Expecting Jeeves
Authors: P. G. Wodehouse
E
XPECTING
JEEVES
P. G. WODEHOUSE
DOVER PUBLICATIONS, INC.
MINEOLA, NEW YORK
Copyright
Copyright © 2016 by Dover Publications, Inc.
All rights reserved.
Bibliographical Note
Expecting Jeeves
, first published by Dover Publications, Inc., in 2016, is a new compilation of ten stories by P. G. Wodehouse. All of the stories were originally published in
The Strand Magazine
between 1918 and 1922.
International Standard Book Number
ISBN-13: 978-0-486-80614-3
ISBN-10: 0-486-80614-6
Manufactured in the United States by RR Donnelley
80614601Â Â Â 2016
Contents
The Delayed Exit of Claude and Eustace
Aunt
Agatha Takes the Count
“JEEVES,” I said, “we've backed a winner.”
“Sir?”
“Coming to this place, I mean. Here we are in a topping hotel, with fine weather, good cooking, golf, bathing, gambling of every variety, and my Aunt Agatha miles away on the other side of the English Channel. I ask you, what could be sweeter?”
I had had to leg it, if you remember, with considerable speed from London because my Aunt Agatha was on my track with a hatchet as the result of the breaking-off of my engagement to Honoria Glossop. The thing hadn't been my fault, but I couldn't have convinced Aunt Agatha of that if I'd argued for a week: so it had seemed to me that the judicious course to pursue was to buzz briskly off while the buzzing was good. I was standing now at the window of the extremely decent suite which I'd taken at the Hotel Splendide at Roville on the French coast, and, as I looked down at the people popping to and fro in the sunshine, and reflected that in about a quarter of an hour I was due to lunch with a girl who was the exact opposite of Honoria Glossop in every way, I felt dashed uplifted. Gay, genial, happy-go-lucky, and devil-may-care, if you know what I mean.
I had met this girlâAline Hemmingway her name wasâfor the first time on the train coming from Paris. She was going to Roville to wait there for a brother who was due to arrive from England. I had helped her with her baggage, got into conversation, had a bite of dinner with her in the restaurant-car, and the result was we had become remarkably chummy. I'm a bit apt, as a rule, to give the modern girl a miss, but there was something different about Aline Hemmingway.
I
turned round, humming a blithe melody, and Jeeves shied like a startled mustang.
I had rather been expecting some such display of emotion on the man's part, for I was trying out a fairly fruity cummerbund that morningâone of those silk contrivances, you know, which you tie round your waist, something on the order of a sash, only more substantial. I had seen it in a shop the day before and hadn't been able to resist it, but I'd known all along that there might be trouble with Jeeves. It was a pretty brightish scarlet.
“I beg your pardon, sir,” he said, in a sort of hushed voice. “You are surely not proposing to appear in public in that thing?”
“What, Cuthbert the Cummerbund?” I said, in a careless, debonair way, passing it off. “Rather!”
“I should not advise it, sir, really I shouldn't.”
“Why not?”
“The effect, sir, is loud in the extreme.”
I tackled the blighter squarely. I mean to say, nobody knows better than I do that Jeeves is a master-mind and all that, but, dash it, a fellow must call his soul his own. You can't be a serf to your valet.
“You know, the trouble with you, Jeeves,” I said, “is that you're tooâwhat's the word I want?âtoo bally insular. You can't realize that you aren't in Piccadilly all the time. In a place like this, simply dripping with the gaiety and
joie-de-vivre
of France, a bit of colour and a touch of the poetic is expected of you. Why, last night at the Casino I saw a chappie in a full evening suit of yellow velvet.”
“Nevertheless, sirââ”
“Jeeves,” I said, firmly, “my mind is made up. I'm in a foreign country; it's a corking day; God's in his heaven and all's right with the world, and this cummerbund seems to me to be called for.”
“Very good, sir,” said Jeeves, coldly.
Dashed upsetting, this sort of thing. If there's one thing that gives me the pip, it's unpleasantness in the home; and I could see that relations were going to be pretty fairly strained for a while. I suppose the old brow must have been a bit furrowed or something, for Aline Hemmingway spotted that things were wrong directly we sat down to lunch.
“
You seem depressed, Mr. Wooster,” she said. “Have you been losing money at the Casino?”
“No,” I said. “As a matter of fact, I won quite a goodish sum last night.”
“But something is the matter. What is it?”
“Well, to tell you the truth,” I said, “I've just had rather a painful scene with my man, and it's shaken me a bit. He doesn't like this cummerbund.”
“Why, I've just been admiring it. I think it's very becoming.”
“No, really?”
“It has rather a Spanish effect.”
“Exactly what I thought myself. Extraordinary you should have said that. A touch of the hidalgo, what? Sort of Vincente y Blasco What's-his-name stuff. The jolly old hidalgo off to the bull-fight, what?”
“Yes. Or a corsair of the Spanish Main.”
“Absolutely! I say, you know, you have bucked me up. It's a rummy thing about youâhow sympathetic you are, I mean. The ordinary girl you meet to-day is all bobbed hair and gaspers, but youââ”
I was about to continue in this strain, when somebody halted at our table, and the girl jumped up.
“Sidney!” she cried.
The chappie who had anchored in our midst was a small, round cove with a face rather like a sheep. He wore pince-nez, his expression was benevolent, and he had on one of those collars which button at the back. A parson, in fact.
“Well, my dear,” he said, beaming pretty freely, “here I am at last.”
“Are you very tired?”
“Not at all. A most enjoyable journey, in which tedium was rendered impossible by the beauty of the scenery through which we passed and the entertaining conversation of my fel-low-travellers. But may I be presented to this gentleman?” he said, peering at me through the pince-nez.
“This is Mr. Wooster,” said the girl, “who was very kind to me coming from Paris. Mr. Wooster, this is my brother.”
We shook hands, and the brother went off to get a wash.
“Sidney's such a dear,” said the girl. “I know you'll like him.”
“
Seems a topper.”
“I 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, soââ”
“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 wouldââ”
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 ifâerâif 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 bootjack 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 crossroads, 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 Sidneyâit was my faultâI 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.