There was dead silence at the other end of the wire. It seemed as if the revelation of a good man’s love had struck Lord Ems-worth dumb. It was only some moments later, after he had said ‘Hullo!’ six times and ‘I say, are you there?’ twice that it was borne in upon Hugo that he had wasted two hundred and eighty words of the finest eloquence on empty space.
His natural chagrin at this discovery was sensibly diminished by the sudden sound of Millicent’s voice in his ear.
‘Hullo!’
‘Hullo!’
‘Hullo!’
‘Hullo!’
‘Hugo!’
‘Hullo!’
‘I say, Hugo!’ She spoke with the joyous excitement of a girl who has just emerged from the centre of a family dog-fight. ‘I say, Hugo, things are hotting up here properly. I sprung it on Uncle Clarence just now that I want to marry you!’
‘So did I. Only he wasn’t there.’
‘I said “Uncle Clarence, aren’t you grateful to Mr Carmody for finding the Empress?” and he said “Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, to be sure. Capital boy! Capital boy! Always liked him.” And I said “I suppose you wouldn’t by any chance let me marry him?” and he said “Eh, what? Marry him?” “Yes,” I said. “Marry him.” And he said “Certainly, certainly, certainly, certainly, by all means.” And then Aunt Constance had a fit, and Uncle Gaily said she was a kill-joy and ought to be ashamed of herself for throwing the gaff into love’s young dream, and Uncle Clarence kept on saying “Certainly, certainly, certainly.” I don’t know what old Parsloe thinks of it all. He’s sitting in his chair, looking at the ceiling and drinking hock. The butler left at the end of round one. I’m going back to see how it’s all coming out. Hold the line.’
A man for whom Happiness and Misery are swaying in the scales three miles away, and whose only medium of learning the result of the contest is a telephone wire, is not likely to ring off impatiently. Hugo sat tense and breathless, like one listening in on the radio to a championship fight in which he has a financial interest. It was only when a cheery voice spoke at his elbow that he realized that his solitude had been invaded, and by Percy Pilbeam at that.
Percy Pilbeam was looking rosy and replete. He swayed slightly and his smile was rather wider and more pebble-beached than a total abstainer’s would have been.
‘Hullo, Carmody,’ said Percy Pilbeam. ‘What ho, Carmody. So here you are, Carmody.’
It came to Hugo that he had something to say to this man.
‘Here, you!’ he cried.
‘Yes, Carmody?’
‘Do you want to be battered to a pulp?’
‘No, Carmody.’
‘Then listen. You didn’t see me put that pig in the caravan. Understand?’
‘But I did, Carmody.’
‘You didn’t – not if you want to go on living.’
Percy Pilbeam appeared to be in a mood not only of keen intelligence but of the utmost reasonableness and amiability.
‘Say no more, Carmody,’ he said agreeably. ‘I take your point. You want me not to tell anybody I saw you put that caravan in the pig. Quite, Carmody, quite.’
‘Well, bear it in mind.’
‘I will, Carmody. Oh yes, Carmody, I will. I’m going for a stroll outside, Carmody. Care to join me?’
‘Go to hell!’
‘Quite,’ said Percy Pilbeam.
He tacked unsteadily to the door, aimed himself at it and passed through. And a moment later Millicent’s voice spoke.
‘Hugo?’
‘Hullo?’
‘Oh, Hugo, darling, the battle’s over. We’ve won. Uncle Clarence has said “Certainly” sixty-five times, and he’s just told Aunt Constance that if she thinks she can bully him she’s very much mistaken. It’s a walk-over. They’re all coming back right away in the car. Uncle Clarence is an angel.’
‘So are you.’
‘Me?’
‘Yes, you.’
‘Not such an angel as you are.’
‘Much more of an angel than I am,’ said Hugo, in the voice of one trained to the appraising and classifying of angels.
‘Well, anyway, you precious old thing, I’m going to give them the slip and walk home along the road. Get out Ronnie’s two-seater and come and pick me up and we’ll go for a drive together, miles and miles through the country. It’s the most perfect evening.’
‘You bet it is!’ said Hugo fervently. ‘What I call something like an evening. Give me two minutes to get the car out and five to make the trip and I’ll be with you.’
“At-a-boy!’said Millicent.
“At-a-baby!’ said Hugo.
16 LOVERS MEETING
Sue stood staring, wide-eyed. This was the moment which she had tried to picture to herself a hundred times. And always her imagination had proved unequal to the task. Sometimes she had seen Ronnie in her mind’s eye cold, aloof, hostile; sometimes gasping and tottering, dumb with amazement; sometimes pointing a finger at her like a character in a melodrama and denouncing her as an impostor. The one thing for which she had not been prepared was what happened now.
Eton and Cambridge train their sons well. Once they have grasped the fundamental fact of life that all exhibitions of emotion are bad form, bombshells cannot disturb their poise and earthquakes are lucky if they get so much as an ‘Eh, what?’ from them. But Cambridge has its limitations, and so has Eton. And remorse had goaded Ronnie Fish to a point where their iron discipline had ceased to operate. He was stirred to his depths, and his scarlet face, his rumpled hair, his starting eyes and his twitching fingers all proclaimed the fact.
‘Ronnie!’cried Sue.
It was all she had time to say. The thought of what she had done for his sake; the thought that for love of him she had come to Blandings Castle under false colours – an impostor – faced at every turn by the risk of detection – liable at any moment to be ignominiously exposed and looked at through a lorgnette by his Aunt Constance; the thought of the shameful way he had treated her . . . all these thoughts were racking Ronald Fish with a searing anguish. They had brought the hot blood of the Fishes to the boil, and now, face to face with her, he did not hesitate.
He sprang forward, clasped her in his arms, hugged her to him. To Baxter’s revolted ears, though he tried not to listen, there came in a husky cataract the sound of a Fish’s self-reproaches. Ronnie was saying what he thought of himself, and his opinion appeared not to be high. He said he was a beast, a brute, a swine, a cad, a hound, and a worm. If he had been speaking of Percy Pilbeam, he could scarcely have been less complimentary.
Even up to this point, Baxter had not liked the dialogue. It now became perfectly nauseating. Sue said it had all been her fault. Ronnie said, No, his. No, hers, said Sue. No, his, said Ronnie. No, hers, said Sue. No, altogether his, said Ronnie. It must have been his, he pointed out, because, as he had observed before, he was a hound and a worm. He now went further. He revealed himself as a blister, a tick, and a perishing outsider.
‘You’re not!’
‘I am!’
‘You’re not!’
‘I am!’
‘Of course you’re not!’
‘I certainly am!’
‘Well, I love you anyway.’
‘You can’t.’
‘I do.’
‘You can’t.’
‘I do.’
Baxter writhed in silent anguish.
‘How long?’ said Baxter to his immortal soul. ‘How long?’
The question was answered with a startling promptitude. From the neighbourhood of the french windows there sounded a discreet cough. The debaters sprang apart, two minds with but a single thought.
‘Your manuscript, miss,’ said Beach sedately.
Sue looked at him. Ronnie looked at him. Sue until this moment had forgotten his existence. Ronnie had supposed him downstairs, busy about his butlerine duties. Neither seemed very glad to see him.
Ronnie was the first to speak.
‘Oh-hullo, Beach!’
> There being no answer to this except ‘Hullo, sir!’ which is a thing that butlers do not say, Beach contented himself with a benignant smile. It had the unfortunate effect of making Ronnie think that the man was laughing at him, and the Fishes were men at whom butlers may not lightly laugh. He was about to utter a heated speech, indicating this, when the injudiciousness of such a course presented itself to his mind. Beach must be placated. He forced his voice to a note of geniality.
‘So there you are, Beach?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘I suppose all this must seem tolerably rummy to you?’
‘No, sir.’
‘No?’
‘I had already been informed, Mr Ronald, of the nature of your feelings towards this lady.’
‘What!’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Who told you?’
‘Mr Pilbeam, sir.’
Ronnie uttered a gasp. Then he became calmer. He had suddenly remembered that this man was his ally, his accomplice, linked to him not only by a friendship dating back to his boyhood but by the even stronger bond of mutual crime. Between them there need be no reserves. Delicate though the situation was, he now felt equal to it.
‘Beach,’ he said. ‘How much do you know?’
‘All, sir.’
‘All?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Such as –?’
Beach coughed.
‘I am aware that this lady is a Miss Sue Brown. And, according to my informant, she is employed in the chorus of the Regal Theatre.’
‘Quite the Encyclopaedia, aren’t you?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘I want to marry Miss Brown, Beach.’
‘I can readily appreciate such a desire on your part, Mr Ronald,’ said the butler with a paternal smile.
Sue caught at the smile.
‘Ronnie! He’s all right. I believe he’s a friend.’
‘Of course he’s a friend! Old Beach. One of my earliest and stoutest pals.’
‘I mean, he isn’t going to give us away.’
‘Me, miss?’ said Beach, shocked. ‘Certainly not.’
‘Splendid fellow, Beach!’
‘Thank you, sir.’
‘Beach,’ said Ronnie, ‘the time has come to act. No more delay. I’ve got to make myself solid with Uncle Clarence at once. Directly he gets back to-night, I shall go to him and tell him that Empress of Blandings is in the gamekeeper’s cottage in the West Wood, and then, while he’s still weak, I shall spring on him the announcement of my engagement.’
‘Unfortunately, Mr Ronald, the animal is no longer in the cottage.’
‘You’ve moved it?’
‘Not I, sir. Mr Carmody. By a most regrettable chance Mr Carmody found me feeding it this afternoon. He took it away and deposited it in some place of which I am not cognizant, sir.’
‘But, good heavens, he’ll dish the whole scheme. Where is he?’
‘You wish me to find him, sir?’
‘Of course I wish you to find him. Go at once and ask him where that pig is. Tell him it’s vital.’
‘Very good, sir.’
Sue had listened with bewilderment to this talk of pigs.
‘I don’t understand, Ronnie.’
Ronnie was pacing the room in agitation. Once he came so close to where Baxter lay in his snug harbour that the ex-secretary had a flashing glimpse of a sock with a lavender clock. It was the first object of beauty that he had seen for a long time, and he should have appreciated it more than he did.
‘I can’t explain now,’ said Ronnie. ‘It’s too long. But I can tell you this. If we don’t get that pig back, we’re in the soup.’
‘Ronnie!’
Ronnie had ceased to pace the room. He was standing in a listening attitude.
‘What’s that?’
He sprang quickly to the balcony, looked over the parapet and came softly back.
‘Sue!’
‘What!’
‘It’s that blighter Pilbeam,’ said Ronnie in a guarded undertone. ‘He’s climbing up the waterspout!’
17 SPIRITED CONDUCT OF LORD EMSWORTH
From the moment when it left the door of Matchingham Hall and started on its journey back to Blandings Castle, a silence as of the tomb had reigned in the Antelope car which was bringing Lord Emsworth, his sister Lady Constance Keeble, and his brother, the Hon. Galahad Threepwood, home from their interrupted dinner-party. Not so much as a syllable proceeded from one of them.
In the light of what Millicent, an eyewitness at the Front, had told Hugo over the telephone of the family battle which had been raging at Sir Gregory Parsloe’s table, this will appear strange. If ever three people with plenty to say to one another were assembled together in a small space, these three, one would have thought, were those three. Lady Constance alone might have been expected to provide enough conversation to keep the historian busy for hours.
The explanation, like all explanations, is simple. It is supplied by that one word Antelope.
Owing to the fact that some trifling internal ailment had removed from the active list the Hispano-Suiza in which Blandings Castle usually went out to dinner, Voules, the chauffeur, had had to fall back upon this secondary and inferior car; and anybody who has ever owned an Antelope is aware that there is no glass partition inside it shutting off the driver from the cash customers. He is right there in their midst, ready and eager to hear everything that is said and to hand it on in due course to the Servants’ Hall.
In these circumstances, though the choice seemed one between speech and spontaneous combustion, the little company kept their thoughts to themselves. They suffered, but they did it. It would be difficult to find a better illustration of all that is implied in the fine old phrase Noblesse oblige. At Lady Constance we point with particular pride. She was a woman, and silence weighed hardest on her.
There were times during the drive when even the sight of Voules’ large, red ears, all pricked up to learn the reason for this sudden and sensational return, was scarcely sufficient to restrain Lady Constance Keeble from telling her brother Clarence just what she thought of him. From boyhood up, he had not once come near to being her ideal man; but never had he sunk so low in her estimation as at the moment when she heard him giving his consent to the union of her niece Millicent with a young man who, besides being penniless, had always afflicted her with a nervous complaint for which she could find no name, but which is known to Scientists as the heeby-jeebies.
Nor had he re-established himself in any way by his outspoken remarks on the subject of the Efficient Baxter. He had said things about Baxter which no admirer of that energetic man could forgive. The adjectives mad, crazy, insane, gibbering – and, worse, potty – had played in and out of his conversation like flashes of lightning. And from the look in his eye she gathered that he was still saying them all over again to himself.
Her surmise was correct. To Lord Emsworth the events of this day had come as a stunning revelation. On the strength of that flower-pot incident two years ago, he had always looked on Baxter as mentally unbalanced; but, being a fair-minded man, he had recognized the possibility that a quiet, regular life and freedom from worries might, in the interval which had elapsed since his late secretary’s departure from the castle, have effected a cure. Certainly the man had appeared quite normal on the day of his arrival. And now into the space of a few hours he had crammed enough variegated lunacy to equip all the March Hares in England and leave some over for the Mad Hatters.
The ninth Earl of Emsworth was not a man who was easily disturbed. His was a calm which, as a rule, only his younger son Frederick could shatter. But it was not proof against the sort of thing that had being going on to-day. No matter how placid you may be, if you find yourself in close juxtaposition with a man who, when he is not hurling himself out of windows, is stealing pigs and trying to make you believe they were stolen by your butler, you begin to think a bit. Lord Emsworth was thoroughly upset. As the car bowled up the drive, he
was saying to himself that nothing could surprise him now.
And yet something did. As the car turned the corner by the rhododendrons and wheeled into the broad strip of gravel that faced the front door, he beheld a sight which brought the first sound he had uttered since the journey began bursting from his lips.
‘Good God!’
The words were spoken in a high, penetrating tenor, and they made Lady Constance jump as if they had been pins running into her. This unexpected breaking of the great silence was agony to her taut nerves.
‘What is the matter?’
‘Matter? Look! Look at that fellow!’
Voules took it upon himself to explain. Never having met Lady Constance socially, as it were, he ought perhaps not to have spoken. He considered, however, that the importance of the occasion justified the solecism.
‘A man is climbing the waterspout, m’lady.’
‘What! Where? I don’t see him.’
‘He has just got into the balcony outside one of the bedrooms,’ said the Hon. Galahad.
Lord Emsworth went straight to the heart of the matter.
‘It’s that fellow Baxter!’ he exclaimed.
The summer day, for all the artificial aid lent by daylight saving, was now definitely over, and gathering night had spread its mantle of dusk over the world. The visibility, therefore, was not good: and the figure which had just vanished over the parapet of the balcony of the Garden Room had been unrecognizable except to the eye of intuition. This, however, was precisely the sort of eye that Lord Emsworth possessed.
He reasoned closely. There were, he knew, on the premises of Blandings Castle other male adults besides Rupert Baxter: but none of these would climb up waterspouts and disappear over balconies. To Baxter, on the other hand, such a pursuit would seem the normal, ordinary way of passing an evening. Itwouldbe his idea of wholesome relaxation. Soon, no doubt, he would come out on to the balcony again and throw himself to the ground. That was the sort of fellow Baxter was – a man of strange pleasures.