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

for some reason she had taken a dislike to me. I

suppose because I wasn’t George M. Cohan. It was a bit hard on a chap.

 

“This is a surprise, what?” I said, after about five minutes’ restful

silence, trying to crank the conversation up again.

 

“What is a surprise?”

 

“Your coming here, don’t you know, and so on.”

 

She raised her eyebrows and drank me in a bit more through her glasses.

 

“Why is it surprising that I should visit my only nephew?” she said.

 

Put like that, of course, it did seem reasonable.

 

“Oh, rather,” I said. “Of course! Certainly. What I mean is–-”

 

Jeeves projected himself into the room with the tea. I was jolly glad

to see him. There’s nothing like having a bit of business arranged for

one when one isn’t certain of one’s lines. With the teapot to fool

about with I felt happier.

 

“Tea, tea, tea—what? What?” I said.

 

It wasn’t what I had meant to say. My idea had been to be a good deal

more formal, and so on. Still, it covered the situation. I poured her

out a cup. She sipped it and put the cup down with a shudder.

 

“Do you mean to say, young man,” she said frostily, “that you expect me

to drink this stuff?”

 

“Rather! Bucks you up, you know.”

 

“What do you mean by the expression ‘Bucks you up’?”

 

“Well, makes you full of beans, you know. Makes you fizz.”

 

“I don’t understand a word you say. You’re English, aren’t you?”

 

I admitted it. She didn’t say a word. And somehow she did it in a way

that made it worse than if she had spoken for hours. Somehow it was

brought home to me that she didn’t like Englishmen, and that if she had

had to meet an Englishman, I was the one she’d have chosen last.

 

Conversation languished again after that.

 

Then I tried again. I was becoming more convinced every moment that you

can’t make a real lively salon with a couple of people,

especially if one of them lets it go a word at a time.

 

“Are you comfortable at your hotel?” I said.

 

“At which hotel?”

 

“The hotel you’re staying at.”

 

“I am not staying at an hotel.”

 

“Stopping with friends—what?”

 

“I am naturally stopping with my nephew.”

 

I didn’t get it for the moment; then it hit me.

 

“What! Here?” I gurgled.

 

“Certainly! Where else should I go?”

 

The full horror of the situation rolled over me like a wave. I couldn’t

see what on earth I was to do. I couldn’t explain that this wasn’t

Rocky’s flat without giving the poor old chap away hopelessly, because

she would then ask me where he did live, and then he would be right in

the soup. I was trying to induce the old bean to recover from the shock

and produce some results when she spoke again.

 

“Will you kindly tell my nephew’s manservant to prepare my room? I

wish to lie down.”

 

“Your nephew’s manservant?”

 

“The man you call Jeeves. If Rockmetteller has gone for an automobile

ride, there is no need for you to wait for him. He will naturally wish

to be alone with me when he returns.”

 

I found myself tottering out of the room. The thing was too much for

me. I crept into Jeeves’s den.

 

“Jeeves!” I whispered.

 

“Sir?”

 

“Mix me a b.-and-s., Jeeves. I feel weak.”

 

“Very good, sir.”

 

“This is getting thicker every minute, Jeeves.”

 

“Sir?”

 

“She thinks you’re Mr. Todd’s man. She thinks the whole place is his,

and everything in it. I don’t see what you’re to do, except stay on and

keep it up. We can’t say anything or she’ll get on to the whole thing,

and I don’t want to let Mr. Todd down. By the way, Jeeves, she wants

you to prepare her bed.”

 

He looked wounded.

 

“It is hardly my place, sir–-”

 

“I know—I know. But do it as a personal favour to me. If you come to

that, it’s hardly my place to be flung out of the flat like this and

have to go to an hotel, what?”

 

“Is it your intention to go to an hotel, sir? What will you do for

clothes?”

 

“Good Lord! I hadn’t thought of that. Can you put a few things in a bag

when she isn’t looking, and sneak them down to me at the St. Aurea?”

 

“I will endeavour to do so, sir.”

 

“Well, I don’t think there’s anything more, is there? Tell Mr. Todd

where I am when he gets here.”

 

“Very good, sir.”

 

I looked round the place. The moment of parting had come. I felt sad.

The whole thing reminded me of one of those melodramas where they drive

chappies out of the old homestead into the snow.

 

“Good-bye, Jeeves,” I said.

 

“Good-bye, sir.”

 

And I staggered out.

 

*

 

You know, I rather think I agree with those poet-and-philosopher

Johnnies who insist that a fellow ought to be devilish pleased if he

has a bit of trouble. All that stuff about being refined by suffering,

you know. Suffering does give a chap a sort of broader and more

sympathetic outlook. It helps you to understand other people’s

misfortunes if you’ve been through the same thing yourself.

 

As I stood in my lonely bedroom at the hotel, trying to tie my white

tie myself, it struck me for the first time that there must be whole

squads of chappies in the world who had to get along without a man to

look after them. I’d always thought of Jeeves as a kind of natural

phenomenon; but, by Jove! of course, when you come to think of it,

there must be quite a lot of fellows who have to press their own

clothes themselves and haven’t got anybody to bring them tea in the

morning, and so on. It was rather a solemn thought, don’t you know. I

mean to say, ever since then I’ve been able to appreciate the frightful

privations the poor have to stick.

 

I got dressed somehow. Jeeves hadn’t forgotten a thing in his packing.

Everything was there, down to the final stud. I’m not sure this didn’t

make me feel worse. It kind of deepened the pathos. It was like what

somebody or other wrote about the touch of a vanished hand.

 

I had a bit of dinner somewhere and went to a show of some kind; but

nothing seemed to make any difference. I simply hadn’t the heart to go

on to supper anywhere. I just sucked down a whisky-and-soda in the

hotel smoking-room and went straight up to bed. I don’t know when I’ve

felt so rotten. Somehow I found myself moving about the room softly, as

if there had been a death in the family. If I had anybody to talk to I

should have talked in a whisper; in fact, when the telephone-bell rang

I answered in such a sad, hushed voice that the fellow at the other end

of the wire said “Halloa!” five times, thinking he hadn’t got me.

 

It was Rocky. The poor old scout was deeply agitated.

 

“Bertie! Is that you, Bertie! Oh, gosh? I’m having a time!”

 

“Where are you speaking from?”

 

“The Midnight Revels. We’ve been here an hour, and I think we’re a

fixture for the night. I’ve told Aunt Isabel I’ve gone out to call up a

friend to join us. She’s glued to a chair, with this-is-the-life

written all over her, taking it in through the pores. She loves it, and

I’m nearly crazy.”

 

“Tell me all, old top,” I said.

 

“A little more of this,” he said, “and I shall sneak quietly off to the

river and end it all. Do you mean to say you go through this sort of

thing every night, Bertie, and enjoy it? It’s simply infernal! I was

just snatching a wink of sleep behind the bill of fare just now when

about a million yelling girls swooped down, with toy balloons. There

are two orchestras here, each trying to see if it can’t play louder

than the other. I’m a mental and physical wreck. When your telegram

arrived I was just lying down for a quiet pipe, with a sense of

absolute peace stealing over me. I had to get dressed and sprint two

miles to catch the train. It nearly gave me heart-failure; and on top

of that I almost got brain fever inventing lies to tell Aunt Isabel.

And then I had to cram myself into these confounded evening clothes of

yours.”

 

I gave a sharp wail of agony. It hadn’t struck me till then that Rocky

was depending on my wardrobe to see him through.

 

“You’ll ruin them!”

 

“I hope so,” said Rocky, in the most unpleasant way. His troubles

seemed to have had the worst effect on his character. “I should like to

get back at them somehow; they’ve given me a bad enough time. They’re

about three sizes too small, and something’s apt to give at any moment.

I wish to goodness it would, and give me a chance to breathe. I haven’t

breathed since half-past seven. Thank Heaven, Jeeves managed to get out

and buy me a collar that fitted, or I should be a strangled corpse by

now! It was touch and go till the stud broke. Bertie, this is pure

Hades! Aunt Isabel keeps on urging me to dance. How on earth can I

dance when I don’t know a soul to dance with? And how the deuce could

I, even if I knew every girl in the place? It’s taking big chances even

to move in these trousers. I had to tell her I’ve hurt my ankle. She

keeps asking me when Cohan and Stone are going to turn up; and it’s

simply a question of time before she discovers that Stone is sitting

two tables away. Something’s got to be done, Bertie! You’ve got to

think up some way of getting me out of this mess. It was you who got me

into it.”

 

“Me! What do you mean?”

 

“Well, Jeeves, then. It’s all the same. It was you who suggested

leaving it to Jeeves. It was those letters I wrote from his notes that

did the mischief. I made them too good! My aunt’s just been telling me

about it. She says she had resigned herself to ending her life where

she was, and then my letters began to arrive, describing the joys of

New York; and they stimulated her to such an extent that she pulled

herself together and made the trip. She seems to think she’s had some

miraculous kind of faith cure. I tell you I can’t stand it, Bertie!

It’s got to end!”

 

“Can’t Jeeves think of anything?”

 

“No. He just hangs round saying: ‘Most disturbing, sir!’ A fat lot of

help that is!”

 

“Well, old lad,” I said, “after all, it’s far worse for me than it is

for you. You’ve got a comfortable home and Jeeves. And you’re saving a

lot of money.”

 

“Saving money? What do you mean—saving money?”

 

“Why, the allowance your aunt was giving you. I suppose she’s paying

all the expenses now, isn’t she?”

 

“Certainly she is; but she’s stopped the allowance. She wrote the

lawyers to-night. She says that, now she’s in New York, there is no

necessity for it to go on, as we shall always be together, and it’s

simpler for her to look after that