P. Wodehouse - Jeeves in the offing

'Kipper,' I said, 'I have an amazing story to relate.'

I don't know if you happen to take Old Doctor Gordon's Bile Magnesia, which when the liver is disordered gives instant relief, acting like magic and imparting an inward glow? I don't myself, my personal liver being always more or less in mid-season form, but I've seen the advertisements. They show the sufferer before and after taking, in the first case with drawn face and hollow eyes and the general look of one shortly about to hand in his dinner pail, in the second all beans and buck and what the French call bien etre. Well, what I'm driving at is that my amazing story had exactly the same effect on Kipper as the daily dose for adults … He moved, he stirred, he seemed to feel the rush of life along his keel, and while I don't suppose he actually put on several pounds in weight as the tale proceeded, one got the distinct illusion that he was swelling like one of those rubber ducks which you fill with air before inserting them in the bath tub.

'Well, I'll be blowed!' he said, when I had placed the facts before him. 'Well, I'll be a son of a what not!'

'I thought you would be.'

'Bless her ingenious little heart! Not many girls would have got the grey matter working like that.'

'Very few.'

'What a helpmeet! Talk about service and co-operation. Have you any idea how the thing is working out?'

'Rather smoothly, I think. On reading the announcement in The Times, Wickham senior had hysterics and swooned in her tracks.'

'She doesn't like you?'

'That was the impression I got. It has been confirmed by subsequent telegrams to Bobbie in which she refers to me as a guffin and a gaby. She also considers me a nincompoop.'

'Well, that's fine. It looks as though, after you, I shall come to her like … it's on the tip of my tongue.'

'Rare and refreshing fruit?'

'Exactly. If you care to have a bet on it, five bob will get you ten that this scenario will end with a fade-out of Lady Wickham folding me in her arms and kissing me on the brow and saying she knows I will make her little girl happy. Gosh, Bertie, when I think that she – Bobbie, I mean, not Lady Wickham – will soon be mine and that shortly after yonder sun has set I shall be tucking into one of Anatole's dinners, I could dance a saraband. By the way, talking of dinner, do you suppose it would also run to a bed? The «Bull and Bush» is well spoken of in the Automobile Guide, but I'm always a bit wary of these country pubs. I'd much rather be at Brinkley Court, of which I have such happy memories. Could you swing it with your aunt?'

'She isn't here. She left to minister to her son Bonzo, who is down with German measles at his school. But she rang up this afternoon and instructed me to wire you to come and make a prolonged stay.'

'You're pulling my leg.'

'No, this is official.'

'But what made her think of me?'

'There's something she wants you to do for her.'

'She can have anything she asks, even unto half my kingdom. What does she …' He paused, and a look of alarm came into his face. 'Don't tell me she wants me to present the prizes at Market Snodsbury Grammer School, like Gussie?'

He was alluding to a mutual friend of ours of the name of Gussie Fink-Nottle, who, hounded by the aged relative into undertaking this task in the previous summer, had got pickled to the gills and made an outstanding exhibition of himself, setting up a mark at which all future orators would shoot in vain.

'No, no, nothing like that. The prizes this year will be distributed by Aubrey Upjohn.'

'That's a relief. How is he, by the way? You've met him, of course?'

'Oh, yes, we got together. I spilled some tea on him.'

'You couldn't have done better.'

'He's grown a moustache.'

'That eases my mind. I wasn't looking forward to seeing that bare upper lip of his. Remember how it used to make us quail when he twitched it at us? I wonder how he'll react when confronted with not only one former pupil but two, and those two the very brace that have probably haunted him in his dreams for the last fifteen years. Might as well unleash me on him now.'

'He isn't here.'

'You said he was.'

'Yes, he was and he will be, but he isn't. He's gone up to London.'

'Isn't anybody here?'

'Certainly. There's Phyllis Mills –'

'Nice girl.'

' – and Mrs Homer Cream of New York City, NY, and her son Wilbert. And that brings me to the something Aunt Dahlia wants you to do for her.'

I was pleased, as I put him hep on the Wilbert –Phyllis situation and revealed the part he was expected to play in it, to note that he showed no signs of being about to issue the presidential veto. He followed the set-up intelligently and when I had finished said that of course he would be only too willing to oblige. It wasn't much, he said, to ask of a fellow who esteemed Aunt Dahlia as highly as he did and who ever since she had lushed him up so lavishly two summers ago had been wishing there was something he could do in the way of buying back.

'Rely on me, Bertie,' he said. 'We can't have Phyllis tying herself up with a man who on the evidence would appear to be as nutty as a fruit cake. I will be about this Cream's bed and about his board, spying out all his ways. Every time he lures the poor girl into a leafy glade, I will be there, nestling behind some wild flower all ready to pop out and gum the game at the least indication that he is planning to get mushy. And now if you would show me to my room, I will have a bath and brush-up so as to be all sweet and fresh for the evening meal. Does Anatole still do those Timbales de ris de veau toulousaine?'

'And the Sylphides a la creme d'ecrevisses.'

'There is none like him, none,' said Kipper, moistening the lips with the tip of the tongue and looking like a wolf that has just spotted its Russian peasant. 'He stands alone.'

As I hadn't the remotest which rooms were available and which weren't, getting Kipper dug in necessitated ringing for Pop Glossop. I pressed the button and he appeared, giving me, as he entered, the sort of conspiratorial glance the acting secretary of a secret society would have given a friend on the membership roll.

'Oh, Swordfish,' I said, having given him a conspiratorial glance in return, for one always likes to do the civil thing, 'this is Mr Herring, who has come to join our little group.'

He bowed from the waist, not that he had much waist.

'Good evening, sir.'

'He will be staying some time. Where do we park him?'

'The Red Room suggests itself, sir.'

'You get the Red Room, Kipper.'

'Right-ho.'

'I had it last year. 'Tis not as deep as a well nor as wide as a church door, but 'tis enough, 'twill serve,' I said, recalling a gag of Jeeves's. 'Will you escort Mr Herring thither, Swordfish?'

'Very good, sir.'

'And when you have got him installed, perhaps I could have a word with you in your pantry,' I said, giving him a conspiratorial glance.

'Certainly, sir,' he responded, giving me a conspiratorial glance.

It was one of those big evenings for conspiratorial glances.

I hadn't been waiting in the pantry long when he navigated over the threshold, and my first act was to congratulate him on the excellence of his technique. I had been much impressed by all that 'Very good, sir,' 'Certainly, sir,' bowing-from-the-waist stuff. I said that Jeeves himself couldn't have read his lines better, and he simpered modestly and said that one picked up these little tricks of the trade from one's own butler.

'Oh, by the way,' I said, 'where did you get the Swordfish?'

He smiled indulgently.

'That was Miss Wickham's suggestion.'

'I thought as much.'

'She informed me that she had always dreamed of one day meeting a butler called Swordfish. A charming young lady. Full of fun.'