The Jeeves Omnibus - Vol 4: (Jeeves & Wooster): No.4

Contents

About the Author

Also by P. G. Wodehouse

Title Page

Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Jeeves in the Offing

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Copyright

About the Author

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.

Also 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

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

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

Paperback Omnibuses

The Golf Omnibus

The Aunts Omnibus

The Drones Omnibus

The Clergy Omnibus

The Jeeves Omnibus 1

The Jeeves Omnibus 2

The Jeeves Omnibus 3

The Jeeves Omnibus 4

The Jeeves Omnibus 5

The Mulliner Omnibus

Poems

The Parrot and Other Poems

Autobiographical

Wodehouse on Wodehouse (comprising Bring on the Girls, Over Seventy, Performing Flea)

Letters

Yours, Plum

JEEVES AND THE FEUDAL SPIRIT
1

AS I SAT
in the bath tub, soaping a meditative foot and singing, if I remember correctly, ‘Pale Hands I Loved Beside the Shalimar’, it would be deceiving my public to say that I was feeling boomps-a-daisy. The evening that lay before me promised to be one of those sticky evenings, no good to man or beast. My Aunt Dahlia, writing from her country residence, Brinkley Court down in Worcestershire, had asked me as a personal favour to take some acquaintances of hers out to dinner, a couple of the name of Trotter.

They were, she said, creeps of the first water and would bore the pants off me, but it was imperative that they be given the old oil, because she was in the middle of a very tricky business deal with the male half of the sketch and at such times every little helps. ‘Don’t fail me, my beautiful bountiful Bertie’, her letter had concluded, on a note of poignant appeal.

Well, this Dahlia is my good and deserving aunt, not to be confused with Aunt Agatha, the one who kills rats with her teeth and devours her young, so when she says Don’t fail me, I don’t fail her. But, as I say, I was in no sense looking forward to the binge. The view I took of it was that the curse had come upon me.

It had done so, moreover, at a moment when I was already lowered spiritually by the fact that for the last couple of weeks or so Jeeves had been away on his summer holiday. Round about the beginning of July each year he downs tools, the slacker, and goes off to Bognor Regis for the shrimping, leaving me in much the same position as those poets one used to have to read at school who were always beefing about losing gazelles. For without this right-hand man at his side Bertram Wooster becomes a mere shadow of his former self and in no condition to cope with any ruddy Trotters.

Brooding darkly on these Trotters, whoever they might be, I was starting to scour the left elbow and had switched to ‘Ah, Sweet Mystery of Life’, when my reverie was interrupted by the sound of a soft footstep in the bedroom, and I sat up, alert and, as you might say, agog, the soap frozen in my grasp. If feet were stepping softly in
my
sleeping quarters, it could only mean, I felt, unless of course a burglar had happened to drop in, that the prop of the establishment had returned from his vacation, no doubt looking bronzed and fit.

A quiet cough told me that I had reasoned astutely, and I gave tongue.

‘Is that you, Jeeves?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Home again, what?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Welcome to 3a Berkeley Mansions, London, W.1,’ I said, feeling like a shepherd when a strayed sheep comes trickling back to the fold. ‘Did you have a good time?’

‘Most agreeable, thank you, sir.’

‘You must tell me all about it.’

‘Certainly, sir, at your convenience.’

‘I’ll bet you hold me spellbound. What are you doing in there?’

‘A letter has just arrived for you, sir. I was placing it on the dressing-table. Will you be dining in, sir?’

‘No, out, blast it! A blind date with some slabs of gorgonzola sponsored by Aunt Dahlia. So if you want to go to the club, carry on.’

As I have mentioned elsewhere in these memoirs of mine, Jeeves belongs to a rather posh club for butlers and valets called the Junior Ganymede, situated somewhere in Curzon Street, and I knew that after his absence from the metropolis he would be all eagerness to buzz round there and hobnob with the boys, picking up the threads and all that sort of thing. When I’ve been away for a week or two, my first move is always to make a beeline for the Drones.

‘I can see you getting a rousing welcome from the members, with a hey-nonny-nonny and a hot cha-cha,’ I said. ‘Did I hear you say something about there being a letter for me?’

‘Yes, sir. It was delivered a moment ago by special messenger.’

‘Important, do you think?’

‘One can only conjecture, sir.’

‘Better open it and read contents.’

‘Very good, sir.’

There was a stage wait of about a minute and a half, during which, my moodiness now much lightened, I rendered ‘Roll Out the Barrel’, ‘I Love a Lassie’, and ‘Every Day I Bring Thee Violets’, in the order named. In due season his voice filtered through the woodwork.

‘The letter is of considerable length, sir. Perhaps if I were to give you its substance?’

‘Do so, Jeeves. All ready at this end.’

‘It is from a Mr. Percy Gorringe, sir. Omitting extraneous matter and concentrating on essentials, Mr. Gorringe wishes to borrow a thousand pounds from you.’

I started sharply, causing the soap to shoot from my hand and fall with a dull thud on the bath mat. With no preliminary warning to soften the shock, his words had momentarily unmanned me. It is not often that one is confronted with ear-biting on so majestic a scale, a fiver till next Wednesday being about the normal tariff.

Other books

An Alien Rescue by Gordon Mackay
Banksy by Will Ellsworth-Jones
Gateways to Abomination by Matthew Bartlett
The Main Corpse by Diane Mott Davidson
Candor by Pam Bachorz
Knowing Your Value by Mika Brzezinski