“Bertie,” she said, suddenly, as if she had just remembered it, “what is the name of that man of yours—your valet?”
“Eh? Oh, Jeeves.”
“I think he’s a bad influence for you,” said Honoria. “When we are married, you must get rid of Jeeves.”
It was at this point that I jerked the spoon and sent six of the best and crispest sailing on to the sideboard, with Spenser gambolling after them like a dignified old retriever.
“Get rid of Jeeves!” I gasped.
“Yes. I don’t like him.”
“I don’t like him,” said Aunt Agatha.
“But I can’t. I mean—why, I couldn’t carry on for a day without Jeeves.”
“You will have to,” said Honoria. “I don’t like him at all.”
“I don’t like him at all,” said Aunt Agatha. “I never did.”
Ghastly, what? I’d always had an idea that marriage was a bit of a washout, but I’d never dreamed that it demanded such frightful sacrifices from a fellow. I passed the rest of the meal in a sort of stupor.
The scheme had been, if I remember, that after lunch I should go off and caddy for Honoria on a shopping tour down Regent Street; but when she got up and started collecting me and the rest of her things, Aunt Agatha stopped her.
“You run along, dear,” she said. “I want to say a few words to Bertie.”
So Honoria legged it, and Aunt Agatha drew up her chair and started in.
“Bertie,” she said, “dear Honoria does not know it, but a little difficulty has arisen about your marriage.”
“By Jove! not really?” I said, hope starting to dawn.
“Oh, it’s nothing at all, of course. It is only a little exasperating. The fact is, Sir Roderick is being rather troublesome.”
“Thinks I’m not a good bet? Wants to scratch the fixture? Well, perhaps he’s right.”
“Pray do not be so absurd, Bertie. It is nothing so serious as that. But the nature of Sir Roderick’s profession unfortunately makes him—overcautious.”
I didn’t get it.
“Overcautious?”
“Yes. I suppose it is inevitable. A nerve specialist with his extensive practice can hardly help taking a rather warped view of humanity.”
I got what she was driving at now. Sir Roderick Glossop, Honoria’s father, is always called a nerve specialist, because it sounds better, but everybody knows that he’s really a sort of janitor to the looney-bin. I mean to say, when your uncle the Duke begins to feel the strain a bit and you find him in the blue drawing-room sticking straws in his hair, old Glossop is the first person you send for. He toddles round, gives the patient the once-over, talks about overexcited nervous systems, and recommends complete rest and seclusion and all that sort of thing. Practically every posh family in the country has called him in at one time or another, and I suppose that, being in that position—I mean constantly having to sit on people’s heads while their nearest and dearest phone to the asylum to send round the wagon—does tend to make a chappie take what you might call a warped view of humanity.
“You mean he thinks I may be a looney, and he doesn’t want a looney son-in-law?” I said.
Aunt Agatha seemed rather peeved than otherwise at my ready intelligence.
“Of course, he does not think anything so ridiculous. I told you he was simply exceedingly cautious. He wants to satisfy himself that you are perfectly normal.” Here she paused, for Spenser had come in with the coffee. When he had gone, she went on: “He appears to have got hold of some extraordinary story about your having pushed his son Oswald into the lake at Ditteredge Hall. Incredible, of course. Even you would hardly do a thing like that.”
“Well, I did sort of lean against him, you know, and he shot off the bridge.”
“Oswald definitely accuses you of having pushed him into the water. That has disturbed Sir Roderick, and unfortunately it has caused him to make inquiries, and he has heard about your poor Uncle Henry.”
She eyed me with a good deal of solemnity, and I took a grave sip of coffee. We were peeping into the family cupboard and having a look at the good old skeleton. My late Uncle Henry, you see, was by way of being the blot on the Wooster escutcheon. An extremely decent chappie personally, and one who had always endeared himself to me by tipping me with considerable lavishness when I was at school; but there’s no doubt he did at times do rather rummy things, notably keeping eleven pet rabbits in his bedroom; and I suppose a purist might have considered him more or less off his onion. In fact, to be perfectly frank, he wound up his career, happy to the last and completely surrounded by rabbits, in some sort of a home.
“It is very absurd, of course,” continued Aunt Agatha. “If any of the family had inherited poor Henry’s eccentricity—and it was nothing more—it would have been Claude and Eustace, and there could not be two brighter boys.”
Claude and Eustace were twins, and had been kids at school with me in my last summer term. Casting my mind back, it seemed to me that “bright” just about described them. The whole of that term, as I remembered it, had been spent in getting them out of a series of frightful rows.
“Look how well they are doing at Oxford. Your Aunt
