Lord Emsworth endorsed this view.
'He painted the Stag at Bay,' he said admiringly.
There was a special sound which Lady Hermione often found it convenient to employ when conversing with her elder brother and feeling the need of relieving her feelings. It was not exactly a sniff and not precisely a snort, but a sort of blend of the two. It proceeded from her now.
'Mr Landseer did not paint the Stag at Bay. It was painted by Sir Edwin Landseer, who has been dead for years.'
'That's odd. Galahad told me it was this chap who painted the Stag at Bay'
Gally laughed indulgently.
'You've muddled the whole thing as usual, Clarence. I said the Pig at Bay'
'The Pig at Bay?'
'Yes. A very different thing.'
Lord Emsworth digested this. A question occurred to him almost immediately.
'But are pigs at bay?'
'This one was.'
'It seems most unusual.'
'Not when you remember, as you would if you were a travelled man, that Bée is a village in the Pyrenees famous for its pigs. If Landseer goes to Bée on a sketching tour one summer and sees a pig there and paints it and, hunting round for a title, decides to call it the Pig at Bée, it seems to me quite a natural sequence of events. I don't see what all the argument is about, anyway. The only thing that matters, to my mind, is that you have got hold of a man who knows his pigs and can be relied on to turn out a speaking likeness of the Empress. You ought to be rejoicing unstintedly.'
'Oh, I am,' said Lord Emsworth. 'Oh, yes, indeed. It's a great relief to feel that Mr Landseer is going to attend to the thing. I'm sure he will be an enormous improvement on the other fellow. By George!' cried Lord Emsworth with sudden animation. 'God bless my soul! Now I know why I thought I'd seen him before. He's the living image of that other fellow – the frightful chap you sent down a few days ago, the one who did a horrible caricature of the Empress and then told me to go and boil my head because I ventured on the mildest of criticisms. What was his name?'
'Messmore Breamworthy.' Gally eyed Bill with mild interest. 'Yes, there is a resemblance,' he agreed. 'Quite understandably of course, considering that they are half-brothers.'
'Eh?'
'Landseer's widowed mother married a man named Bream-worthy. The union culminated in young Messmore. A good enough chap in his way, but I would never have sent him down if I had known that Landseer was available. No comparison between the two men as artists.'
'Odd that they should both be artists.'
'Would you say that? Surely these things often run in families.'
'That's true,' agreed Lord Emsworth. 'There's a man living near here who breeds cocker spaniels, and he has a brother in Kent who breeds sealyhams.'
During these exchanges Lady Hermione had been silent. It was the burgeoning within her of a monstrous suspicion that had made her so. Slowly and by degrees this suspicion was gathering strength. Indeed, the only barrier to a complete understanding on her part was the feeling that there must surely be some things of which her brother Galahad was not capable. She knew him to be a man possessed to an impressive degree of the gall of an army mule, but even an army mule, she considered, would hesitate to smuggle into Blandings Castle an ineligible suitor from whose society one of its sacred nieces was being rigorously withheld.
She looked at Bill and closed her eyes, trying to conjure up that interview on the lawn. She wished she could be sure....
Too little, the chronicler realizes, has been said about that beard of Fruity Biffen's, and it may be that its concealing properties have not been adequately stressed. But reading between the lines, the public must have gathered an impression of its density. The Fruities of this world, when they are endeavouring to baffle the scrutiny of keen-eyed bookmakers, do not skimp in the matter of face fungus. The man behind this beard was not so much a man wearing a beard as a pair of eyes staring out of an impenetrable jungle; and, try as she might, Lady Hermione was unable to recall any more definite picture than just that.
She sat back in her chair frowning. The whole thing turned, of course, on whether her brother Galahad was or was not capable of drawing the line somewhere. She mused on this, and the conversation flowed about her unheard.
As a matter of fact, there was nothing in it particularly worth hearing. Lord Emsworth said that he had been wrong in asserting that the man who lived near here bred cocker spaniels – he had meant retrievers. And as the mention of dogs of any breed could scarcely fail to remind Gally of a rather amusing story which might possibly be new to those present, he told one.
He had finished it and was starting another, begging them to stop him if they had heard it before, when Lord Emsworth, who had been showing signs of restlessness, said that he thought he ought to be going down and seeing Pott, his pig man, in case the latter should have anything of interest to report concerning the affairs of the Empress during his absence.
The words brought Gally to an abrupt halt in his narrative. They reminded him that he had still to see this Pott and purchase his silence. If Lord Emsworth were to contact the fellow before this was done, who knew what sensational confidences might not be poured into his quivering ear. Gally was extremely fond of his brother and shrank from having him upset. He also disliked arguments and discussions.
Policy plainly called to him to race off and sweeten Pott. But this involved leaving Bill. And was it safe to leave Bill to cope unsupported with a situation which he was quite aware was delicate and difficult?
The point was very moot, and for a moment he hesitated. What finally decided him was Lady Hermione's trancelike demeanour. She seemed to have withdrawn into a meditative coma, and as long as this persisted there could surely be no peril. And, after all, it does not take the whole evening to whizz down to a pigsty, stop the pig man's mouth with gold, and whizz back again. He would be able to return in a quarter of an hour at the outside.
Rising, accordingly, with a muttered statement about having forgotten something, he passed through the french windows and disappeared; and a few moments later Lord Emsworth, who always took a little time to collect his hands and feet when about to potter from any given spot, followed him. With much the same unpleasant shock which must have come to the boy who stood on the burning deck, Bill awoke from a reverie on his favourite subject of Prudence to the realization that all but he had fled and that he was alone with his hostess.
A silence ensued. When a young man of shy disposition, accustomed to the more Bohemian society of Chelsea, finds himself alone on her home ground with a daughter of a hundred earls and cannot forget that at their last meeting he mistook her for the cook and tipped her half a crown; and when the daughter of the hundred earls, already strongly prejudiced against the young man as an intruder, has begun to suspect that he is the miscreant who recently chivvied her only child and is doing his best to marry her niece against the wishes of the family, it is almost too much to expect that the conversation will proceed from the first with an easy flow.
Her friends had sometimes said of Lady Hermione, who was a well-read, well-educated woman with an interest in most of the problems of the day, that if she wanted to she could found a modern salon. At the moment, it seemed, she did not want to, at any rate with Bill as the nucleus of it.
The two were still eyeing each other with embarrassment on the one side and an ever-increasing suspicion on the other, when their tête-à-tête was interrupted. A shadow fell on the pool of sunlight in the french windows, and Freddie came curvetting in.
'No dice,' announced Freddie, addressing his aunt. 'I found them linked in a close embrace, and I hadn't the heart to interrupt them.'
At this point he observed that his father and his uncle were no longer in the room, but that a newcomer had been added in the shape of a large individual who was sitting with his long legs twined round those of a chair. Coming out of the sunshine, he experienced a momentary difficulty in seeing this substantial bird steadily and seeing him whole, and f
or an instant supposed himself to be gazing upon a stranger. The thought occurred to him that it might be possible to interest the man in a good dog biscuit.
Then, as his eyes adjusted themselves to the subdued light, they suddenly widened in an incredulous stare and his mouth, as was its habit in times of emotion, fell open like a letter box.
To his Uncle Galahad he later put two simple questions, explaining that on these he rested his case.
They were:
(a) How the dickens could he have been expected to know?
and, arising from this,
(b) Why had he not been kept informed?
It stands to reason, argued Freddie, that if a chap has been widely publicized as a pariah and an outcast and then you suddenly come upon him sitting at his ease in the drawing-room, having a cosy dish of tea with the spearhead of the opposition, you naturally assume that the red light has turned to green and that he has been taken to the family's bosom. Particularly, he added with quiet reproach, if you have been expressly told that he is 'all right' and that you need not worry about him because the speaker assures you that he has his case 'well in hand'.
It was on those phrases, he said, that he took his stand. Had his Uncle Gally used them, or had he not? Had he or had he not practically stated in so many words that the ban on poor old Blister had been lifted and that his future need cause his friends and well-wishers no concern? Very well, then, there you were. The point he was making was that it was unjust and absurd to apply such a term as 'cloth-headed young imbecile' to himself and to hurl at him the reproach of being a spiller of beans and a bunger of spanners into works.
What had brought about the disaster, he urged, was the Hon. Galahad's extraordinary policy of silence and secretiveness. A word to the effect that he was planning to introduce Bill Lister into the house surreptitiously, and all would have been well. In these affairs, he pointed out, co-operation is of the essence. Without co-operation and a frank pooling of information, no dividends can be expected to result.
Thus Freddie later. What he said now was:
'Blister!'
The word rang through the drawing-room like a bugle, and Lady Hermione, on whose heart the name 'Lister' was deeply graven, leaped in her chair.
'Well, well, well!' said Freddie, beaming profusely. 'Well, well, well, well, well! Well, this is fine, this is splendid. So you've seen reason, Aunt Hermione? I was hoping your sterling good sense would assert itself. I take it that you have talked Aunt Dora over, or propose to do so at an early date. Now that you are wholeheartedly on the side of love's young dream, I anticipate no trouble in that quarter. She will be wax in your hands. Tell her from me, in case she starts beefing, that Prue could find no worthier mate than good old Bill Lister. One of the best and brightest. I've known him for years. And if he chucks his art, as he has guaranteed to do, and goes into the pub-keeping business, I see no reason why the financial future of the young couple should not be extremely bright. There's money in pubs. They will need a spot of capital, of course, but that can be supplied. I suggest a family round-table conference, at which the thing can be thoroughly gone into and threshed out in all its aspects. Cheerio, Blister. Heartiest congratulations.'
Throughout this well-phased harangue Lady Hermione had been sitting with twitching hands and gleaming eyes. It had not occurred to the speaker that there was anything ominous in her demeanour, but a more observant nephew would have noted her strong resemblance to the puma of the Indian jungle about to pounce upon its prey.
She eyed him enquiringly.
'Have you quite finished, Freddie?'
'Eh? Yes, I think that about covers the subject.'
'Then I should be glad,' said Lady Hermione, 'if you would go and see Beach and tell him to pack Mr Lister's things, if they are already unpacked, and send them to the Emsworth Arms. Mr Lister will be leaving the castle immediately.'
CHAPTER 9
Accustomed from earliest years to carry out with promptness and civility the wishes of his aunts, a nephew's automatic reaction to a command from one of the platoon, even after he has become a solid married man with an important executive post in America's leading firm of dog biscuit manufacturers, is to jump to it. Ordered by his Aunt Hermione to go and see Beach, Freddie did not draw himself up and reply that if she desired to get in touch with her staff she could jolly well ring for them; he started off immediately.
It was only when he was almost at the door of the butler's pantry that it occurred to him that this errand boy stuff was a bit infra dig for a vice-president, and he halted. And having halted he realized that where he ought to be was back in the drawing-room, which he should never have left, trying to break down with silver-tongued eloquence his relative's sales resistance to poor old Blister. A testing task, of course, but one not, he fancied, beyond the scope of a man who had recently played on Major R. B. and Lady Emily Finch as on a couple of stringed instruments.
Reaching the drawing-room, he found that in the brief interval since his departure Bill had left, presumably with bowed head, through the french windows. But, restoring the quota of lovers to its previous level, Prudence had arrived, and her aspect showed only too plainly that she had been made acquainted with the position of affairs. Her eyes were dark with pain, and she was eating buttered toast in a crushed sort of way.
Lady Hermione was still sitting behind the teapot, as rigidly erect as if some sculptor had persuaded her to pose for his Statue of an Aunt. In all the long years during which they had been associated it seemed to Freddie that he had never seen her looking so undisguisedly the Aunt, the whole Aunt, and nothing but the Aunt, and in spite of himself his heart sank a little. Even Lady Emily Finch, though her mental outlook was that of a strong-minded mule, an animal which she resembled in features as well as temperament, had been an easier prospect.
'Blister gone?' he said, and marshalled a telling phrase or two in his mind for use later.
'Gone,' said Prudence, through a bitter mouthful of buttered toast. 'Gone without a cry. Driven into the snow before I could so much as set eyes on him. Golly, if a few people around this joint had hearts, Blandings Castle would be a better, sweeter place.'
'Well spoken, young half-portion,' said Freddie approvingly. 'I thoroughly concur. What the old dosshouse needs is a splash of the milk of human kindness. Switch it on, Aunt Hermione, is my advice.'
Lady Hermione, disregarding this appeal, asked if he had seen Beach, and Freddie said no, he had not seen Beach and he would tell her why. It was because he had hoped that better counsels would prevail, and if his aunt would give him a couple of minutes of her valuable time he would like to put forward a few arguments which might induce her to look with a kindlier eye on these young lovers who were being kept asunder.
Lady Hermione, who was somewhat addicted to homely phrases, said: 'Stuff and nonsense.' Freddie, shaking his head, said that this was hardly the spirit he had hoped to see. And Prudence, who had been sighing rather heavily at intervals, brought the names of Simon Legree and Torquemada into the conversation, speculating as to why people always made such a song and dance about their brutal inhuman inhumanity when there were others (whom she was prepared to name on request) who could give them six strokes in eighteen holes and be dormy two on the seventeenth tee.
Lady Hermione said: 'That is quite enough, Prudence,' and Freddie contested this view.
'It is not enough, Aunt Hermione. Far from it. We will now go into executive session and thresh the whole thing out. What have you got against poor old Blister? That is the question I should like to begin by asking you.'
'And this,' said Lady Hermione, 'is the question I should like to begin by asking you. Were you a party to this abominable trick of Galahad's?'
'Eh?'
'You know perfectly well what I mean. Bringing that young man into the house under a false name.'
'Oh, that?' said Freddie. 'Well, I'll tell you. I was not actually help to the stratagem you mention, or I would never have dropped the brick I did.
But if you are asking me: "Am I heart and soul in Blister's cause?" the answer is in the affirmative. I consider that a union between him and this young prune here would be in the best and deepest sense a bit of all right.'
''Att-a boy, Freddie,' said the prune, well pleased with this sentiment.
'Stuff and nonsense,' said Lady Hermione, with whom it had not gone over so big. 'The man looks like a gorilla.'
'Bill does not look like a gorilla!' cried Prudence.
'Yes, he does,' said Freddie, who, though partisan, was fair. 'As far as the outer crust goes, good old Blister could walk straight into any zoo, and they would lay down the red carpet for him. But the point seems to me to have little or no bearing upon the case at issue. There is nothing in the book of rules, as far as I am aware, that prevents a man looking like a gorilla and still having what it takes when it is a question of being a good husband and a loving father, if you'll excuse me mentioning it, Prue. Just peeping into Vol. Two for a moment.'
'Quite all right,' said Prudence. 'Carry on. You're doing fine.'
'Where you have made your bloomer, Aunt Hermione, is in allowing yourself to be influenced too much by appearances. You cock an eye at Blister and you say to yourself, "Gosh! I'd hate to meet that bird down a lonely alley on a dark night," overlooking the fact that beneath that sinister exterior there beats one of the most outsize hearts you're likely to find in a month of Sundays. It isn't faces that matter, it's honest worth, and in that department Blister is a specialist.'
'Freddie?'
'Hullo?'
'Will you be quiet!'
'No, Aunt Hermione,' said the splendid young dog biscuit vendor stoutly. 'I will not be quiet. The time has come to speak out. Blister, as I told you before, is one of the best. And I believe I mentioned that he is the owner of a pub which only needs a bit of capital to make it a gold mine.'
Lady Hermione shuddered. She was not a woman who had ever been fond of public houses.