Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit Read Online Free PDF

to
grow a moustache, too. She said — I quote her words — that when a man has a
large pink face and a head like a pumpkin, a little something around the upper
lip often does wonders in the way of easing the strain. Would you say my head
was like a pumpkin, Wooster?’
    ‘Not a
bit, old man.’
    ‘Not
like a pumpkin?’
    ‘No,
not like a pumpkin. A touch of the dome of St. Paul’s, perhaps. ‘‘Well, that is
what she compared it to, and she said that if I split it in the middle with a
spot of hair, the relief to pedestrians and traffic would be enormous. She’s
crazy. I wore a moustache my last year at Oxford, and it looked frightful. Nearly
as loathsome as yours. Moustache forsooth!’ said Stilton, which surprised me,
for I hadn’t supposed he knew words like “forsooth”. ‘“I wouldn’t grow a
moustache to please a dying grandfather,” I told her. “A nice fool I’d look
with a moustache,” I said. “It’s how you look without one,” she said. “Is that
so?” I said. “Yes, it is,” she said. “Oh?” I said. “Yes,” she said. “Ho!” I
said, and she said “Ho to you!”’
    If she
had added ‘With knobs on’, it would, of course, have made it stronger, but I
must say I was rather impressed by Florence’s work as described in this slice
of dialogue. It seemed to me snappy and forceful. I suppose girls learn this
sort of cut-and-thrust stuff at their finishing schools. And Florence, one must
remember, had been moving a good deal of late in Bohemian circles — Chelsea
studios and the rooms of the intelligentsia in Bloomsbury and places like that
— where the repartee is always of a high order.
    ‘So
that was that,’ proceeded Stilton, having brooded for a space. ‘One thing led
to another, hot words passed to and fro, and it was not long before she was
returning the ring and saying she would be glad to have her letters back at my
earliest convenience.’
    I tut-tutted.
He asked me rather abruptly not to tut-tut, so I stopped tut-tutting,
explaining that my reason for having done so was that his tragic tale had moved
me deeply.
    ‘My
heart aches for you,’ I said.
    ‘It
does, does it?’
    ‘Profusely.’
    ‘Ho!’
    ‘You
doubt my sympathy?’
    ‘You
bet I doubt your ruddy sympathy. I told you just now that I was trying to make
up my mind, and what I’m trying to make it up about is this. Had you foreseen
that that would happen? Did your cunning fiend’s brain spot what was bound to
occur if you grew a moustache and flashed it on Florence?’
    I tried
to laugh lightly, but you know how it is with these light laughs, they don’t
always come out just the way you would wish. Even to me it sounded more like a
gargle.
    ‘Am I
right? Was that the thought that came into your cunning fiend’s brain?’
    ‘Certainly
not. As a matter of fact, I haven’t got a cunning fiend’s brain.’
    ‘Jeeves
has. The plot could have been his. Was it Jeeves who wove this snare for my
feet?’
    ‘My
dear chap! Jeeves doesn’t weave snares for feet. He would consider it a liberty.
Besides, I told you he is the spearhead of the movement which disapproves of my
moustache.’
    ‘I see
what you mean. Yes, on second thoughts I am inclined to acquit Jeeves of
complicity. The evidence points to your having thought up the scheme yourself.’
    ‘Evidence?
How do you mean, evidence?’
    ‘When
we were at your flat and I said I was expecting Florence, I noticed a very
significant thing — your face lit up.’
    ‘It
didn’t’
    ‘Pardon
me. I know when a face lights up and when it doesn’t. I could read you like a
book. You were saying to yourself, “This is the moment! This is where I spring
it on her!”‘
    ‘Nothing
of the sort. If my face lit up — which I gravely doubt —it was merely because I
reasoned that as soon as she arrived you would be leaving.’
    ‘You
wanted me to leave?’
    ‘I did.
You were taking up space which I required for other purposes.’
    It was
plausible, of