Right Ho, Jeeves

being the life and soul of the party was accustomed to attend binges at the Casino in the ordinary evening-wear trouserings topped to the north by a white mess-jacket with brass buttons. And ever since I had stepped aboard the Blue Train at Cannes station, I had been wondering on and off how mine would go with Jeeves.
    In the matter of evening costume, you see, Jeeves is hidebound and reactionary. I had had trouble with him before about soft-bosomed shirts. And while these mess-jackets had, as I say, been all the rage—_tout ce qu’il y a de chic_—on the Cote d’Azur, I had never concealed it from myself, even when treading the measure at the Palm Beach Casino in the one I had hastened to buy, that there might be something of an upheaval about it on my return.
    I prepared to be firm.
    “Yes, Jeeves?” I said. And though my voice was suave, a close observer in a position to watch my eyes would have noticed a steely glint. Nobody has a greater respect for Jeeves’s intellect than I have, but this disposition of his to dictate to the hand that fed him had got, I felt, to be checked. This mess-jacket was very near to my heart, and I jolly well intended to fight for it with all the vim of grand old Sieur de Wooster at the Battle of Agincourt.
    “Yes, Jeeves?” I said. “Something on your mind, Jeeves?”
    “I fear that you inadvertently left Cannes in the possession of a coat belonging to some other gentleman, sir.”
    I switched on the steely a bit more.
    “No, Jeeves,” I said, in a level tone, “the object under advisement is mine. I bought it out there.”
    “You wore it, sir?”
    “Every night.”
    “But surely you are not proposing to wear it in England, sir?”
    I saw that we had arrived at the nub.
    “Yes, Jeeves.”
    “But, sir–-”
    “You were saying, Jeeves?”
    “It is quite unsuitable, sir.”
    “I do not agree with you, Jeeves. I anticipate a great popular success for this jacket. It is my intention to spring it on the public tomorrow at Pongo Twistleton’s birthday party, where I confidently expect it to be one long scream from start to finish. No argument, Jeeves. No discussion. Whatever fantastic objection you may have taken to it, I wear this jacket.”
    “Very good, sir.”
    He went on with his unpacking. I said no more on the subject. I had won the victory, and we Woosters do not triumph over a beaten foe. Presently, having completed my toilet, I bade the man a cheery farewell and in generous mood suggested that, as I was dining out, why didn’t he take the evening off and go to some improving picture or something. Sort of olive branch, if you see what I mean.
    He didn’t seem to think much of it.
    “Thank you, sir, I will remain in.”
    I surveyed him narrowly.
    “Is this dudgeon, Jeeves?”
    “No, sir, I am obliged to remain on the premises. Mr. Fink-Nottle informed me he would be calling to see me this evening.”
    “Oh, Gussie’s coming, is he? Well, give him my love.”
    “Very good, sir.”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “And a whisky and soda, and so forth.”
    “Very good, sir.”
    “Right ho, Jeeves.”
    I then set off for the Drones.
    At the Drones I ran into Pongo Twistleton, and he talked so much about his forthcoming merry-making of his, of which good reports had already reached me through my correspondents, that it was nearing eleven when I got home again.
    And scarcely had I opened the door when I heard voices in the sitting-room, and scarcely had I entered the sitting-room when I found that these proceeded from Jeeves and what appeared at first sight to be the Devil.
    A closer scrutiny informed me that it was Gussie Fink-Nottle, dressed as Mephistopheles.

    -2-
    “What-ho, Gussie,” I said.
    You couldn’t have told it from my manner, but I was feeling more than a bit nonplussed. The spectacle before me was enough to nonplus anyone. I mean to say, this Fink-Nottle, as I remembered him, was the sort of shy, shrinking goop who might have been expected to shake like an aspen if invited to so much as a social Saturday afternoon at the vicarage. And yet here he was, if one could credit one’s senses, about to take part in a fancy-dress ball, a form of entertainment notoriously a testing experience for the toughest.
    And he was attending that fancy-dress ball, mark you—not, like every other well-bred Englishman, as a Pierrot, but as Mephistopheles—this involving, as I need scarcely stress, not only scarlet tights but a pretty frightful false beard.
    Rummy,