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

garden. He had not wandered far when from somewhere close at hand there was borne to him on the breeze a remark in a high voice about Scottish obstinacy, which could only have proceeded from one source. He quickened his steps.

“Hallo, guv’nor.”

“Well, Frederick?”

Freddie shuffled.

“I say, guv’nor, do you think I might go up to town with you this afternoon?”

“What!”

“Fact is, I ought to see my dentist. Haven’t been to him for a deuce of a time.”

“I cannot see the necessity for you to visit a London dentist. There is an excellent man in Shrewsbury, and you know I have the strongest objection to your going to London.”

“Well, you see, this fellow understands my snappers. Always been to him, I mean to say. Anybody who knows anything about these things will tell you greatest mistake go buzzing about to different dentists.”

Already Lord Emsworth’s attention was wandering back to the waiting McAllister.

“Oh, very well, very well.”

“Thanks awfully, guv’nor.”

“But on one thing I insist, Frederick. I cannot have you loafing about London the whole day. You must catch the twelve-fifty train back.”

“Right ho. That’ll be all right, guv’nor.”

“Now, listen to reason, McAllister,” said his lordship. “That is all I ask you to do⁠—listen to reason⁠ ⁠…”

II Enter Psmith I

At about the hour when Lord Emsworth’s train, whirling him and his son Freddie to London, had reached the halfway point in its journey, a very tall, very thin, very solemn young man, gleaming in a speckless top hat and a morning-coat of irreproachable fit, mounted the steps of Number Eighteen, Wallingford Street, West Kensington, and rang the front-door bell. This done, he removed the hat; and having touched his forehead lightly with a silk handkerchief, for the afternoon sun was warm, gazed about him with a grave distaste.

“A scaly neighbourhood!” he murmured.

The young man’s judgment was one at which few people with an eye for beauty would have cavilled. When the great revolution against London’s ugliness really starts and yelling hordes of artists and architects, maddened beyond endurance, finally take the law into their own hands and rage through the city burning and destroying, Wallingford Street, West Kensington, will surely not escape the torch. Long since it must have been marked down for destruction. For, though it possesses certain merits of a low practical kind, being inexpensive in the matter of rents and handy for the buses and the Underground, it is a peculiarly beastly little street. Situated in the middle of one of those districts where London breaks out into a sort of eczema of red brick, it consists of two parallel rows of semidetached villas, all exactly alike, each guarded by a ragged evergreen hedge, each with coloured glass of an extremely regrettable nature let into the panels of the front door; and sensitive young impressionists from the artists’ colony up Holland Park way may sometimes be seen stumbling through it with hands over their eyes, muttering between clenched teeth “How long? How long?”

A small maid-of-all-work appeared in answer to the bell, and stood transfixed as the visitor, producing a monocle, placed it in his right eye and inspected her through it.

“A warm afternoon,” he said cordially.

“Yes, sir.”

“But pleasant,” urged the young man. “Tell me, is Mrs. Jackson at home?”

“No, sir.”

“Not at home?”

“No, sir.”

The young man sighed.

“Ah well,” he said, “we must always remember that these disappointments are sent to us for some good purpose. No doubt they make us more spiritual. Will you inform her that I called? The name is Psmith. P-smith.”

“Peasmith, sir?”

“No, no. P-s-m-i-t-h. I should explain to you that I started life without the initial letter, and my father always clung ruggedly to the plain Smith. But it seemed to me that there were so many Smiths in the world that a little variety might well be introduced. Smythe I look on as a cowardly evasion, nor do I approve of the too prevalent custom of tacking another name on in front by means of a hyphen. So I decided to adopt the Psmith. The p, I should add for your guidance, is silent, as in phthisis, psychic, and ptarmigan. You follow me?”

“Y-yes, sir.”

“You don’t think,” he said anxiously, “that I did wrong in pursuing this course?”

“N-no, sir.”

“Splendid!” said the young man, flicking a speck of dust from his coat-sleeve. “Splendid! Splendid!”

And with a courteous bow he descended the steps and made his way down the street. The little maid, having followed him with bulging eyes till he was out of sight, closed the door and returned to her kitchen.

Psmith strolled meditatively on. The genial warmth of the afternoon soothed him. He hummed lightly⁠—only stopping when, as he reached the end of the street, a young man of his own age, rounding the corner rapidly, almost ran into him.

“Sorry,” said the young man. “Hallo, Smith.”

Psmith gazed upon him with benevolent affection.

“Comrade Jackson,” he said, “this is well met. The one man of all others whom I would have wished to encounter. We will pop off somewhere, Comrade Jackson, should your engagements permit, and restore our tissues with a cup of tea. I had hoped to touch the Jackson family for some slight refreshment, but I was informed that your wife was out.”

Mike Jackson laughed.

“Phyllis isn’t out. She⁠ ⁠…”

“Not out? Then,” said Psmith, pained, “there has been dirty work done this day. For I was turned from the door. It would not be exaggerating to say that I was given the bird. Is this the boasted Jackson hospitality?”

“Phyllis is giving a tea to some of her old school pals,” explained Mike. “She told the maid to say she wasn’t at home to anybody else. I’m not allowed in myself.”

“Enough, Comrade Jackson!” said Psmith agreeably. “Say no more. If you yourself have been booted out in spite of all the loving, honouring, and obeying your wife promised at the altar, who am I to complain? And possibly, one can console oneself by reflecting, we are well out of it. These gatherings of old girls’-school