Free The Jeeves Omnibus - Vol 3 by P. G. Wodehouse Page A

become less expansive on the subject of the dear old days. He addressed himself to the task of curbing her exuberance.
    ‘Nice to welcome you to Rowcester Abbey,’ he said formally.
    ‘Yes, I hope you’ll like it,’ said Monica.
    ‘It’s the most wonderful place I ever saw!’
    ‘Would you say that? Mouldering old ruin, I’d call it,’ said Rory judicially, and was fortunate enough not to catch his wife’s eye, ‘Been decaying for centuries. I’ll bet if you shook those curtains, a couple of bats would fly out.’
    ‘The patina of Time!’ said Mrs Spottsworth. ‘I adore it.’ She closed her eyes. ‘“The dead, twelve deep, clutch at you as you go by,”’ she murmured.
    ‘What a beastly idea,’ said Rory. ‘Even a couple of clutching corpses would be a bit over the odds, in my opinion.’
    Mrs Spottsworth opened her eyes. She smiled.
    ‘I’m going to tell you something very strange,’ she said. ‘It struck me so strongly when I came in at the front door I had to sit down for a moment. Your butler thought I was ill.’
    ‘You aren’t, I hope?’
    ‘No, not at all. It was simply that I was … overcome. I realized that I had been here before.’
    Monica looked politely puzzled. It was left to Rory to supply the explanation.
    ‘Oh, as a sightseer?’ he said. ‘One of the crowd that used to come on Fridays during the summer months to be shown over the place at a bob a head. I remember them well in the days when you and I were walking out, Moke. The Gogglers, we used to call them. They came in charabancs and dropped nut chocolate on the carpets. Not that dropping nut chocolate on them would make these carpets any worse. That’s all been discontinued now, hasn’t it, Bill? Nothing left to goggle at, I suppose. The late Lord Rowcester,’ he explained to the visitor , ‘stuck the Americans with all his best stuff, and now there’s not a thing in the place worth looking at. I was saying to my wife only a short while ago that by far the best policy in dealing with Rowcester Abbey would be to burn it down.’
    A faint moan escaped Monica. She raised her eyes heavenwards, as if pleading for a thunderbolt to strike this man. If this was her Roderick’s idea of selling goods to a customer, it seemed a miracle that he had ever managed to get rid of a single hose-pipe, lawnmower or bird-bath.
    Mrs Spottsworth shook her head with an indulgent smile.
    ‘No, no, I didn’t mean that I had been here in my present corporeal envelope. I meant in a previous incarnation. I’m a Rotationist, you know.’
    Rory nodded intelligently.
    ‘Ah, yes. Elks, Shriners and all that. I’ve seen pictures of them, in funny hats.’
    ‘No, no, you are thinking of Rotarians. I am a Rotationist, which is quite different. We believe that we are reborn as one of our ancestors every ninth generation.’
    ‘Ninth?’ said Monica, and began to count on her fingers.
    ‘The mystic ninth house. Of course you’ve read the
Zend Avesta of Zoroaster
, Sir Roderick?’
    ‘I’m afraid not. Is it good?’
    ‘Essential, I would say.’
    ‘I’ll put it on my library list,’ said Rory. ‘By Agatha Christie, isn’t it?’
    Monica had completed her calculations.
    ‘Ninth … That seems to make me Lady Barbara, the leading hussy of Charles II’s reign.’
    Mrs Spottsworth was impressed.
    ‘I suppose I ought to be calling you Lady Barbara and asking you about your latest love affair.’
    ‘I only wish I could remember it. From what I’ve heard of her, it would make quite a story.’
    ‘Did she get herself sunburned all over?’ asked Rory. ‘Or was she more of an indoor girl?’
    Mrs Spottsworth had closed her eyes again.
    ‘I feel influences,’ she said. ‘I even hear faint whisperings. How strange it is, coming into a house that you last visited three hundred years ago. Think of all the lives that have been lived within these ancient walls. And they are here, all around us, creating an intriguing aura for this delicious old