‘Zero hour, Jeeves,’ I said gravely.
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Carry on.’
‘Very good, sir.’
‘Heaven speed your canvassing.’
‘Thank you, sir.’
‘And mine.
‘ ‘Yes, sir.’
He pushed along and mounted the steps of Number Two, leaving me feeling rather as I had done in my younger days at a clergyman uncle’s place in Kent when about to compete in the Choir Boys Bicycle Handicap open to all those whose voices had not broken by the first Sunday in Epiphany, – nervous, but full of the will to win. The door opened as I was running phrough the high spots of the laughable story I planned to unleash when I got inside. A maid was standing there, and conceive my emotion when I recognized her as one who had held office under Aunt Dahlia the last time I had enjoyed the latter’s hospitality; the one with whom, the old sweats will recall, I had chewed the fat on the subject of the cat Augustus and his tendency to pass his days in sleep instead of bustling about and catching mice.
The sight of her friendly face was like a tonic. My morale, which had begun to sag a bit after Jeeves had left me, rose sharply, closing at nearly par. I felt that even if the fellow I was going to see kicked me downstairs, she would be there to show me out and tell me that these things are sent to try us, with the general idea of making us more spiritual.
‘Why, hullo! ‘ I said.
‘Good morning, sir.’
‘We meet again.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘You remember me ? ‘
‘Oh yes, sir.’
‘And you have not forgotten Augustus?’
‘Oh no, sir.’
‘He’s still as lethargic as ever. He joined me at breakfast this morning. Just managed to keep awake while getting outside his portion of kipper, then fell into a dreamless sleep at the end of the bed with his head hanging down. So you have resigned your portfolio at Aunt Dahlia’s since we last met. Too bad. We shall all miss you. Do you like it here?’
‘Oh yes, sir.’
‘That’s the spirit. Well, getting down to business, I’ve come to see your boss on a matter of considerable importance. What sort of chap is he? Not too short- tempered? Not too apt to be cross with callers, I hope?’
‘It isn’t a gentleman, sir, it’s a lady. Mrs. McCorkadale.’
This chipped quite a bit off the euphoria I was feeling. I had been relying on the story I had prepared to put me over with a bang, carrying me safely through the first awkward moments when the fellow you’ve called on without an invitation is staring at you as if wondering to what he owes the honour of this visit, and now it would have to remain untold. It was one I had heard from Catsmeat Potter-Pirbright at the Drones and it was essentially a conte whose spiritual home was the smoking-room of a London club or the men’s washroom on an American train, — in short, one by no means adapted to the ears of the gentler sex; especially a member of that sex who probably ran the local Watch Committee.
It was, consequently, a somewhat damped Bertram Wooster whom the maid ushered into the drawing-room, and my pep was in no way augmented by the first sight I had of mine hostess. Mrs. McCorkadale was what I would call a grim woman. Not so grim as my Aunt Agatha, perhaps, for that could hardly be expected, but certainly well up in the class of Jael the wife of Heber and the Madame Whoever-it-was who used to sit and knit at the foot of the guillotine during the French Revolution. She had a beaky nose, tight thin lips, and her eye could have been used for splitting logs in the teak forests of Borneo. Seeing her steadily and seeing her whole, as the expression is, one marvelled at the intrepidity of Mr. McCorkadale in marrying her — A man obviously whom nothing could daunt.
However, I had come there to be-jolly and genial, and jolly and genial I was resolved to be. Actors will tell you that on these occasions, when the soul is a-twitter and the nervous system not like mother makes it, the thing to do is to take a deep breath. I took three, and immediately felt much better.