Jeeves in the Offing

sandy beach trying to avoid the attentions of a child with a spade. But I didn’t go to my room and relax, I went in search of Bobbie, breathing fire. I wanted to take up with her the matter of that absence of the burst of melody. I mean, considering that a mere couple of bars of some popular song hit would have saved me from an experience that had turned the bones to water and whitened the hair from the neck up, I felt entitled to demand an explanation of why those bars had not emerged.
I found her outside the front door at the wheel of her car.
‘Oh, hullo, Bertie,’ she said, and a fish on ice couldn’t have spoken more calmly. ‘Have you got it?’
I ground a tooth or two and waved the arms in a passionate gesture.
‘No,’ I said, ignoring her query as to why I had chosen this moment to do my Swedish exercises. ‘I haven’t. But Ma Cream got me.’
Her eyes widened. She squeaked a bit.
‘Don’t tell me she caught you bending again?’
‘Bending is right. I was half-way under the dressing-table. You and your singing,’ I said, and I’m not sure I didn’t add the word ‘Forsooth!’
Her eyes widened a bit further, and she squeaked another squeak.
‘Oh, Bertie, I’m sorry about that.’
‘Me, too.’
‘You see, I was called away to the telephone. Mother rang up. She wanted to tell me you were a nincompoop.’
‘One wonders where she picks up such expressions.’
‘From her literary friends, I suppose. She knows a lot of literary people.’
‘Great help to the vocabulary.’
‘Yes. She was delighted when I told her I was coming home. She wants to have a long talk.’
‘About me, no doubt?’
‘Yes, I expect your name will crop up. But I mustn’t stay here chatting with you, Bertie. If I don’t get started, I shan’t hit the old nest till daybreak. It’s a pity you made such a mess of things. Poor Mr Travers, he’ll be broken-hearted. Still, into each life some rain must fall,’ she said, and drove off, spraying gravel in all directions.
If Jeeves had been there, I would have turned to him and said ‘Women, Jeeves!’, and he would have said ‘Yes, sir’ or possibly ‘Precisely, sir’, and this would have healed the bruised spirit to a certain extent, but as he wasn’t I merely laughed a bitter laugh and made for the lawn. A go at Ma Cream’s goose-flesher might, I thought, do something to soothe the vibrating ganglions.
And it did. I hadn’t been reading long when drowsiness stole over me, the tired eyelids closed, and in another couple of ticks I was off to dreamland, slumbering as soundly as if I had been the cat Augustus. I awoke to find that some two hours had passed, and it was while stretching the limbs that I remembered I hadn’t sent that wire to Kipper Herring, inviting him to come and join the gang. I went to Aunt Dahlia’s boudoir and repaired this omission, telephoning the communication to someone at the post office who would have been well advised to consult a good aurist. This done, I headed for the open spaces again, and was approaching the lawn with a view to getting on with my reading when, hearing engine noises in the background and turning to cast an eye in their direction, blow me tight if I didn’t behold Kipper alighting from his car at the front door.

9
The distance from London to Brinkley Court being a hundred miles or so and not much more than two minutes having elapsed since I had sent off that telegram, the fact that he was now outside the Brinkley front door struck me as quick service. It lowered the record of the chap in the motoring sketch which Catsmeat Potter-Pirbright sometimes does at the Drones Club smoking concert where the fellow tells the other fellow he’s going to drive to Glasgow and the other fellow says ‘How far is that?’ and the fellow says ‘Three hundred miles’ and the other fellow says ‘How long will it take you to get there?’ and the fellow says ‘Oh, about half an hour, about half an hour.’ The What-ho with which I greeted the back of his head as I approached was tinged, accordingly, with a certain bewilderment.
At the sound of the old familiar voice he spun around with something of the agility of a cat on hot bricks, and I saw that his dial, usually cheerful, was contorted with anguish, as if he had swallowed a bad oyster. Guessing now what was biting him, I smiled one of my subtle smiles. I would soon, I told myself, be bringing the roses back to his cheeks.
He gulped a bit, then spoke in a hollow voice, like