Love. Bertie

  I then went down to the hall to join Madeline Bassett. She was standing by the barometer, which, if it had had an ounce of sense in its head, would have been pointing to ‘Stormy’ instead of ‘Set Fair’: and as I hove alongside she turned and gazed at me with a tender goggle which sent a thrill of dread creeping down the Wooster spine. The thought that there stood one who was on distant terms with Gussie and might ere long return the ring and presents afflicted me with a nameless horror.

  I resolved that if a few quiet words from a man of the world could heal the breach, they should be spoken. ‘Oh, Bertie,’ she said, in a low voice like beer trickling out of a jug, ‘you ought not to be here!’ My recent interview with old Bassett and Roderick Spode had rather set me thinking along those lines myself. But I hadn’t time to explain that this was no idle social visit, and that if Gussie hadn’t been sending out SOSs I wouldn’t have dreamed of coming within a hundred miles of the frightful place. She went on, looking at me as if I were a rabbit which she was expecting shortly to turn into a gnome.

  ‘Why did you come? Oh, I know what you are going to say. You felt that, cost what it might, you had to see me again, just once. You could not resist the urge to take away with you one last memory, which you could cherish down the lonely years. Oh, Bertie, you remind me of Rudel.’ The name was new to me. ‘Rudel?’

  ‘The Seigneur Geoffrey Rudel, Prince of Blay-en-Saintonge.’ I shook my head. ‘Never met him, I’m afraid. Pal of yours?’

  ‘He lived in the Middle Ages. He was a great poet. And he fell in love with the wife of the Lord of Tripoli.’ I stirred uneasily. I hoped she was going to keep it clean. ‘For years he loved her, and at last he could resist no longer. He took ship to Tripoli, and his servants carried him ashore.’

  ‘Not feeling so good?’ I said, groping. ‘Rough crossing?’

  ‘He was dying. Of love.’

  ‘Oh, ah.’

  ‘They bore him into the Lady Melisande’s presence on a litter, and he had just strength enough to reach out and touch her hand. Then he died.’ She paused, and heaved a sigh that seemed to come straight up from the cami-knickers. A silence ensued. ‘Terrific,’ I said, feeling I had to say something, though personally I didn’t think the story a patch on the one about the travelling salesman and the farmer’s daughter. Different, of course, if one had known the chap. She sighed again. ‘You see now why I said you reminded me of Rudel. Like him, you came to take one last glimpse of the woman you loved. It was dear of you, Bertie, and I shall never forget it. It will always remain with me as a fragrant memory, like a flower pressed between the leaves of an old album. But was it wise? should you not have been strong? Would it not have been better to have ended it all cleanly, that day when we said goodbye at Brinkley Court, and not to have reopened the wound? We had met, and you have loved me, and I had had to tell you that my heart was another’s. That should have been our farewell.’

  ‘Absolutely,’ I said. I mean to say, all that was perfectly sound, as far as it went. If her heart really was another’s, fine. Nobody more pleased than Bertram. The whole nub of the thing was — was it? ‘But I had a communication from Gussie, more or less indicating that you and he were…’

  She looked at me like someone who has just solved the crossword puzzle, with a shrewd ‘Emu’ in the top right-hand corner.

  ‘So that was why you came! You thought that there might still be hope? Oh, Bertie, I’m sorry…sorry…so sorry.’ Her eyes were misty with the unshed, and about the size of soup plates. ‘No, Bertie, really there is no hope, none. You must not build dream castles. It can only cause you pain. I love Augustus. He is my man.’

  ‘And you haven’t parted brass rags?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘Then what did he mean by saying ‘Serious rift Madeline and self’?’

  ‘Oh, that?’ She laughed another tinkling, silvery one. ‘That was nothing. It was all too perfectly silly and ridiculous. Just the teeniest, weeniest little misunderstanding. I thought I had found him flirting with my cousin Stephanie, and I was silly and jealous. But he explained everything this morning. He was only taking a fly out of her eye.’

  I suppose I might legitimately have been a bit shirty on learning that I had been hauled all the way down here for nothing, but I wasn’t. I was amazingly braced. As I have indicated, that telegram of Gussie’s had shaken me to my foundations, causing me to fear the worst. And now the All Clear had been blown, and I had received absolute inside information straight from the horse’s mouth that all was hotsy-totsy between this blister and himself. ‘So everything’s all right, is it?’

  ‘Everything. I have never loved Augustus more than I do now.’

  ‘Haven’t you, by Jove?’

  ‘Each moment I am with him, his wonderful nature seems to open before me like some lovely flower.’

  ‘Does it, egad?’

  ‘Every day I find myself discovering some new facet of his extraordinary character. For instance…you have seen him quite lately, have you not?’

  ‘Oh, rather. I gave him a dinner at the Drones only the night before last.’

  ‘I wonder if you noticed any difference in him?’ I threw my mind back to the binge in question. As far as I could recollect, Gussie had been the same fish-faced freak I had always known. ‘Difference? No, I don’t think so. Of course, at that dinner I hadn’t the chance to observe him very closely — subject his character to the final analysis, if you know what I mean. He sat next to me, and we talked of this and that, but you know how it is when you’re a host — you have all sorts of things to divert your attention…keeping an eye on the waiters, trying to make the conversation general, heading Catsmeat Potter-Pirbright off from giving his imitation of Beatrice Lillie…a hundred little duties. But he seemed to me much the same. What sort of difference?’

  ‘An improvement, if such a thing were possible. Have you not sometimes felt in the past, Bertie, that, if Augustus had a fault, it was a tendency to be a little timid?’ I saw what she meant. ‘Oh, ah, yes, of course, definitely.’ I remembered something Jeeves had once called Gussie. ‘A sensitive plant, what?’

  ‘Exactly. You know your Shelley, Bertie.’

  ‘Oh, am I?’

  ‘That is what I have always thought him — a sensitive plant, hardly fit for the rough and tumble of life. But recently — in this last week, in fact — he has shown, together with that wonderful dreamy sweetness of his, a force of character which I had not suspected that he possessed. He seems completely to have lost his diffidence.’

  ‘By Jove, yes,’ I said, remembering. ‘That’s right. Do you know, he actually made a speech at that dinner of mine, and a most admirable one. And, what is more — ’

  I paused. I had been on the point of saying that, what was more, he had made it from start to finish on orange juice, and not — as had been the case at the Market Snodsbury prize giving — with about three quarts of mixed alcoholic stimulants lapping about inside him: and I saw that the statement might be injudicious. That Market Snodsbury exhibition on the part of the adored object was, no doubt, something which she was trying to forget. ‘Why, only this morning,’ she said, ‘he spoke to Roderick Spode quite sharply.’

  ‘He did?’

  ‘Yes. They were arguing about something, and Augustus told him to go and boil his head.’

  ‘Well, well!’ I said. Naturally, I didn’t believe it for a moment. Well, I mean to say! Roderick Spode, I mean — a chap who even in repose would have made an all-in wrestler pause and pick his words. The thing wasn’t possible.

  I saw what had happened, of course. She was trying to give the boyfriend a build-up and, like all girls, was overdoing it. I’ve noticed the same thing in young wives, when they’re trying to kid you that Herbert or George or whatever the name may be has hidden depths which the vapid and irreflective observer might overlook. Women never know when to stop on these occasions.

  I remember Mrs Bingo Little once telling me, shortly after their marriage, that Bingo said poetic things to her about sunsets — his best friends being perfectly well aware, of course, that the old egg never noticed a sunset in his life and that, if he did by a fluke ever happen to do so, the only thing he would say about it would be that it reminded him of a slice of roast beef, cooked just right. However, you can’t call a girl a liar; so, as I say, I said: ‘Well, well!’

  ‘It was the one thing that was needed to make him perfect. Sometimes, Bertie, I ask myself if I am worthy of so rare a soul.’

  ‘Oh, I wouldn’t ask yourself rot like that,’ I said heartily. ‘Of course you are.’

  ‘It’s sweet of you to say so.’

  ‘Not a bit. You two fit like pork and beans. Anyone could see that it was a what-d’you-call-it…ideal union. I’ve known Gussie since we were kids together, and I wish I had a bob for every time I’ve thought to myself that the girl for him was somebody just like you.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Absolutely. And when I met you, I said: ‘That’s the bird! There she spouts!’ When is the wedding to be?’

  ‘On the twenty-third.’

  ‘I’d make it earlier.’

  ‘You think so?’

  ‘Definitely. Get it over and done with, and then you’ll have it off your mind. You can’t be married too soon to a chap like Gussie. Great chap. Splendid chap. Never met a chap I respected more. They don’t often make them like Gussie. One of the fruitiest.’

  She reached out and grabbed my hand and pressed it. Unpleasant, of course, but one had to take the rough with the smooth. ‘Ah, Bertie! Always the soul of generosity!’

  ‘No, no, rather not. Just saying what I think.’

  ‘It makes me so happy to feel that…all this…has not interfered with your affection for Augustus.’

  ‘I should say not.’

  ‘So many men in your position might have become embittered.’

  ‘Silly asses.’

  ‘But you are too fine for that. You can still say these wonderful things about him.’

  ‘Oh, rather.’

  ‘Dear Bertie!’ And on this cheery note we parted, she to go messing about on some domestic errand, I to head for the drawing room and get a spot of tea. She, it appeared, did not take tea, being on a diet. And I had reached the drawing room, and was about to shove open the door, which was ajar, when from the other side there came a voice. And what it was saying was: ‘So kindly do not talk rot, Spode!’ There was no possibility of mistake as to whose voice it was. From his earliest years, there has always been something distinctive and individual about Gussie’s timbre, reminding the hearer partly of an escape of gas from a gas pipe and partly of a sheep calling to its young in the lambing season.

  Nor was there any possibility of mistake about what he had said. The words were precisely as I have stated, and to say that I was surprised would be to put it too weakly. I saw now that it was perfectly possible that there might be something, after all, in that wild story of Madeline Bassett’s. I mean to say, an Augustus Fink-Nottle who told Roderick Spode not to talk rot was an Augustus Fink-Nottle who might quite well have told him to go and boil his head. I entered the room, marvelling. Except for some sort of dim female abaft the teapot, who looked as if she might be a cousin by marriage or something of that order, only Sir Watkyn Bassett, Roderick Spode and Gussie were present. Gussie was straddling the hearth rug with his legs apart, warming himself at the blaze which should, one would have said, have been reserved for the trouser seat of the master of the house, and I saw immediately what Madeline Bassett had meant when she said that he had lost his diffidence. Even across the room one could see that, when it came to self-confidence, Mussolini could have taken his correspondence course. He sighted me as I entered, and waved what seemed to me a dashed patronizing hand. Quite the ruddy Squire graciously receiving the deputation of tenantry. ‘Ah, Bertie. So here you are.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Come in, come in and have a crumpet.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Did you bring that book I asked you to?’

  ‘Awfully sorry. I forgot.’

  ‘Well, of all the muddle-headed asses that ever stepped, you certainly are the worst. Others abide our question, thou art free.’ And dismissing me with a weary gesture, he called for another potted-meat sandwich. I have never been able to look back on my first meal at Totleigh Towers as among my happiest memories. The cup of tea on arrival at a country house is a thing which, as a rule, I particularly enjoy. I like the crackling logs, the shaded lights, the scent of buttered toast, the general atmosphere of leisured cosines. There is something that seems to speak to the deeps in me in the beaming smile of my hostess and the furtive whisper of my host, as he plucks at my elbow and says ‘Let’s get out of here and go and have a whisky and soda in the gun room.’ It is on such occasions as this, it has often been said, that you catch Bertram Wooster at his best.

  But now all sense of bien-etre was destroyed by Gussie s peculiar manner — that odd suggestion he conveyed of having bought the place. It was a relief when the gang had finally drifted away, leaving us alone. There were mysteries here which I wanted to probe.

  I thought it best, however, to begin by taking a second opinion on the position of affairs between himself and Madeline. She had told me that everything was now hunky-dory once more, but it was one of those points on which you cannot have too much assurance. ‘I saw Madeline just now,’ I said. ‘She tells me that you are sweethearts still. Correct?’

  ‘Quite correct. There was a little temporary coolness about my taking a fly out of Stephanie Byng’s eye, and I got a bit panicked and wired you to come down. I thought you might possibly plead. However, no need for that now. I took a strong line, and everything is all right. Still, stay a day or two, of course, as you’re here.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘No doubt you will be glad to see your aunt. She arrives tonight, I understand.’ I could make nothing of this. My Aunt Agatha, I knew, was in a nursing home with jaundice. I had taken her flowers only a couple of days before. And naturally it couldn’t be Aunt Dahlia, for she had mentioned nothing to me about any plans for infesting Totleigh Towers. ‘Some mistake,’ I said. ‘No mistake at all. Madeline showed me the telegram that came from her this morning, asking if she could be put up for a day or two. It was dispatched from London, I noticed, so I suppose she has left Brinkley.’ I stared. ‘You aren’t talking about my Aunt Dahlia?’

  ‘Of course I’m talking about your Aunt Dahlia.’

  ‘You mean Aunt Dahlia is coming here tonight?’

  ‘Exactly’ This was nasty news, and I found myself chewing the lower lip a bit in undisguised concern. This sudden decision to follow me to Totleigh Towers could mean only one thing, that Aunt Dahlia, thinking things over, had become mistrustful of my will to win, and had felt it best to come and stand over me and see that I did not shirk the appointed task. And as I was fully resolved to shirk it, I could envisage some dirty weather ahead. Her attitude towards a recalcitrant nephew would, I feared, closely resemble that which in the old tally-ho days she had been wont to adopt towards a hound which refused to go to cover.

  ‘Tell me,’ continued Gussie, ‘what sort of voice is she in these days? I ask, because if she is going to make those hunting noises of hers at me during her visit, I shall be compelled to tick her off pretty sharply. I had enough of that sort of thing when I was staying at Brinkley’

  I would have liked to go on musing on the unpleasant situation which had arisen, but it seemed to me that I had been given the cue to begin my probe. ‘What’s happened to you, Gussie?’ I asked. ‘Eh?’

  ‘Since when have you been like this?’

  ‘I don’t understand you.’

  ‘Well, to take an instance, saying you’re going to tick Aunt Dahlia off. At Brinkley, you cowered before her like a wet sock. And, to take another instance, telling Spode not to talk rot. By the way, what was he talking rot about?’

  ‘I forget. He talks so much rot.’

  ‘I wouldn’t have the nerve to tell Spode not to talk rot,’ I said frankly. My candour met with an immediate response. ‘Well, to tell you the truth, Bertie,’ said Gussie, coming clean, ‘neither would I, a week ago.’

  ‘What happened a week ago?’

  ‘I had a spiritual rebirth. Thanks to Jeeves. There’s a chap, Bertie!’

  ‘Ah!’

  ‘We are as little children, frightened of the dark, and Jeeves is the wise nurse who takes us by the hand and — ’

  ‘Switches the light on?’

  ‘Precisely. Would you care to hear about it?’ I assured him that I was all agog. I settled myself in my chair and, putting match to gasper, awaited the inside story. Gussie stood silent for a moment. I could see that he was marshalling his facts. He took off his spectacles and polished them. ‘A week ago, Bertie,’ he began, ‘my affairs had reached a crisis. I was faced by an ordeal, the mere prospect of which blackened the horizon. I discovered that I would have to make a speech at the wedding breakfast.’

  ‘Well, naturally.’

  ‘I know, but for some reason I had not foreseen it, and the news came as a stunning blow. And shall I tell you why I was so overcome by stark horror at the idea of making a speech at the wedding breakfast? It was because Roderick Spode and Sir Watkyn Bassett would be in the audience. Do you know Sir Watkyn intimately?’

  ‘Not very. He once fined me five quid at his police court.’

  ‘Well, you can take it from me that he is a hard nut, and he strongly objects to having me as a son-in-law. For one thing, he would have liked Madeline to marry Spode — who, I may mention, has loved her since she was so high.’

  ‘Oh, yes?’ I said, courteously concealing my astonishment that anyone except a certified boob like himself could deliberately love this girl.

  ‘Yes. But apart from the fact that she wanted to marry me, he didn’t want to marry her. He looks upon himself as a Man of Destiny, you see, and feels that marriage would interfere with his mission. He takes a line through Napoleon.’