Blanding Castle Omnibus

by P. G. Wodehouse

  As for all that pig business, he refused to allow himself to be discouraged. Probably much exaggerated. An excellent fellow, Hugo Carmody, one of the best, but always inclined to make a good story out of everything.

  Full of optimism, Monty Bodkin went along the passage to the telephone-room.

  ‘I want a trunk call,’ he said. ‘Matchingham 8-3.’

  Chapter Three

  Some twenty-four hours after Monty Bodkin had put in his longdistance call to Matchingham 8-3, an observant bird, winging its way over Blandings Castle and taking a bird’s-eye view of its parks, gardens, and messuages, would have noticed a couple walking up and down the terrace which fronts the main entrance of that stately home of England. And narrowing its gaze and shading its eyes with a claw, for the morning sun was strong, it would have seen that one of the pair was a small, sturdy young man of pink complexion, the other an extremely pretty girl in a green linen dress with a Quaker collar. Ronald Overbury Fish was saying good-bye to his Sue preparatory to driving in to Market Blandings and taking the twelve-forty train east. He was going to Norfolk to be best man at the wedding of his cousin George.

  He did not anticipate that the parting would be a long one, for he expected to return on the morrow. Nevertheless, he felt constrained to give Sue a few words of advice as to her deportment during his absence.

  First and foremost, he urged, she must use every feminine wile to fascinate his Uncle Clarence.

  ‘Right,’ said Sue. She was a tiny girl, with an enchanting smile and big blue eyes. These last were now sparkling with ready intelligence. She followed his reasoning perfectly. Lord Emsworth, though he had promised Ronnie his money, had not yet given it to him and might conceivably change his mind. Obviously, therefore, he must be fascinated. The task, moreoever, would not be a distasteful one. In the brief time during which she had had the pleasure of his acquaintance, she had grown very fond of that mild and dreamy peer.

  ‘Right,’ she said.

  ‘Keep surging round him like glue.’

  ‘Right,’ said Sue.

  ‘In fact, I think you had better go and talk pig to him the moment I’ve left.’

  ‘Right,’ said Sue.

  ‘And about Aunt Constance …’ said Ronnie.

  He paused, frowning. He always frowned when he thought of his aunt, Lady Constance Keeble.

  When Ronald Fish, the Last of the Fishes, only son of Lady Julia Fish, and nephew to Clarence, ninth Earl of Emsworth, had announced that a marriage had been arranged and would shortly take place between himself and a unit of the Regal Theatre chorus, he had had what might be called a mixed Press. Some of the notices were good, others not.

  Beach, the Castle butler, who had fostered for eighteen years a semi-paternal attitude towards Ronnie and had fallen in love with Sue at first sight, liked the idea. So did the Hon. Galahad Threepwood, who when a dashing young man about town in the nineties had wanted to marry Sue’s mother. As for Lord Emsworth himself, he had said ‘Oh, ah?’ in an absent voice on hearing the news and had gone on thinking about pigs.

  It was, as so often happens on these occasions, from the female side of the family that the jarring note had proceeded. Women are seldom without their class prejudices. Their views on the importance of Rank diverge from those of the poet Burns. We have seen how Lady Julia felt about the match. The disapproval of her sister Constance was equally pronounced. She grieved over this blot which was about to be splashed upon the escutcheon of a proud family, and let the world see that she grieved. She sighed a good deal, and when she was not sighing kept her lips tightly pressed together.

  So now when Ronnie mentioned her name, he frowned. ‘About Aunt Constance …’

  He was going on to add that, should his Aunt Constance have the nerve during his absence to put on dog and do any of that haughty County stuff to his betrothed, the latter would be well advised to kick her in the face; when there emerged from the house a young man with marcelled hair, a shifty expression, and a small and repellent moustache. He stood for an instant on the threshold, hesitated, caught Ronnie’s eye, smiled weakly, and disappeared again. Ronnie stood gazing tensely at the spot where he had been.

  ‘Little blighter!’ he growled, grinding his teeth gently. The sight of P. Frobisher Pilbeam always tended to wake the fiend that slept in Ronald Fish. ‘Looking for you, I suppose!’

  Sue started nervously.

  ‘Oh, I shouldn’t think so. We’ve hardly spoken for days.’

  ‘He doesn’t ever bother you now?’

  ‘Oh, no.’

  ‘What’s he doing here, anyway? I thought he’d left.’

  ‘I suppose Lord Emsworth asked him to stay on. What does he matter?’

  ‘He used to send you flowers!’

  ‘I know, but …’

  ‘He trailed you to that restaurant that night.’

  ‘I know. But surely you aren’t worried about him any longer?’

  ‘Me?’ said Ronnie.

  ‘No! Of course not.’

  He spoke a little gruffly, for he was embarrassed. It is always embarrassing for a young man of sensibility to realize that he is making a priceless ass of himself. He knew perfectly well that there was nothing between Sue and this Pilbeam perisher and never had been anything. And yet the sight of him about the place could make him flush and scowl and get all throaty.

  Of course, the whole trouble with him was that where Sue was concerned he suffered from an inferiority complex. He found it so difficult to believe that a girl like her could really care for a bird so short and pink as himself. He was always afraid that one of these days it would suddenly dawn upon her what a mistake she had made in supposing herself to be in love with him and would race off and fall in love with somebody else. Not Pilbeam, of course, but suppose somebody tall and lissom came along…

  Sue was pressing her point. She wanted this thing settled and out of the way. The only cloud on her happiness was that tendency of her Ronald’s towards jealousy, to which Hugo Carmody had alluded so feelingly in his conversation with Monty Bodkin. Jealousy when two people had come together and knew that they loved one another always seemed to her silly and incomprehensible. She had the frank, uncomplicated mind of a child.

  ‘You promise you won’t worry about him again?’

  ‘Absolutely not.’

  ‘Nor about anybody else?’

  ‘Positively not. Couldn’t possibly happen again.’ He paused. ‘The only thing is,’ he said broodingly, ‘I am so dashed short!’

  ‘You’re just the right height.’

  ‘And pink.’

  ‘My favourite colour. You’re a precious little pink cherub, and I love you.’

  ‘You really do?’

  ‘Of course I do.’

  ‘But suppose you changed your mind?’

  ‘You are a chump, Ronnie.’

  ‘I know I’m a chump, but I still say—Suppose you changed your mind?’

  ‘It’s much more likely that you’ll change yours.’

  ‘What!’

  ‘Suppose when your mother arrives she talks you over?’

  ‘What absolute rot!’

  ‘I don’t imagine she will approve of me.’

  ‘Of course she’ll approve of you.’

  ‘Lady Constance doesn’t.’

  Ronnie uttered a spirited cry.

  ‘Aunt Constance! I was trying to think who it was we were talking about when that Pilbeam blister came to a head. Listen. If Aunt Constance tries to come the old aristocrat over you while I’m away, punch her in the eye. Don’t put up for a moment with any pursed-lip-and-lorgnette stuff.’

  ‘And what do I do when your mother reaches for her lorgnette?’

  ‘Oh, you won’t have anything of that sort from Mother.’

  ‘Hasn’t she got a lorgnette?’

  ‘Mother’s all right.’

  ‘Not like Lady Constance?’

  ‘A bit, to look at. But quite different, really. Aunt Constance is straight Queen Elizabet
h. Mother’s a cheery soul.’

  ‘She’ll try to talk you over, all the same.’

  ‘She won’t.’

  ‘She will. “Ronald, my dear boy, really! This absurd infatuation. Most extraordinary!” I can feel it in my bones.’

  ‘Mother couldn’t talk like that if you paid her. I keep telling you she’s a genial egg.’

  ‘She won’t like me.’

  ‘Of course she’ll like you. Don’t be … what the dickens is that word.’

  Sue-was biting her lip with her small, very white tooth. Her blue eyes had clouded.

  ‘I wish you weren’t going away, Ronnie.’

  ‘It’s only for tonight.’

  ‘Have you really got to go?’

  ‘Afraid so. Can’t very well let poor old George down. He’s relying on me. Besides, I want to watch his work at the altar rails. Pick up some hints on technique which’ll come in useful when you and I…’

  ‘If ever we do.’

  ‘Do stop talking like that,’ begged Ronnie.

  ‘I’m sorry. But I do wish you hadn’t got to go away. I’m scared. It’s this place. It’s so big and old. It makes me feel like a puppy that’s got into a cathedral.’

  Ronnie turned and gave his boyhood home an appraising glance.

  ‘I suppose it is a fairly decent-sized old shack,’ he admitted, having run his eye up to the battlements and back again. ‘I never really gave the thing much thought before, but, now you mention it, I have seen smaller places. But there’s nothing about it to scare anybody.’

  ‘There is, if you were born and brought up in a villa in the suburbs. I feel that at any moment all the ghosts of your ancestors will come popping out, pointing at me and shouting “What business have you here, you little rat?”’

  ‘They’d better not let me catch them at it,’ said Ronnie warmly. ‘Don’t be so… what on earth is that word? I know it begins with an m. You mustn’t feel like that. You’ve gone like a breeze here. Uncle Clarence likes you. Uncle Gally likes you. Everybody likes you—except Aunt Constance. And a fat lot we care what Aunt Constance thinks, what?’

  ‘I keep worrying about your mother.’

  ‘And I keep telling you…’

  ‘I know. But I’ve got that funny feeling you get sometimes that things are going to happen. Trouble, trouble. A dark lady coming over the water.’

  ‘Mother’s fair.’

  ‘It doesn’t make it any better. I’ve got that presentiment.’

  ‘Well, I don’t see why you should. Everything’s gone without a hitch so far.’

  ‘That’s just what I mean. I’ve been so frightfully happy, and I feel that all the beastly things that spoil happiness are just biding their time. Waiting. They can’t do nothin’ till Martin gets here!’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘I was thinking of a thing one of the girls used to play on her gramophone in the dressing-room, the last show I was in. It was about a Negro who goes to a haunted house, and demon cats keep coming in, each bigger and more horrible than the last, and as each one comes in it says to the others, “Shall we start in on him now?” and they shake their heads and say, “Not yet. We can’t do nothin’ till Martin gets here.” Well, I can’t help feeling that Martin soon will be here.’

  Ronnie had found the word for which he had been searching. ‘Morbid. I knew it began with an m. Don’t be so dashed morbid!’

  Sue gave herself a little shake, like a dog coming out of a pond. She put her arm in Ronnie’s and gave it a squeeze. ‘I suppose it is morbid.’

  ‘Of course it is.’

  ‘Everything may be all right.’

  ‘Everything’s going to be fine. Mother will be crazy about you. She won’t be able to help herself. Because of all the …’

  On the verge of becoming lyrical, Ronnie broke off abruptly. The Castle car had just come round the corner from the stables with Voules, the chauffeur, at the helm.

  ‘I didn’t know it was as late as that,’ said Ronnie discontentedly.

  The car drew up beside them, and he eyed Voules with a touch of austerity. It was not that he disliked the chauffeur, a man whom he had known since his boyhood and one with whom he had many a time played village cricket. It was simply that there are moments when a fellow wishes to be free from observation, and one of these is when he is about to bid farewell to his affianced.

  However, there was good stuff in Ronald Fish. Ignoring the chauffeur’s eye, which betrayed a disposition to be roguish, he gathered his loved one to him and, his face now a pretty cerise, kissed her with all a Fish’s passion. This done, he entered the car, leaned out of the window, waved, went on waving, and continued 30 to wave till Sue was out of sight. Then, sitting down, he gazed straight before him, breathing a little heavily through the nostrils.

  Sue, having lingered until the car had turned the corner of the drive and was hidden by a clump of rhododendrons, walked pensively back to the terrace.

  The August sun was now blazing down in all its imperious majesty. Insects were chirping sleepily in the grass, and the hum of bees in the lavender borders united with the sun and the chirping to engender sloth. A little wistfully Sue looked past the shrubbery at the cedar-shaded lawn where the Hon. Galahad Threep-wood, thoughtfully sipping a whisky and soda, lay back in a deep chair, cool and at his ease. There was another chair beside him, and she knew that he had placed it there for her.

  But duty is duty, no matter how warm the sun and drowsy the drone of insects. Ronnie had asked her to go and talk pig to Lord Emsworth, and the task must be performed.

  She descended the broad stone steps and, turning westward, made for the corner of the estate sacred to that noble Berkshire sow, Empress of Blandings.

  The boudoir of the Empress was situated in a little meadow, dappled with buttercups and daisies, round two sides of which there flowed in a silver semicircle the stream which fed the lake. Lord Emsworth, as his custom was, had pottered off there directly after breakfast, and now, at half past twelve, he was still standing, in company with his pig-man Pirbright, draped bonelessly over the rail of the sty, his mild eyes beaming with the light of a holy devotion.

  From time to time he sniffed sensuously. Elsewhere throughout this fair domain the air was fragrant with the myriad scents of high summer, but not where Lord Emsworth was doing his sniffing. Within a liberal radius of the Empress’s headquarters other scents could not compete. This splendid animal diffused an aroma which was both distinctive and arresting. Attractive, too, if you liked that sort of thing, as Lord Emsworth did.

  Between Empress of Blandings and these two human beings who ministered to her comfort there was a sharp contrast in physique. Lord Emsworth was tall and thin and scraggy, Pirbright tall and thin and scraggier. The Empress, on the other hand, you’re as much trouble as a baby. Why you want to waste your time staring at beastly pigs, I can’t imagine.’

  Lord Emsworth accompanied her across the paddock, but his face—there was hardly any mud on it at all, really, just a couple of splashes or so—was sullen and mutinous. This was not the first time his sister had alluded in this offensive manner to one whom he regarded as the supreme ornament of her sex and species. Beastly pigs, indeed! He pondered moodily on the curious inability of his immediate circle to appreciate the importance of the Empress in the scheme of things. Not one of them seemed to have the sagacity to realize her true worth.

  Well, yes, one, perhaps. That little girl what-was-her-name, who was going to marry his nephew Ronald, had always displayed a pleasing interest in the silver medallist.

  ‘Nice girl,’ he said, following this train of thought to its conclusion.

  ‘What are you talking about, Clarence?’ asked Lady Constance wearily.

  ‘Who is a nice girl?’

  ‘That little girl of Ronald’s. I’ve forgotten her name. Smith, is it?’

  ‘Brown,’ said Lady Constance shortly.

  ‘That’s right, Brown. Nice girl.’

  ‘You are entitled to your opinion,
I suppose,’ said Lady Constance.

  They walked on in silence for some moments.

  ‘While we are on the subject of Miss Brown,’ said Lady Constance, speaking the name as she always did with her teeth rather tightly clenched and a stony look in her eyes, ‘I forgot to tell you that I had a letter from Julia this morning.’

  ‘Did you?’ said Lord Emsworth, giving the matter some two-fifty-sevenths of his attention. ‘Capital, capital. Who,’ he asked politely, ‘is Julia?’

  Lady Constance was within easy reach of his head and could quite comfortably have hit it, but she refrained. Noblesse oblige.

  ‘Julia?’ she said, with a rising inflection. ‘There’s only one Julia in our family.’

  ‘Oh, you mean Julia?’ said Lord Emsworth, enlightened. ‘And what had Julia got to say for herself? She’s at Biarritz, isn’t she?’ he said, making a great mental effort. ‘Having a good time, I hope?’

  ‘She’s in London.’

  ‘Oh, yes?’

  ‘And she is coming here tomorrow by the two forty-five.’

  Lord Emsworth’s vague detachment vanished. His sister Julia was not a woman to whose visits he looked forward with joyous enthusiasm.

  ‘Why?’ he asked, with a strong note of complaint in his voice. ‘It is the only good train in the afternoon, and gets her here in plenty of time for dinner.’

  ‘I mean, why is she coming?’

  It would be too much to say that Lady Constance snorted. Women of her upbringing do not snort. But she certainly sniffed.

  ‘Well, really!’ she said. ‘Does it strike you as so odd that a mother whose only son has announced his intention of marrying a ballet-girl should wish to see her?’

  Lord Emsworth considered this.

  ‘Not ballet-girl. Chorus-girl, I understood.’

  ‘It’s the same thing.’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ said Lord Emsworth doubtfully. ‘I must ask Galahad.’ A sudden idea struck him. ‘Don’t you like this Smith girl?’

  ‘Brown.’

  ‘Don’t you like this Brown girl?’