Lord Emsworth scratched meditatively at the Empress's tank-like back. A mutinous expression was on his mild face.
'Don't see why she shouldn't marry the fellow,' he mumbled.
'Marry James Belford?'
'I don't see why not. Seems fond of him and all that.'
'You never have had a grain of sense in your head, Clarence. Angela is going to marry Heacham.'
'Can't stand that man. All wrong about pigs.'
'Clarence, I don't wish to have any more discussion and argument. You will go to London on the two o'clock train. You will see Mr Belford. And you will tell him about Angela's money. Is that quite clear?'
'Oh, all right,' said his lordship moodily. All right, all right, all right.'
The emotions of the Earl of Emsworth, as he sat next day facing his luncheon-guest, James Bartholomew Belford, across a table in the main dining-room of the Senior Conservative Club, were not of the liveliest and most agreeable. It was bad enough to be in London at all on such a day of golden sunshine. To be charged, while there, with the task of blighting the romance of two young people for whom he entertained a warm regard was unpleasant to a degree.
For, now that he had given the matter thought, Lord Emsworth recalled that he had always liked this boy Belford. A pleasant lad, with, he remembered now, a healthy fondness for that rural existence which so appealed to himself. By no means the sort of fellow who, in the very presence and hearing of Empress of Blandings, would have spoken disparagingly and with oaths of pigs as a class. It occurred to Lord Emsworth, as it has occurred to so many people, that the distribution of money in this world is all wrong. Why should a man like pig-despising Heacham have a rent roll that ran into the tens of thousands, while this very deserving youngster had nothing?
These thoughts not only saddened Lord Emsworth – they embarrassed him. He hated unpleasantness, and it was suddenly borne in upon him that, after he had broken the news that Angela's bit of capital was locked up and not likely to get loose, conversation with his young friend during the remainder of lunch would tend to be somewhat difficult.
He made up his mind to postpone the revelation. During the meal, he decided, he would chat pleasantly of this and that; and then, later, while bidding his guest good-bye, he would spring the thing on him suddenly and dive back into the recesses of the club.
Considerably cheered at having solved a delicate problem with such adroitness, he started to prattle.
'The gardens at Blandings,' he said, 'are looking particularly attractive this summer. My head-gardener, Angus McAllister, is a man with whom I do not always find myself seeing eye to eye, notably in the matter of hollyhocks, on which I consider his views subversive to a degree; but there is no denying that he understands roses. The rose garden—'
'How well I remember that rose garden,' said James Belford, sighing slightly and helping himself to brussels sprouts. 'It was there that Angela and I used to meet on summer mornings.'
Lord Emsworth blinked. This was not an encouraging start, but the Emsworths were a fighting clan. He had another try.
'I have seldom seen such a blaze of colour as was to be witnessed there during the month of June. Both McAllister and I adopted a very strong policy with the slugs and plant lice, with the result that the place was a mass of flourishing Damasks and Ayrshires and—'
'Properly to appreciate roses,' said James Belford, 'You want to see them as a setting for a girl like Angela. With her fair hair gleaming against the green leaves she makes a rose garden seem a veritable Paradise.'
'No doubt,' said Lord Emsworth. 'No doubt. I am glad you liked my rose garden. At Blandings, of course, we have the natural advantage of loamy soil, rich in plant food and humus; but, as I often say to McAllister, and on this point we have never had the slightest disagreement, loamy soil by itself is not enough. You must have manure. If every autumn a liberal mulch of stable manure is spread upon the beds and the coarser parts removed in the spring before the annual forking—'
Angela tells me,' said James Belford, 'that you have forbidden our marriage.'
Lord Emsworth choked dismally over his chicken. Directness of this kind, he told himself with a pang of self-pity, was the sort of thing young Englishmen picked up in America. Diplomatic circumlocution flourished only in a more leisurely civilization, and in those energetic and forceful surroundings you learned to Talk Quick and Do It Now, and all sorts of uncomfortable things.
'Er – well, yes, now you mention it, I believe some informal decision of that nature was arrived at. You see, my dear fellow, my sister Constance feels rather strongly—'
'I understand. I suppose she thinks I'm a sort of prodigal.'
'No, no, my dear fellow. She never said that. Wastrel was the term she employed.'
'Well, perhaps I did start out in business on those lines. But you can take it from me that when you find yourself employed on a farm in Nebraska belonging to an applejack-nourished patriarch with strong views on work and a good vocabulary, you soon develop a certain liveliness.'
'Are you employed on a farm?'
'I was employed on a farm.'
'Pigs?' said Lord Emsworth in a low, eager voice.
'Among other things.'
Lord Emsworth gulped. His fingers clutched at the table-cloth.
'Then perhaps, my dear fellow, you can give me some advice. For the last two days my prize sow, Empress of Blandings, has declined all nourishment. And the Agricultural Show is on Wednesday week. I am distracted with anxiety.'
James Belford frowned thoughtfully.
'What does your pig-man say about it?'
'My pig-man was sent to prison two days ago. Two days!' For the first time the significance of the coincidence struck him. 'You don't think that can have anything to do with the animal's loss of appetite?'
'Certainly. I imagine she is missing him and pining away because he isn't there.'
Lord Emsworth was surprised. He had only a distant acquaintance with George Cyril Wellbeloved, but from what he had seen of him he had not credited him with this fatal allure.
'She probably misses his afternoon call.'
Again his lordship found himself perplexed. He had had no notion that pigs were such sticklers for the formalities of social life.
'His call?'
'He must have had some special call that he used when he wanted her to come to dinner. One of the first things you learn on a farm is hog-calling. Pigs are temperamental. Omit to call them, and they'll starve rather than put on the nose-bag. Call them right, and they will follow you to the ends of the earth with their mouths watering.'
'God bless my soul! Fancy that.'
'A fact, I assure you. These calls vary in different parts of America. In Wisconsin, for example, the words "Poig, Poig, Poig" bring home – in both the literal and the figurative sense – the bacon. In Illinois, I believe they call "Burp, Burp, Burp," while in Iowa the phrase "Kus, Kus, Kus" is preferred. Proceeding to Minnesota, we find "Peega, Peega, Peega" or, alternatively, "Oink, Oink, Oink," whereas in Milwaukee, so largely inhabited by those of German descent, you will hear the good old Teuton "Komm Schweine, Komm Schweine." Oh, yes, there are all sorts of pig-calls, from the Massachusetts "Phew, Phew, Phew" to the "Loo-ey, Loo-ey, Loo-ey" of Ohio, not counting various local devices such as beating on tin cans with axes or rattling pebbles in a suit-case. I knew a man out in Nebraska who used to call his pigs by tapping on the edge of the trough with his wooden leg.'
'Did he, indeed?'
'But a most unfortunate thing happened. One evening, hearing a woodpecker at the top of a tree, they started shinning up it; and when the man came out he found them all lying there in a circle with their necks broken.'
'This is no time for joking,' said Lord Emsworth, pained.
'I'm not joking. Solid fact. Ask anybody out there.'
Lord Emsworth placed a hand to his throbbing forehead.
'But if there is this wide variety, we have no means of knowing which call Wellbeloved ...'
'Ah,' said
James Belford, 'but wait. I haven't told you all. There is a master-word.'
'A what?'
'Most people don't know it, but I had it straight from the lips of Fred Patzel, the hog-calling champion of the Western States. What a man! I've known him to bring pork chops leaping from their plates. He informed me that, no matter whether an animal has been trained to answer to the Illinois "Burp" or the Minnesota "Oink," it will always give immediate service in response to this magic combination of syllables. It is to the pig world what the Masonic grip is to the human. "Oink" in Illinois or "Burp" in Minnesota, and the animal merely raises its eyebrows' and stares coldly. But go to either state and call "Pig-hoo-oo-ey!" ...'
The expression on Lord Emsworth's face was that of a drowning man who sees a lifeline.
'Is that the master-word of which you spoke?'
'That's it.'
'Pig –?'
'– hoo-oo-ey.'
'Pig-hoo-o-ey?'
'You haven't got it quite right. The first syllable should be short and staccato, the second long and rising into a falsetto, high but true.'
'Pig-hoo-o-o-ey'
'Pig-hoo-o-o-ey'
'Pig-hoo-o-o-ey!' yodelled Lord Emsworth, flinging his head back and giving tongue in a high, penetrating tenor which caused ninety-three Senior Conservatives, lunching in the vicinity, to congeal into living statues of alarm and disapproval.
'More body to the "hoo,"' advised James Belford.
'Pig-hoo-o-o-o-ey!'
The Senior Conservative Club is one of the few places in London where lunchers are not accustomed to getting music with their meals. White-whiskered financiers gazed bleakly at bald-headed politicians, as if asking silently what was to be done about this. Bald-headed politicians stared back at white-whiskered financiers, replying in the language of the eye that they did not know. The general sentiment prevailing was a vague determination to write to the Committee about it.
'Pig-hoo-o-o-o-ey!' carolled Lord Emsworth. And, as he did so, his eye fell on the clock over the mantelpiece. Its hands pointed to twenty minutes to two.
He started convulsively. The best train in the day for Market Blandings was the one which left Paddington station at two sharp. After that there was nothing till the five-five.
He was not a man who often thought; but, when he did, to think was with him to act. A moment later he was scudding over the carpet, making for the door that led to the broad staircase.
Throughout the room which he had left, the decision to write in strong terms to the Committee was now universal; but from the mind, such as it was, of Lord Emsworth the past, with the single exception of the word 'Pig-hoo-o-o-o-ey!' had been completely blotted.
Whispering the magic syllables, he sped to the cloak-room and retrieved his hat. Murmuring them over and over again, he sprang into a cab. He was still repeating them as the train moved out of the station; and he would doubtless have gone on repeating them all the way to Market Blandings, had he not, as was his invariable practice when travelling by rail, fallen asleep after the first ten minutes of the journey.
The stopping of the train at Swindon Junction woke him with a start. He sat up, wondering, after his usual fashion on these occasions, who and where he was. Memory returned to him, but a memory that was, alas, incomplete. He remembered his name. He remembered that he was on his way home from a visit to London. But what it was that you said to a pig when inviting it to drop in for a bite of dinner he had completely forgotten.
It was the opinion of Lady Constance Keeble, expressed verbally during dinner in the brief intervals when they were alone, and by means of silent telepathy when Beach, the butler, was adding his dignified presence to the proceedings, that her brother Clarence, in his expedition to London to put matters plainly to James Belford, had made an outstanding idiot of himself.
There had been no need whatever to invite the man Belford to lunch; but, having invited him to lunch, to leave him sitting, without having clearly stated that Angela would have no money for four years, was the act of a congenital imbecile. Lady Constance had been aware ever since their childhood days that her brother had about as much sense as a—
Here Beach entered, superintending the bringing-in of the savoury, and she had been obliged to suspend her remarks.
This sort of conversation is never agreeable to a sensitive man, and his lordship had removed himself from the danger zone as soon as he could manage it. He was now seated in the library, sipping port and straining a brain which Nature had never intended for hard exercise in an effort to bring back that word of magic of which his unfortunate habit of sleeping in trains had robbed him.
'Pig–'
He could remember as far as that; but of what avail was a single syllable? Besides, weak as his memory was, he could recall that the whole gist or nub of the thing lay in the syllable that followed. The 'pig' was a mere preliminary.
Lord Emsworth finished his port and got up. He felt restless, stifled. The summer night seemed to call to him like some silvervoiced swineherd calling to his pig. Possibly, he thought, a breath of fresh air might stimulate his brain-cells. He wandered downstairs; and, having dug a shocking old slouch hat out of the cupboard where he hid it to keep his sister Constance from impounding and burning it, he strode heavily out into the garden.
He was pottering aimlessly to and fro in the parts adjacent to the rear of the castle when there appeared in his path a slender female form. He recognized it without pleasure. Any unbiased judge would have said that his niece Angela, standing there in the soft, pale light, looked like some dainty spirit of the Moon. Lord Emsworth was not an unbiased judge. To him Angela merely looked like Trouble. The march of civilization has given the modern girl a vocabulary and an ability to use it which her grandmother never had. Lord Emsworth would not have minded meeting Angela's grandmother a bit.
'Is that you, my dear?' he said nervously.
'Yes.'
'I didn't see you at dinner.'
'I didn't want any dinner. The food would have choked me. I can't eat.'
'It's precisely the same with my pig,' said his lordship. 'Young Belford tells me—'
Into Angela's queenly disdain there flashed a sudden animation.
'Have you seen Jimmy? What did he say?'
'That's just what I can't remember. It began with the word
"Pig" —'
'But after he had finished talking about you, I mean. Didn't he say anything about coming down here?'
'Not that I remember.'
'I expect you weren't listening. You've got a very annoying habit, Uncle Clarence,' said Angela maternally, 'of switching your mind off and just going blah when people are talking to you. It gets you very much disliked on all sides. Didn't Jimmy say anything about me?'
'I fancy so. Yes, I am nearly sure he did.'
'Well, what?'
'I cannot remember.'
There was a sharp clicking noise in the darkness. It was caused by Angela's upper front teeth meeting her lower front teeth; and was followed by a sort of wordless exclamation. It seemed only too plain that the love and respect which a niece should have for an uncle were in the present instance at a very low ebb.
'I wish you wouldn't do that,' said Lord Emsworth plaintively.
'Do what?'
'Make clicking noises at me.'
'I will make clicking noises at you. You know perfectly well, Uncle Clarence, that you are behaving like a bohunkus.'
A what?'
A bonhunkus,' explained his niece coldly, 'is a very inferior sort of worm. Not the kind of worm that you see on lawns, which you can respect, but a really degraded species.'
'I wish you would go in, my dear,' said Lord Emsworth. 'The night air may give you a chill.'
'I won't go in. I came out here to look at the moon and think of Jimmy. What are you doing out here, if it comes to that?'
'I came here to think. I am greatly exercised about my pig, Empress of Blandings. For two days she has refused her food, and young Belford sa
ys she will not eat until she hears the proper call or cry. He very kindly taught it to me, but unfortunately I have forgotten it.'
'I wonder you had the nerve to ask Jimmy to teach you pig calls, considering the way you're treating him.'
'But—'
'Like a leper, or something. And all I can say is that, if you remember this call of his, and it makes the Empress eat, you ought to be ashamed of yourself if you still refuse to let me marry him.'
'My dear,' said Lord Emsworth earnestly, 'if through young Belford's instrumentality Empress of Blandings is induced to take nourishment once more, there is nothing I will refuse him – nothing.'
'Honour bright?'
'I give you my solemn word.'
'You won't let Aunt Constance bully you out of it?'
Lord Emsworth drew himself up.
'Certainly not,' he said proudly. 'I am always ready to listen to your Aunt Constance's views, but there are certain matters where I claim the right to act according to my own judgment.' He paused and stood musing. 'It began with the word "Pig—"'
From somewhere near at hand music made itself heard. The servants' hall, its day's labours ended, was refreshing itself with the housekeeper's gramophone. To Lord Emsworth the strains were merely an additional annoyance. He was not fond of music. It reminded him of his younger son Frederick, a flat but persevering songster both in and out of the bath.
'Yes, I can distinctly recall as much as that. Pig – Pig—'
'WHO—'
Lord Emsworth leaped in the air. It was as if an electric shock had been applied to his person.
'WHO stole my heart away?' howled the gramophone. 'WHO—?'
The peace of the summer night was shattered by a triumphant shout.
'Pig-HOO-o-o-o-ey!'
A window opened. A large, bald head appeared. A dignified voice spoke.
'Who is there? Who is making that noise?'
'Beach!' cried Lord Emsworth. 'Come out here at once.'
'Very good, your lordship.'
And presently the beautiful night was made still more lovely by the added attraction of the butler's presence.
'Beach, listen to this.'
'Very good, your lordship.'
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