‘One of your best and brightest, Jeeves,’ I said, refilling the glass. ‘The weeks among the shrimps have not robbed your hand of its cunning.’
He did not reply. Speech seemed to have been wiped from his lips, and I saw, as I had foreseen would happen, that his gaze was riveted on the upper slopes of my mouth. It was a cold, disapproving gaze, such as a fastidious luncher who was not fond of caterpillars might have directed at one which he had discovered in his portion of salad, and I knew that the clash of wills for which I had been bracing myself was about to raise its ugly head.
I spoke suavely but firmly. You can’t beat suave firmness on these occasions, and thanks to that life-giving special I was able to be as firmly suave as billy-o. There was no mirror in the sitting-room, but had there been, and had I caught a glimpse of myself in it, I have no doubt I should have seen something closely resembling a haughty seigneur of the old régime about to tell the domestic staff just where it got off.
‘Something appears to be arresting your attention, Jeeves. Is there a smut on my nose?’
His manner continued frosty. There are moments when he looks just like a governess, one of which was this one.
‘No, sir. It is on the upper lip. A dark stain like mulligatawny soup.’
I gave a careless nod.
‘Ah, yes,’ I said. ‘The moustache. That is what you are alluding to, is it not? I grew it while you were away. Rather natty, don’t you think?’
‘No, sir, I do not.’
I moistened my lips with the special, still suave to the gills. I felt strong and masterful.
‘You dislike the little thing?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘You don’t feel it gives me a sort of air? A … how shall I put it? … A kind of diablerie?’
‘No, sir.’
‘You hurt and disappoint me, Jeeves,’ I said, sipping a couple of sips and getting suaver all the time. ‘I could understand your attitude if the object under advisement were something bushy and waxed at the ends like a sergeant-major’s, but it is merely the delicate wisp of vegetation with which David Niven has for years been winning the applause of millions. When you see David Niven on the screen, you don’t recoil in horror, do you?’
‘No, sir. His moustache is very becoming to Mr. Niven.’
‘But mine isn’t to me?’
‘No, sir.’
It is at moments like this that a man realizes that the only course for him to pursue, if he is to retain his self-respect, is to unship the velvet hand in the iron glove, or, rather, the other way about. Weakness at such a time is fatal.
There are limits, I mean to say, and sharply defined limits at that, and these limits I felt that he had passed by about a mile and a quarter. I yield to nobody in my respect for Jeeves’s judgment in the matter of socks, shoes, shirts, hats and cravats, but I was dashed if I was going to have him muscling in and trying to edit the Wooster face. I finished my special and spoke in a quiet, level voice.
‘I am sorry, Jeeves. I had hoped for your sympathy and co-operation, but if you are unable to see your way to sympathizing and co-operating, so be it. Come what may, however, I shall maintain the status quo. It is status quos that people maintain, isn’t it? I have been put to considerable trouble and anxiety growing this moustache, and I do not propose to hew it off just because certain prejudiced parties, whom I will not specify, don’t know a good thing when they see one. J’y suis, j’y reste, Jeeves,’ I said, becoming a bit Parisian.
Well, after this splendid exhibition of resolution on my part I suppose there was nothing much the chap could have said except ‘Very good, sir’ or something of that sort, but, as it happened, he hadn’t time to say even that, for the final word had scarcely left my lips when the front-door bell tootled. He shimmered out, and a moment later shimmered in again.
‘Mr. Cheesewright,’ he announced.
And in clumped the massive form of the bird to whom he alluded. The last person I had expected to see, and, for the matter of that, about the last one I wanted to.
2
* * *
I DON’T KNOW if you have had the same experience, but I have always found that there are certain blokes whose mere presence tends to make me ill at ease, inducing the nervous laugh, the fiddling with the tie and the embarrassed shuffling of the feet. Sir Roderick Glossop, the eminent loony doctor, until circumstances so arranged themselves that I was enabled to pierce the forbidding exterior and see his better, softer side, was one of these. J. Washburn Stoker, with his habit of kidnapping people on his yacht and throwing his weight about like a pirate of the Spanish Main, was another. And a third is this G. D’Arcy (‘Stilton’) Cheesewright. Catch Bertram Wooster vis-à-vis with him, and you do not catch him at his best.
Considering that he and I have known each other since, as you might say, we were so high, having been at private school, Eton and Oxford together, we ought, I suppose, to be like Damon and what’s-his-name, but we aren’t by any means. I generally refer to him in conversation as ‘that blighter Stilton’, while he, I have been informed by usually reliable sources, makes no secret of his surprise and concern that I am still on the right side of the walls of Colney Hatch or some similar institution. When we meet, there is always a certain stiffness and what Jeeves would call an imperfect fusion of soul.
One of the reasons for this is, I think, that Stilton used to be a policeman. He joined the Force on coming down from Oxford with the idea of rising to a position of eminence at Scotland Yard, a thing you find a lot of the fellows you know doing these days. True, he turned in his truncheon and whistle shortly afterwards because his uncle wanted him to take up another walk in life, but these rozzers, even when retired, never quite shake off that ‘Where were you on the night of June the fifteenth?’ manner, and he seldom fails, when we run into one another, to make me feel like a rat of the Underworld detained for questioning in connection with some recent smash-and-grab raid.
Add the fact that this uncle of his wins his bread as a magistrate at one of the London police courts, and you will understand why I avoid him as much as possible and greatly prefer him elsewhere. The man of sensibility shrinks from being closeted with an ex-bluebottle with magistrate blood in him.
In my demeanour, accordingly, as I rose to greet him, a close observer would have noted more than a touch of that To-what-am-I-indebted-for-the-honour-of-this-visit stuff. I was at a loss to imagine what he was doing invading my privacy like this, and another thing that had fogged me was why, having invaded it, he was standing staring at me in a stern, censorious sort of way, as if the sight of me had got right in amongst him, revolting his finest feelings. I might have been some dreg of society whom he had caught in the act of slipping a couple of ounces of cocaine to some other dreg.
‘Ho!’ he said, and this alone would have been enough to tell an intelligent bystander, had there been one, that he had spent some time in the ranks of the Force. One of the first things the Big Four teach the young recruit is to say ‘Ho!’ ‘I thought as much,’ he went on, knitting the brow. ‘Swilling cocktails, eh?’
This was the moment when, had conditions been normal, I would no doubt have laughed nervously, fingered the tie and shuffled the feet, but with two of Jeeves’s specials under my belt, still exercising their powerful spell, I not only remained intrepid but retorted with considerable spirit, putting him right in his place.
‘I fail to understand you, officer,’ I said coldly. ‘Correct me if I am wrong, but I believe this is the hour when it is customary for an English gentleman to partake of a short snifter. Will you join me?’
His lip curled. Most unpleasant. These coppers are bad enough when they leave their lips in statu quo.
‘No, I won’t,’ he replied, curtly and offensively. ‘I don’t want to ruin my constitution. What do you suppose those things are going to do to your eye and your power of control? How can you expect to throw doubles if you persist in stupefying yourself with strong drink? It’s heart-breaking.’
r /> I saw all. He was thinking of the Darts sweep.
The annual Darts sweep is one of the high spots of life at the Drones Club. It never fails to stir the sporting instincts of the members, causing them to roll up in dense crowds and purchase tickets at ten bob a go, with the result that the sum in the kitty is always colossal. This time my name had been drawn by Stilton, and as Horace Pendlebury-Davenport, last year’s winner, had gone and got married and at his wife’s suggestion resigned his membership, the thing was pretty generally recognized as a sitter for me, last year’s runner-up. ‘Wooster,’ the word flew to and fro, ‘is the deadest of snips. He throws a beautiful dart.’
So I suppose it was only natural in a way that, standing, if all went well, to scoop in a matter of fifty-six pounds ten shillings, Stilton should feel that it was his mission in life to see that I kept at the peak of my form. But that didn’t make this incessant surveillance of his easier to endure. Ever since he had glanced at his ticket, seen that it bore the name Wooster, and learned that I was a red-hot favourite for the tourney, his attitude towards me had been that of an official at Borstal told off to keep an eye on a more than ordinarily up-and-coming juvenile delinquent. He had a way of looming up beside me at the club, sniffing quickly at my glass and giving me an accusing look, coupled with a sharp whistling intake of the breath, and here he was now doing the same thing in my very home. It was worse than being back in a Little Lord Fauntleroy suit and ringlets and having a keen-eyed nurse always at one’s elbow, watching one’s every move like a bally hawk.
I was about to say how deeply I resented being tailed up in this manner, when he resumed.
‘I have come here tonight to talk seriously to you, Wooster,’ he said, frowning in a most unpleasant manner. ‘I am shocked at the casual, frivolous way in which you are treating this Darts tournament. You seem not to be taking the most elementary precautions to ensure victory on the big day. It’s the old, old story. Over-confidence. All these fatheads keep telling you you’re sure to win, and you suck it down like one of your beastly cocktails. Well, let me tell you you’re living in a fool’s paradise. I happened to look in at the Drones this afternoon, and Freddie Widgeon was at the Darts board, stunning all beholders with a performance that took the breath away. His accuracy was sensational.’
I waved a hand and tossed the head. In fact, I suppose you might say I bridled. He had wounded my amour propre.
‘Tchah!’ I said, registering scorn.
‘Eh?’
‘I said “Tchah!” With ref. to F. Widgeon. I know his form backwards. Flashy, but no staying power. The man will be less than the dust beneath my chariot wheels.’
‘That’s what you think. As I said before, over-confidence. You can take it from me that Freddie is a very dangerous competitor. I happen to know that he has been in strict training for weeks. He’s knocked off smoking and has a cold bath every morning. Did you have a cold bath this morning?’
‘Certainly not. What do you suppose the hot tap’s for?’
‘Do you do Swedish exercises before breakfast?’
‘I wouldn’t dream of such a thing. Leave these excesses to the Swedes, I say.’
‘No,’ said Stilton bitterly. ‘All you do is riot and revel and carouse. I am told that you were at that party of Catsmeat Potter-Pirbright’s last night. You probably reeled home at three in the morning, rousing the neighbourhood with drunken shouts.’
I raised a haughty eyebrow. This police persecution was intolerable.
‘You would scarcely expect me, constable,’ I said coldly, ‘to absent myself from the farewell supper of a boyhood friend who is leaving for Hollywood in a day or two and may be away from civilization for years. Catsmeat would have been pained to his foundations if I had oiled out. And it wasn’t three in the morning, it was two-thirty.’
‘Did you drink anything?’
‘The merest sip.’
‘And smoke?’
‘The merest cigar.’
‘I don’t believe you. I’ll bet, if the truth was known,’ said Stilton morosely, intensifying the darkness of his frown, ‘you lowered yourself to the level of the beasts of the field. I’ll bet you whooped it up like a sailor in a Marseilles bistro. And from the fact that there is a white tie round your neck and a white waistcoat attached to your foul stomach at this moment I gather that you are planning to be off shortly to some other nameless orgy.’
I laughed one of my quiet laughs. The word amused me.
‘Orgy, eh? I’m giving dinner to some friends of my Aunt Dahlia’s, and she strictly warned me to lay off the old Falernian because my guests are teetotallers. When the landlord fills the flowing bowl, it will be with lemonade, barley water, or possibly lime juice. So much for your nameless orgies.’
This, as I had expected, had a mollifying effect on his acerbity, if acerbity is the word I want. He did not become genial, because he couldn’t, but he became as nearly genial as it was in his power to be. He practically smiled.
‘Capital,’ he said. ‘Capital. Most satisfactory.’
‘I’m glad you’re pleased. Well, good night.’
‘Teetotallers, eh? Yes, that’s excellent. But avoid all rich foods and sauces and be sure to get to bed early. What was that you said?’
‘I said good night. You’ll be wanting to run along, no doubt.’
‘I’m not running along.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Why the devil are women always late?’ he said peevishly. ‘She ought to have been here long ago. I’ve told her over and over again that if there’s one thing that makes Uncle Joe furious, it’s being kept waiting for his soup.’
This introduction of the sex motif puzzled me.
‘She?’
‘Florence. She is meeting me here. We’re dining with my uncle.’
‘Oh, I see. Well, well. So Florence will be with us ere long, will she? Splendid, splendid, splendid.’
I spoke with quite a bit of warmth and animation, trying to infuse a cheery note into the proceedings, and immediately wished I hadn’t, because he quivered like a palsy patient and gave me a keen glance, and I saw that we had got on to dangerous ground. A situation of considerable delicacy had been precipitated.
One of the things which make it difficult to bring about a beautiful friendship between G. D’Arcy Cheesewright and self is the fact that not long ago I unfortunately got tangled up in his love life. Incensed by some crack he had made about modern enlightened thought, modern enlightened thought being practically a personal buddy of hers, Florence gave him the swift heave-ho and – much against my will, but she seemed to wish it – became betrothed to me. And this had led Stilton, a man of volcanic passions, to express a desire to tear me limb from limb and dance buck-and-wing dances on my remains. He also spoke of stirring up my face like an omelette and buttering me over the West End of London.
Fortunately before matters could proceed to this awful extreme love resumed work at the old stand, with the result that my nomination was cancelled and the peril passed, but he has never really got over the distressing episode. Ever since then the green-eyed monster has always been more or less round and about, ready to snap into action at the drop of the hat, and he has tended to docket me as a snake in the grass that can do with a lot of watching.
So, though disturbed, I was not surprised that he now gave me that keen glance and spoke in a throaty growl, like a Bengal tiger snarling over its breakfast coolie.
‘What do you mean, splendid? Are you so anxious to see her?’
I saw that tact would be required.
‘Not anxious, exactly,’ I said smoothly. ‘The word is too strong. It’s just that I would like to have her opinion of this moustache of mine. She is a girl of taste, and I would be prepared to accept her verdict. Shortly before you arrived, Jeeves was subjecting the growth to some destructive criticism, and it shook me a little. What do you think of it, by the way?’
‘I think it’s ghastly.’
‘Ghastly?’
‘Revolting. You l
ook like something in the chorus line of a touring revue. But you say Jeeves doesn’t like it?’
‘He didn’t seem to.’
‘Ah, so you’ll have to shave it. Thank God for that!’
I stiffened. I resent the view, so widely held in my circle of acquaintances, that I am a mere Hey-you in the home, bowing to Jeeves’s behests like a Hollywood yes-man.
‘Over my dead body I’ll shave it! It stays just where it is, rooted to the spot. A fig for Jeeves, if I may use the expression.’
He shrugged his shoulders.
‘Well, it’s up to you, I suppose. If you don’t mind making yourself an eyesore –’
I stiffened a bit further.
‘Did you say eyesore?’
‘Eyesore was what I said.’
‘Oh, it was, was it?’ I riposted, and it is possible that, had we not been interrupted, the exchanges would have become heated, for I was still under the stimulating influence of those specials and in no mood to brook back-chat. But before I could tell him that he was a fatheaded ass, incapable of recognizing the rare and the beautiful if handed to him on a skewer, the door bell rang again and Jeeves announced Florence.
3
* * *
IT’S JUST OCCURRED to me, thinking back, that in that passage where I gave a brief pen portrait of her – fairly near the start of this narrative, if you remember – I may have made a bloomer and left you with a wrong impression of Florence Craye. Informed that she was an intellectual girl who wrote novels and was like ham and eggs with the boys with the bulging foreheads out Bloomsbury way, it is possible that you conjured up in your mind’s eye the picture of something short and dumpy with ink spots on the chin, as worn by so many of the female intelligentsia.