‘Of course I remember Mr Baxter.’
‘Well, his ghost has just walked across the gravel.’
‘What are you talking about, Clarence?’
‘I’m telling you. I was looking out of the library window and I suddenly saw –’
‘Mr Baxter,’ announced Beach, flinging open the door.
‘Mr Baxter!’
‘Good morning, Lady Constance.’
Rupert Baxter advanced with joyous camaraderie glinting from both lenses. Then he perceived his former employer and his exuberance diminished. ‘Er – good morning, Lord Ems-worth,’ he said, flashing his spectacles austerely upon him.
There was a pause. Lord Emsworth adjusted his pince-nez and regarded the visitor dumbly. Of the relief which was presumably flooding his soul at the discovery that Rupert Baxter was still on this side of the veil, he gave no outward sign.
Baxter was the first to break an uncomfortable silence.
‘I happened to be taking a caravan holiday in this neighbourhood, Lady Constance, and finding myself near Market Blandings last night, I thought I would . . .’
‘Why, of course! We should never have forgiven you if you had not come to see us. Should we, Clarence?’
‘Eh?’
‘I said, should we?’
‘Should we what?’ said Lord Emsworth, who was still adjusting his mind.
Lady Constance’s lips tightened, and a moment passed during which it seemed always a fifty-fifty chance that a handsome silver ink-pot would fly through the air in the direction of her brother’s head. But she was a strong woman. She fought down the impulse.
‘Did you say you were travelling in a caravan, Mr Baxter?’
‘In a caravan. I left it in the park.’
‘Well, of course you must come and stay with us. The castle,’ she continued, raising her voice a little, to compete with a sort of wordless bubbling which had begun to proceed from her brother’s lips, ‘is almost empty just now. We shall not be having our first big house-party till the middle of next month. You must make quite a long visit. I will send somebody over to fetch your things.’
‘It is exceedingly kind of you.’
‘It will be delightful having you here again. Won’t it, Clarence?’
‘Eh?’
‘I said won’t it?’
‘Won’t it what?’
Lady Constance’s hand trembled above the ink-pot like a hovering butterfly. She withdrew it.
‘Will it not be delightful,’ she said, catching her brother’s eye and holding it like a female Ancient Mariner, ‘having Mr Baxter back at the castle again?’
‘I’m going down to see my pig,’ said Lord Emsworth.
A silence followed his departure, such as would have fallen had a coffin just been carried out. Then Lady Constance shook off gloom.
‘Oh, Mr Baxter, I’m so glad you were able to come. And how clever of you to come in a caravan. It prevented your arrival seeming pre-arranged.’
‘I thought of that.’
‘You think of everything.’
Rupert Baxter stepped to the door, opened it, satisfied himself that no listeners lurked in the passage, and returned to his seat.
‘Are you in any trouble, Lady Constance? Your letter seemed so very urgent.’
‘I am in dreadful trouble, Mr Baxter.’
If Rupert Baxter had been a different type of man and Lady Constance Keeble a different type of woman he would probably at this point have patted her hand. As it was, he merely hitched his chair an inch closer to hers.
‘If there is anything I can do?’
‘There is nobody except you who can do anything. But I hardly like to ask you.’
Ask me whatever you please. And if it is in my power . . .’
‘Oh, it is.’
Rupert Baxter gave his chair another hitch.
‘Tell me.’
Lady Constance hesitated.
‘It seems such an impossible thing to ask of anyone.’
‘Please!’
‘Well . . . you know my brother?’
Baxter seemed puzzled. Then an explanation of the peculiar question presented itself.
‘Oh, you mean Mr . . .?’
Yes, yes, yes. Of course I wasn’t referring to Lord Emsworth. My brother Galahad.’
‘I have never met him. Oddly enough, though he visited the castle twice during the period when I was Lord Emsworth’s secretary, I was away both times on my holiday. Is he here now?’
Yes. Finishing his Reminiscences.’
‘I saw in some paper that he was writing the history of his life.’
‘And if you know what a life his has been you will understand why I am distracted.’
‘Certainly I have heard stories,’ said Baxter guardedly.
Lady Constance performed that movement with her hands which came so close to wringing.
‘The book is full from beginning to end of libellous anecdotes, Mr Baxter. About all our best friends. If it is published we shall not have a friend left. Galahad seems to have known everybody in England when they were young and foolish, and to remember everything particularly foolish and disgraceful that they did. So . . .’
‘So you want me to get hold of the manuscript and destroy it?’
Lady Constance stared, stunned by this penetration. She told herself that she might have known that she would not have to make long explanations to Rupert Baxter. His mind was like a searchlight, darting hither and thither, lighting up whatever it touched.
‘Yes,’ she gasped. She hurried on. ‘It does seem, I know, an extraordinary thing to . . .’
‘Not at all.’
‘. . . but Lord Emsworth refuses to do anything.’
‘I see.’
‘You know how he is in the face of any emergency.’
‘Yes, I do, indeed.’
‘So supine. So helpless. So vague and altogether incompetent.’
‘Precisely.’
‘Mr Baxter, you are my only hope.’
Baxter removed his spectacles, polished them, and put them back again.
‘I shall be delighted, Lady Constance, to do anything to help you that lies in my power. And to obtain possession of this manuscript should be an easy task. But is there only one copy of it in existence?’
‘Yes, yes, yes. I am sure of that. Galahad told me that he was waiting till it was finished before sending it to the typist.’
‘Then you need have no further anxiety.’
It was a moment when Lady Constance Keeble would have given much for eloquence. She sought for words that should adequately express her feelings, but could find none.
‘Oh, Mr Baxter!’ she said.
III
Ronnie Fish’s aimlessly wandering feet had taken him westward. It was not long, accordingly, before there came to his nostrils a familiar and penetrating odour, and he found that he was within a short distance of the detached residence employed by Empress of Blandings as a combined bedroom and restaurant. A few steps, and he was enabled to observe that celebrated animal in person. With her head tucked well down and her tail wiggling with pure joie de vivre, the Empress was hoisting in a spot of lunch.
Everybody likes to see somebody eating. Ronnie leaned over the rail, absorbed. He poised the tennis-ball and with an absent-minded flick of the wrist bounced it on the silver medallist’s back. Finding the pleasant, ponging sound which resulted soothing to harassed nerves, he did it again. The Empress made excellent bouncing. She was not one of your razor-backs. She presented a wide and resistant surface. For some minutes, therefore, the pair carried on according to plan – she eating, he bouncing, until presently Ronnie was thrilled to discover that this outdoor sport of his was assisting thought. Gradually – mistily at first, then assuming shape, a plan of action was beginning to emerge from the murk of his mind.How would this be, for instance?
If there was one thing calculated to appeal to his Uncle Clarence, to induce in his Uncle Clarence a really melting mood, it was the announcement that s
omebody desired to return to the Land. He loved to hear of people returning to the Land. How, then, would this be? Go to the old boy, state that one had seen the light and was in complete agreement with him that England’s future depended on checking the Drift to the Towns, and then ask for a good fat slice of capital with which to start a farm.
The project of starting a farm was one which was bound to . . . Half a minute. Another idea on the way. Yes, here it came, and it was a pippin. Not merely just an ordinary farm, but a pig-farm! Wouldn’t Uncle Clarence leap in the air and shower gold on anybody who wanted to live in the country and breed pigs? You bet your Sunday cuffs he would. And, once the money was safely deposited to the account of Ronald Overbury Fish in Cox’s Bank, then ho! for the registrar’s hand in hand with Sue.
There was a musical plonk as Ronnie bounced the ball for the last time on the Empress’s complacent back. Then, no longer with dragging steps but treading on air, he wandered away to sketch out the last details of the scheme before going indoors and springing it.
IV
Too often it happens that, when you get these brain-waves, you take another look at them after a short interval and suddenly detect some fatal flaw. No such disappointment came to mar the happiness of Ronnie Fish.
‘I say, Uncle Clarence,’ he said, prancing into the library, some half-hour later.Lord Emsworth was deep in the current issue of a weekly paper of porcine interest. It seemed to Ronnie, as he looked up, that his eye was not any too chummy. This, however, did not disturb him. That eye, he was confident, would melt anon. If, at the moment, Lord Emsworth could hardly have sat for his portrait in the role of a benevolent uncle, there would, Ronnie felt, be a swift change of demeanour in the very near future.
‘I say, Uncle Clarence, you know that capital of mine.’
‘That what?’
‘My capital. My money. The money you’re trustee of. And a jolly good trustee,’ said Ronnie handsomely. ‘Well, I’ve been thinking things over and I want you, if you will, to disgorge a segment of it for a sort of venture I’ve got in mind.’
He had not expected the eye to melt yet, and it did not. Seen through the glass of his uncle’s pince-nez, it looked like an oyster in an aquarium.
You wish to start another night-club?’
Lord Emsworth’s voice was cold, and Ronnie hastened to disabuse him of the idea.
‘No, no. Nothing like that. Night-clubs are a mug’s game. I ought never to have touched them. As a matter of fact, Uncle Clarence, London as a whole seems to me a bit of a washout these days. I’m all for the country. What I feel is that the drift to the towns should be checked. What England wants is more blokes going back to the land. That’s the way it looks to me.’
Ronnie Fish began to experience the first definite twinges of uneasiness. This was the point at which he had been confident that the melting process would set in. Yet, watching the eye, he was dismayed to find it as oysterlike as ever. He felt like an actor who has been counting on a round of applause and goes off after his big speech without a hand. The idea occurred to him that his uncle might possibly have grown a little hard of hearing.
‘To the Land,’ he repeated, raising his voice. ‘More blokes going back to the Land. So I want a dollop of capital to start a farm.’
He braced himself for the supreme revelation.
‘I want to breed pigs,’ he said reverently.
Something was wrong. There was no blinking the fact any longer. So far from leaping in the air and showering gold, his uncle merely stared at him in an increasingly unpleasant manner. Lord Emsworth had removed his pince-nez and was wiping them; and Ronnie thought that his eye looked rather less agreeable in the nude than it had done through glass.
‘Pigs!’ he cried, fighting against a growing alarm.
‘Pigs?’
‘Pigs.’
‘You wish to breed pigs?’
‘That’s right,’ bellowed Ronnie. ‘Pigs!’ And from somewhere in his system he contrived to dig up and fasten on his face an ingratiating smile.
Lord Emsworth replaced his pince-nez.
‘And I suppose,’ he said throatily, quivering from his bald head to his roomy shoes, ‘that when you’ve got ‘em you’ll spend the whole day bouncing tennis-balls on their backs?’
Ronnie gulped. The shock had been severe. The ingratiating smile lingered on his lips, as if fastened there with pins, but his eyes were round and horrified.
‘Eh?’ he said feebly.
Lord Emsworth rose. So long as he insisted on wearing an old shooting jacket with holes in the elbows and letting his tie slip down and show the head of a brass stud, he could never hope to be completely satisfactory as a figure of outraged majesty; but he achieved as imposing an effect as his upholstery would permit. He drew himself up to his full height, which was considerable, and from this eminence glared balefully down on his nephew.
‘I saw you! I was on my way to the piggery and I saw you there bouncing your infernal tennis-balls on my pig’s back. Tennis-balls!’ Fire seemed to stream from the pince-nez. ‘Are you aware that Empress of Blandings is an excessively nervous, highly-strung animal, only too ready on the slightest provocation to refuse her meals? You might have undone the work of months with your idiotic tennis-ball.’
‘I’m sorry . . . .’
‘What’s the good of being sorry?’
‘I never thought . . . .’
‘You never do. That’s what’s the trouble with you. Pig-farm!’ said Lord Emsworth vehemently, his voice soaring into the upper register. ‘You couldn’t manage a pig-farm. You aren’t fit to manage a pig-farm. You aren’t worthy to manage a pig-farm. If I had to select somebody out of the whole world to manage a pig-farm, I would choose you last.’
Ronnie Fish groped his way to the table and supported himself on it. He had a sensation of dizziness. On one point he was reasonably clear, viz. that his Uncle Clarence did not consider him ideally fitted to manage a pig-farm, but apart from that his mind was in a whirl. He felt as if he had stepped on something and it had gone off with a bang.
‘Here! What is all this?’
It was the Hon. Galahad who had spoken, and he had spoken peevishly. Working in the small library with the door ajar, he had found the babble of voices interfering with literary composition and, justifiably annoyed, had come to investigate.
‘Can’t you do your reciting some time when I’m not working, Clarence?’ he said. ‘What’s all the trouble about?’
Lord Emsworth was still full of his grievance.
‘He bounced tennis-balls on my pig!’
The Hon. Galahad was not impressed. He did not register horror.
‘Do you mean to tell me,’ he said sternly, ‘that all this fuss, ruining my morning’s work, was simply about that blasted pig of yours?’
‘I refuse to allow you to call the Empress a blasted pig! Good heavens!’ cried Lord Emsworth passionately. ‘Can none of my family appreciate the fact that she is the most remarkable animal in Great Britain? No pig in the whole annals of the Shropshire Agricultural Show has ever won the silver medal two years in succession. And that, if only people will leave her alone and refrain from incessantly pelting her with tennis-balls, is what the Empress is quite certain to do. It is an unheard of feat.’
The Hon. Galahad frowned. He shook his head reprovingly. It was all very well, he felt, a stable being optimistic about its nominee, but he was a man who could face facts. In a long and chequered life he had seen so many good things unstuck. Besides, he had his superstitions, and one of them was that counting your chickens in advance brought bad luck.
‘Don’t you be too cocksure, my boy,’ he said gravely. ‘I looked in at the Emsworth Arms the other day for a glass of beer, and there was a fellow in there offering three to one on an animal called Pride of Matchingham. Offering it freely. Tall, red-haired fellow with a squint. Slightly bottled.’
Lord Emsworth forgot Ronnie, forgot tennis-balls, forgot, in the shock of this announcement, everything e
xcept that deeper wrong which so long had been poisoning his peace.
‘Pride of Matchingham belongs to Sir Gregory Parsloe,’ he said, ‘and I have no doubt that the man offering such ridiculous odds was his pig-man, Wellbeloved. As you know, the fellow used to be in my employment, but Parsloe lured him away from me by the promise of higher wages.’ Lord Emsworth’s expression had now become positively ferocious. The thought of George Cyril Wellbeloved, that perjured pig-man, always made the iron enter into his soul. ‘It was a most abominable and unneighbourly thing to do.’
The Hon. Galahad whistled.
‘So that’s it, is it? Parsloe’s pig-man going about offering three to one – against the form-book, I take it?’
‘Most decidedly. Pride of Matchingham was awarded second prize last year, but it is a quite inferior animal to the Empress.’
‘Then you look after that pig of yours, Clarence.’ The Hon. Galahad spoke earnestly. ‘I see what this means. Parsloe’s up to his old games, and intends to queer the Empress somehow.’
‘Queer her?’
‘Nobble her. Or, if he can’t do that, steal her.’
You don’t mean that.’
‘I do mean it. The man’s as slippery as a greased eel. He would nobble his grandmother if it suited his book. Let me tell you I’ve known young Parsloe for thirty years and I solemnly state that if his grandmother was entered in a competition for fat pigs and his commitments made it desirable for him to get her out of the way, he would dope her bran-mash and acorns without a moment’s hesitation.’
‘God bless my soul!’ said Lord Emsworth, deeply impressed.
‘Let me tell you a little story about young Parsloe. One or two of us used to meet at the Black Footman in Gossiter Street in the old days – they’ve pulled it down now – and match our dogs against rats in the room behind the bar. Well, I put my Towser, an admirable beast, up against young Parsloe’s Banjo on one occasion for a hundred pounds a side. And when the night came and he was shown the rats, I’m dashed if he didn’t just give a long yawn and roll over and go to sleep. I whistled him . . . called him . . . Towser, Towser . . . No good . . . Fast asleep. And my firm belief has always been that young Parsloe took him aside just before the contest was to start and gave him about six pounds of steak and onions. Couldn’t prove anything, of course, but I sniffed the dog’s breath and it was like opening the kitchen door of a Soho chophouse on a summer night. That’s the sort of man young Parsloe is.’
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