Madame Eulalie’s Rare PlumsThe Pall Mall Magazine, April 1929
The Story So Far:
BLANDINGS Castle slept in the sunshine and Beach, butler to Clarence, ninth Earl of Emsworth, its proprietor, sat in the shade. Suddenly, Mr. Hugo Carmody, the Earl’s secretary, rose from out of a laurel bush and begged Beach to tell Miss Millicent she would find him in the rose garden at six sharp. Hugo’s furtive way was due entirely to his unpopularity with Lady Constance Keeble, his employer’s sister. Hugo had been until recently co-proprietor with Mr. Ronald Fish, Lord Emsworth’s nephew, of the Hot Spot Night Club. The club had failed and Ronald had gone off with his mother, Lady Julia Fish, to Biarritz, but only on condition that a job was found for his boyhood friend Hugo. Lord Emsworth’s previous secretary, one Baxter, had just been dismissed for throwing flowerpots at his Lordship—though certainly he was only trying to call attention to the fact that he had been locked out—so Hugo was appointed in his place, much to Lady Constance’s disapproval, who disliked Hugo and began at once to scheme for Baxter’s return.
Tea time approached and with it Clarence, ninth Earl, fresh from inspecting his prize sow, Empress of Blandings, who was expected to win for the second time the silver medal at the Shropshire Show. Lady Constance and her niece Millicent were the next arrivals and soon came Gally, otherwise the Hon. Galahad Threepwood, the Earl’s brother. Far from showing signs of the wear and tear that should result from a misspent youth, Gally was extremely bright in looks and manner, and far also from trying to forget that misspent youth, he had lately embarked on the writing of his Reminiscences. “What year was it,” he now enquired, “when young Parsloe stole Lord Burper’s false teeth and pawned them in the Edgware Road?” Sir Gregory Parsloe-Parsloe was a near neighbour, a hated rival in pig-owning of Lord Emsworth, and a friend of Lady Constance, so this was received with mixed feelings. Gally flitted away and, changing the subject, Lady Constance made enquiry as to her niece’s intentions with regard to Ronald, stating that a most charming American girl, a Miss Schoonmaker appeared to be quite taken with him and that Hugo was not at all a nice young man being at the moment entangled with some impossible chorus girl. “Good luck to Miss Doopenhacker,” said Millicent, and wandered off towards the rose-garden.
4
A YOUNG man who has arranged to meet the girl he loves in the rose-garden at six sharp naturally goes there at five-twenty-five, so as not to be late. Hugo Carmody had done this, with the result that by three minutes to six he was feeling as if he had been marooned among roses since the beginning of the summer.
If anybody had told Hugo Carmody six months before that half-way through the following July he would be lurking in trysting-places like this, his whole being alert for the coming of a girl, he would have scoffed at the idea. He would have laughed lightly. Not that he had not been fond of girls. He had always liked girls. But they had been, as it were, the mere playthings, so to speak, of a financial giant’s idle hour. Six months ago he had been the keen, iron-souled man of business, all his energies and thoughts devoted to the management of the Hot Spot.
But now he stood shuffling his feet and starting hopefully at every sound while the leaden moments passed sluggishly on their way. Then his vigil was enlivened by a wasp, which stung him on the back of the hand. He was leaping to and fro, licking his wounds, when he perceived the girl of his dreams coming down the path.
“Ah!” cried Hugo.
He ceased to leap and, rushing forward, would have clasped her in a fond embrace. Many people advocate the old-fashioned blue-bag for wasp-stings, but Hugo preferred this treatment.
To his astonishment she drew back. And she was not a girl who usually drew back on these occasions.
“What’s the matter?” he asked, pained. It seemed to him that a spanner had been bunged into a holy moment.
“Nothing.”
Hugo was concerned. He did not like the way she was looking at him. Her soft blue eyes appeared to have been turned into stone.
“I say,” he said, “I’ve just been stung by a beastly great wasp.”
“Good!” said Millicent. The way she was talking seemed to him worse than the way she was looking.
Hugo’s concern increased.
“I say, what’s up?”
The granite eye took on an added hardness.
“You want to know what’s up?”
“Yes—what’s up?”
“I’ll tell you what’s up.”
“Well, what’s up?” asked Hugo.
He waited for enlightenment, but she had fallen into a chilling silence.
“You know,” said Hugo, breaking it, “I’m getting pretty fed up with all this secrecy and general snakiness. Seeing you for an occasional odd five minutes a day and having to put on false whiskers and hide in bushes to manage that. I know the Keeble looks on me as a sort of cross between a leper and a nosegay of deadly nightshade, but I’m strong with the old boy. I talk pig to him. You might almost say I play on him as on a stringed instrument. So what’s wrong with going to him and telling him in a frank and manly way that we love each other and are going to get married?”
The marble of Millicent’s face was disturbed by one of those quick, sharp, short, bitter smiles that do nobody any good.
“Why should we lie to Uncle Clarence?”
“Eh?”
“I say why should we tell him something that isn’t true?”
“I don’t get your drift.”
“I will continue snowing,” said Millicent coldly. “I am not quite sure if I am ever going to speak to you again in this world or the next. Much will depend on how good you are as an explainer. I have it on the most excellent authority that you are entangled with a chorus-girl. How about it?”
Hugo reeled. But then St. Anthony himself would have reeled if a charge like that had suddenly been hurled at him. The best of men require time to overhaul their consciences on such occasions. A moment, and he was himself again.
“It’s a lie!”
“Name of Brown.”
“Not a word of truth in it. I haven’t set eyes on Sue Brown since I first met you.”
“No. You’ve been down here all the time.”
“And when I was setting eyes on her—why, dash it, my attitude from start to finish was one of blameless, innocent, one hundred per cent. brotherliness. A wholesome friendship. Brotherly. Nothing more. I liked dancing and she liked dancing and our steps fitted. So occasionally we would go out together and tread the measure. That’s all there was to it. Pure brotherliness. Nothing more. I looked on myself as a sort of brother.”
“Brother, eh?”
“Absolutely a brother. Don’t,” urged Hugo earnestly, “go running away, my dear old prune, with any sort of silly notion that Sue Brown was something in the nature of a vamp. She’s one of the nicest girls you would ever want to meet.”
“Nice, is she?”
“A sweet girl. A girl in a million. A real good sort. A sound egg.”
“Pretty, I suppose?”
The native good sense of the Carmodys asserted itself at the eleventh hour.
“Not pretty,” said Hugo decidedly. “Not pretty, no. Not at all pretty. Far from pretty. Totally lacking in sex-appeal, poor girl. But nice. A good sort. No nonsense about her. Sisterly.”
Millicent pondered.
“H’m,” she said.
Nature paused, listening. Birds checked their song, insects their droning. It was as if it had got about that this young man’s fate hung in the balance and the returns would be in shortly.
“Well, all right,” she said at length. “I suppose I’ll have to believe you.”
“ ’At’s the way to talk!”
“But just you bear this in mind, my lad. Any funny business from now on . . .”
“As if . . .!”
“One more attack of that brotherly urge . . .”
“As though . . .!”
“All right, then.”
Hugo inhaled vigorously. He felt like a man who has just dodged a wounded tigress.
“Banzai!” he said. “Sweethearts still!”
5
BLANDINGS Castle dozed in the twilight. Its various inmates were variously occupied. Clarence, ninth Earl of Emsworth, after many a longing lingering look behind, had dragged himself away from the Empress’s boudoir and was reading his well-thumbed copy of British Pigs. The Hon. Galahad, having fixed up the Parsloe-Burper passage, was skimming through his day’s output with an artist’s complacent feeling that this was the stuff to give ’em. Butler Beach was pasting the Hon. Galahad’s photograph into his album. Millicent, in her bedroom, was looking a little thoughtfully into her mirror. Hugo, in the billiard-room, was practising pensive cannons and thinking loving thoughts of his lady, coupled with an occasional reflection that a short, swift binge in London would be a great wheeze if he could wangle it.
And in her boudoir on the second floor, Lady Constance Keeble had taken pen in hand and was poising it over a sheet of notepaper.
“Dear Mr. Baxter,” she wrote.
CHAPTER II
1
THE brilliant sunshine which so enhanced the attractions of life at Blandings Castle had brought less pleasure to those of England’s workers whose duties compelled them to remain in London. In his offices on top of the Regal Theatre in Shaftesbury Avenue, Mr. Mortimer Mason, the stout senior partner in the firm of Mason and Saxby, Theatrical Enterprises Ltd., was of opinion that what the country really needed was one of those wedge-shaped depressions off the Coast of Iceland. Apart from making him feel like a gaffed salmon, Flaming July was ruining business. Only last night, to cut down expenses, he had had to dismiss some of the chorus from the show downstairs, and he hated dismissing chorus-girls. He was a kind-hearted man, and, having been in the profession himself in his time, knew what it meant to get one’s notice in the middle of the summer.
There was a tap on the door. The human watch-dog who guarded the outer offices entered.
“Well?” said Mortimer Mason wearily.
“Can you see Miss Brown, sir?”
“Which Miss Brown? Sue?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Of course.” In spite of the heat, Mr. Mason brightened. “Is she outside?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Then pour her in.”
Mortimer Mason had always felt a fatherly fondness for this girl Sue Brown. He liked her for her own sake, for her unvarying cheerfulness and the honest way she worked. But what endeared her more particularly to him was the fact that she was Dolly Henderson’s daughter. London was full of elderly gentlemen who became pleasantly maudlin when they thought of Dolly Henderson and the dear old days when the heart was young and they had had waists. He heaved himself from his chair: then fell back again, filled with a sense of intolerable injury.
“My God!” he cried. “Don’t look so cool.”
The rebuke was not undeserved. On an afternoon when the asphalt is bubbling in the roadways and theatrical managers melting where they sit, no girl has a right to resemble a dewy rose plucked from some old-world garden. And that, Mr. Mason considered, was just what this girl was deliberately resembling. She was a tiny thing, mostly large eyes and a wide, happy smile. She had a dancer’s figure and in every movement of her there was Youth.
“Sorry, Pa.” She laughed, and Mr. Mason moaned faintly. Her laugh had reminded him, for his was a nature not without its poetical side, of ice tinkling in a jug of beer. “Try not looking at me.”
“Well, Sue, what’s on your mind? Come to tell me you’re going to be married.”
“Not at the moment, I’m afraid.”
“Hasn’t that young man of yours got back from Biarritz yet?”
“He arrived this morning. I had a note during the matinée. I suppose he’s outside now, waiting for me. Want to have a look at him?”
“Does it mean walking downstairs?” asked Mr. Mason, guardedly.
“No. He’ll be in his car. You can see him from the window.”
Mr. Mason was equal to getting to the window. He peered down at the rakish sports-model two-seater in the little street below. Its occupant was lying on his spine, smoking a cigarette in a long holder and looking austerely at certain children of the neighbourhood whom he seemed to suspect of being about to scratch his paint.
“They’re making fiancés very small this season,” said Mr. Mason, concluding his inspection.
“He is small, isn’t he? He’s sensitive about it, poor darling. Still, I’m small, too, so that’s all right.”
“Fond of him?”
“Frightfully.”
“Who is he, anyway? Yes, I know his name’s Fish, and it doesn’t mean a thing to me. Any money?”
“I believe he’s got quite a lot, only his uncle keeps it all. Lord Emsworth. He’s Ronnie’s trustee, or something.”
“Emsworth? I knew his brother years ago.” Mr. Mason chuckled reminiscently. “Old Gally! What a lad! I’ve got a scheme I’d like to interest old Gally in. I wonder where he is now.”
“The Prattler this week said he was down at Blandings Castle. That’s Lord Emsworth’s place in Shropshire. Ronnie’s going down there this evening.”
“Deserting you so soon?” Mortimer Mason shook his head. “I don’t like this.”
Sue laughed.
“Well, I don’t,” said Mr. Mason. “You be careful. These lads will all bear watching.”
“Don’t worry, Pa. He means to do right by our Nell.”
“Well, don’t say I didn’t warn you. So old Gally is at Blandings, is he? I must remember that. I’d like to get in touch with him. And now, what was it you wanted to see me about?”
Sue became grave.
“I’ve come to ask you a favour.”
“Go ahead. You know me.”
“It’s about those girls you’re getting rid of.”
Mr. Mason’s genial face took on a managerial look.
“Got to get rid of them.”
“I know. But one of them’s Sally Field.”
“Meaning what?”
“Well, Sally’s awfully hard up, Pa. And what I came to ask,” said Sue breathlessly, “was, will you keep her on and let me go instead?”
Utter amazement caused Mortimer Mason momentarily to forget the heat. He sat up, gaping.
“Do what?”
“Let me go instead.”
“Let you go instead?”
“Yes.”
“You’re crazy.”
“No, I’m not. Come on, Pa. Be a dear.”
“Is she a great friend of yours?”
“Not particularly. I’m sorry for her.”
“I won’t do it.”
“You must. She’s down to her last bean.”
“But I need you in the show.”
“What nonsense! As if I made the slightest difference.”
“You do. You’ve got—I don’t know—” Mr. Mason snapped his fingers—“something. Your mother used to have it. Did you know I was the second juvenile in the first company she was ever in?”
“Yes, you told me. And haven’t you got on! There’s enough of you now to make two second juveniles. Well, you will do it, won’t you?”
Mr. Mason reflected.
“I suppose I’ll have to, if you insist,” he said at length. “If I don’t you’ll just hand your notice in anyway. I know you. You’re a sportsman, Sue. Your mother was just the same. But are you sure you’ll manage all right? I shan’t be casting the new show till the end of August, but I may be able to fix you up somewhere if I look round.”
“I don’t see how you could look any rounder if you tried, you poor darling. Do you realise, Pa, that if you got up early every morning and did half an hour’s Swedish exercises . . .”
“If you don’t want to be murdered, stop!”
“It would do you all the good in the world, you know. Well, it’s awfully sweet of you to bother about me, Pa, but you mustn’t. You’ve got enough to worry you already. I shall be all right. Good-bye. You’ve been an angel about Sally. It’ll save her life.”
“If she’s that cross-eyed girl at the end of the second row who’s always out of step, I’m not sure I want to save her life.”
“Well, you’re going to do it, anyway. Good-bye.”
“Don’t run away.”
“I must. Ronnie’s waiting. He’s going to take me to tea somewhere. Up the river, I hope. Think how nice it will be there, under the trees, with the water rippling . . .”
“The only thing that stops me hitting you with this ruler,” said Mr. Mason, “is the thought that I shall soon be getting out of this Turkish Bath myself. I’ve a show opening at Blackpool next week. Think how nice and cool it will be on the sands there, with the waves splashing . . .”
“. . . And you with your little spade and bucket, paddling! Oh, Pa, do send me a photograph. Well, I can’t stand here all day, chatting over your vacation plans. My poor darling Ronnie must be getting slowly fried.”
2
The process of getting slowly fried, especially when you are chafing for a sight of the girl you love after six weeks of exile from her society, is never an agreeable one. After enduring it for some time, the pink-faced young man with the long cigarette holder had left his seat in the car and had gone for shade and comparative coolness to the shelter of the stage entrance, where he now stood reading the notices on the call-board. He read them moodily. The thought that, after having been away from Sue for all these weeks, he was now compelled to leave her again and go to Blandings Castle was weighing on Ronald Overbury Fish’s mind sorely.
Mac, the guardian of the stage door, leaned out of his hutch. The matinée over, he had begun to experience that solemn joy which comes to camels approaching an oasis and stage-door men who will soon be at liberty to pop round the corner. He endeavoured to communicate his happiness to Ronnie.
“Won’t be long now, Mr. Fish.”
“Eh?”
“Won’t be long now, sir.”
“Ah,” said Ronnie.
Mac was concerned at his companion’s gloom. He liked smiling faces about him. Reflecting, he fancied he could diagnose its cause.
“I was sorry to hear about that, Mr. Fish.”
“Eh?”
“I say I was sorry to hear about that, sir.”
“About what?”
“About the Hot Spot, sir. That night-club of yours. Busting up that way. Going West so prompt.”
Ronnie Fish winced. He presumed the man meant well, but there are certain subjects one does not want mentioned. When you have contrived with infinite pains to wheedle a portion of your capital out of a reluctant trustee and have gone and started a night-club with it and have seen that night-club flash into the receiver’s hands like some frail egg-shell engulfed by a whirlpool, silence is best.
“Ah,” he said briefly, to indicate this.
Mac had many admirable qualities, but not tact. He was the sort of man who would have tried to cheer Napoleon up by talking about the Winter Sports at Moscow.
“When I heard that you and Mr. Carmody was starting one of those places, I said to the fireman ‘I give it two months,’ I said. And it was six weeks, wasn’t it, sir?”
“Seven.”
“Six or seven. Immaterial which. Point is I’m usually pretty right. I said to the fireman ‘It takes brains to run a night-club,’ I said. ‘Brains and a certain what-shall-I-say.’ Won me half-a-dollar, that did.”
He searched in his mind for other topics to interest and amuse.
“Seen Mr. Carmody lately, sir?”
“No. I’ve been in Biarritz. He’s down in Shropshire. He’s got a job as secretary to an uncle of mine.”
“And I shouldn’t wonder,” said Mac cordially, “if he wouldn’t make a mess of that.”
He began to feel that the conversation was now going with a swing.
“Used to see a lot of Mr. Carmody round here at one time.”
The advance guard of the company appeared, in the shape of a flock of musicians. They passed out of the stage-door, first a couple of thirsty looking flutes, then a group of violins, finally an oboe by himself with a scowl on his face. Oboes are always savage in captivity.
“Yes, sir. Came here a lot, Mr. Carmody did. Asking for Miss Brown. Great friends those two was.”
“Oh?” said Ronnie thickly.
“Used to make me laugh to see them together.”
Ronnie appeared to swallow something large and jagged.
“Why?”
“Well, him so tall and her so small. But there,” said Mac philosophically, “they say it’s opposites that get on best. I know I weigh seventeen stone and my missus looks like a ninepenny rabbit, and yet we’re as happy as can be.”
Ronnie’s interest in the poundage of the stage-door keeper’s domestic circle was slight.
“Ah,” he said.
Mac, having got on to the subject of Sue Brown, stayed there.
“You see the flowers arrived all right, sir.”
“Eh?”
“The flowers you sent Miss Brown, sir,” said Mac, indicating with a stubby thumb a bouquet on the shelf behind him. “I haven’t given her them yet. Thought she’d rather have them after the performance.”
It was a handsome bouquet, but Ronnie Fish stared at it with a sort of dumb horror. His pink face had grown pinker, and his eyes were glassy.
“Give me those flowers, Mac,” he said in a strangled voice.
“Right, sir. Here you are, sir. Now you look just like a bridegroom, sir,” said the stage-door keeper, chuckling the sort of chuckle that goes with seventeen stone and a fat head.
This thought had struck Ronnie, also. It was driven home a moment later by the displeasing behaviour of two of the chorus girls who came flitting past. Both looked at him in a way painful to a sensitive young man, and one of them giggled. Ronnie turned to the door.
“When Miss Brown comes, tell her I’m waiting outside in my car.”
“Right, sir. You’ll be in again, I suppose, sir?”
“No.” The sombre expression deepened on Ronnie’s face. “I’ve got to go down to Shropshire this evening.”
“Be away long?”
“Yes. Quite a time.”
“Sorry to hear that, sir. Well, good-bye, sir. Thank you, sir.”
Ronnie, clutching the bouquet, walked with leaden steps to the two-seater. There was a card attached to the flowers. He read it, frowned darkly, and threw the bouquet into the car.
Girls were passing now in shoals. They meant nothing to Ronnie Fish. He eyed them sourly, marvelling why the papers talked about “beauty choruses.” And then, at last, there appeared one at the sight of whom his heart, parting from its moorings, began to behave like a jumping bean. It had reached his mouth when she ran up with both hands extended.
“Ronnie, you precious angel lambkin!”
“Sue!”
To a young man in love, however great the burden of sorrows beneath which he may be groaning, the spectacle of the only girl in the world, smiling up at him, seldom fails to bring a temporary balm. For the moment, Ronnie’s gloom ceased to be. He forgot that he had recently lost several hundred pounds in a disastrous commercial venture. He forgot that he was going off that evening to live in exile. He even forgot that this girl had just been sent a handsome bouquet by a ghastly bargee named P. Frobisher Pilbeam, belonging to the Junior Constitutional Club. These thoughts would return, but for the time being the one that occupied his mind to the exclusion of all others was the thought that after six long weeks of separation he was once more looking upon Sue Brown.
“I’m so sorry I kept you waiting, precious. I had to see Mr. Mason.”
Ronnie started.
“What about?”
A student of the motion-pictures, he knew what theatrical managers were.
“Just business.”
“Did he ask you to lunch, or anything?”
“No. He just fired me.”
“Fired you!”
“Yes, I’ve lost my job,” said Sue happily.
Ronnie quivered.
“I’ll go and break his neck.”
“No, you won’t. It isn’t his fault. It’s the weather. They have to cut down expenses when there’s a heat-wave. It’s all the fault of people like you for going abroad instead of staying in London and coming to the theatre.” She saw the flowers and uttered a delighted squeal. “For me?”
A moment before, Ronnie had been all chivalrous concern—a knight prepared to battle to the death for his lady-love. He now froze.
“Apparently,” he said coldly.
“How do you mean, apparently?”
“I mean they are.”
“You pet!”
“Leap in.”
Ronnie’s gloom was now dense and foglike once more. He gestured fiercely at the clustering children and trod on the self-starter. The car moved smoothly round the corner into Shaftesbury Avenue.
Opposite the Monico, there was a traffic-block, and he unloaded his soul.
“In re those blooms.”
“They’re lovely.”
“Yes, but I didn’t send them.”
“You brought them. Much nicer.”
“What I’m driving at,” said Ronnie heavily, “is that they aren’t from me at all. They’re from a blighter named P. Frobisher Pilbeam.”
Sue’s smile had faded. She knew her Ronald’s jealousy so well. It was the one thing about him which she could have wished changed.
“Oh?” she said dismally.
The crust of calm detachment from all human emotion, built up by years of Eton and Cambridge, cracked abruptly and there peeped forth a primitive Ronald Overbury Fish.
“Who is this Pilbeam?” he demanded. “Pretty much the Boy Friend, I take it, what?”
“I’ve never even met him!”
“But he sends you flowers.”
“I know he does,” wailed Sue, mourning for a golden afternoon now probably spoiled beyond repair. “He keeps sending me his beastly flowers and writing me his beastly letters. . . .”
Ronnie gritted his teeth.
“And I tell you I’ve never set eyes on him in my life.”
“You don’t know who he is?”
“One of the girls told me that he used to edit that paper Society Spice. I don’t know what he does now.”
“When he isn’t sending you flowers, you mean?”
“I can’t help him sending me flowers.”
“I don’t suppose you want to.”
Sue’s eyes flickered. Realising, however, that her Ronnie in certain moods resembled a child of six, she made a pathetic attempt to lighten the atmosphere.
“It’s not my fault if I get persecuted with loathsome addresses, is it? I suppose, when you go to the movies, you blame Lilian Gish for being pursued by the heavy.”
Ronnie was not to be diverted.
“Sometimes I ask myself,” he said darkly, “if you really care a hang for me.”
“Oh, Ronnie!”
“Yes, I do—repeatedly. I look at you and I look at myself and that’s what I ask myself. What on earth is there about me to make a girl like you fond of a fellow? I’m a failure. Can’t even run a night-club. No brains. No looks.”
“You’ve got a lovely complexion.”
“Too pink. Much too pink. And I’m so damned short.”
“You’re not a bit too short.”
“I am. My Uncle Gally once told me I looked like the protoplasm of a minor jockey.”
“He ought to have been ashamed of himself.”
“Why the dickens,” said Ronnie, laying bare his secret dreams, “I couldn’t have been born a decent height, like Hugo. . . . ” He paused. His hand shook on the steering-wheel. “That reminds me. That fellow Mac at the stage-door was saying that you and Hugo used to be as thick as thieves. Always together, he said.”
Sue sighed. Things were being difficult to-day.
“That was before I met you,” she explained patiently. “I used to like dancing with him. He’s a beautiful dancer. You surely don’t suppose for a minute that I could ever be in love with Hugo?”
“I don’t see why not.”
“Hugo!” Sue laughed. There was something about Hugo Carmody that always made her want to laugh.
“Well, I don’t see why not. He’s better looking than I am. Taller. Not so pink. Plays the saxophone.”
“Will you stop being silly about Hugo.”
“Well, I fear that bird. He’s my best pal and I know his work. He’s practically handsome. And lissom, to boot.” A hideous thought smote Ronnie like a blow. “Did he ever. . . .” He choked. “Did he ever hold your hand?”
“Which hand?”
“Either hand.”
“How can you suggest such a thing!” cried Sue, shocked.
“Well, will you swear there’s nothing between him and you?”
“Of course there isn’t.”
“And nothing between this fellow Pilbeam and you?”
“Of course not.”
“Ah!” said Ronnie. “Then I can go ahead, as planned.”
His was a mercurial temperament and it had lifted him in an instant from the depths to the heights. The cloud had passed from his face, the look of Byronic despair from his eyes. He beamed.
“Do you know why I’m going down to Blandings to-night?” he asked.
“No. I only wish you weren’t.”
“Well, I’ll tell you. I’ve got to get round my uncle.”
“Do what?”
“Make myself solid with my Uncle Clarence. If you’ve ever had anything to do with trustees you’ll know that the one thing they bar like poison is parting with money. And I’ve simply got to have another chunk of my capital, and a good big one, too. Without money, how on earth can I marry you? Let me get hold of funds, and we’ll dash off to the registrar’s the moment you say the word. So now you understand why I’ve got to get to Blandings at the earliest possible moment and stay there till further notice.”
“Yes. I see. And you’re a darling. Tell me about Blandings, Ronnie.”
“How do you mean?”
“Well, what sort of a place is it? I want to imagine you there while you’re away.”
Ronnie pondered. He was not at his best as a word painter.
“Oh, you know the kind of thing. Parks and gardens and terraces and immemorial elms and all that. All the usual stuff.”
“Any girls there?”
“My cousin Millicent. She’s my Uncle Lancelot’s daughter. He’s dead. The family want Millicent and me to get married.”
“To each other, you mean? What a perfectly horrible idea!”
“Oh, it’s all right. We’re both against the scheme.”
“Well, that’s some comfort. What other girls will there be at Blandings?”
“Only one that I know of. My mother met a female called Schoonmaker at Biarritz. American. Pots of money, I believe. One of those beastly tall girls. Looked like something left over from Dana Gibson. I couldn’t stand her myself, but my mother was all for her, and I didn’t at all like the way she seemed to be trying to shove her off on to me. You know—‘Why don’t you ring up Myra Schoonmaker, Ronnie? I’m sure she would like to go to the Casino to-night. And then you could dance afterwards.’ Sinister, it seemed to me.”
“And she’s going to Blandings? H’m!”
“There’s nothing to h’m about.”
“I’m not so sure. Oh, well, I suppose your family are quite right. I suppose you ought really to marry some nice girl in your own set.”
Ronnie uttered a wordless cry, and in his emotion allowed the mudguard of the two-seater to glide so closely past an Austin Seven that Sue gave a frightened squeak and the Austin Seven went on its way thinking black thoughts.
“Do be careful, Ronnie, you old chump!”
“Well, what do you want to go saying things like that for? I get enough of that from the family, without having you start.”
“Poor old Ronnie! I’m sorry. Still, you must admit that they’d be quite within their rights, objecting to me. I’m not so hot, you know. Only a chorus-girl. Just one of the Ensemble!”
Ronnie said something between his teeth that sounded like “Juk”! What he meant was, be her station never so humble, a pure, sweet girl is a fitting mate for the highest in the land.
“And my mother was a music-hall singer.”
“A what!”
“A music-hall singer. What they used to call a Serio. You know,—pink tights and rather risky songs.”
This time Ronnie did not say “Juk”! He merely swallowed painfully. The information had come as a shock to him. Somehow or other, he had never thought of Sue as having encumbrances in the shape of relatives; and he could not hide from himself the fact that a pink-tighted Serio might stir the family up quite a little. He pictured something with peroxide hair who would call his Uncle Clarence “dearie.”
“English, do you mean? On the Halls here in London?”
“Yes. Her stage name was Dolly Henderson.”
“Never heard of her.”
“I dare say not. But she was the rage of London twenty years ago.”
“I always thought you were American,” said Ronnie, aggrieved. “I distinctly recollect Hugo, when he introduced us, telling me that you had just come over from New York.”
“So I had. Father took me to America soon after mother died.”
“Oh, your mother is—er—no longer with us?”
“No.”
“Too bad,” said Ronnie, brightening.
“My father’s name was Cotterleigh. He was in the Irish Guards.”
“What!”
Ronnie’s ecstatic cry seriously inconvenienced a traffic policeman in the exercise of his duties.
“But this is fine! This is the goods! It doesn’t matter to me, of course, one way or the other. I’d love you just the same if your father had sold jellied eels. But think what an enormous difference this will make to my blasted family!”
“I doubt it.”
“But it will. We must get him over at once and spring him on them. Or is he in London?”
Sue’s brown eyes clouded.
“He’s dead.”
“Eh? Oh? Sorry!” said Ronnie.
He was dashed for a moment.
“Well, at least let me tell the family about him,” he urged, recovering. “Let me dangle him before their eyes a bit.”
“If you like. But they’ll still object to me because I’m in the chorus.”
Ronnie scowled. He thought of his mother, he thought of his Aunt Constance, and reason told him that her words were true.
“Dash all this rot people talk about chorus girls!” he said. “They seem to think that just because a girl works in the chorus she must be a sort of animated champagne-vat. . . .”
“Ugh!”
“Spending her life dancing on supper-tables with tight stockbrokers. . . .”
“And not a bad way of passing an evening,” said Sue meditatively. “I must try it some time.”
“. . . with the result that when it’s a question of her marrying anybody, fellows’ people look down their noses and kick like mules. It’s happened in our family before. My Uncle Gally was in love with some girl on the stage back in the dark ages, and they formed a wedge and bust the thing up and shipped him off to South Africa or somewhere to forget her. And look at him! Drew three sober breaths in the year nineteen-hundred and then decided that was enough. I expect I shall be the same. If I don’t take to drink, cooped up at Blandings a hundred miles away from you, I shall be vastly surprised. It’s all a lot of silly nonsense. I haven’t any patience with it. I’ve a jolly good mind to go to Uncle Clarence to-night and simply tell him that I’m in love with you and intend to marry you and that if the family don’t like it they can lump it.”
“I wouldn’t.”
Ronnie simmered down.
“Perhaps you’re right.”
“I’m sure I am. If he hears about me, he certainly won’t give you your money. Whereas, if he doesn’t, he may. What sort of a man is he?”
“Uncle Clarence? Oh, a mild, dreamy old boy. Mad about gardening and all that. At the moment, I hear, he’s wrapped up in his pig.”
“That sounds cosy.”
“I’d feel a lot easier in my mind, I can tell you, going down there to tackle him, if I were a pig. I’d expect a much warmer welcome.”
“You were rather a pig just now, weren’t you?”
Ronnie quivered. Remorse gnawed the throbbing heart beneath his beautifully cut waistcoat.
“I’m sorry. I’m frightfully sorry. The fact is, I’m so crazy about you, I get jealous of everybody you meet. Do you know, Sue, if you ever let me down, I’d . . . I don’t know what I’d do. Er—Sue!”
“Hullo?”
“Swear something.”
“What?”
“Swear that, while I’m at Blandings, you won’t go out with a soul. Not even to a dance.”
“Not even to a dance?”
“No.”
“All right.”
“Especially this man Pilbeam.”
“I thought you were going to say Hugo.”
“I’m not worrying about Hugo. He’s safe at Blandings.”
“Hugo at Blandings?”
“Yes. He’s secretarying for my Uncle Clarence. I made my mother get him the job when the Hot Spot conked.”
“So you’ll have him and Millicent and Miss Schoonmaker there to keep you company! How nice for you.”
“Millicent!”
“It’s all very well to say ‘Millicent!’ like that. If you ask me, I think she’s a menace. She sounds coy and droopy. I can see her taking you for walks by moonlight under those immemorial elms and looking up at you with big, dreamy eyes. . . .”
“Looking down at me, you mean. She’s about a foot taller than I am. And, anyway, if you imagine there’s a girl on earth who could extract so much as a kindly glance from me when I’ve got you to think about, you’re very much mistaken. I give you my honest word. . . .”
He became lyrical. Sue, leaning back, listened contentedly. The cloud had been a threatening cloud, blackening the skies for awhile, but it had passed. The afternoon was being golden, after all.
3
“By the way,” said Ronnie, the flood of eloquence subsiding. “A thought occurs. Have you any notion where we’re headed for?”
“Heaven.”
“I mean at the moment.”
“I supposed you were taking me to tea somewhere.”
“But where? We’ve got right out of the tea zone. What with one thing and another, I’ve just been driving at random—to and fro, as it were—and we seem to have worked round to somewhere in the Swiss Cottage neighbourhood. We’d better switch back and set a course for the Carlton or some place. How do you feel about the Carlton?”
“All right.”
“Or the Ritz?”
“Whichever you like.”
“Or—gosh!”
“What’s the matter?”
“Sue! I’ve got an idea.”
“Beginner’s luck.”
“Why not go to Norfolk Street?”
“To your home?”
“Yes. There’s nobody there. And our butler is a staunch bird. He’ll get us tea and say nothing.”
“I’d like to meet a staunch butler.”
“Then shall we?”
“I’d love it. You can show me all your little treasures and belongings and the photographs of you as a small boy.”
Ronnie shook his head. It irked him to discourage her pretty enthusiasm, but a man cannot afford to take risks.
“Not those. No love could stand up against the sight of me in a sailor suit at the age of ten. I don’t mind,” he said, making a concession, “letting you see the one of me and Hugo, taken just before the Public Schools Rackets Competition, my last year at school. We were the Eton pair.”
“Did you win?”
“No. At a critical moment in the semi-final that ass Hugo foozled a shot a one-armed cripple ought to have taken with his eyes shut. It dished us.”
“Awful!” said Sue. “Well, if I ever had any impulse to love Hugo, that’s killed it.” She looked about her. “I don’t know this aristocratic neighbourhood at all. How far is it to Norfolk Street?”
“Next turning.”
“You’re sure there’s nobody in the house? None of the dear old family?”
“Not a soul.”
He was right. Lady Constance Keeble was not actually in the house. At the moment when he spoke, she had just closed the front door behind her. After waiting half an hour in the hope of her nephew’s return, she had left a note for him on the hall table and was going to Claridge’s to get a cup of tea.
It was not until he had drawn up immediately opposite the house that Ronnie perceived what stood upon the steps. Having done so, he blenched visibly.
“Oh, my sainted aunt!” he said.
And seldom can the familiar phrase have been used with more appropriateness.
The sainted aunt was inspecting the two-seater and its contents with a frozen stare. Her eyebrows were two marks of interrogation. As she had told Millicent, she was old-fashioned, and when she saw her flesh and blood snuggled up to girls of attractive appearance in two-seaters, she suspected the worst.
“Good afternoon, Ronald.”
“Er—hullo, Aunt Constance.”
“Will you introduce me?”
There is no doubt that peril sharpens the intellect. His masters at school and his tutors at the University, having had to do with Ronald Overbury Fish almost entirely at times when his soul was at rest, had classed him among the less keen-witted of their charges. Had they seen him now in this crisis, they would have pointed at him with pride. And, being the sportsmen and gentlemen that they were, they would have hastened to acknowledge that they had grossly underestimated his ingenuity and initiative.
For, after turning a rather pretty geranium tint and running a finger round the inside of his collar for an instant, as if he found it too tight, Ronnie Fish spoke the only two words in the language which could have averted disaster.
“Miss Schoonmaker,” he said, huskily.
Sue, at his side, gave a little gasp. These were unsuspected depths.
“Miss Schoonmaker!”
Lady Constance’s resemblance to Apollyon straddling right across the way had vanished abruptly. Remorse came upon her that she should have wronged her blameless nephew with unfounded suspicions.
“Miss Schoonmaker, my aunt Lady Constance Keeble,” said Ronnie, going from strength to strength and speaking now quite easily and articulately.
Sue was not the girl to sit dumbly by and fail a partner in his hour of need. She smiled brightly.
“How do you do, Lady Constance?” she said. She smiled again, if possible even more brightly than before. “I feel I know you already. Lady Julia told me so much about you at Biarritz.”
A momentary qualm lest, in the endeavour to achieve an easy cordiality, she had made her manner a shade too patronising, melted in the sunshine of the older woman’s smile. Lady Constance had become charming, almost effusive. She had always hoped that Ronald and Millicent would make a match of it: but, failing that, this rich Miss Schoonmaker was certainly the next best thing. And driving chummily about London together like this must surely, she thought, mean something, even in these days when chummy driving is so prevalent between the sexes. At any rate, she hoped so.
“So here you are in London?”
“Yes.”
“You did not stay long in Paris.”
“No.”
“When can you come down to Blandings?”
“Oh, very soon, I hope.”
“I am going there this evening. I only ran up for the day. I want you to drive me back, Ronald.”
Ronnie nodded silently. The crisis passed, a weakness had come upon him. He preferred not to speak, if speech could be avoided.
“Do try to come soon. The gardens are looking delightful. My brother will be so glad to see you. I was just on my way to Claridge’s for a cup of tea. Won’t you come too?”
“I’d love to,” said Sue, “but I really must be getting on. Ronnie was taking me shopping.”
“I thought you stayed in Paris to do your shopping.”
“Not all of it.”
“Well, I shall hope to see you soon.”
“Oh, yes.”
“At Blandings.”
“Thank you so much. Ronnie, I think we ought to be getting along.”
“Yes.” Ronnie’s mind was blurred, but he was clear on that point. “Yes, getting along. Pushing off.”
“Well, I’m so delighted to have seen you. My sister told me so much about you in her letters. After you have put your luggage on the car, Ronald, will you come and pick me up at Claridge’s?”
“Right ho.”
“I would like to make an early start, if possible.”
“Right ho.”
“Well, good-bye for the present, then.”
“Right ho.”
“Good-bye, Lady Constance.”
“Good-bye.”
The two-seater moved off, and Ronnie, taking his right hand from the wheel as it turned the corner, groped for a handkerchief, found it, and passed it over his throbbing brow.
“So that was Aunt Constance!” said Sue.
Ronnie breathed deeply.
“Nice meeting one of whom I have heard so much.”
Ronnie replaced his hand on the wheel and twiddled it feebly to avoid a dog. Reaction had made him limp.
Sue was gazing at him almost reverently.
“What genius, Ronnie! What ready wit! What presence of mind! If I hadn’t heard it with my own ears, I wouldn’t have believed it. Why didn’t you ever tell me you were one of those swift thinkers?”
“I didn’t know it myself.”
“Of course, I’m afraid it has complicated things a little.”
“Eh?” Ronnie started. This aspect of the matter had not struck him. “How do you mean?”
“When I was a child, they taught me a poem. . . .”
Ronnie raised a suffering face to hers.
“Don’t let’s talk about your childhood now, old thing,” he pleaded. “Feeling rather shaken. Any other time. . . .”
“It’s all right. I’m not wandering from the subject. I can only remember two lines of the poem. They were ‘Oh, what a tangled web we weave when first we practise to deceive.’ You do see the web is a bit tangled, don’t you, Ronnie darling?”
“Eh? Why? Everything looks pretty smooth to me. Aunt Constance swallowed you without a yip.”
“And when the real Miss Schoonmaker arrives at Blandings with her jewels and her twenty-four trunks?” said Sue gently.
The two-seater swerved madly across Grosvenor Street.
“Gosh!” said Ronnie.
Sue’s eyes were sparkling.
“There’s only one thing to do,” she said. “Now you’re in, you’ll have to go in deeper. You’ll have to put her off.”
“How?”
“Send her a wire saying she mustn’t come to Blandings, because scarlet fever or something has broken out.”
“I couldn’t!”
“You must. Sign it in Lady Constance’s name.”
“But suppose . . .”
“Well, suppose they do find out? You won’t be in any worse hole than you will be if she comes sailing up to the front door, all ready to stay a couple of weeks. And she will unless you wire.”
“That’s true.”
“What it means,” said Sue, “is that instead of having plenty of time to get that money out of Lord Emsworth you’ll have to work quick.” She touched his arm. “Here’s a post-office,” she said. “Go in and send that wire before you weaken.”
Ronnie stopped the car.
“You will have to do the most rapid bit of trustee-touching in the history of the world, I should think,” said Sue reflectively. “Do you think you can manage it?”
“I’ll have a jolly good prod.”
“Remember what it means.”
“I’ll do that all right. The only trouble is that in the matter of biting Uncle Clarence’s ear I’ve nothing to rely on but my natural charm. And as far as I’ve been able to make out,” said Ronnie, “he hasn’t noticed yet that I have any.”
He strode into the post-office, thinking deeply.
CHAPTER III
1
IT was the opinion of the poet Calverley, expressed in his immortal “Ode to Tobacco,” that there is no heaviness of the soul which will not vanish beneath the influence of a quiet smoke. Ronnie Fish would have disputed this theory. It was the third morning of his sojourn at Blandings Castle; and, taking with him a tennis-ball which he proposed to bounce before him in order to assist thought, he had wandered out into the grounds, smoking hard. And tobacco, though Turkish and costly, was not lightening his despondency at all. It seemed to Ronnie that the present was bleak and the future grey. Roaming through the sun-flooded park, he bounced his tennis-ball and groaned in spirit.
On the credit side of the ledger one single item could be inscribed. Hugo was at the castle. He had the consolation, therefore, of knowing that that tall and lissom young man was not in London, exercising his fatal fascination on Sue. But, when you had said this, you had said everything. After all, even eliminating Hugo, there still remained in the metropolis a vast population of adult males, all either acquainted with Sue or trying to make her acquaintance. The poison-sac Pilbeam, for instance. By now it might well be that that bacillus had succeeded in obtaining an introduction to her. A devastating thought.
And even supposing he hadn’t, even supposing that Sue, as she had promised, was virtuously handing the mitten to all the young thugs who surged around her with invitations to lunch and supper; where did that get a chap? What, in other words, of the future?
In coming to Blandings Castle, Ronnie was only too well aware, he had embarked on an expedition, the success or failure of which would determine whether his life through the years was to be roses, roses all the way or a dreary desert. And so far, in his efforts to win the favour and esteem of his Uncle Clarence, he seemed to have made no progress whatsoever. On the occasions when he had found himself in Lord Emsworth’s society, the latter had looked at him sometimes as if he did not know he was there, more often as if he wished he wasn’t. It was only too plain that the collapse of the Hot Spot had left his stock in bad shape. There had been a general sagging of the market. Fish Preferred, taking the most sanguine estimate, could scarcely be quoted at more than about thirty to thirty-five.
Plunged in thought and trying without any success to conjure up a picture of a benevolent uncle patting him on the head with one hand while writing cheques with the other, he had wandered some distance from the house and was passing a small spinney, when he observed in a little dell to his left a peculiar object.
It was a large yellow caravan. And what, he asked himself, was a caravan doing in the grounds of Blandings Castle?
To aid him in grappling with the problem, he flung the tennis-ball at it. Upon which the door opened and a spectacled head appeared.
“Hullo!” said the head.
“Hullo!” said Ronnie.
“Hullo!”
“Hullo!”
The thing threatened to become a hunting-chorus. At this moment, however, the sun went behind a cloud and Ronnie was enabled to recognise the head’s proprietor. Until now, the light, shining on the other’s glasses, had dazzled him.
“Baxter!” he exclaimed.
The last person he would have expected to meet in the park of Blandings. He had heard all about that row a couple of years ago. He knew that, if his own stock with Lord Emsworth was low, that of the efficient Baxter was down in the cellar, with no takers. Yet here the fellow was, shoving his head out of caravans as if nothing had ever happened.
“Ah, Fish!”
Rupert Baxter descended the steps, a swarthy-complexioned young man with a supercilious expression which had always been displeasing to Ronnie.
“What are you doing here?” asked Ronnie.
“I happened to be taking a caravan holiday in the neighbourhood. And, finding myself at Market Blandings last night, I thought I would pay a visit to the place where I had spent so many happy days.”
“I see.”
“Perhaps you could tell me where I could find Lady Constance?”
“I haven’t seen her since breakfast. She’s probably about somewhere.”
“I will go and enquire. If you meet her, perhaps you would not mind mentioning that I am here.”
The efficient Baxter strode off, purposeful as ever; and Ronnie, having speculated for a moment as to how his Uncle Clarence would comport himself if he came suddenly round a corner and ran into this bit of the dead past, and having registered an idle hope that, when this happened, he might be present with a camera, inserted another cigarette in its holder and passed on his way.
2
Five minutes later, Lord Emsworth leaning pensively out of the library window and sniffing the morning air, received an unpleasant shock. He could have sworn he had seen his late secretary, Rupert Baxter, cross the gravel and go in at the front door.
“Bless my soul!” said Lord Emsworth.
The only explanation that occurred to him was that Baxter, having met with some fatal accident, had come back to haunt the place. To suppose the fellow could be here in person was absurd. When you shoot a secretary out for throwing flower-pots at you in the small hours, he does not return to pay social calls. A frown furrowed his lordship’s brow. The spectre of one of his ancestors he could have put up with, but the idea of a Blandings Castle haunted by Baxter he did not relish at all. He decided to visit his sister Constance in her boudoir and see what she had to say about it.
“Constance, my dear.”
Lady Constance looked up from the letter she was writing. She clicked her tongue, for it annoyed her to be interrupted at her correspondence.
“Well, Clarence?”
“I say, Constance, a most extraordinary thing happened just now. I was looking out of the library window and—you remember Baxter?”
“Of course I remember Mr. Baxter.”
“Well, his ghost has just walked across the gravel.”
“What are you talking about, Clarence?”
“I’m telling you. I was looking out of the library window and I suddenly saw——”
“Mr. Baxter,” announced Beach, flinging open the door.
“Mr. Baxter!”
“Good morning, Lady Constance.”
Rupert Baxter advanced with joyous camaraderie glinting from both lenses. Then he perceived his former employer and his exuberance diminished. “Er—good morning, Lord Emsworth,” he said, flashing his spectacles austerely upon him.
There was a pause. Lord Emsworth adjusted his pince-nez and regarded the visitor dumbly. Of the relief which was presumably flooding his soul at the discovery that Rupert Baxter was still on this side of the veil, he gave no outward sign.
Baxter was the first to break an uncomfortable silence.
“I happened to be taking a caravan holiday in this neighbourhood, Lady Constance, and, finding myself near Market Blandings last night, I thought I would. . . .”
“Why, of course! We should never have forgiven you if you had not come to see us. Should we, Clarence?”
“Eh?”
“I said, should we?”
“Should we what?” said Lord Emsworth, who was still adjusting his mind.
Lady Constance’s lips tightened, and a moment passed during which it seemed always a fifty-fifty chance that a handsome silver ink-pot would fly through the air in the direction of her brother’s head. But she was a strong woman. She fought down the impulse.
“Did you say you were travelling in a caravan, Mr. Baxter?”
“In a caravan. I left it in the park.”
“Well, of course you must come and stay with us. The castle,” she continued, raising her voice a little, to compete with a sort of wordless bubbling which had begun to proceed from her brother’s lips, “is almost empty just now. We shall not be having our first big house-party till the middle of next month. You must make quite a long visit. I will send somebody over to fetch your things.”
“It is exceedingly kind of you.”
“It will be delightful having you here again. Won’t it, Clarence?”
“Eh?”
“I said, won’t it?”
“Won’t it what?”
Lady Constance’s hand trembled above the ink-pot like a hovering butterfly. She withdrew it.
Annotations to this novel in its book form are on this site.
The chapter and section divisions in this serial episode match those in the book, beginning with section 4 of Chapter I.
Printer’s errors corrected above:
Magazine, p. 108a, had “Mac, having got on to the subject of Sue Brown stayed there.”; comma after ‘Brown’ added as in books.
Magazine, p. 109b, had “animated champagne-cat”; changed to ‘vat’ as in other sources.
Editorial error not corrected:
In the synopsis, p. 18a, Baxter had not “just been dismissed”; he had been fired two years before, as we will learn in Chapter 10, part 2.