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 to-morrow, 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 wagonloads 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.”
I could see the man was brooding tensely.
I’VE found, as a general rule in life, that the things you think are going to be the scaliest nearly always turn out not so bad after all; but it wasn’t that way with Bingo’s tea-party. From the moment he invited himself I felt that the thing was going to be blue round the edges, and it was. And I think the most gruesome part of the whole affair was the fact that, for the first time since I’d known him, I saw Jeeves come very near to being rattled. I suppose there’s a chink in everyone’s armour, and young Bingo found Jeeves’s right at the drop of the flag when he breezed in with six inches or so of brown beard hanging on to his chin. I had forgotten to warn Jeeves about the beard, and it came on him absolutely out of a blue sky. I saw the man’s jaw drop, and he clutched at the table for support. 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 was too busy introducing the mob to take much notice. They were a very C3 collection. Comrade Butt looked like one of the things that come out of dead trees after the rain; moth-eaten was the word I should have used to describe old Rowbotham; and as for Charlotte, she seemed to take me straight into another and a dreadful world. It wasn’t that she was exactly bad-looking. In fact, if she had knocked off starchy foods and done Swedish exercises for a bit, she might have been quite tolerable. But there was too much of her. Billowy curves. Well-nourished perhaps expresses it best. 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 knew that young Bingo, when in form, 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, completing the ceremonial.
Old Rowbotham looked at me and then he looked round the room, and I could see he wasn’t particularly braced. There’s nothing of absolutely Oriental luxury about the old flat, but I have managed to make myself fairly comfortable, and I suppose the surroundings jarred him a bit.
“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 can make out, the whole nub of the scheme seems to be to massacre coves like me; and I don’t mind owning I’m not frightfully keen on the idea.”
“But I’m talking him round,” said Bingo. “I’m wrestling with him. A few more treatments ought to do the trick.”
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 such succulent devotion at her that I reeled in my tracks. It seemed to depress Comrade Butt a good deal too. He scowled at the carpet and said something about dancing on volcanoes.
“Tea is served, sir,” said Jeeves.
“Tea, pa!” said Charlotte, starting at the word like the old war-horse who hears the bugle; and we got down to it.
Funny how one changes as the years roll on. At school, I remember, I would cheerfully have sold my soul for scrambled eggs and sardines at five in the afternoon; but somehow, since reaching man’s estate, I had rather dropped out of the habit; and I’m bound to admit I was appalled to a goodish extent at the way the sons and daughter of the Revolution shoved their heads down and went for the foodstuffs. Even Comrade Butt cast off his gloom for a space and immersed his whole being in scrambled eggs, only coming to the surface at intervals to grab another cup of tea. Presently the hot water gave out, and 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 obsolete relic of an exploded feudal system.”
“Very good, sir.”
“If there’s one thing that makes the blood boil in my veins——”
“Have another sardine,” chipped in 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 it was going on for ever, the thing finished. I woke up to find the party getting ready to leave.
Sardines and about three quarts 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, going off in my ear like a depth-charge. He was scowling in a morose sort of manner 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 wrung 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 Cause,” said old Rowbotham. “And soon, I hope, we shall see you at one of our little meetings.”
Jeeves came in to clear away, and found me sitting among the ruins. It was all very well for Comrade Butt to knock the food, but he had pretty well finished the ham; and if you had shoved the remainder of the jam into the bleeding lips of the starving poor it would hardly have made them sticky.
“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 gathered, sir. She was slapping him in the passage.”
I clutched my brow.
“Slapping him?”
“Yes, sir. Roguishly.”
“Great Scott! I didn’t know it had got as far as that. How did Comrade Butt seem to be taking it? Or perhaps he didn’t see?”
“Yes,