'Some of Gally's pals are queer fish,' he admitted. 'One of them once picked my pocket. He was at the dinner.'
'The pickpocket?'
'No, Gally.'
'He would be.'
'Oh, come, old girl, don't speak as if it had been an orgy. And whatever sort of a life Gally has led, by George it's agreed with him. I never saw a man looking fitter. He's coming here for Vee's birthday.'
'I know,' said Lady Hermione, without pleasure. 'And Freddie. Did Clarence tell you that Freddie would be here to-morrow with a friend?'
'Eh? No, I told him. I happened to run into Freddie in Piccadilly. You don't mean Clarence knew all the time? Well, I'm dashed. When I mentioned to him just now that Freddie was headed for the castle, the news came as a complete surprise and bowled him over.'
'His vagueness is really very trying.'
'Vagueness?' Colonel Wedge came of a long line of bluff military men who called spades spades. He would have none of these polite euphemisms. 'It isn't vagueness. It's sheer, gibbering lunacy. The fact is, old girl, we've got to face it, Clarence is dotty. He was dotty when I married you, twenty-four years ago, and he's been getting dottier and dottier ever since. Where do you think I found him just now? Down at the pigsty. I noticed something hanging over the rail, and thought the pig man must have left his overalls there, and then it suddenly reared itself up like a cobra and said "Ah, Egbert." Gave me a nasty shock. I nearly swallowed my cigar. Questioned as to what the deuce he thought he was playing at, he said he was listening to his pig.'
'Listening to his pig?'
'I assure you. And what, you will ask, was the pig doing? Singing? Reciting "Dangerous Dan McGrew"? Nothing of the kind. Just breathing. I tell you, the idea of being cooped up at Blandings Castle at the time of the full moon with Clarence, Galahad, Freddie, and this fellow Plimsoll on the premises is one that frankly appals me. It'll be like being wrecked on a desert island with the Marx Brothers.'
'Plimsoll?'
'This chap Freddie's bringing down.'
'Is his name Plimsoll?'
'Well, I've only Freddie's word for it, of course. The chap himself was too blotto to utter. During our conversation he stood silently supporting himself with one hand against a cab shelter and catching invisible flies with the other, a sort of sweet, fixed smile on his face. I never saw a fellow so completely submerged.'
A wrinkle had come into Lady Hermione's forehead, as if she were trying to stimulate her memory.
'What was he like?'
'Tall, thin chap. About Clarence's build. In fact, if you can picture a young, intoxicated Clarence with a beaky nose and horn-rimmed spectacles, you will have a very fair idea of Plimsoll. Why, do you know him?'
'I'm trying to remember. I have certainly heard the name before. Did Freddie tell you anything about him?'
'He hadn't time. You know how it is when you meet Freddie. Your impulse is to hurry on. I just paused long enough for him to mention that he was coming to Blandings with this fly-catching chap and that the fly-catching chap's name was Tipton Plimsoll, and then I sprang into a cab.'
'Tipton! Of course! Now I remember.'
'You do know him?'
'We have never met, but he was pointed out to me in a restaurant just before we left London. He is a young American, educated in England, I believe, and very rich.'
'Rich?'
'Enormously rich.'
'Good God!'
There was a pause. They looked at each other. Then, as if by mutual consent, their eyes strayed to the wall on the left, behind which Veronica Wedge lay gazing at the ceiling. Lady Hermione's breathing had become more rapid, and on the colonel's face, as he sat silently playing This Little Pig Went to Market with his consort's toes, there was the look of one who sees visions.
He coughed.
'He will be nice company for Vee.'
'Yes.'
'Do her all the good in the world.'
'Yes.'
'It's – er – an excellent thing for young people – in a place like this – depths of the country and all that – to have young people to talk to. Brightens them up.'
'Yes. Did he seem nice?'
'A charming personality, I thought. Allowing, of course, for the fact that he was as soused as a herring.'
'I don't attach much importance to that. He probably has not a very strong head.'
'No. And a fellow spending the evening with Freddie would naturally have to keep himself going. Besides, there is always this to bear in mind – Vee isn't hard to please.'
'What do you mean?'
'Well, dash it, when you reflect that she was once engaged to Freddie—'
'Oh dear, I had forgotten that. I must tell her not to mention it. And you had better warn Clarence.'
'I'll go and see him now. Good night, old girl.'
'Good night, dear.'
There was a rather rapt look on Colonel Wedge's clean-cut face as he left the room. He was not a man given to any great extent to the dreaming of daydreams, but he had fallen into one now. He seemed to be standing in the library of Blandings Castle, his hand on the shoulder of a tall, thin young man in horn-rimmed spectacles who had asked if he could have a word with him in private.
'Pay your addresses to my daughter, Plimsoll?' he was saying. 'Certainly you may pay your addresses to my daughter, my dear fellow.'
III
In the Red Room Veronica was still thinking about the County Ball, and not too optimistically. She would have liked to be in a position to attend that function glittering like a chandelier, but of this she felt there was little hope. For though she would be twenty-three years old in a few days, experience had taught her not to expect diamond necklaces on her birthday. The best the future seemed to hold was the brooch promised her by her uncle Galahad and an unspecified trinket at which her cousin Freddie had hinted.
Her reverie was interrupted by the opening of the door. The pencil of light beneath it had attracted Colonel Wedge's eye as he started forth on his mission. She raised her head from the pillow and rolled two enormous eyes in his direction. In a slow, pleasant voice, like clotted cream made audible, she said:
'Hullo, Dad-dee.'
'Hullo, my dear. How are you?'
'All right, Dad-dee.'
Colonel Wedge seated himself on the end of the bed, amazed afresh, as he always was when he saw this daughter of his, that two such parents as his wife and himself, mere selling platers in the way of looks, could have produced an offspring so spectacular. Veronica Wedge, if the dumbest, was certainly the most beautiful girl registered among the collateral branches in the pages of Debrett's Peerage. With the brains of a peahen, and one whose mental growth had been retarded by being dropped on its head when just out of the egg, she combined a radiant loveliness which made fashionable photographers fight for her custom. Every time you saw in the paper the headlines
WEST END AFFRAY
PHOTOGRAPHERS BRAWL WHILE
THOUSANDS CHEER
you could be pretty certain that trade rivalry concerning Veronica Wedge had caused the rift.
'When did you get back, Dad-dee?'
'Just now. Train was late.'
'Did you have a nice time in London?'
'Very nice. Quite a good dinner. Your uncle Galahad was there.'
'Uncle Gally's coming here for my birthday.'
'So he told me. And Freddie arrives to-morrow.'
'Yes.'
Veronica Wedge spoke without emotion. If the severing of her engagement to Frederick Threepwood and his union with another had ever pained her, it was clear that the agony had abated.
'He's bringing a friend with him. Chap named Tipton Plimsoll.'
'Oh, is that who it is?'
'You've met him?'
'No, but I was at Quaglino's with Mummie one day, and somebody pointed him out. He's frightfully rich. Does Mummie want me to marry him?'
There was an engaging simplicity and directness about his child which sometimes took Colonel Wedge's bre
ath away. It did so now.
'Good God!' he said, when he had recovered it. 'What an extraordinary notion. I don't suppose such an idea so much as crossed her mind.'
Veronica lay thinking for a few moments. It was a thing she did very seldom and then only with the greatest difficulty, but this was a special occasion.
'I wouldn't mind,' she said. 'He didn't look a bad sort.'
Her words were not burning – Juliet, speaking of Romeo, would have put it better – but they came as music to Colonel Wedge. It was with uplifted heart that he kissed his daughter good night. He had reached the door, when it occurred to him that there was a subject he had intended to touch on the next time he saw her.
'Oh, by the way, Vee, has anyone ever called you a dream rabbit?'
'No, Dad-dee.'
'Would you consider it pretty significant if they did? Even nowadays, I mean, when everybody calls everyone every dashed thing under the sun – "darling" and "angel" and all that sort of thing?'
'Oh yes, Dad-dee.'
'Ha!' said Colonel Wedge.
He returned to the Blue Room. The light had been switched off, and he spoke at a venture into the darkness.
'Old girl.'
'Oh, Egbert, I was nearly asleep.'
'I'm sorry. I thought you would like to hear that I've been talking to Vee about Plimsoll, and she seems interested. It appears that she was with you that time you saw him in the restaurant. She says she didn't think he looked a bad sort. I consider it promising. Oh, and about that other matter. She says "dream rabbit" is dashed strong stuff. The real ginger. You'd better tell Dora. It seems to me that young Prudence wants watching. Good night, old girl. I'm off to see Clarence.'
IV
Lord Emsworth was not asleep. He was lying in bed with a book on the treatment of pigs in sickness and in health. At the moment of his brother-in-law's entrance he had laid it down for a space, in order to brood on this awful thing which was about to befall him. To be compelled to play the host to his younger son Freddie was alone enough to unman him. Add a tight chap, and you had a situation at which the doughtiest earl might quail.
'Ah, Egbert,' he said dully.
'Shan't keep you a moment, Clarence. Just a trifling matter. You remember I told you Freddie was bringing his friend Plimsoll down here.'
Lord Emsworth quivered.
'As well as the tight chap?'
Colonel Wedge tutted a tut as impatient as any that had ever proceeded from the lips of his companion's female connections.
'Plimsoll is the tight chap. And what I came to say is, when you meet him, don't tell him Veronica used to be engaged to Freddie. Better write it down, or you'll go forgetting.'
'Certainly, my dear fellow, if you wish it. Have you a pencil?'
'Here you are.'
'Thank you, thank you,' said Lord Emsworth, and wrote on the flyleaf of the pig book, which was all he had at his bedside in the way of tablets. 'Good night,' he said, pocketing the pencil.
'Good night,' said Colonel Wedge, retrieving it.
He closed the door, and Lord Emsworth returned to his sombre thoughts.
V
Blandings Castle was in for the night. In the Clock Room, Colonel Wedge was dreaming of rich sons-in-law. In the Blue Room, Lady Hermione, on the verge of sleep, was registering a mental note to ring her sister Dora up on the telephone first thing in the morning and warn her to keep a keen, motherly eye on her daughter Prudence. In the Red Room, Veronica was staring at the ceiling again, and now there was a soft smile on her lovely lips. It had just occurred to her that Tipton Plimsoll was exactly the sort of man who would provide her with jewels – in fact, cover her with them.
Lord Emsworth had picked up the pig book again and was peering through his pince-nez at the words on the flyleaf.
When Plimsoll arrives, tell him that Veronica used to be engaged to Freddie.
They perplexed him a little, for he could not understand why, if Colonel Wedge wished such a piece of information imparted to this tight Plimsoll, he should not impart it himself. But he had long given up trying to fathom the mental processes of those about him. Turning to page forty-seven, he began to re-read its golden words on the subject of bran mash and was soon absorbed.
The moon beamed down on the turrets and battlements. It was not quite full yet, but would be in the course of the next few days.
CHAPTER 2
The hands of those of London's clocks which happened to be seeing eye to eye with Greenwich Observatory were pointing to twenty minutes past nine on the following morning, when the ornate front door of Wiltshire House, Grosvenor Square, flew open, and there came pouring out in close formation an old spaniel, a young spaniel, and a middle-aged Irish setter, followed by a girl in blue. She crossed the road to the railed-in gardens and unlocked the gate, and her associates streamed through; first the junior spaniel, then the senior spaniel, and finally the Irish setter, who had been detained for a moment by a passing smell.
It has never been authoritatively established what are the precise attributes which qualify a girl to rank as a dream rabbit, but few impartial judges would have cavilled at the application of the term to Prudence, only daughter of Dora, relict of the late Sir Everard Garland, K.C.B. For while she had none of that breath-taking beauty which caused photographers to fight over Veronica Wedge, she was quite alluring enough in her trim, slim, blue-eyed way to justify male acquaintances in so addressing her over the telephone. There was not much of her, but what there was was good.
Probably the chief thing about this attractive young half-portion that would have impressed itself upon an observer on the present occasion was the fact that she appeared extraordinarily happy. She had, indeed, the air of a girl who is thoroughly above herself. Her eyes were shining, her feet seemed to dance along the pavement, and from her lips there proceeded a gay song, not so loudly as to disturb the amenities of Grosvenor Square, but loudly enough to shock a monocled young man who had just come up behind her, causing him to prod her in the small of the back with an austere umbrella.
'Less of it, young Prue,' he said rebukingly. 'You can't do that there here.'
The clocks, as has been stated, showed that the time was only twenty minutes past nine. Nevertheless, this musical critic was Lord Emsworth's younger son, Freddie. Early though the hour was, Frederick Threepwood was up and about, giving selfless service to the firm which employed him. Sent over to London to whack up the English end of Donaldson's Inc., manufacturers of the world-famous Donaldson's Dog-Joy, he had come to catch his aunt Dora before she went out and give her a sales talk.
The thing was, of course, a mere incident in a busy man's routine. Lady Dora Garland was not, like some women, a sort of projecting rock in the midst of a foaming sea of dogs, and flags would not be run up over the firm's Long Island City factory if he booked her order; but as the managing director of two distinct spaniels and an Irish setter she was entitled to her place as a prospect. Allowing, say, twenty biscuits per day per spaniel and the same or possibly more per day per Irish setter, her custom per year per complete menagerie would be quite well worth securing. Your real go-getter, seething though his brain may be with gigantic schemes, does not disdain these minor coups, for he knows that every little bit added to what you've got makes just a little bit more.
The apparition of her cousin seemed to astonish Prudence as much as that of Colonel Wedge on the previous night had astonished Lord Emsworth.
'Golly, Freddie,' she cried, amazed. 'Up already?'
The poetic greeting plainly stung the young go-getter.
'Already? What do you mean, already? Why, over in Long Island City I leave the hay at seven sharp, and by nine-thirty we're generally half-way through our second conference.'
'You don't attend conferences?'
'You betcher I attend conferences.'
'Well, you could knock me down with a feather,' said Prudence composedly. 'I always thought you were a sort of office boy.'
'Me? Vice-president. Say,
is Aunt Dora in?'
'She was just going to the phone when I came out. Somebody ringing up from Blandings.'
'Good. I want a talk with her. I've been trying to get around to it for days. It's about those dogs of yours. What do they live on?'
'The chairs most of the time.'
Freddie clicked his tongue. One smiles at these verbal pleasantries, but they clog the wheels of commerce.
'You know what I mean. What do you feed them?'
'I forget. Mother could tell you. Peterson's something.'
A quick shudder passed through Freddie's elegant frame. His air was that of a man who has been bitten in the leg.
'Not Peterson's Pup Food?'
'That's the name.'
'My God!' cried Freddie, dropping his monocle in his emotion. 'Is everybody over here nuts? This is the fifth case of Peterson's Pup Food I've come across in the last two weeks. And they call England a dog-loving nation. Do you want those hounds of yours to get rickets, rheumatism, sciatica, anæmia, and stomach trouble? Well, they jolly well will if you continue to poison them with a product lacking, I happen to know, in several of the most important vitamins. Peterson's Pup Food, forsooth! What they need, to make them the well-muscled, vital, one-hundred-per-cent he-dogs they ought to be, is Donaldson's Dog-Joy. Donaldson's Dog-Joy is God's gift to the kennel, whether it be in the gilded palace of the rich or the humble hovel of the poor. Dogs raised on Donaldson's Dog-Joy become fine, strong, upstanding dogs who go about with their chins up and both feet on the ground and look the world in the eye. Get your dog thinking the Donaldson way! Let Donaldson make your spaniel a super-spaniel! Place your Irish setter's paws on the broad Donaldson highroad and watch him scamper away to health, happiness, the clear eye, the cold nose, and the ever-wagging tail! Donaldson's Dog-Joy, which may be had in the five-shilling packet, the half-crown packet, and the—'
'Freddie!'
'Hullo?'
'Stop!'
'Stop?' said Freddie, who had only just begun.
Prudence Garland was exhibiting symptoms of being overcome.