Blanding Castle Omnibus

by P. G. Wodehouse

  Mac, the guardian of the stage door, leaned out of his hutch. The matinee over, he had begun to experience that solemn joy which comes to camels approaching an oasis and stage-door men who will soon be at liberty to pop round the corner. He endeavoured to communicate his happiness to Ronnie.‘Won’t be long now, Mr Fish.’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘Won’t be long now, sir.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Ronnie.

  Mac was concerned at his companion’s gloom. He liked smiling faces about him. Reflecting, he fancied he could diagnose its cause.

  ‘I was sorry to hear about that, Mr Fish.’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘I say I was sorry to hear about that, sir.’

  ‘About what?’

  About the Hot Spot, sir. That night-club of yours. Busting up that way. Going West so prompt.’

  Ronnie Fish winced. He presumed the man meant well, but there are certain subjects one does not want mentioned. When you have contrived with infinite pains to wheedle a portion of your capital out of a reluctant trustee and have gone and started a night-club with it and seen that night-club flash into the receiver’s hands like some frail egg-shell engulfed by a whirlpool, silence is best.

  Ah,’ he said briefly, to indicate this.

  Mac had many admirable qualities, but not tact. He was the sort of man who would have tried to cheer Napoleon up by talking about the Winter Sports at Moscow.

  ‘When I heard that you and Mr Carmody was starting one of those places, I said to the fireman “I give it two months,” I said. And it was six weeks, wasn’t it, sir?’

  ‘Seven.’

  ‘Six or seven. Immaterial which. Point is I’m usually pretty right. I said to the fireman “It takes brains to run a night-club,” I said. “Brains and a certain what-shall-I-say.” Won me half-a-dollar, that did.’

  He searched in his mind for other topics to interest and amuse.

  ‘Seen Mr Carmody lately, sir?’

  ‘No. I’ve been in Biarritz. He’s down in Shropshire. He’s got a job as secretary to an uncle of mine.’

  ‘And I shouldn’t wonder,’ said Mac cordially, ‘if he wouldn’t make a mess of that.’

  He began to feel that the conversation was now going with a swing.

  ‘Used to see a lot of Mr Carmody round here at one time.’

  The advance guard of the company appeared, in the shape of a flock of musicians. They passed out of the stage door, first a couple of thirsty-looking flutes, then a group of violins, finally an oboe by himself with a scowl on his face. Oboes are always savage in captivity.

  ‘Yes, sir. Came here a lot, Mr Carmody did. Asking for Miss Brown. Great friends those two was.’

  ‘Oh?’ said Ronnie thickly.

  ‘Used to make me laugh to see them together.’

  Ronnie appeared to swallow something large and jagged.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Well, him so tall and her so small. But there,’ said Mac philosophically, ‘they say it’s opposites that get on best. I know I weigh seventeen stone and my missus looks like a ninepenny rabbit, and yet we’re as happy as can be.’

  Ronnie’s interest in the poundage of the stage-door keeper’s domestic circle was slight.

  Ah,’ he said.

  Mac, having got on to the subject of Sue Brown, stayed there.

  ‘You see the flowers arrived all right, sir.’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘The flowers you sent Miss Brown, sir,’ said Mac, indicating with a stubby thumb a bouquet on the shelf behind him. I haven’t given her them yet. Thought she’d rather have them after the performance.’

  It was a handsome bouquet, but Ronnie Fish stared at it with a sort of dumb horror. His pink face had grown pinker, and his eyes were glassy.

  ‘Give me those flowers, Mac,’ he said in a strangled voice.

  ‘Right, sir. Here you are, sir. Now you look just like a bridegroom, sir,’ said the stage-door keeper, chuckling the sort of chuckle that goes with seventeen stone and a fat head.

  This thought had struck Ronnie, also. It was driven home a moment later by the displeasing behaviour of two of the chorus-girls who came flitting past. Both looked at him in away painful to a sensitive young man, and one of them giggled. Ronnie turned to the door.

  ‘When Miss Brown comes, tell her I’m waiting outside in my car.’

  ‘Right, sir. You’ll be in again, I suppose, sir?’

  ‘No.’ The sombre expression deepened on Ronnie’s face. ‘I’ve got to go down to Shropshire this evening.’

  ‘Be away long?’

  Yes. Quite a time.’

  ‘Sorry to hear that, sir. Well, good-bye, sir. Thank you, sir.’

  Ronnie, clutching the bouquet, walked with leaden steps to the two-seater. There was a card attached to the flowers. He read it, frowned darkly, and threw the bouquet into the car.

  Girls were passing now in shoals. They meant nothing to Ronnie Fish. He eyed them sourly, marvelling why the papers talked about ‘beauty choruses’. And then, at last, there appeared one at the sight of whom his heart, parting from its moorings, began to behave like a jumping bean. It had reached his mouth when she ran up with both hands extended.

  ‘Ronnie, you precious angel lambkin!’

  ‘Sue!’

  To a young man in love, however great the burden of sorrows beneath which he may be groaning, the spectacle of the only girl in the world, smiling up at him, seldom fails to bring a temporary balm. For the moment, Ronnie’s gloom ceased to be. He forgot that he had recently lost several hundred pounds in a disastrous commercial venture. He forgot that he was going off that evening to live in exile. He even forgot that this girl had just been sent a handsome bouquet by a ghastly bargee named P. Frobisher Pilbeam, belonging to the Junior Constitutional Club. These thoughts would return, but for the time being the one that occupied his mind to the exclusion of all others was the thought that after six long weeks of separation he was once more looking upon Sue Brown.

  ‘I’m so sorry I kept you waiting, precious. I had to see Mr Mason.’

  Ronnie started.

  ‘What about?’

  A student of the motion-pictures, he knew what theatrical managers were.

  ‘Just business.’

  ‘Did he ask you to lunch, or anything?’

  ‘No.He just fired me.’

  ‘Fired you!’

  ‘Yes, I’ve lost my job,’ said Sue happily.

  Ronnie quivered.

  ‘I’ll go and break his neck.’

  ‘No, you won’t. It isn’t his fault. It’s the weather. They have to cut down expenses when there’s a heat-wave. It’s all the fault of people like you for going abroad instead of staying in London and coming to the theatre.’ She saw the flowers and uttered a delighted squeal. ‘For me?’

  A moment before, Ronnie had been all chivalrous concern – a knight prepared to battle to the death for his lady-love. He now froze.

  ‘Apparently,’ he said coldly.

  ‘How do you mean, apparently?’

  ‘I mean they are.’

  ‘You pet!’

  ‘Leap in.’

  Ronnie’s gloom was now dense and foglike once more. He gestured fiercely at the clustering children and trod on the self-starter. The car moved smoothly round the corner into Shaftes-bury Avenue.

  Opposite the Monico, there was a traffic-block, and he unloaded his soul.

  ‘In re those blooms.’

  ‘They’re lovely.’

  ‘Yes, but I didn’t send them.’

  ‘You brought them. Much nicer.’

  ‘What I’m driving at,’ said Ronnie heavily, ‘is that they aren’t from me at all. They’re from a blighter named P. Frobisher Pilbeam.’

  Sue’s smile had faded. She knew her Ronald’s jealousy so well. It was the one thing about him which she could have wished changed.

  ‘Oh?’ she said dismally.

  The crust of calm detachment from all human emotion, built up by years of Eton and Cambridge
, cracked abruptly, and there peeped forth a primitive Ronald Overbury Fish.

  ‘Who is this Pilbeam?’ he demanded. ‘Pretty much the Boy Friend, I take it, what?’

  ‘I’ve never even met him!’

  ‘But he sends you flowers.’

  ‘I know he does,’ wailed Sue, mourning for a golden afternoon now probably spoiled beyond repair. ‘He keeps sending me his beastly flowers and writing me his beastly letters . . .’

  Ronnie gritted his teeth.

  ‘And I tell you I’ve never set eyes on him in my life.’

  ‘You don’t know who he is?’

  ‘One of the girls told me that he used to edit that paper Society Spice. I don’t know what he does now.’

  ‘When he isn’t sending you flowers, you mean?’

  ‘I can’t help him sending me flowers.’

  ‘I don’t suppose you want to.’

  Sue’s eyes flickered. Realizing, however, that her Ronnie in certain moods resembled a child of six, she made a pathetic attempt to lighten the atmosphere.

  ‘It’s not my fault if I get persecuted with loathsome addresses, is it? I suppose, when you go to the movies, you blame Lilian Gish for being pursued by the heavy.’

  Ronnie was not to be diverted.

  ‘Sometimes I ask myself,’ he said darkly, ‘if you really care a hang for me.’

  ‘Oh, Ronnie!’

  ‘Yes, I do – repeatedly. I look at you and I look at myself and that’s what I ask myself. What on earth is there about me to make a girl like you fond of a fellow? I’m a failure. Can’t even run a night-club. No brains. No looks.’

  ‘You’ve got a lovely complexion.’

  ‘Too pink. Much too pink. And I’m so damned short.’

  You’re not a bit too short.’

  ‘I am. My Uncle Gaily once told me I looked like the protoplasm of a minor jockey.’

  ‘He ought to have been ashamed of himself.’

  ‘Why the dickens,’ said Ronnie, laying bare his secret dreams, ‘I couldn’t have been born a decent height, like Hugo . . .’ He paused. His hand shook on the steering-wheel. ‘That reminds me. That fellow Mac at the stage door was saying that you and Hugo used to be as thick as thieves. Always together, he said.’

  Sue sighed. Things were being difficult to-day.

  ‘That was before I met you,’ she explained patiently. ‘I used to like dancing with him. He’s a beautiful dancer. You surely don’t suppose for a minute that I could ever be in love with Hugo?’

  ‘I don’t see why not.’

  ‘Hugo!’ Sue laughed. There was something about Hugo Carmody that always made her want to laugh.

  ‘Well, I don’t see why not. He’s better looking than I am. Taller. Not so pink. Plays the saxophone.’

  ‘Will you stop being silly about Hugo.’

  ‘Well, I fear that bird. He’s my best pal and I know his work. He’s practically handsome. And lissom, to boot.’ A hideous thought smote Ronnie like a blow. ‘Did he ever . . .’ He choked. ‘Did he ever hold your hand?’

  ‘Which hand?’

  ‘Either hand.’

  ‘How can you suggest such a thing!’ cried Sue, shocked.

  ‘Well, will you swear there’s nothing between him and you?’

  ‘Of course there isn’t.’

  And nothing between this fellow Pilbeam and you?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  Ah!’ said Ronnie. ‘Then I can go ahead, as planned.’

  His was a mercurial temperament, and it had lifted him in an instant from the depths to the heights. The cloud had passed from his face, the look of Byronic despair from his eyes. He beamed.

  ‘Do you know why I’m going down to Blandings to-night?’ he asked.

  ‘No. I only wish you weren’t.’

  ‘Well, I’ll tell you. I’ve got to get round my uncle.’

  ‘Do what?’

  ‘Make myself solid with my Uncle Clarence. If you’ve ever had anything to do with trustees you’ll know that the one thing they bar like poison is parting with money. And I’ve simply got to have another chunk of my capital, and a good big one, too. Without money, how on earth can I marry you? Let me get hold of funds, and we’ll dash off to the registrar’s the moment you say the word. So now you understand why I’ve got to get to Blandings at the earliest possible moment and stay there till further notice.’

  ‘Yes. I see. And you’re a darling. Tell me about Blandings, Ronnie.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Well, what sort of a place is it? I want to imagine you there while you’re away.’

  Ronnie pondered. He was not at his best as a word painter.

  ‘Oh, you know the kind of thing. Parks and gardens and terraces and immemorial elms and all that. All the usual stuff.’

  Any girls there?’

  ‘My cousin Millicent. She’s my Uncle Lancelot’s daughter. He’s dead. The family want Millicent and me to get married.’

  ‘To each other, you mean? What a perfectly horrible idea!’

  ‘Oh, it’s all right. We’re both against the scheme.’

  ‘Well, that’s some comfort. What other girls will there be at Blandings?’

  ‘Only one that I know of. My mother met a female called Schoonmaker at Biarritz. American. Pots of money, I believe. One of those beastly tall girls. Looked like something left over from Dana Gibson. I couldn’t stand her myself, but my mother was all for her, and I didn’t at all like the way she seemed to be trying to shove her off on to me. You know – “Why don’t you ring up Myra Schoonmaker, Ronnie? I’m sure she would like to go to the Casino to-night. And then you could dance afterwards.” Sinister, it seemed to me.’

  And she’s going to Blandings? H’m!’

  ‘There’s nothing to h’m about.’

  ‘I’m not so sure. Oh, well, I suppose your family are quite right. I suppose you ought really to marry some nice girl in your own set.’

  Ronnie uttered a wordless cry, and in his emotion allowed the mudguard of the two-seater to glide so closely past an Austin Seven that Sue gave a frightened squeak and the Austin Seven went on its way thinking black thoughts.

  ‘Do be careful, Ronnie, you old chump!’

  ‘Well, what do you want to go saying things like that for? I get enough of that from the family, without having you start.’

  ‘Poor old Ronnie! I’m sorry. Still, you must admit that they’d be quite within their rights, objecting to me. I’m not so hot, you know. Only a chorus-girl. Just one of the Ensemble!’

  Ronnie said something between his teeth that sounded like ‘Juki’ What he meant was, Be her station never so humble, a pure, sweet girl is a fitting mate for the highest in the land.

  And my mother was a music-hall singer.’

  A what!’

  ‘A music-hall singer. What they used to call a Serio. You know – pink tights and rather risky songs.’

  This time Ronnie did not say ‘Juki’ He merely swallowed painfully. The information had come as a shock to him. Somehow or other, he had never thought of Sue as having encumbrances in the shape of relatives; and he could not hide from himself the fact that a pink-tighted Serio might stir the Family up quite a little. He pictured something with peroxide hair who would call his Uncle Clarence ‘dearie’.

  ‘English, do you mean? On the Halls here in London?’

  ‘Yes. Her stage name was Dolly Henderson.’

  ‘Never heard of her.’

  ‘I dare say not. But she was the rage of London twenty years ago.’

  ‘I always thought you were American,’ said Ronnie, aggrieved. ‘I distinctly recollect Hugo, when he introduced us, telling me that you had just come over from New York.’

  ‘So I had. Father took me to America soon after mother died.’

  ‘Oh, your mother is – er – no longer with us?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Too bad,’ said Ronnie, brightening.

  ‘My father’s name was Cotterleigh. He was in the Irish G
uards.’

  ‘What!’

  Ronnie’s ecstatic cry seriously inconvenienced a traffic policeman in the exercise of his duties.

  ‘But this is fine! This is the goods! It doesn’t matter to me, of course, one way or the other. I’d love you just the same if your father had sold jellied eels. But think what an enormous difference this will make to my blasted family!’

  ‘I doubt it.’

  ‘But it will. We must get him over at once and spring him on them. Or is he in London?’

  Sue’s brown eyes clouded.

  ‘He’s dead.’

  ‘Eh? Oh? Sorry!’said Ronnie.

  He was dashed for a moment.

  ‘Well, at least let me tell the family about him,’ he urged, recovering. ‘Let me dangle him before their eyes a bit.’

  ‘If you like. But they’ll still object to me because I’m in the chorus.’

  Ronnie scowled. He thought of his mother, he thought of his Aunt Constance, and reason told him that her words were true.

  ‘Dash all this rot people talk about chorus-girls!’ he said. ‘They seem to think that just because a girl works in the chorus she must be a sort of animated champagne vat . . . .’

  Ugh!’

  ‘Spending her life dancing on supper-tables with tight stockbrokers. . . .’

  ‘And not a bad way of passing an evening,’ said Sue meditatively. ‘I must try it some time.’

  ‘. . . with the result that when it’s a question of her marrying anybody, the fellow’s people look down their noses and kick like mules. It’s happened in our family before. My Uncle Gaily was in love with some girl on the stage back in the dark ages, and they formed a wedge and bust the thing up and shipped him off to South Africa or somewhere to forget her. And look at him! Drew three sober breaths in the year nineteen-hundred and then decided that was enough. I expect I shall be the same. If I don’t take to drink, cooped up at Blandings a hundred miles away from you, I shall be vastly surprised. It’s all a lot of silly nonsense. I haven’t any patience with it. I’ve a jolly good mind to go to Uncle Clarence to-night and simply tell him that I’m in love with you and intend to marry you and that if the family don’t like it they can lump it.’

  ‘I wouldn’t.’

  Ronnie simmered down.

  ‘Perhaps you’re right.’