Read Online Much Obliged, Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse - Free Book Online Page A

behaviour, so I said:
    ‘Euphoria.’
    ‘I what?’
    ‘That’s what it’s called, Jeeves tells me, feeling like that.’
    ‘Oh, I see. I just call it being happy, happy, happy.’
    Having said which, she gave a start, quivered and put a hand up to her face as if she were having a screen test and had been told to register remorse.
    ‘Oh, Bertie! ‘
    ‘Hullo?’
    ‘I’m so sorry.’
    ‘Eh?’
    ‘It was so tactless of me to go on about my happiness. I should have remembered how different it was for you. I saw your face twist with pain as I came in and I can’t tell you how sorry I am to think that it is I who have caused it. Life is not easy, is it?’
    ‘Not very.’
    ‘Difficult.’
    ‘In spots.’
    ‘The only thing is to be brave.’
    ‘That’s about it.’
    ‘You must not lose courage. Who knows? Consolation may be waiting for you somewhere. Some day you will meet someone who will make you forget you ever loved me. No, not quite that. I think I shall always be a fragrant memory, always something deep in your heart that will be with you like a gentle, tender ghost as you watch the sunset on summer evenings while the little birds sing their off-to-bed songs in the shrubbery.’
    ‘I wouldn’t be surprised,’ I said, for one simply has to say the civil thing. ‘You look a bit damp,’ I added, changing the subject. ‘Was it raining when you were out?’
    ‘A little, but I didn’t mind. I was saying good night to the flowers.’
    ‘Oh, you say good night to them, too?’
    ‘Of course. Their poor little feelings would be so hurt if I didn’t.’
    ‘Wise of you to come in. Might have got lumbago.’
    ‘That was not why I came in. I saw you through the window, and I had a question to ask you. A very, very serious question.’
    ‘Oh, yes?’
    ‘But it’s so difficult to know how to put it. I shall have to ask it as they do in books. You know what they say in books.’
    ‘What who say in books?’
    ‘Detectives and people like that. Bertie, are you going straight now ? ‘
    ‘I beg your pardon ? ‘
    ‘You know what I mean. Have you given up stealing things? ‘
    I laughed one of those gay debonair ones. ‘Oh, absolutely.’
    ‘I’m so glad. You don’t feel the urge any more? You’ve conquered the craving? I told Daddy it was just a kind of illness. I said you couldn’t help yourself.’
    I remembered her submitting this theory to him… I was hiding behind a sofa at the time, a thing I have been compelled to do rather oftener than I could wish… and Sir Watkyn had replied in what I thought dubious taste that it was precisely my habit of helping myself to everything I could lay my hands on that he was criticizing.
    Another girl might have left it at that, but not M. Bassett. She was all eager curiosity.
    ‘Did you have psychiatric treatment? Or was it will power?
    ‘ ‘Just will power.’
    ‘How splendid. I’m so proud of you. It must have been a terrible struggle.’
    ‘Oh, so-so.’
    ‘I shall write to Daddy and tell him-‘
    Here she paused and put a hand to her left eye, and it was easy for a man of my discernment to see what had happened. The french window being open, gnats in fairly large numbers had been coming through and flitting to and fro. It’s a thing one always has to budget for in the English countryside. In America they have screens, of course, which make flying objects feel pretty non-plussed, but these have never caught on in England and the gnats have it more or less their own way. They horse around and now and then get into people’s eyes. One of these, it was evident, had now got into Madeline’s. I would be the last to deny that Bertram Wooster has his limitations, but in one field of endeavour I am pre-eminent. In the matter of taking things out of eyes I yield to no one. I know what to say and what to do.
    Counselling her not to rub it, I advanced handkerchief in hand.
    I remember going into the technique of operations of this kind with Gussie Fink-Nottle