To Pop Bassett, on the other hand, this bit of front page news had plainly come as rare and refreshing fruit. My face being buried as stated, I couldn’t see if he went into a buck-and-wing dance, but I should think it highly probable that he did a step or two, for when he spoke you could tell from the timbre of his voice that he was feeling about as pepped up as a man can feel without bursting.
One could understand his fizziness, of course. Of all the prospective sons-in-law in existence, Gussie, with the possible exception of Bertram Wooster, was the one he would have chosen last. He had viewed him with concern from the start, and if he had been living back in the days when fathers called the shots in the matter of their daughters’ marriages, would have forbidden the banns without a second thought.
Gussie once told me that when he, Gussie, was introduced to him, Bassett, as the fellow who was to marry his, Bassett’s, offspring, he, Bassett, had stared at him with his jaw dropping and then in a sort of strangled voice had said ”WhatT Incredulously, if you see what I mean, as if he were hoping that they were just playing a jolly practical joke on him and that in due course the real chap would jump out from behind a chair and say ‘April fool!’ And when he, Bassett, at last got on to it that there was no deception and that Gussie was really what he had drawn, he went off into a corner and sat there motionless, refusing to speak when spoken to.
Little wonder, then, that Stiffy’s announcement had bucked him up like a dose of Doctor Somebody’s Tonic Swamp Juice, which acts directly on the red corpuscles and imparts a gentle glow.
‘Eloped?’ he gurgled.
‘That’s right.’
‘With the cook?’
‘With none other. That’s why I said there wasn’t going to be any dinner. We shall have to make do with hard-boiled eggs, if there are any left over from the treat.’
The mention of hard-boiled eggs made Pop Bassett wince for a moment, and one could see that his thoughts had flitted back to the tea tent, but he was far too happy to allow sad memories to trouble him for long. With a wave of the hand he dismissed dinner as something that didn’t matter one way or the other. The Bassetts, the wave suggested, could rough it if they had to.
‘Are you sure of your facts, my dear?’
‘I met them as they were starting off. Gussie said he hoped I wouldn’t mind him borrowing my car.’
‘You reassured him, I trust?’
‘Oh, yes. I said “That’s all right, Gussie. Help yourself.” ‘
‘Good girl. Good girl. An excellent response. Then they have really gone?’
‘With the wind.’
‘And they plan to get married?’
‘As soon as Gussie can get a special licence. You have to apply to the Archbishop of Canterbury, and I’m told he stings you for quite a bit.’
‘Money well spent.’
‘That’s how Gussie feels. He told me he was dropping the cook at Bertie’s aunt’s place and then going on to London to confer with the Archbish. He’s full of zeal.’
This extraordinary statement that Gussie was landing Emerald Stoker on Aunt Dahlia brought my head up with a jerk. I found myself speculating on how the old flesh-and-blood was going to take the intrusion, and it gave me rather an awed feeling to think how deep Gussie’s love for his Em must be, to make him face such fearful risks. The aged relative has a strong personality and finds no difficulty, when displeased, in reducing the object of her displeasure to a spot of grease in a matter of minutfs. I am told that sportsmen whom in her hunting days she had occasion to rebuke for riding over hounds were never the same again and for months would go about in a sort of stupor, starting at sudden noises.
My head being now up, I was able to see Pop Bassett, and I found that he was regarding me with an eye so benevolent that I could hardly believe that this was the same ex-magistrate with whom I had so recently been hobnobbing, if you can call it hobnobbing when a couple of fellows sit in a couple of chairs for twenty minutes without saying a word to each other. It was plain that joy had made him the friend of all the world, even to the extent of allowing him to look at Bertram without a shudder. He was more like something out of Dickens than anything human.