Jeeves Stories - P. G. Wodehouse (best non fiction books to read txt) 📗

in the way of her marrying the man she’s in love with. He’s an artist, too.”

“In the small time.”

“You were in the small time once, Joe. You mustn’t look down on him because he’s a beginner. I know you feel that your daughter is marrying beneath her, but⁠—”

“How on earth do you know anything about young Wilson?”

“He’s my son.”

“Your son?”

“Yes, Joe. And I’ve just been watching him work. Oh, Joe, you can’t think how proud I was of him! He’s got it in him. It’s fate. He’s my son and he’s in the profession! Joe, you don’t know what I’ve been through for his sake. They made a lady of me. I never worked so hard in my life as I did to become a real lady. They kept telling me I had got to put it across, no matter what it cost, so that he wouldn’t be ashamed of me. The study was something terrible. I had to watch myself every minute for years, and I never knew when I might fluff my lines or fall down on some bit of business. But I did it, because I didn’t want him to be ashamed of me, though all the time I was just aching to be back where I belonged.”

Old Danby made a jump at her, and took her by the shoulders.

“Come back where you belong, Julie!” he cried. “Your husband’s dead, your son’s a pro. Come back! It’s twenty-five years ago, but I haven’t changed. I want you still. I’ve always wanted you. You’ve got to come back, kid, where you belong.”

Aunt Julia gave a sort of gulp and looked at him.

“Joe!” she said in a kind of whisper.

“You’re here, kid,” said Old Danby, huskily. “You’ve come back.⁠ ⁠… Twenty-five years!⁠ ⁠… You’ve come back and you’re going to stay!”

She pitched forward into his arms, and he caught her.

“Oh, Joe! Joe! Joe!” she said. “Hold me. Don’t let me go. Take care of me.”

And I edged for the door and slipped from the room. I felt weak. The old bean will stand a certain amount, but this was too much. I groped my way out into the street and wailed for a taxi.

Gussie called on me at the hotel that night. He curveted into the room as if he had bought it and the rest of the city.

“Bertie,” he said, “I feel as if I were dreaming.”

“I wish I could feel like that, old top,” I said, and I took another glance at a cable that had arrived half an hour ago from Aunt Agatha. I had been looking at it at intervals ever since.

“Ray and I got back to her flat this evening. Who do you think was there? The mater! She was sitting hand in hand with old Danby.”

“Yes?”

“He was sitting hand in hand with her.”

“Really?”

“They are going to be married.”

“Exactly.”

“Ray and I are going to be married.”

“I suppose so.”

“Bertie, old man, I feel immense. I look round me, and everything seems to be absolutely corking. The change in the mater is marvellous. She is twenty-five years younger. She and old Danby are talking of reviving ‘Fun in a Teashop,’ and going out on the road with it.”

I got up.

“Gussie, old top,” I said, “leave me for a while. I would be alone. I think I’ve got brain fever or something.”

“Sorry, old man; perhaps New York doesn’t agree with you. When do you expect to go back to England?”

I looked again at Aunt Agatha’s cable.

“With luck,” I said, “in about ten years.”

When he was gone I took up the cable and read it again.

“What is happening?” it read. “Shall I come over?”

I sucked a pencil for a while, and then I wrote the reply.

It was not an easy cable to word, but I managed it.

“No,” I wrote, “stay where you are. Profession overcrowded.”

Leave It to Jeeves

Jeeves⁠—my man, you know⁠—is really a most extraordinary chap. So capable. Honestly, I shouldn’t know what to do without him. On broader lines he’s like those chappies who sit peering sadly over the marble battlements at the Pennsylvania Station in the place marked “Inquiries.” You know the Johnnies I mean. You go up to them and say: “When’s the next train for Melonsquashville, Tennessee?” and they reply, without stopping to think, “Two-forty-three, track ten, change at San Francisco.” And they’re right every time. Well, Jeeves gives you just the same impression of omniscience.

As an instance of what I mean, I remember meeting Monty Byng in Bond Street one morning, looking the last word in a grey check suit, and I felt I should never be happy till I had one like it. I dug the address of the tailors out of him, and had them working on the thing inside the hour.

“Jeeves,” I said that evening. “I’m getting a check suit like that one of Mr. Byng’s.”

“Injudicious, sir,” he said firmly. “It will not become you.”

“What absolute rot! It’s the soundest thing I’ve struck for years.”

“Unsuitable for you, sir.”

Well, the long and the short of it was that the confounded thing came home, and I put it on, and when I caught sight of myself in the glass I nearly swooned. Jeeves was perfectly right. I looked a cross between a music hall comedian and a cheap bookie. Yet Monty had looked fine in absolutely the same stuff. These things are just Life’s mysteries, and that’s all there is to it.

But it isn’t only that Jeeves’s judgment about clothes is infallible, though, of course, that’s really the main thing. The man knows everything. There was the matter of that tip on the “Lincolnshire.” I forget now how I got it, but it had the aspect of being the real, red-hot tabasco.

“Jeeves,” I said, for I’m fond of the man, and like to do him a good turn when I can, “if you want to make a bit of money have something on Wonderchild for the ‘Lincolnshire.’ ”

He shook his head.

“I’d rather not, sir.”

“But it’s the straight goods. I’m going to