A Deuced Difficult Dilemma, Ch. 6
Title: A Deuced Difficult Dilemma
Chapter: 6/?
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: 1,732
Disclaimer: None of Wodehouse's characters belong to me. I'm just writing this for fun.
Sorry to leave you all hanging on such a traumatic note last time! Here's some more. Part 1 is here, part 2 is here, part 3 is here, part 4 is here, part 5 is here.
The girl stood goggling at me for a moment in wonder, then chucked her head back and started to laugh. I couldn’t see what was so dashed funny about the situation myself, but I refrained from saying so.
“What is it, old thing?” I said instead.
“Oh, it’s just too ridiculous, that’s all,” she said at last, wiping away a mirthful tear or two. “Your Aunt Agatha was right. He is a scoundrel.”
“For once, I’m forced to agree with the old girl. He’s really gotten above himself this time.”
“What on earth is he trying to accomplish?”
“Hanged if I know,” I said, although I had a few ideas.
“How long do you suppose he intends to keep us in here?”
I prodded the basket with my toe. “Quite some time, unless I very much miss my guess,” I said moodily.
“Ooh,” she said, casting a hungry eye at the basket. “What’s in there? I’m famished!”
“Well, you’re in luck, my dear girl. Judging from the weight of the thing, there’s enough to feed an army in there.” I knelt down and cracked open the hatch. “Gosh!” I said.
Hecken leaned in to inspect the goods. “Golly!” she said. We looked at each other in a wild surmise.
The basket contained two sandwiches wrapped neatly in brown paper, two glasses, a corkscrew, and two bottles of the best port the Brinkley Court cellars had to offer, nestled in a tea towel so they wouldn’t clink.
“Well, I’m dashed,” I said, hauling out one of the bottles. “No wonder the bally thing was so heavy. Does he really expect us to tie one on to such an extent?”
Hecken shrugged. “I’m game if you are, dearie,” she said. “Anyway, just a snifter or two couldn’t hurt, could it? It might warm you up a bit, poor thing.” She gave my wet hair a sympathetic tousle. I realized suddenly that I was still only wrapped in a dressing gown, and nearly dropped the bottle.
I gulped. “Perhaps you’re right,” I said weakly. “I could use a little fortification.”
Hecken rustled up a crate and a couple sacks of sod for a table and chairs, and I uncorked the goods and poured out two generous glasses of the restorative.
“Skin off your nose, old thing,” I said.
“Mud in your eye, darling.”
We drained our glasses in a couple of gulps.
“I say,” said the girl, “that’s awfully good port.”
“Well, if there’s one thing I can say for my Uncle Tom, it’s that he knows a good thing when he spots it. Peculiar taste in silver aside. Another glass, my dear squirt?”
“Oh, I shouldn’t,” she said, thrusting out her glass. We both downed a second libation.
“You know,” she continued as I fumbled with the sandwiches, “I’d be in a hell of a lot of trouble if my mother ever found out I was drinking this stuff.”
“Ah,” I said, pouring a third glass for each of us. “Teetotaller, eh?”
“Yes indeed. She thinks the Americans have got the right idea with that prohibition business.”
“Apparently they don’t agree. I’ve heard they’re probably giving it the bum’s rush by the end of this year.”
She sloshed her glass enthusiastically. “Well, God bless ‘em, I say!” It seemed like as reasonable a thing to drink to as any, so we got around the outside of our third glass in short order, and then took a brief intermission to munch thoughtfully on our respective sandwiches.
“This hiding in sheds wheeze of yours isn’t half bad,” I admitted after a bit. “With the right provisions, anyway. I mean, I wouldn’t want to live here, mind you.”
“No,” she agreed. “Too drafty. And spidery.”
I shivered. “Not too spidery, I hope.”
“Reasonably spidery. Are you cold, darling?”
“Oh, no.”
“Don’t be silly. You’re turning blue around the edges.” She picked up her sack and hauled it around to my side of the crate, and then proceeded to lean up against me. I inhaled a bit of my sandwich. “For heaven’s sake, Bertie,” said Hecken, pounding me on the back a few times, “why do I make you so nervous? I thought you liked me.”
“I do like you, dear girl,” I croaked. “That’s just the trouble.”
“What do you mean, ‘That’s just the trouble’?”
“More port?”
“Yes, please.”
“You see,” I began, having fortified the old nerves a little further, “the thing is.”
“Yes?”
“The thing is, Hecken old top . . . you’re a great, great girl and all that.”
“And I think you’re simply the cat’s knees.”
“I’m in love with you, don’t you know. Well, falling in, as it were.”
She hiccupped violently and slipped an arm around my waist. “Oh, Buh-ertie!” She gazed a little unsteadily into my eyes. “Do you want to ki-hiss me right now?”
“More than anything. In fact, I’m about this close to asking you to marry me,” I said, and I tried to hold up my thumb and index finger to show her, but they didn’t seem to be quite working right.
“But Bertie, it’s all so-“ She was cut off by another particularly powerful hiccup.
“Fast?” I suggested.
“I was going to say suh-oon. Or maybe sudden. But fast works too, don’t you know. I don’t know wha-excuse me! I don’t know what to say.”
“Well, it would make things considerably easier for me if you’d say . . .”
“What?”
I paused to belt back another snifter. “If you’d say ‘Bertie, you ass, why don’t you go and boil your head?’”
She pulled back to look at me and nearly toppled over. “But wuh-y would I say that?”
“Because,” I said, poking at her with my glass to underline my point, “I’m a bounder. A frightful bounder.”
“You’re not!”
“I am.”
“But why?”
“Well,” I said, pausing to top off our glasses, “you see, old girl, I’m in love with someone else already.” I could scarcely believe what I was saying. I mean, scarcely preux, what? And until I said it, I hadn’t realized it myself. But you know how it is when you have a few doses of the best under your belt. The words just sort of sloshed out of their own accord.
Her eyes widened. “Oohh!” she said.
“But it’s not what you’re thinking. At least, it’s not what I think you’re thinking.”
“What do I think you’re - what do you think - I mean, what?”
“I mean, I’m not two-timing anyone or any of that sort of rot. I’m not that sort of a chap. It’s one of those things that’s . . . I say, what do you call it when person A loves person B, but the party of the second whatsit - person B, that is - thinks person A is all right, but doesn’t feel anything truer and deeper for person A than ordinary friendship?”
“Unre-hic-quited?” she offered helpfully.
“Right! That’s exactly the chap I’m looking for. It’s most awfully unrequited.”
She leaned in and eyed me keenly. “How do you know? Have you said anything?”
I shook the lemon firmly. “No. Absolutely - I could never, I mean to say.”
“Then how do you knuh-how it’s unrequited?”
“Trust me, dear soul, it’s about as unrequited as it gets. If you knew Jeeves-“
“Jeeves!”
I felt my face tingle rummily. “I mean, if you knew Jeeves’ theories. About the whatsit of the individual and all that. Psychology, that’s the bird. He’d tell you just how unrequited it is. Anyway, that’s the thing. I’m falling in love with you, but I already love this other person, and it’s all so dashed confusing that I don’t know up from down.”
“I see. I think. Well, you don’t seem so awfully keen on marrying me.”
“If you say yes, I’ll do it.”
She frowned. “But you don’t want to.”
“I don’t know what I want, dash it!”
“Well, what would make you happier? Going on mooning over this person you love unre-huh-unre-un-that you love, but who doesn’t love you, or so you say, or being with someone who definitely does love you?”
“I was perfectly happy doing the first one until you came along,” I said, a bit petulantly.
“Oh, no!” she said, and her eyes flashed in a way I never thought I’d see outside of one of the more lurid Rosie M. Banks novels. “Now you listen to me, Buh-ertie Woo-hooster. Don’t you go putting the responsibility for your goofiness on my head! You know what your problem is?”
“What?”
“You’re too complacent, that’s what!”
“That’s the same bally word that Jeeves used,” I said miserably.
“Well, Jeeves is a smart man.”
“You don’t know the half of it. Although lately I wonder if he’s going completely off his nut.”
“I don’t think so. I think he just got tired of you moping around waiting for him to make up your muh-hind for you.”
“Oh, now look here-“
“You’ve got a lot of nerve, did you know that? I like your crust, trying to shove your silly dilemma off on me!”
“But-“
“All I know is, I’m not going to jolly well make this easy on you. You’ve got to make your own decision. I’m not going to say yes and then spend the rest of my life wondering if you regret marrying me. I’m not going to say no and wonder if you’re going to spend the rest of your days pining away over both me and this other blister, and knowing that you’ll blame me either way. You make your choice and you stick with it!”
“But, dash it--!”
“And for heaven’s sake, you’ll never know how J-how this other person feels unless you jolly well ask. You’re a sweet boy, but you don’t see so blasted well, do you?” And with that, she rose to her feet and marched unsteadily to the exit. “Too-hoodle pip, Buh-ertie,” she hiccupped coldly over her shoulder, just before crashing rather magnificently into the door. She turned back to me austerely. “That,” she said, “would have been much more impressive if this door wasn’t still locked.”
“Oh, quite.”
“I was going to storm out and slam it after me.”
“I was already taking it as read.”
“Good. Now, if you’ll excuse me.” And she turned back to the door and roared for Jeeves.