Read Online The inimitable Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse - Free Book Online Page B

read Ruskin to me.

    7
    Introducing Claude and Eustace

    The blow fell precisely at one-forty-five (summer time). Spenser, Aunt Agatha’s butler, was offering me the fried potatoes at the moment, and such was my emotion that I lofted six of them on to the sideboard with the spoon. Shaken to the core, if you know what I mean.
    Mark you, I was in a pretty enfeebled condition already. I had been engaged to Honoria Glossop nearly two weeks, and during all that time not a day had passed without her putting in some heavy work in the direction of what Aunt Agatha had called ‘moulding’ me. I had read solid literature till my eyes bubbled; we had legged it together through miles of picture-galleries; and I had been compelled to undergo classical concerts to an extent you would hardly believe. All in all, therefore, I was in no fit state to receive shocks, especially shocks like this. Honoria had lugged me round to lunch at Aunt Agatha’s, and I had just been saying to myself, ‘Death, where is thy jolly old sting?’ when she hove the bomb.
    ‘Bertie,’ she said, suddenly, as if she had just remembered it, ‘what is the name of that man of yours - your valet?’
    ‘Eh? Oh, Jeeves.’
    ‘I think he’s a bad influence for you,’ said Honoria. ‘When we are married, you must get rid of Jeeves.’
    It was at this point that I jerked the spoon and sent six of the best and crispest sailing on to the sideboard, with Spenser gambolling after them like a dignified old retriever.
    ‘Get rid of Jeeves!’ I gasped.
    ‘Yes. I don’t like him.’
    ’ I don’t like him,’ said Aunt Agatha.
    ‘But I can’t. I mean - why, I couldn’t carry on for a day without Jeeves.’
    ‘You will have to,’ said Honoria. ‘I don’t like him at all.’
    ’ I don’t like him at all,’ said Aunt Agatha. ‘I never did.’
    Ghastly, what? I’d always had an idea that marriage was a bit of a wash-out, but I’d never dreamed that it demanded such frightful sacrifices from a fellow. I passed the rest of the meal in a sort of stupor.
    The scheme had been, if I remember, that after lunch I should go off and caddy for Honoria on a shopping tour down Regent Street; but when she got up and started collecting me and the rest of her things, Aunt Agatha stopped her.
    ‘You run along, dear,’ she said. ‘I want to say a few words to Bertie.’
    So Honoria legged it, and Aunt Agatha drew up her chair and started in.
    ‘Bertie,’ she said, ‘dear Honoria does not know it, but a little difficulty has arisen about your marriage.’
    ‘By Jove! Not really?’ I said, hope starting to dawn.
    ‘Oh, it’s nothing at all, of course. It is only a little exasperating. The fact is, Sir Roderick is being rather troublesome.’
    ‘Thinks I’m not a good bet? Wants to scratch the fixture? Well, perhaps he’s right.’
    ‘Pray do not be so absurd, Bertie. It is nothing so serious as that. But the nature of Sir Roderick’s profession unfortunately makes him - over-cautious.’
    I didn’t get it.
    ‘Over-cautious?’
    ‘Yes. I suppose it is inevitable. A nerve specialist with his extensive practice can hardly help taking a rather warped view of humanity.’
    I got what she was driving at now. Sir Roderick Glossop, Hono-ria’s father, is always called a nerve specialist, because it sounds better, but everybody knows that he’s really a sort of janitor to the loony-bin. I mean to say, when your uncle the Duke begins to feel the strain a bit and you find him in the blue drawing-room sticking straws in his hair, old Glossop is the first person you send for. He toddles round, gives the patient the once-over, talks about overexcited nervous systems, and recommends complete rest and seclusion and all that sort of thing. Practically every posh family in the country has called him in at one time or another, and I suppose that, being in that position - I mean constantly having to sit on people’s heads while their nearest and dearest phone to the asylum to