[adapted]

by
P. G. Wodehouse

She surprised me with it before breakfast. There in seven words you have a complete picture of my Aunt Agatha. I could go on for a very long time about unkindness and not thinking of others. I only say that she made me get out of bed to listen to her sad story in the very early morning. It can’t have been half past eleven when Jeeves, my man, woke me from dreamless sleep and told me the news:

‘Mrs Gregson is here to see you, sir.’

I thought she must be sleepwalking, but I got out of bed and put on a bathrobe. I knew Aunt Agatha well enough to know that, if she had come to see me, she was going to see me. That’s the sort of woman she is.

She was sitting very straight in a chair, looking at nothing. When I came in she looked at me in that very critical way that always makes me feel as if I had jelly where my back should be. Aunt Agatha is one of those strict women. I think Queen Elizabeth was probably like her. She orders around her husband, Spencer Gregson, a small, tired man on the stock market. She orders around my cousin, Gussie Mannering-Phipps. She orders around her sister-in-law, Gussie’s mother. And, worst of all, she orders around me. She has an eye like a man-eating fish, and she is very good at making people do what she wants by saying it is right.

I suppose there are men in the world — tough, strong men, you know, and so on — who she couldn’t scare; but if you’re a guy like me, who likes a quiet life, you just curl up into a ball when you see her coming, and hope for the best. In my experience, when Aunt Agatha wants you to do something you do it, or else you find yourself wondering why those men in the old days made such a fuss when they had trouble with the Spanish Inquisition.

‘Hello, Aunt Agatha!’ I said.

‘Bertie,’ she said, ‘you look a mess. You look completely worn out.’

I felt like a badly wrapped brown paper package. I’m never at my best in the early morning. I said so.

‘Early morning! I had breakfast three hours ago, and have been walking in the park ever since, trying to clear my thoughts.’

If I ever ate breakfast at half past eight I should walk by the river, trying to end my life in the water.

‘I am very worried, Bertie. That is why I have come to you.’

And then I saw she was going to begin something, and I called in a weak voice to Jeeves to bring me tea. But she had started before I could get it.

‘What are your plans right now, Bertie?’’

‘Well, I thought about going out for some lunch later, and then maybe going to the club, and after that, if I felt strong enough, I might go to Walton Heath for a round of golf.’

I am not interested in your little comings and goings. I mean, do you have any important plans in the next week or so?’

I smelled danger.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Lots! Millions! Fully booked!’

‘What are they?’

‘I — uh — well, I don’t really know.’

‘I thought so. You have no plans. All right, then, I want you to go to America right away.’

‘America!’

Remember that all this was happening without any breakfast, just after sunrise.

‘Yes, America. I think even you have heard of America?’

‘But why America?’

‘Because that is where your Cousin Gussie is. He is in New York, and I can’t reach him.’

‘What has Gussie done?’

‘Gussie is making a complete fool of himself.’

To someone who knew young Gussie as well as I did, the words gave a lot to think about.

‘In what way?’

‘He has fallen in love with a girl.’

From past experience this seemed true. Ever since he became an adult Gussie had been falling in love with women. He’s that sort of guy. But, as the women never seemed to fall in love with him, it had never led to much.

‘I think you know very well why Gussie went to America, Bertie. You know how very wasteful with money your Uncle Cuthbert was.’

She talked about Gussie’s father, the head of the family who had died, and I must say she was right. Nobody was fonder of old Uncle Cuthbert than I was, but everybody knows that, about money, he was the biggest fool in the history of the country. He liked to drink, and it was expensive. He always bet on horses that got hurt in the middle of the race. He had a plan to beat the casino at Monte Carlo which made the people there very happy when they saw him coming. All in all, dear old Uncle Cuthbert spent money very easily, and he even called the family lawyer a bloodsucking vampire because he would not let Uncle Cuthbert cut down the trees to get another thousand.

‘He left your Aunt Julia very little money for a woman in her situation. Beechwood needs a lot of care, and poor dear Spencer, though he does his best to help, does not have unlimited money. It was clear why Gussie went to America. He is not clever, but he is very good-looking, and, though he has no title, the Mannering-Phippses are one of the best and oldest families in England. He had some very good letters of introduction, and when he wrote home to say that he had met the most lovely and beautiful girl in the world I felt quite happy. He kept praising her for several letters, and then this morning a letter has come from him in which he says, very casually, as an extra thought, that he knows we are open-minded enough not to think any less of her because she is on the vaudeville stage.’

‘Oh, I say!’

‘It was like a big shock. The girl’s name, it seems, is Ray Denison, and Gussie says she does something he calls a one-person act on the big stage. What this low kind of performance may be I have no idea at all. He also says that she got them out of their seats at Mosenstein’s last week. Who she may be, and how or why, and who or what Mr Mosenstein may be, I cannot tell you.’

‘Wow,’ I said, ‘it’s like a sort of thing, isn’t it? A sort of fate, right?’

‘I don’t understand you.’

‘Well, Aunt Julia, you know, don’t you know? It runs in the family, and so on. What is born in you will show in the end, and all that kind of thing, you know.’

‘Don’t be silly, Bertie.’

That was all right, but it was by chance all the same. Nobody ever talks about it, and the family have been trying to forget it for twenty-five years, but it is a known fact that my Aunt Julia, Gussie’s mother, was a stage performer once, and a very good one, too, I’m told. She was playing in pantomime at Drury Lane when Uncle Cuthbert saw her first. It was before my time, of course, and long before I was old enough to notice the family had accepted it, and Aunt Agatha had worked hard and done a lot of teaching, and with a microscope you couldn’t tell Aunt Julia from a real aristocrat. Women change so quickly!

I have a friend who married Daisy Trimble from the Gaiety, and when I meet her now I feel like walking away from her backwards. But there it was, and you couldn’t get away from it. Gussie had show-business blood in him, and it looked like he was going back to his type, or whatever they call it.

‘Goodness,’ I said, because I am interested in this heredity stuff, ‘maybe the thing is going to be a regular family tradition, like you read about in books — a kind of Curse of the Mannering-Phippses, you might say. Maybe each head of the family is going to marry someone in show business for ever and ever. Until the what-d’you-call-it generation, don’t you know?’

‘Please do not be so silly, Bertie. There is one leader of the family who is not going to do it for sure, and that is Gussie. And you are going to America to stop him.’

‘Yes, but why me?’

‘Why you? You are too annoying, Bertie. Do you not care about the family at all? You are too lazy to try to make yourself look good, but at least you can try to stop Gussie from making us look bad. You are going to America because you are Gussie’s cousin, because you have always been his closest friend, because you are the only one of the family who has nothing at all to fill his time except golf and night clubs.’

‘I play a lot of auction.’

‘And as you say, stupid gambling in bad places. If you need another reason, you are going because I ask you as a personal favour.’

What she meant was that, if I said no, she would use all her natural skill to make life very hard for me. She held me with her bright eye. I have never met anyone who can act like the Ancient Mariner better.

‘So you will start right away, won’t you, Bertie?’

I didn’t wait.

‘Sure!’ I said. ‘Of course I will’

Jeeves came in with the tea.

‘Jeeves,’ I said, ‘we leave for America on Saturday.’

‘Very good, sir,’ he said; ‘which suit will you wear?’