Ukridge Stories - P. G. Wodehouse (e book free reading TXT) 📗

Ukridge pondered.

“It’s difficult to know where to begin.”

“Well, to start with, who was she?”

“She was the daughter of a bloke who ran some sort of immensely wealthy business in Singapore.”

“Where did she live?”

“In Onslow Square.”

“Where were you living?”

“With my aunt in Wimbledon.”

“Where did you meet her?”

“At a dinner party at my aunt’s.”

“You fell in love with her at first sight?”

“Yes.”

“For a while it seemed she might return your love?”

“Exactly.”

“And then one day she saw you in a top hat and the whole thing was off. There you are. The entire story in two minutes, fifteen seconds. Now let’s go to bed.”

Ukridge shook his head.

“You’ve got it wrong, old horse. Nothing like that at all. You’d better let me tell the whole thing from the beginning.”

The first thing I did after that dinner (said Ukridge) was to go and call at Onslow Square. As a matter of fact, I called about three times in the first week; and it seemed to me that everything was going like a breeze. You know what I’m like when I’m staying with my Aunt Julia, Corky. Dapper is the word. Debonair. Perfectly groomed. Mind you, I don’t say I enjoy dressing the way she makes me dress when I’m with her, but there’s no getting away from it that it gives me an air. Seeing me strolling along the street with the gloves, the cane, the spats, the shoes and the old top hat, you might wonder if I was a marquis or a duke, but you would be pretty sure I was one of the two.

These things count with a girl. They count still more with her mother. By the end of the second week you wouldn’t be far wrong in saying that I was the popular pet at Onslow Square. And then, rolling in one afternoon for a dish of tea, I was shocked to perceive nestling in my favorite chair, with all the appearance of a cove who is absolutely at home, another bloke. Mabel’s mother was fussing over him as if he were the long-lost son. Mabel seemed to like him a good deal. And the nastiest shock of all came when I discovered that the fellow was a baronet.

Now, you know as well as I do, Corky, that for the ordinary workaday bloke Barts are tough birds to go up against. There is something about Barts that appeals to the most soulful girl. And, as for the average mother, she eats them alive. Even an elderly Bart with two chins and a bald head is bad enough, and this was a young and juicy specimen. He had a clean-cut, slightly pimply, patrician face; and, what was worse, he was in the Coldstream Guards. And you will bear me out, Corky, when I say that, while an ordinary civilian Bart is bad enough, a Bart who is also a Guardee is a rival the stoutest-hearted cove might well shudder at.

And when you consider that practically all I had to put up against this serious menace was honest worth and a happy disposition, you will understand why the brow was a good deal wrinkled as I sat sipping my tea and listening to the rest of the company talking about people I’d never heard of and entertainments where I hadn’t been among those we also noticed.

After a while the conversation turned to Ascot.

“Are you going to Ascot, Mr. Ukridge?” said Mabel’s mother, apparently feeling that it was time to include me in the chitchat.

“Wouldn’t miss it for worlds,” I said.

Though, as a matter of fact, until that moment I had rather intended to give it the go-by. Fond as I am of the sport of kings, to my mind a race meeting where you’ve got to go in a morning coat and a top hat⁠—with the thermometer probably in the nineties⁠—lacks fascination. I’m all for being the young duke when occasion requires, but races and toppers don’t seem to me to go together.

“That’s splendid,” said Mabel, and I’m bound to say these kind words cheered me up a good deal. “We shall meet there.”

“Sir Aubrey,” said Mabel’s mother, “has invited us to his house party.”

“Taken a place for the week down there,” explained the Bart.

“Ah!” I said. And, mark you, that was about all there was to say. For the sickening realization that this Guardee Bart, in addition to being a Bart and a Guardee, also possessed enough cash to take country houses for Ascot Week in that careless, offhand manner, seemed to go all over me like nettle rash. I was rattled, Corky. Your old friend was rattled. I did some pretty tense thinking on my way back to Wimbledon.

When I got there, I found my aunt in the drawing-room. And suddenly something in her attitude seemed to smite me like a blow. I don’t know if you have ever had that rummy feeling which seems to whisper in your ear that hell’s foundations are about to quiver, but I got it the moment I caught sight of her. She was sitting bolt upright in a chair, and as I came in she looked at me. You know her, Corky, and you know just how she shoots her eyes at you without turning her head, as if she were a basilisk with a stiff neck. Well, that’s how she looked at me now.

“Good evening,” she said.

“Good evening,” I said.

“So you’ve come in,” she said.

“Yes,” I said.

“Well, then, you can go straight out again,” she said.

“Eh?” I said.

“And never come back,” she said.

I goggled at her. Mark you, I had been heaved out of the old home by my Aunt Julia many a time before, so it wasn’t as if I wasn’t used to it; but I had never got the boot quite so suddenly before and so completely out of a blue sky. Usually, when Aunt Julia bungs me out on my ear, it is possible to see it coming days ahead.

“I might have guessed that something like