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.’
‘Well, if you take my advice, you’ll hide the flower-pots. One of the things this fellow does when he gets these attacks,’ explained the Hon. Galahad, taking Sue into the family confidence, ‘is to go about hurling flower-pots at people.’
‘Really?’
‘I assure you. Looking for me, Beach?’
The careworn figure of the butler had appeared, walking as one pacing behind the coffin of an old friend.
‘Yes, sir. The gentleman has arrived, Mr Galahad. I looked in the small library, thinking that you might possibly be there, but you were not.’
‘No, I was out here.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘That’s why you couldn’t find me. Show him up to the small library, Beach, and tell him I’ll be with him in a moment.’
‘Very good, sir.’
The Hon. Galahad’s temporary delay in going to see his visitor was due to his desire to linger long enough to tell Sue, to whom he had taken a warm fancy and whom he wished to shield as far as it was in his power from the perils of life, what every girl ought to know about the Efficient Baxter.
‘Never let yourself be alone with that fellow in a deserted spot, my dear,’ he counselled. ‘If he suggests a walk in the woods, call for help. Been off his head for years. Ask Clarence.’
Lord Emsworth nodded solemnly.
‘And it looks to me,’ went on the Hon. Galahad, ‘as if his mania had now taken a suicidal turn. Overbalanced, indeed! How the deuce could he have overbalanced? Flung himself out bodily, that’s what he did. I couldn’t think who it was he reminded me of till this moment. He’s the living image of a man I used to know in the nineties. The first intimation any of us had that this chap had anything wrong with him was when he turned up to supper at the house of a friend of mine – George Pallant. You remember George, Clarence? – with a couple of days’ beard on him. And when Mrs George, who had known him all her life, asked him why he hadn’t shaved – “Shaved?” says this fellow, surprised. Packleby, his name was. One of the Leicestershire Packlebys. “Shaved, dear lady?” he says. “Well, considering that they even hide the butter-knife when I come down to breakfast for fear I’ll try to cut my throat with it, is it reasonable to suppose they’d trust me with a razor?” Quite stuffy about it, he was, and it spoiled the party. Look after Miss Schoonmaker, Clarence. I shan’t be long.’
Lord Emsworth had little experience in the art of providing diversion for young girls. Left thus to his native inspiration, he pondered a while. If the Empress had not been stolen, his task would, of course, have been simple. He could have given this Miss Schoonmaker a half-hour of sheer entertainment by taking her down to the piggeries to watch that superb animal feed. As it was, he was at something of a loss.
‘Perhaps you would care to see the rose-garden?’ he hazarded.
‘I should love it,’ said Sue.
‘Are you fond of roses?’
‘Tremendously.’
Lord Emsworth found himself warming to this girl. Her personality pleased him. He seemed dimly to recall something his sister Constance had said about her – something about wishing that her nephew Ronald would settle down with some nice girl with money like that Miss Schoonmaker whom Julia had met at Biarritz. Feeling so kindly towards her, it occurred to him that a word in season, opening her eyes to his nephew’s true character, might prevent the girl making a mistake which she would regret for ever when it was too late.
‘I think you know my nephew Ronald?’ he said.
‘Yes.’
Lord Emsworth paused to smell a rose. He gave Sue a brief biography of it before returning to the theme.
‘That boy’s an ass,’ he said.
‘Why?’ said Sue sharply. She began to feel less amiable towards this stringy old man. A moment before, she had been thinking that it was rather charming, that funny, vague manner of his. Now she saw him clearly for what he was – a dodderer, and a Class A dodderer at that.
‘Why?’ His lordship considered the point. ‘Well, heredity, probably, I should say. His father, old Miles Fish, was the biggest fool in the Brigade of Guards.’ He looked at her impressively through slanting pince-nez, as if to call her attention to the fact that this was something of an achievement. ‘The boy bounces tennis-balls on pigs,’ he went on, getting down to the ghastly facts.
Sue was surprised. The words, if she had caught them correctly, seemed to present a side of Ronnie’s character of which she had been unaware.
‘Does what?’
‘I saw him with my own eyes. He bounced a tennis-ball on Empress of Blandings. And not once but repeatedly.’
The motherly instinct which all girls feel towards the men they love urged Sue to say something in Ronnie’s defence. But, apart from suggesting that the pig had probably started it, she could not think of anything. They left the rose-garden and began to walk back to the lawn, Lord Emsworth still exercised by the thought of his nephew’s shortcomings. For one reason and another, Ronnie had always been a source of vague annoyance to him since boyhood. There had even been times when he had felt that he would almost have preferred the society of his younger son, Frederick.
‘Aggravating boy,’ he said. ‘Most aggravating. Always up to something or other. Started a night-club the other day. Lost a lot of money over it. Just the sort of thing he would do. My brother Galahad started some kind of a club many years ago. It cost my old father nearly a thousand pounds, I recollect. There is something about Ronald that reminds me very much of Galahad at the same age.’
Although Sue had found much in the author of the Reminiscences to attract her, she was able to form a very fair estimate of the sort of young man he must have been in the middle twenties. This charge, accordingly, struck her as positively libellous.
‘I don’t agree with you, Lord Emsworth.’
‘But you never knew my brother Galahad as a young man,’ his lordship pointed out cleverly.
‘What is the name of that hill over there?’ asked Sue in a cold voice, changing the unpleasant
subject.
‘That hill? Oh, that one?’ It was the only one in sight. ‘It is called the Wrekin.’
‘Oh?’ said Sue.
‘Yes,’ said Lord Emsworth.
‘Ah,’ said Sue.
They had crossed the lawn and were on the broad terrace that looked out over the park. Sue leaned on the low stone wall that bordered it and gazed before her into the gathering dusk.
The castle had been built on a knoll of rising ground, and on this terrace one had the illusion of being perched up at a great height. From where she stood, Sue got a sweeping view of the park and of the dim, misty Vale of Blandings that dreamed beyond. In the park, rabbits were scuttling to and fro. In the shrubberies birds called sleepily. From somewhere out across the fields there came the faint tinkling of sheep-bells. The lake shone like old silver, and there was a river in the distance, dull grey between the dull green of the trees.
It was a lovely sight, age-old, orderly and English, but it was spoiled by the sky. The sky was overcast and looked bruised. It seemed to be made of dough, and one could fancy it pressing down on the world like a heavy blanket. And it was muttering to itself. A single heavy drop of rain splashed on the stone beside Sue, and there was a low growl far away as if some powerful and unfriendly beast had spied her.
She shivered. She had been gripped by a sudden depression, a strange foreboding that chilled the spirit. That muttering seemed to say that there was no happiness anywhere and never could be any. The air was growing close and clammy. Another drop of rain fell, squashily like a toad, and spread itself over her hand.
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