The Essential Works of P. G. Wodehouse. P. G. WodehouseЧитать онлайн книгу.
should not be surprised, from his conversation with me, sir, if some such idea had not entered his head.”
I was just starting in to speak, when the telephone-bell rang. Jeeves answered it.
“No, madam, Mr. Wooster is not in. No, madam, I do not know when he will return. No, madam, he left no message. Yes, madam, I will inform him.” He put back the receiver. “Mrs. Gregson, sir.”
Aunt Agatha! I had been expecting it. Ever since the luncheon-party had blown out a fuse, her shadow had been hanging over me, so to speak.
“Does she know? Already?”
“I gather that Sir Roderick has been speaking to her on the telephone, sir, and——”
“No wedding bells for me, what?”
Jeeves coughed.
“Mrs. Gregson did not actually confide in me, sir, but I fancy that some such thing may have occurred. She seemed decidedly agitated, sir.”
It’s a rummy thing, but I’d been so snootered by the old boy and the cats and the fish and the hat and the pink-faced chappie and all the rest of it that the bright side simply hadn’t occurred to me till now. By Jove, it was like a bally weight rolling off my chest! I gave a yelp of pure relief.
“Jeeves,” I said, “I believe you worked the whole thing!”
“Sir?”
“I believe you had the jolly old situation in hand right from the start.”
“Well, sir, Spenser, Mrs. Gregson’s butler, who inadvertently chanced to overhear something of your conversation when you were lunching at the house, did mention certain of the details to me; and I confess that, though it may be a liberty to say so, I entertained hopes that something might occur to prevent the match. I doubt if the young lady was entirely suitable to you, sir.”
“And she would have shot you out on your ear five minutes after the ceremony.”
“Yes, sir. Spenser informed me that she had expressed some such intention. Mrs. Gregson wishes you to call upon her immediately, sir.”
“She does, eh? What do you advise, Jeeves?”
“I think a trip to the south of France might prove enjoyable, sir.”
“Jeeves,” I said, “you are right, as always. Pack the old suit-case, and meet me at Victoria in time for the boat-train. I think that’s the manly, independent course, what?”
“Absolutely, sir!” said Jeeves.
Jeeves and the Chump Cyril
YOU know, the longer I live in New York, the more clearly I see that half the trouble in this bally world is caused by the light-hearted and thoughtless way in which chappies dash off letters of introduction and hand them to other chappies to deliver to chappies of the third part. It’s one of those things that make you wish you were living in the Stone Age. What I mean to say is, if a fellow in those days wanted to give anyone a letter of introduction, he had to spend a month or so carving it on a large-sized boulder, and the chances were that the other chappie got so sick of lugging the thing round in the hot sun that he dropped it after the first mile. But nowadays it’s so easy to write letters of introduction that everybody does it without a second thought, with the result that some perfectly harmless cove like myself gets in the soup. The last time that happened to me was when the chump Cyril Bassington-Bassington came over from England with a letter from my Aunt Agatha.
This chump Bassington-Bassington would seem from contemporary accounts to have blown in one morning at seven-forty-five. He was given the respectful raspberry by my man Jeeves, and told to try again about three hours later, when there would be a sporting chance of my having sprung from my bed with a glad cry to welcome another day and all that sort of thing. Which was rather decent of Jeeves, by the way, for it so happened that there was a slight estrangement, a touch of coldness, a bit of a row in other words, between us at the moment because of some rather priceless purple socks which I was wearing against his wishes: and a lesser man might easily have snatched at the chance of getting back at me a bit by loosing Cyril into my bedchamber at a moment when I couldn’t have stood a two-minutes’ conversation with my dearest pal. You know how it is. The fierce rush of modern life, the cheery supper-party, the wine when it is red, and so forth. Well, what I mean to say is, as far as I’m concerned, what with one thing and another, the old bean is a trifle slow at getting into its stride in the morning, and, until I have had my early cup of tea and brooded on life for a bit absolutely undisturbed, I’m not much of a lad for the merry chit-chat.
So Jeeves very sportingly shot Cyril out into the crisp morning air, and didn’t let me know of his existence till he brought his card in with my tea.
“And what might all this be, Jeeves?” I said, giving the thing the glassy gaze.
“The gentleman called to see you earlier in the day, sir.”
“Good Lord, Jeeves! You don’t mean to say the day starts earlier than this?”
“He desired me to say he would return later, sir.”
“I’ve never heard of him. Have you ever heard of him, Jeeves?”
“I am familiar with the name Bassington-Bassington, sir. There are three branches of the Bassington-Bassington family—the Shropshire Bassington-Bassingtons, the Hampshire Bassington-Bassingtons, and the Kent Bassington-Bassingtons.”
“England seems pretty well stocked up with Bassington-Bassingtons.”
“Tolerably so, sir.”
“No chance of a sudden shortage, I mean, what?”
“Presumably not, sir.”
“And what sort of a specimen is thus one?”
“I could not say, sir, on such short acquaintance.”
“Will you give me a sporting two to one, Jeeves, judging from what you have seen of him, that this chappie is not a blighter or an excrescence?”
“No, sir. I should not care to venture such odds.”
“I knew it. Well, the only thing that remains to be discovered is what kind of a blighter he is.”
“Time will tell, sir. The gentleman brought this letter for you, sir.”
“What-ho! What-ho! What-ho! I say, Jeeves, this is from my Aunt Agatha!”
“Indeed, sir?”
I gave the thing the rapid eye. The wassail-bowl which had flowed overnight with a fairly steady gush into the small hours had left me rather pessimistic that morning, and the moment I saw Aunt Agatha’s handwriting something seemed to tell me that Fate was about to let me have it in the lower ribs once again. It’s a rummy thing. Aunt Agatha is the one person in the world I daren’t offend, and it always happens that everyone she sends to me with letters of introduction gets into trouble of some sort. And she always seems to think that I ought to have watched over them while they were in New York like a blend of nursemaid and guardian angel. Which, of course, is a bit thick and pretty scaly.
There was only one gleam of comfort.
“He isn’t going to stay in New York long, Jeeves. He’s headed for Washington. Going to give the chappies there the up-and-down before taking a whirl at the Diplomatic Service. So he ought to be leaving us eftsoons or right speedily, thank goodness. I should say a lunch and a couple of dinners would about meet the case, what?”
“I fancy that should be entirely adequate, sir.”
He started to put out my things, and there was an awkward sort of silence.
“Not those socks, Jeeves,” I said, gulping a