She starts. She moves. She seems to feel
The stir of life along her keel.
And what I’m driving at is that you couldn’t get a better description of what happened to Gussie as I spoke these heartening words. His brow cleared, his eyes brightened, he lost that fishy look, and he gazed at the slug, which was still on the long, long trail, with something approaching bonhomie. A marked improvement.
‘I see what you mean. You will sort of pave the way, as it were.’
‘That’s right. Spadework.’
‘It’s a terrific idea, Bertie. It will make all the difference.’
‘Quite. But don’t forget that after that it will be up to you. You will have to haul up your slacks and give her the old oil, or my efforts will have been in vain.’
Something of his former Gawd-help-us-ness seemed to return to him. He gasped a bit.
‘That’s true. What the dickens shall I say?’
I restrained my impatience with an effort. The man had been at school with me.
‘Dash it, there are hundreds of things you can say. Talk about the sunset.’
‘The sunset?’
‘Certainly. Half the married men you meet began by talking about the sunset.’
‘But what can I say about the sunset?’
‘Well, Jeeves got off a good one the other day. I met him airing the dog in the park one evening, and he said, “Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight, sir, and all the air a solemn stillness holds.” You might use that.’
‘What sort of landscape?’
‘Glimmering. G for “gastritis”, l for “lizard” –’
‘Oh, glimmering? Yes, that’s not bad. Glimmering landscape … solemn stillness … Yes, I call that pretty good.’
‘You could then say that you have often thought that the stars are God’s daisy chain.’
‘But I haven’t.’
‘I dare say not. But she has. Hand her that one, and I don’t see how she can help feeling that you’re a twin soul.’
‘God’s daisy chain?’
‘God’s daisy chain. And then you go on about how twilight always makes you sad. I know you’re going to say it doesn’t, but on this occasion it has jolly well got to.’
‘Why?’
‘That’s just what she will ask, and you will then have got her going. Because you will reply that it is because yours is such a lonely life. It wouldn’t be a bad idea to gave her a brief description of a typical home evening at your Lincolnshire residence, showing how you pace the meadows with a heavy tread.’
‘I generally sit indoors and listen to the wireless.’
‘No, you don’t. You pace the meadows with a heavy tread, wishing that you had someone to love you. And then you speak of the day when she came into your life.’
‘Like a fairy princess.’
‘Absolutely,’ I said with approval. I hadn’t expected such a hot one from such a quarter. ‘Like a fairy princess. Nice work, Gussie.’
‘And then?’
‘Well, after that it’s easy. You say you have something you want to say to her, and then you snap into it. I don’t see how it can fail. If I were you, I should do it in this rose garden. It is well established that there is no sounder move than to steer the adored object into rose gardens in the gloaming. And you had better have a couple of quick ones first.’
‘Quick ones?’
‘Snifters.’
‘Drinks, do you mean? But I don’t drink.’
‘What?’
‘I’ve never touched a drop in my life.’
This made me a bit dubious, I must confess. On these occasions it is generally conceded that a moderate skinful is of the essence.
However, if the facts were as he had stated, I supposed there was nothing to be done about it.
‘Well, you’ll have to make out as best you can on ginger pop.’
‘I always drink orange juice.’
‘Orange juice, then. Tell me, Gussie, to settle a bet, do you really like that muck?’
‘Very much.’
‘Then there is no more to be said. Now, let’s just have a run through, to see that you’ve got the layout straight. Start off with the glimmering landscape.’
‘Stars God’s daisy chain.’
‘Twilight makes you feel sad.’
‘Because mine is a lonely life.’
‘Describe life.’
‘Talk about the day I met her.’
‘Add fairy-princess gag. Say there’s something you want to say to her. Heave a couple of sighs. Grab her hand. And give her the works. Right.’
And confident that he had grasped the scenario and that everything might now be expected to proceed through the proper channels, I picked up the feet and hastened back to the house.
It was not until I had reached the drawing-room and was enabled to take a square look at the Bassett that I found the debonair gaiety with which I had embarked on this affair beginning to wane a trifle. Beholding her at close range like this, I suddenly became cognisant of what I was in for. The thought of strolling with this rummy specimen undeniably gave me a most unpleasant sinking feeling. I could not but remember how often, when in her company at Cannes, I had gazed dumbly at her, wishing that some kindly motorist in a racing car would ease the situation by coming along and ramming her amidships. As I have already made abundantly clear, this girl was not one of my most congenial buddies.
However, a Wooster’s word is his bond. Woosters may quail, but they do not edge out. Only the keenest ear could have detected the tremor in the voice as I asked her if she would care to come out for half an hour.
‘Lovely evening,’ I said.
‘Yes, lovely, isn’t it?’
‘Lovely. Reminds me of Cannes.’
‘How lovely the evenings were there!’
‘Lovely,’ I said.
‘Lovely,’ said the Bassett.
‘Lovely,’ I agreed.
That completed the weather and news bulletin for the French Riviera. Another minute, and we were out in the great open spaces, she cooing a bit about the scenery, and self replying, ‘Oh, rather, quite,’ and wondering how best to approach the matter in hand.
10
* * *
HOW DIFFERENT IT all would have been, I could not but reflect, if this girl had been the sort of girl one chirrups cheerily to over the telephone and takes for spins in the old two-seater. In that case, I would simply have said, ‘Listen,’ and she would have said, ‘What?’ and I would 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 said either, ‘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 would have been over and done with in under a minute.
But with the Bassett something less snappy and a good deal more glutinous was obviously indicated. What with all this daylight-saving stuff, we had hit the great open spaces at a moment when twilight had not yet begun to cheese it in favour of the shades of night. There was a fag-end of sunset still functioning. Stars were beginning to peep out, bats were fooling round, the garden was full of the aroma of those niffy white flowers which only start to put in their heavy work at the end of the day – in short, the glimmering landscape was fading on the sight and all the air held a solemn stillness, and it was plain that this was having the worst effect on her. Her eyes were enlarged, and her whole map a good deal too suggestive of the soul’s awakening for comfort.
Her aspect was that of a girl who was expecting something fairly fruity from Bertram.
In these circs, conversation inevitably flagged a bit. I am never at my best when the situation seems to call for a certain soupiness, and I’ve heard other members of the Drones say the same thing about themselves. I remember Pongo Twistleton telling me that he was out in a gondola with a girl by moonlight once, and the only time he spoke was to t
ell her that old story about the chap who was so good at swimming that they made him a traffic cop in Venice.
Fell rather flat, he assured me, and it wasn’t much later when the girl said she thought it was getting a little chilly and how about pushing back to the hotel.
So now, as I say, the talk rather hung fire. It had been all very well for me to promise Gussie that I would cut loose to this girl about aching hearts, but you want a cue for that sort of thing. And when, toddling along, we reached the edge of the lake and she finally spoke, conceive my chagrin 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 this at Cannes, where she had drawn my attention in this manner on various occasions to such diverse objects as a French actress, a Provençal filling station, the sunset over the Estorels, Michael Arlen, a man selling 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 of way 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 is born 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 to check up with her statement that the stars were God’s daisy chain. I mean, you can’t have it both ways.
However, I was in no mood to dissect and criticize. I saw that I had been wrong in supposing that the stars were not germane to the issue. Quite a decent cue they had provided, and I leaped on it promptly: ‘Talking of shedding tears –’
But she was now on the subject of rabbits, several of which were messing about 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 has gone 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 if I 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 loony thing I should have expected her to think as a child, I returned to the point.
‘Talking of shedding tears,’ I said firmly, ‘it may interest you to know that there is an aching heart in Brinkley Court.’
This held her. She cheesed the rabbit theme. Her face, which had been aglow with what I supposed was a pretty animation, clouded. She unshipped a 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 like elves of delight. And all through a foolish misunderstanding about a shark. What a tragedy misunderstandings are. That pretty romance broken and 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 clipping her one on the earhole, but I would have given a shilling to be able to do it. There seemed to me something deliberately fatheaded 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 rôle 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 mediaeval 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.’
I was glad to hear this.
‘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.’
The Jeeves Omnibus Vol. 2: Right Ho, Jeeves / Joy in the Morning / Carry On, Jeeves Page 9