“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 clipping
her one on the ear-hole, but I would have given a shilling to be able
to do it. There seemed to me something deliberately fat-headed in the
way she 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’s row with Angela. It’s aching for a different reason altogether.
I mean to say--dash it, you know why hearts ache!”
She seemed to shimmy a bit. Her voice, when she spoke, was whispery:
“You mean--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 at
first sight, and ever since it’s been eating itself out, as I believe
the expression is.”
There was a silence. She had turned away and was watching a duck out
on the lake. It was tucking into weeds, a thing I’ve never been able
to understand anyone wanting to do. Though I suppose, if you face it
squarely, they’re no worse than spinach. She stood drinking it in for a
bit, and then it suddenly stood on its head and disappeared, and this
seemed to break the spell.
“Oh, Mr. Wooster!” she said again, and from the tone of her voice, I
could see that I had got her going.
“For you, I mean to say,” I proceeded, starting to put in the fancy
touches. I dare say you have noticed on these occasions that the
difficulty is to plant the main idea, to get the general outline of the
thing well fixed. The rest is mere detail work. I don’t say I became
glib at this juncture, but I certainly became a dashed glibber than I
had been.
“It’s having the dickens of a time. Can’t eat, can’t sleep--all for
love of you. And what makes it all so particularly rotten is that
it--this aching heart--can’t bring itself up to the scratch and tell
you the position of affairs, because your profile has gone and given
it cold feet. Just as it is about to speak, it catches sight of you
sideways, and words 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.
I don’t know if you suffer in the same way, but with me the act of
talking anything in the nature of real mashed potatoes always induces a
sort of prickly sensation and a hideous feeling of shame, together with
a marked starting of the pores.
I remember at my Aunt Agatha’s place in Hertfordshire once being put on
the spot and forced to enact the role of King Edward III saying goodbye
to that girl of his, Fair Rosamund, at some sort of pageant in aid of
the Distressed Daughters of the Clergy. It involved some rather warmish
medieval dialogue, I recall, racy of the days when they called a spade
a spade, and by the time the whistle blew, I’ll bet no Daughter of the
Clergy 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-à-vis_ give a couple of hiccups and start to speak
bent an attentive ear.
“Please don’t say any more, Mr. Wooster.”
Well, I wasn’t going to, of course.
“I understand.”