P. G. Wodehouse - Thank You, Jeeves

I was a shade perturbed. Nothing to signify, really, but still just a spot concerned. As I sat in the old flat, idly touching the strings of my banjolele, an instrument to which I had become greatly addicted of late, you couldn't have said that the brow was actually furrowed, and yet, on the other hand, you couldn't have stated absolutely that it wasn't. Perhaps the word 'pensive' about covers it. It seemed to me that a situation fraught with embarrassing potentialities had arisen.

'Jeeves,' I said, 'do you know what?'

'No, sir.'

'Do you know whom I saw last night?'

'No, sir.'

'J. Washburn Stoker and his daughter, Pauline.'

'Indeed, sir?'

'They must be over here.'

'It would seem so, sir.'

'Awkward, what?'

'I can conceive that after what occurred in New York it might be distressing for you to encounter Miss Stoker, sir. But I fancy the contingency need scarcely arise.'

I weighed this.

'When you start talking about contingencies arising, Jeeves, the brain seems to flicker and I rather miss the gist. Do you mean that I ought to be able to keep out of her way?'

'Yes, sir.'

'Avoid her?'

'Yes, sir.'

I played five bars of 'Old Man River' with something of abandon. His pronouncement had eased my mind. I followed his reasoning. After all, London's a large place. Quite simple not to run into people, if you don't want to.

'It gave me rather a shock, though.'

'I can readily imagine so, sir.'

'Accentuated by the fact that they were accompanied by Sir Roderick Glossop.'

'Indeed, sir?'

'Yes. It was at the Savoy Grill. They were putting on the nosebag together at a table by the window. And here's rather a rummy thing, Jeeves. The fourth member of the party was Lord Chuffnell's aunt, Myrtle. What would she be doing in that gang?'

'Possibly her ladyship is an acquaintance either of Mr Stoker, Miss Stoker, or Sir Roderick, sir.'

'Yes, that may be so. Yes, that might account for it. But it surprised me, I confess.'

'Did you enter into conversation with them, sir?'

'Who, me? No, Jeeves. I was out of the room like a streak. Apart from wishing to dodge the Stokers, can you see me wantonly and deliberately going and chatting with old Glossop?'

'Certainly he has never proved a very congenial companion in the past, sir.'

'If there is one man in the world I hope never to exchange speech with again, it is that old crumb.'

'I forgot to mention, sir, that Sir Roderick called to see you this morning.'

'What!'

'Yes, sir.'

'He called to see me?'

'Yes, sir.'

'After what has passed between us?'

'Yes, sir.'

'Well, I'm dashed!'

'Yes, sir. I informed him that you had not yet risen, and he said that he would return later.'

'He did, did he?' I laughed. One of those sardonic ones. 'Well, when he does, set the dog on him.'

'We have no dog, sir.'

'Then step down to the flat below and borrow Mrs Tinkler-Moulke's Pomeranian. Paying social calls after the way he behaved in New York! I never heard of such a thing. Did you ever hear of such a thing, Jeeves?'

'I confess that in the circumstances his advent occasioned me surprise, sir.'

'I should think it did. Good Lord! Good heavens! Good gosh! The man must have the crust of a rhinoceros.'

And when I have given you the inside story, I think you will agree with me that my heat was justified. Let me marshal my facts and go to it.

About three months before, noting a certain liveliness in my Aunt Agatha, I had deemed it prudent to pop across to New York for a space to give her time to blow over. And about half-way through my first week there, in the course of a beano of some description at the Sherry-Netherland, I made the acquaintance of Pauline Stoker.

She got right in among me. Her beauty maddened me like wine.

'Jeeves,' I recollect saying, on returning to the apartment, 'who was the fellow who on looking at something felt like somebody looking at something? I learned the passage at school, but it has escaped me.'

'I fancy the individual you have in mind, sir, is the poet Keats, who compared his emotions on first reading Chapman's Homer to those of stout Cortez when with eagle eyes he stared at the Pacific'