Pelham Wodehouse - The Return of Jeeves

Jill started so sharply that she dropped her suitcase.

"Allow me," said the Captain, diving for it.

"I don't understand," said Jill. "Do you mean that Lord Rowcester—?"

One of the rules of the code is that a white man must shield women, and especially young, innocent girls, from the seamy side of life, but Captain Biggar was far too stirred to think of that now. He resembled Othello not only in his taste for antres vast and deserts idle but in his tendency, being wrought, to become perplexed in the extreme.

"He was making love to Mrs. Spottsworth in the moonlight," he said curtly.

"What!"

"Heard him with my own ears. He was cooing to her like a turtle dove. After her money, of course. All the same, these effete aristocrats of the old country. Make a noise like a rich widow anywhere in England, and out come all the Dukes and Earls and Viscounts, howling like wolves. Rats, we'd call them in Kuala Lumpur. You should hear Tubby Frobisher talk about them at the club. I remember him saying one day to Doc and Squiffy—the Subahdar wasn't there, if I recollect rightly—gone up country, or something—"Doc", he said ..."

It was probably going to be a most extraordinarily good story, but Captain Biggar did not continue it any further for he saw that his audience was walking out on him. Jill had turned abruptly, and was passing through the door. Her head, he noted, was bowed, and very properly, too, after a revelation like that. Any nice girl would have been knocked endways by such a stunning expos`e of the moral weaknesses of the British aristocracy.

He sat down and picked up the evening paper, throwing it from him with a stifled cry as the words "Whistler's Mother" leaped at him from the printed page. He did not want to be reminded of Whistler's Mother. He was brooding darkly on Honest Patch Perkins and wondering wistfully if Destiny (or Fate) would ever bring their paths together again, when Jeeves came floating in. Simultaneously, Rory entered from the library.

"Oh, Jeeves," said Rory, "will you bring me a flagon of strong drink? I am athirst."

With a respectful movement of his head Jeeves indicated the tray he was carrying, laden with the right stuff, and Rory accompanied him to the table, licking his lips.

"Something for you, Captain?" he said.

"Whisky, if you please," said Captain Biggar. After that ordeal in the moonlit garden, he needed a restorative.

"Whisky? Right. And for you, Mrs.

Spottsworth?" said Rory, as that lady came through the French window accompanied by Bill.

"Nothing, thank you, Sir Roderick. On a night like this, moonlight is enough for me.

Moonlight and your lovely garden, Billiken."

"I'll tell you something about that garden," said Rory. "In the summer months—" He broke off as Monica appeared in the library door.

The sight of her not only checked his observations on the garden, but reminded him of her injunction to boost the bally place to this Spottsworth woman. Looking about him for something in the bally place capable of being boosted, his eye fell on the dower chest in the corner and he recalled complimentary things he had heard said in the past about it.

It seemed to him that it would make a good point d'appui. "Yes," he proceeded, "the garden's terrific, and furthermore it must never be overlooked that Rowcester Abbey, though a bit shopsoiled and falling apart at the seams, contains many an objet d'art calculated to make the connoisseur sit up and say "What ho!"

Cast an eye on that dower chest, Mrs.

Spottsworth."

"I was admiring it when I first arrived. It's beautiful."

"Yes, it is nice, isn't it?" said Monica, giving her husband a look of wifely approval. One didn't often find Rory showing such signs of almost human intelligence.

"Duveen used to plead to be allowed to buy it, but of course it's an heirloom and can't be sold."

"Goes with the house," said Rory.

"It's full of the most wonderful old costumes."

"Which go with the house," said Rory, probably quite incorrectly, but showing zeal.

"Would you like to look at them?" said Monica, reaching for the lid.

Bill uttered an agonized cry.

"They're not in there!"

"Of course they are. They always have been. And I'm sure Rosalinda would enjoy seeing them."

"I would indeed."

"There's quite a romantic story attached to this dower chest, Rosalinda. The Lord Rowcester of that time—centuries ago—wouldn't let his daughter marry the man she loved, a famous explorer and discoverer."

"The old boy was against Discoverers," explained Rory. "He was afraid they might discover America. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. Oh, I beg your pardon."

"The lover sent his chest to the girl, filled with rare embroideries he had brought back from his travels in the East, and her father wouldn't let her have it. He told the lover to come and take it away. And the lover did, and of course inside it was the young man's bride. Knowing what was going to happen, she had hidden there."

"And the funny part of the story is that the old blister followed the chap all the way down the drive, shouting "Get that damn thing out of here!""

Mrs. Spottsworth was enchanted.

"What a delicious story. Do open it, Monica."

"I will. It isn't locked."

Bill sank bonelessly into a chair.

"Jeeves!"

"M'lord?"

"Brandy!"

"Very good, m'lord."

"Well, for heaven's sake!" said Monica.

She was staring wide-eyed at a check coat of loud pattern and a tie so crimson, so intensely blue horseshoed, that Rory shook his head censoriously.

"Good Lord, Bill, don't tell me you go around in a coat like that? It must make you look like an absconding bookie. And the tie! The cravat! Ye gods! You'd better drop in at Harrige's and see the chap in our haberdashery department. We've got a sale on."

Captain Biggar strode forward. There was a tense, hard expression on his rugged face.

"Let me look at that." He took the coat, felt in the pocket and produced a black patch. "Ha!" he said, and there was a wealth of meaning in his voice.

Rory was listening at the library door.

"Hullo," he said. "Someone talking French.

Must be Boussac. Don't want to miss Boussac. Come along, Moke. This girl," said Rory, putting a loving arm round her shoulder, "talks French with both hands. You coming, Mrs.

Spottsworth? It's the Derby Dinner on television."

"I will join you later, perhaps," said Mrs.

Spottsworth. "I left Pomona out in the garden, and she may be getting lonely."

"You, Captain?"

Captain Biggar shook his head. His face was more rugged than ever.

"I have a word or two to say to Lord Rowcester first. If you can spare me a moment, Lord Rowcester?"

"Oh, rather," said Bill faintly.

Jeeves returned with the brandy, and he sprang for it like Whistler's Mother leaping at the winning post.

But brandy, when administered in one of those small after-dinner glasses, can never do anything really constructive for a man whose affairs have so shaped themselves as to give him the momentary illusion of having been hit in the small of the back by the Twentieth Century Limited. A tun or a hogshead of the stuff might have enabled Bill to face the coming interview with a jaunty smile. The mere sip which was all that had been vouchsafed to him left him as pallid and boneless as if it had been sarsaparilla. Gazing through a mist at Captain Biggar, he closely resembled the sort of man for whom the police spread drag-nets, preparatory to questioning them in connection with the recent smash-and-grab robbery at Marks and Schoenstein's Bon Ton Jewellery Store on Eighth Avenue. His face had shaded away to about the colour of the under-side of a dead fish, and Jeeves, eyeing him with respectful commiseration, wished that it were possible to bring the roses back to his cheeks by telling him one or two good things which had come into his mind from the Collected Works of Marcus Aurelius.