Entry tags:
A Modern Prometheus, If That's The Greek Chap I'm Thinking Of: A Romance
title: A Modern Prometheus, If That's The Greek Chap I'm Thinking Of: A Romance
by:
chikkiboo
fandom: P.G. Wodehouse
characters: Mostly original, using characters from Psmith's world, and also cameos from characters from The Saint
rated: G
for:
all_hallows_fic
prompt: monster: Frankenstein's Monster
disclaim: The characters of Euphonia Smith and Beatrice Van Walden belong to me. All others are the property of their respective creators. No infringement upon the rights of P.G. Wodehouse, Leslie Charteris, Mary Shelley, or anyone else is intended. Do not take internally.
notes: The horror element is very understated. Also, it's about 3,600 words, so you might want to get a cup of tea to drink while you read.
It all started when I accepted that invitation to stay a few weeks in Shropshire with an old school chum named Euphonia. Now, Finny's the absolute tops, really - as I've said, we're old school chums, and if ever she needed a smile on a grey day or a fiver for a taxi or my firstborn child or to borrow my favourite hat or something, I'd be more than glad to give it to her; but I'm sorry to say that with the exception of yours truly she has some absolutely rotten taste in friends.
It started out as a fairly good party, with plenty of people around without cluttering up the place too much, so that you could choose who you spoke with and find an empty room if you chose to speak with no-one; but people started to leave in drips and drabs, you know, whatever a drab is. And of course it's always the really interesting people who leave first. This girl Pat, for instance - she seemed like a real ace, but she beetled off after a single night. She left her date behind, which I thought was going to be nice for me, but Finny glommed on to him like a starving urchin on a piece of wedding-cake, and neither one of them was any use to me after that. Which left me rather in the lurch. Or, rather, with the lurch.
After a few days, you see, it was down to me, Finny and her new addition, Finny's brother Rupert (who is a consummate ass - the real Platonic ideal of an ass, so that you expect to see the ears and tail tucked up behind whenever he turns around), and this tall hulking sort of chap whose name I never quite caught. He wasn't much of a conversationalist, but after five minutes with Rupert I didn't see any need for it; what really put me up was the smell. I hate to be indelicate, but this chap carried with him the odour of the sepulchre. Several times I thought of sneaking into his room while he was out and placing a bar of soap on his pillow, but my hand was stayed by two thoughts: first, the inevitable result upon my reputation of being caught in his room, and second, the fact that he would probably have taken it for a mint and eaten it.
Well, it only took a week for that to grow sort of long in the tooth, and I had half a mind to pack up and go home; only Finny happened on me while I was asking a housemaid to find my suitcase, and fairly went down upon the old bended knee and begged me. "Please, Beetle," was the line of the day, "remember the old school!" I didn't know then and I don't know now what the old school had to do with my putting up with the big lurchy chap, but - well, the old school is the old school, and the old school chum is the old school chum; and anyone who can look the old s. c. in the face when the old s. c. is down upon the bended k. is not worthy of having gone to the old s. in the first place. "Stay," is what she asked; and stay, is what I did.
Around day 14 Rupert showed the first scrap of common human decency I had ever witnessed in him, and took himself away somewhere. The atmosphere in the place was considerably quieter after that, which I have to say was a blessing; only it had the obvious side effect of throwing me even more in company with the lurchy chap, whose name I still hadn't caught. Finny didn't mean to abandon me to the wild winds, I'm sure, but she had her new addition to look after. And I did an awful lot of looking after them, whether I meant to or not. If you've ever tried to share a house with a pair of love-birds like that, you'll know exactly what I mean. They seem to multiply, until every room in the house contains them, and you're constantly stumbling through doorways and interrupting some sort of tryst or something. Thinking of going to the library and having a bit of a read? As soon as you crack the portal, the two of them whirl apart and pretend interest in random bits of wallpaper. Fancy a midnight snack? They're sure to be in the kitchen, looking terribly flustered and insisting that one of them was just helping the other light the gas because the scullery-maid was out sick or something. Decide to give the entire house a pass and stroll through the garden? They're behind every disguising bit of shrubbery in a state of suspicious rumpledness. Rumpleosity? They're rumpled. It's suspicious. And after a while they begin to suspect you of doing it on purpose - you, who are merely trying to go about your everyday life without hearing constant birdsong and cooing! Really it's they who should feel ashamed of themselves for running around in front of you and hiding everywhere you plan to go.
Obviously the position was untenable. The only safe place on the estate was wherever the lurchy chap happened to be, for they always gave him a wide berth - probably due to the smell; and so I took up with him out of a sheer sense of self-preservation. I went through at least six tins of mentholated petroleum during my stay there - a quick dab beneath the nostrils and the lurchy chap was almost unnoticeable - and I considered it a minor investment in my own peace of mind.
I wasn't completely without reprieve - Finny took to dragging me around with her after tea every day, making me help her pick out her dress to wear to dinner while she lapsed rhapsodaisical - if rhapsodaisical is a word - about how wonderful her lad was, and how he'd said just the sweetest thing to her that morning, and this and that and the other, with occasional pauses to ask me whether I thought she should wear the stockings with the clocks on, and whether her lipstick was a shade too bright, and how I was getting on with the lurchy chap.
Now, casting the old peepers back over this missive I notice I haven't done a terrible lot of explaining exactly why the chap was so distasteful, except for the smell. In my defense, the smell is your first impression - and your last one too, if you're smart; but it doesn't end there. Besides apparently wearing formaldehyde as cologne in an ill-starred attempt to disguise the charnel-house odour, he was also possessed of a greenish skin, a shambling gait that made the very thought of dancing a horror, and eyes that reminded one of a fish on ice - always staring through you, and not in the thoughtful way. Quite the opposite, rather. If it were possible to ignore all the above factors and the bizarre patchwork of scars across his skin - he really looked like nothing so much as a crazy quilt that someone had left out of the icebox too long during a heat wave, assuming people made crazy quilts out of old lunchmeat - I'll admit he might possibly have been just bearable. He was better-looking than some of the fellows I'd had foisted on me, anyway, and at least he didn't have a moustache.
Let me hasten to add, because you're probably saying to yourself "Egads, but she's shallow!", that I would have been able to overlook all of his physical flaws and develop a decent friendship with the old boy - preferably by correspondence, but a friendship nevertheless - if he'd been clever, or witty, or capable of speech in the first place. But let the girls who write the books with the pink covers that you're not allowed to read at school say what they will about long mute gazes, speaking without words, and love that transcends language; my bosom was not heaving. And if it had been... well, there was that smell, you know.
I couldn't very well tell Finny that her friend made me sick to my stomach. That would just be rude, with me a guest in her house and all. I did go so far as to ask her how she knew him, with a sort of italicized tone of voice and some meaningful motions of the eyebrows, but she missed the meaningful motions and the words themselves due to being currently inside the wardrobe. She poked her head back out a moment too late, along with an arm laden with clothing, and I had to repeat myself.
"How do you fancy this moss-green silk? I'll be in peach-blossom, so we'll go nicely together - oh, him? He's some sort of a friend of my father's. Try this on, I bet it'll be darling. Anyway, Papa's friend is a doctor somewhere on the Continent - Germany or Switzerland or something, I think - and he's his pet patient. Sent him over here for a rest-cure or something. Can you do me up the back, love, and then I'll get you - oh, thanks awfully. There, don't we look lovely?"
She did, at least. The moss-green silk she'd tossed at me made me look positively bilious, I thought. I tried to comfort myself with the thought that I'd sort of coordinate with the lurching chap - and cold comfort that was! - while Finny fussed over her make-up and begged to borrow my pearls. Then it was downstairs to purgatory - two hours of trying to hold a conversation with two doting lovers and a fellow who may as well have been a corpse.
It was particularly bill-y and coo-y that night, and I could feel the iced-fish eyes staring through me the whole time. Finny's people have a grand cook, which is probably why their house-parties pull such a great crowd for the first few days, but my enjoyment of the bouillabaisse was severely depressed under the circs. I tried to amuse myself by telling the lurchy chap some stories from the old s., such as the time that Finny and I scandalized the populace by spiking the fountain with washing-up liquid and putting on a bubble show like that girl in the Follies, but between his lack of response and the way the other protag. in the tale was doing the limpid-pools act at the other end of the table, it just didn't do much to raise my spirits.
I was carefully sculpting my pommes de terre aux jardinière comme fou into a rather spiffing little model of the forementioned fountain when things at the far end took a turn for the dramatic. The addition actually upset his chair in order to pull the bended k., and proceeded to make the sort of speech that probably seems like a very good idea in the mind of either speechmaker or pink-cover-novelist but which has always struck me as sort of ridiculous. Really, my only thoughts were "How on earth did he get hold of a rock that big on notice this short?" and "Finny is going to strain her wrist wearing that thing."
Not that I was jealous.
Now, up to this point, you understand, the lurchy chap had never said a single word. He didn't propose to break his streak, either - but apparently moved by the outpouring of emotion we were playing witness to, he offered me his hand in marriage. Or, at any rate, he offered me his hand. I found this extremely disturbing, as until then I hadn't even realized they were detachable.
The only thing I could think of to do was grab him by the wrist and try to stick him back together, which was why, when Finny was done tearfully repeating the word "yes" over and over and happened to glance over at us, we were holding hands under the table and staring at each other in a way which I suppose could have been misinterpreted as soulful if the lurchy chap possessed a soul.
After that I sort of got caught up in Finny's dance of joy. I felt like a tadpole must when some tyke yanks it out of its puddle and puts it in an old jam-jar and goes gallivanting around showing it off. They probably don't understand why they're worth making a fuss over, either. It wasn't until several hours later, when Finny produced a massive tome of wedding-dress styles from somewhere and proceeded to call out ones she thought would suit me as well as herself, that I finally twigged it, and then I was put in mind of the tadpoles again. Mine always died.
To say that I did not wish to marry the lurchy chap would be like saying that Daphne did not wish to marry Apollo, if those are the Greeks I'm thinking of, and if I could have turned myself into a tree I would have done it in a heartbeat. As it was, though, I was sort of stuck. I swear Finny never stopped moving or talking long enough for me to fit a word in edgewise; before I knew it she'd declared it a double wedding and had invitations ordered, and there it was, right under the Euphonia Smith: Beatrice Van Walden. I couldn't very well back out of it now. She'd already paid for the printing. It would be rude.
Things buzzed along merrily after that, at least for Finny; her fiancé was in and out of the house, bringing friends back occasionally - unfortunately, none of them were single; but then, neither was I, as horrifying as I found the thought - as was just about everyone we knew, popping in for congratulatory visits and such. It would really have been fun, and definitely a vast improvement over most of the previous weeks, if there hadn't been the spectre of doom lurching over me at all times.
I gave it the old school try, really I did; spent some time with him, telling him about myself and attempting to make things livable. People marry people they don't love all the time; if I could just learn to tolerate him, we could live in separate wings of our eventual house and only see each other at breakfast or something. But really, he was just too much. All the mentholated petroleum in the world couldn't induce me to kiss him; it was all I could do not to faint when he attempted to hug me - and I don't mean swoon, either. But what could I do? Short of ripping out his neck-bolts and hoping he'd die permanently - and I sort of draw the line at murder, even under the circs - I couldn't think of anything at all that wouldn't put me in dutch with Finny. So with heavy heart I followed her down the rose-lined path to matrimony.
And so we came to The Fateful Day.
The priest was going through the usual litany of haves and have-nots and so forth, Finny was staring fixedly at her reflection in her lad's shoes, and I was frantically pondering the question of whether the rites of marriage are legally binding if one of the parties is technically deceased, when the door of the chapel was flung open like - oh, what is that thing that was flung open? Someone's tomb. Some Biblical fellow, I mean, not the lurchy chap's.
A long and narrow shadow fell dramatically over the floor, and a long and narrow young man fell rather less-dramatically over it right afterward; I suppose he was expecting the door to put up more of a resistance. When he righted himself, it became apparent that it was Rupert. I had never expected myself to be glad to see him in all my life, but I was. Absolutely overjoyed. You might even go so far as to say ecstatic. And the overjoyedness, if that's a word, only increased when he spoke.
"Oh, bloody - I'm not late, am I, dash it all? Am I in time for the 'speak now or forever hold your piece' bit? I've always sort of wanted to do that, you know; rush in at the dramatic moment and - oh, I've missed it? Well then. I'm still in before the 'I do,' aren't I? That's good enough, then. Because I refuse to forever hold my peace."
He advanced down the aisle and pushed his way in between the lurchy chap and yours truly. Now, Rupert's an insufferable ass, but he doesn't smell of the graveyard; he might talk my ear off over the morning coffee, but at least I'd have a very nice sister-in-law; so I was grinning from ear to ear at the sudden prospect of Not Marrying The Lurchy Chap, and not letting the prospect of Instead Marrying Rupert wiggle its way in and make an unpleasantness. Although his speech kept going, and was rather assish.
"Ladies and gentlemen of the jury - I'm sorry, begin again. Ladies and gentlemen, we are gathered here today to witness the union of two - or four, as the case may be - souls in holy matrimony, the blessed joining which makes of two - or four - disparate humans a family. Or two. It is an important rite - one of the greatest steps a person can take in their mortal life. To cleave together for eternity to another being - this is not a decision which should be made lightly, or for the wrong reasons. And, ladies and gentlemen, I say to you that today, these people are making a mistake. I cannot stand meekly aside and let this happen - I cannot watch this fate unfold itself upon the one I love!"
Gasps from the crowd, of course, and blushes from the narrator; and I was extending the hand which was not engaged in bouquet-holding when Rupert proceeded to firmly reestablish his place as the Assiest Ass To Ever Walk Upon Two Legs.
He took hold of the lurchy chap's hand instead.
He then proceeded to propel the both of them down the aisle at speed, leaving everyone too startled to even gasp again, as they were mostly still recovering from the first gasp and didn't wish to try again with the chap in the aisle and hence closer to them. I could restrain myself no longer.
"What on earth is wrong with you, Rupert Smith?"
He halted and turned to me with an expression of carefully-composed surprise. "He's perfect. He never interrupts!"
The jar of the chapel door swinging shut left the congregation in silence.
The priest had just about regained his composure and was thumbing for his place in the B.C.P. when Finny gave herself a bit of a shake, like a cat that's just had water on it, and put her foot down - quite literally; I heard the stomp. Quite a fearsome stomp she has when she wants to, you know.
"Oh, this is ridiculous. If Rupert's going to run off with some bloke just because he says he's in love, I'm bloody well going to run off with a girl for the same reason. Come on, Beetle, it's you and me and the world."
Well, you know, Finny's just the tops. I'd let her borrow one of my favourite pairs of shoes for the blessed event, and she had my second-best hat packed up in her trousseau for a travelling costume, and what's your heart and soul compared to that?
So hand in hand we progressed out of the chapel; and as we reached the nave I heard the organist hastily strike up the Wedding March. I may have also heard the voice of Finny's fiancé, but as the voice I heard was saying things which ought never be uttered in a house of worship, I'll give him the benefit of the doubt and say it was someone else.
Of course I simply had to ask Finny as we motored away, tidily tucked in the back of an auto between a baffled chauffeur and a collection of ribbons and tin cans, how it was that Rupert was able to stomach the odor.
"Oh - that. Rupert hasn't any sense of smell at all, love, didn't you know? He hasn't had since the Chicken Incident when he was ten; and then, of course, he did an awful lot of blow at Eton."
As far as I'm aware we are all of us living happily ever after, with the exception of family Christmases, when Finny and I must break out the mentholated petroleum once more for the sake of jollity and being physically capable of enjoying Anatole's figgy pudding.
The end!
P.S. Oh - you might be wondering what happened to Finny's lad. Well, so is she, to tell you the truth, but his name never popped up in the obituaries, so one can safely assume he didn't do anything rash like toss himself off the White Cliffs of Dover or something. I don't even remember his name, personally.
P.P.S. ...Which I suppose means he MAY have tossed himself off the White Cliffs of Dover and I didn't notice.
P.P.P.S. Finny says he didn't. And his name was Roger.
P.P.P.P.S. Apparently the lurchy chap's name was Frank. Ugh! Can you imagine being married to someone named Frank?
by:
![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
fandom: P.G. Wodehouse
characters: Mostly original, using characters from Psmith's world, and also cameos from characters from The Saint
rated: G
for:
![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
prompt: monster: Frankenstein's Monster
disclaim: The characters of Euphonia Smith and Beatrice Van Walden belong to me. All others are the property of their respective creators. No infringement upon the rights of P.G. Wodehouse, Leslie Charteris, Mary Shelley, or anyone else is intended. Do not take internally.
notes: The horror element is very understated. Also, it's about 3,600 words, so you might want to get a cup of tea to drink while you read.
It all started when I accepted that invitation to stay a few weeks in Shropshire with an old school chum named Euphonia. Now, Finny's the absolute tops, really - as I've said, we're old school chums, and if ever she needed a smile on a grey day or a fiver for a taxi or my firstborn child or to borrow my favourite hat or something, I'd be more than glad to give it to her; but I'm sorry to say that with the exception of yours truly she has some absolutely rotten taste in friends.
It started out as a fairly good party, with plenty of people around without cluttering up the place too much, so that you could choose who you spoke with and find an empty room if you chose to speak with no-one; but people started to leave in drips and drabs, you know, whatever a drab is. And of course it's always the really interesting people who leave first. This girl Pat, for instance - she seemed like a real ace, but she beetled off after a single night. She left her date behind, which I thought was going to be nice for me, but Finny glommed on to him like a starving urchin on a piece of wedding-cake, and neither one of them was any use to me after that. Which left me rather in the lurch. Or, rather, with the lurch.
After a few days, you see, it was down to me, Finny and her new addition, Finny's brother Rupert (who is a consummate ass - the real Platonic ideal of an ass, so that you expect to see the ears and tail tucked up behind whenever he turns around), and this tall hulking sort of chap whose name I never quite caught. He wasn't much of a conversationalist, but after five minutes with Rupert I didn't see any need for it; what really put me up was the smell. I hate to be indelicate, but this chap carried with him the odour of the sepulchre. Several times I thought of sneaking into his room while he was out and placing a bar of soap on his pillow, but my hand was stayed by two thoughts: first, the inevitable result upon my reputation of being caught in his room, and second, the fact that he would probably have taken it for a mint and eaten it.
Well, it only took a week for that to grow sort of long in the tooth, and I had half a mind to pack up and go home; only Finny happened on me while I was asking a housemaid to find my suitcase, and fairly went down upon the old bended knee and begged me. "Please, Beetle," was the line of the day, "remember the old school!" I didn't know then and I don't know now what the old school had to do with my putting up with the big lurchy chap, but - well, the old school is the old school, and the old school chum is the old school chum; and anyone who can look the old s. c. in the face when the old s. c. is down upon the bended k. is not worthy of having gone to the old s. in the first place. "Stay," is what she asked; and stay, is what I did.
Around day 14 Rupert showed the first scrap of common human decency I had ever witnessed in him, and took himself away somewhere. The atmosphere in the place was considerably quieter after that, which I have to say was a blessing; only it had the obvious side effect of throwing me even more in company with the lurchy chap, whose name I still hadn't caught. Finny didn't mean to abandon me to the wild winds, I'm sure, but she had her new addition to look after. And I did an awful lot of looking after them, whether I meant to or not. If you've ever tried to share a house with a pair of love-birds like that, you'll know exactly what I mean. They seem to multiply, until every room in the house contains them, and you're constantly stumbling through doorways and interrupting some sort of tryst or something. Thinking of going to the library and having a bit of a read? As soon as you crack the portal, the two of them whirl apart and pretend interest in random bits of wallpaper. Fancy a midnight snack? They're sure to be in the kitchen, looking terribly flustered and insisting that one of them was just helping the other light the gas because the scullery-maid was out sick or something. Decide to give the entire house a pass and stroll through the garden? They're behind every disguising bit of shrubbery in a state of suspicious rumpledness. Rumpleosity? They're rumpled. It's suspicious. And after a while they begin to suspect you of doing it on purpose - you, who are merely trying to go about your everyday life without hearing constant birdsong and cooing! Really it's they who should feel ashamed of themselves for running around in front of you and hiding everywhere you plan to go.
Obviously the position was untenable. The only safe place on the estate was wherever the lurchy chap happened to be, for they always gave him a wide berth - probably due to the smell; and so I took up with him out of a sheer sense of self-preservation. I went through at least six tins of mentholated petroleum during my stay there - a quick dab beneath the nostrils and the lurchy chap was almost unnoticeable - and I considered it a minor investment in my own peace of mind.
I wasn't completely without reprieve - Finny took to dragging me around with her after tea every day, making me help her pick out her dress to wear to dinner while she lapsed rhapsodaisical - if rhapsodaisical is a word - about how wonderful her lad was, and how he'd said just the sweetest thing to her that morning, and this and that and the other, with occasional pauses to ask me whether I thought she should wear the stockings with the clocks on, and whether her lipstick was a shade too bright, and how I was getting on with the lurchy chap.
Now, casting the old peepers back over this missive I notice I haven't done a terrible lot of explaining exactly why the chap was so distasteful, except for the smell. In my defense, the smell is your first impression - and your last one too, if you're smart; but it doesn't end there. Besides apparently wearing formaldehyde as cologne in an ill-starred attempt to disguise the charnel-house odour, he was also possessed of a greenish skin, a shambling gait that made the very thought of dancing a horror, and eyes that reminded one of a fish on ice - always staring through you, and not in the thoughtful way. Quite the opposite, rather. If it were possible to ignore all the above factors and the bizarre patchwork of scars across his skin - he really looked like nothing so much as a crazy quilt that someone had left out of the icebox too long during a heat wave, assuming people made crazy quilts out of old lunchmeat - I'll admit he might possibly have been just bearable. He was better-looking than some of the fellows I'd had foisted on me, anyway, and at least he didn't have a moustache.
Let me hasten to add, because you're probably saying to yourself "Egads, but she's shallow!", that I would have been able to overlook all of his physical flaws and develop a decent friendship with the old boy - preferably by correspondence, but a friendship nevertheless - if he'd been clever, or witty, or capable of speech in the first place. But let the girls who write the books with the pink covers that you're not allowed to read at school say what they will about long mute gazes, speaking without words, and love that transcends language; my bosom was not heaving. And if it had been... well, there was that smell, you know.
I couldn't very well tell Finny that her friend made me sick to my stomach. That would just be rude, with me a guest in her house and all. I did go so far as to ask her how she knew him, with a sort of italicized tone of voice and some meaningful motions of the eyebrows, but she missed the meaningful motions and the words themselves due to being currently inside the wardrobe. She poked her head back out a moment too late, along with an arm laden with clothing, and I had to repeat myself.
"How do you fancy this moss-green silk? I'll be in peach-blossom, so we'll go nicely together - oh, him? He's some sort of a friend of my father's. Try this on, I bet it'll be darling. Anyway, Papa's friend is a doctor somewhere on the Continent - Germany or Switzerland or something, I think - and he's his pet patient. Sent him over here for a rest-cure or something. Can you do me up the back, love, and then I'll get you - oh, thanks awfully. There, don't we look lovely?"
She did, at least. The moss-green silk she'd tossed at me made me look positively bilious, I thought. I tried to comfort myself with the thought that I'd sort of coordinate with the lurching chap - and cold comfort that was! - while Finny fussed over her make-up and begged to borrow my pearls. Then it was downstairs to purgatory - two hours of trying to hold a conversation with two doting lovers and a fellow who may as well have been a corpse.
It was particularly bill-y and coo-y that night, and I could feel the iced-fish eyes staring through me the whole time. Finny's people have a grand cook, which is probably why their house-parties pull such a great crowd for the first few days, but my enjoyment of the bouillabaisse was severely depressed under the circs. I tried to amuse myself by telling the lurchy chap some stories from the old s., such as the time that Finny and I scandalized the populace by spiking the fountain with washing-up liquid and putting on a bubble show like that girl in the Follies, but between his lack of response and the way the other protag. in the tale was doing the limpid-pools act at the other end of the table, it just didn't do much to raise my spirits.
I was carefully sculpting my pommes de terre aux jardinière comme fou into a rather spiffing little model of the forementioned fountain when things at the far end took a turn for the dramatic. The addition actually upset his chair in order to pull the bended k., and proceeded to make the sort of speech that probably seems like a very good idea in the mind of either speechmaker or pink-cover-novelist but which has always struck me as sort of ridiculous. Really, my only thoughts were "How on earth did he get hold of a rock that big on notice this short?" and "Finny is going to strain her wrist wearing that thing."
Not that I was jealous.
Now, up to this point, you understand, the lurchy chap had never said a single word. He didn't propose to break his streak, either - but apparently moved by the outpouring of emotion we were playing witness to, he offered me his hand in marriage. Or, at any rate, he offered me his hand. I found this extremely disturbing, as until then I hadn't even realized they were detachable.
The only thing I could think of to do was grab him by the wrist and try to stick him back together, which was why, when Finny was done tearfully repeating the word "yes" over and over and happened to glance over at us, we were holding hands under the table and staring at each other in a way which I suppose could have been misinterpreted as soulful if the lurchy chap possessed a soul.
After that I sort of got caught up in Finny's dance of joy. I felt like a tadpole must when some tyke yanks it out of its puddle and puts it in an old jam-jar and goes gallivanting around showing it off. They probably don't understand why they're worth making a fuss over, either. It wasn't until several hours later, when Finny produced a massive tome of wedding-dress styles from somewhere and proceeded to call out ones she thought would suit me as well as herself, that I finally twigged it, and then I was put in mind of the tadpoles again. Mine always died.
To say that I did not wish to marry the lurchy chap would be like saying that Daphne did not wish to marry Apollo, if those are the Greeks I'm thinking of, and if I could have turned myself into a tree I would have done it in a heartbeat. As it was, though, I was sort of stuck. I swear Finny never stopped moving or talking long enough for me to fit a word in edgewise; before I knew it she'd declared it a double wedding and had invitations ordered, and there it was, right under the Euphonia Smith: Beatrice Van Walden. I couldn't very well back out of it now. She'd already paid for the printing. It would be rude.
Things buzzed along merrily after that, at least for Finny; her fiancé was in and out of the house, bringing friends back occasionally - unfortunately, none of them were single; but then, neither was I, as horrifying as I found the thought - as was just about everyone we knew, popping in for congratulatory visits and such. It would really have been fun, and definitely a vast improvement over most of the previous weeks, if there hadn't been the spectre of doom lurching over me at all times.
I gave it the old school try, really I did; spent some time with him, telling him about myself and attempting to make things livable. People marry people they don't love all the time; if I could just learn to tolerate him, we could live in separate wings of our eventual house and only see each other at breakfast or something. But really, he was just too much. All the mentholated petroleum in the world couldn't induce me to kiss him; it was all I could do not to faint when he attempted to hug me - and I don't mean swoon, either. But what could I do? Short of ripping out his neck-bolts and hoping he'd die permanently - and I sort of draw the line at murder, even under the circs - I couldn't think of anything at all that wouldn't put me in dutch with Finny. So with heavy heart I followed her down the rose-lined path to matrimony.
And so we came to The Fateful Day.
The priest was going through the usual litany of haves and have-nots and so forth, Finny was staring fixedly at her reflection in her lad's shoes, and I was frantically pondering the question of whether the rites of marriage are legally binding if one of the parties is technically deceased, when the door of the chapel was flung open like - oh, what is that thing that was flung open? Someone's tomb. Some Biblical fellow, I mean, not the lurchy chap's.
A long and narrow shadow fell dramatically over the floor, and a long and narrow young man fell rather less-dramatically over it right afterward; I suppose he was expecting the door to put up more of a resistance. When he righted himself, it became apparent that it was Rupert. I had never expected myself to be glad to see him in all my life, but I was. Absolutely overjoyed. You might even go so far as to say ecstatic. And the overjoyedness, if that's a word, only increased when he spoke.
"Oh, bloody - I'm not late, am I, dash it all? Am I in time for the 'speak now or forever hold your piece' bit? I've always sort of wanted to do that, you know; rush in at the dramatic moment and - oh, I've missed it? Well then. I'm still in before the 'I do,' aren't I? That's good enough, then. Because I refuse to forever hold my peace."
He advanced down the aisle and pushed his way in between the lurchy chap and yours truly. Now, Rupert's an insufferable ass, but he doesn't smell of the graveyard; he might talk my ear off over the morning coffee, but at least I'd have a very nice sister-in-law; so I was grinning from ear to ear at the sudden prospect of Not Marrying The Lurchy Chap, and not letting the prospect of Instead Marrying Rupert wiggle its way in and make an unpleasantness. Although his speech kept going, and was rather assish.
"Ladies and gentlemen of the jury - I'm sorry, begin again. Ladies and gentlemen, we are gathered here today to witness the union of two - or four, as the case may be - souls in holy matrimony, the blessed joining which makes of two - or four - disparate humans a family. Or two. It is an important rite - one of the greatest steps a person can take in their mortal life. To cleave together for eternity to another being - this is not a decision which should be made lightly, or for the wrong reasons. And, ladies and gentlemen, I say to you that today, these people are making a mistake. I cannot stand meekly aside and let this happen - I cannot watch this fate unfold itself upon the one I love!"
Gasps from the crowd, of course, and blushes from the narrator; and I was extending the hand which was not engaged in bouquet-holding when Rupert proceeded to firmly reestablish his place as the Assiest Ass To Ever Walk Upon Two Legs.
He took hold of the lurchy chap's hand instead.
He then proceeded to propel the both of them down the aisle at speed, leaving everyone too startled to even gasp again, as they were mostly still recovering from the first gasp and didn't wish to try again with the chap in the aisle and hence closer to them. I could restrain myself no longer.
"What on earth is wrong with you, Rupert Smith?"
He halted and turned to me with an expression of carefully-composed surprise. "He's perfect. He never interrupts!"
The jar of the chapel door swinging shut left the congregation in silence.
The priest had just about regained his composure and was thumbing for his place in the B.C.P. when Finny gave herself a bit of a shake, like a cat that's just had water on it, and put her foot down - quite literally; I heard the stomp. Quite a fearsome stomp she has when she wants to, you know.
"Oh, this is ridiculous. If Rupert's going to run off with some bloke just because he says he's in love, I'm bloody well going to run off with a girl for the same reason. Come on, Beetle, it's you and me and the world."
Well, you know, Finny's just the tops. I'd let her borrow one of my favourite pairs of shoes for the blessed event, and she had my second-best hat packed up in her trousseau for a travelling costume, and what's your heart and soul compared to that?
So hand in hand we progressed out of the chapel; and as we reached the nave I heard the organist hastily strike up the Wedding March. I may have also heard the voice of Finny's fiancé, but as the voice I heard was saying things which ought never be uttered in a house of worship, I'll give him the benefit of the doubt and say it was someone else.
Of course I simply had to ask Finny as we motored away, tidily tucked in the back of an auto between a baffled chauffeur and a collection of ribbons and tin cans, how it was that Rupert was able to stomach the odor.
"Oh - that. Rupert hasn't any sense of smell at all, love, didn't you know? He hasn't had since the Chicken Incident when he was ten; and then, of course, he did an awful lot of blow at Eton."
As far as I'm aware we are all of us living happily ever after, with the exception of family Christmases, when Finny and I must break out the mentholated petroleum once more for the sake of jollity and being physically capable of enjoying Anatole's figgy pudding.
The end!
P.S. Oh - you might be wondering what happened to Finny's lad. Well, so is she, to tell you the truth, but his name never popped up in the obituaries, so one can safely assume he didn't do anything rash like toss himself off the White Cliffs of Dover or something. I don't even remember his name, personally.
P.P.S. ...Which I suppose means he MAY have tossed himself off the White Cliffs of Dover and I didn't notice.
P.P.P.S. Finny says he didn't. And his name was Roger.
P.P.P.P.S. Apparently the lurchy chap's name was Frank. Ugh! Can you imagine being married to someone named Frank?