The Greatest Works of P. G. Wodehouse. P. G. Wodehouse
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do hope he will enjoy his stay here. It’s so seldom he gets a holiday. His vicar overworks him dreadfully.”
“Vicars are the devil, what?”
“I wonder if you will be able to spare any time to show him round the place? I can see he’s taken such a fancy to you. But, of course, it would be a bother, I suppose, so——”
“Rather not. Only too delighted.” For half a second I thought of patting her hand, then I felt I’d better wait a bit. “I’ll do anything, absolutely anything.”
“It’s awfully kind of you.”
“For you,” I said, “I would——”
At this point the brother returned, and the conversation became what you might call general.
AFTER lunch I fairly curvetted back to my suite, with a most extraordinary braced sensation going all over me like a rash.
“Jeeves,” I said, “you were all wrong about that cummerbund. It went like a breeze from the start.”
“Indeed, sir?”
“Made an absolutely outstanding hit. The lady I was lunching with admired it. Her brother admired it. The waiter looked as if he admired it. Well, anything happened since I left?”
“Yes, sir. Mrs. Gregson has arrived at the hotel.”
A chappie I know who went shooting, and was potted by one of his brother-sportsmen in mistake for a rabbit, once told me that it was several seconds before he realized that he had contributed to the day’s bag. For about a tenth of a minute everything seemed quite O.K., and then suddenly he got it. It was just the same with me. It took about five seconds for this fearful bit of news to sink in.
“What!” I yelled. “Aunt Agatha here?”
“Yes, sir.”
“She can’t be.”
“I have seen her, sir.”
“But how did she get here?”
“The express from Paris has just arrived, sir.”
“But, I mean, how the dickens did she know I was here?”
“You left a forwarding-address at the flat for your correspondence, sir. No doubt Mrs. Gregson obtained it from the hall-porter.”
“But I told the chump not to give it away to a soul.”
“That would hardly baffle a lady of Mrs. Gregson’s forceful personality, sir.”
“Jeeves, I’m in the soup.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Right up to the hocks!”
“Yes, sir.”
“What shall I do?”
“I fear I have nothing to suggest, sir.”
I eyed the man narrowly. Dashed aloof his manner was. I saw what was the matter, of course. He was still brooding over that cummerbund.
“I shall go for a walk, Jeeves,” I said.
“Yes, sir?”
“A good long walk.”
“Very good, sir.”
“And if—er—if anybody asks for me, tell ’em you don’t know when I’ll be back.”
TO people who don’t know my Aunt Agatha I find it extraordinarily difficult to explain why it is that she has always put the wind up me to such a frightful extent. I mean, I’m not dependent on her financially, or anything like that. It’s simply personality, I’ve come to the conclusion. You see, all through my childhood and when I was a kid at school, she was always able to turn me inside out with a single glance, and I haven’t come out from under the ’fluence yet. We run to height a bit in our family, and there’s about five-foot-nine of Aunt Agatha, topped off with a beaky nose, an eagle eye, and a lot of grey hair, and the general effect is pretty formidable.
Her arrival in Roville at this juncture had made things more than a bit complicated for me. What to do? Leg it quick before she could get hold of me, would no doubt have been the advice most fellows would have given me. But the situation wasn’t as simple as that. I was in much the same position as the cat on the garden-wall who, when on the point of becoming matey with the cat next door, observes the boot-jack sailing through the air. If he stays where he is, he gets it in the neck; if he biffs, he has to start all over again where he left off. I didn’t like the prospect of being collared by Aunt Agatha, but on the other hand I simply barred the notion of leaving Roville by the night-train and parting from Aline Hemmingway. Absolutely a man’s cross-roads, if you know what I mean.
I prowled about the neighbourhood all the afternoon and evening, then I had a bit of dinner at a quiet restaurant in the town and trickled cautiously back to the hotel. Jeeves was popping about in the suite.
“There is a note for you, sir,” he said, “on the mantelpiece.”
The blighter’s manner was still so cold and unchummy that I bit the bullet and had a dash at being airy.
“A note, eh?”
“Yes, sir. Mrs. Gregson’s maid brought it shortly after you had left.”
“Tra-la-la!” I said.
“Precisely, sir.”
I opened the note.
“She wants me to look in on her after dinner some time.”
“Yes, sir?”
“Jeeves,” I said, “mix me a stiffish brandy-and-soda.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Stiffish, Jeeves. Not too much soda, but splash the brandy about a bit.”
“Very good, sir.”
He shimmied off into the background to collect the materials, and just at that moment there was a knock at the door.
I’m bound to say it was a shock. My heart stood still, and I bit my tongue.
“Come in,” I bleated.
But it wasn’t Aunt Agatha after all. It was Aline Hemmingway, looking rather rattled, and her brother, looking like a sheep with a secret sorrow.
“Oh, Mr. Wooster!” said the girl, in a sort of gasping way.
“Oh, what-ho!” I said. “Won’t you come in? Take a seat or two.”
“I don’t know how to begin.”
“Eh?” I said. “Is anything up?”
“Poor Sidney—it was my fault—I ought never to have let him go there alone.”
At this point the brother, who had been standing by wrapped in the silence, gave a little cough, like a sheep caught in the mist on a mountain-top.
“The fact is, Mr. Wooster,” he said, “I have been gambling at the Casino.”
“Oh!” I said. “Did you click?”
He sighed heavily.
“If you mean, was I successful, I must answer in the negative. I rashly persisted in the view that the colour red, having appeared no fewer than seven times in succession, must inevitably at no distant date give place to black. I was in error. I lost my little all, Mr. Wooster.”
“Tough luck,” I said.
“I left the Casino, and returned to the hotel. There I encountered one of my parishioners, a Colonel Musgrave, who chanced to be holiday-making over here. I—er—induced him to cash me a cheque for one hundred pounds on my bank in London.”
“Well, that was all to the good, what?” I said, hoping to induce the poor egg to