The Inimitable Jeeves. P. G. WodehouseЧитать онлайн книгу.
be a Sherlock Holmes or anything of that order, but the moment I looked at her I said to myself, "The girl plays the organ in a village church!"
Well, we gazed at one another for a bit, and there was a certain amount of chit-chat, and then I tore myself away. But before I went I had been booked up to take brother and the girl for a nice drive that afternoon. And the thought of it depressed me to such an extent that I felt there was only one thing to be done. I went straight back to my room, dug out the cummerbund, and draped it round the old tum. I turned round and Jeeves shied like a startled mustang.
"I beg your pardon, sir," he said in a sort of hushed voice. "You are surely not proposing to appear in public in that thing?"
"The cummerbund?" I said in a careless, debonair way, passing it off. "Oh, rather!"
"I should not advise it, sir, really I shouldn't."
"Why not?"
"The effect, sir, is loud in the extreme."
I tackled the blighter squarely. I mean to say, nobody knows better than I do that Jeeves is a master mind and all that, but, dash it, a fellow must call his soul his own. You can't be a serf to your valet. Besides, I was feeling pretty low and the cummerbund was the only thing which could cheer me up.
"You know, the trouble with you, Jeeves," I said, "is that you're too—what's the word I want?—too bally insular. You can't realise that you aren't in Piccadilly all the time. In a place like this a bit of colour and touch of the poetic is expected of you. Why, I've just seen a fellow downstairs in a morning suit of yellow velvet."
"Nevertheless, sir——"
"Jeeves," I said firmly, "my mind is made up. I am feeling a little low spirited and need cheering. Besides, what's wrong with it? This cummerbund seems to me to be called for. I consider that it has rather a Spanish effect. A touch of the hidalgo. Sort of Vicente y Blasco What's-his-name stuff. The jolly old hidalgo off to the bull fight."
"Very good, sir," said Jeeves coldly.
Dashed upsetting, this sort of thing. If there's one thing that gives me the pip, it's unpleasantness in the home; and I could see that relations were going to be pretty fairly strained for a while. And, coming on top of Aunt Agatha's bombshell about the Hemmingway girl, I don't mind confessing it made me feel more or less as though nobody loved me.
* * * * *
The drive that afternoon was about as mouldy as I had expected. The curate chappie prattled on of this and that; the girl admired the view; and I got a headache early in the proceedings which started at the soles of my feet and got worse all the way up. I tottered back to my room to dress for dinner, feeling like a toad under the harrow. If it hadn't been for that cummerbund business earlier in the day I could have sobbed on Jeeves's neck and poured out all my troubles to him. Even as it was, I couldn't keep the thing entirely to myself.
"I say, Jeeves," I said.
"Sir?"
"Mix me a stiffish brandy and soda."
"Yes, sir."
"Stiffish, Jeeves. Not too much soda, but splash the brandy about a bit."
"Very good, sir."
After imbibing, I felt a shade better.
"Jeeves," I said.
"Sir?"
"I rather fancy I'm in the soup, Jeeves."
"Indeed, sir?"
I eyed the man narrowly. Dashed aloof his manner was. Still brooding over the cummerbund.
"Yes. Right up to the hocks," I said, suppressing the pride of the Woosters and trying to induce him to be a bit matier. "Have you seen a girl popping about here with a parson brother?"
"Miss Hemmingway, sir? Yes, sir."
"Aunt Agatha wants me to marry her."
"Indeed, sir?"
"Well, what about it?"
"Sir?"
"I mean, have you anything to suggest?"
"No, sir."
The blighter's manner was so cold and unchummy that I bit the bullet and had a dash at being airy.
"Oh, well, tra-la-la!" I said.
"Precisely, sir," said Jeeves.
And that was, so to speak, that.
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