Her demeanour pleased him, too. From the flush on her face and the sparkle in her eyes, she seemed to be taking her first entry into Blandings Castle in quite the proper spirit of reverential excitement. To be at Blandings plainly meant something to her, was an event in her life: and Beach, who after many years of residence within its walls had come to look on the Castle as a piece of personal property, felt flattered and gratified.
‘I dont think this shower will last long/ said Lady Constance.
‘No,’ said Sue, smiling brightly.
‘And now you must be wanting some tea after your journey.’
‘Yes,’ said Sue, smiling brightly.
It seemed as if she had been smiling brightly for centuries. The moment she had alighted from the train and found her formidable hostess and this strangely sinister Mr Baxter waiting to meet her on the platform, she had begun to smile brightly and had been doing it ever since.
‘Usually we have tea on the lawn. It is so nice there.’
It must be.’
‘When the rain is over, Mr Baxter, you must show Miss Schoonmaker the rose-garden.’
‘I shall be delighted,’ said the Efficient Baxter.
He flashed gleaming spectacles in her direction, and a momentary panic gripped Sue. She feared that already this man had probed her secret. In his glance, it seemed to her, there shone suspicion.
Such, however, was not the case. It was only the combination of large spectacles and heavy eyebrows that had created the illusion. Although Rupert Baxter was a man who generally suspected everybody on principle, it so happened that he had accepted Sue without question. The glance was an admiring, almost a loving glance. It would be too much to say that Baxter had already fallen a victim to Sue’s charms, but the good looks which he saw and the wealth which he had been told about were undeniably beginning to fan the hidden fire.
‘My brother is a great rose-grower.’
‘Yes, isn’t he? I mean, I think roses are so lovely.’ The spectacles were beginning to sap Sue’s morale. They seemed to be eating into her soul like some sort of corrosive acid. ‘How nice and old everything is here,’ she went on hurriedly. ‘What is that funny-looking gargoyle thing over there?’
What she actually referred to was a Japanese mask which hung from the wall, and it was unfortunate that the Hon. Galahad should have chosen this moment to come out of the smoking-room. It made the question seem personal.
‘My brother Galahad,’ said Lady Constance. Her voice lost some of the kindly warmth of the hostess putting the guest at her ease and took on the cold disapproval which the author of the Reminiscences always induced in her. ‘Galahad, this is Miss Schoonmaker.’
‘Really?’ The Hon. Galahad trotted briskly up. ‘Is it? Bless my soul! Well, well, well!’
‘How do you do?’ said Sue, smiling brightly.
‘How are you, my dear? I know your father intimately.’
The bright smile faded. Sue had tried to plan this venture of hers carefully, looking ahead for all possible pitfalls, but that she would encounter people who knew Mr Schoonmaker intimately she had not foreseen.
‘Haven’t seen him lately, of course. Let me see . . . Must be twenty-five years since we met. Yes, quite twenty-five years.’
A warm and lasting friendship was destined to spring up between Sue and the Hon. Galahad Threepwood, but never in the whole course of it did she experience again quite the gush of whole-hearted affection which surged over her at these words.
‘I wasn’t born then,’ she said.
The Hon. Galahad was babbling on happily.
‘A great fellow, old Johnny. You’ll find some stories about him in my book. I’m writing my Reminiscences, you know. Fine sportsman, old Johnny. Great grief to him, I remember, when he broke his leg and had to go into a nursing-home in the middle of the racing season. However, he made the best of it. Got the nurses interested in current form, and used to make a book with them in fruit and cigarettes and things. I recollect coming to see him one day and finding him quite worried. He was a most conscientious man, with a horror of not settling up when he lost, and apparently one of the girls had had a suet dumpling on the winner of the three o’clock race at fifteen to eight, and he couldn’t figure out what he had got to pay her.’
Sue, laughing gratefully, was aware of a drooping presence at her side.
‘My niece Millicent,’ said Lady Constance. ‘Millicent, my dear, this is Miss Schoonmaker.’
‘How do you do?’ said Sue, smiling brightly.
‘How do you do?’ said Millicent, like the silent tomb breaking its silence.
Sue regarded her with interest. So this was Hugo’s Millicent. The sight of her caused Sue to wonder at the ardent nature of that young man’s devotion. Millicent was pretty, but she would have thought that one of Hugo’s exuberant disposition would have preferred something a little livelier.
She was startled to observe in the girl’s eye a look of surprise. In a situation as delicate as hers was, Sue had no wish to occasion surprise to anyone.
‘Ronnie’s friend?’ asked Millicent. ‘The Miss Schoonmaker Ronnie met at Biarritz?’
‘Yes,’ said Sue faintly.
‘But I had the impression that you were very tall. I’m sure Ronnie told me so.’
‘I suppose almost anyone seems tall to that boy/ said the Hon. Galahad.
Sue breathed again. She had had a return of the unpleasant feeling of being boneless which had come upon her when the Hon. Galahad had spoken of knowing Mr Schoonmaker intimately. But, though she breathed, she was still shaken. Life at Blandings Castle was plainly going to be a series of shocks. She sat back with a sensation of dizziness. Baxter’s spectacles seemed to her to be glittering more suspiciously than ever.
‘Have you seen Ronald anywhere, Millicent?’ asked Lady Constance.
‘Not since lunch. I suppose he’s out in the grounds somewhere.’
‘I saw him half an hour ago,’ said the Hon. Galahad. ‘He came mooning along under my window while I was polishing up some stuff I wrote this afternoon. I called to him, but he just grunted and wandered off.’
‘He will be surprised to find you here,’ said Lady Constance, turning to Sue. ‘Your telegram did not arrive till after lunch, so he does not know that you were planning to come to-day. Unless you told him, Galahad.’
‘I didn’t tell him. Never occurred to me that he knew Miss Schoonmaker. Forgot you’d met him at Biarritz. What was he like then? Reasonably cheerful?’
‘Yes, I think so.’
‘Didn’t scowl and jump and gasp and quiver all over the place?’
‘No.’
‘Then something must have happened when he went up to London. It was after he came back that I remember noticing that he seemed upset about something. Ah, the rains stopped/
Lady Constance looked over her shoulder.
‘The sky still looks very threatening/ she said, ‘but you might be able to get out for a few minutes. Mr Baxter/ she explained, ‘is going to show Miss Schoonmaker the rose-garden/
‘No, he isn’t/ said the Hon. Galahad, who had been scrutinizing Sue through his monocle with growing appreciation. ‘I am. Old Johnny Schoonmaker’s little girl . . . why, there are a hundred things I want to discuss/
The last thing Sue desired was to be left alone with the intimidating Baxter. She rose quickly.
‘I should love to come/ she said.
The prospect of discussing the intimate affairs of the Schoonmaker family was not an agreeable one, but anything was better than the society of the spectacles.
‘Perhaps/ said the Hon. Galahad, as he led her to the door, ‘you’ll be able to put me right about that business of old Johnny and the mysterious woman at the New Year’s Eve party. As I got the story, Johnny suddenly found this female – a perfect stranger, mind you – with her arms round his neck, telling him in a confidential undertone that she had made up her mind to go straight back to Des Moines, Iowa, and stick a knife into Fred. What he had do
ne to win her confidence and who Fred was and whether she ever did stick a knife into him, your father hadn’t found out by the time I left for home.’
His voice died away, and a moment later the Efficient Baxter, starting as if a sudden thought had entered his powerful brain, rose abruptly and made quickly for the stairs.
10 A SHOCK FOR SUE
I
The rose-garden of Blandings Castle was a famous beauty-spot. Most people who visited it considered it deserving of a long and leisurely inspection. Enthusiastic horticulturists frequently went pottering and sniffing about it for hours on end. The tour through its fragrant groves personally conducted by the Hon. Galahad Threepwood lasted some six minutes.
‘Well, that’s what it is, you see,’ he said, as they emerged, waving a hand vaguely. ‘Roses and – er – roses, and all that sort of thing. You get the idea. And now, if you don’t mind, I ought to be getting back. I want to keep in touch with the house. It slipped my mind, but I’m expecting a man to call to see me at any moment on some rather important business.’
Sue was quite willing to return. She liked her companion, but she had found his company embarrassing. The subject of the Schoonmaker family history showed a tendency to bulk too largely in his conversation for comfort. Fortunately, his practice of asking a question and answering it himself and then rambling off into some anecdote of the person or persons involved had enabled her so far to avoid disaster: but there was no saying how long this happy state of things would last. She was glad of the opportunity of being alone.
Besides, Ronnie was somewhere out in these grounds. At any moment, if she went wandering through them, she might come upon him. And then, she told herself, all would be well. Surely he could not preserve his sullen hostility in the face of the fact that she had come all this way, pretending dangerously to be Miss Schoonmaker, of New York, simply in order to see him?
Her companion, she found, was still talking.
‘He wants to see me about a play. This book of mine is going to make a stir, you see, and he thinks that if he can get me to put my name to the play . . .’
Sue’s thoughts wandered again. She gathered that the caller he was expecting had to do with the theatrical industry, and wondered for a moment if it was anyone she had ever heard of. She was not sufficiently interested to make inquiries. She was too busy thinking of Ronnie.
‘I shall be quite happy,’ she said, as the voice beside her ceased. ‘It’s such a lovely place. I shall enjoy just wandering about by myself.’
The Hon. Galahad seemed shocked at the idea.
‘Wouldn’t dream of leaving you alone. Clarence will look after you, and I shall be back in a few minutes.’
The name seemed to Sue to strike a familiar chord. Then she remembered. Lord Emsworth. Ronnie’s Uncle Clarence. The man who held Ronnie’s destinies in the hollow of his hand.
‘Hi! Clarence!’ called the Hon. Galahad.
Sue perceived pottering towards them a long, stringy man of mild and benevolent aspect. She was conscious of something of a shock. In Ronnie’s conversation, the Earl of Emsworth had always appeared in the light of a sort of latter-day ogre, a man at whom the stoutest nephew might well shudder. She saw nothing formidable in this new-comer.
‘Is that Lord Emsworth?’ she asked, surprised.
‘Yes. Clarence, this is Miss Schoonmaker.’
His lordship had pottered up and was beaming amiably.
‘Is it, indeed? Oh, ah, yes, to be sure. Delighted. How are you? How are you? Miss Who?’
‘Schoonmaker. Daughter of my old friend Johnny Schoonmaker. You knew she was arriving. Considering that you were in the hall when Constance went to meet her . . .’
‘Oh, yes.’ The cloud was passing from what, for want of a better word, must be called Lord Emsworth’s mind. Yes, yes, yes. Yes, to be sure.’
‘I’ve got to leave you to look after her for a few minutes, Clarence.’
‘Certainly, certainly.’
‘Take her about and show her things. I wouldn’t go too far from the house, if I were you. There’s a storm coming up.’
‘Exactly. Precisely. Yes, I will take her about and show her things. Are you fond of pigs?’
Sue had never considered this point before. Hers had been an urban life, and she could not remember ever having come into contact with a pig on what might be termed a social footing. But, remembering that this was the man whom Ronnie had described as being wrapped up in one of these animals, she smiled her bright smile.
‘Oh, yes. Very.’
‘Mine has been stolen.’
‘I’m so sorry.’
Lord Emsworth was visibly pleased at this womanly sympathy.
‘But I now have strong hopes that she may be recovered. The trained mind is everything. What I always say . . .’
What it was that Lord Emsworth always said was unfortunately destined to remain unrevealed. It would probably have been something good, but the world was not to hear it; for at this moment, completely breaking his train of thought, there came from above, from the direction of the window of the small library, an odd, scrabbling sound. Something shot through the air. And the next instant there appeared in the middle of a flower-bed containing lobelias something that was so manifestly not a lobelia that he stared at it in stunned amazement, speech wiped from his lips as with a sponge.
It was the Efficient Baxter. He was on all fours, and seemed to be groping about for his spectacles, which had fallen off and got hidden in the undergrowth.
II
Properly considered, there is no such thing as an insoluble mystery. It may seem puzzling at first sight when ex-secretaries start falling as the gentle rain from heaven upon the lobelias beneath, but there is always a reason for it. That Baxter did not immediately give the reason was due to the fact that he had private and personal motives for not doing so.
We have called Rupert Baxter efficient, and efficient he was. The word, as we interpret it, implies not only a capacity for performing the ordinary tasks of life with a smooth firmness of touch but in addition a certain alertness of mind, a genius for opportunism, a gift for seeing clearly, thinking swiftly, and Doing It Now. With these qualities Rupert Baxter was pre-eminently equipped; and it had been with him the work of a moment to perceive, directly the Hon. Galahad had left the house with Sue, that here was his chance of popping upstairs, nipping in to the small library, and abstracting the manuscript of the Reminiscences. Having popped and nipped, as planned, he was in the very act of searching the desk when the sound of a footstep outside froze him from his spectacles to the soles of his feet. The next moment, fingers began to turn the door-handle.
You may freeze a Baxter’s body, but you cannot numb his active brain. With one masterful, lightning-like flash of clear thinking he took in the situation and saw the only possible way out. To reach the door leading to the large library, he would have to circumnavigate the desk. The window, on the other hand, was at his elbow. So he jumped out of it.
All these things Baxter could have explained in a few words. Refraining from doing so, he rose to his feet and began to brush the mould from his knees.
‘Baxter! What on earth?’
The ex-secretary found the gaze of his late employer trying to nerves which had been considerably shaken by his fall. The occasions on which he disliked Lord Emsworth most intensely were just these occasions when the other gaped at him open-mouthed like a surprised halibut.
‘I overbalanced,’ he said curtly.
‘Overbalanced?’
‘Slipped.’
‘Slipped?’
‘Yes. Slipped.’
‘How? Where?’
It now occurred to Baxter that by a most fortunate chance the window of the small library was not the only one that looked out on to this arena into which he had precipitated himself. He might equally well have descended from the larger library which adjoined it.
‘I was leaning out of the library window . . .’
‘Why?’
‘Inhaling the air . . .’
‘What for?’
‘And I lost my balance.’
‘Lost your balance?’
‘I slipped.’
‘Slipped?’
Baxter had the feeling – it was one which he had often had in the old days when conversing with Lord Emsworth – that an exchange of remarks had begun which might go on for ever. A keen desire swept over him to be – and that right speedily – in some other place. He did not care where it was. So long as Lord Emsworth was not there, it would be Paradise enow.
‘I think I will go indoors and wash my hands,’ he said.
And face,’ suggested the Hon. Galahad.
‘My face, also,’ said Rupert Baxter coldly.
He started to move round the angle of the house, but long before he had got out of hearing Lord Emsworth’s high and penetrating tenor was dealing with the situation. His lordship, as so often happened on these occasions, was under the impression that he spoke in a hushed whisper.
‘Mad as a coot!’ he said. And the words rang out through the still summer air like a public oration.
They cut Baxter to the quick. They were not the sort of words to which a man with an inch and a quarter of skin off his left shinbone ought ever to have been called upon to listen. With flushed ears and glowing spectacles, the Efficient Baxter passed on his way. Statistics relating to madness among coots are not to hand, but we may safely doubt whether even in the ranks of these notoriously unbalanced birds there could have been found at this moment one who was feeling half as mad as he did.
Lord Emsworth continued to gaze at the spot where his late secretary had passed from sight.
‘Mad as a coot,’ he repeated.
In his brother Galahad he found a ready supporter.
‘Madder,’ said the Hon. Galahad.
‘Upon my word, I think he’s actually worse than he was two years ago. Then, at least, he never fell out of windows.’
‘Why on earth do you have the fellow here?’
Lord Emsworth sighed.
‘It’s Constance, my dear Galahad. You know what she is. She insisted on inviting him.’
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