‘Yes, sir, I fancied I recognized Mrs. Travers’s voice.’
‘She wants me to give her lunch the day after tomorrow. I think we’d better have it here. She’s not keen on restaurant cooking.’
‘Very good, sir.’
‘What’s this black amber statuette thing she was talking about?’
‘It is a somewhat long story, sir.’
‘Then don’t tell me now. If I don’t rush, I shall be late for my date.’
I reached for the umbrella and hat, and was heading for the open spaces, when I heard Jeeves give that soft cough of his and, turning, saw that a shadow was about to fall on what had been a day of joyous reunion. In the eye which he was fixing on me I detected the aunt-like gleam which always means that he disapproves of something, and when he said in a soupy tone of voice ‘Pardon me, sir, but are you proposing to enter the Ritz Hotel in that hat?’ I knew that the time had come when Bertram must show that iron resolution of his which has been so widely publicized.
In the matter of head-joy Jeeves is not in tune with modern progressive thought, his attitude being best described, perhaps, as hidebound, and right from the start I had been asking myself what his reaction would be to the blue Alpine hat with the pink feather in it which I had purchased in his absence. Now I knew. I could see at a g. that he wanted no piece of it.
I, on the other hand, was all for this Alpine lid. I was prepared to concede that it would have been more suitable for rural wear, but against this had to be set the fact that it unquestionably lent a diablerie to my appearance, and mine is an appearance that needs all the diablerie it can get. In my voice, therefore, as I replied, there was a touch of steel.
‘Yes, Jeeves, that, in a nutshell, is what I am proposing to do. Don’t you like this hat?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Well, I do,’ I replied rather cleverly, and went out with it tilted just that merest shade over the left eye which makes all the difference.
2
My date at the Ritz was with Emerald Stoker, younger offspring of that pirate of the Spanish Main, old Pop Stoker, the character who once kidnapped me on board his yacht with a view to making me marry his elder daughter Pauline. Long story, I won’t go into it now, merely saying that the old fathead had got entirely the wrong angle on the relations between his ewe lamb and myself, we being just good friends, as the expression is. Fortunately it all ended happily, with the popsy linked in matrimony with Marmaduke, Lord Chuffnell, an ancient buddy of mine, and we’re still good friends. I put in an occasional week-end with her and Chuffy, and when she comes to London on a shopping binge or whatever it may be, I see to it that she gets her calories. Quite natural, then, that when her sister Emerald came over from America to study painting at the Slade, she should have asked me to keep an eye on her and give her lunch from time to time. Kindly old Bertram, the family friend.
I was a bit late, as I had foreshadowed, in getting to the tryst, and she was already there when I arrived. It struck me, as it did every time I saw her, how strange it is that members of a family can be so unlike each other – how different in appearance, I mean, Member A. so often is from Member B., and for the matter of that Member B. from Member C., if you follow what I’m driving at. Take the Stoker troupe, for instance. To look at them, you’d never have guessed they were united by ties of blood. Old Stoker resembled one of those fellows who play bit parts in gangster pictures: Pauline was of a beauty so radiant that strong men whistled after her in the street; while Emerald, in sharp contra-distinction, was just ordinary, no different from a million other nice girls except perhaps for a touch of the Pekinese about the nose and eyes and more freckles than you usually see.