Blanding Castle Omnibus

by P. G. Wodehouse

  'Oh, hullo, guv'nor!' ejaculated the Hon. Freddie, plainly startled.

  'What – what are you doing here?' demanded Lord Emsworth.

  He spoke with heat, and justly so. London, as the result of several spirited escapades which still rankled in the mind of a father who had had to foot the bills, was forbidden ground to Freddie.

  The young man was plainly not at his ease. He had the air of one who is being pushed towards dangerous machinery in which he is loath to become entangled. He shuffled his feet for a moment, then raised his left shoe and rubbed the back of his right calf with it.

  'The fact is, guv'nor—'

  'You know you are forbidden to come to London.'

  'Absolutely, guv'nor, but the fact is—'

  And why anybody but an imbecile should want to come to London when he could be at Blandings—'

  'I know, guv'nor, but the fact is—' Here Freddie, having replaced his wandering foot on the pavement, raised the other, and rubbed the back of his left calf. 'I wanted to see you,' he said. 'Yes. Particularly wanted to see you.'

  This was not strictly accurate. The last thing in the world which the Hon. Freddie wanted was to see his parent. He had come to the Senior Conservative Club to leave a carefully written note. Having delivered which, it had been his intention to bolt like a rabbit. This unforeseen meeting had upset his plans.

  'To see me?' said Lord Emsworth. 'Why?'

  'Got – er – something to tell you. Bit of news.'

  'I trust it is of sufficient importance to justify your coming to London against my express wishes.'

  'Oh, yes. Oh, yes, yes-yes. Oh, rather. It's dashed important. Yes – not to put too fine a point upon it – most dashed important. I say, guv'nor, are you in fairly good form to stand a bit of a shock?'

  A ghastly thought rushed into Lord Emsworth's mind. Freddie's mysterious arrival – his strange manner – his odd hesitation and uneasiness – could it mean—? He clutched the young man's arm feverishly.

  'Frederick! Speak! Tell me! Have the cats got at it?'

  It was a fixed idea of Lord Emsworth, which no argument would have induced him to abandon, that cats had the power to work some dreadful mischief on his pumpkin and were continually lying in wait for the opportunity of doing so; and his behaviour on the occasion when one of the fast sporting set from the stables, wandering into the kitchen garden and finding him gazing at the Blandings Hope, had rubbed itself sociably against his leg, lingered long in that animal's memory.

  Freddie stared.

  'Cats? Why? Where? Which? What cats?'

  'Frederick! Is anything wrong with the pumpkin?'

  In a crass and materialistic world there must inevitably be a scattered few here and there in whom pumpkins touch no chord. The Hon. Freddie Threepwood was one of these. He was accustomed to speak in mockery of all pumpkins, and had even gone so far as to allude to the Hope of Blandings as 'Percy.' His father's anxiety, therefore, merely caused him to giggle.

  'Not that I know of,' he said.

  'Then what do you mean?' thundered Lord Emsworth, stung by the giggle. 'What do you mean, sir, by coming here and alarming me – scaring me out of my wits, by Gad! – with your nonsense about giving me shocks?'

  The Hon. Freddie looked carefully at his fermenting parent. His fingers, sliding into his pocket, closed on the note which nestled there. He drew it forth.

  'Look here, guv'nor,' he said nervously. 'I think the best thing would be for you to read this. Meant to leave it for you with the hall-porter. It's –well, you just cast your eye over it. Good-bye, guv'nor. Got to see a man.'

  And, thrusting the note into his father's hand, the Hon. Freddie turned and was gone. Lord Emsworth, perplexed and annoyed, watched him skim up the road and leap into a cab. He seethed impotently. Practically any behaviour on the part of his son Frederick had the power to irritate him, but it was when he was vague and mysterious and incoherent that the young man irritated him most.

  He looked at the letter in his hand, turned it over, felt it. Then – for it had suddenly occurred to him that if he wished to ascertain its contents he had better read it – he tore open the envelope.

  The note was brief, but full of good reading matter.

  Dear Guvnor,

  Awfully sorry and all that, but couldn't hold out any longer. I've popped up to London in the two-seater and Aggie and I were spliced this morning. There looked like being a bit of a hitch at one time, but Aggie's guv'nor, who has come over from America, managed to wangle it all right by getting a special licence or something of that order. A most capable Johnny. He's coming to see you. He wants to have a good long talk with you about the whole binge. Lush him up hospitably and all that, would you mind, because he's a really sound egg, and you'll like him.

  Well, cheerio!

  Your affectionate son,

  Freddie.

  P.S. – You won't mind if I freeze on to the two-seater for the nonce, what? It may come in useful for the honeymoon.

  The Senior Conservative Club is a solid and massive building, but, as Lord Emsworth raised his eyes dumbly from the perusal of this letter, it seemed to him that it was performing a kind of whirling dance. The whole of the immediate neighbourhood, indeed, appeared to be shimmying in the middle of a thick mist. He was profoundly stirred. It is not too much to say that he was shaken to the core of his being. No father enjoys being flouted and defied by his own son; nor is it reasonable to expect a man to take a cheery view of life who is faced with the prospect of supporting for the remainder of his years a younger son, a younger son's wife, and possibly younger grandchildren.

  For an appreciable space of time he stood in the middle of the pavement, rooted to the spot. Passers-by bumped into him or grumblingly made détours to avoid a collision. Dogs sniffed at his ankles. Seedy-looking individuals tried to arrest his attention in order to speak of their financial affairs. Lord Emsworth heeded none of them. He remained where he was, gaping like a fish, until suddenly his faculties seemed to return to him.

  An imperative need for flowers and green trees swept upon Lord Emsworth. The noise of the traffic and the heat of the sun on the stone pavement were afflicting him like a nightmare. He signalled energetically to a passing cab.

  'Kensington Gardens,' he said, and sank back on the cushioned seat.

  Something dimly resembling peace crept into his lordship's soul as he paid off his cab and entered the cool shade of the gardens. Even from the road he had caught a glimpse of stimulating reds and yellows; and as he ambled up the asphalt path and plunged round the corner the flower-beds burst upon his sight in all their consoling glory.

  'Ah!' breathed Lord Emsworth, rapturously, and came to a halt before a glowing carpet of tulips. A man of official aspect, wearing a peaked cap and a uniform, stopped as he heard the exclamation and looked at him with approval and even affection.

  'Nice weather we're 'avin',' he observed.

  Lord Emsworth did not reply. He had not heard. There is that about a well-set-out bed of flowers which acts on men who love their gardens like a drug, and he was in a sort of trance. Already he had completely forgotten where he was, and seemed to himself to be back in his paradise of Blandings. He drew a step nearer to the flower-bed, pointing like a setter.

  The official-looking man's approval deepened. This man with the peaked cap was the park-keeper, who held the rights of the high, the low, and the middle justice over that section of the gardens. He, too, loved these flower-beds, and he seemed to see in Lord Emsworth a kindred soul. The general public was too apt to pass by, engrossed in its own affairs, and this often wounded the park-keeper. In Lord Emsworth he thought that he recognized one of the right sort.

  'Nice—' he began.

  He broke off with a sharp cry. If he had not seen it with his own eyes, he would not have believed it. But, alas, there was no possibility of a mistake. With a ghastly shock he realized that he had been deceived in this attractive stranger. Decently, if untidily, dressed; clean; respectable to th
e outward eye; the stranger was in reality a dangerous criminal, the blackest type of evil-doer on the park-keeper's index. He was a Kensington Gardens flower-picker.

  For, even as he uttered the word 'Nice,' the man had stepped lightly over the low railing, had shambled across the strip of turf, and before you could say 'weather' was busy on his dark work. In the brief instant in which the park-keeper's vocal chords refused to obey him, he was two tulips ahead of the game and reaching out to scoop in a third.

  'Hi!!!' roared the park-keeper, suddenly finding speech. "I there!!!'

  Lord Emsworth turned with a start.

  'Bless my soul!' he murmured reproachfully.

  He was in full possession of his senses now, such as they were, and understood the enormity of his conduct. He shuffled back on to the asphalt, contrite.

  'My dear fellow—' he began remorsefully.

  The park-keeper began to speak rapidly and at length. From time to time Lord Emsworth moved his lips and made deprecating gestures, but he could not stem the flood. Louder and more rhetorical grew the park-keeper and denser and more interested the rapidly assembling crowd of spectators. And then through the stream of words another voice spoke.

  'Wot's all this?'

  The Force had materialized in the shape of a large, solid constable.

  The park-keeper seemed to understand that he had been superseded. He still spoke, but no longer like a father rebuking an erring son. His attitude now was more that of an elder brother appealing for justice against a delinquent junior. In a moving passage he stated his case.

  "E Says,' observed the constable judicially, speaking slowly and in capitals, as if addressing an untutored foreigner, "E Says You Was Pickin' The Flowers.'

  'I saw 'im. I was standin' as close as I am to you.'

  "E Saw You,' interpreted the constable. "E Was Standing At Your Side.'

  Lord Emsworth was feeling weak and bewildered. Without a thought of annoying or doing harm to anybody, he seemed to have unchained the fearful passions of a French Revolution; and there came over him a sense of how unjust it was that this sort of thing should be happening to him, of all people – a man already staggering beneath the troubles of a Job.

  'I'll 'ave to ask you for your name and address,' said the constable, more briskly. A stubby pencil popped for an instant into his stern mouth and hovered, well and truly moistened, over the virgin page of his notebook- that dreadful notebook before which taxi-drivers shrink and hardened bus-conductors quail.

  'I – I – why, my dear fellow – I mean, officer – I am the Earl of Emsworth.'

  Much has been written of the psychology of crowds, designed to show how extraordinary and inexplicable it is, but most of such writing is exaggeration. A crowd generally behaves in a perfectly natural and intelligible fashion. When, for instance, it sees a man in a badly-fitting tweed suit and a hat he ought to be ashamed of getting put through it for pinching flowers in the Park, and the man says he is an earl, it laughs. This crowd laughed.

  'Ho?' The constable did not stoop to join in the merriment of the rabble, but his lip twitched sardonically. 'Have you a card, your lordship?'

  Nobody intimate with Lord Emsworth would have asked such a foolish question. His card-case was the thing he always lost second when visiting London – immediately after losing his umbrella.

  'I – er – I'm afraid—'

  'R!' said the constable. And the crowd uttered another happy, hyena-like laugh, so intensely galling that his lordship raised his bowed head and found enough spirit to cast an indignant glance. And, as he did so, the hunted look faded from his eyes.

  'McAllister!' he cried.

  Two new arrivals had just joined the throng, and, being of rugged and nobbly physique, had already shoved themselves through to the ringside seats. One was a tall, handsome, smooth-faced gentleman of authoritative appearance, who, if he had not worn rimless glasses, would have looked like a Roman emperor. The other was a shorter, sturdier man with a bristly red beard.

  'McAllister!' moaned his lordship piteously. 'McAllister, my dear fellow, do please tell this man who I am.'

  After what had passed between himself and his late employer, a lesser man than Angus McAllister might have seen in Lord Emsworth's predicament merely a judgment. A man of little magnanimity would have felt that here was where he got a bit of his own back.

  Not so this splendid Glaswegian.

  Aye,' he said. 'Yon's Lorrud Emsworruth.'

  'Who are you?' inquired the constable searchingly.

  'I used to be head-gardener at the cassel.'

  'Exactly,' bleated Lord Emsworth. 'Precisely. My head-gardener.'

  The constable was shaken. Lord Emsworth might not look like an earl, but there was no getting away from the fact that Angus McAllister was supremely head-gardeneresque. A staunch admirer of the aristocracy, the constable perceived that zeal had caused him to make a bit of a bloomer.

  In this crisis, however, he comported himself with masterly tact. He scowled blackly upon the interested throng.

  'Pass along there, please. Pass along,' he commanded austerely. 'Ought to know better than block up a public thoroughfare like this. Pass along!'

  He moved off, shepherding the crowd before him. The Roman emperor with the rimless glasses advanced upon Lord Emsworth, extending a large hand.

  'Pleased to meet you at last,' he said. 'My name is Donaldson, Lord Emsworth.'

  For a moment the name conveyed nothing to his lordship. Then its significance hit him, and he drew himself up with hauteur.

  'You'll excuse us, Angus,' said Mr Donaldson. 'High time you and I had a little chat, Lord Emsworth.'

  Lord Emsworth was about to speak, when he caught the other's eye. It was a strong, keen, level grey eye, with a curious forcefulness about it that made him feel strangely inferior. There is every reason to suppose that Mr Donaldson had subscribed for years to those personality courses advertised in the magazines which guarantee to impart to the pupil who takes ten correspondence lessons the ability to look the boss in the eye and make him wilt. Mr Donaldson looked Lord Emsworth in the eye, and Lord Emsworth wilted.

  'How do you do?' he said weakly.

  'Now listen, Lord Emsworth,' proceeded Mr Donaldson. 'No sense in having hard feelings between members of a family. I take it you've heard by this that your boy and my girl have gone ahead and fixed it up? Personally, I'm delighted. That boy is a fine young fellow.'

  Lord Emsworth blinked.

  'You are speaking of my son Frederick?' he said incredulously.

  'Of your son Frederick. Now, at the moment, no doubt, you are feeling a trifle sore. I don't blame you. You have every right to be sorer than a gumboil. But you must remember – young blood, eh? It will, I am convinced, be a lasting grief to that splendid young man—'

  'You are still speaking of my son Frederick?'

  'Of Frederick, yes. It will, I say, be a lasting grief to him if he feels he has incurred your resentment. You must forgive him, Lord Emsworth. He must have your support.'

  'I suppose he'll have to have it, dash it!' said his lordship unhappily. 'Can't let the boy starve.'

  Mr Donaldson's hand swept round in a wide, grand gesture.

  'Don't you worry about that. I'll look after that end of it. I am not a rich man—'

  'Ah!' said Lord Emsworth rather bleakly. There had been something about the largeness of the other's manner which had led him to entertain hopes.

  'I doubt,' continued Mr Donaldson frankly, for he was a man who believed in frankness in these matters, 'if, all told, I have as much as ten million dollars in the world.'

  Lord Emsworth swayed like a sapling in the breeze.

  'Ten million? Ten million? Did you say you had ten million dollars?'

  'Between nine and ten, I suppose. Not more. You must remember,' said Mr Donaldson, with a touch of apology, 'that conditions have changed very much in America of late. We have been through a tough time, a mighty tough time. Many of my friends have been harder hit th
an I have. But things are coming back. Yes, sir, they're coming right back. I am a firm believer in President Roosevelt and the New Deal. Under the New Deal, the American dog is beginning to eat more biscuits. That, I should have mentioned, is my line. I am Donaldson's Dog-Biscuits.'

  'Donaldson's Dog-Biscuits? Indeed? Really! Fancy that!'

  'You have heard of Donaldson's Dog-Biscuits?' asked their proprietor eagerly.

  'Never,' said Lord Emsworth cordially.

  'Oh! Well, that's who I am. And, as I say, the business is beginning to pick up nicely after the slump. All over the country our salesmen are reporting that the American dog is once more becoming biscuit-conscious. And so I am in a position, with your approval, to offer Frederick a steady and possibly a lucrative job. I propose, always with your consent, of course, to send him over to Long Island City to start learning the business. I have no doubt that he will in time prove a most valuable asset to the firm.'

  Lord Emsworth could conceive of no way in which Freddie could be of value to a dog-biscuit firm, except possibly as a taster; but he refrained from damping the other's enthusiasm by saying so. In any case, the thought of the young man actually earning his living, and doing so three thousand miles from Blandings Castle, would probably have held him dumb.

  'He seems full of keenness. But, in my opinion, to be able to give of his best and push the Donaldson biscuit as it should be pushed, he must feel that he has your moral support, Lord Emsworth – his father's moral support.'

  'Yes, yes, yes!' said Lord Emsworth heartily. A feeling of positive adoration for Mr Donaldson was thrilling him. The getting rid of Freddie, which he himself had been unable to achieve in twenty-six years, this godlike dog-biscuit manufacturer had accomplished in less than a week. What a man! felt Lord Emsworth. 'Oh, yes, yes, yes!' he said. 'Yes, indeed. Most decidedly.'

  'They sail on Wednesday.'

  'Capital!'

  'Early in the morning.'

  'Splendid!'

  'I may give them a friendly message from you? A forgiving, fatherly message?'

  'Certainly, certainly, certainly. Inform Frederick that he has my best wishes.'