Gally’s face took on a grave expression in keeping with the solemnity of the moment, but he had come here on a mission of vital importance and was not to be diverted from the main issue.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘but before going into that in depth I will explain why I wanted to see you. Your cousin Victoria —’
‘I don’t know what England’s coming to.’
‘Your cousin Victoria has fallen in love with the wrong man and is immured at Blandings, and I have got the man there under a false name. I can reveal this to you without reserve as you have been associated with me in many of my cases. You will recall the Bill Lister incident.’[35]
‘And I’ll tell you why trade isn’t brisk,’ said Freddie. ‘It’s because of the bad practice of English dog owners of giving their dogs scraps at the luncheon and dinner tables. I was lunching —’
‘Freddie —’
‘I was lunching at a house in Sussex only yesterday, and there was my hostess with a dog on each side of her, and all through the meal she kept giving them hand-outs, yes, even of the Bavarian Cream which was the final course.’
‘Freddie —’
‘Is it reasonable to suppose that a dog full of Bavarian Cream will be satisfied with a biscuit, even one as wholesome and rich in all the essential vitamins as Donaldson’s Dog Joy? Naturally when I produced a sample and offered it to the animals they backed away, turning up their noses, and I was unable to book an order. And the same thing has happened over and over —’Freddie,’ said Gaily, ‘if you don’t stop babbling about your damned dog-biscuits and listen to me, I’ll shove the remains of that kipper down your neck.’
Freddie looked up from his marmalade, surprised. ‘Were you saying something?’
‘I was trying to. It’s about Jeff Bennison.’
‘I know Jeff Bennison.’
‘I know you do.’
‘What about him?’
‘He and Vicky are in love.’
‘Nothing wrong with that, is there?’
‘Yes, there is, because Florence has imprisoned her at Blandings to get her out of Jeff’s way and I have got Jeff into the house, calling himself Smith.’
‘You mean he’s in?’
‘Yes, he’s in.’
‘Hob-nobbing daily with Vicky?’
‘Yes.’
‘Absolutely on the premises?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then what’s your problem?’
‘I wouldn’t have one if you hadn’t wired Clarence that you were coming to Blandings … You mustn’t come within a hundred miles of the place. Go anywhere else in England that takes your fancy — they say Skegness is very bracing—but keep away from Shropshire.’
‘I don’t get it. Why?’
‘Because the first thing you would do when you got there would be to say — in Florence’s presence — “Bless my soul if it isn’t my old friend Jeff Bennison. How are you, Jeff old man, how are you?”‘
Freddie was offended. Had he not been seated, he would undoubtedly have drawn himself up to his full height.
‘Are you insinuating that I am a beans-spiller?’
‘Yes, I am.’
‘I’ve been given medals for keeping things under my hat.’
‘You didn’t get one in the Bill Lister affair. I got Bill into the castle incognito in order to oblige my niece Prudence, they being deeply enamoured and kept apart by various relatives. You probably remember the affair …’
‘Of course I do, and let me tell you —’
‘So what occurred? We were all having tea as cosy as be blowed, when you burst in through the french window and bellowed “Blister! Well, well, well! Well, well, well, well, well! This is fine, this is splendid! I can’t tell you how glad I am, Prue, that everything is hunky-dory”. Then, addressing Prue’s mother, you said that Prue could find no worthier mate than good old Bill Lister, whereupon, as might have been foreseen, she had him out of the house in three seconds flat. We don’t want that sort of thing happening again.’
If Freddie had not finished his marmalade, he would have choked on it, so great was his indignation.
‘Well, dash it,’ he thundered, ‘I don’t see how you can blame me. It stands to reason that if a chap has been established as a pariah and an outcast and you suddenly find him tucking into tea and buttered toast in company with the girl’s mother, you naturally assume that the red light has turned to green.’
‘Yes, I can see your side of it,’ said Gally pacifically. It was no part of his policy to rouse the fiend that slept in Freddie’s bosom. ‘But I still think it would be safer if you didn’t come to Blandings.’
Freddie was all cold dignity.
‘I have no wish to come to Blandings,’ he said. ‘I was only going there to give the guv’nor a treat. He enjoys my visits so much.’
‘Then that’s settled,’ said Gally, relieved. ‘A pity, of course, that you won’t see Jeff.’
‘As a matter of fact,’ said Freddie, ‘I’m not particularly anxious to see Jeff. He gave me a comic strip thing to sell in America, and I couldn’t land it anywhere, and I’m afraid he’ll be thinking I’ve let him down.’
CHAPTER ELEVEN
BY inciting the Bentley to make a special effort Gally was enabled to reach Blandings Castle just in time to dress for dinner. It was not till he joined the company at the table that he became aware that unfortunate things must have been happening in his absence. If the atmosphere was not funereal, he told himself, he did not know a funereal atmosphere when he saw one, and it perplexed him. For moodiness on the part of James Piper he had been prepared, and he had not expected anything rollicking from his sister Florence, but Jeff and Vicky should surely have been more vivacious. Their gloom was as marked as that of Freddie had been when brooding on the mistaken liberablity of the English dog owner. Vicky was pale and cold, and Jeff crumbled a good deal of bread.
At the conclusion of the meal there was a general move to the drawing-room, but Jeff went out on to the terrace, and Gally followed him there, eager for an explanation. When a man has gone all the way from Shropshire to London to further the interests of a young protégé, he resents it when the latter shows no appreciation of his efforts. It was with an offended rasp in his voice that he opened the conversation.
‘Jeff,’ he said, ‘you look like the seven years of Famine we read of in Scripture. You could go on and play King Lear without make-up. Before going into the reasons for this — possibly you have been having another spell in the frigidaire with Florence — let me tell you a bit of news which ought to bring the sun smiling through. I saw Freddie, and I have headed him off.’
‘You’ve done what?’
Gally could make nothing of the question. It bewildered him.
‘Didn’t Vicky tell you he was planning to come here?’ A spasm of pain contorted Jeff’s face as if he were discovering too late that he had swallowed a bad oyster. His voice, when he replied, trembled.
‘Vicky isn’t speaking to me.’
‘What do you mean, she isn’t speaking to you? Got tonsillitis or something?’
‘We’ve quarrelled.’
It was the last thing Gally was expecting, and he felt as a general might feel if his whole plan of campaign had been ruined by some eccentricity on the part of his troops. He had taken it for granted that, whatever else might go wrong, the love of his two clients could be relied on to remain unchanged.
‘Quarrelled?’ he gasped.
‘Yes.’
‘One of those lovers’ tiffs?’
‘Rather more than that, I’m afraid.’
‘Big-time stuff?’
‘Yes.’
‘Your fault, of course?’
‘I suppose so. She wanted me to elope with her, and I wouldn’t.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because it would have meant letting Lord Emsworth down. He told me himself I was his last hope of getting the Empress painted. And another thing. What on earth would we have lived on? Unless
Freddie sells that strip of mine. Did he say anything about that, by the way?’
Gally was grateful for the question. He had been wondering how to break the bad news.
‘I’m afraid he did, my boy.’
That word ‘afraid’ could have only one meaning. Jeff gave a momentary quiver, and his mouth tightened, but he spoke calmly.
‘Nothing doing?’
‘Nothing.’
‘About what I expected. It was very good of Freddie to bother himself with the job.’
His courageous bearing under the shattering blow increased Gally’s already favourable opinion of Jeff. At Jeff’s age he, like all Pelicans, had accepted impecuniosity as the natural way of life. If you had the stuff, you spent it; if you hadn’t, you borrowed it. He had sometimes been best man at weddings where the proceedings were held up while the groom, short by fourteen shillings of the sum required of him, fumbled feverishly in his pockets, his only comment ‘Well, this is a nice bit of box fruit, if you like.’
But Jeff, he knew, was different from the young Galahad. Jeff took life seriously. And very proper, too, the reformed Galahad felt.
‘The future doesn’t look rosy,’ he said.
‘Not excessively,’ said Jeff.
‘It’s the old story — where’s the money coming from?’
‘That’s it in a nutshell.’
‘Isn’t there anything you can do?’
‘I’m a pretty good architect, but what good is that when I can’t get commissions?’
‘True. But first things first. We can’t have you at outs with Vicky. I shall now proceed to sweeten her.’
‘Fine, if you can do it. How do you propose to?’
‘I shall tell her the tale,’ said Gally.
Vicky was at the piano in the smaller drawing-room, playing old English folk songs, as girls will when their love life has gone awry. Gally’s face was stern and his eye austere as he approached her. He was not pleased with her behaviour. Life, he considered, was difficult enough without girls giving excellent young men the pink slip and going off and playing old English folk songs.
‘I’ve just been talking to Jeff,’ he said, wasting no time with polite preliminaries. ‘And don’t sit there playing the piano at me,’ he added, for this was what Vicky was continuing to do. ‘He tells me you won’t speak to him. Nice goings-on, I must say. He comes here, braving all the perils of Blandings Castle to be with you, and you give him the push. I can’t follow your mental processes. Of course the fact of the matter is that you would now give anything if you could recall those cruel words.’
‘What cruel words?’
‘You know damn well what cruel words.’
‘Must we discuss this?’
‘It’s what I came here to do.’
‘You’re wasting your time.’
‘Oh, don’t be a little idiot.’
‘Thank you,’ said Vicky, and she played a few bars of an old English folk song in a marked manner.
It occurred to Gally that he was allowing exasperation to interfere with his technique. Instead of telling the tale he was letting this tête-à-tête degenerate into a vulgar brawl. He hastened to repair his blunder.
‘I’m sorry I called you an idiot.’
‘Don’t mention it.’
‘I was not myself.’
‘Who were you?’
Sticky going, Gally felt, extremely sticky going. The tale he told would have to be a good one. And fortunately his brain, working well, had come up with a pippin.
‘The fact is,’ he said, ignoring the question, which would not have been easy to answer, ‘this unfortunate affair has woken old memories. There was a similar tragedy in my own life. Two loving hearts sundered owing to a foolish quarrel, and nothing to be done about it because we were both too proud to make the first move. It happened when I was a very young man and sadly lacking in sense. I loved a girl. I won’t tell you her name. I will call her Deirdre.’
‘I’ve often wondered how that name was spelled,’ said Vicky meditatively. ‘I suppose you start off with a capital D and then just trust to luck. Was she beautiful?’
‘Beautiful indeed. Lovely chestnut hair, a superb figure and large melting eyes, in colour half way between a rook’s egg and a bill stamp.[36] I loved her passionately, and it was my dearest wish to call her mine. But it was not to be.’
‘Why wasn’t it?’
‘Because of my unfortunate sense of humour. She was the daughter of a bishop, very strict in her views.’
‘And you told her one of your Pelican Club limericks?’
‘No, not that. But I took her to dinner at a fashionable restaurant and thinking to amuse her I marched round the table with a soup plate on my head and a stick of celery in my hand, giving what I thought was a droll impersonation of a trooper of the Blues on guard at Whitehall. It was a little thing I had often done on Saturday nights at the Pelican to great applause, but she was deeply offended.’
‘She thought you were blotto?’
‘She did. And she swept out and married an underwriter at Lloyd’s. I could have explained, but I was too proud.’
‘Her cruel words had been too cruel?’
‘Exactly.’
‘How very sad.’
‘I thought you would think so.’
‘Though it would be a lot sadder if you hadn’t told me that Dolly Henderson was the only woman you had ever wanted to marry. Deirdre must have slipped your memory.’
It was not easy to disconcert Gaily. Not only his sisters Constance, Hermione and Florence, but dozens of bookmakers, policemen, three-card men and jellied eel sellers had tried to do it through the years and failed, but these simple words of Vicky’s succeeded in doing so. As he stood polishing his eyeglass, for once in his life unable to speak, she continued her remarks.
‘You certainly have nerve, Gally. The idea of trying to tell me the tale. One smiles.’
Gally was resilient. Not for him the shamefaced blush a the sheepish twiddling of the fingers. Recovering quickly from what had been an unpleasant shock, he spoke in a voice very different from his former melting tones.
‘Oh, one does, does one?’ he said. ‘Well, one won’t smile long. Listen to me, and I’m not telling the tale now. Jeff refused to sit in on your chuckleheaded idea of eloping for a very good reason.’
‘He said he had to stay on and paint a pig.’
‘That wasn’t his only reason. He also didn’t want to have to see you starving in the gutter. He had no job and no prospects and he knew that you had a good appetite and needed three squares a day.’[37]
‘How absolutely absurd. I’ve all sorts of money.’
‘Held in trust for you by your stepmother.’
‘She’d have given it to me.’
‘Want to bet?’
‘Anyway we’d have got along somehow. There are a hundred things Jeff could have done.’
‘Name three. I can only think of two—robbing a bank and stealing the Crown Jewels. The trouble with you, young Victoria, is that you’re like all girls, you don’t look ahead. You want something, and you go for it like a monkey after a banana. The more prudent male counts the cost.’
‘When have you ever counted the cost?’
‘Not often, I admit. But I’m not a prudent male. Jeff’s different.’
There was a pause. Gally’s voice had lacked the Sarah Bernhardt note which had come into it when he had been telling the tale, but his words, even without that added attraction, were such as to give food for thought, and they had made Vicky look pensive. She played a bar or two with an abstracted air.
‘I’ve thought of something,’ she said suddenly.
‘That’s good. What?’
‘There wouldn’t be any need for us to starve in gutters. Freddie will sell that thing of Jeff’s at any moment and we’ll be all right even if I can’t get my money. They pay millions for these comic strips in America, and they go on for ever. And when you’re tired of doing the work yourself you hand
it over to someone else and get paid just the same. Look at some of them. About as old as Blandings Castle, and I’ll bet the fellows who started them have been dead for centuries.’
Gally saw that the time had come to acquaint this optimistic girl with the facts of life.
‘I was about to touch on the J. Bennison comic strip,’ he said. ‘Don’t expect a large annual income from it. Freddie tells me he has tried every possible market and nobody wants it. However promising an architect Jeff may have been, he apparently isn’t good at comic strips. Don’t blame him. Many illustrious artists would have had the same trouble. Michelangelo, Tintoretto and Holbein are names that spring to the mind.’
Gally’s prediction that it would not be long before his niece ceased to smile was fulfilled with a promptitude which should have gratified him. If a bomb had exploded in the smaller drawing-room, scattering old English folk songs left and right, she could not have reacted more instantaneously. The haughtiness which had been so distasteful to her uncle fell from her like a garment.
‘Oh, Gally!’ she cried, her voice breaking and her attractive eyes widening to their fullest extent. ‘Oh, the poor darling angel, he must be feeling awful.’
‘He is,’ said Gally, holding the view that this softer mood should be encouraged. ‘His reception of the news was pitiful to see. It knocked him flatter than a Dover sole. He reminded me of Blinky Bender, an old pal of mine at the Pelican, the time when he won sixty pounds on the fourth at Newmarket and suddenly realized that in order to collect the money he would have to go past five other bookies in whose debt he was. You had better run along and console him.’
‘I will.’
‘Making it clear that all is forgiven and forgotten and that you are sweethearts still,’ said Gally, and he went off to get a glass of port in Beach’s pantry.
CHAPTER TWELVE
JEFF had gone to his room after dinner and changed into a sweater and flannel trousers. There was a full moon, and it was his intention to sit on the terrace in its rays.[38] Not that he expected anything curative to come of this. He did not share Gally’s confidence that telling the tale to Vicky would pick up the pieces of a shattered world and glue them together as good as new. He was aware that in his time Gally with his silver eloquence had played on hardened turf commissioners as on so many stringed instruments, but he could not but feel that the gifted man was faced now with a task beyond even his great powers. Those cruel words to which Gally had alluded in his conversation with Vicky were still green in Jeff’s memory, and it was difficult to imagine a tale, however in the Sarah Bernhardt manner it might be told, persuading their speaker to consider them unsaid.