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Well, what with the train being bally late and all, young Bertram barely had time to slide into the old dinner jacket and scurry out the door of my accom at Blenderings Hall, en route to the dining room. No doubt my cousin Lily and her pals were already noshing away, having given me up as a ghost.
Then—well, I’m not really sure how it all physically transpired, looking back, but I was jaunting down the hall, thinking only of a goodish bit of roast mutton, when something sort of sped out of the adjoining hallway and cracked the old shin with rather a lot of force. Down I went, and down it went with a squeal, and I didn’t really think I was so close to the main staircase, but down we both went. Let me tell you, there is nothing so long or uncomfortable as a staircase one is tumbling down, and all the red plush carpeting in the world can’t cushion it a bit. So I and this squealing thing collapsed in a heap on the floor of the main entryway, winded from our rapid descent, and I finally managed to roll over a bit and check the old frame for any shattered bits. None found, thank goodness—we Woosters are made of sterner stuff than that.
I heard the moan from next to me and turned to check on the squealing thing, and dashed if it wasn’t a girl, of the female variety that is, with rather goldeny blond hair and emeraldy green eyes. You know young Bertram to be a steady, level-headed sort of chap, but I freely admit that for the first few seconds of gazing on the creature I was jolly well struck dumb. I suppose it was the lingering effect of cracking the old skull against the stair, but she seemed to me to have a prettyish sort of face, although it was a bit freckly.
Ignoring my own not inconsiderable injuries, I displayed the Wooster chivalrous streak and rushed to her assistance. “I say, I say,” I huffed, helping the freckly thing sit up, “I say, are you alright there and all that?”
Her chin started to tremble as she looked upon me and I hastened to stave off the old flood. “Sorry about that, nasty bit of a tumble, eh?” I continued cheerily. “Lucky no one broke an ankle, what?”
Well they always say there’s no explaining women, and right when I was being the most comforting her face sort of squashed up like a crumpled handkerchief and she let out the most extraordinary sound, rather like a strangled cat gasping for air. I say, it jolly well blistered the eardrums to hear it. “Now, wait, look here—“ I began, but my words of wisdom were cut off by the approaching clatter of a herd of buffalo, namely my cousin Lily and her dinner guests.
Instead of having the appropriate concern for the situation, the whole lot of them burst into a fit of laughter that was positively epileptic. Not really all that surprising, considering Lily Pottleby is one of the most dashed unstudious minds in the whole family, and between you and me that’s saying something.
“Bertie! I didn’t realize you’d snuck in!” Lily chirped, as if she admired me all the more for having got past her. “I see you’ve already met old Floss.” Said with much of the smirk in her tone.
I looked back at the youngster, who’d knocked off her racket when the crowd approached and was busy snuffling up the unshed deluge. “Well, we had a bit of a run-in,” I replied wittily, but instead of smiling the Floss looked as if she were going to have at it again. The rest of the jackals ate it up, though.
“A collision?” shouted one of them, some chappie in a dinner coat Jeeves would only let me wear over his dead body, and this set them pealing away like churchyard bells to a blaze.
Ignoring them nobly, I ascended to the old shoe soles and bent to give my partner in entertainment a lift, when I noticed a pair of wooden crutches flanking her on the tile. And there, wrapped around her shoeless left ankle, was a rather sturdy-looking bandage. “I say,” I queried delicately, hefting her up, “you haven’t done this before, have you?”
“Only every time I see her,” Lily offered. “Bertie, this is an old school chum of mine, Flossie Collison. Floss, my cousin, Bertie Wooster.”
Since the girl had one arm round my neck and I had one round her waist for balance it seemed a bit silly to shake hands or some such normal greeting, so I settle for a civilized, “Cheerio, there!”
For the first time she started to smile a bit, though I couldn’t appreciate it properly as I started to feel a bit light-headed. Noggin injuries, I suppose. “Cheerio, Mr. Wooster,” she replied in a music-ly sort of voice. “Awfully sorry about the spill. I do seem to draw that sort of thing.”
“Are you alright, miss?” insisted the butler Bigglesworth, tottering up. “Sir? Shall I send for the doctor?”
“Oh I’m still topping, thanks,” I assured him, “a bit stirred but not spilled. How about you, Miss Collison?”
“Right as rain,” she answered, still leaning in on the pillar of strength. “Oh, except for my ankle, of course, but that’s from yesterday.”
A firm-looking redhead in a plain dress hurried to replace me with the wooden limbs still lying on the floor. “How’d you manage that anyway?” I asked as we were untangled.
“Playing croquet,” Lily revealed with madcap delight, looping her arm through mine as we all drifted back to the dining room.
“I think—“ Miss Collison began, “I think after all that, I’ll just have dinner in my room tonight.”
Well, the old Wooster sense of, er, rightness and all that was pinched by that and I popped up with, “I say, well, now that you’ve got down here, hadn’t you ought to stay for a bit?” Just a quick glance at the rest of the hyenas had shown nothing too tolerably interesting about them and I was beginning to heartily regret my week trapped in the country with them already.
She hesitated a bit, but finally shook her head. “No, no, thank you, I’m to keep the foot elevated after all, so—“
“Well, at least let me help you back up,” I insisted, that courteous Wooster spirit roaring fiercely.
The tiger-ish redhead swooped in between us and announced in a distinctive Scottish brogue, “Oh, don’t trouble yourself, sir, I’ve got Miss well in hand.” At the same moment Lily gave a rather sharp tug on the old limb to yank me onwards, and the last I saw of Miss Collison was her hobbling up the stairs, supported by her Scotch maid. Bertie, I told myself, keep an eye on this one, she’s bound to do something else amazing.
**
The next thing I knew, I could feel the old brain swimming upstream towards consciousness. When consciousness turned out to consist totally of overly-bright lights and throbbing pain, however, the brain wisely decided to turn about, but it was too late, and old Bertram awoke with as pounding a headache as he’d ever had—rather reminiscent of a dozen elves armed with hammers and chisels, trying to pry the flesh away from my skull. I would have let them have it, too, if I thought it would satisfy them. My throat was as dry as dust, and, although I’ve never actually tasted dog fur, my mouth felt as if I’d been nibbling on the stuff as a bedtime snack. In short, Bertram was well and truly hungover.
My sole comfort was the thought that Jeeves, through his miraculous brain power, would know I had returned to the land of the living and soon be drifting in with that sacred restorative of his. Just to hurry him along, however, I let out a pitiful moan and shifted a bit on the bed—apparently I had left the world right on top of the spread, though Jeeves had kindly removed my shoes and tossed a blanket over me.
I heard a little groan nearby, and, well, the noodle was too jolly well fried to surmise it didn’t come from me. Then there was a movement, a rippling of the mattress, and even in my severely hindered state I began to suspect something wasn’t right with this picture. As a final straw, a hand with attached arm flopped over my side. Since both my hands were present and accounted for—and anyway this mystery hand belonged to someone of the female variety—it gave me a bit of a start and I spun round to investigate. Unfortunately my burdened brain stayed firmly locked where it was, leading to a good deal of dizziness. And it happened that I was perched precariously close to the edge of the mattress, from whence I promptly tumbled. Body met oak with an unpleasant thud and I decided to stick it out right there for a while.
“Bertie?” It was a croak, albeit a music-ly one, and it came from the bed. A disheveled goldeny head peered over the mattress at me with emeraldy eyes trimmed in red. “Are you alright?”
“Good Lord!” I groaned, in a way that concisely summed up all the complete rumminess I felt. Slowly events percolated through my shriveled sponge of grey matter, and I propped myself up on my elbows for a better look upwards. “Flossie? Is that you, old sport? What are you doing in my room?”
The Floss looked around a bit dazedly and replied, “I think this is my room.”
At that point I decided flat on the floor again would be much more comfortable and swiftly dropped there. “The last thing I remember,” I began, begging the mind to pep up a bit, “is winding up Douglas Major’s finale number from Frannie’s Slippers.”
“I think we came upstairs after that,” Flossie added slowly.
Before I could respond to this insightful comment the door breezed open and I was startled out of my cocoon of ache enough to realize that this all would look terribly improper to the uninformed eye. Rising to the demands of my chivalrous duty, I struggled to sit up and look a bit more presentable—straightening the shirt and all. Unfortunately I immediately had to take a break to lean against the oh-so-soft mattress.
Fortunately the eye that had just entered the room belonged to Chaldwick, something of a co-conspirator with Flossie. “Two for breakfast, Miss?” she asked in her bally cheerful, Scottish sort of way, prying the curtains open. Twin moans of protest met her uncorking of the dikes of light.
“Bertie, do you feel as awful as I do?” Flossie inquired, brushing my head in a chummy sort of way.
“I shouldn’t imagine so,” I assured her. “The old Wooster constitution has had more experience with this than the old Collison’s.”
“Then you are a saint, Bertie,” she mumbled, “a martyr to the cause, as it were.”
“Perhaps you’d better scoot along to your own room, Mr. Wooster,” the blighted maidservant suggested, “before the rest of the household is moving about.”
The Wooster sense of propriety knows no bounds—except perhaps those associated with an excess of martinis—so I staggered haltingly to my feet. Flossie protested my heavy leaning on the mattress, but I needed all the support I could get. “Quite right,” I agreed with Chaldwick. “Get well soon, Flossie,” I told her, patting her shoulder in a friendly way. “I’ll see you at supper in a year or so.” That was about the length of time I felt I would need to recuperate.
Chaldwick directed me out the door and pointed me towards my own room, but then Flossie called something about being sick and the maid rushed back. I was left on my lonesome to make it home, and it took every ounce of energy to wrestle directions from my brain.
When I finally stumbled into the room, I immediately ran into Jeeves, who looked as fresh as a new daisy, much to my disgust. “Sir,” he said with some concern, “are you quite alright?”
“Bally rot, Jeeves,” I rebuked him, eyes focused on the bed, “of course I’m not. Not another word unless it’s, ‘Here, sir, drink this.’ “ I flopped down upon the coverlet and took some time off.
The next words I heard were, “Here, sir, drink this,” and the noxious concoction was shoved under my nose. The scent was not repugnant, however, but rather it inspired a kind of elation that made me grip the glass and scarf the thing. There was a momentary pause, as the world held its breath in anticipation, then a rousing sort of warmth followed the path of the brew through the system, cleansing the brain like a good Sunday washing.
“Jeeves,” I said, feeling well enough to sit up, “send a quart of that over to Flossie’s room post-haste.”
“I have already done so, sir,” he assured me, tucking a pair of shoes into the closet.
“I say, are those mine?” I asked in surprise.
**
Well, the last few days I’d been feeling a bit odd, distinctly un-Wooster-like, and I finally decided to lay the thing out before Jeeves. Normally I wouldn’t trouble that marvelous brain over a bit of moodiness, but I’ve heard this sort of thing can escalate to drastic proportions and I wanted the good man to be aware of it.
I found him in the mustardy-yellow room appointed me at Blenderings, starching the handkerchiefs. “Jeeves,” I said straightforwardly, “I’ve got a—well, it’s not so much a problem really, as a sort of situation, more of a state of being you might say, or perhaps—“ Jeeves gave a bit of a delicate cough. Another man may have interpreted this as some misplaced phlegm, but I am attuned to Jeeves’s subtle hints, and this was definitely a nudge for the young master to zero in a bit.
I flopped down in the chair and loosened the old collar with a sigh. Jeeves at least had the decency to look a bit concerned. “The thing is, Jeeves,” I continued, “I feel a bit… out of sorts.”
“Perhaps, sir, it was the copious amount of coconut cream pie you consumed at dinner,” the man suggested delicately, but I waved him off.
“I think I can tell a bit of indigestion from… whatever this is,” I pointed out to him. As if I hadn’t already thought of that ages ago. “Besides, it’s been going on for days.” I gave a wave to the scotch and soda and Jeeves left his iron to pour me what I hoped was a stiff one. “I feel all sort of… distracted and anxious. Bit nauseous, too, rather.”
“Indeed, sir?” Jeeves replied neutrally, spraying the soda.
I knocked back a bit of the offered concoction. Not quite as stiff as I’d anticipated. “I’ve hardly had any appetite, either, which you must admit is quite unusual.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I mean, I’m wasting away here, Jeeves,” I insisted. “Barely recognizable as a bit of Bertie flesh stretched over Wooster bone.” Jeeves merely favored me with an undecipherable Look. “I’m too busy thinking to eat.”
“That is unusual, sir,” the man responded smoothly. “Should I send for the physician?”
“No, blast it, just bally well listen to me,” I told him a bit sharply, as he seemed rather eager to concentrate fully on the pressing. I agree one-hundred-percent with the need for handkerchiefs to be starched and all, but I’d think a fellow could spare a few brain cells to listen to another fellow pour his heart out. “I keep thinking about things, futurey, long-termy sorts of things, like whether I should follow Aunt Agatha’s suggestion of getting a house in the country.”
“I was under the impression you quite enjoyed city life, sir,” Jeeves answered a bit quickly.
“Yes, well, chap can’t have his bachelor flat in the old metrop forever, can he?” I sighed, propping my feet up on the bed. “And anyway, I’ve stopped ballyhooing some of the things I used to adore. Do you know what I did the other day, Jeeves?”
“No, sir.”
I set my empty glass down with a resolute thud. This one had me stumped, too. “Lemon Farthington asked me to go to the track with him, and I turned him down.” Jeeves swiveled his head up a bit at this momentous news. “Of course it was only a dog track, but still.” I shook my head, bewildered and bemused. “That’s when I really began to worry, Jeeves. I turned down the tracks.”
“May I ask what you did instead, sir?” Jeeves inquired in that probing way, and I felt cheered that he was hacking away at it already.
“Oh, I popped off for a stroll in the woods with Flossie,” I told him helpfully.
Jeeves turned to the wardrobe to put something away. “Miss Collison is sufficiently recovered from her croqueting injury, then, sir?”
There was something a touch frosty about his tone, I thought, or perhaps it was just an echo from the inside of the wardrobe. “Oh, yes, Flossie’s hopping about more these days. Tossed away the crutches and all that. Anyway,” I continued, returning to the main trouble, “you see, I thought perhaps Flossie and I had stayed up too late the other night, playing the piano and singing through all those music hall tunes, or that I had gotten too much sun when we were out on the pond yesterday, but it doesn’t seem too likely that all of these are to blame, does it, Jeeves?”
“Indeed not, sir,” Jeeves replied. I could see by his expression that he was already churning over the facts.
“I mean, it’s so bally odd, that one moment a fine, healthy specimen of a chap like me is tootling along as breezy as a dachshund, and the next—Good Lord, Jeeves!” A terrible thought had suddenly fluttered through the brain. “You don’t think that I—“ Jeeves looked on attentively. “—that I could be—“ He quirked an eyebrow worriedly. “—getting old, do you, Jeeves?”
The man, much to his discredit, almost seemed visibly relieved at my horrible hypothesis, and he returned to putting away the linen. “That condition is unfortunately inevitable, sir,” he replied, “but I should not think you would feel its effect so soon.”
I felt better with his reassurance and banished the odious flittering from my mind. “Well, dash it all, Jeeves, I’m stumped, then,” I admitted. “Any thoughts?”
He paused and pondered for a moment. “The symptoms you describe, sir,” he began slowly, “are not uncommon for city gentlemen such as yourself who are called upon to spend large amounts of time in the country. Or so I am given to understand.”
I frowned at him. “But I’ve only been here five days, Jeeves,” I protested. “I stayed at Aunt Dahlia’s for two weeks last year.”
“And do you recall how you felt on that occasion, sir?” he probed gently.
I thought back and grimaced. “Mmmm, pretty rummy, alright, Jeeves. I think I see your point—something about city chaps not being compatible with all that fresh air and open spaces, what?”
“Precisely, sir. I have heard of it occurring many times.” He paused. “I believe the condition is known to escalate over time.”
Something in his tone unnerved me. “Escalate? Escalate how?” I demanded.
“Over time, I believe, the feelings of anxiety and distraction mount to staggering heights, sir,” he told me, “to the point where some men commit themselves to rash decisions.” The way he said, ‘rash decisions,’ it was like the first stroke on Bertram’s death toll. There was already a bit of clinical oddness in the family, what with Uncle George and all, so I could only imagine that I was more susceptible to this kind of ‘country madness’ than most.
“I suppose the cure is to leave the country, head back to London?” I asked hopefully, though now with a good bit of apprehension. Now that Jeeves had pointed it out, it was as though the very air of this place was choking me. If I could somehow have projected myself back into the sitting room of my little flat in London, I would have done so immediately.
“Indeed, sir,” Jeeves replied, already fetching my suitcase. “I believe a swift departure would be most advisable.”
“Tonight, Jeeves?” I asked, suddenly hesitant. I mean, I trust Jeeves’s brainy schemes to the hilt—gotten me and my pals out of the soup more than once, I can tell you—but I had made some after-dinner plans I hated to break. “I was going to teach Flossie how to play hearts in the drawing room tonight…”
“An admirable occupation, sir,” he said dismissively, folding a few shirts in that expert way of his, “but may I remind you that the night air is considered particularly potent?”
My gaze was instantly drawn to the open window, where the mustardy lace curtains swayed innocently in a breeze made entirely of night air. With feet like lead weights, I forced myself to cross the distance and pound the sill down. I tugged at my loosened collar more—there seemed to be too much empty space in my lungs, but I didn’t want to fill it up with poisonous country air. “Jeeves!” I gasped.
He glanced up from the packing. “Sir?”
“We’ve got to get out of here at once!” I urged him. “At this rate I’ll be dead by morning!”
“I shouldn’t become quite so agitated about it, sir, were I you,” the man soothed, then added, “I should think you would have a week, at least.”
“Arghhh!”
“Sir?”
“Pack faster, Jeeves!”
If there’s one thing that can be said about us Woosters, it’s that we don’t panic. We don’t let the circs, no matter how daunting, rattle our noodles a bit. In this particular case, my next logical thought was of what excuse to offer my cousin/hostess.
“Jeeves!”
“I am packing as swiftly as is prudent, sir.”
“No, blast it, Jeeves, what shall I tell Lily? I can’t bally well say, ‘Your country air is like a vicious toxin in my bloodstream.’ “
Jeeves spared me barely a glance as he tucked my socks away. “Rather inadvisable, sir,” he agreed.
I was pacing back and forth a bit now, getting a bit warm. It was a balmy summer night, after all, and with the window shut it was becoming a tad stuffy. “I know!” I exclaimed triumphantly. “I’ll say I have a dying relative—no, blast, that’d be in the Times. Or it’d be her bally relative as well. Cousins are a frightful nuisance, Jeeves,” I muttered with irritation.
“As you say, sir.”
“I’ll tell her I’ve been sent for by—no; called upon to—no; my flat’s on fire? That’s urgent…” I was, I admit, beginning to flail a bit at this point, but Jeeves made his respectful throat-clearing behind me and I spun round. “Idea?”
“It occurs to me, sir,” he started, “that if you told Miss Stoville you had an inside tip on an important horse race in the city, she would be inclined to see you off in a favorable light.”
“Do I have an inside tip, Jeeves?” I asked, the sporting Wooster blood momentarily distracted.
Jeeves inclined his head modestly. “A knowledgeable acquaintance of mine mentioned that one Honeypot would finally prove himself in the second race at Ballam Track tomorrow afternoon, sir.”
“Well, hooray for Honeypot, Jeeves,” I exclaimed. “You whip through the packing and I’ll go put the idea to Lily.”
Without a second’s hesitation I bounded out the door. Once again Jeeves had solved the problem in that deuced brainy way of his and I was glad I’d laid it out for him. I only wished I’d done it sooner.
Spotting Lily down the hall, I sang out, “Say, old cous,” stopping her in her footprints.
“Whoopster!” she tossed back, and though I steeled myself against wincing, I felt an even greater sense of relief that I would soon be away from this dreadful place. Lily’s set of hyenas felt the need to give everyone they met some sort of insulting nickname, and I was jolly well getting a bit tired of it. ‘Silly,’ as the beasts called her, nodded towards the nearby drawing room and continued, “We heard you were going to teach old Collision how to play at cards and thought we’d all sit in to watch—should be terribly amusing.” Indeed, as I glanced in the doorway I saw the whole chain gang sitting around, sipping drinks and generally eager for merriment to ensue.
Flossie was in there, too, her foot propped up on the couch, looking absolutely miserable at the prospect of more ridicule. Poor old thing, I felt for her, I really did. I mean, it’s all well and good for those who enjoy practical jokes and mockery and all that to practice it on each other, but on the rest of us coves who have tastes in the simpler range of humor it’s frightfully unpleasant. Young Bertram has, on the rare occasion, been the object of an elaborate scheme resulting in said object’s public humiliation, and I can tell you that said object struggled mightily to keep his dignity in the face of the laughing masses. Flossie and I were a perfect match on this subject, and I realized one more beauty to Jeeves’s plan—that the hyenas wouldn’t have their fun at our expense tonight.
“Well, so sorry to disappoint you, old thing,” I managed in a casual tone, “but I’ve got to shoot off now.”
“Right now?” Lily asked with surprise.
“Post-haste,” I confirmed. “Jeeves is packing at this very instant. Had a topping time and all, but I really must fly now.”
Lily and the hyenas looked suitably put out. “But why, Bertie?”
“Hot tip on the races, don’t you know?” I replied, as cool as anything. I even leaned against the doorjamb. Never say I can’t put up a front to match the best of the lot. “Just found out about it, and you know us Woosters, we have that sporting blood that can’t be denied.”
Lily’s whole attitude about the thing changed. “A hot tip? Really?”
“On what?” asked Lemon Farthington, the fellow who’d tried to tempt me to the dog track.
“Secrets of the trade, old man,” I assured him. “Can’t give up the goods, you know. So,” I finished up, giving them all the good-bye eye, “guess I’ll see you ‘round.” The last person I got to was Flossie, and for some reason she didn’t seem terribly braced by the news—surely it should have cheered her to get out of the fishbowl that way. But there’s no telling with the female of the species, is there? I almost regretted my decision, looking at her, because I’d had such a frightfully fruity time speaking with her, but then that odd bit of anxiety and nausea swept in to remind me that I was lucky to escape this festering hive of disease with my life. I heard Jeeves’s quiet cough in the background and turned to see him waiting patiently by the open door, car at the ready. “Well, toodle-pip, all,” I added before strolling away, feeling like bolting. A chorus of good-byes and cheery good lucks swept me out the door, though I fancied I didn’t hear Flossie’s version of the same. Why the old brain should have noticed that, I can’t say—probably the fever or whatever bally rot I had contracted at this place, which was swiftly flowing out of sight behind us.