“Packing, sir?”
“I suppose so.”
To people who don’t know my Aunt Agatha I find it extraordinarily difficult to explain why it I am afraid of her. I mean, I’m not dependent on her financially or anything like that. It’s simply personality. You see, all through my childhood and when I was a kid at school she was always able to turn me inside out[47] with a single glance. If she said I had go to Roville, it was all decided. I must buy the tickets.
“What’s the idea, Jeeves? I wonder why she wants me.”
“I could not say, sir.”
Well, it was no good talking about it. I must go to Roville. At last I will able to wear my cummerbund I had bought six months ago. One of those silk contrivances, you know, which you tie round your waist instead of a waistcoat. To be honest, I did not wear it because I knew that there would be trouble with Jeeves. Still, at a place like Roville—with the gaiety and joie de vivre[48] of France—it will be all right.
Roville, which I reached early in the morning is a nice health resort[49] where a fellow without his aunts might spend a wonderful week. It is like all these French places, mainly sands and hotels and casinos. The hotel which had had the bad luck to draw Aunt Agatha was the Splendide[50]. I’ve had experience of Aunt Agatha at hotels before. She knows how to deal with them. Of course, the real rough work was all over when I arrived, but I understood that she had started by having her first room changed because it hadn’t a southern exposure and her next because it had a creaking wardrobe and that she had said what she had thought about the cooking, the waiting, the chambermaiding and everything else. She was satisfied with this triumph, and she was almost motherly when we met.
“I am so glad you were able to come, Bertie,” she said. “The air will do you so much good. It’s better for you than to spend your time in stuffy London night clubs.”
“Oh, ah,” I said.
“You will meet some pleasant people, too. I want to introduce you to a miss Hemmingway[51] and her brother, who have become great friends of mine. I am sure you will like Miss Hemmingway. A nice, quiet girl, so different from so many of the bold girls[52] one meets in London nowadays. Her brother is curate at Chipley-in-the-Glen in Dorsetshire[53]. A very good family. She is a charming girl.”
All these words were so unlike Aunt Agatha. I felt a suspicion. And I was right.
“Aline[54] Hemmingway,” said Aunt Agatha, “is just the girl I should like to see you marry, Bertie. You ought to be thinking of getting married. Marriage might make something of you. And I could not wish you a better wife than dear Aline. She would be such a good influence in your life.”
“But, I say—” I began.
“Bertie!” said Aunt Agatha, dropping the motherly manner for a bit and giving me the cold eye.
“Yes, but I say—”
“It is young men like you, Bertie, who spoil the society. Cursed with too much money, you lead an idle selfishness life which might have been made useful, helpful and profitable. You do nothing but waste your time on frivolous pleasures. You are simply an anti-social animal, a drone. Bertie, it is imperative that you marry.”
“But—”
“Yes! You should have children to—”
“No, really, I say, please!” I said, blushing richly. Aunt Agatha belongs to two or three of these women’s clubs, and she often forgets she isn’t in the smoking-room[55].
“Bertie,” she resumed. “Ah, here they are!” she said. “Aline, dear!”
And I perceived a girl and a fellow. They were smiling in a pleased sort of manner.
“I want you to meet my nephew, Bertie Wooster,” said Aunt Agatha. “He has just arrived. Such a surprise! I did not expect to meet him in Roville.”
I was feeling like a cat in the middle of a lot of hounds. An inner voice was whispering that Bertram[56] was in trouble.
The brother was a small round man with a face rather like a sheep. He wore pince-nez[57], his expression was benevolent, and he had on one of those collars which button at the back.
“Welcome to Roville, Mr Wooster,” he said.
“Oh, Sidney[58]!” said the girl. “Doesn’t Mr Wooster remind you of Canon Blenkinsop[59], who came to Chipley to preach last Easter?”
“My dear! The resemblance is most striking!”
They peered at me for a while as if I were something in a glass case, and I had a look at the girl. There’s no doubt about it, she was different from what Aunt Agatha had called the bold girls one meets in London nowadays. No bobbed hair[60], no cigarette. I don’t know when I’ve met anybody who looked so respectable. She had on a kind of plain dress, and her hair was plain, and her face was sort of saintlike. I don’t pretend to be a Sherlock Holmes[61] or anything of that order, but the moment I looked at her I said to myself, “The girl plays the organ in a village church!”
Well, we gazed at one another for a bit, and there was a certain amount of chit-chat[62], and then I went away. But before I went I had been told to take brother and girl for a drive that afternoon. And the thought of it depressed me to such an extent that I felt there was only one thing to be done. I went straight back to my room, took out the cummerbund, and draped it round myself. I turned round and saw Jeeves.
“I beg your pardon, sir,” he said. “You are surely not proposing to appear in public in that thing?”
“The cummerbund?” I said in a careless way. “Oh, yes!”
“I should not advise it, sir, really I shouldn’t.”
“Why not?”
“The effect, sir, is unpredictable.”
I looked at him. I mean to say, nobody knows better than I do that Jeeves is a master mind and all that, but, damn it, a fellow must call his soul his own. You can’t be a slave to your valet. Besides, I was feeling pretty low and the cummerbund was the only thing which could cheer me up.
“You know, the trouble with you, Jeeves,” I said, “is that you’re too—what’s the word I want?—too isolated. You can’t realize that you aren’t in Piccadilly[63] all the time. In a place like this something colourful and poetic is expected of you. Why, I’ve just seen a fellow downstairs in a suit of yellow velvet.”
“Nevertheless, sir—”
“Jeeves,” I said firmly, “my mind is made up. I am feeling a little low-spirited