Leave It to Psmith, P. G. Wodehouse [novels to read .txt] 📗

chums are not the sort of function your man of affairs wants to get lugged into. Capital company as we are, Comrade Jackson, we should doubtless have been extremely in the way. I suppose the conversation would have dealt exclusively with reminiscences of the dear old school, of tales of surreptitious cocoa-drinking in the dormitories and what the deportment mistress said when Angela was found chewing tobacco in the shrubbery. Yes, I fancy we have not missed a lot.⁠ ⁠… By the way, I don’t think much of the new home. True, I only saw it from the outside, but⁠ ⁠… no, I don’t think much of it.”

“Best we can afford.”

“And who,” said Psmith, “am I to taunt my boyhood friend with his honest poverty? Especially as I myself am standing on the very brink of destitution.”

“You?”

“I in person. That low moaning sound you hear is the wolf bivouacked outside my door.”

“But I thought your uncle gave you rather a good salary.”

“So he did. But my uncle and I are about to part company. From now on he, so to speak, will take the high road and I’ll take the low road. I dine with him tonight, and over the nuts and wine I shall hand him the bad news that I propose to resign my position in the firm. I have no doubt that he supposed he was doing me a good turn by starting me in his fish business, but even what little experience I have had of it has convinced me that it is not my proper sphere. The whisper flies round the clubs ‘Psmith has not found his niche!’

“I am not,” said Psmith, “an unreasonable man. I realise that humanity must be supplied with fish. I am not averse from a bit of fish myself. But to be professionally connected with a firm that handles the material in the raw is not my idea of a large lifework. Remind me to tell you some time what it feels like to sling yourself out of bed at four a.m. and go down to toil in Billingsgate Market. No, there is money in fish⁠—my uncle has made a pot of it⁠—but what I feel is that there must be other walks in life for a bright young man. I chuck it tonight.”

“What are you going to do, then?”

“That, Comrade Jackson, is more or less on the knees of the gods. Tomorrow morning I think I will stroll round to an employment agency and see how the market for bright young men stands. Do you know a good one?”

“Phyllis always goes to Miss Clarkson’s in Shaftesbury Avenue. But⁠ ⁠…”

“Miss Clarkson’s in Shaftesbury Avenue. I will make a note of it⁠ ⁠… Meanwhile, I wonder if you saw the Morning Globe today?”

“No. Why?”

“I had an advertisement in it, in which I expressed myself as willing⁠—indeed, eager⁠—to tackle any undertaking that had nothing to do with fish. I am confidently expecting shoals of replies. I look forward to winnowing the heap and selecting the most desirable.”

“Pretty hard to get a job these days,” said Mike doubtfully.

“Not if you have something superlatively good to offer.”

“What have you got to offer?”

“My services,” said Psmith with faint reproach.

“What as?”

“As anything. I made no restrictions. Would you care to take a look at my manifesto? I have a copy in my pocket.”

Psmith produced from inside his immaculate waistcoat a folded clipping.

“I should welcome your opinion of it, Comrade Jackson. I have frequently said that for sturdy common sense you stand alone. Your judgment should be invaluable.”

The advertisement, which some hours earlier had so electrified the Hon. Freddie Threepwood in the smoking-room at Blandings Castle, seemed to affect Mike, whose mind was of the stolid and serious type, somewhat differently. He finished his perusal and stared speechlessly.

“Neat, don’t you think?” said Psmith. “Covers the ground adequately? I think so, I think so.”

“Do you mean to say you’re going to put drivel like that in the paper?” asked Mike.

“I have put it in the paper. As I told you, it appeared this morning. By this time tomorrow I shall no doubt have finished sorting out the first batch of replies.”

Mike’s emotion took him back to the phraseology of school days.

“You are an ass!”

Psmith restored the clipping to his waistcoat pocket.

“You wound me, Comrade Jackson,” he said. “I had expected a broader outlook from you. In fact, I rather supposed that you would have rushed round instantly to the offices of the journal and shoved in a similar advertisement yourself. But nothing that you can say can damp my buoyant spirit. The cry goes round Kensington (and district) ‘Psmith is off!’ In what direction the cry omits to state: but that information the future will supply. And now, Comrade Jackson, let us trickle into yonder teashop and drink success to the venture in a cup of the steaming. I had a particularly hard morning today among the whitebait, and I need refreshment.”

II

After Psmith had withdrawn his spectacular person from it, there was an interval of perhaps twenty minutes before anything else occurred to brighten the drabness of Wallingford Street. The lethargy of afternoon held the thoroughfare in its grip. Occasionally a tradesman’s cart would rattle round the corner, and from time to time cats appeared, stalking purposefully among the evergreens. But at ten minutes to five a girl ran up the steps of Number Eighteen and rang the bell.

She was a girl of medium height, very straight and slim; and her fair hair, her cheerful smile, and the boyish suppleness of her body all contributed to a general effect of valiant gaiety, a sort of golden sunniness⁠—accentuated by the fact that, like all girls who looked to Paris for inspiration in their dress that season, she was wearing black.

The small maid appeared again.

“Is Mrs. Jackson at home?” said the girl. “I think she’s expecting me. Miss Halliday.”

“Yes, miss?”

A door at the end of the narrow hall had opened.

“Is that you, Eve?”

“Hallo, Phyl, darling.”

Phyllis Jackson fluttered down the passage like