The letter arrived on the morning of the sixteenth. I was pushing a bit
of breakfast into the Wooster face at the moment; and, feeling fairly
well fortified with coffee and kippers, I decided to break the news
to Jeeves without delay. As Shakespeare says, if you're going to do a
thing you might just as well pop right at it and get it over. The man
would be disappointed, of course, and possibly even chagrined; but,
dash it all, a spot of disappointment here and there does a fellow
good. Makes him realize that life is stern and life is earnest.
"Oh, Jeeves," I said.
"Sir?"
"We have here a communication from Lady Wickham. She has written
inviting me to Skeldings for the festivities. So will you see
about bunging the necessaries together? We repair thither on the
twenty-third. We shall be there some little time, I expect."
There was a pause. I could feel he was directing a frosty gaze at me,
but I dug into the marmalade and refused to meet it.
"I thought I understood you to say, sir, that you proposed to visit
Monte Carlo immediately after Christmas."
"I know. But that's all off. Plans changed."
At this point the telephone bell rang, tiding over nicely what had
threatened to be an awkward moment. Jeeves unhooked the receiver.
"Yes?... Yes, madam.... Very good, madam. Here is Mr. Wooster." He
handed me the instrument. "Mrs. Spenser Gregson, sir."
You know, every now and then I can't help feeling that Jeeves is losing
his grip. In his prime it would have been with him the work of a moment
to have told my aunt Agatha that I was not at home. I gave him one of
those reproachful glances, and took the machine.
"Hullo?" I said. "Yes? Yes? Yes? Bertie speaking. Hullo? Hullo? Hullo?"
"Don't keep on saying Hullo," yipped the old relative, in her customary
curt manner. "You're not a parrot. Sometimes I wish you were, because
then you might have a little sense."
Quite the wrong sort of tone to adopt toward a fellow in the early
morning, of course, but what can one do?
"Bertie, Lady Wickham tells me she has invited you to Skeldings for
Christmas. Are you going?"
"Rather!"
"Well, mind you behave yourself. Lady Wickham is an old friend of mine."
"I shall naturally endeavour, Aunt Agatha," I replied stiffly, "to
conduct myself in a manner befitting an English gentleman paying a
visit----"
"What did you say? Speak up. I can't hear."
"I said, 'Right ho.'"
"Oh? Well, mind you do. And there's another reason why I particularly
wish you to be as little of an imbecile as you can manage while at
Skeldings. Sir Roderick Glossop will be there."
"What!"
"Don't bellow like that."
"Did you say Sir Roderick Glossop?"
"I did."
"You don't mean Tuppy Glossop?"
"I mean Sir Roderick Glossop. Which was my reason for saying Sir
Roderick Glossop. Now, Bertie, I want you to listen to me attentively.
Are you there?"
"Yes. Still here."
"Well, then, listen. I have at last succeeded, after incredible
difficulty and in face of all the evidence, in almost persuading Sir
Roderick that you are not actually insane. He is prepared to suspend
judgment until he has seen you once more. On your behaviour at
Skeldings, therefore----"
But I had hung up the receiver. Shaken. That's what I was. S. to the
core.
This Glossop was a formidable old bird with a bald head and outsize
eyebrows, by profession a loony-doctor. How it happened, I couldn't
tell you to this day, but I once got engaged to his daughter Honoria, a
ghastly dynamic exhibit who read Nietzsche and had a laugh like waves
breaking on a stern and rockbound coast. The fixture was scratched,
owing to events occurring which convinced the old boy that I was off my
napper; and since then he has always had my name at the top of his list
of Loonies I Have Lunched With.
"Jeeves," I said, all of a twitter, "do you know what? Sir Roderick
Glossop is going to be at Lady Wickham's."
"Very good, sir. If you have finished breakfast I will clear away."
Cold and haughty. No sympathy. None of the rallying-around spirit which
one likes to see. As I had anticipated, Jeeves had been looking forward
to a little flutter at the tables. We Woosters can wear the mask. I
ignored his lack of decent feeling.
"Do so, Jeeves," I said proudly.
Going down to Skeldings in the car on the afternoon of the
twenty-third, Jeeves was aloof and reserved. And before dinner on
the first night of my visit he put the studs in my dress shirt in
what I can only call a marked manner. The whole thing was extremely
painful, and it seemed to me, as I lay in bed on the morning of the
twenty-fourth, that the only step to take was to put the whole facts
of the case before him and trust to his native good sense to effect an
understanding.
My hostess, Lady Wickham, was a beaky female built far too closely
on the lines of my aunt Agatha for comfort; but she had seemed matey
enough on my arrival. Her daughter Roberta had welcomed me with a
warmth which, I'm bound to say, had set the old heartstrings fluttering
a bit. And Sir Roderick, in the brief moment we had had together, had
said, "Ha, young man!"--not particularly chummily, but he said it; and
my view was that it practically amounted to the lion lying down with
the lamb.
So, all in all, life at this juncture seemed pretty well all to the
mustard, and I decided to tell Jeeves exactly how matters stood.
"Jeeves," I said, as he appeared with the steaming.
"Sir?"
"I'm afraid scratching that Monte Carlo trip has been a bit of a jar
for you, Jeeves."
"Not at all, sir."
"Oh, yes, it has. The heart was set on wintering in the world's good
old plague spot, I know. I saw your eye light up when I said we were
due for a visit there. You snorted a bit and your fingers twitched. I
know, I know. And now that there has been a change of programme, the
iron has entered into your soul."
"Not at all, sir."
"Oh, yes, it has. I've seen it. Very well, then. What I wish to impress
upon you, Jeeves, is that it was through no light and airy caprice that
I accepted this invitation to Lady Wickham's. I have been angling for
it for weeks, prompted by many considerations. It was imperative that
I should come to Skeldings for Christmas, Jeeves, because I knew that
young Tuppy Glossop was going to be here."
"Sir Roderick Glossop, sir?"
"His nephew. You may have observed hanging about the place a fellow
with light hair and a Cheshire-cat grin. That is Tuppy, and I have been
anxious for some time to get to grips with him. The Wooster honour is
involved."