Этот неподражаемый Дживс! / The Inimitable Jeeves

“Have you seen a girl here with a parson brother?”

“Miss Hemmingway, sir? Yes, sir.”

“Aunt Agatha wants me to marry her.”

“Indeed, sir?”

“Well, what about it?”

“Sir?”

“I mean, have you anything to suggest?”

“No, sir.”

His manner was very cold.

“Oh, well, tra-la-la!” I said.

“Precisely sir,” said Jeeves.

And that was all.

4

Pearls Mean Tears

I remember—it must have been when I was at school—reading a poem or something about something or other in which there was a line which went, “Shades of the prison house begin to close upon the growing boy.

” During the next two weeks that’s exactly how it was with me. I mean to say, I could hear the wedding bells chiming faintly in the distance and getting louder and louder every day, and I could not imagine how to slide out of it. Jeeves, no doubt, was offended, and I couldn’t ask him directly. He could see easily enough that the young master was in a bad way and, if that wasn’t enough, well, it meant that the old feudal spirit was dead in his bosom and there was nothing to be done about it.

It was really funny how the Hemmingway family had taken to me[66 - had taken to me – вцепилась в меня]. I wouldn’t have said that there was anything particularly fascinating about me—in fact, most people look on me as rather an ass; but this girl and her brother didn’t seem happy if they were away from me. In fact, I’d got into the habit now of retiring to my room when I wanted to rest a little.

I got a rather decent suite on the third floor, looking down on to the promenade.

I had gone in my suite one evening and for the first time that day was feeling that life wasn’t so bad after all. Right through the day from lunch-time I’d had the Hemmingway girl nearby. The result was, as I looked down on the lighted promenade and saw all the people walking happily to dinner and the Casino, a kind of wistful feeling came over me. I thought how happy I could have been in this place if only Aunt Agatha and her friends had been elsewhere.

I heaved a sigh, and at that moment there was a knock at the door.

“Someone at the door, Jeeves,” I said.

“Yes, sir.”

He opened the door, and in came Aline Hemmingway and her brother. The last persons I had expected. I really had thought that I could be alone for a minute in my own room.

“Oh, hallo!” I said.

“Oh, Mr Wooster!” said the girl.