Her eyes were 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 quarreled?”
“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 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.”
“So everything’s all right, is it?”
“Everything. I have never loved Augustus more than I do now.”
“Haven’t you?”
“Each moment I am with him, his wonderful nature seems to open before me like some lovely flower.”
“Does it?”
“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 only the night before last.”
“I wonder if you noticed any difference in him?”
I threw my mind back to the binge. As far as I could recollect, Gussie had been the same 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… 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, eh?”
“Exactly. You know Shelley[67], 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 Lord, 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.”
“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 stop talking nonsense.”
“Well, well!” I said. Naturally, I didn’t believe it for a moment. That wasn’t possible.
I saw what had happened, of course. She was trying to make her boyfriend stronger and braver, like all girls. I’ve noticed the same thing in young wives. Women never know when to stop on these occasions.
I remembered 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 man never noticed a sunset in his life and that, if he did by a chance, 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 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, of course you are,” I said heartily.
“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-do-you-call-it… ideal union. I’ve known Gussie since we were kids together, and when I met you, I said: ‘That’s the girl for him!’ 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. You can’t be married too soon to a chap like Gussie. Great chap. Splendid chap. Never met a chap I respected more. Gussie. One of the best.”
She reached out and grabbed my hand and pressed it. Unpleasant, of course, but what to do. “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… 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. I headed for the drawing room and got a cup of tea. She did not take tea, being on a diet. And I had reached the drawing room, and was about to open the door, when from the other side there came a voice. And what it was saying was: “So do not talk rot[68], Spode!”
There was no possibility of mistake as to whose voice it was. 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 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 have told him to go and stop talking nonsense. I entered the room, marvelling. Sir Watkyn Bassett, Roderick Spode and Gussie were present. Gussie sighted me as I entered, and waved what seemed to me a patronizing hand.
“Ah, Bertie. So here you are.”
“Yes.”
“Come in, come in and have a drink.”
“Thanks.”
“Did you bring that book I asked you to?”
“Awfully sorry. I forgot.”
“Well, of all the asses that ever lived, you certainly are the worst.”
And he called for another potted-meat sandwich. All sense of bien-être[69] was destroyed by Gussie”s peculiar manner—he looked as if he had 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.
“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. However, no need for that now. I was strong, and everything is all right. Still, stay a day or two, of course, as you’re here.”
“Thanks.”
“No