Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit by P.G. Wodehouse Page A

from
pole to pole, there shone a gleam of light. It spread, illuminating the entire
horizon, and I realized that, taken by and large, I was sitting pretty.
    You
see, what I had failed till now to spot was the fact that Stilton hadn’t a
notion that I was at Brinkley. Thinking me to be in the metropolis, it was
there that he would be spreading his drag—net. He would call at the flat, ring
bells, get no answer and withdraw, baffled. He would haunt the Drones,
expecting me to drop in, and eventually, when I didn’t so drop, would slink
away, baffled again. .‘He cometh not’, he would say, no doubt grinding his
teeth, and a fat lot of good that would do him.
    And of
course, after what had occurred, there was no chance of him visiting Brinkley.
A man who has broken off his engagement doesn’t go to the country house where
he knows the girl to be. Well, I mean, I ask you. Naturally he doesn’t. If
there was one spot on earth which could be counted on as of even date to be
wholly free from Cheesewrights, it was Brinkley Court,
Brinkley-cum-Snodsfield-in-the-Marsh, Worcestershire.
    Profoundly
relieved, I picked up the feet and hastened to my room with a song on my lips.
Jeeves was there, not actually holding a stop-watch but obviously shaking his
head a bit over the young master’s tardiness. His left eyebrow quivered
perceptibly as I entered.
    ‘Yes, I
know I’m late, Jeeves,’ I said, starting to shed the upholstery. ‘I went for a
stroll.’
    He
accepted the explanation indulgently.
    ‘I
quite understand, sir. It had occurred to me that, the evening being so fine,
you were probably enjoying a saunter in the grounds. I told Mr. Cheesewright
that this was no doubt the reason for your absence.’

 
     
     
    11
     
     
    Half in and half out of
the shirt, I froze like one of those fellows in the old fairy stories who used
to talk out of turn to magicians and have spells cast upon them. My ears were
sticking up like a wirehaired terrier’s, and I could scarcely believe that they
had heard aright.
    ‘Mr.
Chuch?’ I quavered. ‘What’s that, Jeeves?’
    ‘Sir?’
    ‘I
don’t understand you. Are you saying … are you telling me … are you
actually asserting that Stilton Cheesewright is on the premises?’
    ‘Yes,
sir. He arrived not long ago in his car. I found him waiting here. He expressed
a desire to see you and appeared chagrined at your continued absence.
Eventually, the dinner-hour becoming imminent, he took his departure. He is
hoping, I gathered from his remarks, to establish contact with you at the
conclusion of the meal.’
    I slid
dumbly into the shirt and started to tie the tie. I was quivering, partly with
apprehension, but even more with justifiable indignation. To say that I felt
that this was a bit thick would not be straining the facts unduly. I mean, I
know D’Arcy Cheesewright to be of coarse fibre, the sort of bozo who, as Percy
had said, would look at a sunset and see in it only a resemblance to a slice of
under-done roast beef, but surely one is entitled to expect even bozos of
coarse fibre to have a certain amount of delicacy and decent feeling and what
not. This breaking off his engagement to Florence with one hand and coming
thrusting his society on her with the other struck me, as it would have struck
any fine-minded man, as about as near the outside rim as it was possible to go.
    ‘It’s
monstrous, Jeeves!’ I cried. ‘Has this pumpkin-headed oaf no sense of what is
fitting? Has he no tact, no discretion? Are you aware that this very evening,
through the medium of a telegram which I have every reason to believe was a
stinker, he severed his relations with Lady Florence?’
    ‘No,
sir, I had not been apprised. Mr. Cheesewright did not confide in me.’
    ‘He
must have stopped off en route to compose the communication, for it
arrived not so very long before he did. Fancy doing the thing by telegram, thus
giving some post—office clerk the laugh of a lifetime. And then actually