Eh?”

“You are not aware that a marriage has been arranged and will shortly take place between Mr. Fink-Nottle and Miss Bassett?”

“What?”

“Yes, sir.”

“When did this happen?”

“Shortly after Mr. Fink-Nottle had left your room, sir.”

“Ah! In the post-orange-juice era?”

“Yes, sir.”

“But are you sure of your facts? How do you know?”

“My informant was Mr. Fink-Nottle himself, sir. He appeared anxious to confide in me. His story was somewhat incoherent, but I had no difficulty in apprehending its substance. Prefacing his remarks with the statement that this was a beautiful world, he laughed heartily and said that he had become formally engaged.”

“No details?”

“No, sir.”

“But one can picture the scene.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I mean, imagination doesn't boggle.”

“No, sir.”

And it didn't. I could see exactly what must have happened. Insert a liberal dose of mixed spirits in a normally abstemious man, and he becomes a force. He does not stand around, twiddling his fingers and stammering. He acts. I had no doubt that Gussie must have reached for the Bassett and clasped her to him like a stevedore handling a sack of coals. And one could readily envisage the effect of that sort of thing on a girl of romantic mind.

“Well, well, well, Jeeves.”

“Yes, sir.”

“This is splendid news.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You see now how right I was.”

“Yes, sir.”

“It must have been rather an eye-opener for you, watching me handle this case.”

“Yes, sir.”

“The simple, direct method never fails.”

“No, sir.”

“Whereas the elaborate does.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Right ho, Jeeves.”

We had arrived at the main entrance of Market Snodsbury Grammar School. I parked the car, and went in, well content. True, the Tuppy-Angela problem still remained unsolved and Aunt Dahlia's five hundred quid seemed as far off as ever, but it was gratifying to feel that good old Gussie's troubles were over, at any rate.

The Grammar School at Market Snodsbury had, I understood, been built somewhere in the year 1416, and, as with so many of these ancient foundations, there still seemed to brood over its Great Hall, where the afternoon's festivities were to take place, not a little of the fug of the centuries. It was the hottest day of the summer, and though somebody had opened a tentative window or two, the atmosphere remained distinctive and individual.

In this hall the youth of Market Snodsbury had been eating its daily lunch for a matter of five hundred years, and the flavour lingered. The air was sort of heavy and languorous, if you know what I mean, with the scent of Young England and boiled beef and carrots.