Читать книгу Дживс, вы – гений! / Thank you, Jeeves! - Пелам Гренвилл Вудхаус, Pelham Grenville Wodehouse - Страница 8

The attitude of fellows towards finding girls in their bedroom after midnight varies. Some like it. Some don’t. I didn’t.

“What—What—What—?”

“It’s all right.”

“All right?”

“Quite all right.”

“Oh?” I said. I stooped to pick up the candle, and the next moment I had uttered a cry.

“Don’t make such a noise!”

“But there’s a corpse on the floor.”

“There isn’t.”

“There is, I tell you. I was looking about for the candle, and my fingers touched something cold and still and wet.”

“Oh, that’s my swimming suit.”

“Your swimming suit?”

“Well, do you think I came ashore by aeroplane?”

“You swam here from the yacht?”

“Yes.”

“When?”

“About half an hour ago.”

“Why?” I asked.

“You know, Bertie, steps should be taken about you.”

“Eh?”

“You ought to be in some sort of a home.”

“I am,” I replied coldly and rather cleverly. “My own. But what are you doing in it?”

She did not answer.

“Why did you want to kiss me in front of father? I can quite understand now why Sir Roderick told father that you ought to be under restraint.”

“The incident to which you allude is readily explained. I thought he was Chuffy.”

“Thought who was Chuffy?”

“Your father.”

“I don’t see what you mean,” she replied coldly.

I explained.

“The idea was to let Chuffy observe you in my embrace. To force him act speedily.”

“That was very sweet of you.”

“We Woosters are sweet, exceedingly sweet, when a pal’s happiness is spoken about.”

“I can see now why I accepted you that night in New York,” she said meditatively. “If I wasn’t so crazy about Marmaduke, I could easily marry you, Bertie.”

“No, no,” I said, with some alarm. “Don’t dream of it. I mean to say—”

“Oh, it’s all right. I’m not going to. I’m going to marry Marmaduke; that’s why I’m here.”

“And now,” I said, “we’ve come right back to it. You say you swam ashore from the yacht? Why? You came here. Why?”

“Because I wanted somewhere to go till I could get clothes, of course. I can’t go to the Hall in a swimming suit.”

“Oh, you swam ashore to get to Chuffy?”

“Of course. Father was keeping me a prisoner on board the yacht, and this evening Jeeves arrived with an early letter from Marmaduke. Oh! I cried six pints when I read it. It was beautiful. It throbbed with poetry.”

“It did?”

“Yes.”

“This letter?”

“Yes.”

“Chuffy’s letter?”

“Yes. You seem surprised.”

I was a bit.

“I felt I couldn’t wait another day without seeing him,” she continued. “And, talking of Jeeves, what a man!”

“Oh, you confided in Jeeves?[59]“

“Yes. And told him what I was going to do.”

“And he didn’t try to stop you?”

“Stop me? He was all for it.”

“He was, was he?”

“You should have seen him. Such a kind smile. He said you would be delighted to help me.”

“He did, eh?”

“He spoke most highly of you.”

“Really?”

“Oh, yes, he thinks a lot of you. I remember his very words. ‘Mr Wooster, miss,’ he said, ‘is, perhaps, mentally somewhat negligible[60], but he has a heart of gold.’ He was lowering me from the side of the boat by a rope.”

I was chewing the lip in some chagrin.

“What the devil did he mean, ‘mentally negligible’?”

“Oh, you know. Loopy.”

“Tchah!”

“Eh?”

“I said ‘Tchah!’”

“Why?”

“Why? Well, wouldn’t you say ‘Tchah!’ if your late servant was telling people you were mentally negligible?”

“But with a heart of gold.”

“Never mind the heart of gold.”

“Bertie! Are you annoyed?”

“Annoyed!”

“You sound annoyed. And I can’t see why. I thought that you would help me get to the man I love. Having this heart of gold.”

“The point is not whether I have a heart of gold. Many people have hearts of gold and yet they will be upset at finding girls in their bedrooms at night. The girls who come in, in the middle of the night, and coolly take your pyjamas—”

“You didn’t expect me to sleep in a wet swimming suit?”

“—and leap into your bed—”

She uttered an exclamation.

“I know what this reminds me of. I’ve been trying to think ever since you came in. The story of the Three Bears. ‘There’s somebody in my bed…’ Wasn’t that what the Big Bear said?”

I frowned doubtfully.

“As I recollect it, it was something about porridge. ‘Who’s been eating my porridge?’”

“I’m sure there was a bed in it.”

“Bed? Bed? I can’t remember any bed. What will people say when they find you here?”

“But they won’t find me here.”

“You think so? Ha! What about Brinkley?”

“Who’s he?”

“My new man. At nine tomorrow morning he will bring me tea.”

“But wait a minute. You are talking about Brinkley, but there is no Brinkley.”

“There is Brinkley. One Brinkley. And one Brinkley coming into this room at nine o’clock tomorrow morning and finding you in that bed will start a scandal.”

“I mean, he can’t be in the house.”

“Of course he’s in the house.”

“Well, he must be deaf, then. I made big noise getting in.”

“Did you smash the window?”

“I had to, or I couldn’t have got in. It was the window of some sort of bedroom on the ground floor.”

“Why, dash it, that’s Brinkley’s bedroom.”

“Well, he wasn’t in it.”

“Why not?”

But what she would answer, I did not learn. Somebody was knocking on the front door.