“What else can you suggest? You don’t suppose the Rev. can give this absolute marvel a handicap and win, do you?”
“I’ve got it!” I said.
“What?”
“I see a way by which we can make it safe for our nominee. I’ll pop over this afternoon, and ask him as a personal favour, to preach that sermon of his on Brotherly Love on Sunday.”
Claude and Eustace looked at each other, like those chappies in the poem, with a wild surmise.
“It’s a scheme,” said Claude.
“A jolly brainy scheme,” said Eustace. “I didn’t think you had it in you, Bertie.”
“But even so,” said Claude, “fizzer as that sermon no doubt is, will it be good enough in the face of a four-minute handicap?”
“Rather!” I said. “When I told you it lasted forty-five minutes, I was probably understating it. I should call it—from my recollection of the thing—nearer fifty.”
“Then carry on,” said Claude.
I toddled over in the evening and fixed the thing up. Old Heppenstall was most decent about the whole affair. He seemed pleased and touched that I should have remembered the sermon all these years, and said he had once or twice had an idea of preaching it again, only it had seemed to him, on reflection, that it was perhaps a trifle long for a rustic congregation.
“And in these restless times, my dear Wooster,” he said, “I fear that brevity in the pulpit is becoming more and more desiderated by even the bucolic churchgoer, who one might have supposed would be less afflicted with the spirit of hurry and impatience than his metropolitan brother. I have had many arguments on the subject with my nephew, young Bates, who is taking my old friend Spettigue’s cure over at Gandle-by-the-Hill. His view is that a sermon nowadays should be a bright, brisk, straight-from-the-shoulder address, never lasting more than ten or twelve minutes.”
“Long?” I said. “Why, my goodness! You don’t call that Brotherly Love sermon of yours long, do you?”
“It takes fully fifty minutes to deliver.”
“Surely not?”
“Your incredulity, my dear Wooster, is extremely flattering—far more flattering, of course, than I deserve. Nevertheless, the facts are as I have stated. You are sure that I would not be well advised to make certain excisions and eliminations? You do not think it would be a good thing to cut, to prune? I might, for example, delete the rather exhaustive excursus into the family life of the early Assyrians?”
“Don’t touch a word of it, or you’ll spoil the whole thing,” I said, earnestly.
“I am delighted to hear you say so, and I shall preach the sermon without fail next Sunday morning.”
WHAT I have always said, and what I always shall say, is, that this ante-post betting is a mistake, an error, and a mug’s game. You never can tell what’s going to happen. If fellows would only stick to the good old S.P. there would be fewer young men go wrong. I’d hardly finished my breakfast on the Saturday morning, when Jeeves came to my bedside to say that Eustace wanted me on the telephone.
“Good Lord, Jeeves, what’s the matter, do you think?”
I’m bound to say I was beginning to get a bit jumpy by this time.
“Mr. Eustace did not confide in me, sir.”
“Has he got the wind up?”
“Somewhat vertically, sir, to judge by his voice.”
“Do you know what I think, Jeeves? Something’s gone wrong with the favourite.”
“Which is the favourite, sir?”
“Mr. Heppenstall. He’s gone to odds on. He was intending to preach a sermon on Brotherly Love which would have brought him home by lengths. I wonder if anything’s happened to him.”
“You could ascertain, sir, by speaking to Mr. Eustace on the telephone. He is holding the wire.”
“By Jove, yes!”
I shoved on a dressing-gown, and flew downstairs like a mighty, rushing wind. The moment I heard Eustace’s voice I knew we were for it. It had a croak of agony in it.
“Bertie?”
“Here I am.”
“Deuce of a time you’ve been. Bertie, we’re sunk. The favourite’s blown up.”
“No!”
“Yes. Coughing in his stable all last night.”
“What!”
“Absolutely! Hay-fever.”
“Oh, my sainted aunt!”
“The doctor is with him now, and it’s only a question of minutes before he’s officially scratched. That means the curate will show up at the post instead, and he’s no good at all. He is being offered at a hundred-to-six, but no takers. What shall we do?”
I had to grapple with the thing for a moment in silence.
“Eustace.”
“Hallo?”
“What can you get on G. Hayward?”
“Only four-to-one now. I think there’s been a leak, and Steggles has heard something. The odds shortened late last night in a significant manner.”
“Well, four-to-one will clear us. Put another fiver all round on G. Hayward for the syndicate. That’ll bring us out on the right side of the ledger.”
“If he wins.”
“What do you mean? I thought you considered him a cert, bar Heppenstall.”
“I’m beginning to wonder,” said Eustace, gloomily, “if there’s such a thing as a cert. in this world. I’m told the Rev. Joseph Tucker did an extraordinarily fine trial gallop at a mothers’ meeting over at Badgwick yesterday. However, it seems our only chance. So-long.”
Not being one of the official stewards, I had my choice of churches next morning, and naturally I didn’t hesitate. The only drawback to going to Lower Bingley was that it was ten miles away, which meant an early start, but I borrowed a bicycle from one of the grooms and tooled off. I had only Eustace’s word for it that G. Hayward was such a stayer, and it might have been that he had showed too flattering form at that wedding where the twins had heard him preach; but any misgivings I may have had disappeared the moment he got into the pulpit. Eustace had been right. The man was a trier. He was a tall, rangy-looking greybeard, and he went off from the start with a nice, easy action, pausing and clearing his throat at the end of each sentence, and it wasn’t five minutes before I realized that here was the winner. His habit of stopping dead and looking round the church at intervals was worth minutes to us, and in the home stretch we gained no little advantage owing to his dropping his pince-nez and having to grope for them. At the twenty-minute mark he had merely settled down. Twenty-five minutes saw him going strong. And when he finally finished with a good burst, the clock showed thirty-five minutes fourteen seconds. With the handicap which he had been given, this seemed to me to make the event easy for him, and it was with much bonhomie and goodwill to all men that I hopped on to the old bike and started back to the Hall for lunch.
Bingo was talking on the ’phone when I arrived.
“Fine! Splendid! Topping!” he was saying. “Eh? Oh, we needn’t worry about him. Right-o, I’ll tell Bertie.” He hung up the receiver and caught sight of me. “Oh, hallo, Bertie; I was just talking to Eustace. It’s all right, old man. The report from Lower Bingley has just got in. G. Hayward romps home.”
“I knew he would. I’ve just come from there.”
“Oh, were you there? I went to Badgwick. Tucker ran a splendid race,