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

sir.”

 

The light of hope gleamed in Rocky’s eyes. He looked at Jeeves in a

startled way, dazed by the man’s vast intellect.

 

“But who would do it?” he said. “It would have to be a pretty smart

sort of man, a man who would notice things.”

 

“Jeeves!” I said. “Let Jeeves do it.”

 

“But would he?”

 

“You would do it, wouldn’t you, Jeeves?”

 

For the first time in our long connection I observed Jeeves almost

smile. The corner of his mouth curved quite a quarter of an inch, and

for a moment his eye ceased to look like a meditative fish’s.

 

“I should be delighted to oblige, sir. As a matter of fact, I have

already visited some of New York’s places of interest on my evening

out, and it would be most enjoyable to make a practice of the pursuit.”

 

“Fine! I know exactly what your aunt wants to hear about, Rocky. She

wants an earful of cabaret stuff. The place you ought to go to first,

Jeeves, is Reigelheimer’s. It’s on Forty-second Street. Anybody will

show you the way.”

 

Jeeves shook his head.

 

“Pardon me, sir. People are no longer going to Reigelheimer’s. The

place at the moment is Frolics on the Roof.”

 

“You see?” I said to Rocky. “Leave it to Jeeves. He knows.”

 

It isn’t often that you find an entire group of your fellow-humans

happy in this world; but our little circle was certainly an example of

the fact that it can be done. We were all full of beans. Everything

went absolutely right from the start.

 

Jeeves was happy, partly because he loves to exercise his giant brain,

and partly because he was having a corking time among the bright lights.

I saw him one night at the Midnight Revels. He was sitting at a table

on the edge of the dancing floor, doing himself remarkably well with a

fat cigar and a bottle of the best. I’d never imagined he could look so

nearly human. His face wore an expression of austere benevolence, and he

was making notes in a small book.

 

As for the rest of us, I was feeling pretty good, because I was fond

of old Rocky and glad to be able to do him a good turn. Rocky was

perfectly contented, because he was still able to sit on fences in his

pyjamas and watch worms. And, as for the aunt, she seemed tickled to

death. She was getting Broadway at pretty long range, but it seemed to

be hitting her just right. I read one of her letters to Rocky, and it

was full of life.

 

But then Rocky’s letters, based on Jeeves’s notes, were enough to buck

anybody up. It was rummy when you came to think of it. There was I,

loving the life, while the mere mention of it gave Rocky a tired

feeling; yet here is a letter I wrote to a pal of mine in London:

 

“DEAR FREDDIE,—Well, here I am in New York. It’s not a bad place.

I’m not having a bad time. Everything’s pretty all right. The

cabarets aren’t bad. Don’t know when I shall be back. How’s

everybody? Cheer-o!—Yours,

 

“BERTIE.

 

“PS.—Seen old Ted lately?”

 

Not that I cared about Ted; but if I hadn’t dragged him in I couldn’t

have got the confounded thing on to the second page.

 

Now here’s old Rocky on exactly the same subject:

 

“DEAREST AUNT ISABEL,—How can I ever thank you enough for giving

me the opportunity to live in this astounding city! New York seems

more wonderful every day.

 

“Fifth Avenue is at its best, of course, just now. The dresses are

magnificent!”

 

Wads of stuff about the dresses. I didn’t know Jeeves was such an

authority.

 

“I was out with some of the crowd at the Midnight Revels the other

night. We took in a show first, after a little dinner at a new

place on Forty-third Street. We were quite a gay party. Georgie

Cohan looked in about midnight and got off a good one about Willie

Collier. Fred Stone could only stay a minute, but Doug. Fairbanks

did all sorts of stunts and made us roar. Diamond Jim Brady was

there, as usual, and Laurette Taylor showed up with a party. The

show at the Revels is quite good. I am enclosing a programme.

 

“Last night a few of us went round to Frolics on the Roof–-”

 

And so on and so forth, yards of it. I suppose it’s the artistic

temperament or something. What I mean is, it’s easier for a chappie

who’s used to writing poems and that sort of tosh to put a bit of a

punch into a letter than it is for a chappie like me. Anyway, there’s

no doubt that Rocky’s correspondence was hot stuff. I called Jeeves in

and congratulated him.

 

“Jeeves, you’re a wonder!”

 

“Thank you, sir.”

 

“How you notice everything at these places beats me. I couldn’t tell

you a thing about them, except that I’ve had a good time.”

 

“It’s just a knack, sir.”

 

“Well, Mr. Todd’s letters ought to brace Miss Rockmetteller all right,

what?”

 

“Undoubtedly, sir,” agreed Jeeves.

 

And, by Jove, they did! They certainly did, by George! What I mean to

say is, I was sitting in the apartment one afternoon, about a month

after the thing had started, smoking a cigarette and resting the old

bean, when the door opened and the voice of Jeeves burst the silence

like a bomb.

 

It wasn’t that he spoke loud. He has one of those soft, soothing voices

that slide through the atmosphere like the note of a far-off sheep. It

was what he said made me leap like a young gazelle.

 

“Miss Rockmetteller!”

 

And in came a large, solid female.

 

The situation floored me. I’m not denying it. Hamlet must have felt

much as I did when his father’s ghost bobbed up in the fairway. I’d

come to look on Rocky’s aunt as such a permanency at her own home that

it didn’t seem possible that she could really be here in New York. I

stared at her. Then I looked at Jeeves. He was standing there in an

attitude of dignified detachment, the chump, when, if ever he should

have been rallying round the young master, it was now.

 

Rocky’s aunt looked less like an invalid than any one I’ve ever seen,

except my Aunt Agatha. She had a good deal of Aunt Agatha about her, as

a matter of fact. She looked as if she might be deucedly dangerous if

put upon; and something seemed to tell me that she would certainly

regard herself as put upon if she ever found out the game which poor

old Rocky had been pulling on her.

 

“Good afternoon,” I managed to say.

 

“How do you do?” she said. “Mr. Cohan?”

 

“Er—no.”

 

“Mr. Fred Stone?”

 

“Not absolutely. As a matter of fact, my name’s Wooster—Bertie

Wooster.”

 

She seemed disappointed. The fine old name of Wooster appeared to mean

nothing in her life.

 

“Isn’t Rockmetteller home?” she said. “Where is he?”

 

She had me with the first shot. I couldn’t think of anything to say. I

couldn’t tell her that Rocky was down in the country, watching worms.

 

There was the faintest flutter of sound in the background. It was the

respectful cough with which Jeeves announces that he is about to speak

without having been spoken to.

 

“If you remember, sir, Mr. Todd went out in the automobile with a party

in the afternoon.”

 

“So he did, Jeeves; so he did,” I said, looking at my watch. “Did he

say when he would be back?”

 

“He gave me to understand, sir, that he would be somewhat late in

returning.”

 

He vanished; and the aunt took the chair which I’d forgotten to offer

her. She looked at me in rather a rummy way. It was a nasty look. It

made me feel as if I were something the dog had brought in and intended

to bury later on, when he had time. My own Aunt Agatha, back in England,

has looked at me in exactly the same way many a time, and it never fails

to make my spine curl.

 

“You seem very much at home here, young man. Are you a great friend of

Rockmetteller’s?”

 

“Oh, yes, rather!”

 

She frowned as if she had expected better things of old Rocky.

 

“Well, you need to be,” she said, “the way you treat his flat as your

own!”

 

I give you my word, this quite unforeseen slam simply robbed me of the

power of speech. I’d been looking on myself in the light of the dashing

host, and suddenly to be treated as an intruder jarred me. It wasn’t,

mark you, as if she had spoken in a way to suggest that she considered

my presence in the place as an ordinary social call. She obviously

looked on me as a cross between a burglar and the plumber’s man come

to fix the leak in the bathroom. It hurt her—my being there.

 

At this juncture, with the conversation showing every sign of being

about to die in awful agonies, an idea came to me. Tea—the good old

stand-by.

 

“Would you care for a cup of tea?” I said.

 

“Tea?”

 

She spoke as if she had never heard of the stuff.

 

“Nothing like a cup after a journey,” I said. “Bucks you up! Puts a bit

of zip into you. What I mean is, restores you, and so on, don’t you

know. I’ll go and tell Jeeves.”

 

I tottered down the passage to Jeeves’s lair. The man was reading the

evening paper as if he hadn’t a care in the world.

 

“Jeeves,” I said, “we want some tea.”

 

“Very good, sir.”

 

“I say, Jeeves, this is a bit thick, what?”

 

I wanted sympathy, don’t you know—sympathy and kindness. The old nerve

centres had had the deuce of a shock.

 

“She’s got the idea this place belongs to Mr. Todd. What on earth put

that into her head?”

 

Jeeves filled the kettle with a restrained dignity.

 

“No doubt because of Mr. Todd’s letters, sir,” he said. “It was my

suggestion, sir, if you remember, that they should be addressed from

this apartment in order that Mr. Todd should appear to possess a good

central residence in the city.”

 

I remembered. We had thought it a brainy scheme at the time.

 

“Well, it’s bally awkward, you know, Jeeves. She looks on me as an

intruder. By Jove! I suppose she thinks I’m someone who hangs about

here, touching Mr. Todd for free meals and borrowing his shirts.”

 

“Yes, sir.”

 

“It’s pretty rotten, you know.”

 

“Most disturbing, sir.”

 

“And there’s another thing: What are we to do about Mr. Todd? We’ve got

to get him up here as soon as ever we can. When you have brought the

tea you had better go out and send him a telegram, telling him to come

up by the next train.”

 

“I have already done so, sir. I took the liberty of writing the message

and dispatching it by the lift attendant.”

 

“By Jove, you think of everything, Jeeves!”

 

“Thank you, sir. A little buttered toast with the tea? Just so, sir.

Thank you.”

 

I went back to the sitting-room. She hadn’t moved an inch. She was still

bolt upright on the edge of her chair, gripping her umbrella like a

hammer-thrower. She gave me another of those looks as I came in. There

was no doubt about it;