The point was very moot, and for a moment he hesitated. What finally decided him was Lady Hermione's trancelike demeanour. She seemed to have withdrawn into a meditative coma, and as long as this persisted there could surely be no peril. And, after all, it does not take the whole evening to whizz down to a pigsty, stop the pig man's mouth with gold, and whizz back again. He would be able to return in a quarter of an hour at the outside.
Rising, accordingly, with a muttered statement about having forgotten something, he passed through the french windows and disappeared; and a few moments later Lord Emsworth, who always took a little time to collect his hands and feet when about to potter from any given spot, followed him. With much the same unpleasant shock which must have come to the boy who stood on the burning deck, Bill awoke from a reverie on his favourite subject of Prudence to the realization that all but he had fled and that he was alone with his hostess.
A silence ensued. When a young man of shy disposition, accustomed to the more Bohemian society of Chelsea, finds himself alone on her home ground with a daughter of a hundred earls and cannot forget that at their last meeting he mistook her for the cook and tipped her half a crown; and when the daughter of the hundred earls, already strongly prejudiced against the young man as an intruder, has begun to suspect that he is the miscreant who recently chivvied her only child and is doing his best to marry her niece against the wishes of the family, it is almost too much to expect that the conversation will proceed from the first with an easy flow.
Her friends had sometimes said of Lady Hermione, who was a well-read, well-educated woman with an interest in most of the problems of the day, that if she wanted to she could found a modern salon. At the moment, it seemed, she did not want to, at any rate with Bill as the nucleus of it.
The two were still eyeing each other with embarrassment on the one side and an ever-increasing suspicion on the other, when their tête-à-tête was interrupted. A shadow fell on the pool of sunlight in the french windows, and Freddie came curvetting in.
'No dice,' announced Freddie, addressing his aunt. 'I found them linked in a close embrace, and I hadn't the heart to interrupt them.'
At this point he observed that his father and his uncle were no longer in the room, but that a newcomer had been added in the shape of a large individual who was sitting with his long legs twined round those of a chair. Coming out of the sunshine, he experienced a momentary difficulty in seeing this substantial bird steadily and seeing him whole, and for an instant supposed himself to be gazing upon a stranger. The thought occurred to him that it might be possible to interest the man in a good dog biscuit.
Then, as his eyes adjusted themselves to the subdued light, they suddenly widened in an incredulous stare and his mouth, as was its habit in times of emotion, fell open like a letter box.
To his Uncle Galahad he later put two simple questions, explaining that on these he rested his case.
They were:
(a)How the dickens could he have been expected to know?
and, arising from this,
(b)Why had he not been kept informed?
It stands to reason, argued Freddie, that if a chap has been widely publicized as a pariah and an outcast and then you suddenly come upon him sitting at his ease in the drawing-room, having a cosy dish of tea with the spearhead of the opposition, you naturally assume that the red light has turned to green and that he has been taken to the family's bosom. Particularly, he added with quiet reproach, if you have been expressly told that he is 'all right' and that you need not worry about him because the speaker assures you that he has his case 'well in hand'.
It was on those phrases, he said, that he took his stand. Had his Uncle Gally used them, or had he not? Had he or had he not practically stated in so many words that the ban on poor old Blister had been lifted and that his future need cause his friends and well-wishers no concern? Very well, then, there you were. The point he was making was that it was unjust and absurd to apply such a term as 'cloth-headed young imbecile' to himself and to hurl at him the reproach of being a spiller of beans and a bunger of spanners into works.
What had brought about the disaster, he urged, was the Hon. Galahad's extraordinary policy of silence and secretiveness. A word to the effect that he was planning to introduce Bill Lister into the house surreptitiously, and all would have been well. In these affairs, he pointed out, co-operation is of the essence. Without co-operation and a frank pooling of information, no dividends can be expected to result.
Thus Freddie later. What he said now was:
'Blister!'
The word rang through the drawing-room like a bugle, and Lady Hermione, on whose heart the name 'Lister' was deeply graven, leaped in her chair.
'Well, well, well!' said Freddie, beaming profusely. 'Well, well, well, well, well! Well, this is fine, this is splendid. So you've seen reason, Aunt Hermione? I was hoping your sterling good sense would assert itself. I take it that you have talked Aunt Dora over, or propose to do so at an early date. Now that you are wholeheartedly on the side of love's young dream, I anticipate no trouble in that quarter. She will be wax in your hands. Tell her from me, in case she starts beefing, that Prue could find no worthier mate than good old Bill Lister. One of the best and brightest. I've known him for years. And if he chucks his art, as he has guaranteed to do, and goes into the pub-keeping business, I see no reason why the financial future of the young couple should not be extremely bright. There's money in pubs. They will need a spot of capital, of course, but that can be supplied. I suggest a family round-table conference, at which the thing can be thoroughly gone into and threshed out in all its aspects. Cheerio, Blister. Heartiest congratulations.'
Throughout this well-phased harangue Lady Hermione had been sitting with twitching hands and gleaming eyes. It had not occurred to the speaker that there was anything ominous in her demeanour, but a more observant nephew would have noted her strong resemblance to the puma of the Indian jungle about to pounce upon its prey.
She eyed him enquiringly.
'Have you quite finished, Freddie?'
'Eh? Yes, I think that about covers the subject.'
'Then I should be glad,' said Lady Hermione, 'if you would go and see Beach and tell him to pack Mr Lister's things, if they are already unpacked, and send them to the Emsworth Arms. Mr Lister will be leaving the castle immediately.'
CHAPTER 9
Accustomed from earliest years to carry out with promptness and civility the wishes of his aunts, a nephew's automatic reaction to a command from one of the platoon, even after he has become a solid married man with an important executive post in America's leading firm of dog biscuit manufacturers, is to jump to it. Ordered by his Aunt Hermione to go and see Beach, Freddie did not draw himself up and reply that if she desired to get in touch with her staff she could jolly well ring for them; he started off immediately.
It was only when he was almost at the door of the butler's pantry that it occurred to him that this errand boy stuff was a bit infra dig for a vice-president, and he halted. And having halted he realized that where he ought to be was back in the drawing-room, which he should never have left, trying to break down with silver-tongued eloquence his relative's sales resistance to poor old Blister. A testing task, of course, but one not, he fancied, beyond the scope of a man who had recently played on Major R. B. and Lady Emily Finch as on a couple of stringed instruments.
Reaching the drawing-room, he found that in the brief interval since his departure Bill had left, presumably with bowed head, through the french windows. But, restoring the quota of lovers to its previous level, Prudence had arrived, and her aspect showed only too plainly that she had been made acquainted with the position of affairs. Her eyes were dark with pain, and she was eating buttered toast in a crushed sort of way.
Lady Hermione was still sitting behind the teapot, as rigidly erect as if some sculptor had persuaded her to pose for his Statue of an Aunt. In all the long years during which they had been associated it seem
ed to Freddie that he had never seen her looking so undisguisedly the Aunt, the whole Aunt, and nothing but the Aunt, and in spite of himself his heart sank a little. Even Lady Emily Finch, though her mental outlook was that of a strong-minded mule, an animal which she resembled in features as well as temperament, had been an easier prospect.
'Blister gone?' he said, and marshalled a telling phrase or two in his mind for use later.
'Gone,' said Prudence, through a bitter mouthful of buttered toast. 'Gone without a cry. Driven into the snow before I could so much as set eyes on him. Golly, if a few people around this joint had hearts, Blandings Castle would be a better, sweeter place.'
'Well spoken, young half-portion,' said Freddie approvingly. 'I thoroughly concur. What the old dosshouse needs is a splash of the milk of human kindness. Switch it on, Aunt Hermione, is my advice.'
Lady Hermione, disregarding this appeal, asked if he had seen Beach, and Freddie said no, he had not seen Beach and he would tell her why. It was because he had hoped that better counsels would prevail, and if his aunt would give him a couple of minutes of her valuable time he would like to put forward a few arguments which might induce her to look with a kindlier eye on these young lovers who were being kept asunder.
Lady Hermione, who was somewhat addicted to homely phrases, said: 'Stuff and nonsense.' Freddie, shaking his head, said that this was hardly the spirit he had hoped to see. And Prudence, who had been sighing rather heavily at intervals, brought the names of Simon Legree and Torquemada into the conversation, speculating as to why people always made such a song and dance about their brutal inhuman inhumanity when there were others (whom she was prepared to name on request) who could give them six strokes in eighteen holes and be dormy two on the seventeenth tee.
Lady Hermione said: 'That is quite enough, Prudence,' and Freddie contested this view.
'It is not enough, Aunt Hermione. Far from it. We will now go into executive session and thresh the whole thing out. What have you got against poor old Blister? That is the question I should like to begin by asking you.'
'And this,' said Lady Hermione, 'is the question I should like to begin by asking you. Were you a party to this abominable trick of Galahad's?'
'Eh?'
'You know perfectly well what I mean. Bringing that young man into the house under a false name.'
'Oh, that?' said Freddie. 'Well, I'll tell you. I was not actually help to the stratagem you mention, or I would never have dropped the brick I did. But if you are asking me: "Am I heart and soul in Blister's cause?" the answer is in the affirmative. I consider that a union between him and this young prune here would be in the best and deepest sense a bit of all right.'
''Att-a boy, Freddie,' said the prune, well pleased with this sentiment.
'Stuff and nonsense,' said Lady Hermione, with whom it had not gone over so big. 'The man looks like a gorilla.'
'Bill does not look like a gorilla!' cried Prudence.
'Yes, he does,' said Freddie, who, though partisan, was fair. 'As far as the outer crust goes, good old Blister could walk straight into any zoo, and they would lay down the red carpet for him. But the point seems to me to have little or no bearing upon the case at issue. There is nothing in the book of rules, as far as I am aware, that prevents a man looking like a gorilla and still having what it takes when it is a question of being a good husband and a loving father, if you'll excuse me mentioning it, Prue. Just peeping into Vol. Two for a moment.'
'Quite all right,' said Prudence. 'Carry on. You're doing fine.'
'Where you have made your bloomer, Aunt Hermione, is in allowing yourself to be influenced too much by appearances. You cock an eye at Blister and you say to yourself, "Gosh! I'd hate to meet that bird down a lonely alley on a dark night," overlooking the fact that beneath that sinister exterior there beats one of the most outsize hearts you're likely to find in a month of Sundays. It isn't faces that matter, it's honest worth, and in that department Blister is a specialist.'
'Freddie?'
'Hullo?'
'Will you be quiet!'
'No, Aunt Hermione,' said the splendid young dog biscuit vendor stoutly. 'I will not be quiet. The time has come to speak out. Blister, as I told you before, is one of the best. And I believe I mentioned that he is the owner of a pub which only needs a bit of capital to make it a gold mine.'
Lady Hermione shuddered. She was not a woman who had ever been fond of public houses.
'The fact that this young man may have a bright future as a potboy,' she said, 'does not seem to me an argument in favour of his marrying my niece. I wish to hear no more about Mr Lister.'
The wish was not fulfilled. There was a patter of feet outside the french windows, and Gally tripped in, looking well satisfied with himself. He did not know what the European record was for a two-hundred-yard dash to a pigsty, the bribing to silence of the pig man and the two-hundred-yard dash back, but he rather fancied that he had clipped a few seconds off it. It seemed to him most improbable that in such a brief period of time anything could have gone wrong with his protégé's affairs, and the first flicker of apprehension which disturbed his equanimity came when he glanced about the room and noted his absence.
'Hullo,' he said. 'Where's Landseer?'
Lady Hermione was looking like a cook about to give notice on the evening of the big dinner party.
'If you are referring to Mr Lister, your public-house friend, he has gone.'
A deep sigh escaped Prudence.
'Aunt Hermione bunged him out, Uncle Gally.'
'What!'
'She found out who he was.'
Gally stared at his sister, stunned by this evidence of what seemed to him a scarcely human penetration.
'How the dickens,' he asked, awed, 'did you do that?'
'Freddie was obliging enough to tell me.'
Gally turned to his nephew, and his monocle shot forth flame.
'You cloth-headed young imbecile!'
It was at this point that Freddie put the two questions to which allusion has been made earlier, and followed them up with the train of reasoning which has already been outlined. He spoke eloquently and well, and as his uncle also spoke eloquently and well at the same time, a certain uproar and confusion resulted. Simultaneously Prudence was adding her mite, protesting in her clear soprano voice that she intended to marry the man she loved, no matter what anybody said and no matter how often her flinty-hearted relatives might see fit to throw the poor angel out on his ear; and Lady Hermione's position became roughly that of a chairman at a stormy meeting of shareholders.
She was endeavouring to restore order by beating on the table with a teaspoon when Veronica came in through the french windows, and at the sight of her the uproar ceased. People who knew her always stopped arguing when Veronica came along, because she was sure to want them to explain what they were arguing about and, when they had explained, to ask them to start at the beginning and explain again. And when nerves are frayed that sort of thing is annoying.
Gally stopped calling Freddie names. Freddie stopped waving his hands and appealing to the other's simple sense of justice. Prudence stopped saying they would all look pretty silly when they found her drowned in the lake one morning. And Lady Hermione stopped hammering on the table with the teaspoon. It was like a lightning strike in a boiler factory.
Veronica was radiant. Not even in the photograph taken after the Pageant in Aid of Distressed Public School Men and showing her as the Spirit of the Playing Fields of Eton had she exhibited a more boneheaded loveliness. She seemed to have developed a sort of elephantiasis of the eyes and front teeth, and her cheeks glowed with the light that never was on land or sea. She was wearing on her right wrist the best bracelet which Shrewsbury could produce at a moment's notice, and there were other ornaments on her person. But she made it plain at once that her thirst for bijouterie was by no means slaked.
'Oh, Fred-dee,' she said, 'has Uncle Clarence got back yet?'
Freddie passed a careworn hand
over his brow. He had had the sense of being just about to triumph in the argument which her arrival had brought to a close, and this interruption irked him.
'Eh? Yes, the guv'nor is on the premises. You'll find him in the pigsty, I imagine.'
'Did he bring your present?'
'Oh, the present? The gift? Yes, I have it here. Here you are, with oomps and good wishes.'
'Oh, thank you, Fred-dee,' said Veronica, and withdrew into a corner to inspect it.
As a rule, as has been said, people stopped arguing when this girl came in, and they had done so now. But so gripping were the various subjects on the agenda paper that it was only a moment before the discussion broke out again. At first it was conducted in whispers, but gradually these gathered strength, until presently the boiler factory was in full swing once more.
Gally said that while he had always held a low opinion of his nephew's mentality and would never have cared to risk important money on him in an intelligence contest against a child of three with water on the brain, this latest manifestation of his ingrowing imbecility had come as a profound and painful shock, seeming, as it did, to extend the bounds of possibility. Years ago, he recalled, when shown the infant Frederick in his cradle, he had been seized by a strong conviction that the sensible thing for his parents to have done would have been to write off their losses and drown him in a bucket, and to this view he still adhered. Much misery might thus have been averted.
Freddie said that it began to look to him as if there were no such thing as justice in this world. If ever a fellow had been allowed to wander into a snare through lack of inter-office communication, that fellow was himself. Why had he not been told? Why had he not been put abreast? A simple memo would have done the trick, and no memo had been forthcoming. If the verdict of posterity was not that the whole thing was the fault of his uncle and that he himself was blameless and innocent, he would be surprised and astonished – in fact, amazed and stunned.
Blanding Castle Omnibus Page 195