Madame Eulalie’s Rare PlumsThe Pall Mall Magazine, July 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 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. 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.
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 inquired, “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 inquiry 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.
Millicent’s interview with Hugo was of a distinctly thunderous nature, but he was able to convince her that his friend of the chorus, by name Sue Brown, was a sister to him only. Meanwhile Miss Brown was resigning her job in favour of a more struggling friend—to the utter disgust of her agent, the kind-hearted Mr. Mortimer Mason. Outside Mr. Mason’s office Ronnie and his car waited to take her to tea. Ronnie was suffering from an attack of jealousy over Hugo who, he was informed by the stage doorkeeper, had at one time taken Miss Brown out a good deal and also over one P. Frobisher Pilbeam who had just sent her a marvellous bouquet. But she dispelled the cloud when she promised not to go out with anyone at all while Ronnie was down at Blandings and stated that Mr. Pilbeam was so far a stranger to her. Ronnie decided to take his lady-love to the family home in Norfolk Street for an hour where, in the absence of his relations, the butler would provide tea. But as he drew up outside the house he saw Lady Constance Keeble descending the steps. Disaster was averted when Ronnie introduced Sue huskily as Miss Schoonmaker. Sue was warmly greeted and Ronnie was amazed at his own presence of mind until Sue asked what would happen when the real Miss Schoonmaker arrived at Blandings. They decided that a wire must be sent in Lady Constance’s name to put her off.
Down again at Blandings Ronnie was not less astonished than his uncle when Baxter turned up in a caravan in the grounds. Lady Constance had summoned him secretly in her horror at the idea of Gally’s reminiscences being published. Baxter agreed to get hold of the manuscript and destroy it.
Ronnie meanwhile was cogitating ways and means of acquiring money and his charming Sue. An attempt at borrowing money from his uncle to start a pig farm did not meet with success. During the resulting argument Gally appeared and mentioned his suspicion that Sir Gregory Parsloe would stick at nothing to clear the way for the victory in the forthcoming show of his own prize pig, Pride of Matchingham. Ronnie was stunned by a bright idea. Suppose he stole the Empress, hid her for a day or two and then spectacularly restored her to his uncle Clarence. And Beach was the man to help him.
That night the deed was done.
Next day Ronnie’s troubles began. Hugo, full of zeal, advised his uncle to call in the Argus Private Inquiry Agency to locate the Empress, and himself went up to town to start the ball rolling. Millicent asked Ronnie if he too thought that Hugo had a special reason for wanting to go up to town, and if that special reason was Sue Brown. Ronnie decided he would run up to call on Sue, not that he didn’t trust her implicitly! Nevertheless. . . .
P. Frobisher Pilbeam, Manager of the Argus Agency, was inclined to scorn the idea of investigating a pig robbery, but Hugo’s silver tongue prevailed. Business done, Hugo decided a platonic evening with Sue would cheer him up and telephoned her from Pilbeam’s office to meet him at Mario’s. Pilbeam saw a chance of the long-desired introduction to Sue; he too decided to go to Mario’s.
During the evening Hugo left Sue for a minute to telephone Millicent that he was spending a quiet evening in his hotel bedroom. Pilbeam’s chance had come. He walked up and introduced himself to Sue. At that moment Ronald Overbury Fish, having tracked Sue to Mario’s, appeared in the doorway and strode across the room. “Mr. Fish, Mr. Pilbeam,” murmured Sue dazedly.
Ronnie lost his temper. Fined five pounds next day, he was borne off by Hugo to make an attempt at mending his shattered life. Hugo confessed that Sue had gone not with Pilbeam to Mario’s but with Hugo himself. Ronnie had difficulty in believing this and when Hugo turned round from paying the cabman, Ronnie had gone. Sue now appeared, also mourning a shattered life, and in the next minute Hugo’s own lay in ruins about him: Millicent telephoned him to break off their engagement. Hugo and Sue decided that Sue must go to Blandings in the guise of Miss Schoonmaker for Lady Constance’s benefit—make peace with Ronnie and thereby prove to Millicent that Hugo meant less than nothing to her.
Meanwhile Sir Gregory Parsloe-Parsloe was receiving a call from Lord Emsworth and Mr. Galahad Threepwood, who commanded him to cough up the stolen pig.
“You’re crazy! Both of you.” shouted Sir Gregory.
“Very well,” said the Hon. Galahad. “If that is the attitude you propose to adopt, there is no course before me but to take steps. I’ll tell the full story of the prawns.” (A sharp cry escaped Sir Gregory.)
CHAPTER VII (continued)
“ I WILL,” said the Hon. Galahad firmly. “The full, true and complete story of the prawns, omitting nothing.”
“What was the story of the prawns, my dear fellow,” asked Lord Emsworth, interested.
“Never mind. I know. And young Parsloe knows. And if Empress of Blandings is not back in her stye this afternoon, you will find it in my book.”
“But I keep telling you,” cried the suffering baronet, “that I know nothing whatever about your pig.”
“Ha!”
“I’ve not seen the animal since last year’s Agricultural Show.”
“Ho!”
“I didn’t know it had disappeared till you told me.”
The Hon. Galahad stared fixedly at him through the black-rimmed monocle. Then, with a gesture of loathing, he turned to the door.
“Come, Clarence!” he said.
“Are we going?”
“Yes,” said the Hon. Galahad with quiet dignity. “There is nothing more that we can do here. Let us get away from this house before it is struck by a thunderbolt.”
The gentlemanly office-boy who sat in the outer room of the Argus Inquiry Agency read the card which the stout visitor had handed to him and gazed at the stout visitor with respect and admiration. A polished lad, he loved the aristocracy. He tapped on the door of the inner office.
“A gentleman to see me?” asked Percy Pilbeam.
“A baronet to see you, sir,” corrected the office-boy. “Sir Gregory Parsloe-Parsloe, Matchingham Hall, Salop.”
“Show him in immediately,” said Pilbeam with enthusiasm.
He rose and pulled down the lapels of his coat. Things, he felt, were looking up. He remembered Sir Gregory Parsloe. One of his first cases. He had been able to recover for him some letters which had fallen into the wrong hands. He wondered, as he heard the footsteps outside, if his client had been indulging in correspondence again.
From the baronet’s sandbagged expression, as he entered, such might well have been the case. It is the fate of Sir Gregory Parsloe-Parsloe to come into this chronicle puffing and looking purple. He puffed and looked purple now.
“I have called to see you, Mr. Pilbeam,” he said, after the preliminary civilities had been exchanged and he had lowered his impressive bulk into a chair, “because I am in a position of serious difficulty.”
“I am sorry to hear that, Sir Gregory.”
“And because I remember with what discretion and resource you once acted on my behalf.”
Pilbeam glanced at the door. It was closed. He was now convinced that his visitor’s little trouble was the same as on that previous occasion, and he looked at the indefatigable man with frank astonishment. Didn’t these old bucks, he was asking himself, ever stop writing compromising letters? You would have thought they would have got writer’s cramp.
“If there is any way in which I can assist you, Sir Gregory. . . . Perhaps you will tell me the facts from the beginning?”
“The beginning?” Sir Gregory pondered. “Well let me put it this way. At one time, Mr. Pilbeam, I was younger than I am to-day.”
“Quite.”
“Poorer.”
“No doubt.”
“And less respectable. And during that period of my life I unfortunately went about a good deal with a man named Threepwood.”
“Galahad Threepwood?”
“You know him?” said Sir Gregory, surprised.
Pilbeam chuckled reminiscently.
“I know his name. I wrote an article about him once, when I was editing a paper called Society Spice. Number One of the Thriftless Aristocrats series. The snappiest thing I ever did in my life. They tell me he called twice at the office with a horsewhip, wanting to see me.”
Sir Gregory exhibited concern.
“You have met him, then?”
“I have not. You are probably not familiar with the inner workings of a paper like Society Spice, Sir Gregory, but I may tell you that it is foreign to the editorial policy ever to meet visitors who call with horsewhips.”
“Would he have heard your name?”
“No. There was a very strict rule in the Spice office that the names of the editorial staff were not to be divulged.”
“Ah!” said Sir Gregory, relieved.
His relief gave place to indignation. There was an inconsistency about the Hon. Galahad’s behaviour which revolted him.
“He cut up rough, did he, because you wrote things about him in your paper? And yet he doesn’t seem to mind writing things himself about other people, damn him. That’s quite another matter. A different thing altogether. Oh, yes!”
“Does he write? I didn’t know.”
“He’s writing his Reminiscences at this very moment. He’s down at Blandings Castle, finishing them now. And the book’s going to be full of stories about me. That’s why I’ve come to see you. Dashed, infernal, damaging stories, which’ll ruin my reputation in the county. There’s one about some prawns. . . .”
Words failed Sir Gregory. He sat puffing. Pilbeam nodded gravely. He understood the position now. As to what his client expected him to do about it, however, he remained hazy.
“But if these stories you speak of are libellous. . . .”
“What has that got to do with it? They’re true.”
“The greater the truth, the greater the . . .”
“Oh, I know all about that,” interrupted Sir Gregory impatiently. “And a lot of help it’s going to be to me. A jury could give me the heaviest damages on record and it wouldn’t do me a bit of good. What about my reputation in the county? What about knowing that every damned fool I met was laughing at me behind my back? What about the Unionist Committee? I may tell you, Mr. Pilbeam, apart from any other consideration, that I am on the point of being accepted by our local Unionist Committee as their candidate at the next election. And if that old pest’s book is published, they will drop me like a hot coal. Now do you understand?”
Pilbeam picked up a pen, and with it scratched his chin thoughtfully. He liked to take an optimistic view with regard to his clients’ affairs, but he could not conceal from himself that Sir Gregory appeared to be out of luck.
“He is determined to publish this book?”
“It’s the only object he’s got in life, the miserable old fossil.”
“And he is resolved to include the stories?”
“He called on me this morning expressly to tell me so. And I caught the next train to London to put the matter in your hands.”
Pilbeam scratched his left cheekbone.
“H’m!” he said. “Well, in the circumstances, I really don’t see what is to be done except . . .”
“. . . get hold of the manuscript and destroy it, you were about to say? Exactly. That’s precisely what I’ve come to ask you to do for me.”
Pilbeam opened his mouth, startled. He had not been about to say anything of the kind. What he had been intending to remark was that, the situation being as described, there appeared no course to pursue but to fold the hands, set the teeth, and await the inevitable disaster like a man and a Briton. He gazed blankly at this lawless Bart. Baronets are proverbially bad, but surely, felt Percy Pilbeam, there was no excuse for them to be as bad as all that.
“Steal the manuscript?”
“Only possible way.”
“But that’s rather a tall order, isn’t it, Sir Gregory?”
“Not,” replied the baronet ingratiatingly, “for a clever young fellow like you.”
The flattery left Pilbeam cold. His distant, unenthusiastic manner underwent no change. However clever a man is, he was thinking, he cannot very well abstract the manuscript of a book of Reminiscences from a house unless he is first able to enter that house.
“How could I get into the place?”
“I should have thought you would have found a dozen ways.”
“Not even one,” Pilbeam assured him.
“Look how you recovered those letters of mine.”
“That was easy.”
“You told them you had come to inspect the gas meter.”
“I could scarcely go to Blandings Castle and say I had come to inspect the gas meter and hope to be invited to make a long visit on the strength of it. You do not appear to realise, Sir Gregory, that the undertaking you suggest would not be a matter of a few minutes. I might have to remain in the house for quite a considerable time.”
Sir Gregory found his companion’s attitude damping. He was a man who since his accession to the baronetcy and its accompanying wealth, had grown accustomed to seeing people jump smartly to it when he issued instructions. He became peevish.
“Why couldn’t you go there as a butler or something?”
Percy Pilbeam’s only reply to this was a tolerant smile. He raised the pen and scratched his head with it.
“Scarcely feasible,” he said. And again that rather pitying smile flitted across his face.
The sight of it brought Sir Gregory to the boil. He felt an irresistible desire to say something to wipe it away. It reminded him of the smiles he had seen on the faces of bookmakers in his younger days when he had suggested backing horses with them on credit and in a spirit of mutual trust.
“Well, have it your own way,” he snapped. “But it may interest you to know that to get that manuscript into my possession I am willing to pay a thousand pounds.”
It did, as he had foreseen, interest Pilbeam extremely. So much so that in his emotion he jerked the pen wildly, inflicting a nasty scalp wound.
“A thuth?” he stammered.
Sir Gregory, a prudent man in money matters, perceived that he had allowed his sense of the dramatic to carry him away.
“Well, five hundred,” he said, rather quickly. “And five hundred pounds is a lot of money, Mr. Pilbeam.”
The point was one which he had no need to stress. Percy Pilbeam had grasped it without assistance, and his face grew wan with thought. The day might come when the proprietor of the Argus Inquiry Agency would remain unmoved by the prospect of adding five hundred pounds to his bank balance, but it had not come yet.
“A cheque for five hundred the moment that old weasel’s manuscript is in my hands,” said Sir Gregory, insinuatingly.
Nature had so arranged it that in no circumstances could Percy Pilbeam’s face ever become really beautiful; but at this moment there stole into it an expression which did do something to relieve, to a certain extent, its normal unpleasantness. It was an expression of rapture, of joy, of almost beatific happiness—the look, in short, of a man who sees his way clear to laying his hands on five hundred pounds.
There is about the mention of any substantial sum of money something that seems to exercise a quickening effect on the human intelligence. A moment before, Pilbeam’s mind had been an inert mass. Now, abruptly, it began to function like a dynamo.
Get into Blandings Castle? Why, of course he could get into Blandings Castle. And not sneak in, either, with a trousers-seat itching in apprehension of the kick that should send him out again, but bowl proudly up to the front door in his two-seater and hand his suit-case to the butler and be welcomed as the honoured guest. Until now he had forgotten, for he had deliberately set himself to forget, the outrageous suggestion of that young idiot whose name escaped him that he should come to Blandings and hunt about for lost pigs. It had wounded his self-respect so deeply at the time that he had driven it from his thoughts. When he found himself thinking about Hugo, he had immediately pulled himself together and started thinking about something else. Now it all came back to him. And Hugo’s parting words, he recalled, had been that if ever he changed his mind the commission would still be open.
“I will take this case, Sir Gregory,” he said.
“Woof?”
“You may rely on my being at Blandings Castle by to-morrow evening at the latest. I have thought of a way of getting there.”
He rose from his desk, and paced the room with knitted brows. That agile brain had begun to work under its own steam. He paused once to look in a distrait manner out of the window; and when Sir Gregory cleared his throat to speak, jerked an impatient shoulder at him. He could not have baronets even with hyphens in their names, interrupting him at a moment like this.
“Sir Gregory,” he said at length. “The great thing in matters like this is to be prepared with a plan. I have a plan.”
“Woof!” said Sir Gregory.
This time he meant that he had thought all along that his companion would get one after pacing like that.
“When you arrive home, I want you to invite Mr. Galahad Threepwood to dinner to-morrow night.”
The baronet shook like a jelly. Wrath and amazement fought within him. Ask the man to dinner? After what had occurred?
“As many others of the Blandings Castle party as you think fit, of course, but Mr. Threepwood without fail. Once he is out of the house, my path will be clear.”
Wrath and amazement died away. The baronet had grasped the idea. The beauty and simplicity of the stratagem stirred his admiration. But was it not, he felt, a simpler matter to issue such an invitation than to get it accepted? A vivid picture rose before his eyes of the Hon. Galahad as he had last seen him.
Then there came to him the blessed, healing thought of Lady Constance Keeble. He would send the invitation to her and—yes, dash it!—he would tell her the full facts, put his cards on the table and trust to her sympathy and proper feeling to enlist her in the cause. He had long been aware that her attitude towards the Reminiscences resembled his own. He could rely on her to help him. He could also rely on her somehow—by what strange feminine modes of coercion he, being a bachelor, could only guess at—to deliver the Hon. Galahad Threepwood at Matchingham Hall in time for dinner. Women, he knew, had this strange power over their near relations.
“Splendid!” he said. “Excellent! Capital. Woof! I’ll see it’s done.”
“Then you can leave the rest to me.”
“You think, if I can get him out of the house, you will be able to secure the manuscript?”
“Certainly.”
Sir Gregory rose and extended a trembling hand.
“Mr. Pilbeam,” he said, with deep feeling, “coming to see you was the wisest thing I ever did in my life.”
“Quite,” said Percy Pilbeam.
CHAPTER VIII
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 fellow-men. 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 practised 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 employment he 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. A butler, felt the Hon. Galahad, is a butler, and a startled fawn is a startled fawn. He disliked the blend of the two in a single body.
“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 drooped 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 practising 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 to-day, 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 that’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’s that book you’re reading?”
“It belongs to Aunt Constance.” Millicent glanced wanly at the cover. “It seems to be about Theosophy.”
“Theosophy! Fancy a young girl in the springtime of life. . . . 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. Her manner suggested that she was disappointed in the hall of Blandings Castle. She had supposed it a nice place for a girl to sit and study the best literature, and now, it appeared, it was over-run by the Underworld. “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 stye 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 bit crushed by recent happenings, but at this it flickered into feeble life.
“I call that a beastly thing to say.”
“Do you?”
“Yes, I do.”
“I oughtn’t to have said it?”
“No, you oughtn’t.”
“Well, I wouldn’t have, if I could have thought of anything worse.”
“And when you let a little thing like what happened the other night rot up a great love like ours, I—well, I call it a bit rotten. You know perfectly well that you’re the only girl in the world I ever . . .”
“Shall I tell you something?”
“What?”
“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 comes along and asks me. And you can be a page at the wedding if you like. You couldn’t look any sillier than you do now, even in a frilly shirt and satin knickerbockers.”
Hugo laughed raspingly.
“Is that so?”
“It is.”
“And once you said there wasn’t another man like me in the world.”
“Well, I should hate to think there was,” said Millicent. 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, she passed proudly up the stairs.
James withdrew. Thomas withdrew. Beach remained gazing with a hypnotised 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 pyjamas, 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 honour 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 gaiety that he stood transfixed. It seemed to the Hon. Galahad years since he had seen anyone looking cheerful in Blandings Castle.
“Good God, Clarence! What’s happened?”
“What, my dear fellow?”
“You’re wreathed in smiles, dash it, and skipping like the high hills. 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. He is having what he describes as a bit of a snack at the Emsworth Arms. When he has finished, he will drive over. 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. The chatelaine of Blandings was apt sometimes to react unpleasantly to the information that visitors not invited by herself were expected at the castle.
“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 to-night.”
“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 could be?”
“What?”
“I had a note from him after luncheon. It is 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 foreseen a reaction of this kind. 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. You may as well understand at once that I do not intend to be on bad terms with our nearest neighbour, even if a hundred of your pig-men leave you and go to him. Your attitude in the matter has been perfectly childish from the very start. If Sir Gregory realises that there has been a coolness, and has most sensibly decided to make the first move towards 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. Almost an inspiration, it seemed to him. “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. Ring for Beach and tell him now. Last night you looked like a scarecrow.”
“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 neighbours in the country. Always a mistake. Never pays.”
“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 neighbours.”
“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!”
The Hon. Galahad patted his shoulder reassuringly.
“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. Oh, I see Parsloe’s motive all right. A clever move. Not that it’ll work.”
“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?” he said, coming back. “Something that’ll interest you?”
“Certainly, my dear fellow. Certainly. 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? To-night? 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. Recognised military manœuvre.”
“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 realised 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 macintosh. 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.
CHAPTER IX
“ 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 demeanour 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. To be at Blandings plainly meant something to her, was an event in her life: and Beach, who after many years of residence within its walls had come to look on the Castle as a piece of personal property, felt flattered and gratified.
“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 so 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. Her voice lost some of the kindly warmth of the hostess putting the guest at her ease and took on the cold disapproval which the author of the Reminiscences always induced in her. “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 wholehearted 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 had the impression that 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 breathed again. She had had a return of the unpleasant feeling of being boneless which had come upon her when the Hon. Galahad had spoken of knowing Mr. Schoonmaker intimately. But, though she breathed, she was still shaken. 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 grounds 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 to-day. 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 scrutinising 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.
CHAPTER X
THE rose-garden of Blandings Castle was a famous beauty-spot. Most people who visited it considered it deserving of a long and leisurely inspection. 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.”
Sue 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.”
“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 towards them a long, stringy man of mild and 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.
“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 minutes, 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.”
Annotations to this novel in its book form are on this site.
The chapter and section divisions in this serial episode match those in books, beginning in the middle of section ii of Chapter VII.
Editorial error not corrected:
Magazine synopsis, p. 29b, says “Hugo’s silver tongue prevailed.” Actually Pilbeam does not decide to go to Blandings until Sir Gregory hires him to steal Gally’s manuscript, as told in the first section of the present episode.
Printer’s errors corrected above:
Magazine, p. 90b, had “Edgar Allen Poe”; corrected to ‘Allan’.
Magazine, p. 92c, had “The butler did not, he was not one of your fresh-air men.”; run-on sentence split into two sentences as in books.
Magazine, p. 94a, had “a sensation of dizziness, Baxter’s spectacles”; comma changed to period as in books.