“Ah, there you have me. But the nibs say it isn’t.”
“But what does it mean?”
“I take it it’s supposed to console the chaps who haven’t won prizes.”
“What’s the good of that to me? I’m not worrying about them. It’s the ones that have won prizes that I’m worrying about, the little blighters who will come up on the platform. Suppose they make faces at me.”
“They won’t.”
“How do you know they won’t? It’s probably the first thing they’ll think of. And even if they don’t—Bertie, shall I tell you something?”
“What?”
“I’ve a good mind to take that tip of yours and have a drink.”
I smiled. He little knew, about summed up what I was thinking.
“Oh, you’ll be all right,” I said.
He became fevered again.
“How do you know I’ll be all right? I’m sure to blow up in my lines.”
“Tush!”
“Or drop a prize.”
“Tut!”
“Or something. I can feel it in my bones. As sure as I’m standing here, something is going to happen this afternoon which will make everybody laugh themselves sick at me. I can hear them now. Like hyenas. … Bertie!”
“Hullo?”
“Do you remember that kids’ school we went to before Eton?”
“Quite. It was there I won my Scripture prize.”
“Never mind about your Scripture prize. I’m not talking about your Scripture prize. Do you recollect the Bosher incident?”
I did, indeed. It was one of the high spots of my youth.
“Major-General Sir Wilfred Bosher came to distribute the prizes at that school,” proceeded Gussie in a dull, toneless voice. “He dropped a book. He stooped to pick it up. And, as he stooped, his trousers split up the back.”
“How we roared!”
Gussie’s face twisted.
“We did, little swine that we were. Instead of remaining silent and exhibiting a decent sympathy for a gallant officer at a peculiarly embarrassing moment, we howled and yelled with mirth. I loudest of any. That is what will happen to me this afternoon, Bertie. It will be a judgment on me for laughing like that at Major-General Sir Wilfred Bosher.”
“No, no, Gussie, old man. Your trousers won’t split.”
“How do you know they won’t? Better men than I have split their trousers. General Bosher was a D.S.O., with a fine record of service on the northwestern frontier of India, and his trousers split. I shall be a mockery and a scorn. I know it. And you, fully cognizant of what I am in for, come babbling about good news. What news could possibly be good to me at this moment except the information that bubonic plague had broken out among the scholars of Market Snodsbury Grammar School, and that they were all confined to their beds with spots?”
The moment had come for me to speak. I laid a hand gently on his shoulder. He brushed it off. I laid it on again. He brushed it off once more. I was endeavouring to lay it on for the third time, when he moved aside and desired, with a certain petulance, to be informed if I thought I was a ruddy osteopath.
I found his manner trying, but one has to make allowances. I was telling myself that I should be seeing a very different Gussie after lunch.
“When I said I had good news, old man, I meant about Madeline Bassett.”
The febrile gleam died out of his eyes, to be replaced by a look of infinite sadness.
“You can’t have good news about her. I’ve dished myself there completely.”
“Not at all. I am convinced that if you take another whack at her, all will be well.”
And, keeping it snappy, I related what had passed between the Bassett and myself on the previous night.
“So all you have to do is play a return date, and you cannot fail to swing the voting. You are her dream man.”
He shook his head.
“No.”
“What?”
“No use.”
“What do you mean?”
“Not a bit of good trying.”
“But I tell you she said in so many words—”
“It doesn’t make any difference. She may have loved me once. Last night will have killed all that.”
“Of course it won’t.”
“It will. She despises me now.”
“Not a bit of it. She knows you simply got cold feet.”
“And I should get cold feet if I tried again. It’s no good, Bertie. I’m hopeless, and there’s an end of it. Fate made me the sort of chap who can’t say ‘bo’ to a goose.”
“It isn’t a question of saying ‘bo’ to a goose. The point doesn’t arise at all. It is simply a matter of—”
“I know, I know. But it’s no good. I can’t do it. The whole thing is off. I am not going to risk a repetition of last night’s fiasco. You talk in a light way of taking another whack at her, but you don’t know what it means. You have not been through the experience of starting to ask the girl you love to marry you and then suddenly finding yourself talking about the plumlike external gills of the newly-born newt. It’s not a thing you can do twice. No, I accept my destiny. It’s all over. And now, Bertie, like a good chap, shove off. I want to compose my speech. I can’t compose my speech with you mucking around. If you are going to continue to muck around, at least give me a couple of stories. The little hell hounds are sure to expect a story or two.”
“Do you know the one about—”
“No good. I don’t want any of your off-colour stuff from the Drones’ smoking-room. I need something clean. Something that will be a help to them in their after lives. Not that I care a damn about their after lives, except that I hope they’ll all choke.”
“I heard a story the other day. I can’t quite remember it, but it was about a chap who snored and disturbed the neighbours, and it ended, ‘It was his adenoids that adenoid them.’ ”
He made a weary gesture.
“You expect me to work that in, do you, into a speech to be delivered to an audience of boys, every one of whom is probably riddled with adenoids?
