Part 14

"A day spent without nourishment in the keen autumnal air may induce in Mrs. Little a frame of mind not altogether in sympathy with Miss Pyke's view on diet."

"You mean, hunger will gnaw and she'll be apt to bite at the Pyke when she talks about how jolly it is for the gastric juices to get a day off?"

"Exactly, sir."

I shook the head. I hated to damp the man's enthusiasm, but it had to be done.

"Abandon the idea, Jeeves," I said. "I fear you have not studied the sex as I have. Missing her lunch means little or nothing to the female of the species. The feminine attitude toward lunch is notoriously airy and casual.

"Where you have made your bloomer is in confusing lunch with tea. Hell, it is well known, has no fury like a woman who wants her tea and can't get it. At such times the most amiable of the sex become mere bombs which a spark may ignite. But lunch, Jeeves, no. I should have thought you would have known that--a bird of your established intelligence."

"No doubt you are right, sir."

"If you could somehow arrange for Mrs. Little to miss her tea.... But these are idle dreams, Jeeves. By tea time she will be back at the old home, in the midst of plenty. It only takes an hour to do the trip. The last race is over shortly after four. By five o'clock Mrs. Little will have her feet tucked under the table and will be revelling in buttered toast. I am sorry, Jeeves, but your scheme was a washout from the start. No earthly. A dud."

"I appreciate the point you have raised, sir. What you say is extremely true."

"Unfortunately. Well, there it is. The only thing to do seems to be to get back to the course and try to skin a bookie or two and forget."

Well, the long day wore on, so to speak. I can't say I enjoyed myself much. I was distrait, if you know what I mean. Preoccupied. From time to time assorted clusters of spavined local horses clumped down the course with farmers on top of them, but I watched them with a languid eye. To get into the spirit of one of these rural meetings, it is essential that the subject have a good fat luncheon inside him. Subtract the luncheon, and what ensues? Ennui.

Not once but many times during the afternoon I found myself thinking hard thoughts about Jeeves. The man seemed to me to be losing his grip. A child could have told him that that footling scheme of his would not get him anywhere.

I mean to say, when you reflect that the average woman considers she has lunched luxuriously if she swallows a couple of macaroons, half a chocolate éclair, and a raspberry vinegar, is she going to be peevish because you do her out of a midday sandwich? Of course not. Perfectly ridiculous. Too silly for words. All that Jeeves had accomplished by his bally trying to be clever was to give me a feeling as if foxes were gnawing my vitals and a strong desire for home.

It was a relief, therefore, when, as the shades of evening were beginning to fall, Mrs. Bingo announced her intention of calling it a day and shifting.

"Would you mind very much missing the last race, Mr. Wooster?" she asked.

"I am all for it," I replied cordially. "The last race means little or nothing in my life. Besides, I am a shilling and sixpence ahead of the game, and the time to stop is when you're winning."

"Laura and I thought we would go home. I feel I should like an early cup of tea. Bingo says he will stay on. So I thought you could drive our car, and he would follow later in yours, with Jeeves."

"Right ho."

"You know the way?"

"Oh, yes. Main road to that turning by the pond, and then across country."

"I can direct you from there."

I sent Jeeves to fetch the car, and presently we were bowling off in good shape. The short afternoon had turned into a rather chilly, misty sort of evening, the kind of evening that sends a fellow's thoughts straying off in the direction of hot Scotch and water with a spot of lemon in it. I put the foot firmly on the accelerator, and we did the five or six miles of main road in quick time.

Turning eastward at the pond, I had to go a bit slower, for we had struck a wildish stretch of country where the going wasn't so good. I don't know any part of England where you feel so off the map as on the byroads of Norfolk. Occasionally we would meet a cow or two, but otherwise we had the world pretty much to ourselves.

I began to think about that drink again, and the more I thought the better it looked. It's rummy how people differ in this matter of selecting the beverage that is to touch the spot. It's what Jeeves would call the "psychology of the individual."

Some fellows in my position might have voted for a tankard of ale, and the Pyke's idea of a refreshing snort was, as I knew from what she had told me on the journey out, a cupful of tepid pip-and-peel water, or, failing that, what she called the "fruit liquor." You make this, apparently, by soaking raisins in cold water and adding the juice of a melon. After which, I suppose, you invite some old friends in and have an orgy, burying the bodies in the morning.

Personally, I had no doubts. I never wavered. Hot Scotch and water was the stuff for me--stressing the Scotch, if you know what I mean, and going fairly easy on the H_{2}O. I seemed to see the beaker smiling at me across the misty fields, beckoning me on, as it were, and saying, "Courage, Bertram! It will not be long now!" And with renewed energy I bunged the old foot down on the accelerator and tried to send the needle up to sixty.

Instead of which, if you follow my drift, the bally thing flickered for a moment to thirty-five, and then gave the business up as a bad job. Quite suddenly and unexpectedly, no one more surprised than myself, the car let out a faint gurgle like a sick moose and stopped in its tracks. And there we were, somewhere in Norfolk, with darkness coming on and a cold wind that smelled of guano and dead mangel-wurzels playing about the spinal column.

The back-seat drivers gave tongue. "What's the matter? What has happened? Why don't you go on? What are you stopping for?"

I explained. "I'm not stopping. It's the car."

"Why has the car stopped?"

"Ah!" I said, with a manly frankness that became me well. "There you have me."

You see, I'm one of those birds who drive a lot but don't know the first thing about the works. The policy I pursue is to get aboard, prod the self-starter, and leave the rest to Nature. If anything goes wrong I scream for an A. A. scout. It's a system that answers admirably as a rule, but on the present occasion it blew a fuse owing to the fact that there wasn't an A. A. scout within miles.

I explained as much to the fair cargo and received in return a "Pshaw" from the Pyke that nearly lifted the top of my head off. What with having a covey of female relations who have regarded me from childhood as about ten degrees short of a half-wit, I have become rather a connoisseur of "Pshaws," and the Pyke's seemed to me well up in Class A, possessing much of the timbre and _brio_ of my aunt Agatha's.

"Perhaps I can find out what the trouble is," she said, becoming calmer. "I understand cars."

She got out and began peering into the thing's vitals. I thought for a moment of suggesting that its gastric juices might have taken a turn for the worse owing to lack of fat-soluble vitamins, but decided on the whole not. I'm a pretty close observer, and it didn't seem to me that she was in the mood.

And yet, as a matter of fact, I should have been about right, at that. For after fiddling with the engine for a while in a discontented sort of way the female was suddenly struck with an idea. She tested it, and it was proved correct. There was not a drop in the tank. No gas. In other words, a complete lack of fat-soluble vitamins. What it amounted to was that the job now before us was to get the old bus home purely by will power.

Feeling that, from whatever angle they regarded the regrettable occurrence, they could hardly blame me, I braced up a trifle--in fact, to the extent of a hearty "Well, well, well!"

"No gas," I said. "Fancy that."

"But Bingo said he was going to fill the tank this morning," said Mrs. Bingo.

"I suppose he forgot," said the Pyke. "He would!"

"What do you mean by that?" said Mrs. Bingo, and I noted in her voice a touch of what-is-it.

"I mean he is just the sort of man who would forget to fill the tank," replied the Pyke, who also appeared somewhat moved.

"I should be very much obliged, Laura," said Mrs. Bingo, doing the loyal-little-woman stuff, "if you would refrain from criticizing my husband."

"Pshaw!" said the Pyke.

"And don't say 'Pshaw'!" said Mrs. Bingo.

"I shall say whatever I please," said the Pyke.

"Ladies, ladies!" I said. "Ladies, ladies, ladies!"

It was rash. Looking back, I can see that. One of the first lessons life teaches us is that on these occasions of back-chat between the delicately nurtured a man should retire into the offing, curl up in a ball, and imitate the prudent tactics of the opossum, which, when danger is in the air, pretends to be dead, frequently going to the length of hanging out crape and instructing its friends to stand round and say what a pity it all is. The only result of my dash at the soothing intervention was that the Pyke turned on me like a wounded leopardess.

"Well!" she said. "Aren't you proposing to do anything, Mr. Wooster?"

"What can I do?"

"There's a house over there. I should have thought it would be well within even your powers to go and borrow a can of gasoline."

I looked. There was a house. And one of the lower windows was lighted, indicating to the trained mind the presence of a taxpayer.

"A very sound and brainy scheme," I said ingratiatingly. "I will first honk a little on the horn to show we're here, and then rapid action."

I honked, with the most gratifying results. Almost immediately a human form appeared in the window. It seemed to be waving its arms in a matey and welcoming sort of way. Stimulated and encouraged, I hastened to the front door and gave it a breezy bang with the knocker. Things, I felt, were moving.

The first bang produced no result. I had just lifted the knocker for the encore, when it was wrenched out of my hand. The door flew open, and there stood a bloke with an expression of strained anguish on his face. A bloke with a secret sorrow.

I was sorry he had troubles, of course, but, having some of my own, I came right down to the agenda without delay.

"I say----" I began.

The bloke's hair was standing up in a kind of tousled mass, and at this juncture he ran a hand through it. And for the first time I noted that his eyes had a hostile gleam.

"Was that you making that infernal noise?" he asked.

"Er--yes," I said. "I did honk."

"Honk once more--just once," said the bloke, speaking in a low, strangled voice, "and I'll shred you up into little bits with my bare hands. My wife's gone out for the evening and after hours of ceaseless toil I've at last managed to get the baby to sleep, and you come along making that hideous din with your confounded horn. What do you mean by it, blast you?"

"Er----"

"Well, that's how matters stand," said the bloke, summing up. "One more toot--just one single solitary suggestion of the faintest shadow or suspicion of anything remotely approaching a toot--and may the Lord have mercy on your soul."

"What I want," I said, "is gasoline."

"What you'll get," said the bloke, "is a thick ear."

And closing the door with the delicate caution of one brushing flies off a sleeping Venus, he passed out of my life.

Women as a sex are always apt to be a trifle down on the defeated warrior. Returning to the car, I was not well received. The impression seemed to be that Bertram had not acquitted himself in a fashion worthy of his crusading ancestors.

I did my best to smooth matters over, but you know how it is. When you've broken down on a chilly autumn evening miles from anywhere and have missed luncheon and look like missing tea as well, mere charm of manner can never be a really satisfactory substitute for a can of the juice.

Things got so noticeably unpleasant, in fact, that after a while, mumbling something about getting help, I sidled off down the road. And by Jove, I hadn't gone half a mile before I saw lights in the distance and there, in the middle of this forsaken desert, was a car.

I stood in the road and whooped as I had never whooped before.

"Hi!" I shouted. "I say! Hi! Half a minute! Hi! Ho! Hi! Just a second, if you don't mind."

The car reached me and slowed up. A voice spoke.

"Is that you, Bertie?"

"Hullo, Bingo! Is that you? I say, Bingo, we've broken down."

Bingo hopped out. "Give us five minutes, Jeeves," he said, "and then drive slowly on."

"Very good, sir."

Bingo joined me.

"We aren't going to walk, are we?" I asked. "Where's the sense?"

"Yes, walk, laddie," said Bingo, "and warily withal. I want to make sure of something. Bertie, how were things when you left? Hotting up?"

"A trifle."

"You observed symptoms of a row, a quarrel, a parting of brass rags between Rosie and the Pyke?"

"There did seem a certain liveliness."

"Tell me."

I related what had occurred. He listened intently.

"Bertie," he said as we walked along, "you are present at a crisis in your old friend's life. It may be that this vigil in a broken-down car will cause Rosie to see what you'd have thought she ought to have seen years ago: viz., that the Pyke is entirely unfit for human consumption and must be cast into outer darkness where there is wailing and gnashing of teeth.

"I am not betting on it, but stranger things have happened. Rosie is the sweetest girl in the world, but, like all women, she gets edgy toward tea time. And to-day, having missed lunch----Hark!"

He grabbed my arm, and we paused. Tense. Agog. From down the road came the sound of voices, and a mere instant was enough to tell us that it was Mrs. Bingo and the Pyke talking things over.

I had never listened in on a real, genuine female row before, and I'm bound to say it was pretty impressive. During my absence matters appeared to have developed on rather a spacious scale. They had reached the stage now where the combatants had begun to dig into the past and rake up old scores.

Mrs. Bingo was saying that the Pyke would never have got into the hockey team at St. Adela's if she hadn't flattered and fawned upon the captain in a way that it made Mrs. Bingo, even after all these years, sick to think of. The Pyke replied that she had refrained from mentioning it until now, having always felt it better to let bygones be bygones, but that if Mrs. Bingo supposed her to be unaware that Mrs. Bingo had won the Scripture prize by taking a list of the Kings of Judah into the examination room, tucked into her middy blouse, Mrs. Bingo was vastly mistaken.

Furthermore, the Pyke proceeded, Mrs. Bingo was also labouring under an error if she imagined that the Pyke proposed to remain a night longer under her roof. It had been in a moment of weakness, a moment of mistaken kindliness, supposing her to be lonely and in need of intellectual society, that the Pyke had decided to pay her a visit at all.

Her intention now was, if ever Providence sent them aid and enabled her to get out of this beastly car and back to her trunks, to pack those trunks and leave by the next train, even if that train was a milk train, stopping at every station. Indeed, rather than endure another night at Mrs. Bingo's, the Pyke was quite willing to walk to London.

To this, Mrs. Bingo's reply was long and eloquent, and touched on the fact that in her last term at St. Adela's a girl named Simpson had told her (Mrs. Bingo) that a girl named Waddesley had told her (the Simpson) that the Pyke, while pretending to be a friend of hers (the Bingo's), had told her (the Waddesley) that she (the Bingo) couldn't eat strawberries and cream without coming out in spots, and, in addition, had spoken in the most catty manner about the shape of her nose. It could all have been condensed, however, into the words "Right ho."

It was when the Pyke had begun to say that she had never had such a hearty laugh in her life as when she read the scene in Mrs. Bingo's last novel where the heroine's little boy dies of croup that we felt it best to call the meeting to order before bloodshed set in. Jeeves had come up in the car, and Bingo, removing a can of gasoline from the dickey, placed it in the shadows at the side of the road. Then we hopped on and made the spectacular entry.

"Hullo, hullo, hullo!" said Bingo brightly. "Bertie tells me you've had a breakdown."

"Oh, Bingo!" cried Mrs. Bingo, wifely love trilling in every syllable. "Thank goodness you've come!"

"Now, perhaps," said the Pyke, "I can get home and do my packing. If Mr. Wooster will allow me to use his car his man can drive me back to the house in time to catch the six-fifteen."

"You aren't leaving us?" said Bingo.

"I am," said the Pyke.

"Too bad," said Bingo.

She climbed in beside Jeeves and they popped off. There was a short silence after they had gone. It was too dark to see her, but I could feel Mrs. Bingo struggling between love of her mate and the natural urge to say something crisp about his forgetting to fill the gasoline tank that morning. Eventually Nature took its course.

"I must say, sweetie-pie," she said, "it was a little careless of you to leave the tank almost empty when we started to-day. You promised me you would fill it, darling."

"But I did fill it, darling."

"But darling, it's empty."

"It can't be, darling."

"Laura said it was."

"The woman's an ass," said Bingo. "There's plenty of gas. What's wrong is probably that the sprockets aren't running true with the differential gear. It happens that way sometimes. I'll fix it in a second. But I don't want you to sit freezing out here while I'm doing it. Why not go to that house over there and ask them if you can't come in and sit down for ten minutes? They might give you a cup of tea, too."

A soft moan escaped Mrs. Bingo. "Tea!" I heard her whisper.

I had to bust Bingo's daydream.

"I'm sorry, old man," I said, "but I fear the old English hospitality which you outline is off. That house is inhabited by a sort of bandit. As unfriendly a bird as I ever met. His wife's out and he's just got the baby to sleep, and this has darkened his outlook. Tap even lightly on his front door and you take your life into your hands."

"Nonsense," said Bingo. "Come along."

He banged the knocker, and produced an immediate response.

"Hell!" said the Bandit, appearing as if out of a trap.

"I say," said young Bingo, "I'm just fixing our car outside. Would you object to my wife coming in out of the cold for a few minutes?"

"Yes," said the Bandit, "I would."

"And you might give her a cup of tea."

"I won't," said the Bandit.

"You won't?"

"No. And for heaven's sake don't talk so loud. I know that baby. A whisper sometimes does it."

"Let us get this straight," said Bingo. "You refuse to give my wife tea?"

"Yes."

"You would see a woman starve?"

"Yes."

"Well, you jolly well aren't going to," said young Bingo. "Unless you go straight to your kitchen, put the kettle on, and start slicing bread for buttered toast, I'll yell and wake the baby."

The Bandit turned ashen. "You wouldn't do that?"

"I would."

"Have you no heart?"

"No."

"No human feeling?"

"No."

The Bandit turned to Mrs. Bingo. You could see his spirit was broken.

"Do your shoes squeak?" he asked humbly.

"No."

"Then come on in."

"Thank you," said Mrs. Bingo.

She turned for an instant to Bingo, and there was a look in her eyes that one of those damsels in distress might have given the knight as he shot his cuffs and turned away from the dead dragon. It was a look of adoration, of almost reverent respect. Just the sort of look, in fact, that a husband likes to see.

"Darling!" she said.

"Darling!" said Bingo.

"Angel!" said Mrs. Bingo.

"Precious!" said Bingo. "Come along, Bertie, let's get at that car."

He was silent till he had fetched the can of gasoline and filled the tank and screwed the cap on again. Then he drew a deep breath.

"Bertie," he said, "I am ashamed to admit it, but occasionally in the course of a lengthy acquaintance there have been moments when I have temporarily lost faith in Jeeves."

"My dear chap!" I said, shocked.

"Yes, Bertie, there have. Sometimes my belief in him has wabbled. I have said to myself, 'Has he the old speed, the ancient vim?' I shall never say it again. From now on, childlike trust. It was his idea, Bertie, that if a couple of women headed for tea suddenly found the cup snatched from their lips, so to speak, they would turn and rend each other. Observe the result."

"But dash it, Jeeves couldn't have known that the car would break down."

"On the contrary. He let all the gasoline out of the tank when you sent him to fetch the machine--all except just enough to carry it well into the wilds beyond the reach of human aid. He foresaw what would happen. I tell you, Bertie, Jeeves stands alone."

"Absolutely."

"He's a marvel."

"A wonder."

"A wizard."

"A stout fellow," I agreed. "Full of fat-soluble vitamins."

"The exact expression," said young Bingo. "And now let's go and tell Rosie the car is fixed, and then home to the tankard of ale."

"Not the tankard of ale, old man," I said firmly. "The hot Scotch and water with a spot of lemon in it."

"You're absolutely right," said Bingo. "What a flair you have in these matters, Bertie. Hot Scotch and water it is."

The Indian Summer of an Uncle

Ask anyone at the Drones', and they will tell you that Bertram Wooster is a fellow whom it is dashed difficult to deceive. Old Lynx-Eye is about what it amounts to. I observe and deduce. I weigh the evidence and draw my conclusions. And that is why Uncle George had not been in my midst more than about two minutes before I, so to speak, saw all. To my trained eye the thing stuck out a mile.

And yet it seemed so dashed absurd. Consider the facts, if you know what I mean.

I mean to say, for years, right back to the time when I first went to Eton, this bulging relative had been one of the recognized eyesores of London. He was fat then, and day by day in every way has been getting fatter ever since, till now tailors measure him just for the sake of the exercise. He is what they call a prominent London clubman--one of those birds in tight morning coats and gray toppers whom you see toddling along St. James's Street on fine afternoons, puffing a bit as they make the grade. Slip a ferret into any good club between Piccadilly and Pall Mall, and you would start half a dozen Uncle Georges.

He spends his time lunching and dining at the Buffers' and, between meals, sucking down spots in the smoking room and talking about the lining of his stomach to anyone who will listen. About twice a year his liver lodges a formal protest and he goes off to Harrogate or Carlsbad to get planed down. Then back again and on with the programme. The last bloke in the world, in short, who you would think would ever fall a victim to the divine pash. And yet, if you will believe me, that was absolutely the strength of it.

This old pestilence blew in on me one morning at about the hour of the after-breakfast cigarette.

"Oh, Bertie," he said.

"Hullo?"

"You know those ties you've been wearing. Where did you get them?"

"Blucher's, in the Burlington Arcade."

"Thanks."

He walked across to the mirror and stood in front of it, gazing at himself in an earnest manner.

"Smut on your nose?" I asked courteously.

Then I suddenly perceived that he was wearing a sort of horrible simper, and I confess it chilled the blood to no little extent. Uncle George, with face in repose, is hard enough on the eye. Simpering, he goes right above the odds.

"Ha!" he said.

He heaved a long sigh, and turned away. Not too soon, for the mirror was on the point of cracking.

"I'm not so old," he said, in a musing sort of voice.

"So old as what?"