3 June, 1870
Fiendishly interesting day!
Started out quite a rum deal. I don't mind confessing that the heart was singularly heavy. Here I was in the greatest city of the world, London, in the height of the season on holiday from my studies at Oxford. I should have been coving off to balls and galas and dances, and prowling about in some of the more exciting parts of the city when Mother was otherwise engaged. And it would be so easy for her to be otherwise engaged, seeing how my three merry uncles, George, Richard, and Henry, have managed, after all these years, to confound her continuous attempts to get them all properly paired off in matrimonial servitude. She is, therefore, often fervently occupied trying to keep them on the straight and narrow and find them a suitable jailer, as it were.
She has made it quite clear that she expects me to avoid any matrimonial pursuits until I have taken my degree, and possibly even until I have taken the bar. As long as she is distracted by the aforementioned merry uncles (or, as she likes to describe them, the vapid and irreflective chumps), and believes that I am enjoying innocent frivolity with my male friends, and spending not any time in the company of young ladies when she is not about to protect me from the opportunistic gold-diggers, I am free as the proverbial bird.
Alas, just days after my triumphant entry into the city, Lord Yaxley, who just happens to be my great-grandfather on Mother's side, was taken ill. Now, for a gentleman of his prodigious years, that is to say, a man who is closing in on the century mark, this can not be an entirely unforeseen eventuality. Particularly given how much of his energies have been dissipated over the years, as Mother frequently frets, through all sorts of unhealthy recreation. He takes snuff and has enjoyed a good pipe of tobacco several times a day for most of his extraordinarily long life. In more recent years he has taken a fancy to full-leaf sumatran cigars, without decreasing his enjoyment of the snuff or pipe to any noticeable degree. He has always been inordinately found of brandy, wine, ale, bitters, and the occasional gin or whisky. Then, of course, there are the long hours he spends playing cards at his club.
Before this most recent development, I had begun to entertain the notion that all of those spirits consumed by Great-grandfather had had the effect of pickling the old jolly old lord, and he would still be enjoying the daily smoke and gin for many years after yours truly had shuffled off this mortal coil. It appears, unfortunately, that the notion was mere flight of fancy, for the doctors are extremely grim, and Mother and most of the rest of the family has descended into an even darker depth of grimness than the physicians.
With Mother in such a dark mood, I endeavored to pry myself from Morpheus' gentle embrace and arrive at the breakfast table before Father had departed for the bank. I was able, therefore, to fortify myself properly with kippers and coffee before Mother had a chance to turn her full attention upon me. When she did place poor Tobias in her sights, she fired straight to the heart of the matter without any friendly small talk to soften the blow. "Caine tells me that that imbecile uncle of yours, Henry, has still not extricated himself from the his legal difficulties."
"Rather!" I replied, smearing a bit of jam onto a scrap of toast. "Parks tells me is still locked up in the pokey on those silly assault charges."
"You will kindly exclude from your conversation all that is suggestive of the billiard room and the stage-door!"
"Right--" I barely bit off the 'ho' at the end of 'right ho' and rather deftly segued it to a "Right you are, Mother." Which I apparently delivered in sufficiently contrite tone of voice to mollify her somewhat.
"After you call on your great-grandfather," she went on, giving me the eye, "you are to go down to this place where Henry has hidden himself, no doubt enjoying the finest meals and drink that Caine can deliver, and impress upon him the seriousness of the viscount's condition."
"I shall naturally endeavor, Mother, to make the situation as clear as crystal."
"Well, mind you do."
So, having taken the edge off my appetite, I hared off to great-grandfather's house on St. James street. I had hoped a good night sleep might of put a bit of color in the old bird's cheeks, alas, the old relative was looking even paler and less substantial than he had the previous evening. At his request I read the Times to him until he told me he was too tired to listen to any more. I took my leave of him, wishing a speedy recovery and all that, with as much enthusiasm as I could muster, and then went looking for this dungeon that they had locked dear Uncle Henry into.
A visit to Uncle Henry is usually guaranteed to buoy the spirit. He seems perpetually to be in excellent spirits, and very little, other than a lecture from Mother, is long able to drive the merry Tra-la from his lips.
Uncle Henry did not disappoint me. Mother had been almost prescient in her estimation of the conditions of his incarceration, and Uncle Henry was treating the whole thing as quite a lark. He confided that the charges against him were quite bogus, and the he had the most impeccable of witnesses: a police inspector had seen the entire thing, as had a baronet of his acquaintance and a pair of ladies who he has been spending some time with, trying to decide which ones favors he should accept. The inspector had tried to get him out of pokey the day before, and it was only in the nick of time that Uncle Henry persuaded the man to leave him in irons for another two nights so he could avoid his luncheon with Mother.
I hated to dash his delight at such a clever plan, but I knew that he would want to know about great-grandfather's decline. So, I explained the situation to him. He was more than a little suspicious. I think he feared that Mother had put me up to telling him a false tale to get him to exit the jail so she could ambush him with yet another widow. Eventually I convinced him it was true, and further that the old relative seemed to be getting rather worse by the hour. Poor Uncle Henry was quite discomfited by the news.
He then began talking about way he could get away to see Lord Yaxley, pay his respects, as it were, without exposing himself to Mother's latest reprimand. I helpfully pointed out the the door was not locked and that I had had quite an easy time walking into the place without hardly anyone asking who I was. Even with that prompting, it took him a good five or tens minutes to propose a plan that had some hope of succeeded.
We traded clothes, informed that guard that he was not feeling well and did not wish to receive any visitors other than Mr. Caine. Then, with myself prostrate in the bed, pretending to be quite ill, Uncle Henry left the room, promising several times that he would be back as quickly as possible.
I helped myself to some of his brandy and read the paper until a pair of visitors arrived who would not, under any circumstances, be deterred from seeing Henry.
Two lieutenants of her majesty's navy, shipmates of Uncle Henry, had arrived to cheer him up. The slightly smaller fellow, the blond gentleman by the name of Lochsley, thought they had been taken to the wrong cell and had begun to raise a ruckus, ready to tick the jailer off properly, when the barrel-chested one, Pellew by name, stopped him. "I believe we are in the right cell," he said, "but we have the wrong lieutenant. Look at the boy's eyes, Lochsley, he clearly must be a relative of Wooster. And that uniform is tailored for someone of his height, but with a slightly more generous waist."
"I don't recall Wooster mentioning any relatives in the navy," Lochsley replied.
Pellew hazarded a guess that Henry had wanted to get out of the building for a while and that I was masquerading as my uncle until his return. They had me dead to rights, of course, and could have caused a bit of trouble, so I had no alternative but to confess all and throw myself onto the mercy of their friendship and camaraderie for Uncle Henry.
They were both quite sympathetic, though Pellew indicated that the plan, while bold, was also rife with great risks. Lochsley seemed to think that made it all the better. He and Pellew became involved in an intricate discussion of the merits of contingency plans. They were thus engaged when the door was opened and a red-haired gentleman, who I suspected, from his manner of dress, was an inspector or possibly an officer of the court, stepped in and said he was here to collect Wooster.
Lochsley immediately hurled himself in front of the fusillade, as it were, doing his best to stand in front of me and keep the gentleman from getting too close to me. The gentleman introduced himself as Inspector MacGregor, and said he had the necessary paperwork to effect Uncle Henry's release. It was quite clear that he wasn't at all taken in by Lochsley's attempt at misdirection, but once we were in the situation, we had little choice but to play the stratagem through to the end.
Fortunately, MacGregor seemed more amused than anything. Once he had determined why Uncle Henry had left, he told the two lieutenants to stay with me and said he would see about collecting Wooster. Feeling that we had dodged a bullet, we settled down to discuss some of Uncle Henry's more colourful adventures, which seem even more amusing when told from the point of view of his shipmates, I must say, until Lochsley's valet came to the door to warn us that Mrs. Gregson had arrived to see Wooster.
"Who is Mrs. Gregson?" Lochsley asked.
"My mother," I explained, "or, as Uncle Henry likes to call her, the Brother Crusher."
Lochsley nodded sagely and said. "Oh, her. I have heard many horrific tales about her." He stood up and straightened his jacket. "There is no getting around it, I shall have to go mount a delaying action. You will remain here, in reserve, Pellew."
And off he went. Occasionally I could hear the familiar strains of Mother's voice drift up the corridor. It was enough to make a man's blood run cold. She was clearly in a very cross mood and not ready to suffer any fools, lightly or otherwise.
And then, miracle of miracles! Mr. Caine arrived, along with Lochsley's valet, Wren, and they had Uncle Henry with them. As we quickly effected a costume change, Caine explained that he had been alerted to the situation by MacGregor, and had managed to bring Uncle Henry up through the back way. MacGregor himself arrived not a moment later, explaining that Mother and Lochsley were still engaged in conversation. In a few moments, Henry's signature had been applied to the proper papers, and we were all back in our respective identities. MacGregor took Henry out to turn him over to Mother (who, he said, was insisting on taking Henry straight to great-grandfather's).
Uncle Henry looked for all the world like a condemned man being taken to the gallows. It was a longish drive but we fetched up to our destination without major incident, and, primed by Lochsley's tales of Henry's derring-do as acting commander of a battleship recently, Uncle Henry was able to launch into a tale of his exploits before great-grandfather could say anything about Henry being in attendance earlier.
It was, all in all, quite a corker of a day!
Proceed to Certain things will come to light
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