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Chapter Text

Rather a splendid word, isn’t it, ‘honeymoon’? Whatever brainy cove conjured that one up did a good job. You have ‘honey’, in the sense of pet names, happily buzzing bees, and other sweet things, and add to that ‘moon’, in the sense of being moony over whoever you just got hitched to. Marvellously apt.

My own honeymoon was proceeding wonderfully. Jeeves and I had booked a leisurely six-week cruise around the Mediterranean aboard the good ship Bonheur. By the time we were approaching Venice, we had spent three weeks in conjugal bliss. There had been a moment of friction when I bought a spiffing Cordovan hat as a souvenir from a chap in Malaga, but as soon as I caught a glimpse of Jeeves’ wounded expression when he saw me in it, I gave it to the cabin boy, no questions asked. What are hats, after all, compared with the happiness of my husband?

If you were playing one of those word-association games that those psychiatrist Johnnies use to tell you that you have odd beliefs about cigars, I bet it would take a good long while before you got from ‘honeymoon’ to ‘aunt’. If there’s one thing that you’re not supposed to have on a honeymoon, it’s an aunt. In fact, as we approached Venice, as far as I knew all my troublesome relatives were five hundred or more miles of clear blue sea away from me, and I gave them not a thought.

Which just goes to show the dangers of letting one’s guard down.

As is ever the case on a cruise ship, we arrived into port in Venice at an ungodly hour. The only compensation for being awakened when the sun was just starting to creep over the gondoliers is the delivery of letters, to enable one’s friends and relations to harangue one even at a distance. I was all for chucking the whole stack into the Venetian Lagoon, but Jeeves made me think better of it. He received a charming postcard from his niece, as well as missives from some Junior Ganymede chums.

“Oh, hello,” I said, looking through my letters. “Here’s something from my uncle’s trustees. Thought all that was over and done with.”

“Your uncle who died some five years ago?”

“That’s the one.” I skimmed through the letter. “Oh, good-o! Apparently they’ve held back some wodge of moolah on my uncle’s instructions until the occasion of my marriage, and now it’s time to pay up. Very generous of them. Not sure it’s needed, though, I feel pretty flush at the minute.”

“We do seem to be in a state of financial comfort,” Jeeves agreed.

But I was still making my way through the letter. “By Jove! Jeeves, listen to this – ‘your uncle was greatly concerned about the dangers of man and wife marrying with unequal assets. Therefore, on your entering the matrimonial state, this payment was to be made to whichever of yourself or your wife was in more straitened financial circumstances, in order to create a greater condition of equality between you. Though you have not taken a wife, we the trustees of your uncle’s estate believe it is consistent with his wishes to make this payment to Mr Reginald Jeeves.’ Look at that!”

I passed it over to him. The sum didn’t measure up to the stack of cash that my dear departed uncle had left to me, but it was a goodish pile, and I knew several chaps who considered themselves tolerably oofy with a good deal less.

Jeeves is a dependable sort of chap, not easily startled. He briefly raised his eyebrows as he glanced at the letter.

“That is a not inconsiderable amount, Bertie.”

“I’ll say! But wait – ‘this agreement has been signed by five of the six trustees, and awaits only the signature of your Aunt Agatha, Lady Worplesdon.’”

“That will hardly cause a problem. We can wait until our return to England, and visit her at Bumpleigh Hall.”

But I had read ahead. I could feel the blood draining from my cheeks.

“Are you well?” Jeeves asked.

I held out the letter with a trembling hand. Jeeves read it aloud. “‘You will have the opportunity to obtain the signature of Lady Worplesdon when she comes aboard the Bonheur in Venice, which should be shortly after your receipt of this letter.’”

“Aunt Agatha,” I said, in tones of horror. “Here!”

You know that feeling on a hot day, when the pressure starts to build, the sky darkens, and you can almost smell the storm approaching? That was what it was like waiting for Aunt Agatha to arrive. Jeeves and I had what would otherwise have been a jolly good day in Venice: strolling through St Mark’s Square, going about the place on a gondola, and eating some scrumptious doll-sized topless sandwiches that Jeeves said were called cicchetti. But I couldn’t enjoy myself. I kept looking over my shoulder in case she was lurking in a shadow, or had disguised herself as a young lad selling novelty postcards.

Daft thing to think, really. Aunt Agatha isn’t the skulking type. In another life she could have been a drill sergeant. You know she’s approaching from the scattered waiting-staff and atmosphere of fear. When we got back to the ship in the evening, we knew she’d arrived, because the chief steward looked like he’d just gone three rounds with a prize-fighter.

I found her waiting in our cabin like an eagle staking out a particularly vulnerable and tasty-looking mouse.

“Good evening, Bertie,” she said. “Good evening, Mr Jeeves.”

“Good evening, Lady Worplesdon,” Jeeves replied.

It occurred to me that in all my years of terror under Aunt Agatha’s thumb, one glimmer of hope is that she had never had any financial hold over me. She’d managed my uncle’s trust after he died, but that was all cut and dried, the money came to me no questions asked, and not even a demon in pearls could make it otherwise.

But this time she did have control of the purse-strings. And not mine, where I might have been seized with a fit of courage and said, “tush! I defy thee!”, but Jeeves’. I wouldn’t be much of a husband if, at four weeks of marriage, I caused Aunt Agatha to snatch away his promised dosh.

I had no doubt that she could, if she wanted to. While Jeeves and I considered ourselves wed in the sight of man and God and so on, both being of the male persuasion we could hardly assert our rights in the courts. Jeeves’ entitlement to the cash rested entirely on Aunt Agatha’s say-so.

I steeled myself to face her.

“Mr Jeeves,” she said, “would you mind giving Bertie and me some privacy?”

“Now look here,” I said, with what I felt to be admirable firmness. “Jeeves and I are married now. You can’t send him out of the room –”

“What nonsense, Bertie,” Aunt Agatha interrupted. “Mr Jeeves quite understands that you and I may have private matters to discuss. You can’t spend all your time on top of one another. It is quite an unhealthy foundation for a marriage. ”

Jeeves went outside meekly. Aunt Agatha has that effect on people.

“Bertie,” Aunt Agatha said, when the door closed behind Jeeves. “Have you yet made the acquaintance of Miss Penelope Arnoult? I believe she boarded the ship at the same time as you did.”

“Can’t say that I have. Jeeves and I have kept ourselves pretty well to ourselves, as one might expect on the occasion of our honeymoon.”

Aunt Agatha didn’t take the hint. “I should like you to make her acquaintance, Bertie.”

“Whatever for?”

I didn’t like the sound of this much. I’d had enough conversations with Aunt Agatha trying to introduce me to some female or other with a view to seeing us down the aisle. But surely that couldn’t be the case now? Jeeves and I weren’t married in law, but we had been married in sight of God by no fewer than half-a-dozen vicars, and what therefore God hath joined together, let not even Aunt Agatha put asunder.

“Miss Arnoult has recently been disappointed by her fiancé. They are both aboard this vessel – travelling separately, of course – and I should like him to see the jewel that he has lost.”

“I really don’t see what that has to do with me.”

“You see very little, Bertie. Your perception is quite lacking. A young man such as Miss Arnoult’s former beau will only see that he has lost something of value when he sees another young gentleman valuing it.”

“I say!” I said. “You want me to flirt with this girl!”

“I wouldn’t put it in such vulgar terms, Bertie –”

“And in front of my husband too! Now Aunt Agatha, this goes too far –”

“Bertie, you are distressingly prone to histrionics. I’m not asking you to commit bigamy with the girl –”

“And what if she gets the wrong impression? And next thing I know I’ve been served with a breach of promise suit?”

“I trust with your considerable experience of avoiding romantic entanglements with women, Bertie, that you would be able to stay on the right side of the line.”

It was Jeeves who had enabled me to escape most of the entanglements, and I could hardly ask him to help with this one. I thought of my husband, of my vows, of the commitment I had made him. “I shan’t do it, Aunt Agatha. It wouldn’t be proper.”

She drew in a deep sigh, as if I had landed all the cares of England on her shoulders and chucked in some from France for good measure. “Very well, Bertie. I didn’t like to do this, but you have forced my hand. If you do not make a reasonable overture of friendship to Miss Arnoult, then I may have to reconsider the matter of your uncle’s legacy.”

“You can’t do that!”

“I absolutely can and I will. Now, Bertie, do you want to continue to stand on principle, and deprive Mr Jeeves of a sum of money that could keep him in financial comfort for the rest of his life?”

She had me over a barrel. For love of Jeeves, I couldn’t say yes. For love of Jeeves, I couldn’t say no.

“I’ll – well, I’ll –”

“Don’t splutter, Bertie! Yes or no?”

“I’ll – I’ll think about it.”

Aunt Agatha snorted. We’d been in Spain not long ago and she put me rather in mind of a bull facing a matador. “Don’t think about it for too long. I only intend to stay aboard until Sicily.”

With that, she swept out.

Of course, I put the whole bally dilemma in front of Jeeves right away. His handsome forehead knitted into a frown, his mighty brain at work. 

“I do not immediately see a solution, Bertie.”

“Nor do I, old chap. But look, I can’t go around flirting with some girl, not on our honeymoon.”

“I confess I would be inclined to take it amiss. It would not be what I had hoped for these early days of our marriage.”

“No small wodge of moolah, though, Jeeves, that’s the other thing to be considered.”

“Indeed, Bertie. I observe that the cocktail hour is upon us. Perhaps we might go up on deck and see if we can bring about an introduction to Miss Arnoult?”

“See the lie of the land, what? Good-o. A stiff b-and-s is just what I need after Aunt Agatha.”

“The same thought had occurred to me.”

Miss Arnoult, as it turned out, wasn’t very hard to find. While everyone else on deck was eating, drinking and making merry, there was one young woman gazing mournfully out to sea, like a gannet that has learned that all life is mortal.

We strolled over to her, and I greeted her with a cheerful, “What ho!”

“Good evening, gentlemen,” she said, in tones that suggested there was nothing whatsoever good about it, and indeed, that she was sceptical of the very concept of dusk. “Have we met?”

“I don’t believe we have, though I believe you know my Aunt Agatha – Lady Worplesdon, dontcha know. Well, I’m Bertie Wooster and this is Reginald Jeeves.”

“I’m Penelope Arnoult.”

“Delighted to make your acquaintance, Miss Arnoult,” Jeeves said. “Have you been enjoying your time aboard ship?”

“Yes,” she said. “The Mediterranean is lovely at this time of year.”

But the way she said it made it sound as if she’d be just as happy to pull the plug and watch the whole bally thing drain away.

“Seen much of Venice?” I asked.

“Not yet,” she replied. “Perhaps tomorrow. Good evening.”

And she turned her gaze back on the sea – unplumb'd, salt, and estranging as the fellow said it was.

A gentleman knows when a lady has dismissed him, so Jeeves and I abandoned our attempt at a conversation.

“Not much luck, eh, Jeeves m’dear?” I said as we waited for our cocktails to be mixed.

“The lady does not appear to be in a convivial mood.”

“Down in the dumps, I’d say. Pretty, though, I think. Perhaps? Seems like the sort of filly Bingo might have fallen for before he got himself hitched.”

“I couldn't venture to say.”

I regarded Miss Arnoult some more.

“Jeeves, you know the chaps. Artist chaps. Forever making women lie in bathtubs and sleeping with each other’s wives and all that. Name sounds like a religious cult crossed with a sneeze.”

“Among the artistic community I fear such practices are the norm, Bertie. But perhaps you are referring specifically to the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood?”

“That's the one. Doesn't Miss Arnoult have a Pre-Raphaelite look to her?”

Jeeves pondered. “Yes, I take your point. The hue of her hair and definition of her features would almost be calculated to appeal to gentlemen of that school.”

“In other words she's a looker.”

“Do you think perhaps that if the other gentlemen aboard ship were encouraged to notice Miss Arnoult's physical appearance, then they might supply the attentions that Lady Worplesdon has requested of you?”

“I bet they would, Jeeves m’dear, I bet they would.” I sat back and made a face. “The only trouble is, how can we get them to notice her in the first place? Even the most eager chap needs a bit of encouragement, and Miss Arnoult is giving them none.”

But Jeeves was looking at the dozen or so young gentlemen on the deck with a gimlet eye.

“I say, Jeeves,” I said, “that eye of yours looks awfully gimlet. Don’t say you’ve had an idea?”

I knew the copious quantities of Mediterranean fish served at breakfast, lunch and dinner could only serve to strengthen his mental powers. 

“I believe I may have done, Bertie. But I fear that it will only work if you can behave entirely authentically. Would you therefore forgive me, my love, if I did not take you into my confidence at this time?”

“So long as I don't need to flirt with Miss Arnoult –”

“No, you would not. Only the merest gentlemanly politeness would be required.”

“Well, dash it, Jeeves. In that case, I'm in your hands. I'm all yours.”

And he looked at me with such warmth and fondness that I bally well started blushing.

I didn’t see much of Aunt Agatha for the next day or two by the simple expedient of not leaving our room very often. We were, after all, a married couple on our honeymoon, and I hope I don’t need to explain what a honeymooning couple usually does in the long stretches between ports on a cruise.

Now, Jeeves and I are generally of harmonious temperaments, and certainly in the aforementioned activity we found ourselves to have a very great deal of compatibility. But one respect in which we have always differed is in our need for company.

Jeeves is the sort of chap who can be left alone with a book and a good brandy for hours on end. That he is fond of his fellow man, there is no doubt, but absence makes the heart grow fonder as far as he’s concerned. Meanwhile, yours truly runs more to meeting a fellow for lunch, trickling around to the club for an afternoon snifter with some of the Drones, dining out with an old school pal, and finishing off with a lively bash with two or three score of my closest chums.

So, it became clear that for marital harmony, the best approach was for me to leave Jeeves in our room for a little time alone with such chaps as Virgil or Ovid or Catullus, and for me to go out on deck and enjoy some time with chaps and chapesses rather less literary and much less dead.

You may already know that the Woosters are sportsmen if we are anything at all, and when I heard the words “fifteen-to-one against” when I came up on deck, I was like a foxhound hearing the ‘view-halloo’. I trickled my way over to a growing group of chaps huddled together, deep in conversation with a deckhand named Jones.

“Five-to-one on Mr Acton is rather generous, isn’t it?” a gentleman called Stopforth was saying.

“He spoke with Miss Arnoult for ten minutes yesterday,” replied Jones, with whom Jeeves and I had played cards a couple of nights before. “He’s a strong runner. Ah, and here’s Mr Wooster. Two-to-one. A hard man to beat, sir.”

“What ho!” I said. “Is there a flutter?”

“There is,” said Stopforth proudly, gesturing to a chalkboard of figures. “We’re wagering on which one of us Miss Arnoult will get engaged to.”

Now, the eagle-eyed and quick-witted reader might exert their Holmesian powers of deduction here, and infer a possible connection between this discussion of Miss Arnoult’s marital prospects and the task which I had been set by my infernal Aunt Agatha, and to which Jeeves had promised to set his considerable mental powers. And indeed, the said reader may also wonder whether I made such a connection myself.

I did not. 

What can I say? The last of the Woosters is not known for his intellect at the best of times, and over several weeks of conjugal bliss, the blood flow had been directed more towards the extremities than the grey matter. What’s more, the sporting instinct was roused within me, and I was focused on the game that was afoot.

I glanced down the chalkboard. Anyone who was betting on me at two-to-one was going to be disappointed, of course, but I didn’t see many opportunities for a quick win. Eight-to-one on Mr Finch-Wolryche was optimistic, since he had a face like a three-day-old pilchard. Ten-to-one on Mr Montgomery underestimated the power a sonorous speaking voice can have on a young lady and…

I came to an abrupt halt.

“A hundred to one on Mr Jeeves?” I exclaimed. 

They were very nearly the worst odds on the board. There was only a Mr Naresby at two hundred-to-one, presumably on the grounds that no young lady wishes to marry the Invisible Man. I hadn’t seen a hair of him since the first day at sea.

“I’d say Mr Jeeves hasn’t got much chance with Miss Arnoult, sir, begging your pardon,” said Jones.

“I think you’re selling him rather short!” I said hotly. “Take his looks, for one –”

“On the stern side.”

“Tall, dark and handsome!”

“And his conversation isn’t such as charms a young lady –”

“Piffle! He is witty and erudite. There’s nothing he doesn’t know about.”

“If you say so, sir. There’s not much known of his people. I heard a rumour he used to be in service, for all that he dresses like he has money.”

“Rather a Victorian attitude, Jones,” I said. “Verging on feudal. I didn’t take you for a snob.”

“Just not quite the type for Miss Arnoult, I would have thought, sir.”

“Tosh! Anyone would count themselves dashed lucky to have Mr Jeeves as a husband! As well they should!”

I was conscious of having spoken quite loudly, but no redblooded Englishman could be asked to hear the love of his life so derided and keep an even temper about it.

“Well, if you think so much of his chances, Wooster,” Stopforth said, soothingly, “why not place a bet yourself?”

“Very well,” I said. “I will! Twenty pounds on Mr Jeeves – no, fifty pounds. I’ll have the cheque for you this evening.”

I saw a soupçon of concern cross Jones’ face, and I’ll admit to enjoying it. 

“You wouldn’t have insider knowledge of an existing relationship between Mr Jeeves and Miss Arnoult, would you, sir?” he said. “I’m not sure that would be considered fair play.”

Well, that was the bally limit! Not content with insulting my husband, now the blighter was suggesting I was a cheat. “I assure you I do not, Mr Jones,” I said. “The Wooster name is one spoken of with utmost respect in the highest circles –”

“All right, Mr Wooster,” said Jones. “I’ll take your bet.” He studied his chalkboard. “That’ll make a difference to the odds, though, fifty quid on Mr Jeeves. Let’s see – with your tenner on Mr Montgomery, Mr Stopforth, and yours on Mr Drummond, Mr Tyndall, and of course Mr Wooster’s bet on Mr Jeeves… well, I’d say that puts Mr Jeeves at three-to-one.” He rubbed out the odds and updated them with fresh figures. “Second only to you, Mr Wooster.”

Stopforth chuckled. “Rather a bind for you, Mr Wooster. If you marry Miss Arnoult, you get a charming bride. But if Mr Jeeves marries Miss Arnoult, you get five thousand pounds. Some fellows would find that a tough decision.”

Jones had gone quite pale at the words ‘five thousand pounds’. But he wouldn’t be in the soup if he’d offered shorter odds on Jeeves. I knew he’d never have to pay out, so I was quite content to let him stew. 

“What happens if she doesn’t marry anyone at all?” I asked.

“I’ll treat an engagement at the end of the voyage as good enough to pay out winnings,” said Jones. “If she leaves the ship without getting engaged –”

Tyndall guffawed. His large moustache shook vigorously as he did. I feared it might flee his top lip like a lemming on a clifftop. “I can’t imagine a young lady like Miss Arnoult getting to the end of a six-week cruise without securing an engagement.”

“Even so,” said Jones, “if she does, monies will be refunded, less a reasonable fee.”

“Your Mr Jeeves had better make his play dashed quick, then,” Stopforth said. “We’ll be in Sicily in three days.”

I felt a glimmer of alarm in my spine, like the echo of a distantly tolling bell, or the reverberation of Aunt Agatha’s footsteps. Three days to befriend Miss Arnoult, or lose Jeeves’ dosh! And Miss Arnoult welcomed my company about as much as, well, I welcomed Aunt Agatha’s. I didn’t see how it could be done.

But by that evening Miss Arnoult seemed to have warmed up considerably to y.t.. Jeeves and I were getting ourselves outside of the usual delightful little Italian digestif, when she strode boldly to our table.

“Might I join you, gentlemen?” she asked, and seated herself without waiting for an answer.

“With pleasure,” I replied, redundantly.

“Some manner of affliction seems to have affected all the men aboard this ship,” Miss Arnoult commented waspishly. “I do hope that you and Mr Jeeves will prove to be immune.”

“Oh?” I asked. “Nothing catching, I hope?”

“Desperately catching,” Miss Arnoult said. “I mean romance, Mr Wooster. I can’t walk two paces without some swain thrusting a rose in my face or offering to get me a cocktail. We are fifty miles from the coast. Where are the roses even coming from?”

“They say love has its means, Miss Arnoult,” Jeeves replied. 

“It isn’t as if I’m the only unattached young lady aboard ship,” Miss Arnoult said. “Though they are all acting as if I am. And when it’s not the young men trying to court me, it’s the older ones asking which of the young ones I like the look of most! Mr Grenville must be seventy-five if he’s a day and he was asking me if I liked Mr Tyndall’s moustache. I told him I couldn’t abide it. I simply don’t know what’s got into them all.”

So much for Jones’ six-to-one on Mr Tyndall, then. 

“Well, you stick with us, old girl,” I said. “We’ll keep all those other blighters away, won’t we, Jeeves?”

“You are too kind, Mr Wooster,” Miss Arnoult said. “If you promise you won’t start composing sonnets to my eyebrows, I should be very pleased to stay here.”

“Sonnets are more Jeeves’ line than mine anyway,” I confessed. “I could probably rustle you up a limerick or two, if I knew anything to rhyme with ‘Arnoult’. Where do you hail from, Miss Arnoult?”

“Ashby-de-la-Zouch,” said Miss Arnoult.

“Not much hope for a rhyme there either,” I said. “I pity any of the chaps trying to woo you with verse.”

“Sometimes the simpler names are just as dangerous for the romantically-inclined gentleman, in my view,” Jeeves mused. “The temptation to rhyme Rye with ‘eye’ or Bicester with ‘kissed her’, for instance. The result is inevitably some very poor poetry.”

Miss Arnoult let out a sudden squawk of laughter. It sounded like a dog getting its tail trodden on, and I saw one young lady on the far side of the restaurant pick up her Pekinese in alarm.

“Oh, you are funny, Mr Jeeves,” she said. “I haven’t laughed in – oh, I don’t know how long. I am glad I came to talk to the two of you. I’m sure you would never harangue a lady with poor quality verse. Only the best from Mr Jeeves – and Mr Wooster, of course.”

“I’m afraid my attempts at verse haven’t exactly been of the first rank,” I admitted. “Jeeves is a different matter, of course. Dashed brainy. A whizz at anything he puts his mind to, really.”

“I knew it!” Miss Arnoult said. “Do you have a favourite poet yourself, Mr Jeeves?”

Now Jeeves, after a lifetime in service, is in the habit of keeping his feelings to himself. But the effect of the question must have been obvious even to Miss Arnoult. He sat up a little straighter. His eyes gleamed. He looked like a thoroughbred at the starting gate. And then, in a tangle of laureates and prosodists, sonneteers and elegists, they were off. 

I won’t record everything that passed between Jeeves and Miss Arnoult that evening, because it turned into a kind of soup of Keats this and Wordsworth that and had Miss Arnoult ever read any Walt Whitman and what did Mr Jeeves think of the works of Emily Dickinson? 

Meanwhile, I discovered that if I shimmied slightly to the left, then with one glance I could take in Jeeves’ profile and the sunset through a window behind him, and a jolly fine view it was too. The result was that I spent rather a lot of time admiring the curve of Jeeves’ nose in the fading light and not a lot of time paying attention to the poetical chitchat. 

After some time had gone by, I was suddenly struck by a yawn. Truth was, aboard ship I’d been neglecting my usual nine hours of the dreamless, what with there being so many other mattress-based pursuits for a newly married couple to engage in. 

“I might pop off to bed early,” I said. Jeeves and Miss Arnoult were still going at the poetry lark like consumptives in a garret, so I thought I could slope off without cries of abandonment. “Goodnight Jeeves, Miss Arnoult.”

They wished me goodnight, and I slipped away to the Bonheur’s honeymoon suite. 

Sleep was elusive. Not in the tossing-and-turning, emotionally-fraught, soul-of-suffering way. Instead, I lay there thinking about how jolly lucky I was. Married to the love of my life, sailing on the honeymoon of my dreams, scarcely a care in the world. There was Aunt Agatha, but I hadn’t seen her all day, and besides, Jeeves and I had befriended Miss Arnoult just as she’d asked. She could hardly complain that Miss Arnoult had lacked for male attention, either. 

It was like the fellow said, God’s in His heaven, all’s right with the Wooster. Perhaps Jeeves had a point about poetry, after all. The right poem in the right moment can be a jolly good thing. I thought I should ask Jeeves about his favourites again in the morning…

I was just tiptoeing across the border of the Land of Nod when the cabin door creaked open. 

“Bertie!” Jeeves said. His voice had a note of suffering that I hadn’t heard since I showed him my Cordovan hat. 

“My darling,” I said, bolt awake. “What’s wrong?”

Jeeves sat down on the side of the bed, and took my hand. There was a slight tremor in his index finger. I knew he must be in the deepest of distress.

“I have become engaged,” he said, in tones of horror. “To Miss Penelope Arnoult!”

Chapter Text

It was like this. Jeeves and Miss Arnoult had gone for a stroll out on deck together and, swept up in the poetical exchange, had started quoting their favourite lines at one another. Now, had it been me, it would have been the misadventures of the young man from Nantucket, and there would have been no harm done. 

But Jeeves is such a dashed romantic, he started off on the theme of the leading Love-throb in the Heart, and as anyone knows, you can’t say that sort of stuff to a young lady by moonlight without her taking it a certain way. She’d been so impressed by how sensitively Jeeves had plighted his troth – unlike all those other fellows – that she accepted him on the spot. 

It’s like getting a cab outside the Drones. Get chucked out of the first one, and you leap with gratitude into whichever one next comes along, even if it’s missing a wheel and the driver is wearing an eyepatch. A girl who’s been given the old heave-ho is much the same. No wonder she fell on Jeeves like the drowning man. 

“My thoughts were only of you, Bertie,” he said, eyes wide with sorrow. 

Trouble is, when you’re the last of the Woosters you spend your life alert, like the wily fox, to the snares of young ladies looking to entrap you in the confines of matrimony. But Jeeves, being a valet, had experienced only a fraction of the obstacle course of feminine charm that chaps of my rank were so used to navigating. And so, when approaching the spiked pit, he fell right in. 

“Are you very angry with me?” he asked.

“My beloved!” I exclaimed. “Not with you – never with you. With that bally siren Penelope Arnoult, perhaps; with Aunt Agatha, certainly. But not with you.”

“But on our honeymoon, Bertie –”

I kissed him. “We’re in the soup all right, but we’ll get out of it. Let’s sleep on it. We’ll find a way out in the morning.”

But when the day dawned, the golden sunlight stretching out over the sparkling sea, the way out didn’t seem any closer. And Miss Arnoult buttonholed Jeeves at breakfast, wreathed in smiles. 

It has been well said of Bertram Wooster that he is an excellent and undaunted trencherman. But on that morning, the Bonheur’s chef’s bacon and eggs turned to ashes in the Wooster mouth. I could tolerate the concept of Jeeves being thought engaged to this harpy. Seeing her in the flesh, however, and hearing her speak of flowers for her bouquet, and music for the ceremony, and quaint little churches – I couldn’t stick it at any price. I finished the bacon and sloped away. 

Had I been any less pipped, I might have noticed the strain in Miss Arnoult’s voice, that there were no roses in her cheeks, and not much by way of love-light in her eyes; to wit, that perhaps the glad tidings were not much gladder for her than they were for Jeeves and me. But I was pipped, dashed pipped, and so I cursed her for a blot on the landscape and looked no further. 

As I left, I heard Miss Arnoult ask Jeeves if he knew any vicars. 

These were deep waters, but the Wooster heart is not easily daunted. I was ready to march, Danielesque, into the lion’s den. It was time to consult the old flesh-and-blood: Aunt Agatha.

She had of course been moved into the second-best cabin on the ship (the best being the honeymoon suite, occupied by y.t. and beloved husband). I rapped smartly on the door, and awaited admission.

“Come!” came the reverberating tones of the aged relative. 

I entered. 

“Bertie?” she said with some surprise. “I hardly expected to see you at this time in the morning. Are you a creature of reformed habits?”

I had no time for social niceties. I laid it all out for her: the conversation, the poetry, the proposal, the acceptance – the whole sorry lot of it. 

She gave me an appraising look. It had all the tenderness and warmth of the look given to a swimming child by an attendant shark.

“So your husband has made a fool of himself,” she said. 

“Well, I say!” I said. When it came to Aunt Agatha, the milk of human kindness was always semi-skimmed at best, but I had expected at least some meagre dregs of sympathy. “That’s jolly thick! He would never have spoken to the girl had it not been for your unreasonable demands –”

“My demands were quite reasonable, Bertie,” Aunt Agatha replied, “and Mr Jeeves had nothing to do with them. I asked you to befriend Miss Arnoult, not him.”

“Now look here,” I said, the spirit of Agincourt surging within me. “You can hardly have expected me to befriend some chit and leave my husband playing gooseberry? On our very honeymoon?”

“I thought that the two of you might have been able to conjure a measure of common sense,” Aunt Agatha said, implacable as a galleon. “I see that I was mistaken.”

“This is the bally limit,” I said. “At least you must admit that I fulfilled your absurd request. I imagine you will be signing the agreement to pay Jeeves the money from my uncle’s trust forthwith.”

“I shall be doing no such thing,” said Aunt Agatha.

“Aunt Agatha!”

“Now, Bertie, stop striking that absurd injured pose. You look like a kicked poodle. I assume that Mr Jeeves has no intention of committing bigamy, so he will be breaking his engagement with Miss Arnoult. You can hardly think it wise for him to come into a very considerable sum of money shortly before being served with a breach of promise suit?”

That stopped me short. Aunt Agatha was low in my estimation, but even I had to admit that she had a point. No point in Jeeves being oofy only for Miss Arnoult to pinch it all from him again in a court of law.  

Still, I soldiered on. “There will be no breach of promise suit. Miss Arnoult will simply have to be persuaded to break the engagement herself.”

Aunt Agatha snorted. “The poor girl has already lost an engagement to one gentleman aboard this ship. Two would start to look like carelessness.”

I had a sudden flash of inspiration. The stormclouds parted, and the skies cleared and brightened before me. 

“What was the name of Miss Arnoult’s former fiancé?” I asked, affecting an airy tone.

“Mr Cecil Naresby,” Aunt Agatha said. “Why?”

“No matter,” I said. “Toodle-pip, old ancestor.”

And I darted from her cabin before she could say another word.

Hope was blooming in my chest. You see, there was one chap aboard who had already succeeded in giving Miss Arnoult the push without it ending up in court. And if it could be done once, then it would be a poor sportsman who would claim it could not be done a second time. 

The first difficulty was in finding the blighter. There were a few hundred people aboard the Bonheur and not all of them could have such predictable taste in cabins as Aunt Agatha. I thought of going from door to door like a disaffected postman, but then I had a stroke of luck.

Out of the corner of my eye, I caught a glimpse of the brim of a snazzy – nay, debonair – Cordovan hat. 

I dashed after it.

“You there!” I said. “Boy!”

The cabin boy started, and clutched at the hat. “Yes, sir?”

“What cabin is Mr Naresby in?”

The boy trembled. I sensed hesitation, so dug in my pocket and found the typical assortment that one gathers on holiday: six francs, a ten bob note, a few hundred lira, two tortoiseshell buttons, and a penny whistle. I handed over the lot.

“Mr Naresby?” I repeated.

Greed battled discretion, and won. “Cabin 146, sir. Amidships on the port side, lower deck, sir. Thank you, sir.”

And with that, he exited the scene. 

We Woosters are not natural sailors, so it took me a moment or two to decode the directions from the naval code in which they were given. But soon I was heading down to the bottom middle of the left-hand side of the ship, and there I found a door marked CXLIV. 

That, as it turned out, was 144, Mr Tyndall’s room. But once I’d escaped Mr Tyndall and shaken off his moustache, I stepped one room to the right and found CXLVI. I knocked trepidatiously. 

“Mr Naresby?” I asked.

The chap who opened the door nodded. He was a tall, straight-backed, dark-haired cove, well if plainly dressed, with a sombre, handsome face, finely chiselled features, and bright, intelligent eyes. I couldn’t put my finger on why, but I warmed to him immediately. 

“Cecil Naresby,” he said. “May I help you?”

“Be dashed good if you could, old bean,” I said. “Mind if I come in? Not really a subject for the whole deck to hear.”

“And you are…?”

“Wooster,” I said, “Bertram Wooster. My chums call me Bertie.”

Mr Naresby yielded to the Wooster charm. “Come in, then, Mr Wooster.”

“Good-o,” I said, and followed him inside. 

There was a gloomy air to the little cabin. Much of the gloom came from Mr Naresby himself. He was a creature suffused with sorrow. 

“So,” he said. “How may I help you, Mr Wooster?”

His tone of voice said he didn’t give much of a hoot how he could help me. He was as full of woe as Wednesday’s child, if Wednesday’s child had been kicked by Tuesday’s, then had Saturday’s pinch its lunch. 

In fact, he reminded me of no one so much as Miss Arnoult when Jeeves and I first met her. 

“Well, old chum,” I said, “I was very much hoping you might be willing to speak to me about Miss Penelope Arnoult.”

“My apologies, Mr Wooster. I cannot help you. I have vowed never to speak of that person again.”

“And I can’t fault you,” I gambled desperately, “she is a blot, but I was hoping –”

Fierce light sprang in his eyes. “Mr Wooster! You will not speak of Miss Arnoult in those terms in my presence.”

I could see I had misjudged the posish, and badly. Dash it, I could hardly make it worse.

“She is engaged to my husband!” I blurted out.

Silence.

Always a difficulty, when you’re a chap married to another chap. I mean, all of my chums and relations had taken it well enough, and affliction cometh not forth of the dust, neither doth trouble spring out of the ground, but you never knew which coves might take it amiss.

“Your… husband?” Mr Naresby said. “Forgive me – you are Mr Wooster?”

“The very same,” I said.

He sighed a deeply world-weary sigh. If Atlas had ever sighed, it would have sounded a bit like that.

“I think perhaps you had better explain at greater length, Mr Wooster.”

And so I did. I explained the whole bally lot of it, from Jeeves’ first blessed arrival on wings of angels, through to the holes he’d dug me out of, to our wedding with its plethora of vicars, and finally to the detestable auntly commandment that led to Jeeves and Miss Arnoult’s engagement.

Mr Naresby softened by inches. When I explained about my proposal, he cracked a smile. By the time I reached the sixth vicar, he almost laughed. And once my story was concluded, he nodded sagely.

“I see that we are in much the same position, Mr Wooster. The love of your life is engaged to Miss Arnoult. The love of my life is engaged to Mr Jeeves.”

“You mean to say that you still have feelings for the husband-stealing – I mean, for the young lady?”

“I do, Mr Wooster,” Mr Naresby said, and the sorrow returned to his face like the tide to the beach. “It is true that I ended our engagement, but not for any want of feeling on my side. Nor, I believed, on hers.”

“Then whyever did you give her the push?” 

“I had a financial disappointment, and I could not maintain her in the lifestyle to which she is accustomed. The trip will deplete the last of my resources. I should have cancelled, and yet I could not deny myself six weeks near my dearest Penelope, even if they could not be at her side.”

I provided a reassuring pat on the shoulder. It seemed the situation called for it.

“No hope of getting the necessary moolah, then? No ageing relatives? No gainful employment?”

Mr Naresby shook his proud and handsome head. “None. At our stop at Monte Carlo, I gambled what little I had left – and lost it all. I am destitute, Mr Wooster. There is no hope. And even were I the richest man alive, would Penelope take me back? She has accepted the proposal of another man.”

“Something of the old affection may still linger, old chum,” I said. I recalled then how at breakfast, Miss Arnoult had more closely resembled the lost lamb contemplating the mint sauce than the radiant bride.

But at the same time, the grey matter was gearing into action. The mention of Monte Carlo had set me off, like a bloodhound on the scent. 

With all that had happened since, I had forgotten my bet on Jeeves to marry Miss Arnoult. Funny where fate leads you. If Jeeves didn’t manage to give her the push by the end of the cruise, I’d be five grand up, and I couldn’t think of anything I wanted less in the world.

But the odds on Mr Naresby had been even worse than those on Jeeves.

“How much moolah would you need to make a go of it with Miss Arnoult, old boy?”

Mr Naresby pulled himself upright. “I couldn’t accept charity, Mr Wooster –”

“I’m not asking you to – or not more than a few quid. How much would set you on your feet?”

He thought for a moment. 

“I have a friend with a booming sardine business in which I could invest – perhaps buy out the pet food subsidiary, set myself up as a manager – there’s a lot of money in sardines – could expand into cod, given time – lots of potential. Two thousand pounds should do it. But Mr Wooster, wherever am I to get two thousand pounds?”

“Let’s make it three thousand,” I said, and reached for my pocketbook. “Here’s fifteen quid.”

He accepted the notes, but looked at them with bafflement. “Mr Wooster, I don’t understand.”

I explained all about Jones the deckhand and his book on Miss Arnoult’s marital prospects. “Your odds are two hundred to one,” I said. “Marry Miss Arnoult and you can turn fifteen quid into three grand.”

“But wouldn’t that be dishonest?”

That was a sticky point, but I recalled what Jones had said about the marriageability of Jeeves, and decided that they that plow iniquity, and sow wickedness, reap the same.

“You’d be saving Jones money,” I explained. “It’s a kindness. If Miss Arnoult leaves the ship engaged to Jeeves, he’ll owe me five thousand pounds.”

“But I still have to win back Penelope.”

“Faint heart never won fair lady, old boy,” I said. “Besides, I fancy Miss Arnoult still holds a torch for you as well. Now, hurry – if Jones gets wind of Miss Arnoult’s engagement, he’ll close the book. Hurry!”

Once the idea had taken root in Naresby’s mind, he didn’t hesitate. He was off like a dog from the traps. 

By this point, it was lunchtime, so I sidled over to the dining room to restore the tissues. There, I saw Jeeves – wonderfully, blessedly alone. It was all I could do not to leap into his welcoming arms.

“Jeeves!” I said, and trusted that he could hear the depth of love in my voice.

“Bertie!” he said in much the same tone. 

But what sweet nothings might have passed between us shall remain forever a mystery, because at that point Miss Arnoult appeared at his elbow and said, “good afternoon, my Reggie-Weggie!”

I have said before that it’s a rummy sort of thing for a preux chevalier to call his husband by his surname, but I fell in love with a Jeeves, and so I married a Jeeves, and thus a Jeeves he shall remain. But it still made me sick to hear this virago referring to my Jeeves as Reggie-Weggie. 

With one plaintive glance back at my beloved, I turned on my heel and cut her dead. And if that meant I went without my luncheon, well, that would show her!

I sloped off to the bar on the top deck. If lunch was not forthcoming, then at least I could apply the old tincture to brace myself for the day still to come. I wouldn’t have said I was drowning my sorrows, but I was certainly getting them a little soggy. 

I had got myself outside of a b-and-s or three when there was a sudden commotion. Jones the deckhand burst in, followed by Jeeves, Miss Arnoult, and Mr Naresby, all in a tumult and shouting over one another. And a few paces behind them all – heaven help us – came Aunt Agatha. 

“I will have an explanation, Mr Jeeves,” Jones was saying. “I might only be staff, but from what I’ve heard you was staff not all that long ago, and I will not have my good nature taken advantage of!”

“Mr Jones,” Mr Naresby said, “if I might only –”

“No, Mr Naresby,” Jones said, “a fair bet is a fair bet and – ah! There’s the man himself! Mr Wooster!”

And the gaggle of them bore down upon me. I don’t mind saying that three brandies deep, the Wooster spirit was depleted. I quaked in my chair.

Jones was heading straight for me. Jeeves was trying to put himself in the way. Miss Arnoult was clinging at Jeeves’ arm like a dashed limpet. Mr Naresby was dancing around by Jones like a boxing hare with a bee on its foot. And Aunt Agatha was as firm and implacable as a concrete outhouse – and just as rough to run into.

Voices layered on voices: Jones remonstrating; Jeeves attempting politeness; Arnoult cajoling; Naresby wheedling. And finally, over the top of them all, Aunt Agatha bellowed: “ENOUGH!”

Blessed silence descended.

“Now,” Aunt Agatha said, in the ensuing calm. “Explain yourselves. One at a time. Mr Jones, you may begin.”

Jones glanced furtively around the room. “I have a question to ask, but I have been promised to silence by a gentleman, and I’m a man of my word.”

“Can you proceed without naming the gentleman?” Aunt Agatha’s tone said that he was on thin ice, and she was about to get the salt-cellar out.

“I suppose that I can,” Jones replied. “Three days ago, a gentleman told me that Miss Arnoult was newly released from her engagement, and asked me to open a book as regards her marital prospects on board this ship. I said there’s not enough gents on board to make it worth my while. The gentleman said I could offer good odds, and if I fell short, he’d cover my expenses.”

Aunt Agatha’s eyebrows were climbing into her hairline. “And why would a gentleman do such a thing?”

“I should very much like to know that as well,” Miss Arnoult said. 

“Said he felt sorry for the girl – begging your pardon, miss – and he wanted the gents on board to take an interest,” said Jones. 

Miss Arnoult glowered, but said nothing. 

“In comes Mr Wooster and puts fifty quid on Mr Jeeves,” said Jones. “That’s five thousand pounds at a hundred to one odds. I thought that sounded fishy, but Mr Wooster comes in standing on his honour as a gentleman. So I take the bet.”

“Bertie!” Jeeves said. I tried to shoot him a glance fraught with meaning, but I fear I only looked as if I had a headache coming on. Which I did. 

“Thus far this narrative seems only to demonstrate the perils of gambling,” Aunt Agatha observed imperiously. 

“Well, be that as it may,” Jones said. “What do I hear this morning but that Mr Jeeves and Miss Arnoult are engaged? What am I supposed to think but that it’s some kind of confidence trick? If Mr Wooster wants his winnings and then the gentleman as was supposed to back me doesn’t cough up –”

“I assure you that any gentleman on board this ship worthy of the name would honour such a promise,” Aunt Agatha said in tones of steel.

“And then there’s Mr Naresby,” Jones said. “Who shows up just thirty minutes ago, wanting to put a bet on himself, and said Mr Wooster put him up to it. And I wouldn’t take that bet, not for a gent to bet on himself, but that I knew about the wedding bells for Mr Jeeves and Miss Arnoult, and Mr Naresby said he did too, and if he wants to waste fifteen quid, who am I to stop him?”

“Cecil!” Miss Arnoult gasped, turning towards him. “Why – why would you do such a thing?”

“It was for you, my love!” Mr Naresby exclaimed. “It was so that I could marry you!”

“But Cecil! You left me! You told me we had no future together!”

“My darling!” Mr Naresby said. “It was only because I could not afford to keep you in the manner that you deserved! I would not have you impoverished – not for love of me!”

“But Cecil! I would have lived in a garret – nay, on the street, if only it meant that I could be with you!”

“I couldn’t bear to see you suffer! My own Penelope! My jewel!”

“My only suffering was not to be with you! My Cecil!”

“My Penelope! Say you’ll take me back? Say you’ll forgive me?”

“My dearest Cecil! Always!”

And the two of them embraced, eyes wet with tears. 

I was conscious of a certain dampness about the cheek myself. Since I married Jeeves, I’ve developed a certain weakness for star-crossed lovers who overcome it all. 

Jones coughed discreetly. “You won’t be getting your five thousand pounds then, Mr Wooster.”

“Certainly not,” I said. “But you will honour Mr Naresby’s bet.”

Jones sent a sideways glance at Jeeves that I didn’t quite understand. “I will if the other gentleman in this circumstance keeps his promise.”

“I am quite sure that he will,” said Aunt Agatha. “Mr Jeeves, as regards the other matter under discussion – I will have your signed agreement delivered to your cabin later today, before my departure at Sicily. Any monies required in the short term can be advanced from my bank.”

“Thank you, Lady Worplesdon,” Jeeves said. He had an embarrassed air, like a sheep that has forgotten another sheep’s birthday. I couldn’t fathom why. 

“Your scheme here has not pleased me,” Aunt Agatha continued, bafflingly. “I can see why you and my nephew… why you get on so well.”

It was a clear dismissal. Miss Arnoult and Mr Naresby had eyes only for each other. And I didn’t fancy any further conversation with Jones. 

We fled the scene for the auntless safety of our cabin.

“Well, all’s well that ends well, eh, Jeeves?” I said, as the door closed behind us, and I drew him in for a lingering kiss. “The Arnoult female has given you the push, it’s wedding bells for her and Naresby, Aunt Agatha has delivered the dosh – all a jolly good day’s worth, and it’s not even dinnertime. Rotten luck for the blighter who has to cough up three grand to Jones, but that’s his look-out, whoever he may be.”

Jeeves’ embarrassed expression heightened, and all at once the pieces fell into place.

“Ah,” I said. “My beloved – my darling – was that you?”

Jeeves gave a small nod. His chiselled features were pained. “I thought it might stimulate romantic interest amongst the men of the ship. It succeeded rather too well.”

I pulled him into a comforting embrace. “No use crying over spilt milk,” I said. “What’s done is done. And I’d say that getting off with three grand – less whatever Jones got from the other punters – is a lucky enough escape. Miss Arnoult might well have fleeced you for more in court. And by Jove, I’d have paid more than that to be free of her.”

“Nonetheless, I have some considerable regrets about what transpired.”

“Tush,” I said. “Tush and fiddlesticks. Neither of us are blameless, my dearest. I should have connected the dots when I heard about Jones’ book in the first place – but then I was distracted, you see. Jones insulted you. A hundred-to-one odds!”

“I should have foreseen the possibility. I thought it would be a mild stimulus to the gentlemen of the ship, but I underestimated the English sportsman.”

“Call that one a draw, then.”

But Jeeves’ brow was still wrinkled o’er by care. “Mine was surely the greater failing. To become engaged to someone else on our honeymoon –”

“Happens to the best of us, my darling. Now you see the crocodile-infested waters in which y.t. has been swimming all this time.”

“And the loss of your uncle’s money –”

“Only a small part of it. A good old wodge of moolah left in the bank. And what’s mine is yours besides, my beloved.”

“Nonetheless, Bertie, had you not found Mr Naresby and rescued me –”

“Not as if you haven’t done the same for me, many times, dear heart.”

Jeeves fell silent for a long moment. He seemed to be steeling himself to do something that required great courage.

“Bertie,” he said, taking my hand, “your Cordovan hat.”

I was a little hurt to have it brought up again, when I had just that day had to suffer it parading up and down the quarter-deck, adorning the cabin boy’s head. But perhaps Jeeves had forgotten.

“Already disposed of, my dear,” I said. “I gave it to the cabin boy.”

“I know,” Jeeves said. “I will take the liberty of requesting its return, or purchasing a similar item on our return journey. I am suggesting that if you wish, you might continue to wear it.”

“My darling!” I said. “But you hate that hat.”

“You liked it, however, and I am sensible of the very considerable pain I have caused you, and the efforts you have made on my behalf. Perhaps this might be some small recompense?”

I looked at my husband’s face. I thought about how dashing I looked in that hat.

“Perhaps I could wear it just from time to time – when you’re not there?”

“Of such compromises,” Jeeves replied, “are happy marriages made.”