THE INIMITABLE JEEVES
PART 6
CHAPTER VI
THE HERO'S REWARD
I don't know if
you've noticed it, but it's rummy how nothing in this world ever seems to be
absolutely perfect. The drawback to this otherwise singularly fruity binge was,
of course, the fact that Jeeves wouldn't be on the spot to watch me in action.
Still, apart from that there wasn't a flaw. The beauty of the thing was, you
see, that nothing could possibly go wrong. You know how it is, as a rule, when
you want to get Chappie A on Spot B at exactly the same moment when Chappie C
is on Spot D. There's always a chance of a hitch. Take the case of a general, I
mean to say, who's planning out a big movement. He tells one regiment to
capture the hill with the windmill on it at the exact moment when another regiment
is taking the bridgehead or something down in the valley; and everything gets
all messed up. And then, when they're chatting the thing over in camp that
night, the colonel of the first regiment says, "Oh, sorry! Did you say the
hill with the windmill? I thought you said the one with the flock of
sheep." And there you are! But in this case, nothing like that could
happen, because Oswald and Bingo would be on the spot right along, so that all
I had to worry about was getting Honoria there in due season. And I managed
that all right, first shot, by asking her if she would come for a stroll in the
grounds with me, as I had something particular to say
to her.
She had arrived
shortly after lunch in the car with the Braythwayt girl. I was introduced to
the latter, a tallish girl with blue eyes and fair hair. I rather took to
her—she was so unlike Honoria—and, if I had been able to spare the time, I
shouldn't have minded talking to her for a bit. But business was business—I had
fixed it up with Bingo to be behind the bushes at three sharp, so I got hold of
Honoria and steered her out through the grounds in the direction of the lake.
"You're
very quiet, Mr. Wooster," she said.
Made me jump a
bit. I was concentrating pretty tensely at the moment. We had just come in
sight of the lake, and I was casting a keen eye over the ground to see that
everything was in order. Everything appeared to be as arranged. The kid Oswald
was hunched up on the bridge; and, as Bingo wasn't visible, I took it that he
had got into position. My watch made it two minutes after the hour.
"Eh?"
I said. "Oh, ah, yes. I was just thinking."
"You said
you had something important to say to me."
"Absolutely!"
I had decided to open the proceedings by sort of paving the way for young
Bingo. I mean to say, without actually mentioning his name, I wanted to prepare
the girl's mind for the fact that, surprising as it might seem, there was
someone who had long loved her from afar and all that sort of rot. "It's
like this," I said. "It may sound rummy and all that, but there's
somebody who's frightfully in love with you and so forth—a friend of mine, you
know."
"Oh, a
friend of yours?"
"Yes."
She gave a kind
of a laugh.
"Well, why
doesn't he tell me so?"
"Well, you
see, that's the sort of chap he is. Kind of shrinking, diffident kind of
fellow. Hasn't got the nerve. Thinks you so much above him, don't you know.
Looks on you as a sort of goddess. Worships the ground you tread on, but can't
whack up the ginger to tell you so."
"This is
very interesting."
"Yes. He's
not a bad chap, you know, in his way. Rather an ass, perhaps, but well-meaning.
Well, that's the posish. You might just bear it in mind, what?"
"How funny
you are!"
She chucked
back her head and laughed with considerable vim. She had a penetrating sort of
laugh. Rather like a train going into a tunnel. It didn't sound over-musical to
me, and on the kid Oswald it appeared to jar not a little. He gazed at us with
a good deal of dislike.
"I wish the
dickens you wouldn't make that row," he said. "Scaring all the fish
away."
It broke the
spell a bit. Honoria changed the subject.
"I do wish
Oswald wouldn't sit on the bridge like that," she said. "I'm sure it
isn't safe. He might easily fall in."
"I'll go
and tell him," I said.
*
* *
* *
I suppose the
distance between the kid and me at this juncture was about five yards, but I
got the impression that it was nearer a hundred. And, as I started to toddle
across the intervening space, I had a rummy feeling that I'd done this very
thing before. Then I remembered. Years ago, at a country-house party, I had
been roped in to play the part of a butler in some amateur
theatricals in aid of some ghastly charity or other; and I had had to open the
proceedings by walking across the empty stage from left upper entrance and
shoving a tray on a table down right. They had impressed it on me at rehearsals
that I mustn't take the course at a quick heel-and-toe, like a chappie finishing
strongly in a walking-race; and the result was that I kept the brakes on to
such an extent that it seemed to me as if I was never going to get to the bally
table at all. The stage seemed to stretch out in front of me like a trackless
desert, and there was a kind of breathless hush as if all Nature had paused to
concentrate its attention on me personally. Well, I felt just like that now. I
had a kind of dry gulping in my throat, and the more I walked the farther away
the kid seemed to get, till suddenly I found myself standing just behind him
without quite knowing how I'd got there.
"Hallo!"
I said, with a sickly sort of grin—wasted on the kid, because he didn't bother
to turn round and look at me. He merely wiggled his left ear in a rather
peevish manner. I don't know when I've met anybody in whose life I appeared to
mean so little.
"Hallo!"
I said. "Fishing?"
I laid my hand
in a sort of elder-brotherly way on his shoulder.
"Here,
look out!" said the kid, wobbling on his foundations.
It was one of
those things that want doing quickly or not at all. I shut my eyes and pushed.
Something seemed to give. There was a scrambling sound, a kind of yelp, a
scream in the offing, and a splash. And so the long day wore on, so to speak.
I opened my
eyes. The kid was just coming to the surface.
"Help!"
I shouted, cocking an eye on the bush from which young Bingo was scheduled to
emerge.
Nothing
happened. Young Bingo didn't emerge to the slightest extent whatever.
"I say!
Help!" I shouted again.
I don't want to
bore you with reminiscences of my theatrical career, but I must just touch once
more on that appearance of mine as the butler. The scheme on that occasion had
been that when I put the tray on the table the heroine would come on and say a
few words to get me off. Well, on the night the misguided female forgot to
stand by, and it was a full minute before the search-party located her and shot
her on to the stage. And all that time I had to stand there, waiting. A rotten
sensation, believe me, and this was just the same, only worse. I understood
what these writer-chappies mean when they talk about time standing still.
Meanwhile, the
kid Oswald was presumably being cut off in his prime, and it began to seem to
me that some sort of steps ought to be taken about it. What I had seen of the
lad hadn't particularly endeared him to me, but it was undoubtedly a bit thick
to let him pass away. I don't know when I have seen anything more grubby and
unpleasant than the lake as viewed from the bridge; but the thing apparently
had to be done. I chucked off my coat and vaulted over.
It seems rummy
that water should be so much wetter when you go into it with your clothes on
than when you're just bathing, but take it from me that it is. I was only under
about three seconds, I suppose, but I came up feeling like the bodies you read
of in the paper which "had evidently been in the water several days."
I felt clammy and bloated.
At this point
the scenario struck another snag. I had assumed that directly I came to the
surface I should get hold of the kid and steer him courageously to shore. But
he hadn't waited to be steered. When I had finished getting the water out of my
eyes and had time to take a look round, I saw him about ten yards away, going
strongly and using, I think, the Australian crawl. The spectacle took all the
heart out of me. I mean to say, the whole essence of a rescue, if you know what
I mean, is that the party of the second part shall keep fairly still and in one
spot. If he starts swimming off on his own account and can obviously give you
at least forty yards in the hundred, where are you? The whole thing falls
through. It didn't seem to me that there was much to be done except get ashore,
so I got ashore. By the time I had landed, the kid was half-way to the house.
Look at it from whatever angle you like, the thing was a wash-out.
I was
interrupted in my meditations by a noise like the Scotch express going under a
bridge. It was Honoria Glossop laughing. She was standing at my elbow, looking
at me in a rummy manner.
"Oh,
Bertie, you are funny!" she said. And even in that moment there seemed to
me something sinister in the words. She had never called me anything except
"Mr. Wooster" before. "How wet you are!"
"Yes, I am
wet."
"You had
better hurry into the house and change."
"Yes."
I wrung a
gallon or two of water out of my clothes.
"You are
funny!" she said again. "First proposing in that extraordinary
roundabout way, and then pushing poor little Oswald into the lake so as to
impress me by saving him."
I managed to
get the water out of my throat sufficiently to try to correct this fearful
impression.
"No,
no!"
"He said
you pushed him in, and I saw you do it. Oh, I'm not angry, Bertie. I think it
was too sweet of you. But I'm quite sure it's time that I took you in hand. You
certainly want someone to look after you. You've been seeing too many
moving-pictures. I suppose the next thing you would have done would have been
to set the house on fire so as to rescue me." She looked at me in a
proprietary sort of way. "I think," she said, "I shall be able
to make something of you, Bertie. It is true yours has been a wasted life up to
the present, but you are still young, and there is a lot of good in you."
"No,
really there isn't."
"Oh, yes,
there is. It simply wants bringing out. Now you run straight up to the house
and change your wet clothes, or you will catch cold."
And, if you
know what I mean, there was a sort of motherly note in her voice which seemed
to tell me, even more than her actual words, that I was for it.
*
* *
* *
As I was coming
downstairs after changing, I ran into young Bingo, looking festive to a degree.
"Bertie!"
he said. "Just the man I wanted to see. Bertie, a wonderful thing has
happened."
"You blighter!"
I cried. "What became of you? Do you know——?"
"Oh, you
mean about being in those bushes? I hadn't time to tell you about that. It's
all off."
"All
off?"
"Bertie, I
was actually starting to hide in those bushes when the most extraordinary thing
happened. Walking across the lawn I saw the most
radiant, the most beautiful girl in the world. There is none like her, none.
Bertie, do you believe in love at first sight? You do believe in love at first
sight, don't you, Bertie, old man? Directly I saw her, she seemed to draw me
like a magnet. I seemed to forget everything. We two were alone in a world of
music and sunshine. I joined her. I got into conversation. She is a Miss
Braythwayt, Bertie—Daphne Braythwayt. Directly our eyes met, I realised that
what I had imagined to be my love for Honoria Glossop had been a mere passing
whim. Bertie, you do believe in love at first sight, don't you? She is so
wonderful, so sympathetic. Like a tender goddess——"
At this point I
left the blighter.
*
* *
* *
Two days later
I got a letter from Jeeves.
" ... The
weather," it ended, "continues fine. I have had one exceedingly
enjoyable bathe."
I gave one of
those hollow, mirthless laughs, and went downstairs to join Honoria. I had an
appointment with her in the drawing-room. She was going to read Ruskin to me.
