The Inimitable Jeeves by Pelham Grenville Wodehouse (free novels to read .TXT) 📖

"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 siphon in my hand. He looked up, and—well, it would have been chucking away the opportunity of a lifetime if I hadn't let him have it in the eyeball."

"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 to-night?"

"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 programme 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, "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 to-night, do you?"

I 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 Hammams 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.

As 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, as 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-bye 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.

"Hallo, Bertie!" said Claude. "Had a nice refreshing sleep? Now, what about a good old bite of lunch?"

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 you to turn up."

"Oh, he'll have Eustace. That'll satisfy him. Very sound fellow, Eustace. Probably end up by being a magnate of some kind. I shall watch his future progress with considerable interest. And now you must excuse me for a moment, Bertie. I want to go and hunt up Jeeves and get him to mix me one of those pick-me-ups of his. For some reason which I can't explain, I've got a slight headache this morning."

And, believe me or believe me not, the door had hardly closed behind him when in blew Eustace with a shining morning face that made me ill to look at.

"Oh, my aunt!" I said.

Eustace started to giggle pretty freely.

"Smooth work, Bertie, smooth work!" he said. "I'm sorry for poor old Claude, but there was no alternative. I eluded his vigilance at Waterloo and snaked off in a taxi. I suppose the poor old ass is wondering where the deuce I've got to. But it couldn't be helped. If you really seriously expected me to go slogging off to South Africa, you shouldn't have introduced me to Miss Wardour last night. I want to tell you all about that, Bertie. I'm not a man," said Eustace, sitting down on the bed, "who falls in love with every girl he sees. I suppose 'strong, silent,' would be the best description you could find for me. But when I do meet my affinity I don't waste time. I——"

"Oh, heaven! Are you in love with Marion Wardour, too?"

"Too? What do you mean, 'too'?"

I was going to tell him about Claude, when the blighter came in in person, looking like a giant refreshed. There's no doubt that Jeeves's pick-me-ups will produce immediate results in anything short of an Egyptian mummy. It's something he puts in them—the Worcester sauce or something. Claude had revived like a watered flower, but he nearly had a relapse when he saw his bally brother goggling at him over the bed-rail.

"What on earth are you doing here?" he said.

"What on earth are you doing here?" said Eustace.

"Have you come back to inflict your beastly society upon Miss Wardour?"

"Is that why you've come back?"

They thrashed the subject out a bit further.

"Well," said Claude at last. "I suppose it can't be helped. If you're here, you're here. May the best man win!"

"Yes, but dash it all!" I managed to put in at this point. "What's the idea? Where do you think you're going to stay if you stick on in London?"

"Why, here," said Eustace, surprised.

"Where else?" said Claude, raising his eyebrows.

"You won't object to putting us up, Bertie?" said Eustace.

"Not a sportsman like you," said Claude.

"But, you silly asses, suppose Aunt Agatha finds out that I'm hiding you when you ought to be in South Africa? Where do I get off?"

"Where does he get off?" Claude asked Eustace.

"Oh, I expect he'll manage somehow," said Eustace to Claude.

"Of course," said Claude, quite cheered up. "He'll manage."

"Rather!" said Eustace. "A resourceful chap like Bertie! Of course he will."

"And now," said Claude, shelving the subject, "what about that bite of lunch we were discussing a moment ago, Bertie? That stuff good old Jeeves slipped into me just now has given me what you might call an appetite. Something in the nature of six chops and a batter pudding would about meet the case, I think."

I suppose every chappie in the world has black periods in his life to which he can't look back without the smouldering eye and the silent shudder. Some coves, if you can judge by the novels you read nowadays, have them practically all the time; but, what with enjoying a sizable private income and a topping digestion, I'm bound to say it isn't very often I find my own existence getting a flat tyre. That's why this particular epoch is one that I don't think about more often than I can help. For the days that followed the unexpected resurrection of the blighted twins were so absolutely foul that the old nerves began to stick out of my body a foot long and curling at the ends. All of a twitter, believe me. I imagine the fact of the matter is that we Woosters are so frightfully honest and open and all that, that it gives us the pip to have to deceive.

All was quiet along the Potomac for about twenty-four hours, and then Aunt Agatha trickled in to have a chat. Twenty minutes earlier and she would have found the twins gaily shoving themselves outside a couple of rashers and an egg. She sank into a chair, and I could see that she was not in her usual sunny spirits.

"Bertie," she said, "I am uneasy."

So was I. I didn't know how long she intended to stop, or when the twins were coming back.

"I wonder," she said, "if I took too harsh a view towards Claude and Eustace."

"You couldn't."

"What do you mean?"

"I—er—mean it would be so unlike you to be harsh to anybody, Aunt Agatha." And not bad, either. I mean, quick—like that—without thinking. It pleased the old relative, and she looked at me with slightly less loathing than she usually does.

"It is nice of you to say that, Bertie, but what I was thinking was, are they safe?"

"Are they what?"

It seemed such a rummy adjective to apply to the twins, they being about as innocuous as a couple of sprightly young tarantulas.

"Do you think all is well with them?"

"How do you mean?"

Aunt Agatha eyed me almost wistfully.

"Has it ever occurred to you, Bertie," she said, "that your Uncle George may be psychic?"

She seemed to me to be changing the subject.

"Psychic?"

"Do you think it is possible that he could see things not visible to the normal eye?"

I thought it dashed possible, if not probable. I don't know if you've ever met