9 JEEVES AND THE OLD SCHOOL CHUM

IN THE AUTUMN of the year in which Yorkshire Pudding won the Manchester November Handicap, the fortunes of my old pal Richard (‘Bingo’) Little seemed to have reached their – what’s the word I want? He was, to all appearances, absolutely on plush. He ate well, slept well, was happily married; and, his Uncle Wilberforce having at last handed in his dinner-pail, respected by all, had come into possession of a large income and a fine old place in the country about thirty miles from Norwich. Buzzing down there for a brief visit, I came away convinced that, if ever a bird was sitting on top of the world, that bird was Bingo.

I had to come away because the family were shooting me off to Harrogate to chaperone my Uncle George, whose liver had been giving him the elbow again. But, as we sat pushing down the morning meal on the day of my departure, I readily agreed to play a return date as soon as ever I could fight my way back to civilization.

‘Come in time for the Lakenham races,’ urged young Bingo. He took aboard a second cargo of sausages and bacon, for he had always been a good trencherman and the country air seemed to improve his appetite. ‘We’re going to motor over with a luncheon basket, and more or less revel.’

I was just about to say that I would make a point of it, when Mrs Bingo, who was opening letters behind the coffee-apparatus, suddenly uttered a pleased yowl.

‘Oh, sweetie-lambkin!’ she cried.

Mrs B., if you remember, before her marriage, was the celebrated female novelist, Rosie M. Banks, and it is in some such ghastly fashion that she habitually addresses the other half of the sketch. She has got that way, I take it, from a lifetime of writing heart-throb fiction for the masses. Bingo doesn’t seem to mind. I suppose, seeing that the little woman is the author of such outstanding bilge as Mervyn Keene, Clubman, and Only A Factory Girl, he is thankful it isn’t anything worse.

‘Oh, sweetie-lambkin, isn’t that lovely?’

‘What?’

‘Laura Pyke wants to come here.’

‘Who?’

‘You must have heard me speak of Laura Pyke. She was my dearest friend at school. I simply worshipped her. She always had such a wonderful mind. She wants us to put her up for a week or two.’

‘Right-ho. Bung her in.’

‘You’re sure you don’t mind?’

‘Of course not. Any pal of yours—’

‘Darling!’ said Mrs Bingo, blowing him a kiss.

‘Angel!’ said Bingo, going on with the sausages. All very charming, in fact. Pleasant domestic scene, I mean. Cheery give-and-take in the home and all that. I said as much to Jeeves as we drove off.

‘In these days of unrest, Jeeves,’ I said, ‘with wives yearning to fulfil themselves and husbands slipping round the corner to do what they shouldn’t, and the home, generally speaking, in the melting-pot, as it were, it is nice to find a thoroughly united couple.’

‘Decidedly agreeable, sir.’

‘I allude to the Bingos – Mr and Mrs.’

‘Exactly, sir.’

‘What was it the poet said of couples like the Bingeese?’

‘“Two minds with but a single thought, two hearts that beat as one,” sir.’

‘A dashed good description, Jeeves.’

‘It has, I believe, given uniform satisfaction, sir.’

And yet, if I had only known, what I had been listening to that a.m. was the first faint rumble of the coming storm. Unseen, in the background, Fate was quietly slipping the lead into the boxing-glove.

I managed to give Uncle George a miss at a fairly early date and, leaving him wallowing in the waters, sent a wire to the Bingos, announcing my return. It was a longish drive and I fetched up at my destination only just in time to dress for dinner. I had done a quick dash into the soup and fish and was feeling pretty good at the prospect of a cocktail and the well-cooked, when the door opened and Bingo appeared.

‘Hello, Bertie,’ he said. ‘Ah, Jeeves.’

He spoke in one of those toneless voices: and, catching Jeeves’s eye as I adjusted the old cravat, I exchanged a questioning glance with it. From its expression I gathered that the same thing had struck him that had struck me – viz., that our host, the young Squire, was none too chirpy. The brow was furrowed, the eye lacked that hearty sparkle, and the general bearing and demeanour were those of a body discovered after being several days in the water.

‘Anything up, Bingo?’ I asked, with the natural anxiety of a boyhood friend. ‘You have a mouldy look. Are you sickening for some sort of plague?’

‘I’ve got it.’

‘Got what?’

‘The plague.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘She’s on the premises now,’ said Bingo, and laughed in an unpleasant, hacking manner, as if he were missing on one tonsil.

I couldn’t follow him. The old egg seemed to me to speak in riddles.

‘You seem to me, old egg,’ I said, ‘to speak in riddles. Don’t you think he speaks in riddles, Jeeves?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘I’m talking about the Pyke,’ said Bingo.

‘What pike?’

‘Laura Pyke. Don’t you remember—?’

‘Oh, ah. Of course. The school chum. The seminary crony. Is she still here?’

‘Yes, and looks like staying for ever. Rosie’s absolutely potty about her. Hangs on her lips.’

‘The glamour of the old days still persists, eh?’

‘I should say it does,’ said young Bingo. ‘This business of schoolgirl friendships beats me. Hypnotic is the only word. I can’t understand it. Men aren’t like that. You and I were at school together, Bertie, but, my gosh, I don’t look on you as a sort of mastermind.’

‘You don’t?’

‘I don’t treat your lightest utterance as a pearl of wisdom.’

‘Why not?’

‘Yet Rosie does with this Pyke. In the hands of the Pyke she is mere putty. If you want to see what was once a first-class Garden of Eden becoming utterly ruined as a desirable residence by the machinations of a Serpent, take a look round this place.’

‘Why, what’s the trouble?’

‘Laura Pyke,’ said young Bingo with intense bitterness, ‘is a food crank, curse her. She says we all eat too much and eat it too quickly and, anyway, ought not to be eating it at all but living on parsnips and similar muck. And Rosie, instead of telling the woman not to be a fathead, gazes at her in wide-eyed admiration, taking it in through the pores. The result is that the cuisine of this house has been shot to pieces, and I am starving on my feet. Well, when I tell you that it’s weeks since a beefsteak pudding raised its head in the home, you’ll understand what I mean.’

At this point the gong went. Bingo listened with a moody frown.

‘I don’t know why they still bang that damned thing,’ he said. ‘There’s nothing to bang it for. By the way, Bertie, would you like a cocktail?’

‘I would.’

‘Well, you won’t get one. We don’t have cocktails any more. The girl friend says they corrode the stomachic tissues.’

I was appalled. I had had no idea that the evil had spread as far as this.

‘No cocktails!’

‘No. And you’ll be dashed lucky if it isn’t a vegetarian dinner.’

‘Bingo,’ I cried, deeply moved, ‘you must act. You must assert yourself. You must put your foot down. You must take a strong stand. You must be master in the home.’

He looked at me. A long, strange look.

‘You aren’t married, are you, Bertie?’

‘You know I’m not.’

‘I should have guessed it, anyway. Come on.’

Well, the dinner wasn’t absolutely vegetarian, but when you had said that you had said everything. It was sparse, meagre, not at all the jolly, chunky repast for which the old tum was standing up and clamouring after its long motor ride. And what there was of it was turned to ashes in the mouth by the conversation of Miss Laura Pyke.

In happier circs, and if I had not been informed in advance of the warped nature of her soul, I might have been favourably impressed by this female at the moment of our meeting. She was really rather a good-looking girl, a bit strong in the face but nevertheless quite reasonably attractive. But had she been a thing of radiant beauty, she could never have clicked with Bertram Wooster. Her conversation was of a kind which would have queered Helen of Troy with any right-thinking man.

During dinner she talked all the time, and it did not take me long to see why the iron had entered into Bingo’s soul. Practically all she said was about food and Bingo’s tendency to shovel it down in excessive quantities, thereby handing the lemon to his stomachic tissues. She didn’t seem particularly interested in my stomachic tissues, rather giving the impression that if Bertram burst it would be all right with her. It was on young Bingo that she concentrated as the brand to be saved from the burning. Gazing at him like a high priestess at the favourite, though erring, disciple, she told him all the things that were happening to his inside because he would insist on eating stuff lacking in fat-soluble vitamins. She spoke freely of proteins, carbohydrates, and the physiological requirements of the average individual. She was not a girl who believed in mincing her words, and a racy little anecdote she told about a man who refused to eat prunes had the effect of causing me to be a non-starter for the last two courses.

‘Jeeves,’ I said, on reaching the sleeping chamber that night, ‘I don’t like the look of things.’

‘No, sir?’

‘No, Jeeves, I do not. I view the situation with concern. Things are worse than I thought they were. Mr Little’s remarks before dinner may have given you the impression that the Pyke merely lectured on food-reform in a general sort of way. Such, I now find, is not the case. By way of illustrating her theme, she points to Mr Little as the awful example. She criticizes him, Jeeves.’

‘Indeed, sir?’

‘Yes. Openly. Keeps telling him he eats too much, drinks too much, and gobbles his food. I wish you could have heard a comparison she drew between him and the late Mr Gladstone, considering them in the capacity of food chewers. It left young Bingo very much with the short end of the stick. And the sinister thing is that Mrs Bingo approves. Are wives often like that? Welcoming criticism of the lord and master, I mean?’

‘They are generally open to suggestions from the outside public with regard to the improvement of their husbands, sir.’

‘That is why married men are wan, what?’

‘Yes, sir.’

I had had the foresight to send the man downstairs for a plate of biscuits. I bit a representative specimen thoughtfully.

‘Do you know what I think, Jeeves?’

‘No, sir.’

‘I think Mr Little doesn’t realize the full extent of the peril which threatens his domestic happiness. I’m beginning to understand this business of matrimony. I’m beginning to see how the thing works. Would you care to hear how I figure it out, Jeeves?’

‘Extremely, sir.’

‘Well, it’s like this. Take a couple of birds. These birds get married, and for a while all is gas and gaiters. The female regards her mate as about the best thing that ever came a girl’s way. He is her king, if you know what I mean. She looks up to him and respects him. Joy, as you might say, reigns supreme. Eh?’

‘Very true, sir.’

‘Then gradually, by degrees – little by little, if I may use the expression – disillusionment sets in. She sees him eating a poached egg, and the glamour starts to fade. She watches him mangling a chop, and it continues to fade. And so on and so on, if you follow me, and so forth.’

‘I follow you perfectly, sir.’

‘But mark this, Jeeves. This is the point. Here we approach the nub. Usually it is all right, because, as I say, the disillusionment comes gradually and the female has time to adjust herself. But in the case of young Bingo, owing to the indecent outspokenness of the Pyke, it’s coming in a rush. Absolutely in a flash, without any previous preparation, Mrs Bingo is having Bingo presented to her as a sort of human boa-constrictor full of unpleasantly jumbled interior organs. The picture which the Pyke is building up for her in her mind is that of one of those men you see in restaurants with three chins, bulging eyes, and the veins starting out on the forehead. A little more of this, and love must wither.’

‘You think so, sir?’

‘I’m sure of it. No affection can stand the strain. Twice during dinner to-night the Pyke said things about young Bingo’s intestinal canal which I shouldn’t have thought would have been possible in mixed company even in this lax post-War era. Well, you see what I mean. You can’t go on knocking a man’s intestinal canal indefinitely without causing his wife to stop and ponder. The danger, as I see it, is that after a bit more of this Mrs Little will decide that tinkering is no use and that the only thing to do is to scrap Bingo and get a newer model.’

‘Most disturbing, sir.’

‘Something must be done, Jeeves. You must act. Unless you can find some way of getting this Pyke out of the woodwork, and that right speedily, the home’s number is up. You see, what makes matters worse is that Mrs Bingo is romantic. Women like her, who consider the day ill-spent if they have not churned out five thousand words of superfatted fiction, are apt even at the best of times to yearn a trifle. The ink gets into their heads. I mean to say, I shouldn’t wonder if right from the start Mrs Bingo hasn’t had a sort of sneaking regret that Bingo isn’t one of those strong, curt, Empire-building kind of Englishmen she puts into her books, with sad, unfathomable eyes, lean, sensitive hands, and riding-boots. You see what I mean?’

‘Precisely, sir. You imply that Miss Pyke’s criticisms will have been instrumental in moving the hitherto unformulated dissatisfaction from the subconscious to the conscious mind.’

‘Once again, Jeeves?’ I said, trying to grab it as it came off the bat, but missing it by several yards.

He repeated the dose.

‘Well, I daresay you’re right,’ I said. ‘Anyway, the point is, P.M.G. Pyke must go. How do you propose to set about it?’

‘I fear I have nothing to suggest at the moment, sir.’

‘Come, come, Jeeves.’

‘I fear not, sir. Possibly after I have seen the lady—’

‘You mean, you want to study the psychology of the individual and what not?’

‘Precisely, sir.’

‘Well, I don’t know how you’re going to do it. After all, I mean, you can hardly cluster round the dinner-table and drink in the Pyke’s small talk.’

‘There is that difficulty, sir.’

‘Your best chance, it seems to me, will be when we go to the Lakenham races on Thursday. We shall feed out of a luncheon-basket in God’s air, and there’s nothing to stop you hanging about and passing the sandwiches. Prick the ears and be at your most observant then, is my advice.’

‘Very good, sir.’

‘Very good, Jeeves. Be there, then, with the eyes popping. And, meanwhile, dash downstairs and see if you can dig up another instalment of these biscuits. I need them sorely.’

The morning of the Lakenham races dawned bright and juicy. A casual observer would have said that God was in His Heaven and all right with the world. It was one of those days you sometimes get lateish in the autumn when the sun beams, the birds toot, and there is a bracing tang in the air that sends the blood beetling briskly through the veins.

Personally, however, I wasn’t any too keen on the bracing tang. It made me feel so exceptionally fit that almost immediately after breakfast I found myself beginning to wonder what there would be for lunch. And the thought of what there probably would be for lunch, if the Pyke’s influence made itself felt, lowered my spirits considerably.

‘I fear the worst, Jeeves,’ I said. ‘Last night at dinner Miss Pyke threw out the remark that the carrot was the best of all vegetables, having an astonishing effect on the blood and beautifying the complexion. Now, I am all for anything that bucks up the Wooster blood. Also, I would like to give the natives a treat by letting them take a look at my rosy, glowing cheeks. But not at the expense of lunching on raw carrots. To avoid any rannygazoo, therefore, I think it will be best if you add a bit for the young master to your personal packet of sandwiches. I don’t want to be caught short.’

‘Very good, sir.’

At this point, young Bingo came up. I hadn’t seen him look so jaunty for days.

‘I’ve just been superintending the packing of the lunch-basket, Bertie,’ he said. ‘I stood over the butler and saw that there was no nonsense.’

‘All pretty sound?’ I asked, relieved.

‘All indubitably sound.’

‘No carrots?’

‘No carrots,’ said young Bingo. ‘There’s ham sandwiches,’ he proceeded, a strange, soft light in his eyes, ‘and tongue sandwiches and potted meat sandwiches and game sandwiches and hard-boiled eggs and lobster and a cold chicken and sardines and a cake and a couple of bottles of Bollinger and some old brandy—’

‘It has the right ring,’ I said. ‘And if we want a bite to eat after that, of course we can go to the pub.’

‘What pub?’

‘Isn’t there a pub on the course?’

‘There’s not a pub for miles. That’s why I was so particularly careful that there should be no funny work about the basket. The common where these races are held is a desert without an oasis. Practically a death-trap. I met a fellow the other day who told me he got there last year and unpacked his basket and found that the champagne had burst and, together with the salad dressing, had soaked into the ham, which in its turn had got mixed up with the gorgonzola cheese, forming a sort of paste. He had had rather a bumpy bit of road to travel over.’

‘What did he do?’

‘Oh, he ate the mixture. It was the only course. But he said he could still taste it sometimes, even now.’

In ordinary circs I can’t say I should have been any too braced at the news that we were going to split up for the journey in the following order – Bingo and Mrs Bingo in their car and the Pyke in mine, with Jeeves sitting behind in the dickey. But, things being as they were, the arrangement had its points. It meant that Jeeves would be able to study the back of her head and draw his deductions, while I could engage her in conversation and let him see for himself what manner of female she was.

I started, accordingly, directly we had rolled off and all through the journey until we fetched up at the course she gave of her best. It was with considerable satisfaction that I parked the car beside a tree and hopped out.

‘You were listening, Jeeves?’ I said gravely.

‘Yes, sir.’

‘A tough baby?’

‘Undeniably, sir.’

Bingo and Mrs Bingo came up.

‘The first race won’t be for half an hour,’ said Bingo. ‘We’d better lunch now. Fish the basket out, Jeeves, would you mind?’

‘Sir?’

‘The luncheon-basket,’ said Bingo in a devout sort of voice, licking his lips slightly.

‘The basket is not in Mr Wooster’s car, sir.’

‘What!’

‘I assumed that you were bringing it in your own, sir.’

I have never seen the sunshine fade out of anybody’s face as quickly as it did out of Bingo’s. He uttered a sharp, wailing cry.

‘Rosie!’

‘Yes, sweetie-pie?’

‘The bunch! The lasket!’

‘What, darling?’

‘The luncheon-basket!’

‘What about it, precious?’

‘It’s been left behind!’

‘Oh, has it?’ said Mrs Bingo.

I confess she had never fallen lower in my estimation. I had always known her as a woman with as healthy an appreciation of her meals as any of my acquaintance. A few years previously, when my Aunt Dahlia had stolen her French cook, Anatole, she had called Aunt Dahlia some names in my presence which had impressed me profoundly. Yet now, when informed that she was marooned on a bally prairie without bite or sup, all she could find to say was, ‘Oh, has it?’ I had never fully realized before the extent to which she had allowed herself to be dominated by the deleterious influence of the Pyke.

The Pyke, for her part, touched an even lower level.

‘It is just as well,’ she said, and her voice seemed to cut Bingo like a knife. ‘Luncheon is a meal better omitted. If taken, it should consist merely of a few muscatels, bananas and grated carrots. It is a well-known fact—’

And she went on to speak at some length of the gastric juices in a vein far from suited to any gathering at which gentlemen were present.

‘So, you see, darling,’ said Mrs Bingo, ‘you will really feel ever so much better and brighter for not having eaten a lot of indigestible food. It is much the best thing that could have happened.’

Bingo gave her a long, lingering look.

‘I see,’ he said. ‘Well, if you will excuse me, I’ll just go off somewhere where I can cheer a bit without exciting comment.’

I perceived Jeeves withdrawing in a meaning manner, and I followed him, hoping for the best. My trust was not misplaced. He had brought enough sandwiches for two. In fact, enough for three. I whistled to Bingo, and he came slinking up, and we restored the tissues in a makeshift sort of way behind a hedge. Then Bingo went off to interview bookies about the first race, and Jeeves gave a cough.

‘Swallowed a crumb the wrong way?’ I said.

‘No, sir, I thank you. It is merely that I desired to express a hope that I had not been guilty of taking a liberty, sir.’

‘How?’

‘In removing the luncheon-basket from the car before we started, sir.’

I quivered like an aspen. I stared at the man. Aghast. Shocked to the core.

‘You, Jeeves?’ I said, and I should rather think Cæsar spoke in the same sort of voice on finding Brutus puncturing him with the sharp instrument. ‘You mean to tell me it was you who deliberately, if that’s the word I want—?’

‘Yes, sir. It seemed to me the most judicious course to pursue. It would not have been prudent, in my opinion, to have allowed Mrs Little, in her present frame of mind, to witness Mr Little eating a meal on the scale which he outlined in his remarks this morning.’

I saw his point.

‘True, Jeeves,’ I said thoughtfully. ‘I see what you mean. If young Bingo has a fault, it is that, when in the society of a sandwich, he is apt to get a bit rough. I’ve picnicked with him before, many a time and oft, and his method of approach to the ordinary tongue or ham sandwich rather resembles that of the lion, the king of beasts, tucking into an antelope. Add lobster and cold chicken, and I admit the spectacle might have been something of a jar for the consort … Still … all the same … nevertheless—’

‘And there is another aspect of the matter, sir.’

‘What’s that?’

‘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 views 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 pretty 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 towards 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 wash-out 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 lunch inside him. Subtract the lunch, 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 have got 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 leave off 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 as far as 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 by-roads 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 lemon. After which, I suppose, you invite a couple of 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 H₂O. 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 mangold-wurzels playing searchingly 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 ‘Tchah!’ 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 ‘Tchahs’, 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 awhile 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 of petrol 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 petrol,’ I said. ‘Fancy that.’

‘But Bingo told me 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 heavy loyal-little-woman stuff, ‘if you would refrain from criticizing my husband.’

‘Tchah!’ said the Pyke.

‘And don’t say “Tchah!”’ 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 crêpe 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 tin of petrol.’

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

‘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 was a bloke with spectacles on his face and all round the spectacles an expression of strained anguish. 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, as if afraid it would not stay like that without assistance, he ran a hand through it. And for the first time I noted that the spectacles had a hostile gleam.

‘Was that you making that infernal noise?’ he asked.

‘Er – yes,’ I said. ‘I did toot.’

‘Toot 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 damned 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 petrol.’

‘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 lunch and look like missing tea as well, mere charm of manner can never be a really satisfactory substitute for a tinful 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! I say! 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 towards 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 tin of petrol 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 thrilling 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 petrol 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 petrol. 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 reaction.

‘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 might,’ said the Bandit, ‘but I won’t.’

‘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 the 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 tin of petrol 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 wobbled. 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 one another. Observe the result.’

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

‘On the contrary. He let all the petrol 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.’