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The author of almost a hundred books and the creator of Jeeves, Blandings Castle, Psmith, Ukridge, Uncle Fred and Mr Mulliner, P. G. Wodehouse was born in 1881 and educated at Dulwich College. After two years with the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank he became a full-time writer, contributing to a variety of periodicals. As well as his novels and short stories, he wrote lyrics for musical comedies, and at one stage had five shows running simultaneously on Broadway.

At the age of 93, in the New Year’s Honours List of 1975, he received a long-overdue knighthood, only to die on St Valentine’s Day some 45 days later.

Aunts Aren’t Gentlemen

The Adventures of Sally

Bachelors Anonymous

Barmy in Wonderland

Big Money

Bill the Conqueror

Blandings Castle and Elsewhere

Carry On, Jeeves

The Clicking of Cuthbert

Cocktail Time

The Code of the Woosters

The Coming of Bill

Company for Henry

A Damsel in Distress

Do Butlers Burgle Banks?

Doctor Sally

Eggs, Beans and Crumpets

A Few Quick Ones

French Leave

Frozen Assets

Full Moon

Galahad at Blandings

A Gentleman of Leisure

The Girl in Blue

The Girl on the Boat

The Gold Bat

The Head of Kay’s

The Heart of a Goof

Heavy Weather

Ice in the Bedroom

If I Were You

Indiscretions of Archie

The Inimitable Jeeves

Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit

Jeeves in the Offing

Jill the Reckless

Joy in the Morning

Laughing Gas

Leave it to Psmith

The Little Nugget

Lord Emsworth and Others

Louder and Funnier

Love Among the Chickens

The Luck of Bodkins

The Man Upstairs

The Man with Two Left Feet

The Mating Season

Meet Mr Mulliner

Mike and Psmith

Mike at Wrykyn

Money for Nothing

Money in the Bank

Mr Mulliner Speaking

Much Obliged, Jeeves

Mulliner Nights

Not George Washington

Nothing Serious

The Old Reliable

Pearls, Girls and Monty Bodkin

A Pelican at Blandings

Piccadilly Jim

Pigs Have Wings

Plum Pie

The Pothunters

A Prefect’s Uncle

The Prince and Betty

Psmith, Journalist

Psmith in the City

Quick Service

Right Ho, Jeeves

Ring for Jeeves

Sam the Sudden

Service with a Smile

The Small Bachelor

Something Fishy

Something Fresh

Spring Fever

Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves

Summer Lightning

Summer Moonshine

Sunset at Blandings

The Swoop

Tales of St Austin’s

Thank You, Jeeves

Ukridge

Uncle Dynamite

Uncle Fred in the Springtime

Uneasy Money

Very Good, Jeeves

The White Feather

William Tell Told Again

Young Men in Spats

The World of Blandings

The World of Jeeves

The World of Mr Mulliner

The World of Psmith

The World of Ukridge

The World of Uncle Fred

Wodehouse Nuggets (edited by Richard Usborne)

The World of Wodehouse Clergy

The Hollywood Omnibus

Weekend Wodehouse

The Golf Omnibus

The Aunts Omnibus

The Drones Omnibus

The Clergy Omnibus

The Jeeves Omnibus 1

The Jeeves Omnibus 2

The Jeeves Omnibus 3

The Jeeves Omnibus 4

The Jeeves Omnibus 5

The Mulliner Omnibus

The Parrot and Other Poems

Wodehouse on Wodehouse (comprising Bring on the Girls, Over Seventy, Performing Flea)

JEEVES AND THE FEUDAL SPIRIT

AS I SAT in the bath tub, soaping a meditative foot and singing, if I remember correctly, ‘Pale Hands I Loved Beside the Shalimar’, it would be deceiving my public to say that I was feeling boomps-a-daisy. The evening that lay before me promised to be one of those sticky evenings, no good to man or beast. My Aunt Dahlia, writing from her country residence, Brinkley Court down in Worcestershire, had asked me as a personal favour to take some acquaintances of hers out to dinner, a couple of the name of Trotter.

They were, she said, creeps of the first water and would bore the pants off me, but it was imperative that they be given the old oil, because she was in the middle of a very tricky business deal with the male half of the sketch and at such times every little helps. ‘Don’t fail me, my beautiful bountiful Bertie’, her letter had concluded, on a note of poignant appeal.

Well, this Dahlia is my good and deserving aunt, not to be confused with Aunt Agatha, the one who kills rats with her teeth and devours her young, so when she says Don’t fail me, I don’t fail her. But, as I say, I was in no sense looking forward to the binge. The view I took of it was that the curse had come upon me.

It had done so, moreover, at a moment when I was already lowered spiritually by the fact that for the last couple of weeks or so Jeeves had been away on his summer holiday. Round about the beginning of July each year he downs tools, the slacker, and goes off to Bognor Regis for the shrimping, leaving me in much the same position as those poets one used to have to read at school who were always beefing about losing gazelles. For without this right-hand man at his side Bertram Wooster becomes a mere shadow of his former self and in no condition to cope with any ruddy Trotters.

Brooding darkly on these Trotters, whoever they might be, I was starting to scour the left elbow and had switched to ‘Ah, Sweet Mystery of Life’, when my reverie was interrupted by the sound of a soft footstep in the bedroom, and I sat up, alert and, as you might say, agog, the soap frozen in my grasp. If feet were stepping softly in my sleeping quarters, it could only mean, I felt, unless of course a burglar had happened to drop in, that the prop of the establishment had returned from his vacation, no doubt looking bronzed and fit.

‘Welcome to 3a Berkeley Mansions, London, W.1,’ I said, feeling like a shepherd when a strayed sheep comes trickling back to the fold. ‘Did you have a good time?’

‘A letter has just arrived for you, sir. I was placing it on the dressing-table. Will you be dining in, sir?’

‘No, out, blast it! A blind date with some slabs of gorgonzola sponsored by Aunt Dahlia. So if you want to go to the club, carry on.’

As I have mentioned elsewhere in these memoirs of mine, Jeeves belongs to a rather posh club for butlers and valets called the Junior Ganymede, situated somewhere in Curzon Street, and I knew that after his absence from the metropolis he would be all eagerness to buzz round there and hobnob with the boys, picking up the threads and all that sort of thing. When I’ve been away for a week or two, my first move is always to make a beeline for the Drones.

‘I can see you getting a rousing welcome from the members, with a hey-nonny-nonny and a hot cha-cha,’ I said. ‘Did I hear you say something about there being a letter for me?’

There was a stage wait of about a minute and a half, during which, my moodiness now much lightened, I rendered ‘Roll Out the Barrel’, ‘I Love a Lassie’, and ‘Every Day I Bring Thee Violets’, in the order named. In due season his voice filtered through the woodwork.

‘The letter is of considerable length, sir. Perhaps if I were to give you its substance?’

‘It is from a Mr. Percy Gorringe, sir. Omitting extraneous matter and concentrating on essentials, Mr. Gorringe wishes to borrow a thousand pounds from you.’

I started sharply, causing the soap to shoot from my hand and fall with a dull thud on the bath mat. With no preliminary warning to soften the shock, his words had momentarily unmanned me. It is not often that one is confronted with ear-biting on so majestic a scale, a fiver till next Wednesday being about the normal tariff.

‘You said … what, Jeeves? A thousand pounds? But who is this hound of hell? I don’t know any Gorringes.’

‘I gather from his communication that you and the gentleman have not met, sir. But he mentions that he is the stepson of a Mr. L.G. Trotter, with whom Mrs. Travers appears to be acquainted.’

‘Yes, he’s on solid ground there,’ I admitted. ‘Aunt Dahlia does know Trotter. He’s the bloke she has asked me to put the nosebag on with tonight. So far, so good. But I don’t see that being Trotter’s stepson entitles this Gorringe to think he can sit on my lap and help himself to the contents of my wallet. I mean, it isn’t a case of “Any stepson of yours, L.G. Trotter, is a stepson of mine”. Dash it, Jeeves, once start letting yourself be touched by stepsons, and where are you? The word flies round the family circle that you’re a good provider, and up roll all the sisters and cousins and aunts and nephews and uncles to stake out their claims, several being injured in the crush. The place becomes a shambles.’

‘There is much in what you say, sir, but it appears to be not so much a loan as an investment that the gentleman is seeking. He wishes to give you the opportunity of contributing the money to the production of his dramatization of Lady Florence Craye’s novel Spindrift.’

‘Oh, that’s it, is it? I see. Yes, one begins to follow the trend of thought.’

This Florence Craye is … well, I suppose you would call her a sort of step-cousin of mine or cousin once removed or something of that nature. She is Lord Worplesdon’s daughter, and old W. in a moment of temporary insanity recently married my Aunt Agatha en secondes noces, as I believe the expression is. She is one of those intellectual girls, her bean crammed to bursting point with the little grey cells, and about a year ago, possibly because she was full of the divine fire but more probably because she wanted something to take her mind off Aunt Agatha, she wrote this novel and it was well received by the intelligentsia, who notoriously enjoy the most frightful bilge.

‘What did you think of it? Go on, Jeeves, don’t be coy. The word begins with an I.’

‘Well, sir, I would not go so far as to apply to it the adjective which I fancy you have in mind, but it seemed to me a somewhat immature production, lacking in significant form. My personal tastes lie more in the direction of Dostoevsky and the great Russians. Nevertheless, the story was not wholly devoid of interest and might quite possibly have its appeal for the theatregoing public.’

I mused awhile. I was trying to remember something, but couldn’t think what. Then I got it.

‘But I don’t understand this,’ I said. ‘I distinctly recall Aunt Dahlia telling me that Florence had told her that some manager had taken the play and was going to put it on. Poor misguided sap, I recollect saying. Well, if that is so, why is Percy dashing about trying to get into people’s ribs like this? What does he want a thousand quid for? These are deep waters, Jeeves.’

‘That is explained in the gentleman’s letter, sir. It appears that one of the syndicate financing the venture, who had promised the sum in question, finds himself unable to fulfil his obligations. This, I believe, frequently happens in the world of the theatre.’

I mused again, letting the moisture from the sponge slide over the torso. Another point presented itself.

‘But why didn’t Florence tell Percy to go and have a pop at Stilton Cheesewright? She being engaged to him, I mean. One would have thought that Stilton, linked to her by bonds of love, would have been the people’s choice.’

The situation had clarified somewhat. Now that I had the facts, I could discern that Percy’s move had been based on sound principles. When you are trying to raise a thousand quid, the first essential, of course, is to go to someone who has got a thousand quid, and no doubt he had learned from Florence that I was stagnant with the stuff. But where he had made his error was in supposing that I was the king of the mugs and in the habit of scattering vast sums like birdseed to all and sundry.

‘Nor would I. I meet him with a firm nolle prosequi, I think, don’t you, and keep the money in the old oak chest?’

‘Right. Percy gets the bird. Let him eat cake. And now to a more urgent matter. While I’m dressing, will you be mixing me a strengthening cocktail?’

I spoke in no uncertain voice. It was not merely the fact that I was up against an evening with a couple whom Aunt Dahlia, always a good judge, had described as creeps that influenced this decision on my part. I needed fortifying for another reason.

These last few days, with Jeeves apt to return at any moment, it had been borne in upon me quite a good deal that when the time came for us to stand face to face I should require something pretty authoritative in the way of bracers to nerve me for what would inevitably be a testing encounter, calling for all that I had of determination and the will to win. If I was to emerge from it triumphant, no stone must be left unturned and no avenue unexplored.

You know how it is when two strong men live in close juxtaposition, if juxtaposition is the word I want. Differences arise. Wills clash. Bones of contention pop up and start turning handsprings. No one was more keenly alive than I to the fact that one such bone was scheduled to make its début the instant I swam into his ken, and mere martinis, I felt, despite their numerous merits, would not be enough to see me through the ordeal that confronted me.

It was in quite fairly tense mood that I dried and clothed the person, and while it would perhaps be too much to say that as I entered the sitting-room some quarter of an hour later I was a-twitter, I was unquestionably conscious of a certain jumpiness. When Jeeves came in with the shaker, I dived at it like a seal going after a slice of fish and drained a quick one, scarcely pausing to say ‘Skin off your nose’.

The effect was magical. That apprehensive feeling left me, to be succeeded by a quiet sense of power. I cannot put it better than by saying that, as the fire coursed through my veins, Wooster the timid fawn became in a flash Wooster the man of iron will, ready for anything. What Jeeves inserts in these specials of his I have never ascertained, but their morale-building force is extraordinary. They wake the sleeping tiger in a chap. Well, to give you some idea, I remember once after a single one of them striking the table with clenched fist and telling my Aunt Agatha to stop talking rot. And I’m not sure it wasn’t ‘bally rot’.

‘One of your best and brightest, Jeeves,’ I said, refilling the glass. ‘The weeks among the shrimps have not robbed your hand of its cunning.’

He did not reply. Speech seemed to have been wiped from his lips, and I saw, as I had foreseen would happen, that his gaze was riveted on the upper slopes of my mouth. It was a cold, disapproving gaze, such as a fastidious luncher who was not fond of caterpillars might have directed at one which he had discovered in his portion of salad, and I knew that the clash of wills for which I had been bracing myself was about to raise its ugly head.

I spoke suavely but firmly. You can’t beat suave firmness on these occasions, and thanks to that life-giving special I was able to be as firmly suave as billy-o. There was no mirror in the sitting-room, but had there been, and had I caught a glimpse of myself in it, I have no doubt I should have seen something closely resembling a haughty seigneur of the old régime about to tell the domestic staff just where it got off.

‘Something appears to be arresting your attention, Jeeves. Is there a smut on my nose?’

His manner continued frosty. There are moments when he looks just like a governess, one of which was this one.

‘Ah, yes,’ I said. ‘The moustache. That is what you are alluding to, is it not? I grew it while you were away. Rather natty, don’t you think?’

I moistened my lips with the special, still suave to the gills. I felt strong and masterful.

‘You don’t feel it gives me a sort of air? A … how shall I put it? … A kind of diablerie?’

‘You hurt and disappoint me, Jeeves,’ I said, sipping a couple of sips and getting suaver all the time. ‘I could understand your attitude if the object under advisement were something bushy and waxed at the ends like a sergeant-major’s, but it is merely the delicate wisp of vegetation with which David Niven has for years been winning the applause of millions. When you see David Niven on the screen, you don’t recoil in horror, do you?’

It is at moments like this that a man realizes that the only course for him to pursue, if he is to retain his self-respect, is to unship the velvet hand in the iron glove, or, rather, the other way about. Weakness at such a time is fatal.

There are limits, I mean to say, and sharply defined limits at that, and these limits I felt that he had passed by about a mile and a quarter. I yield to nobody in my respect for Jeeves’s judgment in the matter of socks, shoes, shirts, hats and cravats, but I was dashed if I was going to have him muscling in and trying to edit the Wooster face. I finished my special and spoke in a quiet, level voice.

‘I am sorry, Jeeves. I had hoped for your sympathy and co-operation, but if you are unable to see your way to sympathizing and co-operating, so be it. Come what may, however, I shall maintain the status quo. It is status quos that people maintain, isn’t it? I have been put to considerable trouble and anxiety growing this moustache, and I do not propose to hew it off just because certain prejudiced parties, whom I will not specify, don’t know a good thing when they see one. J’y suis, j’y reste, Jeeves,’ I said, becoming a bit Parisian.

Well, after this splendid exhibition of resolution on my part I suppose there was nothing much the chap could have said except ‘Very good, sir’ or something of that sort, but, as it happened, he hadn’t time to say even that, for the final word had scarcely left my lips when the front-door bell tootled. He shimmered out, and a moment later shimmered in again.

And in clumped the massive form of the bird to whom he alluded. The last person I had expected to see, and, for the matter of that, about the last one I wanted to.

I DON’T KNOW if you have had the same experience, but I have always found that there are certain blokes whose mere presence tends to make me ill at ease, inducing the nervous laugh, the fiddling with the tie and the embarrassed shuffling of the feet. Sir Roderick Glossop, the eminent loony doctor, until circumstances so arranged themselves that I was enabled to pierce the forbidding exterior and see his better, softer side, was one of these. J. Washburn Stoker, with his habit of kidnapping people on his yacht and throwing his weight about like a pirate of the Spanish Main, was another. And a third is this G. D’Arcy (‘Stilton’) Cheesewright. Catch Bertram Wooster vis-à-vis with him, and you do not catch him at his best.

Considering that he and I have known each other since, as you might say, we were so high, having been at private school, Eton and Oxford together, we ought, I suppose, to be like Damon and what’s-his-name, but we aren’t by any means. I generally refer to him in conversation as ‘that blighter Stilton’, while he, I have been informed by usually reliable sources, makes no secret of his surprise and concern that I am still on the right side of the walls of Colney Hatch or some similar institution. When we meet, there is always a certain stiffness and what Jeeves would call an imperfect fusion of soul.

One of the reasons for this is, I think, that Stilton used to be a policeman. He joined the Force on coming down from Oxford with the idea of rising to a position of eminence at Scotland Yard, a thing you find a lot of the fellows you know doing these days. True, he turned in his truncheon and whistle shortly afterwards because his uncle wanted him to take up another walk in life, but these rozzers, even when retired, never quite shake off that ‘Where were you on the night of June the fifteenth?’ manner, and he seldom fails, when we run into one another, to make me feel like a rat of the Underworld detained for questioning in connection with some recent smash-and-grab raid.

Add the fact that this uncle of his wins his bread as a magistrate at one of the London police courts, and you will understand why I avoid him as much as possible and greatly prefer him elsewhere. The man of sensibility shrinks from being closeted with an ex-bluebottle with magistrate blood in him.

In my demeanour, accordingly, as I rose to greet him, a close observer would have noted more than a touch of that To-what-am-I-indebted-for-the-honour-of-this-visit stuff. I was at a loss to imagine what he was doing invading my privacy like this, and another thing that had fogged me was why, having invaded it, he was standing staring at me in a stern, censorious sort of way, as if the sight of me had got right in amongst him, revolting his finest feelings. I might have been some dreg of society whom he had caught in the act of slipping a couple of ounces of cocaine to some other dreg.

‘Ho!’ he said, and this alone would have been enough to tell an intelligent bystander, had there been one, that he had spent some time in the ranks of the Force. One of the first things the Big Four teach the young recruit is to say ‘Ho!’ ‘I thought as much,’ he went on, knitting the brow. ‘Swilling cocktails, eh?’

This was the moment when, had conditions been normal, I would no doubt have laughed nervously, fingered the tie and shuffled the feet, but with two of Jeeves’s specials under my belt, still exercising their powerful spell, I not only remained intrepid but retorted with considerable spirit, putting him right in his place.

‘I fail to understand you, officer,’ I said coldly. ‘Correct me if I am wrong, but I believe this is the hour when it is customary for an English gentleman to partake of a short snifter. Will you join me?’

His lip curled. Most unpleasant. These coppers are bad enough when they leave their lips in statu quo.

‘No, I won’t,’ he replied, curtly and offensively. ‘I don’t want to ruin my constitution. What do you suppose those things are going to do to your eye and your power of control? How can you expect to throw doubles if you persist in stupefying yourself with strong drink? It’s heart-breaking.’

The annual Darts sweep is one of the high spots of life at the Drones Club. It never fails to stir the sporting instincts of the members, causing them to roll up in dense crowds and purchase tickets at ten bob a go, with the result that the sum in the kitty is always colossal. This time my name had been drawn by Stilton, and as Horace Pendlebury-Davenport, last year’s winner, had gone and got married and at his wife’s suggestion resigned his membership, the thing was pretty generally recognized as a sitter for me, last year’s runner-up. ‘Wooster,’ the word flew to and fro, ‘is the deadest of snips. He throws a beautiful dart.’

So I suppose it was only natural in a way that, standing, if all went well, to scoop in a matter of fifty-six pounds ten shillings, Stilton should feel that it was his mission in life to see that I kept at the peak of my form. But that didn’t make this incessant surveillance of his easier to endure. Ever since he had glanced at his ticket, seen that it bore the name Wooster, and learned that I was a red-hot favourite for the tourney, his attitude towards me had been that of an official at Borstal told off to keep an eye on a more than ordinarily up-and-coming juvenile delinquent. He had a way of looming up beside me at the club, sniffing quickly at my glass and giving me an accusing look, coupled with a sharp whistling intake of the breath, and here he was now doing the same thing in my very home. It was worse than being back in a Little Lord Fauntleroy suit and ringlets and having a keen-eyed nurse always at one’s elbow, watching one’s every move like a bally hawk.

I was about to say how deeply I resented being tailed up in this manner, when he resumed.

‘I have come here tonight to talk seriously to you, Wooster,’ he said, frowning in a most unpleasant manner. ‘I am shocked at the casual, frivolous way in which you are treating this Darts tournament. You seem not to be taking the most elementary precautions to ensure victory on the big day. It’s the old, old story. Over-confidence. All these fatheads keep telling you you’re sure to win, and you suck it down like one of your beastly cocktails. Well, let me tell you you’re living in a fool’s paradise. I happened to look in at the Drones this afternoon, and Freddie Widgeon was at the Darts board, stunning all beholders with a performance that took the breath away. His accuracy was sensational.’

I waved a hand and tossed the head. In fact, I suppose you might say I bridled. He had wounded my amour propre.

‘I said “Tchah!” With ref. to F. Widgeon. I know his form backwards. Flashy, but no staying power. The man will be less than the dust beneath my chariot wheels.’

‘That’s what you think. As I said before, over-confidence. You can take it from me that Freddie is a very dangerous competitor. I happen to know that he has been in strict training for weeks. He’s knocked off smoking and has a cold bath every morning. Did you have a cold bath this morning?’

‘I wouldn’t dream of such a thing. Leave these excesses to the Swedes, I say.’

‘No,’ said Stilton bitterly. ‘All you do is riot and revel and carouse. I am told that you were at that party of Catsmeat Potter-Pirbright’s last night. You probably reeled home at three in the morning, rousing the neighbourhood with drunken shouts.’

‘You would scarcely expect me, constable,’ I said coldly, ‘to absent myself from the farewell supper of a boyhood friend who is leaving for Hollywood in a day or two and may be away from civilization for years. Catsmeat would have been pained to his foundations if I had oiled out. And it wasn’t three in the morning, it was two-thirty.’

‘I don’t believe you. I’ll bet, if the truth was known,’ said Stilton morosely, intensifying the darkness of his frown, ‘you lowered yourself to the level of the beasts of the field. I’ll bet you whooped it up like a sailor in a Marseilles bistro. And from the fact that there is a white tie round your neck and a white waistcoat attached to your foul stomach at this moment I gather that you are planning to be off shortly to some other nameless orgy.’

‘Orgy, eh? I’m giving dinner to some friends of my Aunt Dahlia’s, and she strictly warned me to lay off the old Falernian because my guests are teetotallers. When the landlord fills the flowing bowl, it will be with lemonade, barley water, or possibly lime juice. So much for your nameless orgies.’

This, as I had expected, had a mollifying effect on his acerbity, if acerbity is the word I want. He did not become genial, because he couldn’t, but he became as nearly genial as it was in his power to be. He practically smiled.

‘Teetotallers, eh? Yes, that’s excellent. But avoid all rich foods and sauces and be sure to get to bed early. What was that you said?’

‘I’m not running along.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Why the devil are women always late?’ he said peevishly. ‘She ought to have been here long ago. I’ve told her over and over again that if there’s one thing that makes Uncle Joe furious, it’s being kept waiting for his soup.’

‘Oh, I see. Well, well. So Florence will be with us ere long, will she? Splendid, splendid, splendid.’

I spoke with quite a bit of warmth and animation, trying to infuse a cheery note into the proceedings, and immediately wished I hadn’t, because he quivered like a palsy patient and gave me a keen glance, and I saw that we had got on to dangerous ground. A situation of considerable delicacy had been precipitated.

One of the things which make it difficult to bring about a beautiful friendship between G. D’Arcy Cheesewright and self is the fact that not long ago I unfortunately got tangled up in his love life. Incensed by some crack he had made about modern enlightened thought, modern enlightened thought being practically a personal buddy of hers, Florence gave him the swift heave-ho and – much against my will, but she seemed to wish it – became betrothed to me. And this had led Stilton, a man of volcanic passions, to express a desire to tear me limb from limb and dance buck-and-wing dances on my remains. He also spoke of stirring up my face like an omelette and buttering me over the West End of London.

Fortunately before matters could proceed to this awful extreme love resumed work at the old stand, with the result that my nomination was cancelled and the peril passed, but he has never really got over the distressing episode. Ever since then the green-eyed monster has always been more or less round and about, ready to snap into action at the drop of the hat, and he has tended to docket me as a snake in the grass that can do with a lot of watching.

So, though disturbed, I was not surprised that he now gave me that keen glance and spoke in a throaty growl, like a Bengal tiger snarling over its breakfast coolie.

‘Not anxious, exactly,’ I said smoothly. ‘The word is too strong. It’s just that I would like to have her opinion of this moustache of mine. She is a girl of taste, and I would be prepared to accept her verdict. Shortly before you arrived, Jeeves was subjecting the growth to some destructive criticism, and it shook me a little. What do you think of it, by the way?’

‘Revolting. You look like something in the chorus line of a touring revue. But you say Jeeves doesn’t like it?’

I stiffened. I resent the view, so widely held in my circle of acquaintances, that I am a mere Hey-you in the home, bowing to Jeeves’s behests like a Hollywood yes-man.

‘Over my dead body I’ll shave it! It stays just where it is, rooted to the spot. A fig for Jeeves, if I may use the expression.’

‘Well, it’s up to you, I suppose. If you don’t mind making yourself an eyesore –’

‘Oh, it was, was it?’ I riposted, and it is possible that, had we not been interrupted, the exchanges would have become heated, for I was still under the stimulating influence of those specials and in no mood to brook back-chat. But before I could tell him that he was a fatheaded ass, incapable of recognizing the rare and the beautiful if handed to him on a skewer, the door bell rang again and Jeeves announced Florence.

IT’S JUST OCCURRED to me, thinking back, that in that passage where I gave a brief pen portrait of her – fairly near the start of this narrative, if you remember – I may have made a bloomer and left you with a wrong impression of Florence Craye. Informed that she was an intellectual girl who wrote novels and was like ham and eggs with the boys with the bulging foreheads out Bloomsbury way, it is possible that you conjured up in your mind’s eye the picture of something short and dumpy with ink spots on the chin, as worn by so many of the female intelligentsia.

Such is far from being the truth. She is tall and willowy and handsome, with a terrific profile and luxuriant platinum-blond hair, and might, so far as looks are concerned, be the star unit of the harem of one of the better-class Sultans. I have known strong men to be bowled over by her at first sight, and it is seldom that she takes her walks abroad without being whistled at by visiting Americans.

She came breezing in, dressed up to the nines, and Stilton received her with a cold eye on his wrist-watch.

‘So there you are at last,’ he said churlishly. ‘About time, dash it. I suppose you had forgotten that Uncle Joe has a nervous breakdown if he’s kept waiting for his soup.’

I was expecting some haughty response to this crack, for I knew her to be a girl of spirit, but she ignored the rebuke, and I saw that her eyes, which are bright and hazel in colour, were resting on me with a strange light in them. I don’t know if you have ever seen a female of what they call teen-age gazing raptly at Humphrey Bogart in a cinema, but her deportment was much along those lines. More than a touch of the Soul’s Awakening, if I make my meaning clear.

‘Bertie!’ she yipped, shaking from stem to stern. ‘The moustache! It’s lovely! Why have you kept this from us all these years? It’s wonderful. It gives you such a dashing look. It alters your whole appearance.’

Well, after the bad Press the old fungus had been getting of late, you might have thought that a rave notice like this would have been right up my street. I mean, while one lives for one’s Art, so to speak, and cares little for the public’s praise or blame and all that sort of thing, one can always do with something to paste into one’s scrapbook, can one not? But it left me cold, particularly in the vicinity of the feet. I found my eye swivelling round to Stilton, to see how he was taking it, and was concerned to note that he was taking it extremely big.

Pique. That’s the word I was trying to think of. He was looking definitely piqued, like a diner in a restaurant who has bitten into a bad oyster, and I wasn’t sure I altogether blamed him, for his loved one had not only patted my cheek with an affectionate hand but was drinking me in with such wide-eyed admiration that any fiancé, witnessing the spectacle, might well have been excused for growing a bit hot under the collar. And Stilton, of course, as I have already indicated, is a chap who could give Othello a couple of bisques and be dormy one at the eighteenth.

It seemed to me that unless prompt steps were taken through the proper channels, raw passions might be unchained, so I hastened to change the subject.

‘Tell me all about your uncle, Stilton,’ I said. ‘Fond of soup, is he? Quite a boy for the bouillon, yes?’

He merely gave a grunt like a pig dissatisfied with its ration for the day, so I changed the subject again.

‘How is Spindrift going?’ I asked Florence. ‘Still selling pretty copiously?’

I winced a trifle. Proposing, as I did, to expunge the joy from Percy’s life by giving him the uncompromising miss-in-baulk before tomorrow’s sun had set, I would have preferred to keep him out of the conversation. I said the name seemed somehow familiar, as if I had heard it somewhere in some connection.

Here Stilton, who appeared to be allergic to Gorringes, snorted in his uncouth way. There are two things I particularly dislike about G. D’Arcy Cheesewright – one, his habit of saying ‘Ho!’, the other his tendency, when moved, to make a sound like a buffalo pulling its foot out of a swamp.

‘We have a manager who is going to put it on and he’s got the cast and all that, but there has been an unfortunate hitch.’

‘Yes. One of the backers has failed us, and we need another thousand pounds. Still, it’s going to be all right. Percy assures me he can raise the money.’

Again I winced, and once more Stilton snorted. It is always difficult to weigh snorts in the balance, but I think this second one had it over the first in offensiveness by a small margin.

‘I won’t have you calling Percy a louse. He is very attractive and very clever.’

‘Name three people he ever attracted. And clever? He may have just about enough intelligence to open his mouth when he wants to eat, but no more. He’s a half-witted gargoyle.’

‘Of course he’s a gargoyle. Are you going to look me in the face and deny that he wears short side-whiskers?’

‘Oh, come on,’ said Stilton brusquely, and hustled her out. As they wended their way, he was reminding her once more of his Uncle Joseph’s reluctance to be kept waiting for his soup.

It was a pensive Bertram Wooster, with more than a few furrows in his forehead, who returned to his chair and put match to cigarette. And I’ll tell you why I was pensive and furrowed. The recent slab of dialogue between the young couple had left me extremely uneasy.

Love is a delicate plant that needs constant tending and nurturing, and this cannot be done by snorting at the adored object like a gas explosion and calling her friends lice. I had the disquieting impression that it wouldn’t take too much to make the Stilton-Florence axis go p’fft again, and who could say that in this event, the latter, back in circulation, would not decide to hitch on to me once more? I remembered what had happened that other time and, as the fellow said, the burned child fears the spilled milk.

You see, the trouble with Florence was that though, as I have stated, indubitably comely and well equipped to take office as a pin-up girl, she was, as I have also stressed, intellectual to the core, and the ordinary sort of bloke like myself does well to give this type of female as wide a miss as he can manage.

You know how it is with these earnest, brainy beasels of what is called strong character. They can’t let the male soul alone. They want to get behind it and start shoving. Scarcely have they shaken the rice from their hair in the car driving off for the honeymoon than they pull up their socks and begin moulding the partner of joys and sorrows, and if there is one thing that gives me the pip, it is being moulded. Despite adverse criticism from many quarters – the name of my Aunt Agatha is one that springs to the lips – I like B. Wooster the way he is. Lay off him, I say. Don’t try to change him, or you may lose the flavour.

Even when we were merely affianced, I recalled, this woman had dashed the mystery thriller from my hand, instructing me to read instead a perfectly frightful thing by a bird called Tolstoy. At the thought of what horrors might ensue after the clergyman had done his stuff and she had a legal right to bring my grey hairs in sorrow to the grave, the imagination boggled. It was a subdued and apprehensive Bertram Wooster who some moments later reached for the hat and light overcoat and went off to the Savoy to shove food into the Trotters.

The binge, as I had anticipated, did little or nothing to raise the spirits. Aunt Dahlia had not erred in stating that my guests would prove to be creeps of no common order. L.G. Trotter was a little man with a face like a weasel, who scarcely uttered during the meal because, whenever he tried to, the moon of his delight shut him up, and Mrs. Trotter a burly heavyweight with a beaked nose who talked all the time, principally about some woman she disliked named Blenkinsop. And nothing to help me through the grim proceedings except the faint, far-off echo of those specials of Jeeves’s. It was a profound relief when they finally called it a day and I was at liberty to totter off to the Drones for the restorative I so sorely needed.

The almost universal practice of the inmates being to attend some form of musical entertainment after dinner, the smoking-room was empty when I arrived, and it would not be too much to say that five minutes later, a cigarette between my lips and a brimming flagon at my side, I was enveloped in a deep peace. The strained nerves had relaxed. The snootered soul was at rest.

It couldn’t last, of course. These lulls in life’s battle never do. Came a moment when I had that eerie feeling that I was not alone and, looking round, found myself gazing at G. D’Arcy Cheesewright.

THIS CHEESEWRIGHT, I should perhaps have mentioned earlier, is a bimbo who from the cradle up has devoted himself sedulously to aquatic exercise. He was Captain of Boats at Eton. He rowed four years for Oxford. He sneaks off each summer at the time of Henley Regatta and sweats lustily with his shipmates on behalf of the Leander Club. And if he ever goes to New York, I have no doubt he will squander a fortune sculling about the lake in Central Park at twenty-five cents a throw. It is only rarely that the oar is out of his hand.

Well, you can’t do that sort of thing without developing the thews and sinews, and all this galley-slave stuff has left him extraordinarily robust. His chest is broad and barrel-like and the muscles of his brawny arms strong as iron bands. I remember Jeeves once speaking of someone of his acquaintance whose strength was as the strength of ten, and the description would have fitted Stilton nicely. He looks like an all-in wrestler.

Being a pretty broad-minded chap and realizing that it takes all sorts to make a world, I had always till now regarded this beefiness of his with kindly toleration. The way I look at it is, if blighters want to be beefy, let them be beefy. Good luck to them, say I. What I did not like at the moment of going to press was the fact that in addition to bulging in all directions with muscle he was glaring at me in a highly sinister manner, his air that of one of those Fiends with Hatchet who are always going about the place Slaying Six. He was plainly much stirred about something, and it would not be going too far to say that, as I caught his eye, I wilted where I sat.

Thinking that it must be the circumstance of his having found me restoring the tissues with a spot of the right stuff that was causing his chagrin, I was about to say that the elixir in my hand was purely medicinal and had been recommended by a prominent Harley Street physician when he spoke.

I did a bit more wilting. It seemed to me that I was alone in a deserted smoking-room with a homicidal loony. It is a type of loony I particularly bar, and the homicidal loony I like least is one with a forty-four chest and biceps in proportion. His fingers, I noticed, were twitching, always a bad sign. ‘Oh, for the wings of a dove’ about summed up my feelings as I tried not to look at them.

He paused at this point to dislodge a fly which had sauntered in through the open window and become mixed up with his vocal cords. Having achieved his object, he resumed.

‘Wooster,’ said Stilton, and if he wasn’t grinding his teeth, I don’t know a ground tooth when I see one, ‘what was the thought behind that moustache of yours? Why did you grow it?’

‘Well, rather difficult to say, of course. One gets these whims.’ I scratched the chin a moment.

‘Or had you an ulterior motive? Was it part of a subtle plot for stealing Florence from me?’

‘It all looks very fishy to me. Do you know what happened just now, when we left my uncle’s?’

‘I will tell you. I saw Florence home in a cab, and all the way there she was raving about that moustache of yours. It made me sick to listen to her.’

I weighed the idea of saying something to the effect that girls would be girls and must be expected to have their simple enthusiasms, but decided better not.

‘When we got off at her door and I turned after paying the driver, I found she was looking at me intently, examining me from every angle, her eyes fixed on my face.’

He brooded for a space. Whatever had happened at that lovers’ get-together, one could see that the memory of it was stirring him like a dose of salts.

‘A moment later,’ he said, and paused, wrestling with his feelings. ‘A moment later,’ he went on, finding speech again, ‘she announced that she wished me to grow a moustache, too. She said – I quote her words – that when a man has a large pink face and a head like a pumpkin, a little something around the upper lip often does wonders in the way of easing the strain. Would you say my head was like a pumpkin, Wooster?’

‘Well, that is what she compared it to, and she said that if I split it in the middle with a spot of hair, the relief to pedestrians and traffic would be enormous. She’s crazy. I wore a moustache my last year at Oxford, and it looked frightful. Nearly as loathsome as yours. Moustache forsooth!’ said Stilton, which surprised me, for I hadn’t supposed he knew words like “forsooth”. ‘“I wouldn’t grow a moustache to please a dying grandfather,” I told her. “A nice fool I’d look with a moustache,” I said. “It’s how you look without one,” she said. “Is that so?” I said. “Yes, it is,” she said. “Oh?” I said. “Yes,” she said. “Ho!” I said, and she said “Ho to you!”’

If she had added ‘With knobs on’, it would, of course, have made it stronger, but I must say I was rather impressed by Florence’s work as described in this slice of dialogue. It seemed to me snappy and forceful. I suppose girls learn this sort of cut-and-thrust stuff at their finishing schools. And Florence, one must remember, had been moving a good deal of late in Bohemian circles – Chelsea studios and the rooms of the intelligentsia in Bloomsbury and places like that – where the repartee is always of a high order.

‘So that was that,’ proceeded Stilton, having brooded for a space. ‘One thing led to another, hot words passed to and fro, and it was not long before she was returning the ring and saying she would be glad to have her letters back at my earliest convenience.’

I tut-tutted. He asked me rather abruptly not to tut-tut, so I stopped tut-tutting, explaining that my reason for having done so was that his tragic tale had moved me deeply.

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JEEVES AND THE FEUDAL SPIRIT

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