The Greatest Works of P. G. Wodehouse. P. G. Wodehouse
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you, Bertie, old boy, to pop round to my uncle and do a bit of diplomatic work. That allowance of mine must be restored, and dashed quick, too. What’s more, it must be increased.”
“But look here,” I said, being far from keen on the bally business, “why not wait a while?”
“Wait? What’s the good of waiting?”
“Well, you know what generally happens when you fall in love. Something goes wrong with the works and you get left. Much better tackle your uncle after the whole thing’s fixed and settled.”
“It is fixed and settled. She accepted me this morning.”
“Good Lord! That’s quick work. You haven’t known her two weeks!”
“Not in this life, no,” said young Bingo. “But she has a sort of idea that we must have met in some previous existence. She thinks I must have been a king in Babylon when she was a Christian slave. I can’t say I remember it myself, but there may be something in it.”
“Great Scott!” I said. “Do waitresses really talk like that?”
“How should I know how waitresses talk?”
“Well, you ought to by now. The first time I ever met your uncle was when you hounded me on to ask him if he would rally round to help you marry that girl Mabel in the Piccadilly bunshop.”
Bingo started violently. A wild gleam came into his eyes. And before I knew what he was up to he had brought down his hand with a most frightful whack on my summer trousering, causing me to leap like a young ram.
“Here!” I said.
“Sorry,” said Bingo. “Excited. Carried away. You’ve given me an idea, Bertie.” He waited till I had finished massaging the limb, and resumed his remarks. “Can you throw your mind back to that occasion, Bertie? Do you remember the frightfully subtle scheme I worked? Telling him you were what’s-her-name—the woman who wrote those books, I mean?”
It wasn’t likely I’d forget. The ghastly thing was absolutely seared into my memory. What had happened—stop me if I’ve told you this before—was that, in order to induce his dashed uncle to look on me as a chum and hang upon my words, and all that, the ass Bingo had told him that I was the author of a lot of mushy novels of which he was particularly fond. All that series by Rosie M. Banks, you know. Said that I had written them, and that Rosie’s name on the title-page was simply my what-d’you-call-it. Lord Bittlesham, the uncle, had lapped it up without the slightest hesitation, and had treated me both then and on the other occasions on which we had met with the dickens of a lot of reverence.
“That is the line of attack,” said Bingo. “That is the scheme. Rosie M. Banks forward once more.”
“It can’t be done, old thing. Sorry, but it’s out of the ques. I couldn’t go through all that again.”
“Not for me?”
“Not for a dozen more like you.”
“I never thought,” said Bingo, sorrowfully, “to hear those words from Bertie Wooster!”
“Well, you’ve heard them now,” I said. “Paste them in your hat.”
“Bertie, we were at school together.”
“It wasn’t my fault.”
“We’ve been pals for fifteen years.”
“I know. It’s going to take me the rest of my life to live it down.”
“Bertie, old man,” said Bingo, drawing up his chair closer and starting to knead my shoulder-blade, “listen. Be reasonable!”
And, of course, dash it! at the end of ten minutes I’d allowed the blighter to talk me round. It’s always the way. Anyone can talk me round. If I were in a Trappist monastery, the first thing that would happen would be that some smooth performer would lure me into some frightful idiocy against my better judgment by means of the deaf-and-dumb language.
“Well, what do you want me to do?” I said, realizing that it was hopeless to struggle.
“Start off by sending the old boy an autographed copy of your latest effort, with a flattering inscription. That will tickle him to death. Then you pop round and put it across him.”
“What is my latest?”
“ ‘The Woman Who Braved All,’ ” said young Bingo. “I’ve seen it all over the place. The shop windows and bookstalls are full of nothing but. It looks to me from the picture on the jacket the sort of book any chappie would be proud to have written. Of course, he will want to discuss it with you.”
“Ah!” I said, cheering up. “That dishes the scheme, doesn’t it? I don’t know what the bally thing is about.”
“You will have to read it, naturally.”
“Read it! No, I say——”
“Bertie, we were at school together.”
“Oh, right-o! Right-o!” I said.
“I knew I could rely on you. You have a heart of gold. Jeeves,” said young Bingo, as the faithful servitor rolled in, “Mr. Wooster has a heart of gold.”
“Very good, sir,” said Jeeves.
BAR a weekly wrestle with the Pink ’Un and an occasional dip into the form-book, I’m not much of a lad for reading, and my sufferings as I tackled “The Woman”—curse her!—“Who Braved All” were pretty fearful. But I managed to get through it, and only just in time, as it happened, for I’d hardly reached the bit where their lips met in one long, slow kiss, and everything was still but for the gentle sighing of the breeze in the laburnum, when a messenger-boy brought a note from old Bittlesham asking me to trickle round to lunch.
I found the old boy in a mood you could only describe as melting. He had a copy of the book on the table beside him, and kept turning the pages in the intervals of dealing with things in aspic and what not.
“Mr. Wooster,” he said, swallowing a chunk of trout, “I wish to congratulate you. I wish to thank you. You go from strength to strength. I have read ‘All for Love,’ I have read ‘Only a Factory Girl,’ I know ‘Madcap Myrtle’ by heart. But this—this is your bravest and best. It tears the heart-strings.”
“Yes?”
“Indeed yes! I have read it three times since you most kindly sent me the volume—I wish to thank you once more for the charming inscription—and I think I may say that I am a better, sweeter, deeper man. I am full of human charity and kindliness towards my species.”
“No, really?”
“Indeed, indeed I am.”
“Towards the whole species?”
“Towards the whole species.”
“Even young Bingo?” I said, trying him pretty high.
“My nephew? Richard?” He looked a bit thoughtful, but stuck it like a man and refused to hedge. “Yes, even towards Richard. Well—that is to say—perhaps—yes, even towards Richard.”
“That’s good, because I wanted to talk about him. He’s pretty hard up, you know.”
“In straitened circumstances?”
“Stoney. And he could use a bit of the right stuff paid every quarter, if you felt like unbelting.”
He mused awhile, and got through a slab of cold guinea-hen before replying. He toyed with the book, and it fell open at page two hundred and fifteen. I couldn’t remember what was on page two hundred and fifteen, but it must have been something tolerably zippy, for his expression changed and he gazed up at me with misty eyes, as if he’d taken a shade too much mustard with his last bite of ham.
“Very well, Mr. Wooster,” he said. “Fresh from a perusal