A Damsel in Distress P. G. Wodehouse (sad books to read txt) 📖

like me; because by Jove, laddie,” said Reggie with solemn emphasis, “I could help you there. I’ve got the thing down fine. I’ve got the infallible dope.”

George smiled bleakly.

“You have? You’re a useful fellow to have around. I wish you would tell me what it is.”

“But you don’t need it.”

“No, of course not. I was forgetting.”

Reggie looked at his watch.

“We ought to be shifting in a quarter of an hour or so. I don’t want to be late. It appears that there’s a catch of some sort in this business of getting married. As far as I can make out, if you roll in after a certain hour, the Johnnie in charge of the proceedings gives you the miss-in-baulk, and you have to turn up again next day. However, we shall be all right unless we have a breakdown, and there’s not much chance of that. I’ve been tuning up the old car since seven this morning, and she’s sound in wind and limb, absolutely. Oil⁠—petrol⁠—water⁠—air⁠—nuts⁠—bolts⁠—sprockets⁠—carburetor⁠—all present and correct. I’ve been looking after them like a lot of baby sisters. Well, as I was saying, I’ve got the dope. A week ago I was just one of the mugs⁠—didn’t know a thing about it⁠—but now! Gaze on me, laddie! You see before you old Colonel Romeo, the Man who Knows! It all started on the night of the ball. There was the dickens of a big ball, you know, to celebrate old Boots’ coming-of-age⁠—to which, poor devil, he contributed nothing but the sunshine of his smile, never having learned to dance. On that occasion a most rummy and extraordinary thing happened. I got pickled to the eyebrows!” He laughed happily. “I don’t mean that that was a unique occurrence and so forth, because, when I was a bachelor, it was rather a habit of mine to get a trifle submerged every now and again on occasions of decent mirth and festivity. But the rummy thing that night was that I showed it. Up till then, I’ve been told by experts, I was a chappie in whom it was absolutely impossible to detect the symptoms. You might get a bit suspicious if you found I couldn’t move, but you could never be certain. On the night of the ball, however, I suppose I had been filling the radiator a trifle too enthusiastically. You see, I had deliberately tried to shove myself more or less below the surface in order to get enough nerve to propose to Alice. I don’t know what your experience has been, but mine is that proposing’s a thing that simply isn’t within the scope of a man who isn’t moderately woozled. I’ve often wondered how marriages ever occur in the dry States of America. Well, as I was saying, on the night of the ball a most rummy thing happened. I thought one of the waiters was you!”

He paused impressively to allow this startling statement to sink in.

“And was he?” said George.

“Absolutely not! That was the rummy part of it. He looked as like you as your twin brother.”

“I haven’t a twin brother.”

“No, I know what you mean, but what I mean to say is he looked just like your twin brother would have looked if you had had a twin brother. Well, I had a word or two with this chappie, and after a brief conversation it was borne in upon me that I was up to the gills. Alice was with me at the time, and noticed it too. Now you’d have thought that that would have put a girl off a fellow, and all that. But no. Nobody could have been more sympathetic. And she has confided to me since that it was seeing me in my oiled condition that really turned the scale. What I mean is, she made up her mind to save me from myself. You know how some girls are. Angels absolutely! Always on the look out to pluck brands from the burning, and whatnot. You may take it from me that the good seed was definitely sown that night.”

“Is that your recipe, then? You would advise the would-be bridegroom to buy a case of champagne and a wedding licence and get to work? After that it would be all over except sending out the invitations?”

Reggie shook his head.

“Not at all. You need a lot more than that. That’s only the start. You’ve got to follow up the good work, you see. That’s where a number of chappies would slip up, and I’m pretty certain I should have slipped up myself, but for another singularly rummy occurrence. Have you ever had a what-do-you-call it? What’s the word I want? One of those things fellows get sometimes.”

“Headaches?” hazarded George.

“No, no. Nothing like that. I don’t mean anything you get⁠—I mean something you get, if you know what I mean.”

“Measles?”

“Anonymous letter. That’s what I was trying to say. It’s a most extraordinary thing, and I can’t understand even now where the deuce they came from, but just about then I started to get a whole bunch of anonymous letters from some chappie unknown who didn’t sign his name.”

“What you mean is that the letters were anonymous,” said George.

“Absolutely. I used to get two or three a day sometimes. Whenever I went up to my room, I’d find another waiting for me on the dressing-table.”

“Offensive?”

“Eh?”

“Were the letters offensive? Anonymous letters usually are.”

“These weren’t. Not at all, and quite the reverse. They contained a series of perfectly topping tips on how a fellow should proceed who wants to get hold of a girl.”

“It sounds as though somebody had been teaching you jujitsu by post.”

“They were great! Real red-hot stuff straight from the stable. Priceless tips like ‘Make yourself indispensable to her in little ways,’ ‘Study her tastes,’ and so on and so forth. I tell you, laddie, I pretty soon stopped worrying about who was sending them to me, and concentrated the old bean on acting on them. They worked like magic. The last