"Rum, Jeeves," I said, whilst sipping my usual morning cup of the good old hot and steaming. "Absolutely rum."
"Yes, Sir."
"I mean, this letter from Aunt Agatha, you know. It’s mysterious. Paradoxical. Downright uncanny, if you get me."
"Yes, Sir."
No feeling response from the man. I mean, blast it, why even bother slogging through the old three score and ten, if you can’t get a word of support from your own manservant in times of dire distress?
And the distress was dire, all right. You see, every first of the month, Aunt Agatha – a kind of rare cross or hybrid mix between a sweet old woman and some type of ferocious prehistoric creature – sends me my trust fund check, along with some cheery letter making sure that any self-esteem I’d managed to accumulate over the course of the previous month was fully obliterated.
It wasn’t really Aunt Agatha’s money, of course. Old Uncle Harvey Wooster, you know, he made a pile of the right stuff by reopening the Cyprus copper mines. I don’t know the details, but apparently, whoever closed them last must have inadvertently left a good deal of copper down there, because Uncle Harvey was worth millions the day he died.
To make sure the family skeletons remained in the good old closet where they belonged, Aunt Agatha worked it with the papers so that Uncle Harvey’s death was listed as "...severe physical exhaustion due to overextending himself on a charity hike in the Lake District with a group of Indigent East End Boy Scouts."
The truth of the matter, however, is that Old Harve, that rascal, suffered a fatal heart attack while entertaining a young, vivacious showgirl in his rooms at the Drones Club!
But we Woosters have been instructed not to discuss that aspect of Uncle Harvey’s otherwise spectacular career, and I figure, with all the loot the old bird has sent my way over the years, and him being dead and all, it’s the least I can do to help hush the matter up.
But anyway, I know Old Harv must have had a pile, because even after all these years, there’s still some of it left, and a little of what’s left gets filtered down to me, every month – regular, you know, like the clock striking noon in Trafalgar Square.
But not this month! I mean to say, what!
I’ll let Aunt Agatha speak the painful words herself:
"Dear Bertram, I suppose you are wondering why your monthly support check is not enclosed with this letter, as is customary. There is no need for you to worry. I have been engaged in long discussions with the trustees, and it is our considered opinion that it is time for you to make something of yourself – to begin accomplishing something in your life. We wish to use the assets of your trust fund to achieve this end, and we believe that Uncle Harvey, were he alive today, would fully support this course of action.
"While the terms of your Uncle’s will are, in places, ambiguous, it appears that one of the purposes of this trust fund was to ensure a healthy, happy, and productive life for his issue, and for his issue’s issue."
‘Issue!’ Aunt Agatha made me sound like some kind of bloody magazine!
"In any event," Aunt Agatha pressed on, "the trustees and I would like to meet with you Monday next at the offices of the Lloyd’s Bank Trust Department on Upper Harley Street. As this is a most important meeting for all of us, your timely attendance is naturally expected.
"At this meeting, we will hand you this month’s check -- and discuss your future plans with you in minute detail."
Well, you know, I’ve never been in any kind of prize fight, or what you might call mortal, hand-to-hand combat or anything. I’m more or less a peaceful kind of bloke. But I swear, reading Aunt Agatha’s letter felt like one of those boxing fighter-chappies had given me a right upper-cut to the old chin!
And Jeeves was no help.
"There does not appear to be any reason for concern," he said blithely. "Your Aunt Agatha has expressed no definite intention of putting a stop to your monthly support."
But of course, Jeeves was just playing games with me. He knew as well as I did that Aunt Agatha’s use of the word "productive" with regard to my lifestyle was extremely sinister and foreboding. I could see the proverbial dark rain clouds gathering on the horizon, and all that sort of rot.
But was Jeeves any help during this crisis? Not at all.
I didn’t need Sherlock Holmes to explain Jeeves’ icy manner. It was the Samsung video monitor I’d brought home the other day for my computer. And a whopping fine deal it was, too – half of what a Sony would have cost me.
But Jeeves, you know. He’s absolutely unsurpassed for pressing one’s shirts and bringing tea and so forth. And I have to admit he’s gotten me out of a scrape or two in my time. But when it comes to computer equipment, why, you’d think he was some kind of aristocrat, not one of the working classes!
Just yesterday, I’d bought the Samsung at "Jack The Ripper’s Discount Computer Parts and Gaming Centre," a rather jolly name for a business establishment, it seemed to me. I wanted to upgrade from a 14" to a 17" screen, you see. But because Aunt Agatha’s check hadn’t come this month -- just her rummy letter -- I couldn’t quite swing a Sony.
But, I mean to say, Samsung? Sony? Super VGA? What’s the difference?
One day, after a few strong ones, this lad from my club broke down and told me The Secret. Apparently, he’d traveled all over the Orient on business for the Minister of Trade and Industry – hush-hush stuff. And he said that all video monitors were made in one vast Japanese factory, along with VCRs and Microwave Ovens and CD Players and the rest of it
He swore the only difference was the labels.
But Jeeves couldn’t stick the Samsung at any price.
Finally I couldn’t take it any more, either. I eyed the blighter squarely, taking the bull by the horns, carpeing the diem, and all that.
"Jeeves," I said. "Cluster round."
"Yes, Sir." He floated to my side, wraithlike.
"Tell me what is wrong with this video monitor."
"It’s a fine monitor, Sir."
"Don’t sugar coat the pill, Jeeves. I want it straight. Speak up."
"It will no doubt serve your computing needs satisfactorily for many years to come," he said.
Evasive, these manservants. Cagey, if you get me. Sphinx-like.
"Jeeves," I said. "Spill it."
He spilled it.
"If I may say so, Sir, and begging your pardon, but I have not found Samsung monitors to be of the very highest quality. I have observed pincushion distortion and focus problems at the screen edges. I have detected a lack of full color saturation. I have spotted irregularities in the plastic case surrounding the electron tube."
"Jeeves," I said, "this is pure fiction."
"Perhaps a Sony Multiscan 17sfII would have been a more appropriate use of your financial resources," Jeeves continued, unchecked. "Especially considering the developing situation with Aunt Agatha and your trust fund."
"Jeeves," I said again, "that is absolute poppycock."
"Yes, sir."
"A complete and utter distortion of the facts."
"As you say, sir."
"A heaping pile of unprocessed rubbish."
"Indeed, sir."
The man was unmoved. I tried another tack.
"PC Magazine gave the Samsung ‘Editor’s Choice.’"
"That is certainly within the Editors’ rights," he said.
"Samsung is a huge company. They own all of South Korea."
"A desirable piece of real estate, no doubt," he said.
"And those Koreans, Jeeves. They’re smart blokes. Hard-working. Industrious, don’t you know."
"Taken as a group, their mothers must be extremely proud of them, Sir."
I was revving the old engine at full speed, but it felt like the clutch was slipping or something.
At times, I think Jeeves must be descended from Wellington or Rhodes or Kipling or one of those other iron-willed chappies. I mean to say, he’s stubborn. Intractible. Inflexible. Try as you might, you just can’t mould the man.
So there was this little thingummy between us for the next week or so. I mean, Jeeves did not neglect his duties, but anyway, it’s all wrong, these frosted relations between a gentleman and his manservant. They’re downright unpleasant. And worse, they usually don’t end until I buckle under and cave into Jeeves’ wishes!
But not this time. We Woosters are not so easily pushed and shoved, either. I was perfectly happy with my new Samsung monitor. And I let Jeeves know it.
"Jeeves," I announced haughtily, "this monitor stays."
"As you wish, Sir," he said, and drifted out.
And speaking of drifting, that’s more or less what I did that week. Drift.
I mean, I really didn’t have that much work to do – all caught up, you understand – and even though I did have considerable administrative duties to perform in connection with my role as Treasurer of the Darts Club, and Chief Financial Officer for the football pool, well, it only took about 10 minutes or so to crunch the numbers for the boys on my PC.
So even after all that work, you might say I had quite a bit of time on my hands.
What I usually do in such a situation is pop down to the club, get a good stiff brandy and soda, and gaze out the window, watching traffic go down one side of the street and up the other. But I just wasn’t keen this week, because I was in more or less of a panic about my meeting with Aunt Agatha and The Trustees.
I felt like one of those doomed chappies who’d been sentenced to death for some crime against the state, and was just hanging about, waiting for those grim-looking blokes to hand me the good old blindfold and cigarette and get it over with.
I mean, blast it, me? Bertram Wooster? Productive??? What did Aunt Agatha and the Trustees think I was, some kind of bloody machine, or breeding mammal, or cash crop, or something?
Up at Oxford, you understand, me and the boys read a lot of Shelley and Keats and the Romantic poet chappies. You know, those passionate birds who’d write lyrical verses all day, except for when they were weeping or singing or threatening to toss themselves off the sides of tall buildings if some pretty girl they’d taken a shining to wouldn’t look at them the right way.
Being a sensitive and impressionable lad, a lot of that Romantic Poet stuff has stuck with me to this day – rubbed off, don’t you know. I mean, it kind of fits in well with my particular outlook.
You see, I think folks should enjoy life, find happiness in everything they do, not take life too bloody seriously, that kind of thing. I think life should be like one sweet song, like a melody, like the smile on a beautiful – well, you know what I mean!
And please correct me if I’m wrong, but my idea of happiness, and Aunt Agatha’s idea of happiness -- well, you know, they simply don’t correspond!
I mean, don’t even ask me about the time Aunt Agatha talked me into taking a job at an insurance office in Mayfair! It was horrible! Thank goodness I was sacked the very same day I started.
Apparently, the management chaps, they weren’t keen on my idea of adding vintage champagne to the office water cooler, and faxing off images of certain parts of my anatomy to the company’s leading clients.
If you ask me, life’s not worth living if a lad can’t have some good clean fun now and then. But Aunt Agatha and Mr. Winston from the insurance company, they’re from the old school. They didn’t see it my way.
And you know, it’s a rummy thing, but the Lloyd’s Bank Building, the morning of my meeting with the Trustees? Well, the interior of the lobby looked exactly like that of the insurance building in Mayfair – not a cheery, welcoming place at all. Nothing like my club.
It was all cold marble and hard-edged granite. No warm, glowing Circassian walnut panels or soft Conneley leather surfaces to soothe a lad’s soul.
I really didn’t have what you might call any kind of formal plan or proposal for Aunt Agatha and The Trustees. I figured I would kind of just wing it, you know, like improvisational acting or extempore speaking or something. I like to believe in a kind of benevolent universe, and all I could do was sort of trust that the universe was smiling benevolently on me that morning.
But I confess, the looks of those offices -- and of Mr. Sanderson, the head trustee -- did nothing to lift my somewhat gloomy mood.
"Welcome, Mr. Wooster," Sanderson said humourlessly. "Your Aunt Agatha, the trustees, and your manservant Jeeves are in the boardroom. We’ve already begun. Come in."
"Of course," I said, swallowing hard as I moved into the room. What in blazes was Jeeves doing here? It was bad enough I was going to get crucified by Aunt Agatha and the Trustees; the last thing I needed was Jeeves looking on, grinning at my misfortune like some spectator in the front-row seats of the Roman Amphitheater!
Sure enough, there was this kind of semicircle around a huge wooden table that must have taken the lion’s share of Sherwood Forest to fabricate. Aunt Agatha and a bunch of white-haired blokes sat round it, all dressed in identical drab grey suits which, come to think of it, looked a lot like Aunt Agatha’s drab grey suit.
Apparently, all these somber-looking banking coves had been raised by the same Nanny, some woman who’d gotten bad news around the turn of the century and never gotten over it. And sure enough, there was Jeeves, of all people, standing at the head of the table like he was President of the Bank, making some kind of rummy presentation!
And everyone was listening to him with rapt attention!
Jeeves had this sort of microphone pinned to his vest, and he’d set up some kind of complex-looking high-tech multimedia projection system, tied into a laptop computer.
All the dour bank chappies were staring at a screen on one side of the table, looking more or less hypnotized, and in the centre of the screen was this snazzy-looking PowerPoint slide with colorful graphs and charts and text that read, I kid you not,
"Jeeves," I managed, "What in God’s name is going on here?"
"Ah, Mr. Wooster," said Jeeves, in a kind of smooth, polished, glossy voice I’ve never heard him use before. "I’m glad you were able to get away from your breakfast meeting with the venture capitalists. In your absence, I was fully prepared to present the details of your plan to the Trustees."
"My plan?" I asked.
It came out like a kind of warble from some baby bird who hadn’t gotten enough of the worm.
"Yes, Sir," said Jeeves. "The Trustees have expressed great interest in your work. Like myself, they are enthusiastic about your new system of bookkeeping."
"We certainly are!" said one of the white-haired chappies, who was indistinguishable from all the others, except for a small bit of scone that adhered to his ascot like a barnacle on the bottom of a whaling ship.
"This idea of yours, Wooster – it has great potential!"
Well, I mean to say, I really didn’t have a clue as to what was going on, but the look on Jeeves’ face was so damned confident and self-assured, I felt it was one of those times I had best keep quiet and let Jeeves manage things.
Call it a deep, primordial survival instinct.
I mean, what was the worst that could happen? Even Aunt Agatha looked slightly less hostile than usual. And when she finally spoke up, her voice, if not outright pleasant, was at least reasonably conciliatory.
"Bertram," said Aunt Agatha, "as much as it pains me to admit it, I’m afraid I’ve greatly underestimated you. I thought you had become a drone, an idler, a parasite on the underbelly of society. But your man Jeeves here has helped me see the light. He’s explained to all of us, in great detail, how you’ve been laboring away for years, day and night, at this revolutionary accounting system of yours -- without a thought for your own personal pleasures or luxuries! And while I can not pretend to understand the mechanics of your system, I feel with all my heart that I owe you an apology."
Well, of course, even on a good day, all of Aunt Agatha’s heart would only amount to one ventricle or part of an arterial chamber for some ordinary person. But I mean to say, an apology? From Aunt Agatha?
Had Jeeves slipped something into my tea this morning, some rummy exotic drug from the far reaches of our eastern colonies?
But Aunt Agatha wasn’t finished.
"The Trustees and I are so impressed with your plan that we’ve agreed to double your monthly income, so that you might have additional funds available to you to help refine and promote your system. I’m sure Uncle Harvey, were he alive today, would be as proud as we are of your forthcoming contribution to the world of finance and industry."
"Well, I mean, you know, after all...," I began, but couldn’t quite think of what to say. Not to worry, Jeeves stepped in.
"Mr. Wooster is most grateful for your confidence, and I’m sure that he will continue to make every effort not to disappoint you. We would both like to thank you for your gracious support and enthusiasm ... wouldn’t we, Mr. Wooster?
"Absolutely!" I said, relieved that the whole thing had went so swimmingly – with virtually no effort on my part! Jeeves had saved the day again!
In fact, the only low point of the whole meeting was when we were on the way out. Aunt Agatha cornered me and gave me something she hadn’t given me since I was a little boy – something I hadn’t exactly been hankering for.
A peck on the old cheek.
"You’ve done well, Bertram," was all she said.
I responded with a hasty, "Right-Ho, Cheerio, Old Aunt," and made a dash for the elevator, with Jeeves one step ahead of me. As soon as the doors closed, Jeeves and I were alone.
It was my chance to interrogate the man.
"Jeeves, I said. "You’ve worked it, haven’t you?"
"Yes, Sir. I dare say, your troubles with the trustees are over for now."
"Jeeves, how?" I asked. I was still in a species of shock.
"If I may say so, Sir, I gave your Aunt Agatha and the Trustees the impression that you had devised a brilliant new accounting system. They expect your system will someday catch on like wildfire, revolutionize the world of finance, and make you a wealthy man – thus rendering continued financial support from your late Uncle Harvey’s trust fund unnecessary. With this view of your situation, the trustees are willing, even enthusiastic, about continuing your monthly financial support at an elevated level."
Well, dash it, you know. Jeeves isn’t perfect, but at times I wonder what I would do without the man. He’d completely and utterly saved the day. With an even larger monthly check coming in, I could have even more jolly evenings out on the town, entertain some high-ticket women I’d had my eye on, bung a supercharger into the Bentley, even upgrade my PC...
...and then it struck me. Jeeves hadn’t done all this for nothing. It was time to pay the good old piper.
I braced myself.
"Jeeves," I said, with a trace of what might, in a tender moment, be called humility or remorse, "about that Samsung monitor."
"Yes, Sir?" he asked.
"Take it back to the store, if you like. Or burn it. Stuff it down the garbage disposal, I don’t care. Just get rid of it."
"Sir?" he asked, and something resembling a smile appeared in the corner of his lips – a kind of miniature, half-smile. Not broad. Definitely not broad.
"Then pop round to Computerworld and get that 17" Sony monitor you mentioned the other day."
"I’m afraid that won’t be possible," Jeeves said calmly. "That particular model is out of stock for what appears to be an indefinite period of time. I have thoroughly researched the options, and the only suitable choice appears to be a 20" Sony Trinitron Monitor. But given the additional expense, you may not wish to..."
"Buy it, Jeeves!" I shouted, joyfully. "Damn it, buy it! With all that new trust fund money coming in..."
"Very good, Sir," said Jeeves. "An excellent choice, if I may say so, Sir. And as regards the Samsung monitor, are you sure..."
"I said, get rid of it, man!"
And I can’t say Jeeves surprised me when he responded:
"I have taken the liberty of returning the Samsung monitor for a full refund, Sir. I have applied the credit towards the purchase of the new Sony unit...which is sitting atop your desk now. I trust you will find all this satisfactory."
Again, that funny half-smile of his.
Well, I mean, you know. What the use of arguing with Jeeves?
