The Essential Works of P. G. Wodehouse. P. G. WodehouseЧитать онлайн книгу.
the rather topping idea of putting out a line of spats on the same system. I mean to say, instead of the ordinary gray and white, you can now get them in your regimental or school colors. And believe me, it would have taken a chappie of stronger fiber than I am to resist the pair of Old Etonian spats which had smiled up at me from inside the window. I was inside the shop, opening negotiations, before it had even occurred to me that Jeeves might not approve. And I must say he had taken the thing a bit hardly. The fact of the matter is, Jeeves, though in many ways the best valet in London, is too conservative. Hidebound, if you know what I mean, and an enemy to progress.
“Nothing further, Jeeves,” I said with quiet dignity.
“Very good, sir.”
He gave one frosty look at the spats and biffed off. Dash him!
Anything merrier and brighter than the twins, when they curveted into the old flat while I was dressing for dinner the next night, I have never struck in my whole puff. I’m only about half a dozen years older than Claude and Eustace, but in some rummy manner they always make me feel as if I were well on in the grandfather class and just waiting for the end. Almost before I realized they were in the place they had collared the best chairs, pinched a couple of my special cigarettes, poured themselves out a whisky and soda apiece and started to prattle with the gaiety and abandon of two birds who had achieved their life’s ambition instead of having come a most frightful purler and being under sentence of exile.
“Hullo, Bertie, old thing,” said Claude. “Jolly decent of you to put us up.”
“Oh, no!” I said. (Always the gentleman.) “Only wish you were staying a good long time.”
“Hear that, Eustace? He wishes we were staying a good long time.”
“I expect it will seem a good long time,” said Eustace philosophically.
It was the opportunity of a lifetime“You heard about the binge, Bertie? Our little bit of trouble, I mean?”
“Oh, yes! Aunt Agatha was telling me.”
“We leave our country for our country’s good,” said Eustace.
“And let there be no moaning at the bar,” said Claude, “when I put out to sea. What did Aunt Agatha tell you?”
“She said you poured lemonade on the Junior Dean.”
“I wish the deuce,” said Claude, annoyed, “that people would get these things right. It wasn’t the Junior Dean. It was the Senior Tutor.”
“And it wasn’t lemonade,” said Eustace. “It was soda water. The dear old thing happened to be standing just under our window while I was leaning out with a syphon in my hand and—well, it would have been chucking away the opportunity of a lifetime if I hadn’t let him have it.”
“Simply chucking it away,” agreed Claude.
“Might never have occurred again,” said Eustace.
“Hundred to one against it,” said Claude.
“Now what,” said Eustace, “do you propose to do, Bertie, in the way of entertaining the handsome guests tonight?”
“My idea was to have a bite of dinner in the flat,” I said. “Jeeves is getting it ready now.”
“And afterwards?”
“Well, I thought we might chat of this and that, and then it struck me that you would probably like to turn in early, as your train goes about ten or something, doesn’t it?”
The twins looked at each other in a pitying sort of way.
“Bertie,” said Eustace, “you’ve got the program nearly right, but not quite. I envisage the evening’s events thus. We will toddle along to Ciro’s after dinner. It’s an extension night, isn’t it? Well, that will see us through till about two-thirty or three.”
“After which, no doubt,” said Claude unctuously, “the Lord will provide.”
“But I thought you would want to get a good night’s rest.”
“Good night’s rest!” said Eustace. “My dear old chap, you don’t for a moment imagine that we are dreaming of going to bed tonight, do you?”
By two o'clock the twins were beginning to go nicelyI suppose the fact of the matter is, I’m not the man I was. I mean, these all night vigils don’t seem to fascinate me as they used to a few years ago. I can remember the time, when I was up at Oxford, when a Covent Garden ball till six in the morning, with breakfast at the Hammans and probably a free fight with a few selected costermongers to follow, seemed to me what the doctor ordered. But nowadays two o’clock is about my limit; and by two o’clock the twins were just settling down and beginning to go nicely. So far as I can remember, we went on from Ciro’s to play chemmy with some fellows I don’t recall having met before, and it must have been about nine in the morning when we fetched up again at the flat. By which time, I’m bound to admit, so far as I was concerned, the first careless freshness was beginning to wear off a bit. In fact I’d got just enough strength to say good by to the twins, wish them a pleasant voyage and a happy and successful career in South Africa, and stagger into bed. The last I remember was hearing the blighters chanting like larks under the cold shower, breaking off from time to time to shout to Jeeves to rush along the eggs and bacon.
It must have been about one in the afternoon when I woke. I was feeling more or less like something the Pure Food Committee had rejected, but there was one bright thought which cheered me up and that was that about now the twins would be leaning on the rail of the liner, taking their last glimpse of the dear old homeland. Which made it all the more of a shock when the door opened and Claude walked in.
“Hullo, Bertie!” said Claude. “Had a nice, refreshing sleep? Now what about a good old bite of luncheon?”
I’d been having so many distorted nightmares since I had dropped off to sleep that for half a minute I thought this was simply one more of them and the worst of the lot. It was only when Claude sat down on my feet that I got on to the fact that this was stern reality.
“Great Scott! What on earth are you doing here?” I gurgled.
Claude looked at me reproachfully.
“Hardly the tone I like to hear in a host, Bertie,” he said reprovingly. “Why, it was only last night, that you were saying you wished I was stopping a good long time. Your dream has come true. I am!”
“But why aren’t you on your way to South Africa?”
“Now that,” said Claude, “is a point I rather thought you would want to have explained. It’s like this, old man. You remember that girl you introduced me to at Ciro’s last night?”
“Which girl?”
“There was only one,” said Claude coldly. “Only one that counted, that is to say. Her name was Marion Wardour. I danced with her a good deal, if you remember.”
I began to recollect in a hazy sort of way. Marion Wardour has been a pal of mine for some time. A very good sort. She’s playing in that show at the Apollo at the moment. I remembered now that she had been at Ciro’s with a party the night before and the twins had insisted on being introduced.
“We are soul mates, Bertie,” said Claude. “I found it out quite early in the p. m., and the more thought I’ve given to the matter the more convinced I’ve become. It happens like that now and then, you know. Two hearts that beat as one, I mean, and all that sort of thing. So the long and the short of it is that I gave old Eustace the slip at Waterloo and slid back here. The idea of going to South Africa and leaving a girl like that in England doesn’t appeal to me a bit. I’m all for thinking imperially and giving the Colonies a leg-up and all that sort of thing, but it can’t be done. After all,” said Claude reasonably, “South Africa has got along all right without me up till now, so why shouldn’t it stick it?”
“But what about Van Alstyne, or whatever his name is? He’ll be expecting