Thank You, Jeeves

'But, Chuffy ...'

'I repeat, to edge away. You are brutally and callously scheming to oil out, leaving this lovely girl to break her heart – deserted, abandoned, flung aside like a ... like a ... I shall forget my own name next ... like a soiled glove.'

'But, Chuffy ...'

'Don't try to deny it.'

'But, dash it, it isn't as if she were in love with me.'

'Ha! Isn't she so infatuated with you that she swims ashore from yachts to get at you?'

'She loves you.'

'Ha!'

'She does, I tell you. It was you she swam ashore last night to see. And she only took on this binge of marrying me to score off you because you doubted her.'

'Ha!'

'So take the sensible viewpoint, old man, and bring me butter.'

'Ha!'

'I wish you wouldn't keep saying "Ha!" It doesn't advance the issue, and it sounds rotten. I must have butter, Chuffy. It is of the essence. If it be only a small pat, bring it out. Wooster speaking, old man – the chap you were at school with, the fellow you've known since he was so high.'

I paused. For a moment I had an idea that this had done the trick. I felt his hand fall on my shoulder with a distinct kneading movement. At that instant I would have put my shirt on it that he was softened.

And so he was, but not along the right lines.

'I will tell you exactly how I feel about all this, Bertie,' he said, and there was a sort of beastly gentleness in his manner. 'I won't pretend that I don't love this girl. Even after what has happened, I still love her. I shall always love her. I loved her from the first moment we met. It was at the Savoy Grill, I remember, and she was sitting on one of those chairs in that lobby place half-way through a medium dry Martini, because Sir Roderick and I were a bit late getting there and her father had thought they might as well be having a cocktail instead of just sitting. Our eyes met, and I knew that I had found the only girl in the world for me, not having the foggiest that she was really crazy about you.'

'She isn't!'

'I realize it now, and I know, of course, that I can never win her for myself. But I can do this, Bertie. Having this great love for her, I can see to it that she is not robbed of her happiness. If she is happy, that is all that matters. For some reason her heart is set on being your wife. Why, one cannot say, and we need not go into it. But for some unexplained reason she wants you, and she shall jolly well get you. Funny that you should have come to me, of all people, to help you shatter her girlish dreams and rob her of her sweet, childlike trust in the goodness of human nature! You think I will sit in with you on this foul project? My left foot I will! You get no butter from me, my lad. You will remain exactly as you are, and, after thinking it over, I have no doubt that you will find your better self pointing the way and that you will go back to the yacht, prepared to fulfil your obligations like an English gentleman.'

'But, Chuffy ...'

'And, if you wish, I will be your best man. Agony, of course, but I'll do it if you want me to.'

I clutched at his arm.

'Butter, Chuffy!'

He shook his head.

'No butter, Wooster. You are better without it.'

And, flinging aside my hand like a soiled glove, he stalked past me into the night.

I don't know how long it was that I stood there, rooted to the s. It may have been a short time. It may have been quite a stretch. Despair was gripping me, and when that happens you don't keep looking at your watch.

Let us say, then, that at some point – five, ten, fifteen, or it may have been twenty minutes later – I became aware of somebody coughing softly at my side like a respectful sheep trying to attract the attention of its shepherd, and with how can I describe what thankfulness and astonishment I perceived Jeeves.

15 DEVELOPMENT OF BUTTER SITUATION

A bally miracle it seemed to me at the moment, but of course there was a simple explanation.

'I was hoping that you would not have left the grounds, sir,' he said. 'I have been searching for you for some little time. On learning that the scullery-maid had become a victim to hysterics as the result of opening the back door and observing a black man, I sprang to the conclusion that you must have been calling there, no doubt with a view to seeing me. Has something gone wrong, sir?'

I wiped the brow.

'Jeeves,' I said, 'I feel like a lost child that has found its mother.'

'Indeed, sir?'

'If you don't mind me calling you a mother?'

'Not at all, sir.'

'Thank you, Jeeves.'

'Then there is something wrong, sir?'

'Wrong! You said it. What are those sore things people find themselves in?'

'Straits, sir.'

'I am in the sorest straits, Jeeves. To start with, I found that soap and water won't get this stuff off.'

'No, sir. I should have informed you that butter is a sine qua non.'

'Well, I was on the point of getting butter when Brinkley – my man, you know – suddenly blew in and burned the house down.'

'Too bad, sir.'

'The expression "Too bad" scarcely overstates it, Jeeves. It landed me in the dickens of a hole. I came here. I tried to get in touch with you. But that scullery-maid gummed up that project.'

'A temperamental girl, sir. And by an unfortunate coincidence she and the cook, at the moment of your arrival, had just been occupying themselves with the Ouija board – with, I believe, some interesting results. She appears to have regarded you as a materialized spirit.'

I quivered a bit.

'If cooks would stick to their roasts and hashes,' I said rather severely, 'and not waste their time in psychical research, life would be a very different thing.'

'Quite true, sir.'

'Well, then I ran into Chuffy. He stoutly declined to lend me butter.'

'Indeed, sir?'

'He was in a very unpleasant mood.'

'His lordship is undergoing a good deal of mental anguish at the moment, sir.'

'I could see that. He left me apparently to go for a country ramble. At this time of night!'

'Physical exercise is a recognized palliative when the heart is aching, sir.'

'Well, I mustn't think too harshly of Chuffy. I must always remember that he kicked Brinkley properly. It did me good to watch him. And now you've turned up, all is well. The happy ending, what?'

'Precisely, sir. I shall be delighted to procure you butter.'

'But can I still catch that 10.21?'

'I fear not, sir. But I have ascertained that there is another train as late as 11.50.'

'Then I'm on velvet.'

'Yes, sir.'

I breathed deeply. The relief was great.

'I shouldn't wonder if you couldn't even dig me up a packet of sandwiches for the journey, what?'

'Certainly sir.'

'And a drop of something?'

'Undoubtedly, sir.'

'Then if you happened to have such a thing as a cigarette on your person at this moment, everything would be more or less perfect.'

'Turkish or Virginian, sir?'

'Both.'

There is nothing like a quiet cigarette for soothing the system. For some moments I puffed luxuriously, and my nerves, which had been sticking out of my body an inch long and curled at the ends, gradually slipped into place again. I felt restored and invigorated and in a mood for conversation.

'What was all that yelling about, Jeeves?'

'Sir?'

'Just before I met Chuffy, animal cries started to proceed from somewhere in the house. It sounded like Seabury'