Pelham Wodehouse - The Return of Jeeves

Mrs. Spottsworth had come upon him as a complete and painful surprise. At Cannes he had got the impression that her name was Bessemer, but of course in places like Cannes you don't bother much about surnames. He had, he recalled, always addressed her as Rosie, and she —he shuddered—had addressed him as Billiken.

A clear, but unpleasant, picture rose before his eyes of Jill's face when she heard her addressing him as Billiken at dinner tonight. Most unfortunately, through some oversight, he had omitted to mention to Jill his Riviera acquaintance Mrs. Bessemer, and he could see that she might conceivably take a little explaining away.

"How nice to see you again, Rosalinda," said Monica. "So glad you found your way here all right. It's rather tricky after you leave the main road. My husband, Sir Roderick Carmoyle. And this is—"

"Billiken!" cried Mrs.

Spottsworth, with all the enthusiasm of a generous nature. It was plain that if the ecstasy occasioned by this unexpected encounter was a little one-sided, on her side at least it existed in full measure.

"Eh?" said Monica.

"Mr. Belfry and I are old friends. We knew each other in Cannes a few years ago, when I was Mrs. Bessemer."

"Bessemer!"

"It was not long after my husband had passed the veil owing to having a head-on collision with a truck full of beer bottles on the Jericho Turnpike. His name was Clifton Bessemer."

Monica shot a pleased and congratulatory look at Bill. She knew all about Mrs.

Bessemer of Cannes. She was aware that her brother had given this Mrs. Bessemer the rush of a lifetime, and what better foundation could a young man with a house to sell have on which to build.

"Well, that's fine," she said. "You'll have all sorts of things to talk about, won't you? But he isn't Mr. Belfry now, he's Lord Rowcester."

"Changed his name," explained Rory. "The police are after him, and an alias was essential."

"Oh, don't be an ass, Rory. He came into the title," said Monica. "You know how it is in England. You start out as something, and then someone dies and you do a switch. Our uncle, Lord Rowcester, pegged out not long ago, and Bill was his heir, so he shed the Belfry and took on the Rowcester."

"I see. Well, to me he will always be Billiken. How are you, Billiken?"

Bill found speech, though not much of it and what there was rather rasping.

"I'm fine, thanks—er—Rosie."

"Rosie?" said Rory, startled and, like the child of nature he was, making no attempt to conceal his surprise. "Did I hear you say Rosie?"

Bill gave him a cold look.

"Mrs. Spottsworth's name, as you have already learned from a usually well-informed source—viz.

Moke—is Rosalinda. All her friends—even casual acquaintances like myself—called her Rosie."

"Oh, ah," said Rory. "Quite, quite. Very natural, of course."

"Casual acquaintances?" said Mrs.

Spottsworth, pained.

Bill plucked at his tie.

"Well, I mean blokes who just knew you from meeting you at Cannes and so forth."

"Cannes!" cried Mrs. Spottsworth ecstatically. "Dear, sunny, gay, delightful Cannes! What times we had there, Billiken!

Do you remember—"

"Yes, yes," said Bill. "Very jolly, the whole thing. Won't you have a drink or a sandwich or a cigar or something?"

Fervently he blessed the Mainwarings' Peke for being so confirmed a hypochondriac that it had taken Jill away to the other side of the county. By the time she returned, Mrs. Spottsworth, he trusted, would have simmered down and become less expansive on the subject of the dear old days.

He addressed himself to the task of curbing her exuberance.

"Nice to welcome you to Rowcester Abbey," he said formally.

"Yes, I hope you'll like it," said Monica.

"It's the most wonderful place I ever saw!"

"Would you say that? Mouldering old ruin, I'd call it," said Rory judicially, and was fortunate enough not to catch his wife's eye, "Been decaying for centuries. I'll bet if you shook those curtains, a couple of bats would fly out."

"The patina of Time!" said Mrs.

Spottsworth. "I adore it." She closed her eyes. ""The dead, twelve deep, clutch at you as you go by"," she murmured.

"What a beastly idea," said Rory. "Even a couple of clutching corpses would be a bit over the odds, in my opinion."

Mrs. Spottsworth opened her eyes. She smiled.

"I'm going to tell you something very strange," she said. "It struck me so strongly when I came in at the front door I had to sit down for a moment. Your butler thought I was ill."

"You aren't, I hope?"

"No, not at all. It was simply that I was ... overcome. I realized that I had been here before."

Monica looked politely puzzled. It was left to Rory to supply the explanation.

"Oh, as a sightseer?" he said.

"One of the crowd that used to come on Fridays during the summer months to be shown over the place at a bob a head. I remember them well in the days when you and I were walking out, Moke. The Gogglers, we used to call them. They came in charabancs and dropped nut chocolate on the carpets. Not that dropping nut chocolate on them would make these carpets any worse. That's all been discontinued now, hasn't it, Bill?

Nothing left to goggle at, I suppose. The late Lord Rowcester," he explained to the visitor, "stuck the Americans with all his best stuff, and now there's not a thing in the place worth looking at. I was saying to my wife only a short while ago that by far the best policy in dealing with Rowcester Abbey would be to burn it down."

A faint moan escaped Monica. She raised her eyes heavenwards, as if pleading for a thunderbolt to strike this man. If this was her Roderick's idea of selling goods to a customer, it seemed a miracle that he had ever managed to get rid of a single hose-pipe, lawn-mower or bird-bath.

Mrs. Spottsworth shook her head with an indulgent smile.

"No, no, I didn't mean that I had been here in my present corporeal envelope. I meant in a previous incarnation. I'm a Rotationist, you know."

Rory nodded intelligently.

"Ah, yes. Elks, Shriners and all that.

I've seen pictures of them, in funny hats."

"No, no, you are thinking of Rotarians. I am a Rotationist, which is quite different. We believe that we are reborn as one of our ancestors every ninth generation."

"Ninth?" said Monica, and began to count on her fingers.

"The mystic ninth house. Of course you've read the Zend Avesta of Zoroaster, Sir Roderick?"

"I'm afraid not. Is it good?"

"Essential, I would say."

"I'll put it on my library list," said Rory. "By Agatha Christie, isn't it?"

Monica had completed her calculations.

"Ninth ... That seems to make me Lady Barbara, the leading hussy of Charles the Second's reign."

Mrs. Spottsworth was impressed.

"I suppose I ought to be calling you Lady Barbara and asking you about your latest love affair."

"I only wish I could remember it. From what I've heard of her, it would make quite a story."

"Did she get herself sunburned all over?" asked Rory. "Or was she more of an indoor girl?"

Mrs. Spottsworth had closed her eyes again.

"I feel influences," she said. "I even hear faint whisperings. How strange it is, coming into a house that you last visited three hundred years ago. Think of all the lives that have been lived within these ancient walls. And they are here, all around us, creating an intriguing aura for this delicious old house."

Monica caught Bill's eye.

"It's in the bag, Bill," she whispered.

"Eh?" said Rory in a loud, hearty voice. "What's in the bag?"

"Oh, shut up."

"But what is in the ... Ouch!" He rubbed a well-kicked ankle. "Oh, ah, yes, of course. Yes, I see what you mean."

Mrs. Spottsworth passed a hand across her brow. She appeared to be in a sort of mediumistic trance.