Thank You, Jeeves

Pauline, meanwhile, had begun to advance with the air of a woman getting together with her demon lover, and a sort of pity for the girl shot through the Wooster bosom. I mean to say, any observant outsider like myself could see so clearly that she had got quite the wrong angle on the situation. I could read Chuffy like a book, and I knew that she was totally mistaken in what she supposed to be his emotions at this juncture. That odd noise he was making I could diagnose, not as the love call which she appeared to think it, but as the stern and censorious gruffle of a man who, finding his loved one on alien premises in heliotrope pyjamas, is stricken to the core, cut to the quick, and as sore as a gumboil.

But she, poor simp, being so dashed glad to behold him, had not so much as begun to suspect that he, the circs being what they were, might possibly not be equally glad to behold her. With the result that when at this juncture he stepped back and folded his arms with a bitter sneer, it was as if he had jabbed her in the eye with a burnt stick. The light faded from her face, and in its stead there appeared the hurt, bewildered look of a barefoot dancer who, while half-way through 'The Vision of Salome', steps on a tin tack.

'Marmaduke!'

Chuffy unleashed another bitter sneer.

'So!' he said, finding speech – if you can call that speech.

'What do you mean? Why are you looking like that?'

I thought it about time that I put in a word. I had risen from the bed on Pauline's entry and for some moments had been teetering towards the door with a sort of sketchy idea of making for the great open spaces. But partly because I felt that it ill beseemed a Wooster to leg it at such a time and partly because I had no boots on, I had decided to remain. I now intervened, coming across with the word in season.

'What you want on an occasion like this, Chuffy, old man,' I said, 'is simple faith. The poet Tennyson tells us ...'

'Shut up,' said Chuffy. 'I don't want to hear anything from you.'

'Right ho,' I said. 'But, all the same, simple faith is better than Norman blood, and you can't get away from it.'

Pauline was looking a bit fogged.

'Simple faith? What ... Oh!' she said, abruptly signing off. And I noted that the features were suffused with a crimson blush.

'Oh!' she said.

The cheeks continued to glow. But now it was not the blush of modesty that hotted them up. That first 'Oh!' I take it, had been caused by her catching sight of her pyjamaed limbs and suddenly getting on to the equivocal nature of her position. The second one was different. It was the heart cry of a woman who is madder than a hornet.

I mean, you know how it is. A sensitive and high-spirited girl goes through the deuce of an ordeal to win through to the bloke she loves, jumping off yachts, swimming through dashed cold water, climbing into cottages, and borrowing other people's pyjamas, and then, when she has come to journey's end, so to speak, and is expecting the tender smile and the whispered endearments, gets instead the lowering frown, the curled lip, the suspicious eye, and – in a word – the raspberry. Naturally, she's a bit upset.

'Oh!' she said, for the third time, and her teeth gave a little click, most unpleasant. 'So that's what you think?'

Chuffy shook his head in an impatient sort of way.

'Of course I don't.'

'You do.'

'I don't.'

'Yes, you do.'

'I don't think anything of the kind,' said Chuffy. 'I know that Bertie has been ...'

'... Scrupulously correct in his behaviour throughout,' I suggested.

'... sleeping in a potting shed,' continued Chuffy, and I must say it didn't sound half as good as my version. 'That's not the point. The fact remains that in spite of being engaged to me and pretending this afternoon that you were tickled pink to be engaged to me, you are still so much in love with Bertie that you can't keep away from him. You think I don't know all about your being engaged to him in New York, but I do. Oh, I'm not complaining,' said Chuffy, looking rather like Saint Sebastian on receipt of about the fifteenth arrow. You have a perfect right to love who you like ...'

'Whom, old man,' I couldn't help saying. Jeeves has made me rather a purist in these matters.

'Will you keep quiet!'

'Of course, of course.'

'You keep shoving your oar in....'

'Sorry, sorry. Shan't occur again.'

Chuffy, who had been gazing at me as if he would have liked to strike me with a blunt instrument, gazed once more at Pauline as if he would have liked to strike her with a blunt instrument.

'But ...' He paused. 'Now you've made me forget what I was going to say,' he said in a rather peevish manner.

Pauline took the floor. She was still on the pink side, and her eyes were gleaming glitteringly. I've seen my Aunt Agatha's eyes gleam just like that when she prepared to tick me off for some fancied misdemeanour. Of the love light no traces remained.

'Well, then, perhaps you'll listen to what I'm going to say. I suppose you have no objection to my putting in a word?'

'None,' said Chuffy.

'None, none,' I said.

Pauline was beyond a question stirred to the core. I could see her toes wiggling.

'In the first place, you make me sick!'

'Indeed?'

'Yes, indeed. In the second place, I hope I shall never see you again in this world or the next.'

'Really?'

'Yes, really. I hate you. I wish I'd never met you. I think you're a worse pig than any you've got up at that beastly house of yours.'

This interested me.

'I didn't know you kept pigs, Chuffy'

'Black Berkshires,' he said absently. 'Well, if that's how you ...'

'There's money in pigs.'

'Well, all right,' said Chuffy. 'If that's how you feel, well, all right.'

'You bet it's all right.'

'That's what I said, it's all right.'

'My Uncle Henry...'

'Bertie,' said Chuffy.

'Hallo?'

'I don't want to hear about your Uncle Henry. I am not interested in your Uncle Henry. It will be all right with me if your damned Uncle Henry trips over his feet and breaks his blasted neck.'

'Too late, old man. He passed away three years ago. Pneumonia. I was only saying he kept pigs. Made a good thing out of them, too.'

'Will you stop ...'

'Yes, and will you,' said Pauline. 'Are you going to spend the night here? I wish you would leave off talking and go.'

'I will,' said Chuffy.

'Do,' said Pauline.

'Good night,' said Chuffy.

He strode to the head of the stairs.

'But one last word ... 'he said with a wide, passionate gesture.

Well, I could have told the poor old chap that you can't do that sort of thing in these old-world country cottages. His knuckles hit a projecting beam, he danced in agony, overbalanced, and the next moment was on his way to the ground floor like a sack of coals.

Pauline Stoker ran to the banisters and looked over.

'Are you hurt?' she cried.

'Yes,' yelled Chuffy.

'Good,' cried Pauline.

She came back into the room, and the front door slammed like the bursting of an overwrought heart.

10 ANOTHER VISITOR

I drew a deepish breath. With the departure of the male half of the sketch a certain strain seemed to have gone out of the atmosphere. Excellent companion though I had always found him in the past, Chuffy had not shown himself at his chummiest during the recent scene, with the result that for some little time I had been feeling rather like Daniel in the lions' den.