My Man Jeeves by Pelham Grenville Wodehouse (reading cloud ebooks TXT) 📖

Mrs. Cardew.”

 

She gave a sort of scream. I’ve often thought how interesting it must

be to be one of those Exchange girls. The things they must hear, don’t

you know. Bobbie’s howl and gulp and Mrs. Bobbie’s scream and all about

my feet and all that. Most interesting it must be.

 

“He’s remembered it!” she gasped. “Did you tell him?”

 

“No.”

 

Well, I hadn’t.

 

“Mr. Pepper.”

 

“Yes?”

 

“Was he—has he been—was he very worried?”

 

I chuckled. This was where I was billed to be the life and soul of the

party.

 

“Worried! He was about the most worried man between here and Edinburgh.

He has been worrying as if he was paid to do it by the nation. He has

started out to worry after breakfast, and–-”

 

Oh, well, you can never tell with women. My idea was that we should

pass the rest of the night slapping each other on the back across the

wire, and telling each other what bally brainy conspirators we were,

don’t you know, and all that. But I’d got just as far as this, when she

bit at me. Absolutely! I heard the snap. And then she said “Oh!” in

that choked kind of way. And when a woman says “Oh!” like that, it

means all the bad words she’d love to say if she only knew them.

 

And then she began.

 

“What brutes men are! What horrid brutes! How you could stand by and

see poor dear Bobbie worrying himself into a fever, when a word from

you would have put everything right, I can’t–-”

 

“But–-”

 

“And you call yourself his friend! His friend!” (Metallic laugh, most

unpleasant.) “It shows how one can be deceived. I used to think you a

kind-hearted man.”

 

“But, I say, when I suggested the thing, you thought it perfectly–-”

 

“I thought it hateful, abominable.”

 

“But you said it was absolutely top–-”

 

“I said nothing of the kind. And if I did, I didn’t mean it. I don’t

wish to be unjust, Mr. Pepper, but I must say that to me there seems to

be something positively fiendish in a man who can go out of his way to

separate a husband from his wife, simply in order to amuse himself by

gloating over his agony–-”

 

“But–-!”

 

“When one single word would have–-”

 

“But you made me promise not to–-” I bleated.

 

“And if I did, do you suppose I didn’t expect you to have the sense to

break your promise?”

 

I had finished. I had no further observations to make. I hung up the

receiver, and crawled into bed.

 

*

 

I still see Bobbie when he comes to the club, but I do not visit

the old homestead. He is friendly, but he stops short of issuing

invitations. I ran across Mary at the Academy last week, and her eyes

went through me like a couple of bullets through a pat of butter. And

as they came out the other side, and I limped off to piece myself

together again, there occurred to me the simple epitaph which, when I

am no more, I intend to have inscribed on my tombstone. It was this:

“He was a man who acted from the best motives. There is one born every

minute.”

HELPING FREDDIE

I don’t want to bore you, don’t you know, and all that sort of rot, but

I must tell you about dear old Freddie Meadowes. I’m not a flier at

literary style, and all that, but I’ll get some writer chappie to give

the thing a wash and brush up when I’ve finished, so that’ll be all

right.

 

Dear old Freddie, don’t you know, has been a dear old pal of mine for

years and years; so when I went into the club one morning and found him

sitting alone in a dark corner, staring glassily at nothing, and

generally looking like the last rose of summer, you can understand I

was quite disturbed about it. As a rule, the old rotter is the life and

soul of our set. Quite the little lump of fun, and all that sort of

thing.

 

Jimmy Pinkerton was with me at the time. Jimmy’s a fellow who writes

plays—a deuced brainy sort of fellow—and between us we set to work to

question the poor pop-eyed chappie, until finally we got at what the

matter was.

 

As we might have guessed, it was a girl. He had had a quarrel with

Angela West, the girl he was engaged to, and she had broken off the

engagement. What the row had been about he didn’t say, but apparently

she was pretty well fed up. She wouldn’t let him come near her, refused

to talk on the phone, and sent back his letters unopened.

 

I was sorry for poor old Freddie. I knew what it felt like. I was once

in love myself with a girl called Elizabeth Shoolbred, and the fact

that she couldn’t stand me at any price will be recorded in my

autobiography. I knew the thing for Freddie.

 

“Change of scene is what you want, old scout,” I said. “Come with me to

Marvis Bay. I’ve taken a cottage there. Jimmy’s coming down on the

twenty-fourth. We’ll be a cosy party.”

 

“He’s absolutely right,” said Jimmy. “Change of scene’s the thing. I

knew a man. Girl refused him. Man went abroad. Two months later girl

wired him, ‘Come back. Muriel.’ Man started to write out a reply;

suddenly found that he couldn’t remember girl’s surname; so never

answered at all.”

 

But Freddie wouldn’t be comforted. He just went on looking as if he had

swallowed his last sixpence. However, I got him to promise to come to

Marvis Bay with me. He said he might as well be there as anywhere.

 

Do you know Marvis Bay? It’s in Dorsetshire. It isn’t what you’d call a

fiercely exciting spot, but it has its good points. You spend the day

there bathing and sitting on the sands, and in the evening you stroll

out on the shore with the gnats. At nine o’clock you rub ointment on

the wounds and go to bed.

 

It seemed to suit poor old Freddie. Once the moon was up and the breeze

sighing in the trees, you couldn’t drag him from that beach with a

rope. He became quite a popular pet with the gnats. They’d hang round

waiting for him to come out, and would give perfectly good strollers

the miss-in-baulk just so as to be in good condition for him.

 

Yes, it was a peaceful sort of life, but by the end of the first week I

began to wish that Jimmy Pinkerton had arranged to come down earlier:

for as a companion Freddie, poor old chap, wasn’t anything to write

home to mother about. When he wasn’t chewing a pipe and scowling at the

carpet, he was sitting at the piano, playing “The Rosary” with one

finger. He couldn’t play anything except “The Rosary,” and he couldn’t

play much of that. Somewhere round about the third bar a fuse would

blow out, and he’d have to start all over again.

 

He was playing it as usual one morning when I came in from bathing.

 

“Reggie,” he said, in a hollow voice, looking up, “I’ve seen her.”

 

“Seen her?” I said. “What, Miss West?”

 

“I was down at the post office, getting the letters, and we met in the

doorway. She cut me!”

 

He started “The Rosary” again, and side-slipped in the second bar.

 

“Reggie,” he said, “you ought never to have brought me here. I must go

away.”

 

“Go away?” I said. “Don’t talk such rot. This is the best thing that

could have happened. This is where you come out strong.”

 

“She cut me.”

 

“Never mind. Be a sportsman. Have another dash at her.”

 

“She looked clean through me!”

 

“Of course she did. But don’t mind that. Put this thing in my hands.

I’ll see you through. Now, what you want,” I said, “is to place her

under some obligation to you. What you want is to get her timidly

thanking you. What you want–-”

 

“But what’s she going to thank me timidly for?”

 

I thought for a moment.

 

“Look out for a chance and save her from drowning,” I said.

 

“I can’t swim,” said Freddie.

 

That was Freddie all over, don’t you know. A dear old chap in a

thousand ways, but no help to a fellow, if you know what I mean.

 

He cranked up the piano once more and I sprinted for the open.

 

I strolled out on to the sands and began to think this thing over.

There was no doubt that the brain-work had got to be done by me. Dear

old Freddie had his strong qualities. He was top-hole at polo, and in

happier days I’ve heard him give an imitation of cats fighting in a

backyard that would have surprised you. But apart from that he wasn’t a

man of enterprise.

 

Well, don’t you know, I was rounding some rocks, with my brain whirring

like a dynamo, when I caught sight of a blue dress, and, by Jove, it

was the girl. I had never met her, but Freddie had sixteen photographs

of her sprinkled round his bedroom, and I knew I couldn’t be mistaken.

She was sitting on the sand, helping a small, fat child build a castle.

On a chair close by was an elderly lady reading a novel. I heard the

girl call her “aunt.” So, doing the Sherlock Holmes business, I deduced

that the fat child was her cousin. It struck me that if Freddie had

been there he would probably have tried to work up some sentiment about

the kid on the strength of it. Personally I couldn’t manage it. I don’t

think I ever saw a child who made me feel less sentimental. He was one

of those round, bulging kids.

 

After he had finished the castle he seemed to get bored with life, and

began to whimper. The girl took him off to where a fellow was selling

sweets at a stall. And I walked on.

 

Now, fellows, if you ask them, will tell you that I’m a chump. Well, I

don’t mind. I admit it. I am a chump. All the Peppers have been

chumps. But what I do say is that every now and then, when you’d least

expect it, I get a pretty hot brain-wave; and that’s what happened now.

I doubt if the idea that came to me then would have occurred to a

single one of any dozen of the brainiest chappies you care to name.

 

It came to me on my return journey. I was walking back along the shore,

when I saw the fat kid meditatively smacking a jelly-fish with a spade.

The girl wasn’t with him. In fact, there didn’t seem to be any one in

sight. I was just going to pass on when I got the brain-wave. I thought

the whole thing out in a flash, don’t you know. From what I had seen of

the two, the girl was evidently fond of this kid, and, anyhow, he was

her cousin, so what I said to myself was this: If I kidnap this young

heavy-weight for the moment, and if, when the girl has got frightfully

anxious about where he can have got to, dear old Freddie suddenly

appears leading the infant by the hand and telling a story to the

effect that he has found him wandering at large about the country and

practically saved his life, why,