In the middle of it Aunt Agatha's letter arrived. It took her about six pages to do justice to Cyril's father's feelings in regard to his going on the stage and about six more to give me a kind of sketch of what she would say, think, and do if I didn't keep him clear of injurious influences while he was in America. The letter came by the afternoon mail, and left me with a pretty firm conviction that it wasn't a thing I ought to keep to myself. I didn't[Pg 101] even wait to ring the bell: I whizzed for the kitchen, bleating for Jeeves, and butted into the middle of a regular tea-party of sorts. Seated at the table were a depressed-looking cove who might have been a valet or something, and a boy in a Norfolk suit. The valet-chappie was drinking a whisky and soda, and the boy was being tolerably rough with some jam and cake.
"Oh, I say, Jeeves!" I said. "Sorry to interrupt the feast of reason and flow of soul and so forth, but——"
At this juncture the small boy's eye hit me like a bullet and stopped me in my tracks. It was one of those cold, clammy, accusing sort of eyes—the kind that makes you reach up to see if your tie is straight: and he looked at me as if I were some sort of unnecessary product which Cuthbert the Cat had brought in after a ramble among the local ash-cans. He was a stoutish infant with a lot of freckles and a good deal of jam on his face.
"Hallo! Hallo! Hallo!" I said. "What?" There didn't seem much else to say.
The stripling stared at me in a nasty sort of way through the jam. He may have loved me at first sight, but the impression he gave me was that he didn't think a lot of me and wasn't betting much that I would improve a great deal on acquaintance. I had a kind of feeling that I was about as popular with him as a cold Welsh rabbit.
"What's your name?" he asked.
"My name? Oh, Wooster, don't you know, and what not."
"My pop's richer than you are!"
That seemed to be all about me. The child having said his say, started in on the jam again. I turned to Jeeves.
[Pg 102]
"I say, Jeeves, can you spare a moment? I want to show you something."
"Very good, sir." We toddled into the sitting-room.
"Who is your little friend, Sidney the Sunbeam, Jeeves?"
"The young gentleman, sir?"
"It's a loose way of describing him, but I know what you mean."
"I trust I was not taking a liberty in entertaining him, sir?"
"Not a bit. If that's your idea of a large afternoon, go ahead."
"I happened to meet the young gentleman taking a walk with his father's valet, sir, whom I used to know somewhat intimately in London, and I ventured to invite them both to join me here."
"Well, never mind about him, Jeeves. Read this letter."
He gave it the up-and-down.
"Very disturbing, sir!" was all he could find to say.
"What are we going to do about it?"
"Time may provide a solution, sir."
"On the other hand, it mayn't, what?"
"Extremely true, sir."
We'd got as far as this, when there was a ring at the door. Jeeves shimmered off, and Cyril blew in, full of good cheer and blitheringness.
"I say, Wooster, old thing," he said, "I want your advice. You know this jolly old part of mine. How ought I to dress it? What I mean is, the first act scene is laid in an hotel of sorts, at about three in the afternoon. What ought I to wear, do you think?"
I wasn't feeling fit for a discussion of gent's suitings.
[Pg 103]
"You'd better consult Jeeves," I said.
"A hot and by no means unripe idea! Where is he?"
"Gone back to the kitchen, I suppose."
"I'll smite the good old bell, shall I? Yes. No?"
"Right-o!"
Jeeves poured silently in.
"Oh, I say, Jeeves," began Cyril, "I just wanted to have a syllable or two with you. It's this way—Hallo, who's this?"
I then perceived that the stout stripling had trickled into the room after Jeeves. He was standing near the door looking at Cyril as if his worst fears had been realised. There was a bit of a silence. The child remained there, drinking Cyril in for about half a minute; then he gave his verdict:
"Fish-face!"
"Eh? What?" said Cyril.
The child, who had evidently been taught at his mother's knee to speak the truth, made his meaning a trifle clearer.
"You've a face like a fish!"
He spoke as if Cyril was more to be pitied than censured, which I am bound to say I thought rather decent and broad-minded of him. I don't mind admitting that, whenever I looked at Cyril's face, I always had a feeling that he couldn't have got that way without its being mostly his own fault. I found myself warming to this child. Absolutely, don't you know. I liked his conversation.
It seemed to take Cyril a moment or two really to grasp the thing, and then you could hear the blood of the Bassington-Bassingtons begin to sizzle.
"Well, I'm dashed!" he said. "I'm dashed if I'm not!"
"I wouldn't have a face like that," proceeded[Pg 104] the child, with a good deal of earnestness, "not if you gave me a million dollars." He thought for a moment, then corrected himself. "Two million dollars!" he added.
Just what occurred then I couldn't exactly say, but the next few minutes were a bit exciting. I take it that Cyril must have made a dive for the infant. Anyway, the air seemed pretty well congested with arms and legs and things. Something bumped into the Wooster waistcoat just around the third button, and I collapsed on to the settee and rather lost interest in things for the moment. When I had unscrambled myself, I found that Jeeves and the child had retired and Cyril was standing in the middle of the room snorting a bit.
"Who's that frightful little brute, Wooster?"
"I don't know. I never saw him before to-day."
"I gave him a couple of tolerably juicy buffets before he legged it. I say, Wooster, that kid said a dashed odd thing. He yelled out something about Jeeves promising him a dollar if he called me—er—what he said."
It sounded pretty unlikely to me.
"What would Jeeves do that for?"
"It struck me as rummy, too."
"Where would be the sense of it?"
"That's what I can't see."
"I mean to say, it's nothing to Jeeves what sort of a face you have!"
"No!" said Cyril. He spoke a little coldly, I fancied. I don't know why. "Well, I'll be popping. Toodle-oo!"
"Pip-pip!"
It must have been about a week after this rummy little episode that George Caffyn called me up and asked me if I would care to go and see a run-through of his show. "Ask Dad," it seemed, was to open[Pg 105] out of town in Schenectady on the following Monday, and this was to be a sort of preliminary dress-rehearsal. A preliminary dress-rehearsal, old George explained, was the same as a regular dress-rehearsal inasmuch as it was apt to look like nothing on earth and last into the small hours, but more exciting because they wouldn't be timing the piece and consequently all the blighters who on these occasions let their angry passions rise would have plenty of scope for interruptions, with the result that a pleasant time would be had by all.
The thing was billed to start at eight o'clock, so I rolled up at ten-fifteen, so as not to have too long to wait before they began. The dress-parade was still going on. George was on the stage, talking to a cove in shirt-sleeves and an absolutely round chappie with big spectacles and a practically hairless dome. I had seen George with the latter merchant once or twice at the club, and I knew that he was Blumenfield, the manager. I waved to George, and slid into a seat at the back of the house, so as to be out of the way when the fighting started. Presently George hopped down off the stage and came and joined me, and fairly soon after that the curtain went down. The chappie at the piano whacked out a well-meant bar or two, and the curtain went up again.
I can't quite recall what the plot of "Ask Dad" was about, but I do know that it seemed able to jog along all right without much help from Cyril. I was rather puzzled at first. What I mean is, through brooding on Cyril and hearing him in his part and listening to his views on what ought and what ought not to be done, I suppose I had got a sort of impression rooted in the old bean that he was pretty well the backbone of the show, and that the rest of the company didn't do much except go on and fill[Pg 106] in when he happened to be off the stage. I sat there for nearly half an hour, waiting for him to make his entrance, until I suddenly discovered he had been on from the start. He was, in fact, the rummy-looking plug-ugly who was now leaning against a potted palm a couple of feet from the O.P. side, trying to appear intelligent while the heroine sang a song about Love being like something which for the moment has slipped my memory. After the second refrain he began to dance in company with a dozen other equally weird birds. A painful spectacle for one who could see a vision of Aunt Agatha reaching for the hatchet and old Bassington-Bassington senior putting on his strongest pair of hob-nailed boots. Absolutely!
The dance had just finished, and Cyril and his pals had shuffled off into the wings when a voice spoke from the darkness on my right.
"Pop!"
Old Blumenfield clapped his hands, and the hero, who had just been about to get the next line off his diaphragm, cheesed it. I peered into the shadows. Who should it be but Jeeves's little playmate with the freckles! He was now strolling down the aisle with his hands in his pockets as if the place belonged to him. An air of respectful attention seemed to pervade the building.
"Pop," said the stripling, "that number's no good." Old Blumenfield beamed over his shoulder.
"Don't you like it, darling?"
"It gives me a pain."
"You're dead right."
"You want something zippy there. Something with a bit of jazz to it!"
"Quite right, my boy. I'll make a note of it. All right. Go on!"
[Pg 107]
I turned to George, who was muttering to himself in rather an overwrought way.
"I say, George, old man, who the dickens is that kid?"
Old George groaned a bit hollowly, as if things were a trifle thick.
"I didn't know he had crawled in! It's Blumenfield's son. Now we're going to have a Hades of a time!"
"Does he always run things like this?"
"Always!"
"But why does old Blumenfield listen to him?"
"Nobody seems to know. It may be pure fatherly love, or he may regard him as a mascot. My own idea is that he thinks the kid has exactly the amount of intelligence of the average member of the audience, and that what makes a hit with him will please the general public. While, conversely, what he doesn't like will be too rotten for anyone. The kid is a pest, a wart, and a pot of poison, and should be strangled!"
The rehearsal went on. The hero got off his line. There was a slight outburst of frightfulness between the stage-manager and a Voice named Bill that came from somewhere near the roof, the subject under discussion being where the devil Bill's "ambers" were at that particular juncture. Then things went on again until the moment arrived for Cyril's big scene.
I was still a trifle hazy about the plot, but I had got on to the fact that Cyril was some sort of an English peer who had come over to America doubtless for the best reasons. So far he had only had two lines to say. One was "Oh, I say!" and the other was "Yes, by Jove!"; but I seemed to recollect, from hearing him read his part, that pretty soon he was due rather to spread[Pg 108] himself. I sat back in my chair and waited for him to bob up.
He bobbed up about five minutes later. Things had got a bit stormy by that time. The Voice and the stage-director had had another of their love-feasts—this time something to do with why Bill's "blues" weren't on the job or something. And, almost as soon as that was over, there was a bit of unpleasantness because a flower-pot fell off a window-ledge and nearly brained the hero. The atmosphere was consequently more or less hotted up when Cyril, who had been hanging about at the back of the stage, breezed down centre and toed the mark for his most substantial chunk of entertainment. The heroine had been saying something—I forget what—and all the chorus, with Cyril at their head, had begun to surge round her in the restless sort of way those chappies always do when there's a number coming along.
Cyril's first line was, "Oh, I say, you know, you mustn't say that, really!" and it seemed to me he passed it over the larynx with a goodish deal of vim and je-ne-sais-quoi. But, by Jove, before the heroine had time for the come-back, our little friend with the freckles had risen to lodge a protest.
"Pop!"
"Yes, darling?"
"That one's no good!"
"Which one, darling?"
"The one with a face like a fish."
"But they all have faces like fish, darling."
The child seemed to see the justice of this objection. He became more definite.
"The ugly one."
"Which ugly one? That one?" said old Blumenfield, pointing to Cyril.
[Pg 109]
"Yep! He's rotten!"
"I thought so myself."
"He's a pill!"
"You're dead right, my boy. I've noticed it for some time."
Cyril had been gaping a bit while these few remarks were in progress. He now shot down to the footlights. Even from where I was sitting, I could see that these harsh words had hit the old Bassington-Bassington family pride a frightful wallop. He started to get pink in the ears, and then in the nose, and then in the cheeks, till in about a quarter of a minute he looked pretty much like an explosion in a tomato cannery on a sunset evening.
"What the deuce do you mean?"
"What the deuce do you mean?" shouted old Blumenfield. "Don't yell at me across the footlights!"
"I've a dashed good mind to come down and spank that little brute!"
"What!"
"A dashed good mind!"
Old Blumenfield swelled like a pumped-up tyre. He got rounder than ever.
"See here, mister—I don't know your darn name——!"
"My name's Bassington-Bassington, and the jolly old Bassington-Bassingtons—I mean the Bassington-Bassingtons aren't accustomed——"
Old Blumenfield told him in a few brief words pretty much what he thought of the Bassington-Bassingtons and what they weren't accustomed to. The whole strength of the company rallied round to enjoy his remarks. You could see them jutting out from the wings and protruding from behind trees.
[Pg 110]
"You got to work good for my pop!" said the stout child, waggling his head reprovingly at Cyril.
"I don't want any bally cheek from you!" said Cyril, gurgling a bit.
"What's that?" barked old Blumenfield. "Do you understand that this boy is my son?"
"Yes, I do," said Cyril. "And you both have my sympathy!"
"You're fired!" bellowed old Blumenfield, swelling a good bit more. "Get out of my theatre!"
* * * * *
About half-past ten next morning, just after I had finished lubricating the good old interior with a soothing cup of Oolong, Jeeves filtered into my bedroom, and said that Cyril was waiting to see me in the sitting-room.
"How does he look, Jeeves?"
"Sir?"
"What does Mr. Bassington-Bassington look like?"
"It is hardly my place, sir, to criticise the facial peculiarities of your friends."
"I don't mean that. I mean, does he appear peeved and what not?"
"Not noticeably, sir. His manner is tranquil."
"That's rum!"
"Sir?"
"Nothing. Show him in, will you?"
I'm bound to say I had expected to see Cyril showing a few more traces of last night's battle. I was looking for a bit of the overwrought soul and the quivering ganglions, if you know what I mean. He seemed pretty ordinary and quite fairly cheerful.
"Hallo, Wooster, old thing!"
[Pg 111]
"Cheero!"
"I just looked in to say good-bye."
"Good-bye?"
"Yes. I'm off to Washington in an hour." He sat down on the bed. "You know, Wooster, old top," he went on, "I've been thinking it all over, and really it doesn't seem quite fair to the jolly old guv'nor, my going on the stage and so forth. What do you think?"
"I see what you mean."
"I mean to say, he sent me over here to broaden my jolly old mind and words to that effect, don't you know, and I can't help thinking it would be a bit of a jar for the old boy if I gave him the bird and went on the stage instead. I don't know if you understand me, but what I mean to say is, it's a sort of question of conscience."
"Can you leave the show without upsetting everything?"
"Oh, that's all right. I've explained everything to old Blumenfield, and he quite sees my position. Of course, he's sorry to lose me—said he didn't see how he could fill my place and all that sort of thing—but, after all, even if it does land him in a bit of a hole, I think I'm right in resigning my part, don't you?"
"Oh, absolutely."
"I thought you'd agree with me. Well, I ought to be shifting. Awfully glad to have seen something of you, and all that sort of rot. Pip-pip!"
"Toodle-oo!"
He sallied forth, having told all those bally lies with the clear, blue, pop-eyed gaze of a young child. I rang for Jeeves. You know, ever since last night I had been exercising the old bean to some extent, and a good deal of light had dawned upon me.
[Pg 112]
"Jeeves!"
"Sir?"
"Did you put that pie-faced infant up to bally-ragging Mr. Bassington-Bassington?"
"Sir?"
"Oh, you know what I mean. Did you tell him to get Mr. Bassington-Bassington sacked from the 'Ask Dad' company?"
"I would not take such a liberty, sir." He started to put out my clothes. "It is possible that young Master Blumenfield may have gathered from casual remarks of mine that I did not consider the stage altogether a suitable sphere for Mr. Bassington-Bassington."
"I say, Jeeves, you know, you're a bit of a marvel."
"I endeavour to give satisfaction, sir."
"And I'm frightfully obliged, if you know what I mean. Aunt Agatha would have had sixteen or seventeen fits if you hadn't headed him off."
"I fancy there might have been some little friction and unpleasantness, sir. I am laying out the blue suit with the thin red stripe, sir. I fancy the effect will be pleasing."
* * * * *
It's a rummy thing, but I had finished breakfast and gone out and got as far as the lift before I remembered what it was that I had meant to do to reward Jeeves for his really sporting behaviour in this matter of the chump Cyril. It cut me to the heart to do it, but I had decided to give him his way and let those purple socks pass out of my life. After all, there are times when a cove must make sacrifices. I was just going to nip back and break the glad news to him, when the lift came up, so I thought I would leave it till I got home.
[Pg 113]
The coloured chappie in charge of the lift looked at me, as I hopped in, with a good deal of quiet devotion and what not.
"I wish to thank yo', suh," he said, "for yo' kindness."
"Eh? What?"
"Misto' Jeeves done give me them purple socks, as you told him. Thank yo' very much, suh!"
I looked down. The blighter was a blaze of mauve from the ankle-bone southward. I don't know when I've seen anything so dressy.
"Oh, ah! Not at all! Right-o! Glad you like them!" I said.
Well, I mean to say, what? Absolutely!