Jeeves and the Coming of Age, Chapter 1
Jan. 22nd, 2012 01:08 am![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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indeedsir_backupTitle: Jeeves and the Coming of Age
Chapter: 1/?
Rating: G
Words: 821
Summary: Bertie wakes up to find he has gained the better part of two decades. And a mustache. Not inspired by Skidmore's drawings of Bertie that![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
wotwotleigh kindly brought to our attention AT ALL (except that it totally is, actually).
To begin with, let me just say that I’m something of an expert when it comes to objects tumbling to the ground from nerveless fingers. Over the years the horrors that have been visited on me thanks to aunts, friends, and unwanted fiancées (not necessarily in that order) have led to objects as many and varied as gaspers, crystal decanters, figurines of the Infant Samuel at Prayer, and silver cow creamers falling from my lifeless hands. It’s hardly worth remarking on anymore; the fellows at the Drones Club, upon hearing a distant crash from the direction of the telephone room, merely nod knowingly and say, “Ah, Wooster’s talking to his relations again” or “I wonder what Bertie’s got into this time.”
But on this particular morning—-the morning I’m about to tell you about, that is to say—-there was something atypical about the racket of household items tumbling to the floor from n. f.. For one thing, the item in question was the breakfast tray and all its fixings—something that hitherto I had not let slip through my grasp, mostly thanks to the fact that I am barely sentient in the early A.M., capable only of guiding a cup of life-saving oolong to my mouth with the feeblest of gestures. So for the whole shebang to do a smart somersault—-just before the china exploded on the floor-—was most unusual.
But not as unusual as the fact that the nerveless fingers that had sent it to its doom had been Jeeves'.
My eyelids, which had been at half-mast, flew open at the cacophony, assuming cacophony means a bally lot of noise and not some kind of cat-fight.
“Jeeves!” I said, shocked but also a trifle reproachful. “You nearly gave me a heart attack!”
But after one look at him my only feeling was one of deepest concern. He was staring, his face pale and his hands still half-curled from the tea tray, gaping at me, positively gaping like a fish. I mean to say, put a tank of newts in his hands and plunk some horn-rimmed spectacles on his nose and he could have been Gussie Fink-Nottle’s twin.
“Jeeves!” I repeated. “Jeeves?”
“S . . . sir?” he stuttered out.
“Good heavens, man, what’s the matter?” I couldn’t imagine what could have put him in this state, though my mind tossed up some pretty dreadful suggestions. “Is Aunt Agatha haunting our doorstep? Is Bingo Little parked in the sitting room?”
“That . . . is you then? Mr. Wooster?”
“Of course it’s me!” I said, confused and a bit hurt. I mean to say, it’s one thing for a blighter like Roderick Spode to say I have a forgettable face, but one’s own valet! “Now spill the beans; why are you staring like someone who’s just seen a troupe of Madeline’s little fairies dancing across a dewy lawn?”
“Well, sir . . .” He suddenly glided over to the bed, a bit more unsteadily than usual, and leaned towards me with a scrutiny that frankly alarmed me.
“Jeeves??”
“I’m sorry, sir.” He straightened, seeming more collected, though still breathing more deeply than normal. “It occurred to me that I might be the subject of a practical pleasantry, but I can see that is not the case. The fact is, sir . . .” He trailed off, cleared his throat, coughed, and cleared his throat again. “I think you had better take a look in the mirror, sir.”
“Tut, Jeeves. You know I’m not human until I’ve had my morning tea, and yet you ask me to abandon the warmth of the bedclothes and trundle all the way to the mirror.” I tactfully omitted mention of the shrapnel of fine china now covering most of the floor. “What on Earth's wrong?”
Silently, he picked the tea tray off the floor, wiping it clean with a napkin before offering it to me.
I took it automatically—-still too fuzzed over with sleep to really get why he was handing it over. But I happened to glance at its well-polished surface anyway.
I loosed a cry that was somewhere between the wheeze one gets upon being punched in the stomach and the plaintive wail of a cat whose tail has just been trodden on. The tray dropped from my nerveless fingers, slid down the bedclothes, and clattered to the floor, out of sight. But the horror I’d witnessed remained burned in my head as though someone had just taped a picture in front of my eyes . . . a fellow on the wrong side of forty with a hairline making a desperate retreat from the forehead and wrinkles permanently furrowing his brow.
A reflection.
Somehow, impossibly . . . me.
(Oh, and a bally dreadful mustache, too.)
Mystery! Suspense! Horrible mustaches! Tune in for our next exciting installment, whenever I toss it onto the interwebs!
Chapter: 1/?
Rating: G
Words: 821
Summary: Bertie wakes up to find he has gained the better part of two decades. And a mustache. Not inspired by Skidmore's drawings of Bertie that
wotwotleigh kindly brought to our attention AT ALL (except that it totally is, actually).To begin with, let me just say that I’m something of an expert when it comes to objects tumbling to the ground from nerveless fingers. Over the years the horrors that have been visited on me thanks to aunts, friends, and unwanted fiancées (not necessarily in that order) have led to objects as many and varied as gaspers, crystal decanters, figurines of the Infant Samuel at Prayer, and silver cow creamers falling from my lifeless hands. It’s hardly worth remarking on anymore; the fellows at the Drones Club, upon hearing a distant crash from the direction of the telephone room, merely nod knowingly and say, “Ah, Wooster’s talking to his relations again” or “I wonder what Bertie’s got into this time.”
But on this particular morning—-the morning I’m about to tell you about, that is to say—-there was something atypical about the racket of household items tumbling to the floor from n. f.. For one thing, the item in question was the breakfast tray and all its fixings—something that hitherto I had not let slip through my grasp, mostly thanks to the fact that I am barely sentient in the early A.M., capable only of guiding a cup of life-saving oolong to my mouth with the feeblest of gestures. So for the whole shebang to do a smart somersault—-just before the china exploded on the floor-—was most unusual.
But not as unusual as the fact that the nerveless fingers that had sent it to its doom had been Jeeves'.
My eyelids, which had been at half-mast, flew open at the cacophony, assuming cacophony means a bally lot of noise and not some kind of cat-fight.
“Jeeves!” I said, shocked but also a trifle reproachful. “You nearly gave me a heart attack!”
But after one look at him my only feeling was one of deepest concern. He was staring, his face pale and his hands still half-curled from the tea tray, gaping at me, positively gaping like a fish. I mean to say, put a tank of newts in his hands and plunk some horn-rimmed spectacles on his nose and he could have been Gussie Fink-Nottle’s twin.
“Jeeves!” I repeated. “Jeeves?”
“S . . . sir?” he stuttered out.
“Good heavens, man, what’s the matter?” I couldn’t imagine what could have put him in this state, though my mind tossed up some pretty dreadful suggestions. “Is Aunt Agatha haunting our doorstep? Is Bingo Little parked in the sitting room?”
“That . . . is you then? Mr. Wooster?”
“Of course it’s me!” I said, confused and a bit hurt. I mean to say, it’s one thing for a blighter like Roderick Spode to say I have a forgettable face, but one’s own valet! “Now spill the beans; why are you staring like someone who’s just seen a troupe of Madeline’s little fairies dancing across a dewy lawn?”
“Well, sir . . .” He suddenly glided over to the bed, a bit more unsteadily than usual, and leaned towards me with a scrutiny that frankly alarmed me.
“Jeeves??”
“I’m sorry, sir.” He straightened, seeming more collected, though still breathing more deeply than normal. “It occurred to me that I might be the subject of a practical pleasantry, but I can see that is not the case. The fact is, sir . . .” He trailed off, cleared his throat, coughed, and cleared his throat again. “I think you had better take a look in the mirror, sir.”
“Tut, Jeeves. You know I’m not human until I’ve had my morning tea, and yet you ask me to abandon the warmth of the bedclothes and trundle all the way to the mirror.” I tactfully omitted mention of the shrapnel of fine china now covering most of the floor. “What on Earth's wrong?”
Silently, he picked the tea tray off the floor, wiping it clean with a napkin before offering it to me.
I took it automatically—-still too fuzzed over with sleep to really get why he was handing it over. But I happened to glance at its well-polished surface anyway.
I loosed a cry that was somewhere between the wheeze one gets upon being punched in the stomach and the plaintive wail of a cat whose tail has just been trodden on. The tray dropped from my nerveless fingers, slid down the bedclothes, and clattered to the floor, out of sight. But the horror I’d witnessed remained burned in my head as though someone had just taped a picture in front of my eyes . . . a fellow on the wrong side of forty with a hairline making a desperate retreat from the forehead and wrinkles permanently furrowing his brow.
A reflection.
Somehow, impossibly . . . me.
(Oh, and a bally dreadful mustache, too.)
Mystery! Suspense! Horrible mustaches! Tune in for our next exciting installment, whenever I toss it onto the interwebs!
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2012-01-22 09:34 am (UTC)*hyperventilates just like Jeeves*
no subject
Date: 2012-01-22 05:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-22 04:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-22 05:56 pm (UTC)blamebe thanked! :Dno subject
Date: 2012-01-22 05:17 pm (UTC)Poor Jeeves, getting the shock of his life. I feel for the old fruit, I really do...
no subject
Date: 2012-01-22 05:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-22 05:29 pm (UTC)I cannot wait to see how this develops, and the illustration you chose was just the best! What a wonderfully creative and original idea!!
no subject
Date: 2012-01-22 05:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-23 04:03 am (UTC)