The Jeeves Omnibus (172 page)
Read The Jeeves Omnibus Online
Authors: P. G. Wodehouse
Tags: #Literature & Fiction, #Humour, #Literary, #Fiction, #Classic, #General, #Classics
‘Jolly. Cosy and pleasant, you know. I mean, looking at the clock and wondering if you’re going to be late with the good old drinks, and then you coming in with the tray always on time, never a minute late, and shoving it down on the table and biffing off, and the next night coming in and shoving it down and biffing off, and the next
night
– I mean, gives you a sort of safe, restful feeling. Soothing! That’s the word. Soothing!’
‘Yes, sir. Oh, by the way, sir –’
‘Well?’
‘Have you succeeded in finding a suitable house yet, sir?’
‘House? What do you mean, house?’
‘I understood, sir, that it was your intention to give up the flat and take a house of sufficient size to enable you to have your sister, Mrs Scholfield, and her three young ladies to live with you.’
Mr Wooster shuddered strongly.
‘That’s off, Jeeves,’ he said.
‘Very good, sir,’ I replied.
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Version 1.0
Epub ISBN 9781448107070
First published in this collection 1990
© in this collection the Trustees of the P.G. Wodehouse Estate 1989
Carry on Jeeves
© P.G. Wodehouse 1925
Right Ho, Jeeves
© P.G. Wodehouse 1934
Joy in the Morning
© P.G. Wodehouse 1947
All rights reserved
26
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Reprinted 1991, 1992 (twice), 1999, 2006 (twice)
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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 9780091745745
1: Jeeves and the Impending Doom
2: The Inferiority Complex of Old Sippy
3: Jeeves and the Yule-Tide Spirit
4: Jeeves and the Song of Songs
5: Episode of the Dog McIntosh
7: Jeeves and the Kid Clementina
9: Jeeves and the Old School Chum
‘There are aspects of Jeeves’s character which have frequently caused coldness to arise between us. He is one of those fellows who, if you give them a thingummy, take a what-d’you-call-it.’
BERTRAM WOOSTER
This volume, containing
The Mating Season, Ring for Jeeves
and
Very Good, Jeeves
, gives bumper opportunities for both thingummies and what-d’you-call-its in plots as devious and situations as funny as any in Wodehouse.
The author of almost a hundred books and the creator of Jeeves, Blandings Castle, Psmith, Ukridge, Uncle Fred and Mr Mulliner, P.G. Wodehouse was born in 1881 and educated at Dulwich College. After two years with the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank he became a full-time writer, contributing to a variety of periodicals. As well as his novels and short stories, he wrote lyrics for musical comedies, and at one stage had five shows running simultaneously on Broadway.
At the age of 93, in the New Year’s Honours List of 1975, he received a long-overdue Knighthood, only to die on St Valentine’s Day some 45 days later.
Books by P. G. Wodehouse
Fiction
Aunts Aren’t Gentlemen
The Adventures of Sally
Bachelors Anonymous
Barmy in Wonderland
Big Money
Bill the Conqueror
Blandings Castle and Elsewhere
Carry On, Jeeves
The Clicking of Cuthbert
Cocktail Time
The Code of the Woosters
The Coming of Bill
Company for Henry
A Damsel in Distress
Do Butlers Burgle Banks
Doctor Sally
Eggs, Beans and Crumpets
A Few Quick Ones
French Leave
Frozen Assets
Full Moon
Galahad at Blandings
A Gentleman of Leisure
The Girl in Blue
The Girl on the Boat
The Gold Bat
The Head of Kay’s
The Heart of a Goof
Heavy Weather
Hot Water
Ice in the Bedroom
If I Were You
Indiscretions of Archie
The Inimitable Jeeves
Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit
Jeeves in the Offing
Jill the Reckless
Joy in the Morning
Laughing Gas
Leave it to Psmith
The Little Nugget
Lord Emsworth and Others
Louder and Funnier
Love Among the Chickens
The Luck of Bodkins
The Man Upstairs
The Man with Two Left Feet
The Mating Season
Meet Mr Mulliner
Mike and Psmith
Mike at Wrykyn
Money for Nothing
Money in the Bank
Mr Mulliner Speaking
Much Obliged, Jeeves
Mulliner Nights
My Man Jeeves
Not George Washington
Nothing Serious
The Old Reliable
Pearls, Girls and Monty Bodkin
A Pelican at Blandings
Piccadilly Jim
Pigs Have Wings
Plum Pie
The Pothunters
A Prefect’s Uncle
The Prince and Betty
Psmith, Journalist
Psmith in the City
Quick Service
Right Ho, Jeeves
Ring for Jeeves
Sam the Sudden
Service with a Smile
The Small Bachelor
Something Fishy
Something Fresh
Spring Fever
Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves
Summer Lightning
Summer Moonshine
Sunset at Blandings
The Swoop
Tales of St Austin’s
Thank You, Jeeves
Ukridge
Uncle Dynamite
Uncle Fred in the Springtime
Uneasy Money
Very Good, Jeeves
The White Feather
William Tell Told Again
Young Men in Spats
Omnibuses
The World of Blandings
The World of Jeeves
The World of Mr Mulliner
The World of Psmith
The World of Ukridge
The World of Uncle Fred
Wodehouse Nuggets (edited by Richard Usborne)
The World of Wodehouse Clergy
The Hollywood Omnibus
Weekend Wodehouse
What Ho! The Best of P. G. Wodehouse
Paperback Omnibuses
The Golf Omnibus
The Aunts Omnibus
The Drones Omnibus
The Jeeves Omnibus 1
The Jeeves Omnibus 2
The Jeeves Omnibus 4
The Jeeves Omnibus 5
Poems
The Parrot and Other Poems
Autobiographical
Wodehouse on Wodehouse (comprising Bring on the Girls, Over Seventy, Performing Flea)
Letters
Yours, Plum
JEEVES OMNIBUS
Volume 3
P. G. Wodehouse
1
THE WAITER, WHO
had slipped out to make a quick telephone call, came back into the coffee room of the Goose and Gherkin wearing the starry-eyed look of a man who has just learned that he has backed a long-priced winner. He yearned to share his happiness with someone, and the only possible confidant was the woman at the table near the door, who was having a small gin and tonic and whiling away the time by reading a book of spiritualistic interest. He decided to tell her the good news.
‘I don’t know if you would care to know, madam,’ he said, in a voice that throbbed with emotion, ‘but Whistler’s Mother won the Oaks.’
The woman looked up, regarding him with large, dark, soulful eyes as if he had been something recently assembled from ectoplasm.
‘The what?’
‘The Oaks, madam.’
‘And what are the Oaks?’
It seemed incredible to the waiter that there should be anyone in England who could ask such a question, but he had already gathered that the lady was an American lady, and American ladies, he knew, are often ignorant of the fundamental facts of life. He had once met one who had wanted to know what a football pool was.
‘It’s an annual horse race, madam, reserved for fillies. By which I mean that it comes off once a year and the male sex isn’t allowed to compete. It’s run at Epsom Downs the day before the Derby, of which you have no doubt heard.’
‘Yes, I have heard of the Derby. It is your big race over here, is it not?’
‘Yes, madam. What is sometimes termed a classic. The Oaks is run the day before it, though in previous years the day after. By which I mean,’ said the waiter, hoping he was not being too abstruse, ‘it used to be run the day following the Derby, but now they’ve changed it.’
‘And Whistler’s Mother won this race you call the Oaks?’
‘Yes, madam. By a couple of lengths. I was on five bob.’
‘I see. Well, that’s fine, isn’t it? Will you bring me another gin and tonic?’
‘Certainly, madam. Whistler’s Mother!’ said the waiter, in a sort of ecstasy. ‘What a beauty!’
He went out. The woman resumed her reading. Quiet descended on the coffee room.
In its general essentials the coffee room at the Goose and Gherkin differed very little from the coffee rooms of all the other inns that nestle by the wayside in England and keep the island race from dying of thirst. It had the usual dim religious light, the customary pictures of
The Stag at Bay
and
The Huguenot’s Farewell
over the mantelpiece, the same cruets and bottles of sauce, and the traditional ozone-like smell of mixed pickles, gravy soup, boiled potatoes, waiters and old cheese.
What distinguished it on this June afternoon and gave it a certain something that the others had not got was the presence in it of the woman the waiter had been addressing. As a general rule, in the coffee rooms of English wayside inns, all the eye is able to feast on is an occasional farmer eating fried eggs or a couple of commercial travellers telling each other improper stories, but the Goose and Gherkin had drawn this strikingly handsome hand across the sea, and she raised the tone of the place unbelievably.