Madame Eulalie’s Rare PlumsCollier’s Weekly, May 18, 1929
The Story Thus Far:
In Blandings Castle, England, lives Clarence, ninth Earl of Emsworth, whose chief interest is the Empress of Blandings, his prize pig. With him live his sister, Lady Constance Keeble; his niece, Millicent; his brother, the Honorable Galahad Threepwood, now writing his Reminiscences to the dismay of many respectable men whom he knew in their young and wild days; his secretary, Hugo Carmody, secretly engaged to Millicent and his nephew, Ronald Fish, secretly engaged to Sue Brown, a chorus girl. When Ronnie and Sue accidentally meet Lady Constance in London, Ronnie introduces Sue as Miss Schoonmaker, a wealthy American girl whom he and his mother, Lady Julia, had met at Biarritz and whom Lady Julia invited to visit at Blandings. He wires the real Miss Schoonmaker in Lady Constance’s name not to come to Blandings because of an epidemic there.
Ronnie, with the butler’s aid, steals the Empress and hides her in a disused cottage, planning to “find” her later, thus gaining his trustee’s gratitude and a share of his own capital which he needs to marry Sue. Hugo is sent to London to get a detective from the Argus Inquiry Agency, Mgr. P. Frobisher Pilbeam, to find the pig. Pilbeam refuses to take the case.
At Mario’s that night Sue and Hugo are dancing when Pilbeam appears and finds a long-sought opportunity to approach Sue. Ronnie, come to London to see Sue and having traced her to Mario’s, finds her with Pilbeam and is so enraged he breaks their engagement. The next day Millicent breaks with Hugo. Sue decides to go to Blandings as Miss Schoonmaker to see Ronnie and explain.
Galahad accuses Sir Gregory Parsloe-Parsloe, owner of the rival pig, of having stolen the Empress and threatens to put in his Reminiscences the ruinous story of the prawns. Parsloe offers Pilbeam 500 pounds to get the manuscript. Pilbeam accepts the Empress-hunting job so that he can be on the ground to steal the manuscript, and asks Parsloe to give him a clear field by inviting Galahad to dinner. Parsloe decides to enlist the aid of Lady Constance. She had already invited to Blandings the Efficient Baxter, former secretary of Lord Emsworth, with secret instructions to steal the manuscript.
VII
HAVING re-read the half-dozen pages which he had written since luncheon, the Hon. Galahad Threepwood attached them with a brass paper-fastener to the main body of his monumental work and placed the manuscript in its drawer, lovingly, like a young mother putting her first-born to bed. The day’s work was done. Rising from the desk, he yawned and stretched himself.
He was ink-stained but cheerful. Happiness, as solid thinkers have often pointed out, comes from giving pleasure to others; and the little anecdote which he had just committed to paper would, he knew, give great pleasure to a considerable number of his fellowmen. All over England they would be rolling out of their seats when they read it. True their enjoyment might possibly not be shared to its fullest extent by Sir Gregory Parsloe-Parsloe of Matchingham Hall, for what the Hon. Galahad had just written was the story of the prawns; but the first lesson an author has to learn is that he cannot please everybody.
He left the small library which he had commandeered as a private study and, descending the broad staircase, observed Beach in the hall below. The butler was standing mountainously beside the tea-table, staring in a sort of trance at a plateful of anchovy sandwiches, and it struck the Hon. Galahad, not for the first time in the last few days, that he appeared to have something on his mind. A strained, haunted look he seemed to have, as if he had done a murder and was afraid somebody was going to find the body.
A more practiced physiognomist would have been able to interpret that look. It was the one that butlers always wear when they have allowed themselves to be persuaded against their better judgment into becoming accessories before the fact in the theft of their employers’ pigs.
“Beach,” he said, speaking over the banisters, for he had just remembered that there was a question he wanted to ask the man about the somewhat eccentric Major-General Magnus in whose employ Beach had once been.
“What’s the matter with you?” he added with some irritation. For the butler, jerked from his reverie, had jumped a couple of inches and shaken all over in a manner that was most trying to watch.
“I beg your pardon, sir?”
“Why on earth do you spring like that when anyone speaks to you? I’ve noticed it before. He leaps,” he said complainingly to his niece Millicent, who now came down the stairs with slow, listless steps. “When addressed, he quivers like a harpooned whale.”
“Oh?” said Millicent dully. She had dropped into a chair and picked up a book. She looked like something that might have occurred to Ibsen in one of his less frivolous moments.
“I am extremely sorry, Mr. Galahad.”
“No use being sorry. Thing is not to do it. If you are practicing the shimmy for the Servants’ Ball, be advised by an old friend and give it up. You haven’t the build.”
“I think I may have caught a chill, sir.”
“Take a stiff whisky toddy. Put you right in no time. What’s the car doing out there?”
“Her ladyship ordered it, sir. I understand that she and Mr. Baxter are going to Market Blandings to meet the train arriving at four-forty.”
“Somebody expected?”
“The American young lady, sir. Miss Schoonmaker.”
“Of course, yes. I remember. She arrives today, does she?”
“Yes, sir.”
The Hon. Galahad mused.
“SCHOONMAKER. I used to know old Johnny Schoonmaker well. A great fellow. Mixed the finest mint-juleps in America. Have you ever tasted a mint-julep, Beach?”
“Not to my recollection, sir.”
“Oh, you’d remember all right if you had. Insidious things. They creep up to you like a baby sister and slide their little hands into yours and the next thing you know the Judge is telling you to pay the clerk of the court fifty dollars. Seen Lord Emsworth anywhere?”
“His lordship is at the telephone, sir.”
“Don’t do it, I tell you!” said the Hon. Galahad petulantly. For once again the butler had been affected by what appeared to be a kind of palsy.
“I beg your pardon, Mr. Galahad. It was something I was suddenly reminded of. There was a gentleman just after luncheon who desired to communicate with you on the telephone. I understood him to say that he was speaking from Oxford, being on his way from London to Blackpool in his automobile. Knowing that you were occupied with your literary work, I refrained from disturbing you. And till I mentioned the word ‘telephone,’ the matter slipped my mind.”
“Who was he?”
“I did not get the gentleman’s name, sir. The wire was faulty. But he desired me to inform you that his business had to do with a dramatic entertainment.”
“A play?”
“Yes, sir,” said Beach, plainly impressed by this happy way of putting it. “I took the liberty of advising him that you might be able to see him later in the afternoon. He said that he would call after tea.”
The butler passed from the hall with heavy, haunted steps, and the Hon. Galahad turned to his niece.
“I KNOW who it is,” he said. “He wrote to me yesterday. It’s a theatrical manager fellow I used to go about with years ago. Man named Mason. He’s got a play, adapted from the French, and he’s had the idea of changing it into the period of the ‘nineties’ and getting me to put my name to it.”
“Oh?”
“On the strength of my book coming out at the same time. Not a bad notion, either. Galahad Threepwood’s name’s going to have box-office value pretty soon. The house’ll be sold out for weeks to all the old buffers who’ll come flocking up to London to see if I’ve put anything about them into it.”
“Oh?” said Millicent.
The Hon. Galahad frowned. He sensed a lack of interest and sympathy.
“What’s the matter with you?” he demanded.
“Nothing.”
“Then why are you looking like that?”
“Like what?”
“Pale and tragic, as if you’d just gone into Tattersall’s and met a bookie you owed money to.”
“I am perfectly happy.”
The Hon. Galahad snorted.
“Yes, radiant. I’ve seen fogs that were cheerier. What the devil has happened to everybody in this house? There’s some excuse, perhaps, for Clarence. If you admit the possibility of a sane man getting so attached to a beastly pig, he has a right to be upset. But what’s wrong with all the rest of you? Ronald! Goes about behaving like a bereaved tomato. Beach! Springs up and down when you speak to him. And that young fellow Carmody . . .”
“I am not interested in Mr. Carmody.”
“This morning,” said the Hon. Galahad, aggrieved, “I told that boy one of the most humorous limericks I ever heard in my life—about an Old Man of—however, that is neither here nor there—and he just gaped at me with his jaw dropping, like a spavined horse looking over a fence. There are mysteries afoot in this house, and I don’t like ’em. The atmosphere of Blandings Castle has changed all of a sudden from that of a normal, happy English home into something Edgar Allan Poe might have written on a rainy Sunday. It’s getting on my nerves.
“Let’s hope this girl of Johnny Schoonmaker’s will cheer us up. If she’s anything like her father, she ought to be a nice, lively girl. But I suppose, when she arrives, it’ll turn out that she’s in mourning for a great-aunt or brooding over the situation in Russia or something. I don’t know what young people are coming to nowadays. Gloomy. Introspective. The old gay spirit seems to have died out altogether. In my young days a girl of your age would have been upstairs making an apple-pie bed for somebody instead of lolling on chairs reading books about Theosophy.”
Snorting once more, the Hon. Galahad disappeared into the smoking-room, and Millicent, tight-lipped, returned to her book. She had been reading for some minutes when she became aware of a long, limp, drooping figure at her side.
“HULLO,” said Hugo, for this ruin of a fine young man was he.
Millicent’s ear twitched, but she did not reply.
“Reading?” said Hugo.
He had been standing on his left leg. With a sudden change of policy, he now shifted, and stood on his right.
“Interesting book?”
Millicent looked up.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Only said—is that an interesting book?”
“Very,” said Millicent.
Hugo decided that his right leg was not a success. He stood on his left again.
“What’s it about?”
“Transmigration of souls.”
“A thing I’m not very well up on.”
“One of the many, I should imagine,” said the haughty girl. “Every day you seem to know less and less about more and more.” She rose, and made for the stairs. “If you’re really anxious to know what transmigration means, it’s simply that some people believe that when you die your soul goes into something else.”
“Rum idea,” said Hugo, becoming more buoyant. He began to draw hope from her chattiness. She had not said as many consecutive words as this to him for quite a time. “Into something else, eh? Odd notion. What do you suppose made them think of that?”
“Yours, for instance, would probably go into a pig. And then I would come along and look into your sty and I’d say, ‘Good gracious! Why, there’s Hugo Carmody. He hasn’t changed a bit!’ ”
The spirit of the Carmodys had been a good deal crushed by recent happenings, but at this it flickered into feeble life.
“I call that a beastly thing to say.”
“Well, I wouldn’t have said it, if I could have thought of anything worse.”
“You know perfectly well that you’re the only girl in the world I ever . . .”
“You make me sick.”
Hugo breathed passionately through his nose.
“So all is over, is it?”
“You can jolly well bet all is over. And if you’re interested in my future plans, I may mention I intend to marry the first man who asks me.”
And as the celebrated James-Thomas-Beach procession had entered with cakes and gate-leg tables and her last word seemed about as good a last word as a girl might reasonably consider herself entitled to, Millicent passed proudly up the stairs.
James withdrew. Thomas withdrew. Beach remained gazing with a hypnotized eye at the cake.
“Beach!” said Hugo.
“Sir?”
“Curse all women!”
“Very good, sir,” said Beach.
He watched the young man disappear through the open front door, heard his footsteps crunch on the gravel, and gave himself up to meditation again. How gladly, he was thinking, if it had not been for upsetting Mr. Ronald’s plans, would he have breathed in his employer’s ear as he filled his glass at dinner, “The pig is in the gamekeeper’s cottage in the west wood, your lordship. Thank you, your lordship.” But it was not to be. His face twisted, as if with sudden pain, and he was aware of the Hon. Galahad emerging from the smoking-room.
“Just remembered something I wanted to ask you, Beach. You were with old General Magnus, weren’t you, some years ago, before you came here?”
“Yes, Mr. Galahad.”
“Then perhaps you can tell me the exact facts about that trouble in 1912. I know the old chap chased young Mandeville three times round the lawn in his pajamas, but did he merely try to stab him with the bread-knife or did he actually get home?”
“I could not say, sir. He did not honor me with his confidence.”
“Infernal nuisance,” said the Hon. Galahad. “I like to get these things right.”
He eyed the butler discontentedly as he retired. More than ever was he convinced that the fellow had something on his mind. The very way he walked showed it. He was about to return to the smoking-room when his brother Clarence came into the hall. And there was in Lord Emsworth’s bearing so strange a gayety that he stood transfixed. It seemed to the Hon. Galahad years since he had seen anyone looking cheerful in Blandings Castle.
“GOOD Lord, Clarence! What’s happened? Found that pig under the drawing-room sofa or something?”
Lord Emsworth beamed.
“I have had the most cheering piece of news, Galahad. That detective—the one I sent young Carmody to see—the Argus man, you know—he has come after all. He drove down in his car and is at this moment in Market Blandings, at the Emsworth Arms. I have been speaking to him on the telephone. He rang up to ask if I still required his services.”
“Well, you don’t.”
“Certainly I do, Galahad. I consider his presence vital.”
“He can’t tell you any more than you know already. There’s only one man who can have stolen that pig, and that’s young Parsloe!”
“Precisely. Yes. Quite true. But this man will be able to collect evidence and bring the thing home and—er—bring it home. He has the trained mind. I consider it most important that the case should be in the hands of a man with a trained mind. We should be seeing him very shortly. I am delighted. Ah, Constance, my dear.”
Lady Constance Keeble, attended by the Efficient Baxter, had appeared at the foot of the stairs. His lordship eyed her a little warily.
“Constance, my dear, a friend of mine is arriving this evening, to spend a few days. I forgot to tell you.”
“Well, we have plenty of room for him,” replied Lady Constance, with surprising amiability. “There is something I forgot to tell you, too. We are dining at Matchingham tonight.”
“Matchingham?” Lord Emsworth was puzzled. He could think of no one who lived in the village of Matchingham except Sir Gregory Parsloe-Parsloe. “With whom?”
“Sir Gregory, of course. Who else do you suppose it would be?”
“What?”
“I had a note from him after luncheon. It was a short notice, of course, but that doesn’t matter in the country. He took it for granted that we were not engaged.”
“Constance!” Lord Emsworth swelled slightly. “Constance. I will not—dash it, I will not—dine with that man. And that’s final.”
Lady Constance smiled a sort of lion-tamer’s smile. She had expected sales-resistance, and was prepared to cope with it. Not readily, she knew, would her brother become Parsloe-conscious.
“PLEASE do not be absurd, Clarence. I thought you would say that. I have already accepted for you, Galahad, myself, and Millicent. If Sir Gregory has most sensibly decided to make the first move toward a reconciliation, we cannot possibly refuse the overture.”
“Indeed? And what about my friend? Arriving this evening.”
“He can look after himself for a few hours, I should imagine.”
“Abominable rudeness, he’ll think it.” This line of attack had occurred to Lord Emsworth quite suddenly. He found it good. “I invite my friend Pilbeam here to pay us a visit, and the moment he arrives we meet him at the front door, dash it, and say, ‘Ah, here you are, Pilbeam! Well, amuse yourself, Pilbeam. We’re off.’ And this Miss—er— . . . this American girl. What will she think?”
“Did you say Pilbeam?” asked the Hon. Galahad.
“It is no use talking, Clarence. Dinner is at eight. And please see that your dress clothes are nicely pressed.”
“Once and for all, I tell you . . .”
At this moment an unexpected ally took the arena on Lady Constance’s side.
“Of course we must go, Clarence,” said the Hon. Galahad, and Lord Emsworth, spinning round to face this flank attack, was surprised to see a swift, meaning wink come and go on his brother’s face. “Nothing gained by having unpleasantness with your neighbors in the country. Always a mistake.”
“Exactly,” said Lady Constance, a little dazed at finding this Saul among the prophets, but glad of the helping hand. “In the country one is quite dependent on one’s neighbors.”
“And young Parsloe—not such a bad chap, Clarence. Lots of good in Parsloe. We shall have a pleasant evening.”
“I am relieved to find that you, at any rate, have sense, Galahad,” said Lady Constance handsomely. “I will leave you to try and drive some of it into Clarence’s head. Come, Mr. Baxter, we shall be late.”
The sound of the car’s engine had died away before Lord Emsworth’s feelings found relief in speech.
“But, Galahad, my dear fellow!”
“It’s all right, Clarence, my boy. I know what I’m doing. I have the situation well in hand.”
“Dine with Parsloe after what has occurred? After what occurred yesterday? It’s impossible. Why on earth the man is inviting us, I can’t understand.”
“I suppose he thinks that if he gives us a dinner I shall relent and omit the prawn story. A clever move.”
“But what do you want to go for?”
The Hon. Galahad raked the hall with a conspiratorial monocle. It appeared to be empty. Nevertheless, he looked under a settee and, going to the front door, swiftly scanned the gravel.
“Shall I tell you something, Clarence?”
“Most decidedly.”
“Something that’ll bring the sparkle to your eyes?”
“By all means. I should enjoy it.”
“You know what we’re going to do? Tonight? After dining with Parsloe and sending Constance back in the car?”
“No.”
The Hon. Galahad placed his lips to his brother’s ear.
“We’re going to steal his pig, my boy.”
“What!”
“It came to me in a flash while Constance was talking. Parsloe stole the Empress. Very well, we’ll steal Pride of Matchingham. Then we’ll be in a position to look young Parsloe squarely in the eye and say ‘What about it?’ ”
Lord Emsworth swayed gently. His brain, never a strong one, had tottered perceptibly on its throne.
“Galahad!”
“Only thing to do. Reprisals. Recognized military maneuvers.”
“But how? Galahad, how can it be done?”
“Easily. If young Parsloe stole the Empress, why should we have any difficulty in stealing his animal? You show me where he keeps it, my boy, and I’ll do the rest. Puffy Benger and I stole old Wivenhoe’s pig at Hammers Easton in the year ’95. We put it in Plug Basham’s bedroom. And we’ll put Parsloe’s pig in a bedroom, too.”
“In a bedroom?”
“Well, a sort of bedroom. Where are we to hide the animal, that’s what you’ve been asking yourself, isn’t it? I’ll tell you. We’re going to put it in that caravan that your flower-pot-throwing friend Baxter arrived in. Nobody’s going to think of looking there. Then we’ll be in a position to talk terms to young Parsloe, and I think he will very soon see the game is up.”
Lord Emsworth was looking at his brother almost devoutly. He had always known that Galahad’s intelligence was superior to his own, but he had never realized it could soar to quite such lofty heights as this. It was, he supposed, the result of the life his brother had lived. He himself, sheltered through the peaceful, uneventful years at Blandings Castle, had allowed his brain to become comparatively atrophied. But Galahad, battling through these same years with hostile skittle-sharps and the sort of man that used to be a member of the old Pelican Club, had kept his clear and vigorous.
“YOU really think it would be feasible?”
“Trust me. By the way, Clarence, this man Pilbeam of yours. Do you know if he was ever anything except a detective?”
“I have no idea, my dear fellow. I know nothing of him. I have merely spoken to him on the telephone. Why?”
“Oh, nothing. I’ll ask him when he arrives. Where are you going?”
“Into the garden.”
“It’s raining.”
“I have my mackintosh. I really—I feel I really must walk about after what you have told me. I am in a state of considerable excitement.”
“Well, work it off before you see Constance again. It won’t do to have her start suspecting there’s something up. If there’s anything you want to ask me about, you’ll find me in the smoking-room.”
For some twenty minutes the hall of Blandings Castle remained empty. Then Beach appeared. At the same moment, from the gravel outside there came the purring of a high-powered car and the sound of voices. Beach posed himself in the doorway, looking, as he always did on these occasions, like the Spirit of Blandings welcoming the lucky guest.
“Leave the door open, Beach,” said Lady Constance.
“Very good, your ladyship.”
“I think the smell of the wet earth and the flowers is so refreshing, don’t you?”
The butler did not—he was not one of your fresh-air men. Rightly conjecturing, however, that the question had been addressed not to him but to the girl in the beige suit who had accompanied the speaker up the steps, he forbore to reply. He cast an appraising bulging-eyed look at this girl and decided that she met with his approval. Smaller and slighter than the type of woman he usually admired, he found her, nevertheless, even by his own exacting standards of criticism, noticeably attractive. He liked her face and he liked the way she was dressed. Her frock was right, her shoes were right, her stockings were right, and her hat was right. As far as Beach was concerned, Sue had passed the Censor.
Her demeanor pleased him, too. From the flush on her face and the sparkle in her eyes, she seemed to be taking her first entry into Blandings Castle in quite the proper spirit of reverential excitement.
“I don’t think this shower will last long,” said Lady Constance.
“No,” said Sue, smiling brightly.
“And now you must be wanting some tea after your journey.”
“Yes,” said Sue, smiling brightly.
IT SEEMED to her that she had been smiling brightly for centuries. The moment she had alighted from the train and found her formidable hostess and this strangely sinister Mr. Baxter waiting to meet her on the platform, she had begun to smile brightly and had been doing it ever since.
“Usually we have tea on the lawn. It is so nice there.”
“It must be.”
“When the rain is over, Mr. Baxter, you must show Miss Schoonmaker the rose garden.”
“I shall be delighted,” said the Efficient Baxter.
He flashed gleaming spectacles in her direction, and a momentary panic gripped Sue. She feared that already this man had probed her secret. In his glance, it seemed to her, there shone suspicion.
Such, however, was not the case. It was only the combination of large spectacles and heavy eyebrows that had created the illusion. Although Rupert Baxter was a man who generally suspected everybody on principle, it so happened that he had accepted Sue without question. The glance was an admiring, almost a loving glance. It would be too much to say that Baxter had already fallen a victim to Sue’s charms, but the good looks which he saw and the wealth which he had been told about were undeniably beginning to fan the hidden fire.
“My brother is a great rose-grower.”
“Yes, isn’t he? I mean I think roses are lovely.” The spectacles were beginning to sap Sue’s morale. They seemed to be eating into her soul like some sort of corrosive acid. “How nice and old everything is here,” she went on hurriedly. “What is that funny-looking gargoyle thing over there?”
What she actually referred to was a Japanese mask which hung from the wall, and it was unfortunate that the Hon. Galahad should have chosen this moment to come out of the smoking-room. It made the question seem personal.
“My brother Galahad,” said Lady Constance. “Galahad, this is Miss Schoonmaker.”
“Really?” the Hon. Galahad trotted briskly up. “Is it? Bless my soul! Well, well, well!”
“How do you do?” said Sue, smiling brightly.
“How are you, my dear? I know your father intimately.”
The bright smile faded. Sue had tried to plan this venture of hers carefully, looking ahead for all possible pitfalls, but that she would encounter people who knew Mr. Schoonmaker intimately she had not foreseen.
“Haven’t seen him lately, of course. Let me see . . . Must be twenty-five years since we met. Yes, quite twenty-five years.”
A WARM and lasting friendship was destined to spring up between Sue and the Hon. Galahad Threepwood, but never in the whole course of it did she experience again quite the gush of whole-hearted affection which surged over her at these words.
“I wasn’t born then,” she said.
The Hon. Galahad was babbling on happily.
“A great fellow, old Johnny. You’ll find some stories about him in my book. I’m writing my Reminiscences, you know. Fine sportsman, old Johnny. Great grief to him, I remember, when he broke his leg and had to go into a nursing-home in the middle of the racing season. However, he made the best of it. Got the nurses interested in current form and used to make a book with them in fruit and cigarettes and things. I recollect coming to see him one day and finding him quite worried. He was a most conscientious man, with a horror of not settling up when he lost, and apparently one of the girls had had a suet dumpling on the winner of the three o’clock race at fifteen to eight, and he couldn’t figure out what he had got to pay her.”
Sue, laughing gratefully, was aware of a drooping presence at her side.
“My niece Millicent,” said Lady Constance. “Millicent, my dear, this is Miss Schoonmaker.”
“How do you do?” said Sue, smiling brightly.
“How do you do?” said Millicent, like the silent tomb breaking its silence.
Sue regarded her with interest. So this was Hugo’s Millicent. The sight of her caused Sue to wonder at the ardent nature of that young man’s devotion. Millicent was pretty, but she would have thought that one of his exuberant disposition would have preferred something a little livelier.
She was startled to observe in the girl’s eye a look of surprise. In a situation as delicate as hers was, Sue had no wish to occasion surprise to anyone.
“Ronnie’s friend?” asked Millicent. “The Miss Schoonmaker Ronnie met at Biarritz?”
“Yes,” said Sue faintly.
“But I thought you were very tall. I’m sure Ronnie told me so.”
“I suppose almost anyone seems tall to that boy,” said the Hon. Galahad.
Sue took a deep breath. Life at Blandings Castle was plainly going to be a series of shocks. She sat back with a sensation of dizziness. Baxter’s spectacles seemed to her to be glittering more suspiciously than ever.
“Have you seen Ronald anywhere, Millicent?” asked Lady Constance.
“Not since lunch. I suppose he’s out in the garden somewhere.”
“I saw him half an hour ago,” said the Hon. Galahad. “He came mooning along under my window while I was polishing up some stuff I wrote this afternoon. I called to him, but he just grunted and wandered off.”
“He will be surprised to find you here,” said Lady Constance, turning to Sue. “Your telegram did not arrive till after lunch, so he does not know that you were planning to come today. Unless you told him, Galahad.”
“I didn’t tell him. Never occurred to me that he knew Miss Schoonmaker. Forgot you’d met him at Biarritz. What was he like then? Reasonably cheerful?”
“Yes, I think so.”
“Didn’t scowl and jump and gasp and quiver all over the place?”
“No.”
“Then something must have happened when he went up to London. It was after he came back that I remember noticing that he seemed upset about something. Ah, the rain’s stopped.”
Lady Constance looked over her shoulder.
“The sky still looks very threatening,” she said, “but you might be able to get out for a few minutes. Mr. Baxter,” she explained, “is going to show Miss Schoonmaker the rose garden.”
“No, he isn’t,” said the Hon. Galahad, who had been scrutinizing Sue through his monocle with growing appreciation. “I am. Old Johnny Schoonmaker’s little girl . . . why, there are a hundred things I want to discuss.”
The last thing Sue desired was to be left alone with the intimidating Baxter. She rose quickly.
“I should love to come,” she said.
The prospect of discussing the intimate affairs of the Schoonmaker family was not an agreeable one, but anything was better than the society of the spectacles.
“Perhaps,” said the Hon. Galahad, as he led her to the door, “you’ll be able to put me right about that business of old Johnny and the mysterious woman at the New Year’s Eve party. As I got the story, Johnny suddenly found this female—a perfect stranger, mind you—with her arms round his neck, telling him in a confidential undertone that she had made up her mind to go straight back to Des Moines, Iowa, and stick a knife into Fred. What he had done to win her confidence and who Fred was and whether she ever did stick a knife into him, your father hadn’t found out by the time I left for home.”
His voice died away, and a moment later the Efficient Baxter, starting as if a sudden thought had entered his powerful brain, rose abruptly and made quickly for the stairs.
THE rose garden at Blandings Castle was a famous beauty spot. Enthusiastic horticulturists frequently went pottering and sniffing about it for hours on end. The tour through its fragrant groves personally conducted by the Hon. Galahad Threepwood lasted some six minutes.
“Well, that’s what it is, you see,” he said, as they emerged, waving a hand vaguely. “Roses and—er roses, and all that sort of thing. You get the idea. And now, if you don’t mind, I ought to be getting back. I want to keep in touch with the house. It slipped my mind, but I’m expecting a man to call to see me at any moment on some rather important business.”
She was quite willing to return. She liked her companion, but she had found his company embarrassing. The subject of the Schoonmaker family history showed a tendency to bulk too largely in his conversation for comfort. Fortunately, his practice of asking a question and answering it himself and then rambling off into some anecdote of the person or persons involved had enabled her so far to avoid disaster; but there was no saying how long this happy state of things would last. She was glad of the opportunity of being alone.
Besides, Ronnie was somewhere out in these grounds. At any moment, if she went wandering through them, she might come upon him. And then, she told herself, all would be well. Surely he could not preserve his sullen hostility in the face of the fact that she had come all this way, pretending dangerously to be Miss Schoonmaker of New York, simply in order to see him?
Her companion, she found, was still talking.
“He wants to see me about a play. This book of mine is going to make a stir, you see, and he thinks that if he can get me to put my name to the play . . .”
SUE’S thoughts wandered again. She gathered that the caller he was expecting had to do with the theatrical industry, and wondered for a moment if it was anyone she had ever heard of. She was not sufficiently interested to make inquiries. She was too busy thinking of Ronnie.
“I shall be quite happy,” she said, as the voice beside her ceased. “It’s such a lovely place. I shall enjoy just wandering about by myself.”
The Hon. Galahad seemed shocked at the idea.
“Wouldn’t dream of leaving you alone. Clarence will look after you, and I shall be back in a few minutes.”
The name seemed to Sue to strike a familiar chord. Then she remembered. Lord Emsworth. Ronnie’s Uncle Clarence. The man who held Ronnie’s destinies in the hollow of his hand.
“Hi! Clarence!” called the Hon. Galahad.
Sue perceived pottering toward them a long, stringy man of mild, benevolent aspect. She was conscious of something of a shock. In Ronnie’s conversation, the Earl of Emsworth had always appeared in the light of a sort of latter-day ogre, a man at whom the stoutest nephew might well shudder. She saw nothing formidable in this newcomer.
“Is that Lord Emsworth?” she asked, surprised.
“Yes. Clarence, this is Miss Schoonmaker.”
His Lordship had pottered up and was beaming amiably.
“Is it, indeed? Oh, ah, yes, to be sure. Delighted. How are you? How are you? Miss Who?”
“Schoonmaker. Daughter of my old friend Johnny Schoonmaker. You knew she was arriving. Considering that you were in the hall when Constance went to meet her. . . .”
“Oh, yes.” The cloud was passing from what, for want of a better word, must be called Lord Emsworth’s mind. “Yes, yes, yes. Yes, to be sure.”
“I’ve got to leave you to look after her for a few moments, Clarence.”
“Certainly, certainly.”
“Take her about and show her things. I wouldn’t go too far from the house, if I were you. There’s a storm coming up.”
“Exactly. Precisely. Yes, I will take her about and show her things. Are you fond of pigs?”
Sue had never considered this point before. Hers had been an urban life, and she could not remember ever having come into contact with a pig on what might be termed a social footing. But, remembering that this was the man whom Ronnie had described as being wrapped up in one of these animals, she smiled her bright smile.
“Oh, yes. Very.”
“Mine has been stolen.”
“I’m so sorry.”
Lord Emsworth was visibly pleased at this womanly sympathy.
“But I now have strong hopes that she may be recovered. The trained mind is everything. What I always say . . .”
WHAT it was that Lord Emsworth always said was unfortunately destined to remain unrevealed. It would probably have been something good, but the world was not to hear it; for at this moment, completely breaking his train of thought, there came from above, from the direction of the window of the small library, an odd, scrabbling sound. Something shot through the air. And the next instant there appeared in the middle of a flower bed containing lobelias something that was so manifestly not a lobelia that he stared at it in stunned amazement, speech wiped from his lips as with a sponge.
It was the Efficient Baxter. He was on all fours, and seemed to be groping about for his spectacles, which had fallen off and got hidden in the undergrowth.
Annotations to this novel in book form are on this site.
Printer’s errors corrected above:
p. 10d: Magazine had “all the old bluffers who’ll come flocking up to London”; corrected to “buffers” as in US and UK books.
p. 11d: Magazine had “Yes, Mr. Gallahad.”
p. 68a: Magazine had “ ‘Well, amuse yourself, Pilbeam. We’re off,’ And this Miss—”; comma after “off” changed to period as in books.