'I am not interested,' said Lord Tilbury, 'in your friend Basham.' The Hon. Galahad was remorseful.
'I'm sorry,' he said. 'Shouldn't have rattled on. An old failing of mine, I'm afraid. Probably you've come on some most important errand, and here have I been yarning away, wasting your time. Quite right to pull me up. Take a seat, and tell me why you've suddenly bobbed up like this after all these years, Stinker.'
'Don't call me Stinker!'
'Of course. I'm sorry. Forgot. Well, carry on, Pyke.'
'And don't call me Pyke. My name is Tilbury.'
The Hon. Galahad started. His monocle fell from his eye, and he screwed it in again thoughtfully. There was a concerned and disapproving look on his face. He shook his head gravely.
'Going about under a false name? Bad. I don't like that.'
'Cor!'
'It never pays. Honestly, it doesn't. Sooner or later you're bound to be found out, and then you get it all the hotter from the judge. I remember saying that to Stiffy Vokes in the year ninety-nine, when he was sneaking about London calling himself Orlando Maltravers in the empty hope of baffling the bookies after a bad City and Suburban. And he, unlike you, had had the elementary sense to put on a false beard. Stinker, old chap,' said the Hon. Galahad kindly, 'is it worth while? Can this do anything but postpone the inevitable end? Why not go back and face the music like a man? Or, if the thing's too bad for that, at least look in at some good theatrical costumier's and buy some blond whiskers. What is it they are after you for ?'
Lord Tilbury was beginning to wonder if even a volume of Reminiscences which would rock England was worth the price he was paying.
'I call myself Tilbury,' he said between set teeth, 'because in a recent Honours List I received a peerage, and Tilbury was the title I selected.'
Light flooded in upon the Hon. Galahad's darkness. ' Oh, you're Lord Tilbury ?' 'I am.'
'What on earth did they make you a lord for, Stinker?' asked the Hon. Galahad in frank amazement.
Lord Tilbury was telling himself that he must be strong.
'I happen to occupy a position of some slight importance in the newspaper world. I am the proprietor of a concern whose name may be familiar to you - the Mammoth Publishing Company.'
'Mammoth?'
'Mammoth.'
'Don't tell me,' said the Hon. Galahad. 'Let me think. Why, aren't the Mammoth the people I sold that book of mine to ?' 'They are.'
' Stinker - I mean Pyke -1 mean Tilbury,' said the Hon. Galahad regretfully, 'I'm sorry about that. Yes, by Jove, I am. I've let you down, haven't I ? I see now why you've come here. You want me to reconsider. Well, I'm afraid you've had your journey for nothing, Stinker, old man. I won't let that book be published.'
'But ...'
'No. I can't argue. I won't do it.'
'But, good heavens! ...'
'I know, I know. But I won't. I have reasons.'
'Reasons?'
'Private and sentimental reasons.'
'But it's outrageous. It's unheard of. You signed the contract. You were satisfied with the terms we proposed ...' 'It's got nothing to do with the terms.'
'And you can't pretend that you are not in a position to deliver the book. There it is on your desk, finished.' The Hon. Galahad took up the manuscript with something of the tenderness of a mother dandling her first-born. He stared at it, sighed, stared at it again, sighed once more. His heart was aching.
The more he reread it, the more of a tragedy did it seem to him that this lovely thing should not be given to the world. It was such dashed good stuff. Yes, if he did say it himself, such dashed good stuff. Faithfully and well he had toiled at his great task of erecting a lasting memorial to an epoch in London's history which, if ever an epoch did, deserved its Homer or its Gibbon, and he had done it, by George! Jolly good, ripping good stuff.
And no one would ever read the dashed thing.
'A book like this is never finished,' he said.' I could go on adding to it for the rest of my life.'
He sighed again. Then he brightened. The suppression of his masterpiece was the price of Dolly's daughter's happiness. If it brought happiness to Dolly's daughter, there was nothing to regret, nothing to sigh about at all.
All the same, he did wish that his brother Clarence could have been of tougher fibre and better able, without assistance, to cope with the females of the family.
He put the manuscript away in a drawer.
4 But it's finished,' he said,4 as far as any chance of its ever getting into print is concerned. It will never be published.'
'But...'
4No, Stinker, that's final. I'm sorry. Don't imagine I don't see your side of it. I know I've treated you badly, and I quite realize how justified you are in blinding and stiffing...'
'Iam not blinding and stiffing. I flatter myself that I have - under extreme provocation - succeeded in keeping this discussion on an amicable footing. I merely say...'
'It's no use your saying anything, Stinker.'
'Don't call me ...'
'I can't possibly explain the situation to you. It would take too long. But you can rest assured that nothing you can say will make the slightest difference. I won't publish.'
There was a pregnant silence. Lord Tilbury's gaze, which had fastened itself, like that of a Pekinese on coffee-sugar, upon the drawer into which he had seen the manuscript disappear, shifted to the man who stood between him and it. He stared at the Hon. Galahad wistfully, as if yearning for that side of beef which had once proved so irresistible a weapon in the hand of Plug Basham.
The fever passed. The battle-light died out of his eyes. He rose stiffly.
‘In that case I will bid you good afternoon.' 'You're not going?' ‘I am going.'
The Hon. Galahad was distressed.
'I wish you wouldn't take it like this. Why get stuffy, Stinker? Sit down. Have a chat. Stay on and join us for a bite of dinner.' Lord Tilbury gulped. 'Dinner!'
A harmless word, but on his lips it somehow managed to acquire the sound of a rich Elizabethan oath - the sort of thing Ben Jonson, in his cups, might have flung at Beaumont and Fletcher.
' Dinner!' said Tilbury.' Cor!'
There are moments in life when only sharp physical action can heal the wounded spirit. Just as a native of India, stung by a scorpion, will seek to relieve his agony by running, so now did Lord Tilbury, fresh from this scene with one who seemed to him well fitted to be classified as a human scorpion, desire to calm himself with a brisk cross-country walk. Reaching the broad front steps and seeing before him the station taxi, he was conscious of a feeling amounting almost to nausea at the thought of climbing into its mildew-scented interior and riding back to the Emsworth Arms.
He produced money, thrust it upon the surprised Robinson, mumbled unintelligently and, turning abruptly, began to stump off in a westerly direction. Robinson, having pursued him with a solid, silent, Shropshire stare till he had vanished behind a shrubbery, threw in his clutch and drove pensively homewards.
Lord Tilbury stumped on, busy with his thoughts.
At first chaotic, these began gradually to take shape. His mind returned to that project which he had conceived while standing alone in the small library. A single object seemed to be imprinted on his retina - that desk in which the Hon. Galahad had placed his manuscript.
He yearned for direct action against that desk.
Like all reformed buccaneers, he put up a good case for himself in extenuation of this resurgence of the Old Adam. To take that manuscript, he argued, would merely be to take that which was rightfully his. He had a legal claim to it. The contract had been signed and witnessed. Payment in advance had changed hands. Normally, no doubt, as between author and publisher, the author would have wrapped his work in brown paper, stuck stamps on it, and posted it. But if the eccentric fellow preferred to leave it in a desk for the publisher to come and fetch it, the thing still remained a legitimate business transaction.
And how simple the looting of that desk would b
e, he felt, if only he were staying in the house. From the careless, casual way in which the Hon. Galahad had put the manuscript in that drawer he had received a strong impression that he would not even bother to lock it. Anybody staying in the house ...
Bitter remorse swept over Lord Tilbury as he strode broodingly through the heat-hushed grounds of Blandings Castle. He saw now what a mistake he had made in taking that proud, offended attitude with the Hon. Galahad. If only he had played his cards properly, taken the thing with a smile, accepted that invitation to dinner and gone on playing his cards properly, he would almost certainly before nightfall have been asked to move his belongings from the Emsworth Arms and come and stay at the Castle. And then...
Of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these: It might have been. Groaning in spirit, Lord Tilbury walked on. And suddenly as he walked there came to his nostrils the only scent in the world which could have diverted his mind from that which weighed it.
He had smelt a pig.
To those superficially acquainted with them, it would have seemed incredible that George, Viscount Tilbury, and Clarence, Earl of Emsworth, could have possessed a single taste in common. The souls of the two men, one would have said, lay poles apart. And yet such was the remarkable fact. Widely though their temperaments differed in every other respect, they were both pig-minded. In his little country place in Buckinghamshire, whither he was wont to retire for recuperating over the week-ends, Lord Tilbury kept pigs. He not only kept pigs, but loved and was proud of them. And anything to do with pigs, such as a grunt, a gollop, or, as in this case, a smell, touched an immediate chord in him.
So now he came out of his reverie with a start, to find that his aimless wanderings had brought him to within potato-peel throw of a handsomely appointed sty.
And in this sty stood a pig of such quality as he had never seen before.
The afternoon, as has been said, was overcast. An unwholesome blight, like a premature twilight, had fallen upon the world. But it needed more than a little poorness of visibility to hide the Empress. Sunshine would have brought out her opulent curves more starkly, perhaps, but even seen through this grey murk she was quite impressive enough to draw Lord Tilbury to her as with a lasso. He hurried forward and stood gazing breathlessly.
His initial reaction to the spectacle was a feeling of sick envy, a horrible, aching covetousness. That was the effect the first view of Empress of Blandings always had on visiting fanciers. They came, saw, gasped, and went away unhappy, discontented men, ever after to move through life bemused and yearning for they knew not what, like men kissed by goddesses in dreams. Until this moment Lord Tilbury had looked on his own Buckingham Big Boy as considerable pig. He felt now with a pang that it would be an insult to this supreme animal before him even to think of Buckingham Big Boy in her presence.
The Empress, after a single brief but courteous glance at this newcomer, had returned to the business which had been occupying her at the moment of Lord Tilbury's arrival. She pressed her nose against the lowest rail of the sty and snuffled moodily. And Lord Tilbury, looking down, saw that a portion of her afternoon meal, in the shape of an appetising potato, had been dislodged from the main couvert and had rolled out of bounds. It was this that was causing the silver medallist's distress and despondency. Like all prize pigs who take their career seriously, Empress of Blandings hated to miss anything that might be eaten and converted into firm flesh.
Lord Tilbury's pig-loving heart was touched. Envy left him, swept away on the tide of a nobler emotion. All that was best and humanest in him came to the surface. He clicked his tongue sympathetically. His build made it unpleasant for him to stoop, but he did not hesitate. At the cost of a momentary feeling of suffocation, he secured the potato. And he was on the point of dropping it into the Empress's upturned mouth, when there occurred a startling interruption.
Hot breath fanned his cheek. A hoarse voice in his ear said 'Ur!!' A sinewy hand closed vice-like about his wrist. Another attached itself to his collar. And, jerked violently away, he found himself looking into the accusing eyes of a tall, thin, scraggy man in overalls.
It was the time of day when most of Nature's children take the afternoon sleep. But Jas. Pirbright had not slept. His employer had instructed him to lurk, and he had been lurking ever since lunch. Sooner or later, Lord Emsworth had told him, quoting that second-sighted man, the Hon. Galahad Threepwood, there would come sneaking to the Empress's sty a mysterious stranger. And here he was, complete with poison-potato, and Pirbright had got him. The Pirbrights, like the Canadian Mounted Police, always got their man.
'Gur!' said Jas. Pirbright, which is Shropshire for 'You come along with me and I'll shut you up somewhere while I go and inform his lordship of what has occurred.'
Monty Bodkin, meanwhile, after parting from Sue on the roof, had been making his way slowly and pensively through the grounds in the direction of the Empress's headquarters. It was his intention to look in on the noble animal and try to do himself a bit of good by fraternizing with it.
He was not hurrying. The afternoon was too hot for that. Shropshire had become a Turkish bath. The sky seemed to press down like a poultice. Butterflies had ceased to flutter, and as he dragged himself along it was only the younger and more sprightly rabbits that had the energy to move out of his path.
Yet even had the air been nipping and eager, it is probable that he would still have loitered, for his mind was heavy with care. He didn't like the look of things.
No, mused Monty, he didn't like the look of things at all. Sheridan once wrote of 'a damned disinheriting countenance', and if Monty had ever read Sheridan he would have felt that he had found the perfect description for the face of the ninth Earl of Emsworth as seen across the table in the big library or peering out from behind trees. Not even in that interview with Lord Tilbury in his office at the Mammoth had he been surer that he was associating with a man who proposed very shortly to dispense with his services. The sack, it seemed to him, was hovering in the air. Almost he could hear the beating of its wings.
He came droopingly to the paddock where the Empress resided. There was a sort of potting-shed place just inside the gate, and here he halted, using its surface to ignite the match which was to light the cigarette he so sorely needed.
Yes, he felt, as he stood smoking there, if he had any power of reading faces, any skill whatever in interpreting the language of the human eye, his latest employer was on the eve of administering the bum's rush. It seemed to him that even now he could hear his voice, crying' Get out! Get out!'
And then, as the sound persisted, he became aware that it was no dream voice that spoke, but an actual living voice; that it proceeded from the shed against which he was leaning; and that what it was saying was not' Get out!' but' Let me out!'
He was both startled and intrigued. For a moment, his mind toyed with the thought of spectres. Then he reflected, and very reasonably, that a ghost that had only to walk a quarter of a mile to find one of the oldest castles in England at its disposal would scarcely waste its time haunting potting-sheds. There was a small window close to where he stood. Emboldened, he put his face to it.
'Are you there ?' he asked.
It was a fair question, for the interior of the shed was of an Egyptian blackness. Nevertheless, it appeared to annoy the captive. An explosive 'Cor!' came hurtling through the air, and Monty leaped a full two inches. The thing seemed incredible, but if a fellow was to trust the evidence of his senses this unseen acquaintance was none other than-
‘I say,' he gasped, 'that isn't Lord Tilbury, by any chance, is it ?'
'Who are you?'
'Bodkin speaking. Bodkin, M. Monty Bodkin. You remember old Monty?'
It was plain that Lord Tilbury did, for he spoke with a familiar vigour.
'Then let me out, you miserable imbecile. What are you wasting time for?'
Monty was groping at the door.
'Right-ho,' he said. 'In one moment. There's a sort of wooden gadge
t that needs a bit of shifting. All right. Done it. Out you pop. Upsy-daisy!'
And with these words of encouragement he removed the staple, and Lord Tilbury emerged, snorting.
' Yes, but I say - !' pleaded Monty, after a few moments, anxious, like Goethe, for more light. This was one of the weirdest and most mysterious things that he had encountered in his puff, and it was apparently his companion's intention merely to stand and snort about it.
Lord Tilbury found speech.
'It's an outrage!'