[Jeeves & Wooster] Ficlet: Far More Than Flowers
Penultimate challenge! This one was supplied by mxdp, who I hope will forgive it not being all that it could be.
The quoted story is The Nightingale and the Rose. I think I get unconventional-use-of-Wilde points, at least.
2200-words-ish. What is with my G-rated preslash thing?
Far More Than Flowers
It was a set of circs that would have had me hunting Jeeves up wherever he might have been-- telegramming him back from a shrimping holiday or banging down the door of his lair in the middle of the night. He was neither so far nor so near, in this case. His sister had taken ill, and proving himself the very model of brotherly care and concern, he had asked leave to go round and help look after her daughter while she convalesced. Not Mabel, you understand, who I daresay can look after herself, but a much younger specimen belonging to the same mother. Loath though I was to be Jeevesless for a week or so, the Woosters have faced harder times and I could not but bid him go.
I'd been roughing it at my Aunt Dahlia's place in town, where Uncle Tom fears to tread, and rightly so, especially when it happens to be young Bonzo Travers's birthday. My cousin Bonzo is largely a bit of all right for a kid, and I was as eager as the next chap to congratulate the little sprite on marking out another year in the world. What I was not eager to do was be pelted with satsumas by a small horde of his pals, but I would have taken a large horde with grapefruits over what Aunt Agatha pelted me with. Well, not so much pelted as shoved down next to me on a settee entirely too small for two, determined to have me engaged by the time the cake was cut, but it was certainly some sort of sneak attack.
It took no great feat of deduction to work out which of the miniature barbarians Miss Temperance Armstrong had supplied. I picked her younger brother out of the line-up in an instant as the one with the pointed face and thick glasses, for both seemed to run in the family. I have often said that some pretty rough work is pulled at the font, but in this case the parents Armstrong had had some sort of premonition. Aunt Dahlia had made a heavy supply of spirits available to ease the suffering of the older guests, but this Temperance sat daintily nursing a cup of the mysterious red punch that the children were sucking down by the gallon. She frowned at my scotch and at my cigarette and, indeed, I think even at my shoes. She would have been right at home amongst those wholesome-minded Americans as the spearhead and It Girl of their movement.
"I do so love to see children enjoying themselves, don't you, Mr Wooster?"
As if to drive home her point, my blindfolded cousin Thos pinned the donkey's tail neatly to Aunt Agatha's side, causing her to levitate about a foot in the air and up-end her canapé onto the deserving young blot's head.
I laughed heartily. "Oh, yes, nothing better!"
Of course, Miss Armstrong was looking the other direction at a pair of be-frilled little girls sedately playing pat-a-cake in the corner, but I had sealed my fate. She smiled beatifically in approval, the magnified eyes behind the glasses giving the impression of some sort of lizard who's just had a very pleasing meal. Then she started going on about crocheting flowers and how just darling one would look in my buttonhole, no need to go lopping the heads off the poor old roses.
Needless to say, the mandate to dinner the following night at the hands of the entire Armstrong clan had put me into straits I judged dire enough to warrant wrenching Jeeves from his good works for a moment or two of counsel. I sped out of the house the moment the last of the guests were poured into their respective automobiles, confetti still stuck to me in odd places and a mysterious substance on one of my sleeves. This was no time for vanity, and perhaps my harried state would help drive the point home to Jeeves.
It was but the work of a swift cab ride to deliver me to the doorstep on which I could lay my troubles. The address Jeeves had left with me did prove to be in Clapham, as Biffy had once guessed, but it was less a boot shop than a bookshop that the residential door sat next to. I rang at it, not insistently lest I wake any under-the-weather sisters, but I did try to put forth a certain sense of urgency in my press of the bell.
Jeeves was before me in mere moments, sans tie and in shirtsleeves, framed by a homey glow from the top of the staircase behind him. "Good evening, sir," he said, eyebrows lifting a touch in heartwarming concern.
"Sorry to just elbow in like this, Jeeves, but I find myself in a bit of a pickle."
"I will happily give it my every attention, sir, if I can prevail upon you to wait a few moments."
"By all means," I said guiltily. "I ought to have 'phoned, I suppose, but I'm a bit rattled just now."
I was duly prevailed upon and herded into a small office of sorts, where Jeeves supplied me with a nicely worn leather chair and a brandy. "I shall return directly, sir. There is--"
"He's got a red rose, Uncle Reggie!" crowed a little voice from the doorway. Its owner stepped round from behind Jeeves, revealing itself to be a rather small girl with a rather large book.
"Yes, Beatrice," Jeeves said. "I thought we agreed you would wait for me in the sitting room."
"I saw you come in here," the girl said with an accusatory pout. I had never laid eyes on her mother, but it was no mystery how she'd come by the mane of dark hair and the regal bearing. "You said you wouldn't do any more accounts tonight."
"My fault, I'm afraid," I piped up, "though rest assured, no accounts will be done."
"Beatrice, this is my employer, Mr Wooster."
"What ho, Beatrice," I said with a wave.
"How do you do, Mr Wooster," Beatrice said with a grave little nod. "Would you like to come and hear the rest of the story? It's very good. There's a student who's in love and needs to find a red rose so the girl will dance with him."
"Er," I said, looking to Jeeves for some kind of yea or nay, but there was none to be found.
"Go on along, Beatrice. I will join you momentarily."
I found myself on the befuddled side at the idea of Jeeves reading bedtime stories to little girls. "I'll just wait here, then, shall I?" I said when Beatrice had gone.
"Very good, sir," said Jeeves, and floated out.
Well, a load of ledgers and a few Bayeux Tapestry reproductions are the sort of scenery that dulls very quickly, so I couldn't help but drift to the doorway, and then up the hall a bit.
"But doesn't Mr Wooster want to hear it?" Beatrice was saying.
"Mr Wooster is a gentleman, Beatrice," Jeeves said. I'm sure he didn't know I'd hear it, and therefore couldn't have calculated it to sting me a bit, but it did.
"Gentleman can like stories," the child said sensibly.
"And so Mr Wooster does, exceedingly. But it is not--" I could practically hear him shake his head. "Shall I explain it to you, or would you prefer to see how our student fares?"
"Student."
Though I hadn't heard the beginning and was forced in media res to imagine the background for myself, Jeeves read the end with such feeling that I completely forgot I was eavesdropping in a hallway. The thing ran thusly:
And at noon the Student opened his window and looked out.
“Why, what a wonderful piece of luck!” he cried; “here is a red rose! I have never seen any rose like it in all my life. It is so beautiful that I am sure it has a long Latin name”; and he leaned down and plucked it.
Then he put on his hat, and ran up to the Professor’s house with the rose in his hand.
The daughter of the Professor was sitting in the doorway winding blue silk on a reel, and her little dog was lying at her feet.
“You said that you would dance with me if I brought you a red rose,” cried the Student. “Here is the reddest rose in all the world. You will wear it to-night next your heart, and as we dance together it will tell you how I love you.”
But the girl frowned.
“I am afraid it will not go with my dress,” she answered; “and, besides, the Chamberlain’s nephew has sent me some real jewels, and everybody knows that jewels cost far more than flowers.”
“Well, upon my word, you are very ungrateful,” said the Student angrily; and he threw the rose into the street, where it fell into the gutter, and a cart-wheel went over it.
“Ungrateful!” said the girl. “I tell you what, you are very rude; and, after all, who are you? Only a Student. Why, I don’t believe you have even got silver buckles to your shoes as the Chamberlain’s nephew has”; and she got up from her chair and went into the house.
“What I a silly thing Love is,” said the Student as he walked away. “It is not half as useful as Logic, for it does not prove anything, and it is always telling one of things that are not going to happen, and making one believe things that are not true. In fact, it is quite unpractical, and, as in this age to be practical is everything, I shall go back to Philosophy and study Metaphysics.”
So he returned to his room and pulled out a great dusty book, and began to read.
"But that's sad!" Beatrice exclaimed, snapping me back to the land of the living and dislodging the odd lump that had formed in my throat.
"Yes," Jeeves said. He sounded tired.
"But you said it was a story about love!"
"Not every story of love ends happily, Beatrice."
"I'd rather have flowers than jewels."
"Then I daresay your story will end more happily than the girl's."
"Or the student's."
"The student, I believe, found a kind of contentment."
The lump returned several-fold and I retreated to the study, thoughtfully fingering the slightly worse for wear red rose in my buttonhole.
Jeeves entered a few minutes later and ferried me back to the room I'd been standing outside. He poured more brandy into my glass and stood poised to hear the young master's woes. Only the woes had got all jumbled up with other woes I hadn't known were there. "I thought you weren't fond of children, Jeeves," I said instead.
"I am not, as a rule, partial to them, sir, but my niece is exceptionally well-mannered and bright for her age." His eyes cast about the room as though for something to straighten or dust.
"Do make yourself comfortable, old thing," I said. "I know this uninvited interloping is probably a trifle off-putting."
"Not at all, sir," he said, but poured himself a drink and perched upon the chair across from me. "I believe you had some urgent concern, sir?"
I looked down into my glass, gaze catching again on the buttonhole. "It all seems rather silly now."
"As I am not privy to the pertinent facts, sir--"
I waved a dismissive hand. "Oh, just another girl Aunt Agatha's shoving at me. The aptly-christened Temperance Armstrong. I'm bidden to mangle a spot of dinner at the family home on the 'morrow and hoped you'd come up with one of your corkers to ensure I'd be tossed out on my ear rather than spend the rest of my days as a teetotaller wearing crocheted flowers."
"Crocheted flowers, sir?"
"Miss Armstrong doesn't like the idea of chopping the blooms off the poor old roses."
"Then perhaps you might arrive bearing an ostentatious bouquet, sir."
It was brilliant in its simplicity. I smiled. "Thank you, Jeeves," I said, leaning forward to knock my glass against his.
"I would suggest yellow and striped carnations, sir, to signify rejection and refusal, perhaps with a few acalia blooms to represent her name."
"Could you order the thing for me, Jeeves? Knowing me I'll get it all turned about and accidentally declare my undying love." I blinked and looked down at the rose again. When I looked back at Jeeves, his eyes were fixed on a photograph and medal that sat on the mantelpiece. "Who's that chappie, some relation?"
"My brother," Jeeves said.
"Oh," I said. One over from the brother was a grinning bearded cove who bore no family resemblance, but there was no medal hanging over the corner of his frame. I wondered if it might be the sister's husband, who must've existed at some point put clearly did not now, but I didn't like to ask.
None of the questions bubbling to the surface were the sort I thought I should be asking. Besides, it wasn't as though Jeeves had put this particular rose there. Rollins, a chappie in Aunt Dahlia's employ, was the one looking after pressing the trousers and whatnot. But he also seemed to know how and when I liked my tea, and I knew Jeeves liked to impart these little bits of wisdom before an absence.
"And if undying love did want declaring?" I asked before I could stop myself. It wasn't as though I hadn't entertained the notion. Anyone with the slightest inclination towards the male form would have had to be blind, deaf and senseless not to. But I'd never seriously considered it, because, well, it wasn't exactly cricket, was it? Besides, it was miraculous enough that for whatever reason, Jeeves seemed content enough to hang about editing my socks and pulling me out of the soup rather than go off to be Prime Minister.
Jeeves set his glass down and ran his fingers over the cover of the book Beatrice had been holding. It was a thick tome bound in faded yellowy leather, the cover proclaiming only 'Stories.' "I would think an outright declaration inadvisable without some idea that the sentiment might be returned, sir."
"Something--whatsit--subtle, you mean." I didn't mean to prod my lapel yet again, but I did.
There was a pregnant pause in which we simply stared across the space between us.
"I should let you get on with it, then," I said at last, when it became clear that nothing else was forthcoming from the Jeevesian quarter.
"Very good, sir," said Jeeves. He saw me to the door and handed me my hat.
I was halfway into the street and he halfway up the stairs when I turned back. "Jeeves?"
He paused and turned. "Sir?"
"The idea that a sentiment might be returned. Where does a chap go about getting that?"
"The proof may be under his very nose, sir."
The quoted story is The Nightingale and the Rose. I think I get unconventional-use-of-Wilde points, at least.
2200-words-ish. What is with my G-rated preslash thing?
Far More Than Flowers
It was a set of circs that would have had me hunting Jeeves up wherever he might have been-- telegramming him back from a shrimping holiday or banging down the door of his lair in the middle of the night. He was neither so far nor so near, in this case. His sister had taken ill, and proving himself the very model of brotherly care and concern, he had asked leave to go round and help look after her daughter while she convalesced. Not Mabel, you understand, who I daresay can look after herself, but a much younger specimen belonging to the same mother. Loath though I was to be Jeevesless for a week or so, the Woosters have faced harder times and I could not but bid him go.
I'd been roughing it at my Aunt Dahlia's place in town, where Uncle Tom fears to tread, and rightly so, especially when it happens to be young Bonzo Travers's birthday. My cousin Bonzo is largely a bit of all right for a kid, and I was as eager as the next chap to congratulate the little sprite on marking out another year in the world. What I was not eager to do was be pelted with satsumas by a small horde of his pals, but I would have taken a large horde with grapefruits over what Aunt Agatha pelted me with. Well, not so much pelted as shoved down next to me on a settee entirely too small for two, determined to have me engaged by the time the cake was cut, but it was certainly some sort of sneak attack.
It took no great feat of deduction to work out which of the miniature barbarians Miss Temperance Armstrong had supplied. I picked her younger brother out of the line-up in an instant as the one with the pointed face and thick glasses, for both seemed to run in the family. I have often said that some pretty rough work is pulled at the font, but in this case the parents Armstrong had had some sort of premonition. Aunt Dahlia had made a heavy supply of spirits available to ease the suffering of the older guests, but this Temperance sat daintily nursing a cup of the mysterious red punch that the children were sucking down by the gallon. She frowned at my scotch and at my cigarette and, indeed, I think even at my shoes. She would have been right at home amongst those wholesome-minded Americans as the spearhead and It Girl of their movement.
"I do so love to see children enjoying themselves, don't you, Mr Wooster?"
As if to drive home her point, my blindfolded cousin Thos pinned the donkey's tail neatly to Aunt Agatha's side, causing her to levitate about a foot in the air and up-end her canapé onto the deserving young blot's head.
I laughed heartily. "Oh, yes, nothing better!"
Of course, Miss Armstrong was looking the other direction at a pair of be-frilled little girls sedately playing pat-a-cake in the corner, but I had sealed my fate. She smiled beatifically in approval, the magnified eyes behind the glasses giving the impression of some sort of lizard who's just had a very pleasing meal. Then she started going on about crocheting flowers and how just darling one would look in my buttonhole, no need to go lopping the heads off the poor old roses.
Needless to say, the mandate to dinner the following night at the hands of the entire Armstrong clan had put me into straits I judged dire enough to warrant wrenching Jeeves from his good works for a moment or two of counsel. I sped out of the house the moment the last of the guests were poured into their respective automobiles, confetti still stuck to me in odd places and a mysterious substance on one of my sleeves. This was no time for vanity, and perhaps my harried state would help drive the point home to Jeeves.
It was but the work of a swift cab ride to deliver me to the doorstep on which I could lay my troubles. The address Jeeves had left with me did prove to be in Clapham, as Biffy had once guessed, but it was less a boot shop than a bookshop that the residential door sat next to. I rang at it, not insistently lest I wake any under-the-weather sisters, but I did try to put forth a certain sense of urgency in my press of the bell.
Jeeves was before me in mere moments, sans tie and in shirtsleeves, framed by a homey glow from the top of the staircase behind him. "Good evening, sir," he said, eyebrows lifting a touch in heartwarming concern.
"Sorry to just elbow in like this, Jeeves, but I find myself in a bit of a pickle."
"I will happily give it my every attention, sir, if I can prevail upon you to wait a few moments."
"By all means," I said guiltily. "I ought to have 'phoned, I suppose, but I'm a bit rattled just now."
I was duly prevailed upon and herded into a small office of sorts, where Jeeves supplied me with a nicely worn leather chair and a brandy. "I shall return directly, sir. There is--"
"He's got a red rose, Uncle Reggie!" crowed a little voice from the doorway. Its owner stepped round from behind Jeeves, revealing itself to be a rather small girl with a rather large book.
"Yes, Beatrice," Jeeves said. "I thought we agreed you would wait for me in the sitting room."
"I saw you come in here," the girl said with an accusatory pout. I had never laid eyes on her mother, but it was no mystery how she'd come by the mane of dark hair and the regal bearing. "You said you wouldn't do any more accounts tonight."
"My fault, I'm afraid," I piped up, "though rest assured, no accounts will be done."
"Beatrice, this is my employer, Mr Wooster."
"What ho, Beatrice," I said with a wave.
"How do you do, Mr Wooster," Beatrice said with a grave little nod. "Would you like to come and hear the rest of the story? It's very good. There's a student who's in love and needs to find a red rose so the girl will dance with him."
"Er," I said, looking to Jeeves for some kind of yea or nay, but there was none to be found.
"Go on along, Beatrice. I will join you momentarily."
I found myself on the befuddled side at the idea of Jeeves reading bedtime stories to little girls. "I'll just wait here, then, shall I?" I said when Beatrice had gone.
"Very good, sir," said Jeeves, and floated out.
Well, a load of ledgers and a few Bayeux Tapestry reproductions are the sort of scenery that dulls very quickly, so I couldn't help but drift to the doorway, and then up the hall a bit.
"But doesn't Mr Wooster want to hear it?" Beatrice was saying.
"Mr Wooster is a gentleman, Beatrice," Jeeves said. I'm sure he didn't know I'd hear it, and therefore couldn't have calculated it to sting me a bit, but it did.
"Gentleman can like stories," the child said sensibly.
"And so Mr Wooster does, exceedingly. But it is not--" I could practically hear him shake his head. "Shall I explain it to you, or would you prefer to see how our student fares?"
"Student."
Though I hadn't heard the beginning and was forced in media res to imagine the background for myself, Jeeves read the end with such feeling that I completely forgot I was eavesdropping in a hallway. The thing ran thusly:
And at noon the Student opened his window and looked out.
“Why, what a wonderful piece of luck!” he cried; “here is a red rose! I have never seen any rose like it in all my life. It is so beautiful that I am sure it has a long Latin name”; and he leaned down and plucked it.
Then he put on his hat, and ran up to the Professor’s house with the rose in his hand.
The daughter of the Professor was sitting in the doorway winding blue silk on a reel, and her little dog was lying at her feet.
“You said that you would dance with me if I brought you a red rose,” cried the Student. “Here is the reddest rose in all the world. You will wear it to-night next your heart, and as we dance together it will tell you how I love you.”
But the girl frowned.
“I am afraid it will not go with my dress,” she answered; “and, besides, the Chamberlain’s nephew has sent me some real jewels, and everybody knows that jewels cost far more than flowers.”
“Well, upon my word, you are very ungrateful,” said the Student angrily; and he threw the rose into the street, where it fell into the gutter, and a cart-wheel went over it.
“Ungrateful!” said the girl. “I tell you what, you are very rude; and, after all, who are you? Only a Student. Why, I don’t believe you have even got silver buckles to your shoes as the Chamberlain’s nephew has”; and she got up from her chair and went into the house.
“What I a silly thing Love is,” said the Student as he walked away. “It is not half as useful as Logic, for it does not prove anything, and it is always telling one of things that are not going to happen, and making one believe things that are not true. In fact, it is quite unpractical, and, as in this age to be practical is everything, I shall go back to Philosophy and study Metaphysics.”
So he returned to his room and pulled out a great dusty book, and began to read.
"But that's sad!" Beatrice exclaimed, snapping me back to the land of the living and dislodging the odd lump that had formed in my throat.
"Yes," Jeeves said. He sounded tired.
"But you said it was a story about love!"
"Not every story of love ends happily, Beatrice."
"I'd rather have flowers than jewels."
"Then I daresay your story will end more happily than the girl's."
"Or the student's."
"The student, I believe, found a kind of contentment."
The lump returned several-fold and I retreated to the study, thoughtfully fingering the slightly worse for wear red rose in my buttonhole.
Jeeves entered a few minutes later and ferried me back to the room I'd been standing outside. He poured more brandy into my glass and stood poised to hear the young master's woes. Only the woes had got all jumbled up with other woes I hadn't known were there. "I thought you weren't fond of children, Jeeves," I said instead.
"I am not, as a rule, partial to them, sir, but my niece is exceptionally well-mannered and bright for her age." His eyes cast about the room as though for something to straighten or dust.
"Do make yourself comfortable, old thing," I said. "I know this uninvited interloping is probably a trifle off-putting."
"Not at all, sir," he said, but poured himself a drink and perched upon the chair across from me. "I believe you had some urgent concern, sir?"
I looked down into my glass, gaze catching again on the buttonhole. "It all seems rather silly now."
"As I am not privy to the pertinent facts, sir--"
I waved a dismissive hand. "Oh, just another girl Aunt Agatha's shoving at me. The aptly-christened Temperance Armstrong. I'm bidden to mangle a spot of dinner at the family home on the 'morrow and hoped you'd come up with one of your corkers to ensure I'd be tossed out on my ear rather than spend the rest of my days as a teetotaller wearing crocheted flowers."
"Crocheted flowers, sir?"
"Miss Armstrong doesn't like the idea of chopping the blooms off the poor old roses."
"Then perhaps you might arrive bearing an ostentatious bouquet, sir."
It was brilliant in its simplicity. I smiled. "Thank you, Jeeves," I said, leaning forward to knock my glass against his.
"I would suggest yellow and striped carnations, sir, to signify rejection and refusal, perhaps with a few acalia blooms to represent her name."
"Could you order the thing for me, Jeeves? Knowing me I'll get it all turned about and accidentally declare my undying love." I blinked and looked down at the rose again. When I looked back at Jeeves, his eyes were fixed on a photograph and medal that sat on the mantelpiece. "Who's that chappie, some relation?"
"My brother," Jeeves said.
"Oh," I said. One over from the brother was a grinning bearded cove who bore no family resemblance, but there was no medal hanging over the corner of his frame. I wondered if it might be the sister's husband, who must've existed at some point put clearly did not now, but I didn't like to ask.
None of the questions bubbling to the surface were the sort I thought I should be asking. Besides, it wasn't as though Jeeves had put this particular rose there. Rollins, a chappie in Aunt Dahlia's employ, was the one looking after pressing the trousers and whatnot. But he also seemed to know how and when I liked my tea, and I knew Jeeves liked to impart these little bits of wisdom before an absence.
"And if undying love did want declaring?" I asked before I could stop myself. It wasn't as though I hadn't entertained the notion. Anyone with the slightest inclination towards the male form would have had to be blind, deaf and senseless not to. But I'd never seriously considered it, because, well, it wasn't exactly cricket, was it? Besides, it was miraculous enough that for whatever reason, Jeeves seemed content enough to hang about editing my socks and pulling me out of the soup rather than go off to be Prime Minister.
Jeeves set his glass down and ran his fingers over the cover of the book Beatrice had been holding. It was a thick tome bound in faded yellowy leather, the cover proclaiming only 'Stories.' "I would think an outright declaration inadvisable without some idea that the sentiment might be returned, sir."
"Something--whatsit--subtle, you mean." I didn't mean to prod my lapel yet again, but I did.
There was a pregnant pause in which we simply stared across the space between us.
"I should let you get on with it, then," I said at last, when it became clear that nothing else was forthcoming from the Jeevesian quarter.
"Very good, sir," said Jeeves. He saw me to the door and handed me my hat.
I was halfway into the street and he halfway up the stairs when I turned back. "Jeeves?"
He paused and turned. "Sir?"
"The idea that a sentiment might be returned. Where does a chap go about getting that?"
"The proof may be under his very nose, sir."