“Yes, sir.”
“It’s pretty rotten, you know.”
“Most disturbing, sir.”
“And there’s another thing: What are we to do about Mr. Todd? We’ve got to get him up here as soon as ever we can. When you have brought the tea you had better go out and send him a telegram, telling him to come up by the next train.”
“I have already done so, sir. I took the liberty of writing the message and dispatching it by the lift attendant.”
“By Jove, you think of everything, Jeeves!”
“Thank you, sir. A little buttered toast with the tea? Just so, sir. Thank you.”
I went back to the sitting-room. She hadn’t moved an inch. She was still bolt upright on the edge of her chair, gripping her umbrella like a hammer-thrower. She gave me another of those looks as I came in. There was no doubt about it; for some reason she had taken a dislike to me. I suppose because I wasn’t George M. Cohan. It was a bit hard on a chap.
“This is a surprise, what?” I said, after about five minutes’ restful silence, trying to crank the conversation up again.
“What is a surprise?”
“Your coming here, don’t you know, and so on.”
She raised her eyebrows and drank me in a bit more through her glasses.
“Why is it surprising that I should visit my only nephew?” she said.
Put like that, of course, it did seem reasonable.
“Oh, rather,” I said. “Of course! Certainly. What I mean is——”
Jeeves projected himself into the room with the tea. I was jolly glad to see him. There’s nothing like having a bit of business arranged for one when one isn’t certain of one’s lines. With the teapot to fool about with I felt happier.
“Tea, tea, tea—what? What?” I said.
It wasn’t what I had meant to say. My idea had been to be a good deal more formal, and so on. Still, it covered the situation. I poured her out a cup. She sipped it and put the cup down with a shudder.
“Do you mean to say, young man,” she said frostily, “that you expect me to drink this stuff?”
“Rather! Bucks you up, you know.”
“What do you mean by the expression ‘Bucks you up’?”
“Well, makes you full of beans, you know. Makes you fizz.”
“I don’t understand a word you say. You’re English, aren’t you?”
I admitted it. She didn’t say a word. And somehow she did it in a way that made it worse than if she had spoken for hours. Somehow it was brought home to me that she didn’t like Englishmen, and that if she had had to meet an Englishman, I was the one she’d have chosen last.
Conversation languished again after that.
Then I tried again. I was becoming more convinced every moment that you can’t make a real lively salon with a couple of people, especially if one of them lets it go a word at a time.
“Are you comfortable at your hotel?” I said.
“At which hotel?”
“The hotel you’re staying at.”
“I am not staying at an hotel.”
“Stopping with friends—what?”
“I am naturally stopping with my nephew.”
I didn’t get it for the moment; then it hit me.
“What! Here?” I gurgled.
“Certainly! Where else should I go?”
The full horror of the situation rolled over me like a wave. I couldn’t see what on earth I was to do. I couldn’t explain that this wasn’t Rocky’s flat without giving the poor old chap away hopelessly, because she would then ask me where he did live, and then he would be right in the soup. I was trying to induce the old bean to recover from the shock and produce some results when she spoke again.
“Will you kindly tell my nephew’s man-servant to prepare my room? I wish to lie down.”
“Your nephew’s man-servant?”
“The man you call Jeeves. If Rockmetteller has gone for an automobile ride, there is no need for you to wait for him. He will naturally wish to be alone with me when he returns.”
I found myself tottering out of the room. The thing was too much for me. I crept into Jeeves’s den.