‘The title of the film was “Tiny Hands,” sir. And the father and mother of the character played by Baby Bobbie had unfortunately drifted apart—’
‘Too bad,’ I said.
‘Although at heart they loved each other still, sir.’
‘Did they really? I’m glad you told me that.’
‘And so matters went on, sir, till came a day when—’
‘Jeeves,’ I said, fixing him with a dashed unpleasant eye, ‘what the dickens do you think you’re talking about? Do you suppose that, with this infernal child landed on me and the peace of the home practically shattered into a million bits, I want to hear—’
‘I beg your pardon, sir. I would not have mentioned this cinema performance were it not for the fact that it gave me an idea, sir.’
‘An idea!’
‘An idea that will, I fancy, sir, prove of value in straightening out the matrimonial future of Mr Bullivant. To which end, if you recollect, sir, you desired me to—’
I snorted with remorse.
‘Jeeves,’ I said, ‘I wronged you.’
‘Not at all, sir.’
‘Yes, I did. I wronged you. I had a notion that you had given yourself up entirely to the pleasures of the seaside and had chucked that business altogether. I might have known better. Tell me all, Jeeves.’
He bowed in a gratified manner. I beamed. And, while we didn’t actually fall on each other’s necks, we gave each other to understand that all was well once more.
‘In this super-super-film, “Tiny Hands,” sir,’ said Jeeves, ‘the parents of the child had, as I say, drifted apart.’
‘Drifted apart,’ I said, nodding. ‘Right! And then?’
‘Came a day, sir, when their little child brought them together again.’
‘How?’
‘If I remember rightly, sir, he said, “Dadda, doesn’t ’oo love mummie no more?”’
‘And then?’
‘They exhibited a good deal of emotion. There was what I believe is termed a cut-back, showing scenes from their courtship and early married life and some glimpses of Lovers Through the Ages, and the picture concluded with a close-up of the pair in an embrace, with the child looking on with natural gratification and an organ playing “Hearts and Flowers” in the distance.’
‘Proceed, Jeeves,’ I said. ‘You interest me strangely. I begin to grasp the idea. You mean—?’
‘I mean, sir, that, with this young gentleman on the premises, it might be possible to arrange a dénouement of a somewhat similar nature in regard to Mr Bullivant and Miss Vickers.’
‘Aren’t you overlooking the fact that this kid is no relation of Mr Bullivant or Miss Vickers?’
‘Even with that handicap, sir, I fancy that good results might ensue. I think that, if it were possible to bring Mr Bullivant and Miss Vickers together for a short space of time in the presence of the child, sir, and if the child were to say something of a touching nature—’
‘I follow you absolutely, Jeeves,’ I cried with enthusiasm. ‘It’s big. This is the way I see it. We lay the scene in this room. Child, centre. Girl, l.c. Freddie up stage, playing the piano. No, that won’t do. He can only play a little of “The Rosary” with one finger, so we’ll have to cut out the soft music. But the rest’s all right. Look here,’ I said. ‘This inkpot is Miss Vickers. This mug with “A Present from Marvis Bay” on it is the child. This penwiper is Mr Bullivant. Start with dialogue leading up to child’s line. Child speaks line, let us say, “Boofer lady, does’ oo love dadda?” Business of outstretched hands. Hold picture for a moment. Freddie crosses 1. takes girl’s hand. Business of swallowing lump in throat. Then big speech: “Ah, Elizabeth, has not this misunderstanding of ours gone on too long? See! A little child rebukes us!” And so on. I’m just giving you the general outline. Freddie must work up his own part. And we must get a good line for the child. “Boofer lady, does’ oo love dadda?” isn’t definite enough. We want something more—’
‘If I might make the suggestion, sir—?’
‘Yes?’
‘I would advocate the words “Kiss Freddie!” It is short, readily memorised, and has what I believe is technically termed the punch.’
‘Genius, Jeeves!’
‘Thank you very much, sir.’
‘“Kiss Freddie!” it is, then. But, I say, Jeeves, how the deuce are we to get them together in here? Miss Vickers cuts Mr Bullivant. She wouldn’t come within a mile of him.’
‘It is awkward, sir.’
‘It doesn’t matter. We shall have to make it an exterior set instead of an interior. We can easily corner her on the beach somewhere, when we’re ready. Meanwhile, we must get the kid word-perfect.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Right! First rehearsal for lines and business at eleven sharp to-morrow morning.’
Poor old Freddie was in such a gloomy frame of mind that I decided not to tell him the idea till we had finished coaching the child. He wasn’t in the mood to have a thing like that hanging over him. So we concentrated on Tootles. And pretty early in the proceedings we saw that the only way to get Tootles worked up to the spirit of the thing was to introduce sweets of some sort as a sub-motive, so to speak.
‘The chief difficulty, sir,’ said Jeeves, at the end of the first rehearsal, ‘is, as I envisage it, to establish in the young gentleman’s mind a connection between the words we desire him to say and the refreshment.’
‘Exactly,’ I said. ‘Once the blighter has grasped the basic fact that those two words, clearly spoken, result automatically in chocolate nougat, we have got a success.’
I’ve often thought how interesting it must be to be one of those animal-trainer blokes – to stimulate the dawning intelligence and all that. Well, this was every bit as exciting Some days success seemed to be staring us in the eyeball, and the kid got out the line as if he had been an old professional. And then he would go all to pieces again. And time was flying.
‘We must hurry up, Jeeves,’ I said. ‘The kid’s uncle may arrive any day now and take him away.’
‘Exactly, sir.’
‘And we have no understudy.’
‘Very true, sir.’
‘We must work! I must say this child is a bit discouraging at times. I should have thought a deaf-mute would have learned his part by now.’
I will say this for the kid, though: he was a trier. Failure didn’t damp him. Whenever there was any kind of sweet in sight he had a dash at his line, and kept saying something till he had got what he was after. His chief fault was his uncertainty. Personally, I would have been prepared to risk opening in the act and was ready to start the public performance at the first opportunity, but Jeeves said no.
‘I would not advocate undue haste, sir,’ he said. ‘As long as the young gentleman’s memory refuses to act with any certainty, we are running grave risks of failure. To-day, if you recollect, sir, he said “Kick Freddie!” That is not a speech to win a young lady’s heart, sir.’
‘No. And she might do it, too. You’re right. We must postpone production.’
But, by Jove, we didn’t! The curtain went up the very next afternoon.
It was nobody’s fault – certainly not mine. It was just fate. Jeeves was out, and I was alone in the house with Freddie and the child. Freddie had just settled down at the piano, and I was leading the kid out of the place for a bit of exercise, when, just as we’d got on to the veranda, along came the girl Elizabeth on her way to the beach. And at the sight of her the kid set up a matey yell, and she stopped at the foot of the steps.
‘Hallo, baby,’ she said. ‘Good morning,’ she said to me. ‘May I come up?’
She didn’t wait for an answer. She just hopped on to the veranda. She seemed to be that sort of girl. She started fussing over the child. And six feet away, mind you, Freddie smiting the piano in the sitting-room. It was a dashed disturbing situation, take it from Bertram. At any minute Freddie might take it into his head to come out on the veranda, and I hadn’t even beg
un to rehearse him in his part.
I tried to break up the scene.
‘We were just going down to the beach,’ I said.
‘Yes?’ said the girl. She listened for a moment. ‘So you’re having your piano tuned?’ she said. ‘My aunt has been trying to find a tuner for ours. Do you mind if I go in and tell this man to come on to us when he has finished here?’
I mopped the brow.
‘Er – I shouldn’t go in just now,’ I said. ‘Not just now, while he’s working, if you don’t mind. These fellows can’t bear to be disturbed when they’re at work. It’s the artistic temperament. I’ll tell him later.’
‘Very well. Ask him to call at Pine Bungalow. Vickers is the name. … Oh, he seems to have stopped. I suppose he will be out in a minute now. I’ll wait.’
‘Don’t you think – shouldn’t you be getting on to the beach?’ I said.
She had started talking to the kid and didn’t hear. She was feeling in her bag for something.
‘The beach,’ I babbled.
‘See what I’ve got for you, baby,’ said the girl. ‘I thought I might meet you somewhere, so I bought some of your favourite sweets.’
And, by Jove, she held up in front of the kid’s bulging eyes a chunk of toffee about the size of the Albert Memorial!
That finished it. We had just been having a long rehearsal, and the kid was all worked up in his part. He got it right first time.
‘Kiss Fweddie!’ he shouted.
And the French windows opened and Freddie came out on to the veranda, for all the world as if he had been taking a cue.
‘Kiss Fweddie!’ shrieked the child.
Freddie looked at the girl, and the girl looked at him. I looked at the ground, and the kid looked at the toffee.
‘Kiss Fweddie!’ he yelled. ‘Kiss Fweddie!’
‘What does this mean?’ said the girl, turning on me.
‘You’d better give it him,’ I said. ‘He’ll go on till you do, you know.’
She gave the kid the toffee and he subsided. Freddie, poor ass, still stood there gaping, without a word.
‘What does it mean?’ said the girl again. Her face was pink, and her eyes were sparkling in the sort of way, don’t you know, that makes a fellow feel as if he hadn’t any bones in him, if you know what I mean. Yes, Bertram felt filleted. Did you ever tread on your partner’s dress at a dance – I’m speaking now of the days when women wore dresses long enough to be trodden on – and hear it rip and see her smile at you like an angel and say, ‘Please don’t apologise. It’s nothing,’ and then suddenly meet her clear blue eyes and feel as if you had stepped on the teeth of a rake and had the handle jump up and hit you in the face? Well, that’s how Freddie’s Elizabeth looked.
‘Well?’ she said, and her teeth gave a little click.
I gulped. Then I said it was nothing. Then I said it was nothing much. Then I said, ‘Oh, well, it was this way.’ And I told her all about it. And all the while Idiot Freddie stood there gaping, without a word. Not one solitary yip had he let out of himself from the start.
And the girl didn’t speak, either. She just stood listening.
And then she began to laugh. I never heard a girl laugh so much. She leaned against the side of the veranda and shrieked. And all the while Freddie, the World’s Champion Dumb Brick, standing there, saying nothing.
Well, I finished my story and sidled to the steps. I had said all I had to say, and it seemed to me that about here the stage-direction ‘exit cautiously’ was written in my part. I gave poor old Freddie up in despair. If only he had said a word it might have been all right. But there he stood, speechless.
Just out of sight of the house I met Jeeves, returning from his stroll.
‘Jeeves,’ I said, ‘all is over. The thing’s finished. Poor dear old Freddie has made a complete ass of himself and killed the whole show.’
‘Indeed, sir? What has actually happened?’
I told him.
‘He fluffed in his lines,’ I concluded. ‘Just stood there saying nothing, when if ever there was a time for eloquence, this was it. He … Great Scott! Look!’
We had come back within view of the cottage, and there in front of it stood six children, a nurse, two loafers, another nurse, and the fellow from the grocer’s. They were all staring. Down the road came galloping five more children, a dog, three men and a boy, all about to stare. And on our porch, as unconscious of the spectators as if they had been alone in the Sahara, stood Freddie and his Elizabeth, clasped in each other’s arms.
‘Great Scott!’ I said.
‘It would appear, sir,’ said Jeeves, ‘that everything has concluded most satisfactorily, after all.’
‘Yes. Dear old Freddie may have been fluffy in his lines,’ I said, ‘but his business certainly seems to have gone with a bang.’
‘Very true, sir,’ said Jeeves.
9 CLUSTERING ROUND YOUNG BINGO
I BLOTTED THE last page of my manuscript and sank back, feeling more or less of a spent force. After incredible sweat of the old brow the thing seemed to be in pretty fair shape, and I was just reading it through and debating whether to bung in another paragraph at the end, when there was a tap at the door and Jeeves appeared.
‘Mrs Travers, sir, on the telephone.’
‘Oh?’ I said. Preoccupied, don’t you know.
‘Yes, sir. She presents her compliments and would be glad to know what progress you have made with the article which you are writing for her.’
‘Jeeves, can I mention men’s knee-length under-clothing in a woman’s paper?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Then tell her it’s finished.’
‘Very good, sir.’
‘And, Jeeves, when you’re through, come back. I want you to cast your eye over this effort and give it the O.K.’
My Aunt Dahlia, who runs a woman’s paper called Milady’s Boudoir, had recently backed me into a corner and made me promise to write her a few authoritative words for her ‘Husbands and Brothers’ page on ‘What the Well-Dressed Man is Wearing.’ I believe in encouraging aunts, when deserving; and, as there are many worse eggs than her knocking about the metrop. I had consented blithely. But I give you my honest word that if I had had the foggiest notion of what I was letting myself in for, not even a nephew’s devotion would have kept me from giving her the raspberry. A deuce of a job it had been, taxing the physique to the utmost. I don’t wonder now that all these author blokes have bald heads and faces like birds who have suffered.
‘Jeeves,’ I said, when he came back, ‘you don’t read a paper called Milady’s Boudoir by any chance, do you?’
‘No, sir. The periodical has not come to my notice.’
‘Well, spring sixpence on it next week, because this article will appear in it. Wooster on the well-dressed man, don’t you know.’
‘Indeed, sir?’
‘Yes, indeed, Jeeves. I’ve rather extended myself over this little bijou. There’s a bit about socks that I think you will like.’
He took the manuscript, brooded over it, and smiled a gentle, approving smile.
‘The sock passage is quite in the proper vein, sir,’ he said.
‘Well expressed, what?’
‘Extremely, sir.’
I watched him narrowly as he read on, and, as I was expecting, what you might call the love-light suddenly died out of his eyes. I braced myself for an unpleasant scene.
‘Come to the bit about soft silk shirts for evening wear?’ I asked carelessly.
‘Yes, sir,’ said Jeeves, in a low, cold voice, as if he had been bitten in the leg by a personal friend. ‘And if I may be pardoned for saying so—’
‘You don’t like it?’
‘No, sir. I do not. Soft silk shirts with evening costume are not worn, sir.’
‘Jeeves,’ I said, looking the blighter diametrically in the centre of the eyeball, ‘they’re dashed well going to be. I may as well tell you now that I have ordered a dozen of those shirtings from P
eabody and Simms, and it’s no good looking like that, because I am jolly well adamant.’
‘If I might—’
‘No, Jeeves,’ I said, raising my hand, ‘argument is useless. Nobody has a greater respect than I have for your judgment in socks, in ties, and – I will go farther – in spats; but when it comes to evening shirts your nerve seems to fail you. You have no vision. You are prejudiced and reactionary. Hidebound is the word that suggests itself. It may interest you to learn that when I was at Le Touquet the Prince of Wales buzzed into the Casino one night with soft silk shirt complete.’
‘His Royal Highness, sir, may permit himself a certain licence which in your own case—’
‘No, Jeeves,’ I said firmly, ‘it’s no use. When we Woosters are adamant, we are – well, adamant, if you know what I mean.’
‘Very good, sir.’
I could see the man was wounded, and, of course, the whole episode had been extremely jarring and unpleasant; but these things have to be gone through. Is one a serf or isn’t one? That’s what it all boils down to. Having made my point, I changed the subject.
‘Well, that’s that,’ I said, ‘We now approach another topic. Do you know any housemaids, Jeeves?’
‘Housemaids, sir?’
‘Come, come, Jeeves, you know what housemaids are.’
‘Are you requiring a housemaid, sir?’
‘No, but Mr Little is. I met him at the club a couple of days ago, and he told me that Mrs Little is offering rich rewards to anybody who will find her one guaranteed to go light on the china.’
‘Indeed, sir?’
‘Yes. The one now in office apparently runs through the objets d’art like a typhoon, simoon, or sirocco. So if you know any—’
‘I know a great many, sir. Some intimately, others mere acquaintances.’
‘Well, start digging round among the old pals. And now the hat, the stick, and other necessaries. I must be getting along and handing in this article.’
The offices of Milady’s Boudoir were in one of those rummy streets in the Covent Garden neighbourhood; and I had just got to the door, after wading through a deep top-dressing of old cabbages and tomatoes, when who should come out but Mrs Little. She greeted me with the warmth due to the old family friend, in spite of the fact that I hadn’t been round to the house for a goodish while.