Right Ho, Jeeves

“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.