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How different it all would have been, I could not but reflect, if thisgirl had been the sort of girl one chirrups cheerily to over thetelephone and takes for spins in the old two-seater. In that case, Iwould simply have said, "Listen," and she would have said, "What?" and Iwould have said, "You know Gussie Fink-Nottle," and she would have said,"Yes," and I would have said, "He loves you," and she would have saideither, "What, that mutt? Well, thank heaven for one good laugh today,"or else, in more passionate vein, "Hot dog! Tell me more."
I mean to say, in either event the whole thing over and done with inunder a minute.
But with the Bassett something less snappy and a good deal more glutinouswas obviously indicated. What with all this daylight-saving stuff, we hadhit the great open spaces at a moment when twilight had not yet begun tocheese it in favour of the shades of night. There was a fag-end of sunsetstill functioning. Stars were beginning to peep out, bats were foolinground, the garden was full of the aroma of those niffy white flowerswhich only start to put in their heavy work at the end of the day--inshort, the glimmering landscape was fading on the sight and all the airheld a solemn stillness, and it was plain that this was having the worsteffect on her. Her eyes were enlarged, and her whole map a good deal toosuggestive of the soul's awakening for comfort.
Her aspect was that of a girl who was expecting something fairly fruityfrom Bertram.
In these circs., conversation inevitably flagged a bit. I am never at mybest when the situation seems to call for a certain soupiness, and I'veheard other members of the Drones say the same thing about themselves. Iremember Pongo Twistleton telling me that he was out in a gondola with agirl by moonlight once, and the only time he spoke was to tell her thatold story about the chap who was so good at swimming that they made him atraffic cop in Venice.
Fell rather flat, he assured me, and it wasn't much later when the girlsaid she thought it was getting a little chilly and how about pushingback to the hotel.
So now, as I say, the talk rather hung fire. It had been all very wellfor me to promise Gussie that I would cut loose to this girl about achinghearts, but you want a cue for that sort of thing. And when, toddlingalong, we reached the edge of the lake and she finally spoke, conceive mychagrin when I discovered that what she was talking about was stars.
Not a bit of good to me.
"Oh, look," she said. She was a confirmed Oh-looker. I had noticed thisat Cannes, where she had drawn my attention in this manner on variousoccasions to such diverse objects as a French actress, a Provencalfilling station, the sunset over the Estorels, Michael Arlen, a manselling coloured spectacles, the deep velvet blue of the Mediterranean,and the late mayor of New York in a striped one-piece bathing suit. "Oh,look at that sweet little star up there all by itself."
I saw the one she meant, a little chap operating in a detached sort ofway above a spinney.
"Yes," I said.
"I wonder if it feels lonely."
"Oh, I shouldn't think so."
"A fairy must have been crying."
"Eh?"
"Don't you remember? 'Every time a fairy sheds a tear, a wee bit star isborn in the Milky Way.' Have you ever thought that, Mr. Wooster?"
I never had. Most improbable, I considered, and it didn't seem to me tocheck up with her statement that the stars were God's daisy chain. Imean, you can't have it both ways.
However, I was in no mood to dissect and criticize. I saw that I had beenwrong in supposing that the stars were not germane to the issue. Quite adecent cue they had provided, and I leaped on it Promptly: "Talking ofshedding tears----"
But she was now on the subject of rabbits, several of which were messingabout in the park to our right.
"Oh, look. The little bunnies!"
"Talking of shedding tears----"
"Don't you love this time of the evening, Mr. Wooster, when the sun hasgone to bed and all the bunnies come out to have their little suppers?When I was a child, I used to think that rabbits were gnomes, and that ifI held my breath and stayed quite still, I should see the fairy queen."
Indicating with a reserved gesture that this was just the sort of loonything I should have expected her to think as a child, I returned to thepoint.
"Talking of shedding tears," I said firmly, "it may interest you to knowthat there is an aching heart in Brinkley Court."
This held her. She cheesed the rabbit theme. Her face, which had beenaglow with what I supposed was a pretty animation, clouded. She unshippeda sigh that sounded like the wind going out of a rubber duck.
"Ah, yes. Life is very sad, isn't it?"
"It is for some people. This aching heart, for instance."
"Those wistful eyes of hers! Drenched irises. And they used to dance likeelves of delight. And all through a foolish misunderstanding about ashark. What a tragedy misunderstandings are. That pretty romance brokenand over just because Mr. Glossop would insist that it was a flatfish."
I saw that she had got the wires crossed.
"I'm not talking about Angela."
"But her heart is aching."
"I know it's aching. But so is somebody else's."
She looked at me, perplexed.
"Somebody else? Mr. Glossop's, you mean?"
"No, I don't."
"Mrs. Travers's?"
The exquisite code of politeness of the Woosters prevented me clippingher one on the ear-hole, but I would have given a shilling to be able todo it. There seemed to me something deliberately fat-headed in the wayshe persisted in missing the gist.
"No, not Aunt Dahlia's, either."
"I'm sure she is dreadfully upset."
"Quite. But this heart I'm talking about isn't aching because of Tuppy'srow with Angela. It's aching for a different reason altogether. I mean tosay--dash it, you know why hearts ache!"
She seemed to shimmy a bit. Her voice, when she spoke, was whispery: "Youmean--for love?"
"Absolutely. Right on the bull's-eye. For love."
"Oh, Mr. Wooster!"
"I take it you believe in love at first sight?"
"I do, indeed."
"Well, that's what happened to this aching heart. It fell in love atfirst sight, and ever since it's been eating itself out, as I believe theexpression is."
There was a silence. She had turned away and was watching a duck out onthe lake. It was tucking into weeds, a thing I've never been able tounderstand anyone wanting to do. Though I suppose, if you face itsquarely, they're no worse than spinach. She stood drinking it in for abit, and then it suddenly stood on its head and disappeared, and thisseemed to break the spell.
"Oh, Mr. Wooster!" she said again, and from the tone of her voice, Icould see that I had got her going.
"For you, I mean to say," I proceeded, starting to put in the fancytouches. I dare say you have noticed on these occasions that thedifficulty is to plant the main idea, to get the general outline of thething well fixed. The rest is mere detail work. I don't say I became glibat this juncture, but I certainly became a dashed glibber than I hadbeen.
"It's having the dickens of a time. Can't eat, can't sleep--all for loveof you. And what makes it all so particularly rotten is that it--thisaching heart--can't bring itself up to the scratch and tell you theposition of affairs, because your profile has gone and given it coldfeet. Just as it is about to speak, it catches sight of you sideways, andwords fail it. Silly, of course, but there it is."
I heard her give a gulp, and I saw that her eyes had become moistish.Drenched irises, if you care to put it that way.
"Lend you a handkerchief?"
"No, thank you. I'm quite all right."
It was more than I could say for myself. My efforts had left me weak. Idon't know if you suffer in the same way, but with me the act of talkinganything in the nature of real mashed potatoes always induces a sort ofprickly sensation and a hideous feeling of shame, together with a markedstarting of the pores.
I remember at my Aunt Agatha's place in Hertfordshire once being put onthe spot
and forced to enact the role of King Edward III saying goodbyeto that girl of his, Fair Rosamund, at some sort of pageant in aid of theDistressed Daughters of the Clergy. It involved some rather warmishmedieval dialogue, I recall, racy of the days when they called a spade aspade, and by the time the whistle blew, I'll bet no Daughter of theClergy was half as distressed as I was. Not a dry stitch.
My reaction now was very similar. It was a highly liquid Bertram who,hearing his _vis-a-vis_ give a couple of hiccups and start to speak bentan attentive ear.
"Please don't say any more, Mr. Wooster."
Well, I wasn't going to, of course.
"I understand."
I was glad to hear this.
"Yes, I understand. I won't be so silly as to pretend not to know whatyou mean. I suspected this at Cannes, when you used to stand and stare atme without speaking a word, but with whole volumes in your eyes."
If Angela's shark had bitten me in the leg, I couldn't have leaped moreconvulsively. So tensely had I been concentrating on Gussie's intereststhat it hadn't so much as crossed my mind that another and an unfortunateconstruction could be placed on those words of mine. The persp., alreadybedewing my brow, became a regular Niagara.
My whole fate hung upon a woman's word. I mean to say, I couldn't backout. If a girl thinks a man is proposing to her, and on thatunderstanding books him up, he can't explain to her that she has got holdof entirely the wrong end of the stick and that he hadn't the smallestintention of suggesting anything of the kind. He must simply let it ride.And the thought of being engaged to a girl who talked openly aboutfairies being born because stars blew their noses, or whatever it was,frankly appalled me.
She was carrying on with her remarks, and as I listened I clenched myfists till I shouldn't wonder if the knuckles didn't stand out whiteunder the strain. It seemed as if she would never get to the nub.
"Yes, all through those days at Cannes I could see what you were tryingto say. A girl always knows. And then you followed me down here, andthere was that same dumb, yearning look in your eyes when we met thisevening. And then you were so insistent that I should come out and walkwith you in the twilight. And now you stammer out those halting words.No, this does not come as a surprise. But I am sorry----"
The word was like one of Jeeves's pick-me-ups. Just as if a glassful ofmeat sauce, red pepper, and the yolk of an egg--though, as I say, I amconvinced that these are not the sole ingredients--had been shot into me,I expanded like some lovely flower blossoming in the sunshine. It was allright, after all. My guardian angel had not been asleep at the switch.
"--but I am afraid it is impossible."
She paused.
"Impossible," she repeated.
I had been so busy feeling saved from the scaffold that I didn't get onto it for a moment that an early reply was desired.
"Oh, right ho," I said hastily.
"I'm sorry."
"Quite all right."
"Sorrier than I can say."
"Don't give it another thought."
"We can still be friends."
"Oh, rather."
"Then shall we just say no more about it; keep what has happened as atender little secret between ourselves?"
"Absolutely."
"We will. Like something lovely and fragrant laid away in lavender."
"In lavender--right."
There was a longish pause. She was gazing at me in a divinely pityingsort of way, much as if I had been a snail she had happened accidentallyto bring her short French vamp down on, and I longed to tell her that itwas all right, and that Bertram, so far from being the victim of despair,had never felt fizzier in his life. But, of course, one can't do thatsort of thing. I simply said nothing, and stood there looking brave.
"I wish I could," she murmured.
"Could?" I said, for my attensh had been wandering.
"Feel towards you as you would like me to feel."
"Oh, ah."
"But I can't. I'm sorry."
"Absolutely O.K. Faults on both sides, no doubt."
"Because I am fond of you, Mr.--no, I think I must call you Bertie. MayI?"
"Oh, rather."
"Because we are real friends."
"Quite."
"I do like you, Bertie. And if things were different--I wonder----"
"Eh?"
"After all, we are real friends.... We have this common memory.... Youhave a right to know.... I don't want you to think----Life is such amuddle, isn't it?"
To many men, no doubt, these broken utterances would have appeared meredrooling and would have been dismissed as such. But the Woosters arequicker-witted than the ordinary and can read between the lines. Isuddenly divined what it was that she was trying to get off the chest.
"You mean there's someone else?"
She nodded.
"You're in love with some other bloke?"
She nodded.
"Engaged, what?"
This time she shook the pumpkin.
"No, not engaged."
Well, that was something, of course. Nevertheless, from the way shespoke, it certainly looked as if poor old Gussie might as well scratchhis name off the entry list, and I didn't at all like the prospect ofhaving to break the bad news to him. I had studied the man closely, andit was my conviction that this would about be his finish.
Gussie, you see, wasn't like some of my pals--the name of Bingo Little isone that springs to the lips--who, if turned down by a girl, would simplysay, "Well, bung-oh!" and toddle off quite happily to find another. Hewas so manifestly a bird who, having failed to score in the firstchukker, would turn the thing up and spend the rest of his life broodingover his newts and growing long grey whiskers, like one of those chapsyou read about in novels, who live in the great white house you can justsee over there through the trees and shut themselves off from the worldand have pained faces.
"I'm afraid he doesn't care for me in that way. At least, he has saidnothing. You understand that I am only telling you this because----"
"Oh, rather."
"It's odd that you should have asked me if I believed in love at firstsight." She half closed her eyes. "'Who ever loved that loved not atfirst sight?'" she said in a rummy voice that brought back to me--I don'tknow why--the picture of my Aunt Agatha, as Boadicea, reciting at thatpageant I was speaking of. "It's a silly little story. I was staying withsome friends in the country, and I had gone for a walk with my dog, andthe poor wee mite got a nasty thorn in his little foot and I didn't knowwhat to do. And then suddenly this man came along----"
Harking back once again to that pageant, in sketching out for you myemotions on that occasion, I showed you only the darker side of thepicture. There was, I should now mention, a splendid aftermath when,having climbed out of my suit of chain mail and sneaked off to the localpub, I entered the saloon bar and requested mine host to start pouring. Amoment later, a tankard of their special home-brewed was in my hand, andthe ecstasy of that first gollup is still green in my memory. Therecollection of the agony through which I had passed was just what wasneeded to make it perfect.
It was the same now. When I realized, listening to her words, that shemust be referring to Gussie--I mean to say, there couldn't have been awhole platoon of men taking thorns out of her dog that day; the animalwasn't a pin-cushion--and became aware that Gussie, who an instant beforehad, to all appearances, gone so far back in the betting as not to beworth a quotation, was the big winner after all, a positive thrillpermeated the frame and there escaped my lips a "Wow!" so crisp andhearty that the Bassett leaped a liberal inch and a half from terrafirma.
"I beg your pardon?" she said.
I waved a jaunty hand.
"Nothing," I said. "Nothing. Just remembered there's a letter I have towrite tonight without fail. If you don't mind, I think I'll be going in.Here," I said, "comes Gussie Fink-Nottle. He will look after you."
And, as I spoke, Gussie came sidling out from behind a tree.
I passed away and left them to it. As regards these
two, everything wasbeyond a question absolutely in order. All Gussie had to do was keep hishead down and not press. Already, I felt, as I legged it back to thehouse, the happy ending must have begun to function. I mean to say, whenyou leave a girl and a man, each of whom has admitted in set terms thatshe and he loves him and her, in close juxtaposition in the twilight,there doesn't seem much more to do but start pricing fish slices.
Something attempted, something done, seemed to me to have earnedtwo-penn'orth of wassail in the smoking-room.
I proceeded thither.