He was right. She did. And John, recovering consciousness and with it the illusion that some practical joker had substituted for his head a large and throbbing pumpkin, looked up dazedly. He had an odd feeling that someone had been kissing him. It hardly seemed possible that it was Linda who had done this, but she was certainly bending over him, and it was worth enquiring into.
'Were you kissing me?' he muttered.
'She was indeed,' said Gally heartily. 'No argument about that, my boy. She was kissing you like a ton of bricks. And I think I speak for her when I say that any little differences you may have had are now all washed up and that the laughing love god has wound his silken fetters about her once more, just as in the good old days when Clutterbuck and Frisby were nothing but a couple of names in the telephone directory. Correct, wench?'
'Quite correct.'
'This poor bit of human wreckage is officially established as the cream in your coffee and the salt in your stew?'
'He is.'
'Then would it be fair to suggest that you take him to the downstairs washroom and bathe his head in cold water. That certainly is a lump you've got, Johnny. I've not seen one as big as that since I used to attend the Saturday night gatherings at the old Pelican. Your father was a great man for getting lumps on his head, generally owing to being hit with bottles. He was always having political disputes with the more quick-tempered members. What the devil's all that noise?' said Gally changing the subject.
3
The noise to which he alluded was proceeding from the Duke. He was lying underneath the suit of armour and giving every indication that, whatever ill effects he might have suffered from his fall, his lungs had remained unimpaired. Gally walked over to where he lay and surveyed him with a sympathetic eye. He was not fond of the Duke, but he had a kind heart and could see that he was in pain.
'Are you all right, Dunstable?' he asked, feeling as he spoke that it was a foolish question, and the injured man told him not to be an ass.
'Of course I'm not all right. I've sprained my ankle.'
'Let me have a look. Does that hurt?'
'Ouch!'
'Yes, it's a sprain all right. I can feel the swelling. I'll help you to your room. Oh, Beach,' said Gally, as that interested observer appeared beside them, 'His Grace has sprained his ankle.'
'Indeed, Mr. Galahad?'
'Will you lend a hand. And then you might phone the doctor to come and look him over.'
After a difficult journey the Duke was deposited on the sofa in the garden suite, and Beach withdrew to telephone. Gally, about to follow him, was halted by a sharp 'Hey' from the invalid. He turned, expecting to listen to further observations on the subject of sprained ankles, on which already the other had been far from reticent, but it was on a different topic that the Duke now touched.
'Threepwood!'
'Hullo?'
'Ouch!'
'Agony?'
'Of course it's agony. But it's not that. It's about that niece of mine. What the devil's come over her?'
'How do you mean?'
'You know. You were standing right beside her when she did it. You saw the whole thing. Dammit, man, even if you wear an eyeglass, you aren't blind. She was kissing the headshrinker.'
Gally uttered an exclamation. It was as if his memory had been jogged.
'You're perfectly right. So she was. Yes, it all comes back to me. He was lying on the floor, and she bent over him—'
'What do you mean, bent over him? She flung herself at him like a performing seal going after a bit of fish and kissed him.'
'Yes, I noticed.'
'About fifty times.'
'Yes, that would probably be somewhere near the figure. And you are naturally wondering why. I can explain it in a few words. She's in love with him.'
'Don't be an ass. She's never met him. Not till tonight, I mean. He only arrived this evening. They're perfect strangers.'
Gally saw that the time had come to unseal his lips. He would have preferred to postpone the revelation till he had had his dinner, but this did not appear to be within the sphere of practical politics. It was plain that the invalid would not rest easily on his sofa until presented with a solution of the mystery which was vexing him. He embarked on his narrative with the smooth suavity which had been wont to win all hearts at the Pelican Club.
'I see the time has come to let you in on a little secret, Dunstable, though I wasn't intending to mention it till a more favourable opportunity. In supposing that Johnny Halliday and your niece are perfect strangers you are very wide of the mark. He has known her for quite a time, during which time he never for an instant omitted to press his suit. You know the sort of thing. Flowers, lunches, ardent glances, whispered words and I should imagine, though this is merely a conjecture, bottles of scent. Sometimes he would tell himself that he was making progress, sometimes he would feel that he was getting nowhere and despondency would ensue. He was often to be seen in Hyde Park or Kensington Gardens plucking daisies and murmuring "She loves me, she loves me not". And so it went on till some nights ago, stiffening the sinews and summoning up the blood, as the fellow said, he proposed to her in a taxi cab and they became betrothed. That was the night you were so disturbed because she hummed and giggled, giving you the impression that something had gone wrong with the two hemispheres of her brain and the broad band of transversely running fibres known as the corpus callosum and that she was, in your crisp phrase, potty. It was not pottiness, Dunstable, it was the natural exuberance of a young girl who has found love and happiness and is looking forward to the wedding with full choral effects, with the man she adores standing at her side in a morning coat and sponge bag trousers and the bishop and assistant clergy doing their stuff as busily as one-armed paperhangers with the hives. And then the reception and the going-away dress and the sunlit honeymoon and all that applesauce.'
There were several points in this monologue when the Duke would have been glad to interrupt, but the fury with which its subject matter filled him precluded speech, and he could merely splutter. He was still spluttering as Gally proceeded.
'But, as I need hardly tell an old campaigner like you, the course of true love seldom runs smooth. Circumstances arose which led to a rift between the young couple. Johnny unfortunately blotted his copybook and fell back badly in the betting. His only hope of getting things on an even keel again was to come to Blandings Castle and do some heavy pleading. But how to get him there? Ah, that was what wanted thinking out. To tell Connie that he was a friend of mine, in fact actually my godson, would have been fatal, for Connie's attitude towards my circle of intimates has always been austere. Not bothering to make a study of each individual case, she pencils them all in as untouchables. I can see you shuddering at her unreasonableness—at least something seems to be making you shake—but there it is, that's Connie.
'And then I got the idea of bringing him here to psychoanalyse Clarence. I would be killing two birds with one stone, if I may so express myself. He could devote his mornings to pleading with the popsy and attend to Clarence in the afternoon and evening. A perfect set-up it seemed to me. So thanks to you, for you invited him, he came, and most fortunately fell downstairs and bumped his head, with the happy result that your niece, all animosity forgotten, flung herself on him, like as you brilliantly put it a seal going after a bit of fish, started to kiss him and is probably kissing him still. In short, there has been a complete reconciliation, love is working again at the old stand, and you can begin saving up for the wedding present and making notes for your speech at the wedding breakfast.'
Even Gally, practised raconteur though he was, was obliged to stop occasionally and take in breath. He did so now, and the Duke was enabled to convert the monologue into a duet. For the first time he found himself capable of speech.
'I never heard such dashed nonsense in my life,' he said.
Gally was surprised and pained. He had expected a better comment on his eloquence than this. His eyeglass glittered with repr
oach.
'You amaze me, Dunstable. Don't you approve of young love in Springtime? Not that it is Springtime, but the principle's the same. I would have thought you would have been giving three rousing cheers, only prevented by your groggy ankle from dancing the dance of the seven veils. You seem to me to be on velvet, for though you are losing a niece, you are gaining a nephew.'
'Ouch!'
'Don't say Ouch. Don't you like gaining a nephew?'
'No, I don't. I've got two, and I can't stand them. They both sneaked off and married scums of the earth without a word to me. That isn't going to happen to Linda. I want something better for her than the junior partner of a loony doctor. You can tell your ruddy godson that there isn't a hope of him marrying her. It's no good arguing, I won't consider it,' boomed the Duke, and further discussion was prevented by the arrival of the medicine man, who had his home in the village of Blandings Parva almost in the shadow of the castle walls and so had been able to give prompt service. Gally, relieved by his presence from attendance at the sick bed, returned to the hall, where he found John and Linda, the former looking damp, the latter wearing the contented air of a ministering angel conscious of having done a good job of work. He hastened to acquaint them with the latest developments.
'Well, Johnny, I've just been talking to your future uncle by marriage. Only he says he isn't.'
'Isn't what?'
'Your future uncle by marriage. I explained the position of affairs to him, he being rather at a loss to grasp what was the thought behind all that kissing, and he stoutly denied that you and your little ball of worsted are headed for the altar. He said he wouldn't permit it. What's the matter?'
This to Linda, who had made him jump with a sudden sharp cry, of much the same timbre as the one she had uttered on observing her loved one's head come in contact with the table on which the papers and magazines were kept. The light had died out of her eyes, and those eyes were staring at him in a manner which struck him as extremely odd.
'Did Uncle Alaric say that?' she asked in a hollow voice.
'He did, and it was like his gall. Of all the crust! Where does he get off, trying to dictate to you who you can marry and who you can't? He hasn't any say in the matter at all. It isn't as if he were your father, he's just your uncle and a very inferior uncle at that, the sort of uncle a young bride hushes up and keeps as much as possible in the background. How can he stop you marrying anyone you want to?'
'But he can! He can! Oh, Johnny darling, I couldn't tell you that night in the taxi because there wasn't time, but I'm a ward of court.'
She would probably have gone on to amplify this statement, which had left Gally, for one, completely bewildered, but at this moment Beach began to beat the gong for dinner. And when Beach beat gongs, no human voice could offer competition.
4
All through the meal Gally continued to ponder on these peculiar words, hoping to read some significance into them, but no gleam of elucidation rewarded him. They seemed to him in a nebulous sort of way to convey a suggestion of the legal and if so had no doubt had a meaning for John, but with Connie present he could not apply to John for enlightenment. Nor could he go to the fountain head and ask Linda. He did enquire of Vanessa, who was seated next to him, if she knew what a ward of court was, but as she said she had an idea it was something to do with tennis, he made no real advance.
Dinner at the castle under Lady Constance's regime was a formal affair with no mass exit of the two sexes at the end of it. The gentlemen were left to their port precisely as the gentlemen of her father's day had been left to theirs. It was consequently only after the ladies had withdrawn and Lord Emsworth had gone to his room to take his collar off and get into bedroom slippers that Gally was able to put the question uppermost in his mind. With an abruptness excusable in the circumstances he interrupted Wilbur Trout, who had begun to tell a story about a travelling salesman, and said:
'Do either of you know what a ward of court is?'
Wilbur, abandoning his anecdote with his usual amiability, said he thought it was the fellow who did the fetching and carrying when the District Attorney asked the Judge if the murder weapon or the bloodstained handkerchief or whatever it might be could be placed in evidence as Exhibit A. Gally thanked him.
'No, it's a girl of some sort,' he said. 'I was talking to a girl not long ago, and she told me she was a ward of court, and I've been wondering what she meant.'
John through the greater part of dinner had been sitting in silence, and Gally had supposed that this was because his head was hurting him. The heads of the younger generation, he told himself, were not like the heads he had known at the old Pelican, where it had been unusual for members to take much notice even when struck with a side of beef. He now spoke, the first time he had done so since the fish course.
'I know what a ward of court is.'
'Ah! I thought it was something legal.'
'It's the same as a ward in Chancery,' said John, and Gally uttered a brief 'Oh, my God'. Whether from his reading or because he had heard somebody say something on the subject, he had a rudimentary acquaintance with the status of wards in Chancery. He began to grasp the seriousness of the situation.
John continued to explain in a toneless voice like that of one speaking from the tomb. He was wearing the same wan look which had caused remark in the garden of the Emsworth Arms and distressed the personnel of Paddington.
'A girl who is a ward of court comes under the ruling of the Guardianship Of Infants Act. She cannot marry or accept proposals of marriage without the consent of the court. When the consent of the court is not given, an injunction of restraint is made against the other intended party.'
Having mentally translated this into English, Gally removed and began to polish his eyeglass, a thing which, as has been shown, he seldom did except in moments of profound emotion. When he spoke, it was as though another voice was joining in the conversation from another tomb.
'You mean they put a stopper on the marriage?'
'Exactly.'
'Still they might not.'
'They would if some near relative of the ward of court—her uncle, for instance—objected to it.'
Gally burnished his eyeglass feverishly. He seemed to be praying for strength.
'Are you telling me that if a ward of court wants to marry a fellow who is one of the best and her uncle, a notorious louse, doesn't approve, the court would tell her she mustn't?'
'Yes, if he stood to her in loco parentis.'
'Monstrous!'
'It's the law.'
'Who made that law?'
'I couldn't tell you offhand.'
'Well, it's a damned outrage.'
Wilbur Trout, who had been listening with great interest, put the question which would naturally occur to the lay mind.
'What happens if the other intended party tells the court to go fry an egg and marries the girl anyway?'
'He gets sent to prison.'
'You're kidding.'
'No, that's the law. It's a very serious offence.'
'So the way it works out is that you just can't marry a ward of court?'
'Not with near relatives objecting.'
'Well, I wish some of my wives had been wards of court with near relatives objecting,' said Wilbur. 'I'd have saved money.'
5
Shortly after uttering these wistful words Wilbur, having like the stag at eve drunk his fill, left the table, saying that he thought he would go and do a bit more practising in the billiard room, and Gally was at liberty to speak freely.
'Well, this is a nice piece of box fruit, Johnny.'
'Yes.'
'You couldn't have got your facts wrong?'
'No.'
'Then things don't look so good.'
'I've known them better.'
'Why do you suppose Dunstable made her a ward of court?'
John's reply to this was a little brusque. He was not feeling his usual amiable self.
'Considering that it wa
s only about an hour ago that I found out she was one and that I've had no opportunity of asking her since, I can't tell you.'
'It must have been his experience with her brothers that put the idea into his head. He was telling me about them. They both married girls he disapproved of, and no doubt he said to himself that he was not going to have that happen to Linda.'
'Probably.'
'Just the sort of low trick that would have occurred to him.'
'Yes.'
'Is it really true that you would be slapped in the jug if you married her?'
'Yes.'
'You couldn't reason with them and drive it into their fat heads that yours was a special case?'
'No.'
Gally heaved a sigh. He was a doughty warrior and never gave in readily when in receipt of the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, but reviewing the position of affairs he was compelled to recognize that the outlook could not be called promising. Any knowledgeable turf accountant like Honest Jerry Judson, he felt, would hesitate for a long time before giving odds shorter than a hundred to one against the triumph of young love. And everything till now had seemed to be working out so smoothly.
'It's very bitter,' he said, heaving another sigh, 'that after negotiating with such success all the Becher's Brooks and Canal Turns in love's Grand National we seem to be pipped on the post. Though I ought not to say that. We mustn't be defeatist. Always keep your chin up, is my motto. There must be any number of ways of dealing with the situation.'
'Name three.'
'It will want thought, of course.'
'Quite a good deal.'
'The great thing is that you are solidly established at the castle, cheek by jowl, as you might say, with Dunstable, and so are in an excellent position to ingratiate yourself with him and get him to look on you as a son. He must learn to love you. You must see to it that your nature expands before him like some beautiful flower. You want to get him saying to himself "By golly, I was all wrong about this chap. Now that I've come to know him better I can see he's the salt of the ruddy earth, and it will be a pleasure and privilege to dance at his wedding." Have you been to see him yet with sympathetic enquiries?'