It was a nasty shock. I won’t say she was the last person I wanted to see, Spode of course heading the list of starters with L. P. Runkle in close attendance, but I would willingly have dispensed with her company. However, I rose courteously, and I don’t think there was anything in my manner to suggest that I would have liked to hit her with a brick, for I am pretty inscrutable at all times. Nevertheless, behind my calm front there lurked the uneasiness which always grips me when we meet.
Holding the mistaken view that I am hopelessly in love with her and more or less pining away into a decline, this Bassett never fails to look at me, when our paths cross, with a sort of tender pity, and she was letting me have it now. So melting indeed was her gaze that it was only by reminding myself that she was safely engaged to Spode that I was able to preserve my equanimity and sang froid. When she had been betrothed to Gussie Fink-Nottle, the peril of her making a switch had always been present, Gussie being the sort of spectacled newt-collecting freak a girl might at any moment get second thoughts about, but there was something so reassuring in her being engaged to Spode. Because, whatever you might think of him, you couldn’t get away from it that he was the seventh Earl of Sidcup, and no girl who has managed to hook a seventh Earl with a castle in Shropshire and an income of twenty thousand pounds per annum is lightly going to change her mind about him.
Having given me the look, she spoke, and her voice was like treacle pouring out of a jug.
‘Oh, Bertie, how nice to see you again. How are you?’
‘I’m fine. How are you?’
‘I’m fine.’
‘That’s fine. How’s your father?’
‘He’s fine.’
I was sorry to hear this. My relations with Sir Watkyn Bassett were such that a more welcome piece of news would have been that he had contracted bubonic plague and wasn’t expected to recover.
‘I heard you were here,’ I said.
‘Yes, I’m here.’
‘So I heard. You’re looking well.’
‘Oh, I’m very, very well, and oh so happy.’
‘That’s good.’
‘I wake up each morning to the new day, and I know it’s going to be the best day that ever was. Today I danced on the lawn before breakfast, and then I went round the garden saying good morning to the flowers. There was a sweet black cat asleep on one of the flower beds. I picked it up and danced with it.’
I didn’t tell her so, but she couldn’t have made a worse social gaffe. If there is one thing Augustus, the cat to whom she referred, hates, it’s having his sleep disturbed. He must have cursed freely, though probably in a drowsy undertone. I suppose she thought he was purring.
She had paused, seeming to expect some comment on her fatheaded behaviour, so I said:
‘Euphoria.’
‘I what?’
‘That’s what it’s called, Jeeves tells me, feeling like that.’
‘Oh, I see. I just call it being happy, happy, happy.’
Having said which, she gave a start, quivered and put a hand up to her face as if she were having a screen test and had been told to register remorse.
‘Oh, Bertie! ‘
‘Hullo?’
‘I’m so sorry.’
‘Eh?’
‘It was so tactless of me to go on about my happiness. I should have remembered how different it was for you. I saw your face twist with pain as I came in and I can’t tell you how sorry I am to think that it is I who have caused it. Life is not easy, is it?’
‘Not very.’
‘Difficult.’
‘In spots.’
‘The only thing is to be brave.’
‘That’s about it.’
‘You must not lose courage. Who knows? Consolation may be waiting for you somewhere. Some day you will meet someone who will make you forget you ever loved me. No, not quite that. I think I shall always be a fragrant memory, always something deep in your heart that will be with you like a gentle, tender ghost as you watch the sunset on summer evenings while the little birds sing their off-to-bed songs in the shrubbery.’