The Code of the Woosters / Фамильная честь Вустеров

Deeply regret quite impossible carry out assignment you know what. Atmosphere one of keenest suspicion and any sort of action instantly fatal[61 - any sort of action instantly fatal – любая попытка заранее обречена на провал]. You ought to have seen old Bassett’s eye just now on learning of blood relationship of myself and Uncle Tom. Sorry and all that, but nothing doing.

    Love. Bertie

I then went down to the hall to join Madeline Bassett. She was standing by the barometer, which would have been pointing to “Stormy” instead of “Set Fair”. She turned and gazed at me with a tender goggle which sent a thrill of dread creeping down the spine.

“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 here. 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 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[62 - Rudel – Жофре Рюдель (один из первых провансальских трубадуров XII в.)].”

The name was new to me. “Rudel?”

“The Seigneur Geoffrey Rudel, Prince of Blay-en-Saintonge[63 - Blay-en-Saintonge – Бле-ан-Сентонж].”

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[64 - Tripoli – Триполи].”

I stirred uneasily.

“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. “Rough crossing?[65 - Rough crossing? – На море штормило?]”

“He was dying. Of love.”

“Oh, ah.”

“They bore him into the Lady Melisande’s[66 - Melisande – Мелисанда] 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. A silence ensued.

“Terrific,” I said, feeling I had to say something. 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 clear, as far as it went. If her heart really was another’s, fine. Nobody more pleased than Bertram. “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.

“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 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 - Shelley – Перси Биши Шелли, английский поэт], 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.