jmg
/
hyde


			
							---
title: An Angry Post
description: >
    Temper. Temper. Temper.
created: !!timestamp '2011-01-01 10:00:00'
tags:
    - angry
    - thoughts
---

{% mark excerpt -%}

To complete the character-study of Mr. Worple, he was a man of extremely
uncertain temper, and his general tendency was to think that Corky was a poor
chump and that whatever step he took in any direction on his own account, was
just another proof of his innate idiocy. I should imagine Jeeves feels very
much the same about me.

{%- endmark %}

So when Corky trickled into my apartment one afternoon, shooing a girl in
front of him, and said, "Bertie, I want you to meet my fiancée, Miss Singer,"
the aspect of the matter which hit me first was precisely the one which he had
come to consult me about. The very first words I spoke were, "Corky, how about
your uncle?"

The poor chap gave one of those mirthless laughs. He was looking anxious and
worried, like a man who has done the murder all right but can't think what the
deuce to do with the body.

"We're so scared, Mr. Wooster," said the girl. "We were hoping that you might
suggest a way of breaking it to him."

Muriel Singer was one of those very quiet, appealing girls who have a way of
looking at you with their big eyes as if they thought you were the greatest
thing on earth and wondered that you hadn't got on to it yet yourself. She sat
there in a sort of shrinking way, looking at me as if she were saying to
herself, "Oh, I do hope this great strong man isn't going to hurt me." She
gave a fellow a protective kind of feeling, made him want to stroke her hand
and say, "There, there, little one!" or words to that effect. She made me feel
that there was nothing I wouldn't do for her. She was rather like one of those
innocent-tasting American drinks which creep imperceptibly into your system so
that, before you know what you're doing, you're starting out to reform the
world by force if necessary and pausing on your way to tell the large man in
the corner that, if he looks at you like that, you will knock his head off.
What I mean is, she made me feel alert and dashing, like a jolly old
knight-errant or something of that kind. I felt that I was with her in this
thing to the limit.

"I don't see why your uncle shouldn't be most awfully bucked," I said to
Corky. "He will think Miss Singer the ideal wife for you."

Corky declined to cheer up.

"You don't know him. Even if he did like Muriel he wouldn't admit it. That's
the sort of pig-headed guy he is. It would be a matter of principle with him
to kick. All he would consider would be that I had gone and taken an important
step without asking his advice, and he would raise Cain automatically. He's
always done it."

I strained the old bean to meet this emergency.

"You want to work it so that he makes Miss Singer's acquaintance without
knowing that you know her. Then you come along"

"But how can I work it that way?"

I saw his point. That was the catch.

"There's only one thing to do," I said.

"What's that?"

"Leave it to Jeeves."

And I rang the bell.

"Sir?" said Jeeves, kind of manifesting himself. One of the rummy things about
Jeeves is that, unless you watch like a hawk, you very seldom see him come
into a room. He's like one of those weird chappies in India who dissolve
themselves into thin air and nip through space in a sort of disembodied way
and assemble the parts again just where they want them. I've got a cousin
who's what they call a Theosophist, and he says he's often nearly worked the
thing himself, but couldn't quite bring it off, probably owing to having fed
in his boyhood on the flesh of animals slain in anger and pie.

The moment I saw the man standing there, registering respectful attention, a
weight seemed to roll off my mind. I felt like a lost child who spots his
father in the offing. There was something about him that gave me confidence.

Jeeves is a tallish man, with one of those dark, shrewd faces. His eye gleams
with the light of pure intelligence.

"Jeeves, we want your advice."

"Very good, sir."

I boiled down Corky's painful case into a few well-chosen words.

"So you see what it amount to, Jeeves. We want you to suggest some way by
which Mr. Worple can make Miss Singer's acquaintance without getting on to the
fact that Mr. Corcoran already knows her. Understand?"

"Perfectly, sir."

"Well, try to think of something."

"I have thought of something already, sir."

"You have!"

"The scheme I would suggest cannot fail of success, but it has what may seem
to you a drawback, sir, in that it requires a certain financial outlay."

"He means," I translated to Corky, "that he has got a pippin of an idea, but
it's going to cost a bit."

Naturally the poor chap's face dropped, for this seemed to dish the whole
thing. But I was still under the influence of the girl's melting gaze, and I
saw that this was where I started in as a knight-errant.

"You can count on me for all that sort of thing, Corky," I said. "Only too
glad. Carry on, Jeeves."

"I would suggest, sir, that Mr. Corcoran take advantage of Mr. Worple's
attachment to ornithology."

"How on earth did you know that he was fond of birds?"


[My Man Jeeves by PG Wodehouse][MMJ]

[MMJ]: http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/8164/pg8164.html