Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit by P. G. Wodehouse

Author:P. G. Wodehouse [Wodehouse, P. G.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Classics, Humor, Fiction
ISBN: 9780060806668
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2002-01-02T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 13

I don't know if you happen to be familiar with a poem called The Charge of the Light Brigade' by the bird Tennyson whom Jeeves had mentioned when speaking of the fellow whose strength was as the strength of ten. It is, I believe, farily well known, and I used to have to recite it at the age of seven or thereabouts when summoned to the drawing-room to give visitors a glimpse of the young Wooster', 'Bertie recites so nicely' my mother used to say – getting her facts twisted, I may mention, because I practically always fluffed my lines – and after trying to duck for safety and being hauled back I would snap into it. And very unpleasant the whole thing was, so people have told me.

Well, what I was about to say, when I rambled off a bit on the subject of the dear old days, was that though in the course of the years most of the poem of which I speak has slid from the memory, I still recall its punch line. The thing goes, as you probably know,

Tum tiddle umpty-pum

Tum tiddle umpty-pum

Tum tiddle umpty-pum

and this brought you to the snapperoo or pay-off, which was

I always remember that bit, and the reason I bring it up now is that, as I stood blinking at this pink-boudoir-capped girl, I was feeling just as those Light Brigade fellows must have felt. Obviously someone had blundered here, and that someone was Aunt Dahlia. Why she should have told me that her window was the last one on the left, when the last are on the left was what it was anything but, was more than I could imagine. One sought in vain for what Stilton Cheesewright would have called the ulterior motive.

However, it is hopeless to try to fathom the mental processes of aunts, and anyway this was no time for idle speculation. The first thing the man of sensibility has to do on arriving like a sack of coals in a girl's bedroom in the small hours is to get the conversation going, and it was to this that I now addressed myself. Nothing is worse on these occasions than the awkward pause and the embarrassed silence.

'Oh, hullo,' I said, as brightly and cheerily as I could manage. 'I say, I'm most frightfully sorry to pop in like this at a moment when you were doubtless knitting up the ravelled sleeve of care, but I went for a breather in the garden and found I was locked out, so I thought my best plan was not to rouse the house but to nip in through the first open window. You know how it is when you rouse houses. They don't like it.'

I would have spoken further, developing the theme, for it seemed to me that I was on the right lines ... so much better, I mean to say, than affecting to be walking in my sleep. All that 'Where am I?' stuff, I mean. Too damn silly.

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