Pelham Wodehouse - The Return of Jeeves

Bill started. He also gulped a little.

"Rosie?"

"I think that is what you call her, is it not?"

"Why—er—yes."

"And she calls you Billiken. Is she a very old friend?"

"No, no. I knew her slightly at Cannes one summer."

"From what I heard her saying at dinner about moonlight drives and bathing from the Eden Roc, I got the impression that you had been rather intimate."

"Good heavens, no. She was just an acquaintance, and a pretty mere one, at that."

"I see."

There was a silence.

"I wonder if you remember," said Jill, at length breaking it, "what I was saying this evening before dinner about people not hiding things from each other, if they are going to get married?"

"Er—yes ... Yes ... I remember that."

"We agreed that it was the only way."

"Yes ... Yes, that's right. So we did."

"I told you about Percy, didn't I? And Charles and Squiffy and Tom and Blotto," said Jill, mentioning other figures of Romance from the dead past. "I never dreamed of concealing the fact that I had been engaged before I met you. So why did you hide this Spottsworth from me?"

It seemed to Bill that, for a pretty good sort of chap who meant no harm to anybody and strove always to do the square thing by one and all, he was being handled rather roughly by Fate this summer day. The fellow—Shakespeare, he rather thought, though he would have to check with Jeeves—who had spoken of the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, had known what he was talking about. Slings and arrows described it to a nicety.

"I didn't hide this Spottsworth from you!" he cried passionately. "She just didn't happen to come up. Lord love a duck, when you're sitting with the girl you love, holding her little hand and whispering words of endearment in her ear, you can't suddenly switch the conversation to an entirely different topic and say "Oh, by the way, there was a woman I met in Cannes some years ago, on the subject of whom I would now like to say a few words. Let me tell you all about the time we drove to St. Tropez"."

"In the moonlight."

"Was it my fault that there was a moon? I wasn't consulted. And as for bathing from the Eden Roc, you talk as if we had had the ruddy Eden Roc to ourselves with not another human being in sight.

It was not so, but far otherwise. Every time we took a dip, the water was alive with exiled Grand Dukes and stiff with dowagers of the most rigid respectability."

"I still think it odd you never mentioned her."

"I don't."

"I do. And I think it still odder that when Jeeves told you this afternoon that a Mrs.

Spottsworth was coming here, you just said "Oh, ah?"' or something and let it go as if you had never heard the name before. Wouldn't the natural thing have been to say "Mrs. Spottsworth? Well, well, bless my soul, I wonder if that can possibly be the woman with whom I was on terms of mere acquaintanceship at Cannes a year or two ago. Did I ever tell you about her, Jill? I used to drive with her a good deal in the moonlight, though of course in quite a distant way"."

It was Bill's moment.

"No," he thundered, "it would not have been the natural thing to say "Mrs. Spottsworth?

Well, well," and so on and so forth, and I'll tell you why. When I knew her ... slightly, as I say, as one does know people in places like Cannes ... her name was Bessemer."

"Oh?"

"Precisely. B with an E with an S with an S with an E with an M with an E with an R. Bessemer. I have still to learn how all this Spottsworth stuff arose."

Jeeves came in. Duty called him at about this hour to collect the coffee-cups, and duty never called to this great man in vain.

His arrival broke what might be called the spell. Jill, who had more to say on the subject under discussion, withheld it. She got up and made for the French window.

"Well, I must be getting along," she said, still speaking rather tonelessly.

Bill stared.

"You aren't leaving already?"

"Only to go home and get some things. Moke has asked me to stay the night."

"Then Heaven bless Moke! Full marks for the intelligent female."

"You like the idea of my staying the night?"

"It's terrific."

"You're sure I shan't be in the way?"

"What on earth are you talking about? Shall I come with you?"

"Of course not. You're supposed to be a host."

She went out, and Bill, gazing after her fondly, suddenly stiffened. Like a delayed-action bomb, those words "You're sure I shan't be in the way?"' had just hit him. Had they been mere idle words? Or had they contained a sinister significance?

"Women are odd, Jeeves," he said.

"Yes, m'lord."

"Not to say peculiar. You can't tell what they mean when they say things, can you?"

"Very seldom, m'lord."

Bill brooded for a moment.

"Were you observing Miss Wyvern as she buzzed off?"

"Not closely, m'lord."

"Was her manner strange, do you think?"

"I could not say, m'lord. I was concentrating on coffee-cups."

Bill brooded again. This uncertainty was preying on his nerves. "You're sure I shan't be in the way?"' Had there been a nasty tinkle in her voice as she uttered the words?

Everything turned on that. If no tinkle, fine.

But if tinkle, things did not look so good. The question, plus tinkle, could only mean that his reasoned explanation of the Spottsworth-Cannes sequence had failed to get across and that she still harboured suspicions, unworthy of her though such suspicions might be.

The irritability which good men feel on these occasions swept over him. What was the use of being as pure as the driven snow, or possibly purer, if girls were going to come tinkling at you?

"The whole trouble with women, Jeeves," he said, and the philosopher Schopenhauer would have slapped him on the back and told him he knew just how he felt, "is that practically all of them are dotty. Look at Mrs. Spottsworth.

Wacky to the eyebrows. Roosting in a ruined chapel in the hope of seeing Lady Agatha."

"Indeed, m'lord? Mrs. Spottsworth is interested in spectres?"

"She eats them alive. Is that balanced behaviour?"

"Psychical research frequently has an appeal for the other sex, m'lord. My Aunt Emily—"

Bill eyed him dangerously.

"Remember what I said about Pliny the Younger, Jeeves?"

"Yes, m'lord."

"That goes for your Aunt Emily as well."

"Very good, m'lord."

"I'm not interested in your Aunt Emily."

"Precisely, m'lord. During her long lifetime very few people were."

"She is no longer with us?"

"No, m'lord."

"Oh, well, that's something," said Bill.

Jeeves floated out, and he flung himself into a chair. He was thinking once more of that cryptic speech, and now his mood had become wholly pessimistic. It was no longer any question of a tinkle or a non-tinkle. He was virtually certain that the words "You're sure I shan't be in the way?"' had been spoken through clenched teeth and accompanied by a look of infinite meaning. They had been the words of a girl who had intended to make a nasty crack.

He was passing his hands through his hair with a febrile gesture, when Monica entered from the library. She had found the celebrants at the Derby Dinner a little on the long-winded side.

Rory was still drinking in every word, but she needed an intermission.

She regarded her hair-twisting brother with astonishment.

"Good heavens, Bill! Why the agony?

What's up?"

Bill glared unfraternally.

"Nothing's up, confound it! Nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing!"

Monica raised her eyebrows.

"Well, there's no need to be stuffy about it.

I was only being the sympathetic sister."

With a strong effort Bill recovered the chivalry of the Rowcesters. "I'm sorry, Moke old thing. I've got a headache."