A Deuced Difficult Dilemma, Ch. 3
Title: A Deuced Difficult Dilemma
Chapter: 3/?
Pairing: Bertie/OFC, Bertie/Jeeves (eventually)
Summary: Bertie is dismayed to find that he rather likes the latest girl that Aunt Agatha is egging him on to marry.
Rating: PG
Words: 1,771
Disclaimer: None of Wodehouse's characters belong to me. I'm just writing this for fun.
Whew, part 3 at last! Part 1 is here, part 2 is here.
I don’t mind telling you, it was one of my finer efforts. After some initial startled squirming, Helen gave it up for a lost cause and threw her arms around my neck. When I finally broke away, she maintained the posish, and we sat there gazing into each other’s eyes and breathing stertorously. The whole situation was becoming alarmingly French, but I somehow couldn’t bring myself to give a damn.
“Gracious, Bertie,” said the girl dreamily, “are you always so quick off the mark?”
“By no means,” I said. “But it’s seldom I meet a girl I’m so anxious to kiss straightaway.”
She heaved a happy sigh and put her head on my shoulder, and heaven help me, I nearly broke down. It all felt so dashed cozy and, well, right. I closed my eyes and laid my cheek on her hair. I think I might have been trembling a bit.
“I’m not going to pretend I don’t know why I’m here, Bertie,” she said after a moment. “I know your aunt wants to marry us off.”
“Oh, I don’t know, old thing . . .”
“Oh, yes you do, Bertie. It’s all right.” She pulled back to look me square in the eyes. “I came down here with every intention of despising you, like all the other repulsive blighters my family has tried to foist me off on. But I can’t. I hardly know you, but I can already tell you’re a kindred soul.”
“My dear girl . . .”
“But I just want you to know, Bertie, that I understand if - well, what I’m trying to say is - I don’t want you doing anything just because you feel it’s expected of you.”
“Nothing of the sort, my dear old soul!”
“Good. Just so long as we understand each other.” And before I could answer, she pulled me in for a second kiss.
But as her lips moved to meet mine, a rummy thing happened.
I wonder if you have ever had this sort of experience? It had happened to me once before, when I was a stripling of about seven. I was picking blackberries in the garden of the childhood home, and I had spotted a particularly ripe clump of berries plumb spang in the center of the bush. I reached my little arm in as far as it would go and was straining on the tips of my toes to grasp the bally things, when I suddenly tipped forward and took the purler of a lifetime right into the middle of the shrubbery.
The queer thing about it was that, while the whole thing took about half a blink to play out in its sordid entirety, it seemed like a decade. In that moment when I felt myself losing my balance, time seemed to freeze, and the inevitability of my fate was borne in upon me like a stuffed eel-skin between the eyes. “Wooster,” the young Bertram thought to himself in that endless moment, “your future is full of thorns, and there’s not a blessed thing you can do about it.” Or something to that effect.
Well, the same thing was happening now. Time slowed to a trickle, and my whole future flashed before my eyes. Only this time, it was not a future riddled with prickly bits-it was a future bereft of Jeeves. I gulped like a stricken bull-pup and flinched sharply. Helen’s lips missed their target and brushed my cheek instead.
She gave me a wide-eyed look. “Why, Bertie, what’s wrong?”
“I say, I ought to be getting inside,” I said weakly. “I’m starting to feel faint.”
“Oh, oh heavens, I’m so sorry. I forgot you were sick!”
“Don’t worry, dear girl. It’s nothing serious. Just nerves, you know. Too much fast city living and all that. Well, good night.” And I dashed off, leaving the poor girl staring after me in wonderment.
---
I scuttled into the house and crawled up to my room, feeling positively wretched. Various aunts tried to catch my eye in the hall, but I pretended not to notice. Once I was safely holed up in my lair, I sank into a chair and put in a bit of head clutching.
A moment later, there was a gentle rap at the door, and Jeeves himself floated in. I groaned and melted deeper into the chair.
“Are you well, sir?” he asked, registering concern. “You appear distraught.”
I shook the lemon mournfully. “Oh, Jeeves. I think I am falling in love with Miss Fernsby.”
A corner of one of his eyebrows shifted minutely. “Indeed, sir?”
“I’m probably going to ask her to marry me.”
“She is an uncommonly charming young lady, sir.”
I boggled at the man. “Are you saying you approve, Jeeves?”
“If I may say so, sir, it strikes me as a consummation devoutly to be wished.”
“Well, I’m blowed, Jeeves. Positively blowed. I can’t believe you are standing there and coolly advocating that I link my lot with this girl.”
“Am I not correct in understanding, sir, that you are enamoured of the young person?”
“Oh, I am, Jeeves, I am. But that doesn’t usually stop you from shoving your oar in. Have I upset you in some way?”
“No, sir.”
“You’re not still sore about those striped socks I bought last month, are you?”
He winced. “I had nearly put the articles from my mind, sir.”
“Then what is it, Jeeves? Why aren’t you saving me from myself, dash it?”
“In this case, sir, intervention strikes me as unnecessary. If you are indeed in love with the girl -“
“Not in love, Jeeves. I’ve only just met her. But falling in love, to be sure. It would take only the merest shove, and I would be over the brink. What this needs is some in-the-bud nipping, and dashed quick.”
“One wonders, sir, why you are so resistant to such a development.”
I scowled darkly at a passing lamp. “I suppose we Woosters have a perverse streak.”
“Indeed, sir?”
“Dash it, I don’t know. You’re the expert in the psychology of the individual and all that rot. What’s the matter with me, Jeeves?”
“It is difficult to say, sir.”
“I’m sure I could be happy with her and all that, but . . .”
“Sir?”
“But why take a chance on being happy with Helen when I’m already happy with - with - what I’ve got?”
One of those lengthy awkward silences passed between us. Jeeves finally broke it with a faint cough.
“I hope it is not presumptuous of me to ask, sir . . .”
“Yes, Jeeves?”
“Are you happy, sir, or merely complacent?”
I don’t know why, but the question chilled me to the core. “What on earth are getting at?”
He looked me squarely in the eyeball. “I merely suggest, sir, that you are perhaps letting ‘I dare not’ wait upon ‘I would’. It is all too easy, when one is in a comfortable routine, to sacrifice a chance for true contentment in favor of the familiar.”
“Are you telling me I’m in a rut and afraid to get out of it?”
“It is a possibility to be considered, sir.”
I put in a little more brooding silence. “You know what your problem is, Jeeves?” I said at length.
“No, sir.”
“Your problem is that you’re a hopeless romantic. You see a match to be made, and you are compelled to make it. It’s the sporting blood in you. You go about the place thinking that you’re spreading sweetness and light, and you don’t think through the bally consequences. Well, this time you’ve let this dratted compulsion of yours get the best of you. If I marry Helen, what will happen to you?”
“The problem had not escaped my attention, sir. However, it would hardly do for me to stand in the way of your happiness with the young lady. Although it would pain me to leave your employ, I am certain that I would be able to secure employment elsewhere.”
“But, blast it, Jeeves,” I blurted, “that’s just the trouble. I don’t want you to jolly well secure employment elsewhere! Yes, I’m falling in love with Helen, but I already - well, what I mean to say is, I don’t want to lose you. Why, I couldn’t carry on a day without you, old top! I know . . . I’ve jolly well tried!”
“Well, sir . . .”
“Who would get me out of the soup?”
“Miss Fernsby strikes me as an eminently sensible young person, sir. I am sure that she would-“
“Oh, now come, Jeeves! The girl hides in potting sheds to avoid my aunt Agatha. She may have twice the adult recommended dosage of brain matter for all I know, but she’s at least as goofy as I am when it comes to dealing with the bullion.”
“Sir, I hardly think that-“
“Look, Jeeves, I may have thought I could get along without you once, but that was before I knew better. You’re indispensable. And I’ve got to put a stop to this business with Helen before I find out she’s indispensable as well. Don’t ask me to choose between the cream in my coffee and the salt in my stew, Jeeves - I can’t bally well do it. And,” I added, “stop looking so dashed blurry!” For at some point, during the course of these remarks, Jeeves had ceased to look like the crisp, finely chiseled valet I was accustomed to and was beginning to look like a squiggly, watery valet.
I averted the map from his gaze and tried to dab discreetly at the leaky plumbing. “Sorry, Jeeves,” I said in a voice that came out rather roopily, “I’m not used to dealing with so many emotions in a single evening. The starch seems to have gone right out of the old upper lip.”
“My dear Mr. Wooster,” said Jeeves, and I hiccupped rather violently. It was rare enough for him to address me by name, but I had never heard him bung in a qualifier before. “It was not my intention to cause you distress. I merely thought-”
“I know, Jeeves,” I said, reaching for my cigarette case and hoping they were the sort of cigarettes that make you nonchalant.
“I’m sure you have the young master’s best interests at heart and all that. But just indulge me, old thing, and see what you can do. Tell the bally girl I’m off my nut, or that I’m a career criminal or something. You know, your usual sort of thing.”
“I will give the matter my best attention, sir.”
“Thank you, Jeeves.”
Chapter: 3/?
Pairing: Bertie/OFC, Bertie/Jeeves (eventually)
Summary: Bertie is dismayed to find that he rather likes the latest girl that Aunt Agatha is egging him on to marry.
Rating: PG
Words: 1,771
Disclaimer: None of Wodehouse's characters belong to me. I'm just writing this for fun.
Whew, part 3 at last! Part 1 is here, part 2 is here.
I don’t mind telling you, it was one of my finer efforts. After some initial startled squirming, Helen gave it up for a lost cause and threw her arms around my neck. When I finally broke away, she maintained the posish, and we sat there gazing into each other’s eyes and breathing stertorously. The whole situation was becoming alarmingly French, but I somehow couldn’t bring myself to give a damn.
“Gracious, Bertie,” said the girl dreamily, “are you always so quick off the mark?”
“By no means,” I said. “But it’s seldom I meet a girl I’m so anxious to kiss straightaway.”
She heaved a happy sigh and put her head on my shoulder, and heaven help me, I nearly broke down. It all felt so dashed cozy and, well, right. I closed my eyes and laid my cheek on her hair. I think I might have been trembling a bit.
“I’m not going to pretend I don’t know why I’m here, Bertie,” she said after a moment. “I know your aunt wants to marry us off.”
“Oh, I don’t know, old thing . . .”
“Oh, yes you do, Bertie. It’s all right.” She pulled back to look me square in the eyes. “I came down here with every intention of despising you, like all the other repulsive blighters my family has tried to foist me off on. But I can’t. I hardly know you, but I can already tell you’re a kindred soul.”
“My dear girl . . .”
“But I just want you to know, Bertie, that I understand if - well, what I’m trying to say is - I don’t want you doing anything just because you feel it’s expected of you.”
“Nothing of the sort, my dear old soul!”
“Good. Just so long as we understand each other.” And before I could answer, she pulled me in for a second kiss.
But as her lips moved to meet mine, a rummy thing happened.
I wonder if you have ever had this sort of experience? It had happened to me once before, when I was a stripling of about seven. I was picking blackberries in the garden of the childhood home, and I had spotted a particularly ripe clump of berries plumb spang in the center of the bush. I reached my little arm in as far as it would go and was straining on the tips of my toes to grasp the bally things, when I suddenly tipped forward and took the purler of a lifetime right into the middle of the shrubbery.
The queer thing about it was that, while the whole thing took about half a blink to play out in its sordid entirety, it seemed like a decade. In that moment when I felt myself losing my balance, time seemed to freeze, and the inevitability of my fate was borne in upon me like a stuffed eel-skin between the eyes. “Wooster,” the young Bertram thought to himself in that endless moment, “your future is full of thorns, and there’s not a blessed thing you can do about it.” Or something to that effect.
Well, the same thing was happening now. Time slowed to a trickle, and my whole future flashed before my eyes. Only this time, it was not a future riddled with prickly bits-it was a future bereft of Jeeves. I gulped like a stricken bull-pup and flinched sharply. Helen’s lips missed their target and brushed my cheek instead.
She gave me a wide-eyed look. “Why, Bertie, what’s wrong?”
“I say, I ought to be getting inside,” I said weakly. “I’m starting to feel faint.”
“Oh, oh heavens, I’m so sorry. I forgot you were sick!”
“Don’t worry, dear girl. It’s nothing serious. Just nerves, you know. Too much fast city living and all that. Well, good night.” And I dashed off, leaving the poor girl staring after me in wonderment.
---
I scuttled into the house and crawled up to my room, feeling positively wretched. Various aunts tried to catch my eye in the hall, but I pretended not to notice. Once I was safely holed up in my lair, I sank into a chair and put in a bit of head clutching.
A moment later, there was a gentle rap at the door, and Jeeves himself floated in. I groaned and melted deeper into the chair.
“Are you well, sir?” he asked, registering concern. “You appear distraught.”
I shook the lemon mournfully. “Oh, Jeeves. I think I am falling in love with Miss Fernsby.”
A corner of one of his eyebrows shifted minutely. “Indeed, sir?”
“I’m probably going to ask her to marry me.”
“She is an uncommonly charming young lady, sir.”
I boggled at the man. “Are you saying you approve, Jeeves?”
“If I may say so, sir, it strikes me as a consummation devoutly to be wished.”
“Well, I’m blowed, Jeeves. Positively blowed. I can’t believe you are standing there and coolly advocating that I link my lot with this girl.”
“Am I not correct in understanding, sir, that you are enamoured of the young person?”
“Oh, I am, Jeeves, I am. But that doesn’t usually stop you from shoving your oar in. Have I upset you in some way?”
“No, sir.”
“You’re not still sore about those striped socks I bought last month, are you?”
He winced. “I had nearly put the articles from my mind, sir.”
“Then what is it, Jeeves? Why aren’t you saving me from myself, dash it?”
“In this case, sir, intervention strikes me as unnecessary. If you are indeed in love with the girl -“
“Not in love, Jeeves. I’ve only just met her. But falling in love, to be sure. It would take only the merest shove, and I would be over the brink. What this needs is some in-the-bud nipping, and dashed quick.”
“One wonders, sir, why you are so resistant to such a development.”
I scowled darkly at a passing lamp. “I suppose we Woosters have a perverse streak.”
“Indeed, sir?”
“Dash it, I don’t know. You’re the expert in the psychology of the individual and all that rot. What’s the matter with me, Jeeves?”
“It is difficult to say, sir.”
“I’m sure I could be happy with her and all that, but . . .”
“Sir?”
“But why take a chance on being happy with Helen when I’m already happy with - with - what I’ve got?”
One of those lengthy awkward silences passed between us. Jeeves finally broke it with a faint cough.
“I hope it is not presumptuous of me to ask, sir . . .”
“Yes, Jeeves?”
“Are you happy, sir, or merely complacent?”
I don’t know why, but the question chilled me to the core. “What on earth are getting at?”
He looked me squarely in the eyeball. “I merely suggest, sir, that you are perhaps letting ‘I dare not’ wait upon ‘I would’. It is all too easy, when one is in a comfortable routine, to sacrifice a chance for true contentment in favor of the familiar.”
“Are you telling me I’m in a rut and afraid to get out of it?”
“It is a possibility to be considered, sir.”
I put in a little more brooding silence. “You know what your problem is, Jeeves?” I said at length.
“No, sir.”
“Your problem is that you’re a hopeless romantic. You see a match to be made, and you are compelled to make it. It’s the sporting blood in you. You go about the place thinking that you’re spreading sweetness and light, and you don’t think through the bally consequences. Well, this time you’ve let this dratted compulsion of yours get the best of you. If I marry Helen, what will happen to you?”
“The problem had not escaped my attention, sir. However, it would hardly do for me to stand in the way of your happiness with the young lady. Although it would pain me to leave your employ, I am certain that I would be able to secure employment elsewhere.”
“But, blast it, Jeeves,” I blurted, “that’s just the trouble. I don’t want you to jolly well secure employment elsewhere! Yes, I’m falling in love with Helen, but I already - well, what I mean to say is, I don’t want to lose you. Why, I couldn’t carry on a day without you, old top! I know . . . I’ve jolly well tried!”
“Well, sir . . .”
“Who would get me out of the soup?”
“Miss Fernsby strikes me as an eminently sensible young person, sir. I am sure that she would-“
“Oh, now come, Jeeves! The girl hides in potting sheds to avoid my aunt Agatha. She may have twice the adult recommended dosage of brain matter for all I know, but she’s at least as goofy as I am when it comes to dealing with the bullion.”
“Sir, I hardly think that-“
“Look, Jeeves, I may have thought I could get along without you once, but that was before I knew better. You’re indispensable. And I’ve got to put a stop to this business with Helen before I find out she’s indispensable as well. Don’t ask me to choose between the cream in my coffee and the salt in my stew, Jeeves - I can’t bally well do it. And,” I added, “stop looking so dashed blurry!” For at some point, during the course of these remarks, Jeeves had ceased to look like the crisp, finely chiseled valet I was accustomed to and was beginning to look like a squiggly, watery valet.
I averted the map from his gaze and tried to dab discreetly at the leaky plumbing. “Sorry, Jeeves,” I said in a voice that came out rather roopily, “I’m not used to dealing with so many emotions in a single evening. The starch seems to have gone right out of the old upper lip.”
“My dear Mr. Wooster,” said Jeeves, and I hiccupped rather violently. It was rare enough for him to address me by name, but I had never heard him bung in a qualifier before. “It was not my intention to cause you distress. I merely thought-”
“I know, Jeeves,” I said, reaching for my cigarette case and hoping they were the sort of cigarettes that make you nonchalant.
“I’m sure you have the young master’s best interests at heart and all that. But just indulge me, old thing, and see what you can do. Tell the bally girl I’m off my nut, or that I’m a career criminal or something. You know, your usual sort of thing.”
“I will give the matter my best attention, sir.”
“Thank you, Jeeves.”