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

>bursts? I have, by Jove! But then I’ve had it thrust on my

notice, by George, in a way I should imagine has happened to pretty

few fellows. And the limit was reached by that business of the

Yeardsley “Venus.”

 

To make you understand the full what-d’you-call-it of the situation, I

shall have to explain just how matters stood between Mrs. Yeardsley and

myself.

 

When I first knew her she was Elizabeth Shoolbred. Old Worcestershire

family; pots of money; pretty as a picture. Her brother Bill was at

Oxford with me.

 

I loved Elizabeth Shoolbred. I loved her, don’t you know. And there was

a time, for about a week, when we were engaged to be married. But just

as I was beginning to take a serious view of life and study furniture

catalogues and feel pretty solemn when the restaurant orchestra played

“The Wedding Glide,” I’m hanged if she didn’t break it off, and a month

later she was married to a fellow of the name of Yeardsley—Clarence

Yeardsley, an artist.

 

What with golf, and billiards, and a bit of racing, and fellows at the

club rallying round and kind of taking me out of myself, as it were, I

got over it, and came to look on the affair as a closed page in the

book of my life, if you know what I mean. It didn’t seem likely to me

that we should meet again, as she and Clarence had settled down in the

country somewhere and never came to London, and I’m bound to own that,

by the time I got her letter, the wound had pretty well healed, and I

was to a certain extent sitting up and taking nourishment. In fact, to

be absolutely honest, I was jolly thankful the thing had ended as it

had done.

 

This letter I’m telling you about arrived one morning out of a blue

sky, as it were. It ran like this:

 

“MY DEAR OLD REGGIE,—What ages it seems since I saw anything of

you. How are you? We have settled down here in the most perfect old

house, with a lovely garden, in the middle of delightful country.

Couldn’t you run down here for a few days? Clarence and I would be

so glad to see you. Bill is here, and is most anxious to meet you

again. He was speaking of you only this morning. Do come.

Wire your train, and I will send the car to meet you.

—Yours most sincerely,

 

ELIZABETH YEARDSLEY.

 

“P.S.—We can give you new milk and fresh eggs. Think of that!

 

“P.P.S.—Bill says our billiard-table is one of the best he has

ever played on.

 

“P.P.S.S.—We are only half a mile from a golf course. Bill says

it is better than St. Andrews.

 

“P.P.S.S.S.—You must come!”

 

Well, a fellow comes down to breakfast one morning, with a bit of a

head on, and finds a letter like that from a girl who might quite

easily have blighted his life! It rattled me rather, I must confess.

 

However, that bit about the golf settled me. I knew Bill knew what he

was talking about, and, if he said the course was so topping, it must

be something special. So I went.

 

Old Bill met me at the station with the car. I hadn’t come across him

for some months, and I was glad to see him again. And he apparently was

glad to see me.

 

“Thank goodness you’ve come,” he said, as we drove off. “I was just

about at my last grip.”

 

“What’s the trouble, old scout?” I asked.

 

“If I had the artistic what’s-its-name,” he went on, “if the mere

mention of pictures didn’t give me the pip, I dare say it wouldn’t be

so bad. As it is, it’s rotten!”

 

“Pictures?”

 

“Pictures. Nothing else is mentioned in this household. Clarence is an

artist. So is his father. And you know yourself what Elizabeth is like

when one gives her her head?”

 

I remembered then—it hadn’t come back to me before—that most of my

time with Elizabeth had been spent in picture-galleries. During the

period when I had let her do just what she wanted to do with me, I had

had to follow her like a dog through gallery after gallery, though

pictures are poison to me, just as they are to old Bill. Somehow it had

never struck me that she would still be going on in this way after

marrying an artist. I should have thought that by this time the mere

sight of a picture would have fed her up. Not so, however, according to

old Bill.

 

“They talk pictures at every meal,” he said. “I tell you, it makes a

chap feel out of it. How long are you down for?”

 

“A few days.”

 

“Take my tip, and let me send you a wire from London. I go there

to-morrow. I promised to play against the Scottish. The idea was

that I was to come back after the match. But you couldn’t get me

back with a lasso.”

 

I tried to point out the silver lining.

 

“But, Bill, old scout, your sister says there’s a most corking links

near here.”

 

He turned and stared at me, and nearly ran us into the bank.

 

“You don’t mean honestly she said that?”

 

“She said you said it was better than St. Andrews.”

 

“So I did. Was that all she said I said?”

 

“Well, wasn’t it enough?”

 

“She didn’t happen to mention that I added the words, ‘I don’t think’?”

 

“No, she forgot to tell me that.”

 

“It’s the worst course in Great Britain.”

 

I felt rather stunned, don’t you know. Whether it’s a bad habit to have

got into or not, I can’t say, but I simply can’t do without my daily

allowance of golf when I’m not in London.

 

I took another whirl at the silver lining.

 

“We’ll have to take it out in billiards,” I said. “I’m glad the table’s

good.”

 

“It depends what you call good. It’s half-size, and there’s a seven-inch

cut just out of baulk where Clarence’s cue slipped. Elizabeth has mended

it with pink silk. Very smart and dressy it looks, but it doesn’t improve

the thing as a billiard-table.”

 

“But she said you said–-”

 

“Must have been pulling your leg.”

 

We turned in at the drive gates of a good-sized house standing well

back from the road. It looked black and sinister in the dusk, and I

couldn’t help feeling, you know, like one of those Johnnies you read

about in stories who are lured to lonely houses for rummy purposes and

hear a shriek just as they get there. Elizabeth knew me well enough to

know that a specially good golf course was a safe draw to me. And she

had deliberately played on her knowledge. What was the game? That was

what I wanted to know. And then a sudden thought struck me which brought

me out in a cold perspiration. She had some girl down here and was going

to have a stab at marrying me off. I’ve often heard that young married

women are all over that sort of thing. Certainly she had said there was

nobody at the house but Clarence and herself and Bill and Clarence’s

father, but a woman who could take the name of St. Andrews in vain as

she had done wouldn’t be likely to stick at a trifle.

 

“Bill, old scout,” I said, “there aren’t any frightful girls or any rot

of that sort stopping here, are there?”

 

“Wish there were,” he said. “No such luck.”

 

As we pulled up at the front door, it opened, and a woman’s figure

appeared.

 

“Have you got him, Bill?” she said, which in my present frame of mind

struck me as a jolly creepy way of putting it. The sort of thing Lady

Macbeth might have said to Macbeth, don’t you know.

 

“Do you mean me?” I said.

 

She came down into the light. It was Elizabeth, looking just the same

as in the old days.

 

“Is that you, Reggie? I’m so glad you were able to come. I was afraid

you might have forgotten all about it. You know what you are. Come

along in and have some tea.”

 

*

 

Have you ever been turned down by a girl who afterwards married and

then been introduced to her husband? If so you’ll understand how I felt

when Clarence burst on me. You know the feeling. First of all, when you

hear about the marriage, you say to yourself, “I wonder what he’s like.”

Then you meet him, and think, “There must be some mistake. She can’t have

preferred this to me!” That’s what I thought, when I set eyes on

Clarence.

 

He was a little thin, nervous-looking chappie of about thirty-five. His

hair was getting grey at the temples and straggly on top. He wore

pince-nez, and he had a drooping moustache. I’m no Bombardier Wells

myself, but in front of Clarence I felt quite a nut. And Elizabeth,

mind you, is one of those tall, splendid girls who look like princesses.

Honestly, I believe women do it out of pure cussedness.

 

“How do you do, Mr. Pepper? Hark! Can you hear a mewing cat?” said

Clarence. All in one breath, don’t you know.

 

“Eh?” I said.

 

“A mewing cat. I feel sure I hear a mewing cat. Listen!”

 

While we were listening the door opened, and a white-haired old

gentleman came in. He was built on the same lines as Clarence, but was

an earlier model. I took him correctly, to be Mr. Yeardsley, senior.

Elizabeth introduced us.

 

“Father,” said Clarence, “did you meet a mewing cat outside? I feel

positive I heard a cat mewing.”

 

“No,” said the father, shaking his head; “no mewing cat.”

 

“I can’t bear mewing cats,” said Clarence. “A mewing cat gets on my

nerves!”

 

“A mewing cat is so trying,” said Elizabeth.

 

“I dislike mewing cats,” said old Mr. Yeardsley.

 

That was all about mewing cats for the moment. They seemed to think

they had covered the ground satisfactorily, and they went back to

pictures.

 

We talked pictures steadily till it was time to dress for dinner. At

least, they did. I just sort of sat around. Presently the subject of

picture-robberies came up. Somebody mentioned the “Monna Lisa,” and

then I happened to remember seeing something in the evening paper, as I

was coming down in the train, about some fellow somewhere having had a

valuable painting pinched by burglars the night before. It was the

first time I had had a chance of breaking into the conversation with

any effect, and I meant to make the most of it. The paper was in the

pocket of my overcoat in the hall. I went and fetched it.

 

“Here it is,” I said. “A Romney belonging to Sir Bellamy Palmer–-”

 

They all shouted “What!” exactly at the same time, like a chorus.

Elizabeth grabbed the paper.

 

“Let me look! Yes. ‘Late last night burglars entered the residence of

Sir Bellamy Palmer, Dryden Park, Midford, Hants–-‘

 

“Why, that’s near here,” I said. “I passed through Midford–-”

 

“Dryden Park is only two miles from this house,” said Elizabeth. I

noticed her eyes were sparkling.

 

“Only two miles!” she said. “It might have been us! It might have been

the ‘Venus’!”

 

Old Mr. Yeardsley bounded in his chair.

 

“The ‘Venus’!” he cried.

 

They all seemed wonderfully excited. My little contribution to the

evening’s chat had made quite