‘Oh Lord and butter!’ he exclaimed, moved to his depths, and without further speech hastened off in the direction of the butler’s pantry. It was obvious to him that the crisis called for another of those staff conferences.
‘So there you are,’ said Jerry. He stepped forward masterfully. ‘I shall now kiss you.’
‘Oh, heavens, what a mess!’ wailed Penny.
Jerry paused.
‘Mess? You believe what I was saying?’
‘Of course I believe it.’
‘You love me?’
‘Of course I love you.’
‘All right, then. What are we waiting for? Let’s go.’
Penny stepped back.
‘Jerry darling, I’m afraid things are more complicated than you think. You see, when I saw that girl pat your face –’
‘In a sisterly manner.’
‘Yes, but the point is that it didn’t look sisterly, and I got the wrong angle. So when, just as we were finishing dinner, Orlo Vosper asked me to marry him —’
‘Oh, my God!’
‘Yes,’ said Penny in a small voice. ‘He asked me to marry him, and I said I would.’
CHAPTER 5
BUT WHAT, MEANWHILE, it will be asked, of George Cyril Wellbeloved, whom we left with his tongue hanging out, the future stretching bleakly before him like some grim Sahara? Why is it, we seem to hear a million indignant voices demanding, that no further mention has been made of that reluctant teetotaller?
The matter is susceptible of a ready explanation. It is one of the chief drawbacks to the lot of the conscientious historian that in pursuance of his duties he is compelled to leave in obscurity many of those to whom he would greatly prefer to give star billing. His task being to present a panoramic picture of the actions of a number of protagonists, he is not at liberty to concentrate his attention on any one individual, however much the latter’s hard case may touch him personally. When Edward Gibbon, half-way through his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, complained to Doctor Johnson one night in a mood of discouragement that it – meaning the lot of the conscientious historian – shouldn’t happen to a dog, it was to this aspect of it that he was referring.
In this macedoine of tragic happenings in and around Blandings Castle, designed to purge the souls of a discriminating public with pity and terror, it has been necessary to devote so much space to Jerry Vail, Penny Donaldson, Lord Emsworth and the rest of them that George Cyril Wellbeloved, we are fully aware, has been neglected almost entirely. Except for one brief appearance early in the proceedings, he might as well, for all practical purposes, have been painted on the back drop.
It is with genuine satisfaction that the minstrel, tuning his harp, now prepares to sing of this stricken pig man.
There is no agony like the agony of the man who wants a couple of quick ones and cannot get them and in the days that followed his interview with Sir Gregory Parsloe, George Cyril Wellbeloved may be said to have plumbed the depths. It would, however, be inaccurate to describe him as running the gamut of the emotions, for he had had but one emotion, a dull despair as there crept slowly upon him the realization of the completeness with which his overlord had blocked all avenues to a peaceful settlement. He was in the distressing position of finding himself foiled at every point.
Although nobody who had met him would have been likely to get George Cyril Wellbeloved confused with the poet Keats, it was extraordinary on what similar lines the two men’s minds worked. ‘Oh, for a beaker full of the warm South, full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene!’ sang Keats, licking his lips, and ‘Oh, for a mug of beer with, if possible, a spot of gin in it!’ sighed George Cyril Wellbeloved, licking his; and in quest of the elixir he had visited in turn the Emsworth Arms, the Wheatsheaf, the Waggoner’s Rest, the Beetle and Wedge, the Stitch in Time, the Jolly Cricketers and all the other hostelries at which Market Blandings pointed with so much pride.
But everywhere the story was the same. Barmaids had been given their instructions, pot boys warned to be on the alert. They had placed at his disposal gingerbeer, ginger ale, sarsaparilla, lime juice and on one occasion milk, but his request for the cup that clears today of past regrets and future fears was met with a firm nolle prosequi. Staunch and incorruptible, the barmaids and the pot boys refused to serve him with anything that would have interested Omar Khayam, and he had come away parched and saddened.
But it has been well said of pig men as a class that though crushed to earth, they will rise again. You plot and plan and think you have baffled a pig man, but all the while his quick brain had been working, and it has shown him the way out. It was so with George Cyril Wellbeloved. Just when the thought of the Hon. Galahad Threepwood came stealing into his mind, he could not have said, but it did so steal, and it was as though a light had shone upon his darkness. That dull despair gave way to a flaming hope. Glimmering in the distance, he seemed to see the happy ending.
Although during his term of office at Blandings Castle his opportunities of meeting Gally socially had been rather limited, George Cyril knew all about him. Gally, he was aware, was a man with a feeling heart, a man who could be relied upon to look indulgently on such of his fellow men as wanted a gargle and wanted it quick. According to those who knew him best, his whole life since reaching years of what may loosely be called discretion had been devoted to seeing that the other chap did not die of thirst. Would such a man turn his back on even a comparative stranger, if the comparative stranger were in a position to prove by ocular demonstration that his tongue was blackening at the roots? Most unlikely, thought George Cyril Wellbeloved, and if there was even a sporting chance of securing the services of this human drinking fountain, it was his duty, he felt, not to neglect it.
With pig men, to think is to act. Dinner over and his employer safely in his study with his coffee and cigar, he got out his bicycle and started pedalling through the scented summer night.
The welcome he received at the back door of Blandings Castle could in no sense have been termed a gushing one. Beach, informed that there was a gentleman asking for him and finding that the person thus described was a pig man whom he had never liked and who in his opinion smelled to heaven, was at his most formal. He might have been a prominent Christian receiving an unexpected call from one of the troops of Midian.
George Cyril, in sharp contradistinction, was all bounce and breeziness. Unlike most of those who met that godlike man, he stood in no awe of Beach. He held the view, and had voiced it fearlessly many a time in the tap room of the Emsworth Arms, that Beach was an old stuffed shirt.
‘Hoy, cocky,’ he said, incredible as such a mode of address might seem. ‘Where’s Mr Galahad?’
Ice formed on the butler’s upper slopes.
‘Mr Galahad is in the amber drawing-room with the rest of the household,’ he replied austerely.
‘Then go and hoik him out of it,’ said George Cyril Wellbeloved, his splendid spirit unsubdued. ‘I want to see him. Tell him it’s important.’
2
In stating that Gally was in the amber drawing-room with the rest of the household, Beach had spoken with an imperfect knowledge of the facts. He had been in the amber drawing-room, but he was now just outside it, seated on the terrace with his friend Maudie, and an observer, had one been present, would have received the impression that both he and his companion had much on their minds. In a situation where it might have been expected that reminiscences of the old days would have been flashing merrily to and fro, they had fallen into a silence, busy with their thoughts.
It is possible that there are in the world women of meek and angelic disposition who, deserted by gentlemen friends at the church door, are capable of accepting the betrayal tranquilly, saying to themselves that boys will be boys, but Maudie was not one of them. Hers was a high and mettlesome spirit, and a sense of grievance still burned within her. For years she had been storing up a number of good things which she proposed to say to her faithful lover, should they meet, and it was bitter t
o think that now, with only three miles separating them, this meeting seemed as far away as ever. Situated as she was, she could hardly ask for the car to drive her over to Matchingham Hall, and she shrank from the thought of walking there in this sultry summer weather, her views on pedestrianism being much the same as those of Sir Gregory Parsloe.
On the premises of Blandings Castle, as of even date, there were to be found stricken souls in large numbers – it would, indeed, have been almost impossible to have thrown a brick without hitting one – and that of Maudie Stubbs, alias Bunbury, came high up on the list.
Gally’s moodiness is equally easily explained. With the man Parsloe’s cousin closeted daily with the Empress, the man Parsloe’s fiancée established in the house and the man Parsloe himself rubbing his hand and singing ‘Yo ho ho and a bottle of Slimmo’, a consistent cheerfulness on his part was hardly to be expected. Add to this the tragedy which had darkened the lives of Penny Donaldson and this excellent young fellow Vail, and add to that the telephone conversation he had had with Sir Gregory shortly before dinner, and it cannot be wondered at that he was not his usual effervescent self.
How long the silence might have lasted, it is impossible to say. But at this point the spell was broken by the arrival of Lord Emsworth, who came pottering out of the drawing-room with the air of a man looking for somebody. Having observed Maudie making for the terrace, it had seemed to him that here was a capital opportunity of having a quick word with her outside the orbit of his sister Connie’s watchful eye. Conditions for such a tête-à-tête could scarcely have been more suitable. The moon was riding serenely in the sky, the air was fragrant with the scent of night-blooming flowers, Lord Vosper, who in addition to playing a red-hot game of tennis had a nice tenor voice, was at the piano singing a song with lots of sentimental stomp in it, and what Lord Emsworth felt was that ten minutes of roaming in the gloaming with Maudie, would just about top it off.
Ever since his brother Galahad had introduced him to the relict of the late Cedric Stubbs on this same terrace, strange and novel emotions had been stirring in Lord Emsworth’s bosom. He was a man who since the death of his wife twenty years ago had made something of a lifework of avoiding women. He could not, of course, hope to avoid them altogether, for women have a nasty way of popping up at unexpected moments, but he was quick on his feet and his policy of suddenly disappearing like a diving duck had had excellent results. It was now pretty generally accepted by his little circle that the ninth Earl of Emsworth was not a ladies’ man and that any woman who tried to get a civil word out of him did so at her own risk.
To Maudie, however, he had felt from the start strangely drawn. He admired her looks. Her personality appealed to him. ‘Alluring’ was the word that suggested itself. When he caught Maudie’s eye, it was as though he had caught the eye of a woman who was silently saying ‘Come up and see me some time’, and this – oddly enough – struck him as an admirable idea. So now he had pottered out on to the terrace in the hope of a pleasant exchange of views with her.
But these things never work out perfectly. Here was the terrace, bathed in moonlight, and here was she, bathed in moonlight, too, but here in addition, he now saw, was his brother Galahad, also bathed in moonlight, and the sight brought a quick ‘Oh, ah’ to his lips. The presence of a third party chilled his romantic mood.
‘Hullo, Clarence,’ said Gally. ‘How’s the boy?’
‘Quite, quite,’ said Lord Emsworth, and drifted back into the drawing-room like a family spectre disappointed with the room it had been told off to haunt.
Maudie came out of her thoughts.
‘Was that Lord Emsworth?’ she said, for from the corner of her eye she seemed to have seen something flickering.
‘Yes, there he spouted,’ said Gally. ‘But he buzzed off, mumbling incoherently. Walking in his sleep, probably.’
‘He’s absent-minded, isn’t he?’
‘Yes, I think one could fairly call him that. If he has a mind, it is very seldom there. Did I ever tell you the story of Clarence and the Arkwright wedding?’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘Odd. It happened about the time when I was a regular client of yours at the Criterion and I told it to everybody else. I wonder why I discriminated against you. The Arkwrights lived out Bridgnorth way, and their daughter Amelia was getting married, so Clarence tied a knot in his handkerchief to remind him to send the bride’s mother a telegram on the happy day.’
‘And he forgot?’
‘Oh, no, he sent it. “My heartfelt congratulations to you on this joyous occasion,” he said.’
‘Well, wasn’t that all right?’
‘It was fine. Couldn’t have been improved on. Only the trouble was that in one of his distrait moments he sent it, not to Mrs Arkwright but to another friend of his, a Mrs Cart-wright, and her husband had happened to die that morning. Diabetes. Very sad. We were all very sorry about it, but no doubt the telegram cheered her up. Did I ever tell you about Clarence and the salad?’
‘No.’
‘I don’t seem to have told you any of my best stories. It was in the days when he was younger and used to let me take him about London a bit. Well, of course, even then it wasn’t easy to get him absolutely shining and glittering in lively society and being the belle of the ball, but he did have one unique gift. He could mix a superb salad. As his public relations man, I played this up on all occasions. When men came to me and said “Tell me, Gally, am I correct in supposing that this brother of yours you’re lugging around town is about as outstanding a dumb brick and fathead as ever broke biscuit?” I would reply “To a certain extent, my dear Smith or Jones, or whatever the name might be, the facts are as you state. Clarence has his limitations as a social ball of fire – except when it comes to mixing salads. You just get him to mix you a salad one of these days.” So his fame grew. People would point him out in the streets and say “That’s Emsworth, the chap who mixes salads.” And came a day when I took him to the Pelican Club, feeling like the impresario of a performing flea on an opening night, and they handed him the lettuce and the tomatoes and the oil and the vinegar and the chives and all the rest of it, and he started in.’
‘And made a mess of it?’
‘Not at all. He was a sensational success. He had cut his finger that morning and was wearing a finger-stall, and I feared that this might cramp his style, but no, it didn’t seem to hamper him a bit. He chopped and mixed and mixed and chopped, with here a drop of oil and there a drop of vinegar, and in due season the salad was prepared in a lordly bowl and those present flung themselves on it like starving wolves.’
And they liked it?’
‘They loved it. They devoured it to the last morsel. There wasn’t so much as a shred of lettuce or a solitary chive left in the bowl. And then, when everyone was fawning on Clarence and slapping his back, it was noticed that he was looking disturbed and unhappy. “What’s the matter, old man?” I asked. “Is something wrong?” “Oh, no,” he said. “Everything is capital, capital … only I seem to have lost my finger-stall.” That’s Clarence. A sterling fellow whom I love as if he were my own brother, which he is, of course, but a little on the dreamy side. I remember my nephew Freddie saying once that if you sent him out to buy apples, he would come back with an elephant, and there was considerable justice in the remark. He dodders. He goes off into trances. And you’re seeing him at his worst these days, for he has much on his mind. He has a speech to make tomorrow which involves a stiff collar and a top hat, and he’s naturally worried about his pig and the machinations of the man Parsloe. The shadow of Parsloe broods over him like a London fog. You’ve seen that dark girl with the serpentine figure who’s just blown in here?’
‘Miss Salt?’
‘That’s the one. Parsloe’s fiancée. Makes you think a bit, eh? They’re closing in on us, old girl, closing in on us. The iron ring is narrowing. It won’t be long now … Oh, dash it, here comes someone else,’ said Gally, clicking his tongue. ‘The curs
e of Blandings Castle, no privacy. Oh, no, it’s all right. I think it’s Penny.’
It was Penny. In the amber drawing-room Lord Vosper, having finished his torch song, had started another with even more heartbreak to the cubic inch, and it had been too much for the poor girl. Rising with a stifled sob, she had made a dive for the French windows and was now coming towards them, looking like Ophelia.
‘Hullo, there,’ said Gally. ‘Come and join the party. Nice night.’
Penny sank into a chair.
‘Is it?’ she said listlessly.
‘Come, come,’ said Gally. ‘Tails up, my child. You mustn’t let yourself get downhearted. There’s too much defeatism in this joint. I’ve been meaning to speak to you about that, Maudie. I’ve noticed in you, too, a dropping of the spirits. When I told you that story of Clarence and the salad, which should have had you rolling in the aisle, gasping with merriment, you were gazing at me mournfully all the time. What’s the matter? Don’t you like it here?’
Maudie sighed. Blandings Castle had been a place of enchantment to her.
‘It’s wonderful. But I feel I’m not doing anything to help. I’m about as much use as a cold in the head.’
‘Come, come.’
‘It’s true. Uncle Sebastian –’
‘Not so loud. Castles have ears.’
‘Uncle Sebastian,’ Maudie went on, lowering her voice, ‘was all wrong when he told you about me. He seems to have given you the idea that I was a sort of Sherlock Holmes or something. All I’ve done since Cedric passed on has been to kind of look after the agency – answer letters and send out the bills and sort of keep an eye on things. I don’t do any of the detective work. I wouldn’t know how to begin. That’s all done by Mr North and Mr Connor and Mr Fauntleroy. I mean, suppose you wanted divorce evidence or something, you would come and see me, and I’d say Okay, we’ll attend to it and it’ll be so much as a retainer and so much per week and all that, but then I would hand everything over to Mr Fauntleroy and Mr Connor and Mr North. I don’t see any point in my staying on here.’