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

girls who have a

way of looking at you with their big eyes as if they thought you were

the greatest thing on earth and wondered that you hadn’t got on to it

yet yourself. She sat there in a sort of shrinking way, looking at me

as if she were saying to herself, “Oh, I do hope this great strong man

isn’t going to hurt me.” She gave a fellow a protective kind of

feeling, made him want to stroke her hand and say, “There, there,

little one!” or words to that effect. She made me feel that there was

nothing I wouldn’t do for her. She was rather like one of those

innocent-tasting American drinks which creep imperceptibly into your

system so that, before you know what you’re doing, you’re starting out

to reform the world by force if necessary and pausing on your way to

tell the large man in the corner that, if he looks at you like that,

you will knock his head off. What I mean is, she made me feel alert and

dashing, like a jolly old knight-errant or something of that kind. I

felt that I was with her in this thing to the limit.

 

“I don’t see why your uncle shouldn’t be most awfully bucked,” I said

to Corky. “He will think Miss Singer the ideal wife for you.”

 

Corky declined to cheer up.

 

“You don’t know him. Even if he did like Muriel he wouldn’t admit it.

That’s the sort of pig-headed guy he is. It would be a matter of

principle with him to kick. All he would consider would be that I had

gone and taken an important step without asking his advice, and he

would raise Cain automatically. He’s always done it.”

 

I strained the old bean to meet this emergency.

 

“You want to work it so that he makes Miss Singer’s acquaintance

without knowing that you know her. Then you come along–-”

 

“But how can I work it that way?”

 

I saw his point. That was the catch.

 

“There’s only one thing to do,” I said.

 

“What’s that?”

 

“Leave it to Jeeves.”

 

And I rang the bell.

 

“Sir?” said Jeeves, kind of manifesting himself. One of the rummy

things about Jeeves is that, unless you watch like a hawk, you very

seldom see him come into a room. He’s like one of those weird chappies

in India who dissolve themselves into thin air and nip through space in

a sort of disembodied way and assemble the parts again just where they

want them. I’ve got a cousin who’s what they call a Theosophist, and he

says he’s often nearly worked the thing himself, but couldn’t quite

bring it off, probably owing to having fed in his boyhood on the flesh

of animals slain in anger and pie.

 

The moment I saw the man standing there, registering respectful

attention, a weight seemed to roll off my mind. I felt like a lost

child who spots his father in the offing. There was something about him

that gave me confidence.

 

Jeeves is a tallish man, with one of those dark, shrewd faces. His eye

gleams with the light of pure intelligence.

 

“Jeeves, we want your advice.”

 

“Very good, sir.”

 

I boiled down Corky’s painful case into a few well-chosen words.

 

“So you see what it amount to, Jeeves. We want you to suggest some way

by which Mr. Worple can make Miss Singer’s acquaintance without getting

on to the fact that Mr. Corcoran already knows her. Understand?”

 

“Perfectly, sir.”

 

“Well, try to think of something.”

 

“I have thought of something already, sir.”

 

“You have!”

 

“The scheme I would suggest cannot fail of success, but it has what may

seem to you a drawback, sir, in that it requires a certain financial

outlay.”

 

“He means,” I translated to Corky, “that he has got a pippin of an

idea, but it’s going to cost a bit.”

 

Naturally the poor chap’s face dropped, for this seemed to dish the

whole thing. But I was still under the influence of the girl’s melting

gaze, and I saw that this was where I started in as a knight-errant.

 

“You can count on me for all that sort of thing, Corky,” I said. “Only

too glad. Carry on, Jeeves.”

 

“I would suggest, sir, that Mr. Corcoran take advantage of Mr. Worple’s

attachment to ornithology.”

 

“How on earth did you know that he was fond of birds?”

 

“It is the way these New York apartments are constructed, sir. Quite

unlike our London houses. The partitions between the rooms are of the

flimsiest nature. With no wish to overhear, I have sometimes heard Mr.

Corcoran expressing himself with a generous strength on the subject I

have mentioned.”

 

“Oh! Well?”

 

“Why should not the young lady write a small volume, to be entitled—let

us say—_The Children’s Book of American Birds_, and dedicate it

to Mr. Worple! A limited edition could be published at your expense,

sir, and a great deal of the book would, of course, be given over to

eulogistic remarks concerning Mr. Worple’s own larger treatise on the

same subject. I should recommend the dispatching of a presentation copy

to Mr. Worple, immediately on publication, accompanied by a letter in

which the young lady asks to be allowed to make the acquaintance of one

to whom she owes so much. This would, I fancy, produce the desired

result, but as I say, the expense involved would be considerable.”

 

I felt like the proprietor of a performing dog on the vaudeville stage

when the tyke has just pulled off his trick without a hitch. I had

betted on Jeeves all along, and I had known that he wouldn’t let me

down. It beats me sometimes why a man with his genius is satisfied to

hang around pressing my clothes and whatnot. If I had half Jeeves’s

brain, I should have a stab, at being Prime Minister or something.

 

“Jeeves,” I said, “that is absolutely ripping! One of your very best

efforts.”

 

“Thank you, sir.”

 

The girl made an objection.

 

“But I’m sure I couldn’t write a book about anything. I can’t even

write good letters.”

 

“Muriel’s talents,” said Corky, with a little cough “lie more in the

direction of the drama, Bertie. I didn’t mention it before, but one of

our reasons for being a trifle nervous as to how Uncle Alexander will

receive the news is that Muriel is in the chorus of that show _Choose

your Exit_ at the Manhattan. It’s absurdly unreasonable, but we both

feel that that fact might increase Uncle Alexander’s natural tendency

to kick like a steer.”

 

I saw what he meant. Goodness knows there was fuss enough in our family

when I tried to marry into musical comedy a few years ago. And the

recollection of my Aunt Agatha’s attitude in the matter of Gussie and

the vaudeville girl was still fresh in my mind. I don’t know why it

is—one of these psychology sharps could explain it, I suppose—but

uncles and aunts, as a class, are always dead against the drama,

legitimate or otherwise. They don’t seem able to stick it at any price.

 

But Jeeves had a solution, of course.

 

“I fancy it would be a simple matter, sir, to find some impecunious

author who would be glad to do the actual composition of the volume for

a small fee. It is only necessary that the young lady’s name should

appear on the title page.”

 

“That’s true,” said Corky. “Sam Patterson would do it for a hundred

dollars. He writes a novelette, three short stories, and ten thousand

words of a serial for one of the all-fiction magazines under different

names every month. A little thing like this would be nothing to him.

I’ll get after him right away.”

 

“Fine!”

 

“Will that be all, sir?” said Jeeves. “Very good, sir. Thank you, sir.”

 

I always used to think that publishers had to be devilish intelligent

fellows, loaded down with the grey matter; but I’ve got their number

now. All a publisher has to do is to write cheques at intervals, while

a lot of deserving and industrious chappies rally round and do the real

work. I know, because I’ve been one myself. I simply sat tight in the

old apartment with a fountain-pen, and in due season a topping, shiny

book came along.

 

I happened to be down at Corky’s place when the first copies of _The

Children’s Book of American Birds_ bobbed up. Muriel Singer was

there, and we were talking of things in general when there was a bang

at the door and the parcel was delivered.

 

It was certainly some book. It had a red cover with a fowl of some

species on it, and underneath the girl’s name in gold letters. I opened

a copy at random.

 

“Often of a spring morning,” it said at the top of page twenty-one, “as

you wander through the fields, you will hear the sweet-toned,

carelessly flowing warble of the purple finch linnet. When you are

older you must read all about him in Mr. Alexander Worple’s wonderful

book—American Birds.”

 

You see. A boost for the uncle right away. And only a few pages later

there he was in the limelight again in connection with the yellow-billed

cuckoo. It was great stuff. The more I read, the more I admired the chap

who had written it and Jeeves’s genius in putting us on to the wheeze.

I didn’t see how the uncle could fail to drop. You can’t call a chap the

world’s greatest authority on the yellow-billed cuckoo without rousing a

certain disposition towards chumminess in him.

 

“It’s a cert!” I said.

 

“An absolute cinch!” said Corky.

 

And a day or two later he meandered up the Avenue to my apartment to

tell me that all was well. The uncle had written Muriel a letter so

dripping with the milk of human kindness that if he hadn’t known Mr.

Worple’s handwriting Corky would have refused to believe him the author

of it. Any time it suited Miss Singer to call, said the uncle, he would

be delighted to make her acquaintance.

 

Shortly after this I had to go out of town. Divers sound sportsmen had

invited me to pay visits to their country places, and it wasn’t for

several months that I settled down in the city again. I had been

wondering a lot, of course, about Corky, whether it all turned out

right, and so forth, and my first evening in New York, happening to pop

into a quiet sort of little restaurant which I go to when I don’t feel

inclined for the bright lights, I found Muriel Singer there, sitting by

herself at a table near the door. Corky, I took it, was out

telephoning. I went up and passed the time of day.

 

“Well, well, well, what?” I said.

 

“Why, Mr. Wooster! How do you do?”

 

“Corky around?”

 

“I beg your pardon?”

 

“You’re waiting for Corky, aren’t you?”

 

“Oh, I didn’t understand. No, I’m not waiting for him.”

 

It seemed to roe that there was a sort of something in her voice, a

kind of thingummy, you know.

 

“I say, you haven’t had a row with Corky, have you?”

 

“A row?”

 

“A spat, don’t you know—little misunderstanding—faults on both

sides—er—and all that sort of thing.”

 

“Why, whatever makes you think that?”

 

“Oh, well, as it were, what? What I mean is—I thought you usually

dined with him before you went to the theatre.”

 

“I’ve left the stage now.”

 

Suddenly the whole thing dawned on me.