“But, I say, I’m not quite sure—”
“Yes, you are. Silly ass, when you see old Rowbotham running up Piccadilly with a knife in each hand, you’ll be thankful to be able to remind him that he once ate your tea and shrimps. There will be four of us Charlotte, self, the old man, and Comrade Butt[158].”
“Who is that Comrade Butt?”
“Did you notice a fellow standing on my left in our little troupe yesterday? Small chap. Looks like a haddock. That’s Butt. My rival, dash him. He’s engaged to Charlotte at the moment. Till I came along he was lucky. Old Rowbotham thinks a lot of him. But I’ll cut him out. He may have a strong voice, but he hasn’t my gift of expression. Well, I must go now. I say, you don’t know how I could get fifty pounds, do you?”
“Why don’t you work?”
“Work?” said young Bingo, surprised. “What, me? No. I must put at least fifty on Ocean Breeze. Well, see you tomorrow. God bless you, old man, and don’t forget the muffins.”
I don’t know why, but I have felt a strange feeling of responsibility for young Bingo. I mean to say, he’s not my son (thank goodness) or my brother or anything like that. But this latest affair of his worried me. He was going to support even a mentally afflicted wife on nothing a year.
“Jeeves,” I said, when I got home, “I’m worried.”
“Sir?”
“About Mr Little. I won’t tell you about it now, because he’s bringing some friends of his to tea tomorrow, and then you will be able to judge for yourself. I want you to observe closely, Jeeves, and form your decision.”
“Very good, sir.”
“And about the tea. Get in some muffins.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And some jam, ham, cake, scrambled eggs, and five or six wagons of sardines.”
“Sardines, sir?” said Jeeves, with a shudder.
“Sardines.” There was an awkward pause.
“Don’t blame me, Jeeves,” I said. “It isn’t my fault.”
“No, sir.”
“Well, that’s that.”
“Yes, sir.”
From the moment Bingo invited himself I felt that the things were going to be bad, and they really were. I had forgotten to warn Jeeves about the beard. I saw the man was in stupor, and I don’t blame him, mind you. Few people have ever looked fouler than young Bingo in the fungus. Jeeves paled a little; then the weakness passed and he was himself again. But I could see that he had been shaken.
Young Bingo’s friends were a very strange collection. Comrade Butt looked like a dead tree after the rain; moth-eaten was the word I should have used to describe old Rowbotham; and as for Charlotte, she took me straight into another and a dreadful world. It wasn’t that she was exactly bad-looking. But there was too much of her. Well-nourished, perhaps. And, while she may have had a heart of gold, the thing you noticed about her first was that she had a tooth of gold. I know that young Bingo could fall in love with practically anything of the other sex; but this time I couldn’t see any excuse for him at all.
“My friend, Mr Wooster,” said Bingo.
Old Rowbotham looked at me and then he looked round the room, and I could see he wasn’t satisfied.
“Mr Wooster?” said old Rowbotham. “May I say Comrade Wooster?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Are you of the movement?”
“Well—er—”
“Do you yearn for the Revolution?”
“Well, I don’t know that I exactly yearn. I mean to say, as far as I know, the idea of the revolution is to massacre coves like me; and I don’t like the idea.”
“But I’m talking to him,” said Bingo.
Old Rowbotham looked at me a bit doubtfully.
“Comrade Little has great eloquence,” he admitted.
“I think he talks something wonderful,” said the girl, and young Bingo shot a glance of devotion at her. It seemed to depress Comrade Butt a lot.
“Tea is served, sir,” said Jeeves.
“Tea, Pa!” said Charlotte; and we got down to it.
At school, I remember, I would have sold my soul for scrambled eggs and sardines at five in the afternoon; but everything had changed. And the sons and daughter of the Revolution were eating very fast. Even Comrade Butt immersed his whole being in scrambled eggs, only coming to the surface at intervals to grab another cup of tea. I turned to Jeeves.
“More hot water.”
“Very good, sir.”
“Hey! What’s this? What’s this?” Old Rowbotham had lowered his cup and was eyeing us sternly. He tapped Jeeves on the shoulder. “No servility, my lad; no servility!”
“I beg your pardon, sir?”
“Don’t call me ‘sir’. Call me Comrade. Do you know what you are, my lad? You’re an absolute relic of a feudal system.”
“Very good, sir.”
“If there’s one thing that makes my blood boil in my veins—”
“Have another sardine,” said young Bingo—the first sensible thing he’d done since I had known him. Old Rowbotham took three and dropped the subject, and Jeeves drifted away. I could see by the look of his back what he felt.
At last, just as I was beginning to feel that the tea-party was going on for ever, it finished. Sardines and about three quarters of tea had mellowed old Rowbotham. There was quite a genial look in his eye as he shook my hand.
“I must thank you for your hospitality, Comrade Wooster,” he said.
“Oh, not at all! Only too glad—”
“Hospitality?” snorted the man Butt. He was scowling at young Bingo and the girl, who were giggling together by the window. “I wonder the food didn’t turn to ashes in our mouths! Eggs! Muffins! Sardines! All taken from the bleeding lips of the starving poor!”
“Oh, I say! What a beastly idea!”
“I will send you some literature on the subject of the working class,” said old Rowbotham. “And soon, I hope, we shall see you at one of our little meetings.”
Jeeves came in, and found me sitting among the ruins. Comrade Butt had pretty well finished the ham; and no jam was left for the the bleeding lips of the starving poor.
“Well, Jeeves,” I said, “how about it?”
“I would prefer to express no opinion, sir.”
“Jeeves, Mr Little is in love with that female.”
“So I saw, sir. She was slapping him in the passage.”
“Slapping him?”
“Yes, sir. Roguishly.”
“Lord! I didn’t know it had got as far as that. What did Comrade Butt think about that? Or perhaps he didn’t see?”
“Yes, sir, he observed the entire proceedings. It seems to me that he is extremely jealous.”
“I don’t blame him. Jeeves, what shall we do?”
“I could not say, sir.”
“It’s terrible.”
“Very much so, sir.”
12
Bingo’s Bad Luck at Goodwood
I had promised to meet young Bingo next day, to tell him what I thought of his infernal Charlotte, and I was walking slowly up St James’s Street[159], trying to think how I could explain to him, without hurting his feelings, that I considered her one of the world’s foulest creatures. Suddenly old Bittlesham and Bingo himself went out from the Devonshire Club[160].
“Hallo!” I said.
The result of this simple greeting was a bit of a shock. Old Bittlesham quivered from head to foot.
“Mr Wooster! You have frightened me.”
“Oh, sorry.”
“My uncle,” said young Bingo in a hushed sort of voice, “isn’t feeling quite himself this morning. He’s had a threatening letter.”
“Threatening letter?”
“Written,” said old Bittlesham, “by an uneducated hand. Mr Wooster, do you recall a sinister, bearded man in Hyde Park last Sunday?”
I jumped, and looked at young Bingo.
“Why—ah—yes,” I said. “Bearded man. Chap with a beard.”
“Could you identify him, if necessary?”
“Well, I—er—what do you mean?”