“Very good, sir.”
“I’m glad you think so. You know what those two lads are!”
“Very high-spirited young gentlemen, sir.”
“Blisters, Jeeves!”
For the last day there had been a certain amount of coolness in the home over a pair of wonderful spats which I had bought in the Burlington Arcade[210]. I mean to say, instead of the ordinary grey and white, you can now get spats in your favourite colours. But Jeeves did not approve them. Of course, Jeeves, though in many ways the best valet in London, is too conservative, if you know what I mean, and an enemy to Progress.
The Twins came into my flat while I was dressing for dinner. I’m only six years older than Claude and Eustace, but in some strange manner they always make me feel as if I were a grandfather class and just waiting for the end. They pinched a couple of my special cigarettes, and started to prattle with the gaiety.
“Hallo, Bertie, old man,” said Claude. “Thank you for having us.”
“Oh, no,” I said. “Only wish you were staying a long time.”
“Hear that, Eustace? He wishes we were staying a long time.”
“I expect it will seem a long time,” said Eustace, philosophically.
“You heard, Bertie? Our little bit of trouble, I mean?”
“Oh, yes. Aunt Agatha was telling me.”
“We leave our country for our country’s good,” said Eustace.
“And let there be no moaning at the bar,” said Claude, “when I put out to sea. What did Aunt Agatha tell you?”
“She said you poured lemonade on the Junior Dean.”
“Not at all,” said Claude, annoyed, “It wasn’t the Junior Dean. It was the Senior Tutor[211].”
“And it wasn’t lemonade,” said Eustace. “It was soda-water. The old man was standing just under our window while I was leaning out with a siphon in my hand. And now, what do you propose to do, Bertie, in the way of entertaining the handsome guests tonight?”
“My idea was to have a bit of dinner in the flat,” I said. “Jeeves is getting it ready now.”
“And afterwards?”
“Well, I thought we might chat of this and that, and then I think that you would probably like to go to bed early, as your train goes about ten or something, doesn’t it?”
The twins looked at each other.
“Bertie,” said Eustace, “I offer the following programme: we will go to Giro’s after dinner. And stay there until two-thirty or three.”
“After which, no doubt,” said Claude, “the Lord will provide.”
“But I thought you would want to get a good night’s rest.”
“Good night’s rest!” said Eustace. “My dear old chap, you don’t imagine that we are dreaming of going to bed tonight, do you?”
I suppose the fact is, I’m not the man I was. I mean, those all-night vigils don’t fascinate me as they used to a few years ago.
As far as I can remember, after Giro’s we came back home about nine in the morning. In fact, I’d just got enough strength to say goodbye to the twins, wish them a pleasant voyage and a happy and successful career in South Africa, and sleep.
It must have been about one in the afternoon when I woke. The door opened and Claude walked in.
“Hallo, Bertie!” said Claude. “Had a nice refreshing sleep? Now, what about a good lunch?”
I’d been having so many distorted nightmares since I had gone to sleep that for half a minute I thought this was simply one more of them, and the worst of the lot. It was only when Claude sat down on my feet that I got on to the fact that this was stern reality.
“Great Lord! What are you doing here?” I gurgled.
Claude looked at me reproachfully.
“Hardly the tone I like to hear in a host, Bertie,” he said reprovingly. “Why, it was only last night that you were saying you wished I was stopping a long time. Your dream has come true. I am.”
“But why aren’t you on your way to South Africa?”
“Now,” said Claude, “I’ll explain. It’s like this, old man. You remember that girl you introduced me to at Giro’s last night?”
“Which girl?”
“There was only one,” said Claude coldly. “Her name was Marion Wardour[212]. I danced with her a lot, if you remember.”
I began to recollect. Marion Wardour has been a friend of mine for some time. A very good girl. She’s playing in that show at the Apollo at the moment.
“We are soul-mates, Bertie,” said Claude. “Two hearts that beat as one, I mean, and all that sort of thing. So I don’t like the idea of going to South Africa and leaving a girl like that in England.”
“But what about Van Alstyne, or whatever his name is? He’ll be expecting you.”
“Oh, he’ll have Eustace. That’ll satisfy him. Very good fellow, Eustace. He will become a magnate of some kind. I shall watch his future progress with considerable interest. And now you must excuse me for a moment, Bertie. For some reason which I can’t explain, I’ve got a slight headache this morning.”
And, believe me or believe me not, the door had hardly closed behind him when in came Eustace with a shining morning face.
“Oh, my God!” I said.
Eustace started to giggle pretty freely.
“Good job, Bertie, good job!” he said. “I’m sorry for poor old Claude, but there was no alternative. It couldn’t be helped. If you really seriously expected me to go to South Africa, you shouldn’t have introduced me to Miss Wardour last night. I want to tell you all about that, Bertie. I’m not a man,’ said Eustace, sitting down on the bed, “who falls in love with every girl he sees. But when I meet my affinity I don’t waste time. I—”
“Oh, heaven! Are you in love with Marion Wardour, too?”
“Too? What do you mean, ‘too’?”
I was going to tell him about Claude, when the blighter came in in person.
“What the hell are you doing here?” he said.
“What the hell are you doing here?” said Eustace.
“Have you come back to trouble Miss Wardour with your society?”
“Is that why you’ve come back?”
“Well,” said Claude at last. “I suppose it can’t be helped. If you’re here, you’re here. May the best man win!”
“Yes, but dash it all!” I said. “What’s the idea? Where do you think you’re going to stay in London?”
“Why, here,” said Eustace, surprised.
“Where else?” said Claude, raising his eyebrows.
“You won’t object, Bertie?” said Eustace.
“But, you silly asses, suppose Aunt Agatha finds out that I’m hiding you when you ought to be in South Africa? What shall I do?”
“What will he do?” Claude asked Eustace.
“Oh, I expect he’ll manage somehow,” said Eustace to Claude.
“Of course,” said Claude. “He’ll manage.”
“Rather!” said Eustace. “A wise chap like Bertie! Of course he will.”
“And now,” said Claude, “what about that lunch we were discussing a moment ago, Bertie?”
For the days that followed the unexpected resurrection of the blighted twins were so absolutely foul that the old nerves began to stick out of my body a foot long and curling at the ends.
One day Aunt Agatha came to my flat to have a chat. Twenty minutes earlier and she would have found the twins. She sank into a chair, and I could see that she was not in her usual sunny spirits.
“Bertie,” she said, “I am uneasy.”
So was I. The twins could come back.
“I wonder,” she said, “if I was too cruel with Claude and Eustace.”
“You weren’t.”
“What do you mean?”
“I—er—mean it would be so unlike you to be cruel with anybody, Aunt Agatha.”
Not bad, really. It pleased the old aunt, and she looked at me with pleasure.
“It is nice of you to say that, Bertie, but what I was thinking was, are they safe?”