‘What on earth do you want that awful feller here for?’
‘He would find a way out of this dreadful business. He was always so efficient.’
‘Baxter’s off his head.’
Lady Constance uttered a sharp exclamation.
‘Clarence, you really can be the most irritating person in the world. You get an idea and you cling to it in spite of whatever anybody says. Mr Baxter was the most wonderfully capable man I ever met.’
Yes, capable of anything,’ retorted Lord Emsworth with spirit. ‘Threw flower-pots at me in the middle of the night. I woke up in the small hours and found flower-pots streaming in at my bedroom window and looked out and there was this feller Baxter standing on the terrace in lemon-coloured pyjamas, hurling the dashed things as if he thought he was a machine-gun, or something. I suppose he’s in an asylum by this time.’
Lady Constance had turned a bright scarlet. Even in their nursery days she had never felt quite so hostile towards the head of the family as now.
‘You know perfectly well that there was a quite simple explanation. My diamond necklace had been stolen, and Mr Baxter thought the thief had hidden it in one of the flower-pots. He went to look for it and got locked out and tried to attract attention by . . .’
‘Well, I prefer to think the man was crazy, and that’s the line that Galahad takes in his book.’
‘His . . .! Galahad is not putting that story in his book?’
‘Of course he’s putting it in his book. Do you think he’s going to waste excellent material like that? And, as I say, the line Galahad takes – and he’s a clear-thinking, level-headed man – is that Baxter was a raving, roaring lunatic. Well, I’m going to have another look at the Empress.’
He pottered off pigwards.
Ill
For some moments after he had gone, there was silence at the tea-table. Millicent lay back in her chair, Lady Constance sat stiffly upright in hers. A little breeze that brought with it a scent of wall-flowers began whispering the first tidings that the cool of evening was on its way.
‘Why are you so anxious to get Mr Baxter back, Aunt Constance?’ asked Millicent.
Lady Constance’s rigidity had relaxed. She was looking her calm, masterful self again. She had the air of a woman who has just solved a difficult problem.
‘I think his presence here essential,’ she said.
Uncle Clarence doesn’t seem to agree with you.’
‘Your Uncle Clarence has always been completely blind to his best interests. He ought never to have dismissed the only secretary he has ever had who was capable of looking after his affairs.’
‘Isn’t Mr Carmody any good?’
‘No. He is not. And I shall never feel easy in my mind until Mr Baxter is back in his old place.’
‘What’s wrong with Mr Carmody?’
‘He is grossly inefficient. And,’ said Lady Constance, unmasking her batteries, ‘I consider that he spends far too much of his time mooning around you, my dear. He appears to imagine that he is at Blandings Castle simply to dance attendance on you.’
The charge struck Millicent as unjust. She thought of pointing out that she and Hugo only met occasionally and then on the sly, but it occurred to her that the plea might be injudicious. She bent over the spaniel. A keen observer might have noted a defensiveness in her manner. She looked like a girl preparing to cope with an aunt.
‘Do you find him an entertaining companion?’
Millicent yawned.
‘Mr Carmody? No, not particularly.’
A dull young man, I should have thought.’
‘Deadly.’
‘Vapid.’
‘Vap to a degree.’
‘And yet you went riding with him last Tuesday.’
‘Anything’s better than riding alone.’
‘You play tennis with him, too.’
‘Well, tennis is a game I defy you to play by yourself.’
Lady Constance’s lips tightened.
‘I wish Ronald had never persuaded your uncle to employ him. Clarence should have seen by the mere look of him that he was impossible.’ She paused.
‘It will be nice having Ronald here,’ she said.
‘Yes.’
‘You must try to see something of him. If,’ said Lady Constance, in the manner which her intimates found rather less pleasant than some of her other manners, ‘Mr Carmody can spare you for a moment from time to time.’
She eyed her niece narrowly. But Millicent was a match for any number of narrow glances, and had been from her sixteenth birthday. She was also a girl who believed that the best form of defence is attack.
‘Do you think I’m in love with Mr Carmody, Aunt Constance?’
Lady Constance was not a woman who relished the direct methods of the younger generation. She coloured.
‘Such a thought never entered my head.’
‘That’s fine. I was afraid it had.’
A sensible girl like you would naturally see the utter impossibility of marriage with a man in his position. He has no money and very little prospects. And, of course, your uncle holds your own money in trust for you and would never dream of releasing it if you wished to make an unsuitable marriage.’
‘So it does seem lucky I’m not in love with him, doesn’t it?’
‘Extremely fortunate.’
Lady Constance paused for a moment, then introduced a topic on which she had frequently touched before. Millicent had seen it coming by the look in her eyes.
‘Why you won’t marry Ronald, I can’t think. It would be so suitable in every way. You have been fond of one another since you were children.’
‘Oh, I like old Ronnie a lot.’
‘It has been a great disappointment to your Aunt Julia.’
‘She must cheer up. She’ll get him off all right, if she sticks at it.’
Lady Constance bridled.
‘It is not a question of . . . If you will forgive my saying so, my dear, I think you have allowed yourself to fall into away of taking Ronald far too much for granted. I am afraid you have the impression that he will always be there, ready and waiting for you when you at last decide to make up your mind. I don’t think you realize what a very attractive young man he is.’
‘The longer I wait, the more fascinating it will give him time to become.’
At a moment less tense, Lady Constance would have taken time off to rebuke this flippancy; but she felt it would be unwise to depart from her main theme.
‘He is just the sort of young man that girls are drawn to. In fact, I have been meaning to tell you. I had a letter from your Aunt Julia, saying that during their stay at Biarritz they met a most charming American girl, a Miss Schoonmaker, whose father, it seems, used to be a friend of your Uncle Galahad. She appeared to be quite taken with Ronald, and he with her. He travelled back to Paris with her and left her there.’
‘How fickle men are!’ sighed Millicent.
‘She had some shopping to do,’ said Lady Constance sharply. ‘By this time she is probably in London. Julia invited her to stay at Blandings, and she accepted. She may be here any day now. And I do think, my dear,’ proceeded Lady Constance earnestly, ‘that, before she arrives, you ought to consider very carefully what your feelings towards Ronald really are.’
‘You mean, if I don’t watch my step, this Miss Doopenhacker may steal my Ronnie away from me?’
It was not quite how Lady Constance would have put it herself, but it conveyed her meaning.
‘Exactly.’
Millicent laughed. It was plain that her flesh declined to creep at the prospect.
‘Good luck to her,’ she said. ‘She can count on a fish-slice from me, and I’ll be a bridesmaid, too, if wanted. Can’t you understand, Aunt Constance, that I haven’t the slightest desire to marry Ronnie. We’re great pals, and all that, but he’s not my style. Too short, for one thing.’
‘Short?’
‘I’m inches taller than he is. When we went up the ais
le, I should look like someone taking her little brother for a walk.’
Lady Constance would undoubtedly have commented on this remark, but before she could do so the procession reappeared, playing an unexpected return date. Footman James bore a dish of fruit, Footman Thomas a salver with a cream-jug on it. Beach, as before, confined himself to a straight ornamental role.
‘Oo!’ said Millicent welcomingly. And the spaniel, who liked anything involving cream, gave a silent nod of approval.
‘Well,’ said Lady Constance, as the procession withdrew, giving up the lost cause, ‘if you won’t marry Ronald, I suppose you won’t.’
‘That’s about it,’ agreed Millicent, pouring cream.
‘At any rate, I am relieved to hear that there is no nonsense going on between you and this Mr Carmody. That I could not have endured.’
‘He’s only moderately popular with you, isn’t he?’
‘I dislike him extremely.’
‘I wonder why. I should have thought he was fairly all right, as young men go. Uncle Clarence likes him. So does Uncle Gaily.’
Lady Constance had a high, arched nose, admirably adapted for sniffing. She used it now to the limits of its power.
‘Mr Carmody,’ she said, ‘is just the sort of young man your Uncle Galahad would like. No doubt he reminds him of the horrible men he used to go about London with in his young days.’
‘Mr Carmody isn’t a bit like that.’
‘Indeed?’ Lady Constance sniffed again. ‘Well, I dislike mentioning it to you, Millicent, for I am old-fashioned enough to think that young girls should be shielded from a knowledge of the world, but I happen to know that Mr Carmody is not at all a nice young man. I have it on the most excellent authority that he is entangled with some impossible chorus-girl.’
It is not easy to sit suddenly bolt-upright in a deep garden-chair, but Millicent managed the feat.
‘What!’
‘Lady Allardyce told me so.’
‘And how does she know?’
‘Her son Vernon told her. A girl of the name of Brown. Vernon Allardyce says that he used to see her repeatedly, lunching and dining and dancing with Mr Carmody.’
There was a long silence.
‘Nice boy, Vernon,’ said Millicent.
‘He tells his mother everything.’
‘That’s what I meant. I think it’s so sweet of him.’ Millicent rose. ‘Well, I’m going to take a short stroll.’
She wandered off towards the rose-garden.
IV
A young man who has arranged to meet the girl he loves in the rose-garden at six sharp naturally goes there at five-twenty-five, so as not to be late. Hugo Carmody had done this, with the result that by three minutes to six he was feeling as if he had been marooned among roses since the beginning of the summer.
If anybody had told Hugo Carmody six months before that half-way through the following July he would be lurking in trysting-places like this, his whole being alert for the coming of a girl, he would have scoffed at the idea. He would have laughed lightly. Not that he had not been fond of girls. He had always liked girls. But they had been, as it were, the mere playthings, so to speak, of a financial giant’s idle hour. Six months ago he had been the keen, iron-souled man of business, all his energies and thoughts devoted to the management of the Hot Spot.
But now he stood shuffling his feet and starting hopefully at every sound, while the leaden moments passed sluggishly on their way. Then his vigil was enlivened by a wasp, which stung him on the back of the hand. He was leaping to and fro, licking his wounds, when he perceived the girl of his dreams coming down the path.
‘Ah!’cried Hugo.
He ceased to leap and, rushing forward, would have clasped her in a fond embrace. Many people advocate the old-fashioned blue-bag for wasp-stings, but Hugo preferred this treatment.
To his astonishment she drew back. And she was not a girl who usually drew back on these occasions.
‘What’s the matter?’ he asked, pained. It seemed to him that a spanner had been bunged into a holy moment.
‘Nothing.’
Hugo was concerned. He did not like the way she was looking at him. Her soft blue eyes appeared to have been turned into stone.
‘I say,’ he said, ‘I’ve just been stung by a beastly great wasp.’
‘Good!’ said Millicent.
The way she was talking seemed to him worse than the way she was looking.
Hugo’s concern increased.
‘I say, what’s up?’
The granite eye took on an added hardness.
‘You want to know what’s up?’
Yes-what’s up?’
TU tell you what’s up.’
‘Well, what’s up?’ asked Hugo.
He waited for enlightenment, but she had fallen into a chilling silence.
‘You know,’ said Hugo, breaking it, ‘I’m getting pretty fed up with all this secrecy and general snakiness. Seeing you for an occasional odd five minutes a day and having to put on false whiskers and hide in bushes to manage that. I know the Keeble looks on me as a sort of cross between a leper and a nosegay of deadly nightshade, but I’m strong with the old boy. I talk pig to him. You might almost say I play on him as on a stringed instrument. So what’s wrong with going to him and telling him in a frank and manly way that we love each other and are going to get married?’
The marble of Millicent’s face was disturbed by one of those quick, sharp, short, bitter smiles that do nobody any good.
‘Why should we lie to Uncle Clarence?’
‘Eh?’
‘I say, why should we tell him something that isn’t true?’
‘I don’t get your drift.’
‘I will continue snowing,’ said Millicent coldly. ‘I am not quite sure if I am ever going to speak to you again in this world or the next. Much will depend on how good you are as an explainer. I have it on the most excellent authority that you are entangled with a chorus-girl. How about it?’
Hugo reeled. But then St Anthony himself would have reeled if a charge like that had suddenly been hurled at him. The best of men require time to overhaul their conscience on such occasions. A moment and he was himself again.
‘It’s a lie!’
‘Name of Brown.’
‘Not a word of truth in it. I haven’t set eyes on Sue Brown since I first met you.’
‘No. You’ve been down here all the time.’
And when I was setting eyes on her – why, dash it, my attitude from start to finish was one of blameless, innocent, one hundred per cent brotherliness. A wholesome friendship. Brotherly. Nothing more. I liked dancing and she liked dancing and our steps fitted. So occasionally we would go out together and tread the measure. That’s all there was to it. Pure brotherliness. Nothing more. I looked on myself as a sort of brother.’
‘Brother, eh?’
‘Absolutely a brother. Don’t,’ urged Hugo earnestly, ‘go running away, my dear old thing, with any sort of silly notion that Sue Brown was something in the nature of a vamp. She’s one of the nicest girls you would ever want to meet.’
‘Nice, is she?’
‘A sweet girl. A girl in a million. A real good sort. A sound egg-’
‘Pretty, I suppose?’
The native good sense of the Carmodys asserted itself at the eleventh hour.
‘Not pretty,’ said Hugo decidedly. ‘Not pretty, no. Not at all pretty. Far from pretty. Totally lacking in sex-appeal, poor girl. But nice. A good sort. No nonsense about her. Sisterly.’
Millicent pondered.
‘H’m,’ she said.
Nature paused, listening. Birds checked their song, insects their droning. It was as if it had got about that this young man’s fate hung in the balance and the returns would be in shortly.
‘Well, all right,’ she said at length. ‘I suppose I’ll have to believe you.’
‘“At’s the way to talk!’
‘But just you bear this in mind, my lad. Any funny b
usiness from now on . . .’
As if . . .!’
‘One more attack of that brotherly urge . . .’
As though . . .!’
All right, then.’
Hugo inhaled vigorously. He felt like a man who has just dodged a wounded tigress.
‘Banzai!’ he said. ‘Sweethearts still!’
V
Blandings Castle dozed in the twilight. Its various inmates were variously occupied. Clarence, ninth Earl of Emsworth, after many a longing lingering look behind, had dragged himself away from the Empress’s boudoir and was reading his well-thumbed copy of British Pigs. The Hon. Galahad, having fixed up the Parsloe-Burper passage, was skimming through his day’s output with an artist’s complacent feeling that this was the stuff to give ‘em. Butler Beach was pasting the Hon. Galahad’s photograph into his album. Millicent, in her bedroom, was looking a little thoughtfully into her mirror. Hugo, in the billiard-room, was practising pensive cannons and thinking loving thoughts of his lady, coupled with an occasional reflection that a short, swift binge in London would be a great wheeze if he could wangle it.
And in her boudoir on the second floor, Lady Constance Keeble had taken pen in hand and was poising it over a sheet of notepaper.
‘Dear Mr Baxter,’ she wrote.
2 THE COURSE OF TRUE LOVE
I
The brilliant sunshine which so enhanced the attractions of life at Blandings Castle had brought less pleasure to those of England’s workers whose duties compelled them to remain in London. In his offices on top of the Regal Theatre in Shaftesbury Avenue, Mr Mortimer Mason, the stout senior partner in the firm of Mason and Saxby, Theatrical Enterprises, Ltd, was of opinion that what the country really needed was one of those wedge-shaped depressions off the Coast of Iceland. Apart from making him feel like a gaffed salmon, Flaming July was ruining business. Only last night, to cut down expenses, he had had to dismiss some of the chorus from the show downstairs, and he hated dismissing chorus-girls. He was a kind-hearted man, and, having been in the profession himself in his time, knew what it meant to get one’s notice in the middle of the summer.
There was a tap on the door. The human watchdog who guarded the outer offices entered.
‘Well?’ said Mortimer Mason wearily.
Summer Lightning Page 3