And as if this were not bad enough, Tuppy had to shove his oar in.
“That’s right,” said Tuppy. “Bertie has always been a great cyclist. I remember at Oxford he used to take all his clothes off on bump-supper nights and ride around the quad, singing comic songs. Jolly fast he used to go too.”
“Then he can go jolly fast now,” said Aunt Dahlia with animation. “He can’t go too fast for me. He may also sing comic songs, if he likes. … And if you wish to take your clothes off, Bertie, my lamb, by all means do so. But whether clothed or in the nude, whether singing comic songs or not singing comic songs, get a move on.”
I found speech:
“But I haven’t ridden for years.”
“Then it’s high time you began again.”
“I’ve probably forgotten how to ride.”
“You’ll soon get the knack after you’ve taken a toss or two. Trial and error. The only way.”
“But it’s miles to Kingham.”
“So the sooner you’re off, the better.”
“But—”
“Bertie, dear.”
“But, dash it—”
“Bertie, darling.”
“Yes, but dash it—”
“Bertie, my sweet.”
And so it was arranged. Presently I was moving sombrely off through the darkness, Jeeves at my side, Aunt Dahlia calling after me something about trying to imagine myself the man who brought the good news from Ghent to Aix. The first I had heard of the chap.
“So, Jeeves,” I said, as we reached the shed, and my voice was cold and bitter, “this is what your great scheme has accomplished! Tuppy, Angela, Gussie and the Bassett not on speaking terms, and self faced with an eight-mile ride—”
“Nine, I believe, sir.”
“—a nine-mile ride, and another nine-mile ride back.”
“I am sorry, sir.”
“No good being sorry now. Where is this foul boneshaker?”
“I will bring it out, sir.”
He did so. I eyed it sourly.
“Where’s the lamp?”
“I fear there is no lamp, sir.”
“No lamp?”
“No, sir.”
“But I may come a fearful stinker without a lamp. Suppose I barge into something.”
I broke off and eyed him frigidly.
“You smile, Jeeves. The thought amuses you?”
“I beg your pardon, sir. I was thinking of a tale my Uncle Cyril used to tell me as a child. An absurd little story, sir, though I confess that I have always found it droll. According to my Uncle Cyril, two men named Nicholls and Jackson set out to ride to Brighton on a tandem bicycle, and were so unfortunate as to come into collision with a brewer’s van. And when the rescue party arrived on the scene of the accident, it was discovered that they had been hurled together with such force that it was impossible to sort them out at all adequately. The keenest eye could not discern which portion of the fragments was Nicholls and which Jackson. So they collected as much as they could, and called it Nixon. I remember laughing very much at that story when I was a child, sir.”
I had to pause a moment to master my feelings.
“You did, eh?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You thought it funny?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And your Uncle Cyril thought it funny?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Golly, what a family! Next time you meet your Uncle Cyril, Jeeves, you can tell him from me that his sense of humour is morbid and unpleasant.”
“He is dead, sir.”
“Thank heaven for that. … Well, give me the blasted machine.”
“Very good, sir.”
“Are the tyres inflated?”
“Yes, sir.”
“The nuts firm, the brakes in order, the sprockets running true with the differential gear?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Right ho, Jeeves.”
In Tuppy’s statement that, when at the University of Oxford, I had been known to ride a bicycle in the nude about the quadrangle of our mutual college, there had been, I cannot deny, a certain amount of substance. Correct, however, though his facts were, so far as they went, he had not told all. What he had omitted to mention was that I had invariably been well oiled at the time, and when in that condition a chap is capable of feats at which in cooler moments his reason would rebel.
Stimulated by the juice, I believe, men have even been known to ride alligators.
As I started now to pedal out into the great world, I was icily sober, and the old skill, in consequence, had deserted me entirely. I found myself wobbling badly, and all the stories I had ever heard of nasty bicycle accidents came back to me with a rush, headed by Jeeves’s Uncle Cyril’s cheery little anecdote about Nicholls and Jackson.
Pounding wearily through the darkness, I found myself at a loss to fathom the mentality of men like Jeeves’s Uncle Cyril. What on earth he could see funny in a disaster which had apparently involved the complete extinction of a human creature—or, at any rate, of half a human creature and half another human creature—was more than I could understand. To me, the thing was one of the most poignant tragedies that had ever been brought to my attention, and I have no doubt that I should have continued to brood over it for quite a time, had my thoughts not been diverted by the sudden necessity of zigzagging sharply in order to avoid a pig in the fairway.
For a moment it looked like being real Nicholls-and-Jackson stuff, but, fortunately, a quick zig on my part, coinciding with an adroit zag on the part of the pig, enabled me to win through, and I continued my ride safe, but with the heart fluttering like a captive bird.
The effect of this narrow squeak upon me was to shake the nerve to the utmost. The fact that pigs were abroad in the night seemed to bring home to me the perilous nature of my enterprise. It set me thinking of all the other things that could happen to a man out and about on a velocipede without a lamp after lighting-up time. In particular, I recalled the statement of a pal of mine that in certain sections of the rural districts goats
