“This is very interesting.”
“Yes. He’s not a bad chap, you know. Rather an ass, perhaps, but kind enough. Well, that’s the point. You might just bear it in mind, eh?”
“How funny you are!”
She chucked back her head and laughed. She had a terrifying sort of laugh. Rather like a train going into a tunnel. It didn’t sound musical to me, and to the kid Oswald not a little as well. He gazed at us with dislike.
“Listen,” he said. “You are scaring all the fish away.”
Honoria changed the subject.
“I wish Oswald wouldn’t sit on the bridge like that,” she said. “I’m sure it isn’t safe. He might easily fall in.”
“I’ll go and tell him,” I said.
I suppose the distance between the kid and me at this juncture was about five yards, but I got the impression that it was nearer a hundred. The more I walked the farther away the kid seemed to get, till suddenly I found myself standing just behind him without quite knowing how I’d got there.
“Hallo!” I said, with a grin.
The kid didn’t bother to turn round and look at me. He merely wiggled his left ear in a rather peevish manner. I don’t know when I’ve met anybody in whose life I appeared to mean so little.
“Hallo!” I said. “Fishing?”
I laid my hand on his shoulder.
“Here, look out!” said the kid.
It was one of those things that want doing quickly or not at all. I shut my eyes and pushed. There was a scrambling sound, a yelp, and a splash.
I opened my eyes. The kid was just coming to the surface.
“Help!” I shouted, looking at the bush from which young Bingo was scheduled to emerge.
Nothing happened. Young Bingo didn’t emerge.
“Help! Help!” I shouted again.
Meanwhile, the kid Oswald was drowning, and I thought that some sort of steps ought to be taken about it. Of course, I didn’t like him, but it was not enough to let him die. I put off my coat and jumped into the water.
The water seems wetter when you go into it with your clothes on than when you’re just bathing. I was only under about three seconds, but I felt clammy and bloated.
At this point the scenario changed. I had assumed that I should get hold of the kid and steer him courageously to shore. But he hadn’t waited to be steered. I saw him about ten yards away. He started to swim himself. By the time I had landed, the kid was half-way to the house. Look at it from whatever angle you like, my plan was ruined.
I was interrupted in my meditations by a noise like the train going under a bridge. It was Honoria Glossop laughing. She was standing at my elbow, looking at me.
“Oh, Bertie, you are funny!” she said. And even in that moment there seemed to me something sinister in the words. She had never called me anything except “Mr Wooster” before. “How wet you are!”
“Yes, I am wet.”
“You had better hurry into the house and change your clothes.”
“Yes.”
I wrung a gallon or two of water out of my clothes.
“You are so funny!” she said again. “First proposing in that extraordinary roundabout way, and then pushing poor little Oswald into the lake so as to impress me by saving him.”
I managed to correct this fearful impression.
“No, no!”
“He said you pushed him in, and I saw you do it. Oh, I’m not angry, Bertie. I think it was too funny of you. But I’m quite sure it’s time that I took you in hand. You certainly want someone to look after you. You’ve been seeing too many moving-pictures. I suppose the next thing you would have done would have been to set the house on fire so as to rescue me. I think I shall be able to make something of you, Bertie. It is true your life has been wasted up to the present, but you are still young, and there is a lot of good in you.”
“No, really there isn’t.”
“Oh, yes, there is. And I shall help you. Now you run straight up to the house and change your wet clothes, or you will catch cold[96].”
And, if you know what I mean, there was a sort of motherly note in her voice.
As I was coming downstairs after changing, I saw young Bingo.
“Bertie!” he said. “Just the man I wanted to see. Bertie, a wonderful thing has happened.”
“You blighter!” I cried. “What became of you? Do you know—”
“Oh, you mean about being in those bushes? I hadn’t time to tell you about that. It’s all off[97].”
“All off?”
“Bertie, I was actually going to hide in those bushes when the most extraordinary thing happened. Walking across the lawn I saw the most radiant, the most beautiful girl in the world. There is none like her, none. Bertie, do you believe in love at first sight? You do believe in love at first sight, don’t you, Bertie, old man? Directly I saw her she seemed to draw me like a magnet. I seemed to forget everything. We two were alone in a world of music and sunshine. I joined her. I got into conversation. She is a Miss Braythwayt, Bertie—Daphne Braythwayt[98]. Directly our eyes met, I realized that what I had imagined to be love for Honoria Glossop had been a mere passing whim. Bertie, you do believe in love at first sight, don’t you? She is so wonderful, so sympathetic. Like a tender goddess—” At this point I left the blighter.
Two days later I got a letter from Jeeves.
“—The weather,” it ended, “is fine. I have had one exceedingly enjoyable bathe.”
I gave a rather hollow laugh, and went downstairs to join Honoria. I had an appointment with her in the drawing-room. She was going to read Ruskin[99] to me.
The blow fell precisely at one-forty-five (summer time). Spenser, Aunt Agatha’s butler, was offering me the fried potatoes at the moment.
I had been engaged to Honoria Glossop nearly two weeks, and during all that time not a day had passed without her “moulding” me. I had read solid literature[102] till my eyes bubbled; we had legged it together through miles of picture-galleries; and I had visited classical concerts to an extent you would hardly believe. Therefore, I was not prepared to receive shocks, especially shocks like this. Honoria had brought me to lunch at Aunt Agatha’s, and I had just been saying to myself, “Death, where is thy sting?[103]” when she hove the bomb.
“Bertie,” she said, suddenly, as if she had just remembered it, “what is the name of that man of yours—your valet?”
“Eh? Oh, Jeeves.”
“I think he’s a bad influence for you,” said Honoria. “When we are married, you must get rid of[104] Jeeves.”
“Get rid of Jeeves!” I gasped.
“Yes. I don’t like him.”
“I don’t like him,” said Aunt Agatha.
“But I can’t. I mean—why, I couldn’t carry on for a day[105] without Jeeves.”
“You will have to,” said Honoria. “I don’t like him at all.”
“I don’t like him at all,” said Aunt Agatha. “I never did.”
Ghastly, what? I’d always had an idea that marriage was a terrible thing, but I’d never dreamed that it demanded such frightful sacrifices from a fellow.
When Honoria got up and started collecting me and the rest of her things, Aunt Agatha stopped her.
“You run along, dear,” she said. “I want to say a few words to Bertie.”
So Honoria went away, and Aunt Agatha drew up her chair and began.
“Bertie,” she said, “dear Honoria does not know it, but a little difficulty has arisen about your marriage.”
“Really?” I said, hoping.
99
Ruskin – Джон Рёскин (1819-1900, английский писатель, художник, теоретик искусства, литературный критик и поэт)