‘It sounds incredible,’ said Uncle Willoughby, thereby bucking me up a trifle.
‘Shall I go and look in his room?’ asked young blighted Edwin. ‘I’m sure the parcel’s there.’
‘But what could be his motive for perpetrating this extraordinary theft?’
‘Perhaps he’s a – what you said just now.’
‘A kleptomaniac? Impossible!’
‘It might have been Bertie who took all those things from the very start,’ suggested the little brute hopefully. ‘He may be like Raffles.’
‘Raffles?’
‘He’s a chap in a book who went about pinching things.’
‘I cannot believe that Bertie would – ah – go about pinching things.’
‘Well, I’m sure he’s got the parcel. I’ll tell you what you might do. You might say that Mr Berkeley wired that he had left something here. He had Bertie’s room, you know. You might say you wanted to look for it.’
‘That would be possible. I—’
I didn’t wait to hear any more. Things were getting too hot. I sneaked softly out of my bush and raced for the front door. I sprinted up to my room and made for the drawer where I had put the parcel. And then I found I hadn’t the key. It wasn’t for the deuce of a time that I recollected I had shifted it to my evening trousers the night before and must have forgotten to take it out again.
Where the dickens were my evening things? I had looked all over the place before I remembered that Jeeves must have taken them away to brush. To leap at the bell and ring it was, with me, the work of a moment. I had just rung it when there was a footstep outside, and in came Uncle Willoughby.
‘Oh, Bertie,’ he said, without a blush, ‘I have – ah – received a telegram from Berkeley, who occupied this room in your absence, asking me to forward him his – er – his cigarette-case, which, it would appear, he inadvertently omitted to take with him when he left the house. I cannot find it downstairs; and it has, therefore, occurred to me that he may have left it in this room. I will – er – just take a look round.’
It was one of the most disgusting spectacles I’ve ever seen – this white-haired old man, who should have been thinking of the hereafter, standing there lying like an actor.
‘I haven’t seen it anywhere,’ I said.
‘Nevertheless, I will search. I must – ah – spare no effort.’
‘I should have seen it if it had been here – what?’
‘It may have escaped your notice. It is – er – possibly in one of the drawers.’
He began to nose about. He pulled out drawer after drawer, pottering round like an old bloodhound, and babbling from time to time about Berkeley and his cigarette-case in a way that struck me as perfectly ghastly. I just stood there, losing weight every moment.
Then he came to the drawer where the parcel was
‘This appears to be locked,’ he said, rattling the handle.
‘Yes; I shouldn’t bother about that one. It – it’s – er – locked, and all that sort of thing.’
‘You have not the key?’
A soft, respectful voice spoke behind me.
‘I fancy, sir, that this must be the key you require. It was in the pocket of your evening trousers.’
It was Jeeves. He had shimmered in, carrying my evening things, and was standing there holding out the key. I could have massacred the man.
‘Thank you,’ said my uncle.
‘Not at all, sir.’
The next moment Uncle Willoughby had opened the drawer. I shut my eyes.
‘No,’ said Uncle Willoughby, ‘there is nothing here. The drawer is empty. Thank you, Bertie. I hope I have not disturbed you. I fancy – er – Berkeley must have taken his case with him after all.’
When he had gone I shut the door carefully. Then I turned to Jeeves. The man was putting my evening things out on a chair.
‘Er – Jeeves!’
‘Sir?’
‘Oh, nothing.’
It was deuced difficult to know how to begin.
‘Er – Jeeves!’
‘Sir?’
‘Did you—Was there— Have you by chance—’
‘I removed the parcel this morning, sir.’
‘Oh – ah – why?’
‘I considered it more prudent, sir.’
I mused for a while.
‘Of course, I suppose all this seems tolerably rummy to you, Jeeves?’
‘Not at all, sir. I chanced to overhear you and Lady Florence speaking of the matter the other evening, sir.’
‘Did you, by Jove?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Well – er – Jeeves, I think that, on the whole, if you were to – as it were – freeze on to that parcel until we get back to London—’
‘Exactly, sir.’
‘And then we might – er – so to speak – chuck it away somewhere – what?’
‘Precisely, sir.’
‘I’ll leave it in your hands.’
‘Entirely, sir.’
‘You know, Jeeves, you’re by way of being rather a topper.’
‘I endeavour to give satisfaction, sir.’
‘One in a million, by Jove!’
‘It is very kind of you to say so, sir.’
‘Well, that’s about all, then, I think.’
‘Very good, sir.’
Florence came back on Monday. I didn’t see her till we were all having tea in the hall. It wasn’t till the crowd had cleared away a bit that we got a chance of having a word together.
‘Well, Bertie?’ she said.
‘It’s all right.’
‘You have destroyed the manuscript?’
‘Not exactly; but—’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean I haven’t absolutely—’
‘Bertie, your manner is furtive!’
‘It’s all right. It’s this way—’
And I was just going to explain how things stood when out of the library came leaping Uncle Willoughby, looking as braced as a two-year-old. The old boy was a changed man.
‘A most remarkable thing, Bertie! I have just been speaking with Mr Riggs on the telephone, and he tells me he received my manuscript by the first post this morning. I cannot imagine what can have caused the delay. Our postal facilities are extremely inadequate in the rural districts. I shall write to head-quarters about it. It is insufferable if valuable parcels are to be delayed in this fashion.’
I happened to be looking at Florence’s profile at the moment, and at this juncture she swung round and gave me a look that went right through me like a knife. Uncle Willoughby meandered back to the library, and there was a silence that you could have dug bits out of with a spoon.
‘I can’t understand it,’ I said at last. ‘I can’t understand it, by Jove!’
‘I can. I can understand it perfectly, Bertie. Your heart failed you. Rather than risk off ending your uncle you—’
‘No, no! Absolutely!’
‘You preferred to lose me rather than risk losing the money. Perhaps you did not think I meant what I said. I meant every word. Our engagement is ended.’
‘But – I say!’
‘Not another word!’
‘But, Florence, old thing!’
‘I do not wish to hear any more. I see now that your Aunt Agatha was perfectly right. I consider that I have had a very lucky escape. There was a time when I thought that, with patience, you might be moulded into something worth while. I see now that you are impossible!’
And she popped off, leaving me to pick up the pieces. When I had collected the débris to some extent I went to my room and rang for Jeeves. He came in looking as if nothing had happened or was ever going to happen. He was the calmest thing in captivity.
‘Jeeves!’ I yelled. ‘Jeeves, that parcel has arrived in London!’
‘Yes, sir?’
‘Did you send it?’
‘Yes, sir. I acted for the best, sir. I think that both you and Lady Florence overestimated the danger
of people being offended at being mentioned in Sir Willoughby’s Recollections. It has been my experience, sir, that the normal person enjoys seeing his or her name in print, irrespective of what is said about them. I have an aunt, sir, who a few years ago was a martyr to swollen limbs. She tried Walkinshaw’s Supreme Ointment and obtained considerable relief – so much so that she sent them an unsolicited testimonial. Her pride at seeing her photograph in the daily papers in connection with descriptions of her lower limbs before taking, which were nothing less than revolting, was so intense that it led me to believe that publicity, of whatever sort, is what nearly everybody desires. Moreover, if you have ever studied psychology, sir, you will know that respectable old gentlemen are by no means averse to having it advertised that they were extremely wild in their youth. I have an uncle—’
I cursed his aunts and his uncles and him and all the rest of the family.
‘Do you know that Lady Florence has broken off her engagement with me?’
‘Indeed, sir?’
Not a bit of sympathy! I might have been telling him it was a fine day.
‘You’re sacked!’
‘Very good, sir.’
He coughed gently.
‘As I am no longer in your employment, sir, I can speak freely without appearing to take a liberty. In my opinion you and Lady Florence were quite unsuitably matched. Her ladyship is of a highly determined and arbitrary temperament, quite opposed to your own. I was in Lord Worplesdon’s service for nearly a year, during which time I had ample opportunities of studying her ladyship. The opinion of the servants’ hall was far from favourable to her. Her ladyship’s temper caused a good deal of adverse comment among us. It was at times quite impossible. You would not have been happy, sir!’
‘Get out!’
‘I think you would also have found her educational methods a little trying, sir. I have glanced at the book her ladyship gave you – it has been lying on your table since our arrival – and it is, in my opinion, quite unsuitable. You would not have enjoyed it. And I have it from her ladyship’s own maid, who happened to overhear a conversation between her ladyship and one of the gentlemen staying here – Mr Maxwell, who is employed in an editorial capacity by one of the reviews – that it was her intention to start you almost immediately upon Nietzsche. You would not enjoy Nietzsche, sir. He is fundamentally unsound.’
‘Get out!’
‘Very good, sir.’
It’s rummy how sleeping on a thing often makes you feel quite different about it. It’s happened to me over and over again. Somehow or other, when I woke next morning the old heart didn’t feel half so broken as it had done. It was a perfectly topping day, and there was something about the way the sun came in at the window and the row the birds were kicking up in the ivy that made me half wonder whether Jeeves wasn’t right. After all, though she had a wonderful profile, was it such a catch being engaged to Florence Craye as the casual observer might imagine? Wasn’t there something in what Jeeves had said about her character? I began to realise that my ideal wife was something quite different, something a lot more clinging and drooping and prattling, and what not.
I had got as far as this in thinking the thing out when that ‘Types of Ethical Theory’ caught my eye. I opened it, and I give you my honest word this was what hit me:
Of the two antithetic terms in the Greek philosophy one only was real and self-subsisting; and that one was Ideal Thought as opposed to that which it has to penetrate and mould. The other, corresponding to our Nature, was in itself phenomenal, unreal, without any permanent footing, having no predicates that held true for two moments together; in short, redeemed from negation only by including indwelling realities appearing through.
Well – I mean to say – what? And Nietzsche, from all accounts, a lot worse than that!
‘Jeeves,’ I said, when he came in with my morning tea, ‘I’ve been thinking it over. You’re engaged again.’
‘Thank you, sir.’
I sucked down a cheerful mouthful. A great respect for this bloke’s judgment began to soak through me.
‘Oh, Jeeves,’ I said; ‘about that check suit.’
‘Yes, sir?’
‘Is it really a frost?’
‘A trifle too bizarre, sir, in my opinion.’
‘But lots of fellows have asked me who my tailor is.’
‘Doubtless in order to avoid him, sir.’
‘He’s supposed to be one of the best men in London.’
‘I am saying nothing against his moral character, sir.’
I hesitated a bit. I had a feeling that I was passing into this chappie’s clutches, and that if I gave in now I should become just like poor old Aubrey Fothergill, unable to call my soul my own. On the other hand, this was obviously a cove of rare intelligence, and it would be a comfort in a lot of ways to have him doing the thinking for me. I made up my mind.
‘All right, Jeeves,’ I said. ‘You know! Give the bally thing away to somebody!’
He looked down at me like a father gazing tenderly at the wayward child.
‘Thank you, sir. I gave it to the under-gardener last night. A little more tea, sir?’
2 THE ARTISTIC CAREER OF CORKY
YOU WILL NOTICE, as you flit through these reminiscences of mine, that from time to time the scene of action is laid in and around the city of New York; and it is just possible that this may occasion the puzzled look and the start of surprise. ‘What,’ it is possible that you may ask yourselves, ‘is Bertram doing so far from his beloved native land?’
Well, it’s a fairly longish story; but, reefing it down a bit and turning it for the nonce into a two-reeler, what happened was that my Aunt Agatha on one occasion sent me over to America to try to stop young Gussie, my cousin, marrying a girl on the vaudeville stage, and I got the whole thing so mixed up that I decided it would be a sound scheme to stop on in New York for a bit instead of going back and having long, cosy chats with her about the affair.
So I sent Jeeves out to find a decent flat, and settled down for a spell of exile.
I’m bound to say New York’s a most sprightly place to be exiled in. Everybody was awfully good to me, and there seemed to be plenty of things going on so, take it for all in all, I didn’t undergo any frightful hardships. Blokes introduced me to other blokes, and so on and so forth, and it wasn’t long before I knew squads of the right sort, some who rolled in the stuff in houses up by the Park, and others who lived with the gas turned down mostly around Washington Square – artists and writers and so forth. Brainy coves.
Corky, the bird I am about to treat of, was one of the artists. A portrait-painter, he called himself, but as a matter of fact his score up to date had been nil. You see, the catch about portrait-painting – I’ve looked into the thing a bit – is that you can’t start painting portraits till people come along and ask you to, and they won’t come and ask you to until you’ve painted a lot first. This makes it kind of difficult, not to say tough, for the ambitious youngster.
Corky managed to get along by drawing an occasional picture for the comic papers – he had rather a gift for funny stuff when he got a good idea – and doing bedsteads and chairs and things for the advertisements. His principal source of income, however, was derived from biting the ear of a rich uncle – one Alexander Worple, who was in the jute business. I’m a bit foggy as to what jute is, but it’s apparently something the populace is pretty keen on, for Mr Worple had made quite an indecently large stack out of it.
Now, a great many fellows think that having a rich uncle is a pretty soft snap; but, according to Corky, such is not the case. Corky’s uncle was a robust sort of cove, who looked like living for ever. He was fifty-one, and it seemed as if he might go to par. It was not this, however, that distressed poor Corky, for he was not bigoted and had no objection to the man going on living. What Corky kicked at was the way the above Worple used to harry him.
Corky’s uncle, you see, didn’t want him to be an artist. He didn’t think he had any
talent in that direction. He was always urging him to chuck Art and go into the jute business and start at the bottom and work his way up. And what Corky said was that, while he didn’t know what they did at the bottom of a jute business, instinct told him that it was something too beastly for words. Corky, moreover, believed in his future as an artist. Some day, he said, he was going to make a hit. Meanwhile, by using the utmost tact and persuasiveness, he was inducing his uncle to cough up very grudgingly a small quarterly allowance.
He wouldn’t have got this if his uncle hadn’t had a hobby. Mr Worple was peculiar in this respect. As a rule, from what I’ve observed, the American captain of industry doesn’t do anything out of business hours. When he has put the cat out and locked up the office for the night, he just relapses into a state of coma from which he emerges only to start being a captain of industry again. But Mr Worple in his spare time was what is known as an ornithologist. He had written a book called ‘American Birds,’ and was writing another, to be called ‘More American Birds.’ When he had finished that, the presumption was that he would begin a third, and keep on till the supply of American birds gave out. Corky used to go to him about once every three months and let him talk about American birds. Apparently you could do what you liked with old Worple if you gave him his head first on his pet subject, so these little chats used to make Corky’s allowance all right for the time being. But it was pretty rotten for the poor chap. There was the frightful suspense, you see, and, apart from that, birds, except when broiled and in the society of a cold bottle, bored him stiff.
To complete the character-study of Mr Worple, he was a man of extremely uncertain temper, and his general tendency was to think that Corky was a poor chump and that whatever step he took in any direction on his own account was just another proof of his innate idiocy. I should imagine Jeeves feels very much the same about me.
So when Corky trickled into my apartment one afternoon, shooing a girl in front of him, and said, ‘Bertie, I want you to meet my fiancée, Miss Singer,’ the aspect of the matter which hit me first was precisely the one which he had come to consult me about. The very first words I spoke were, ‘Corky how about your uncle?’