FullReads

I can’t read before I’ve had my morning tea and a cigarette. I groped for the bell.

Jeeves came in looking as fresh as a dewy violet. It’s a mystery to me how he does it.

“Tea, Jeeves.”

“Very good, sir.”

He flowed silently out of the room–he always gives you the impression of being some liquid substance when he moves; and I found that Rocky was surging round with his beastly letter again.

“What is it?” I said. “What on earth’s the matter?”

“Read it!”

“I can’t. I haven’t had my tea.”

“Well, listen then.”

“Who’s it from?”

“My aunt.”

At this point I fell asleep again. I woke to hear him saying:

“So what on earth am I to do?”

Jeeves trickled in with the tray, like some silent stream meandering over its mossy bed; and I saw daylight.

“Read it again, Rocky, old top,” I said. “I want Jeeves to hear it. Mr. Todd’s aunt has written him a rather rummy letter, Jeeves, and we want your advice.”

“Very good, sir.”

He stood in the middle of the room, registering devotion to the cause, and Rocky started again:

“MY DEAR ROCKMETTELLER.–I have been thinking things over for a long while, and I have come to the conclusion that I have been very thoughtless to wait so long before doing what I have made up my mind to do now.”

“What do you make of that, Jeeves?”

“It seems a little obscure at present, sir, but no doubt it becomes cleared at a later point in the communication.”

“It becomes as clear as mud!” said Rocky.

“Proceed, old scout,” I said, champing my bread and butter.

“You know how all my life I have longed to visit New York and see for myself the wonderful gay life of which I have read so much. I fear that now it will be impossible for me to fulfil my dream. I am old and worn out. I seem to have no strength left in me.”

“Sad, Jeeves, what?”

“Extremely, sir.”

“Sad nothing!” said Rocky. “It’s sheer laziness. I went to see her last Christmas and she was bursting with health. Her doctor told me himself that there was nothing wrong with her whatever. But she will insist that she’s a hopeless invalid, so he has to agree with her. She’s got a fixed idea that the trip to New York would kill her; so, though it’s been her ambition all her life to come here, she stays where she is.”

“Rather like the chappie whose heart was ‘in the Highlands a-chasing of the deer,’ Jeeves?”

“The cases are in some respects parallel, sir.”

“Carry on, Rocky, dear boy.”

“So I have decided that, if I cannot enjoy all the marvels of the city myself, I can at least enjoy them through you. I suddenly thought of this yesterday after reading a beautiful poem in the Sunday paper about a young man who had longed all his life for a certain thing and won it in the end only when he was too old to enjoy it. It was very sad, and it touched me.”

“A thing,” interpolated Rocky bitterly, “that I’ve not been able to do in ten years.”

“As you know, you will have my money when I am gone; but until now I have never been able to see my way to giving you an allowance. I have now decided to do so–on one condition. I have written to a firm of lawyers in New York, giving them instructions to pay you quite a substantial sum each month. My one condition is that you live in New York and enjoy yourself as I have always wished to do. I want you to be my representative, to spend this money for me as I should do myself. I want you to plunge into the gay, prismatic life of New York. I want you to be the life and soul of brilliant supper parties.

“Above all, I want you–indeed, I insist on this–to write me letters at least once a week giving me a full description of all you are doing and all that is going on in the city, so that I may enjoy at second-hand what my wretched health prevents my enjoying for myself. Remember that I shall expect full details, and that no detail is too trivial to interest.–Your affectionate Aunt,