“Yes, I understand. I won’t be so silly as to pretend not to know what
you mean. I suspected this at Cannes, when you used to stand and stare
at me 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
more convulsively. So tensely had I been concentrating on Gussie’s
interests that it hadn’t so much as crossed my mind that another and an
unfortunate construction could be placed on those words of mine. The
persp., already bedewing my brow, became a regular Niagara.
My whole fate hung upon a woman’s word. I mean to say, I couldn’t
back out. If a girl thinks a man is proposing to her, and on that
understanding books him up, he can’t explain to her that she has got
hold of entirely the wrong end of the stick and that he hadn’t the
smallest intention of suggesting anything of the kind. He must simply
let it ride. And the thought of being engaged to a girl who talked
openly about fairies 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 my
fists till I shouldn’t wonder if the knuckles didn’t stand out white
under 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 trying
to say. A girl always knows. And then you followed me down here, and
there was that same dumb, yearning look in your eyes when we met this
evening. And then you were so insistent that I should come out and walk
with 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 of
meat sauce, red pepper, and the yolk of an egg--though, as I say, I am
convinced that these are not the sole ingredients--had been shot into
me, I expanded like some lovely flower blossoming in the sunshine. It
was all right, 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 on
to 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 a
tender 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
pitying sort of way, much as if I had been a snail she had happened
accidentally to bring her short French vamp down on, and I longed to
tell her that it was 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 that sort 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. May
I?”
“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.... You
have a right to know.... I don’t want you to think----Life is such a
muddle, isn’t it?”
To many men, no doubt, these broken utterances would have appeared
mere drooling and would have been dismissed as such. But the Woosters
are quicker-witted than the ordinary and can read between the lines. I
suddenly 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 she
spoke, it certainly looked as if poor old Gussie might as well scratch
his name off the entry list, and I didn’t at all like the prospect of
having to break the bad news to him. I had studied the man closely, and
it 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
is one that springs to the lips--who, if turned down by a girl, would
simply say, “Well, bung-oh!” and toddle off quite happily to find
another. He was so manifestly a bird who, having failed to score in the
first chukker, would turn the thing up and spend the rest of his life
brooding over his newts and growing long grey whiskers, like one of
those chaps you read about in novels, who live in the great white house
you can just see over there through the trees and shut themselves off
from the world and have pained faces.
“I’m afraid he doesn’t care for me in that way. At least, he has said
nothing. 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 first
sight.” She half closed her eyes. “‘Who ever loved that loved not at
first sight?’” she said in a rummy voice that brought back to me--I
don’t know why--the picture of my Aunt Agatha, as Boadicea, reciting
at that pageant I was speaking of. “It’s a silly little story. I was
staying with some friends in the country, and I had gone for a walk
with my dog, and the poor wee mite got a nasty thorn in his little foot
and I didn’t know what to do. And then suddenly this man came along----”
Harking back once again to that pageant, in sketching out for you my
emotions on that occasion, I showed you only the darker side of the
picture. There was, I should now mention, a splendid aftermath when,
having climbed out of my suit of chain mail and sneaked off to the
local pub, I entered the saloon bar and requested mine host to start
pouring. A moment later, a tankard of their special home-brewed was
in my hand, and the ecstasy of that first gollup is still green in my
memory. The recollection of the agony through which I had passed was
just what was needed to make it perfect.
It was the same now. When I realized, listening to her words, that she
must be referring to Gussie--I mean to say, there couldn’t have been a
whole platoon of men taking thorns out of her dog that day; the animal
wasn’t a pin-cushion--and became aware that Gussie, who an instant
before had, to all appearances, gone so far back in the betting as
not to be worth a quotation, was the big winner after all, a positive
thrill permeated the frame and there escaped my lips a “Wow!” so crisp
and hearty that the Bassett leaped a liberal inch and a half from terra
firma.
“I beg your pardon?” she said.