Blanding Castle Omnibus

by P. G. Wodehouse

  Binstead, who had spent the last ten minutes panting feebly in his pantry, for Acts of God like Maudie had never before come bursting into his placid life and he was feeling somewhat unnerved, had at last succeeded in restoring his aplomb sufficiently to enable him to resume his butlerine duties. He now entered, bearing a tureen, and Sir Gregory was recalled with a start to a sense of his obligations as a host.

  ‘What ho, the soup!’ he said, welcoming it with a bright smile. ‘I say, now you’re here, you’ll stay and have a bite of dinner, old girl, what? Eh? Got to be getting along? Don’t be silly. You can’t turn up after all these years and just say “Hullo, there” and dash off like a ruddy jack rabbit. We’ve got to have a long talk about all sorts of things. My chauffeur can take you back to wherever you’re staying. Where are you staying, by the way, and how on earth do you happen to be in these parts? You could have knocked me down with a toothpick when you suddenly popped up out of a clear sky like that. Mrs Stubbs and I are old friends, Binstead.’

  ‘Indeed, Sir Gregory?’

  ‘Knew each other years and years ago.’

  ‘Is that so, Sir Gregory?’

  ‘You didn’t tell me where you were hanging out, Maudie.’

  ‘I’m at Blandings Castle.’

  ‘How the devil did you get there?’

  ‘Gally Threepwood invited me.’

  Sir Gregory puffed his cheeks out austerely.

  ‘That gumboil!’

  ‘Why, Tubby, he’s nice.’

  ‘Nice, my foot! He’s a louse in human shape. Well, come along and sit down,’ said Sir Gregory, abandoning the distasteful subject. ‘There’s a Hungarian goulash due at any moment which I think you’ll appreciate, and I stake my all on the Ambrosia Chiffon Pie. It’s made of whipped cream, white of egg, powdered sugar, seeded grapes, sponge cake, shredded coconut, and orange gelatin, and I shall be vastly surprised if it doesn’t melt in the mouth.’

  The presence of Binstead, hovering in the background with his large ears pricked up, obviously hoping to hear something worth including in his Memoirs, prevented anything in the nature of intimate exchanges during the meal. But when he had served the coffee and retired, Sir Gregory, heaving a sentimental sigh, struck the tender note.

  ‘Dashed good, that goulash,’ he said. ‘It isn’t every cook in this country who knows how to prepare it. The paprika has to be judged to a nicety, and there are other subtleties into which I need not go at the moment. Which reminds me. I wonder, old girl, if you remember me standing you dinner one evening years ago – or, rather, you standing me, as it turned out, because I was compelled to stick you with the bill – at a little place in Soho where they dished up a perfectly astounding Hungarian goulash?’

  ‘I remember. It was in the spring.’

  ‘Yes. A lovely spring evening, with a gentle breeze blowing from the west, the twilight falling, and a new moon glimmering in the sky. And we went to this restaurant and there was the goulash.’

  ‘You had three helpings.’

  ‘And you the same, if memory serves me aright. With a jam omelette to follow. That’s what I always admired about you, Maudie, you never went in for this dieting nonsense. You enjoyed your food, and when you had had it, you reached out for more, and to hell with what it did to your hips. Too many girls nowadays are mad about athletics and keeping themselves fit and all that, and if you ask me, they’re a worse menace to the peaceful life of the countryside than botts, glanders, and foot-and-mouth disease. An example of this type of feminine pestilence that springs to the mind is my late fiancée, Gloria Salt. Physical fitness was her gospel, and she spread disaster and desolation on every side like a sower going forth sowing.’

  ‘Aren’t you still engaged to Miss Salt?’

  ‘Not any more. She sent me round a note last night telling me to go and boil my head. And a very good thing, too. I should never have asked her to marry me. A rash act. One does these foolish things.’

  ‘Didn’t you love her?’

  ‘Don’t be silly. Of course I didn’t love her. There was some slight feeling of attraction, possibly, due to her lissom figure, but you couldn’t call it love, not by a jugful. I’ve never loved anyone but you, Maudie.’

  ‘Oh, Tubby!’

  ‘You ought to know that. I told you often enough.’

  ‘But that was years ago.’

  ‘Years don’t make any difference when a fellow really bestows his bally heart. Yes, dash it, I love you, old girl. I fought against it, mark you. Thinking you had let me down, I tried to blot your image from my mind, if you follow what I mean. But when you came in at that door, looking as beautiful as ever, I knew it was no good struggling any longer. My goose was cooked. It was just as though I had been taken back to the old days and was leaning against your bar, gazing into your eyes, while you poured the whisky and uncorked the small soda.’

  ‘Oh, Tubby!’

  ‘And later, when I watched you wading into that Ambrosia Chiffon Pie, obviously enjoying it, I mean to say understanding it, not pecking at it the way most of these dashed women would have done but plainly getting its inner meaning and all that, I said to myself “My mate!” I realized that we were twin souls and that was all there was about it.’

  ‘Oh, Tubby!’

  Sir Gregory took a moody salted almond, frowning as he ate it.

  ‘You keep saying, “Oh, Tubby!” but a fat lot of use that is. I said we were twin souls, and we are twin souls, but under prevailing conditions what’s the good of our being twin souls? Where do we go from there? I mean, you can’t get away from the fundamental fact that you’re married.’

  ‘No, I’m not.’

  ‘Pardon me. You must have forgotten. I distinctly heard Binstead announce you as “Mrs Stubbs”.’

  ‘But Cedric’s dead.’

  ‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ said Sir Gregory politely. ‘Here today and gone tomorrow, what? Who is Cedric?’

  ‘My husband.’

  Sir Gregory, who had taken another salted almond, held it poised in air. He looked at her with a wild surmise.

  ‘Your husband?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘He’s dead?’

  ‘He died five years ago.’

  Sir Gregory was so moved that he returned the salted almond to its dish untasted.

  ‘Let’s get this straight,’ he said, his voice and chins shaking a little. ‘Let’s keep our heads and thresh this thing out calmly and coolly. You say your husband is no longer with us? He has handed in his dinner pail? Then, as I see it, this means that you’re at a loose end, like me.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Nothing in the world to stop us getting married any dashed moment we care to.’

  ‘No.’

  Sir Gregory reached out for her hand as if it had been a portion of Ambrosia Chiffon Pie.

  ‘Then how about it, old girl?’

  ‘Oh, Tubby!’ said Maudie.

  3

  Most men, having started out in a car with a lady friend and discovered at journey’s end that she was no longer there, would have felt a certain surprise at this shortage and probably asked a lot of tedious questions. To Lord Emsworth, woken with a respectful prod in the ribs by Alfred Voules at the door of Blandings Castle and finding himself alone, it never occurred to wonder what had become of Maudie en route. He seldom worried about things like that. If women vanished out of cars, they vanished. There was nothing you could do about it, and no doubt all would be explained in God’s good time. So he merely blinked, said ‘Eh? What? We’re there, are we? Quite. Capital,’ and tottered in, sneezing. And Gally, who was passing through the hall with Jerry, stared at him, concerned.

  ‘That’s a nasty cold you’ve got, Clarence,’ he said, and Jerry thought so, too.

  ‘That is a nasty cold you’ve got, Lord Emsworth,’ said Jerry.

  Beach appeared, took one look at his employer and formed a swift diagnosis.

  ‘Your lordship has a nasty cold,’ he said.

  Lord E
msworth, who had subsided into a chair, sniffed without speaking, and the three men looked at one another.

  ‘There’s only one thing to do for a cold,’ said Gally. ‘Boil the feet and slap on an onion poultice.’

  ‘I should have said vinegar tea and a lump of sugar soaked in kerosene,’ said Jerry.

  ‘If I might offer a suggestion, Mr Galahad,’ said Beach, ‘I was reading in the paper this morning of a new American cereal called Cute Crispies. It contains sixty-two per cent of nutroglutene, and one tablespoonful, I understand, provides nourishment equal to that of a pound and a half of steak. Such a preparation might prove efficacious.’

  ‘I’ll tell you what,’ said Jerry. ‘Suppose I dash off to Market Blandings and collect a few things at that chemist’s in the High Street?’

  ‘An excellent idea. Bulstrode’s you mean. It’ll be shut, but the blighter lives over the shop, so hammer at the door till he comes down and place your order. What do you think you’re doing, Clarence?’ asked Gally sternly, for the sufferer had risen and seemed about to accompany Jerry into the great open spaces.

  ‘I was going down to have a look at the Empress.’

  Gally and Beach exchanged glances. ‘Secrecy and silence!’ said Gally’s. ‘Yes, sir. Precisely, sir,’ said that of Beach.

  ‘You’re crazy,’ said Gally. Do you want to get pneumonia? Bed’s the place for you. Beach will bring your dinner on a tray. Won’t you, Beach?

  ‘Certainly, Mr Galahad.’

  ‘And not a word to Lady Constance. We don’t want her coming fussing over the poor devil and driving him off his rocker. The one thing a man with a cold in the head must avoid is the woman’s touch.’

  ‘Her ladyship is not at home, sir. She has gone to attend the weekly meeting of the Literary Society at the Vicarage.’

  ‘That’s good. It removes a grave threat. Upsydaisy, Clarence.’

  ‘But, Galahad, the Empress.’

  ‘What about her?’

  ‘I want to see how she is.’

  Once more that significant glance passed between Gally and Beach.

  ‘Don’t you worry about the Empress. I was down taking a look at her only just now, and she’s fine. Sparkling eyes. Rosy cheeks. You come along to bed, my dear chap,’ said Gally, and a short while later Lord Emsworth was between the sheets, a hot water bottle at his toes, a dinner tray on his lap, and at his side a couple of Edgar Wallaces, donated by Beach in case he felt like reading. On his departure for America, Lord Emsworth’s younger son, Freddie Threepwood, had bequeathed to Beach his library of who-dun-its, generally supposed to be the most complete in Shropshire, and he was always glad to give of his plenty.

  But Lord Emsworth was in no mood for Faceless Fiends and Things In The Night. A glance at the first of the two volumes had told him that there was a gorilla in it which went climbing up water-pipes, snatching girls with grey eyes and hair the colour of ripe wheat out of their beds in the small hours, but he was a man who could take gorillas or leave them alone. He closed the book and lay there sneezing softly and thinking of Maudie. It saddened him to look back and reflect that by going to sleep in the car he had missed an opportunity which might not occur again of pouring burning words of love into her alabaster ear.

  In the matter of pouring burning words of love into people’s alabaster ears, Lord Emsworth was handicapped. Blandings Castle was full to bursting point of Nosey Parkers who seemed to have nothing to do except interrupt private conversations, and this rendered it difficult ever to get the desired object alone. Every time you had the stage set for an intimate exchange of ideas, along came somebody breaking it up, and all the weary work to do over again.

  It was at this point in his meditations that his eye fell on the desk across the room, and it suddenly struck him that modern civilization has provided other methods of communication between person and person than the spoken word. In the pigeon-holes of that desk were single sheets of notepaper, double sheets of notepaper, postcards, envelopes, telegraph forms, and some of those little pads which enable you to jot down bright thoughts on life in general, while on the desk itself were pens, ink, indiarubber, sealing wax, and what looked like an instrument for taking stones out of horses’ hooves. Rising from his sick bed, and ignoring the indiarubber, the sealing wax, and the horses’ hooves instrument, Lord Emsworth took pen and paper and began to compose a letter.

  It came out splendidly. He was not a very ready letter-writer as a rule, but after a couple of false starts the impassioned prose began gushing up like a geyser. When he had finished, he read the thing over and was stunned by his virtuosity. Just the right note of respectful fervour, he considered, and felt that that drowsiness in the car had been all for the best, for he could never have hoped to speak half as fluently as he had written. What he had got down on four sides of a double sheet of notepaper was the sort of thing that would have earned him a brotherly pat on the back from the author of the Song of Solomon.

  As he was licking the envelope, Jerry came in, laden with parcels like a pack mule.

  ‘I’ve brought you cinnamon, aspirin, vapex, glycerine of thymol, black currant tea, camphorated oil, a linseed poultice, and some thermogene wool,’ said Jerry. ‘A wide selection is always best, don’t you think? And old Pop Bulstrode says you ought to drink hot milk and wear flannel next your skin.’

  Lord Emsworth agreed that this sounded like an interesting and even amusing way of passing the time, but his mind was on his letter.

  ‘Er,’ he said.

  ‘Yes?’ said Jerry eagerly, in pursuance of his policy of hanging on his employer’s lightest word.

  ‘I wonder,’ said Lord Emsworth, ‘if you would do something for me, my dear fellow.’

  ‘Anything, anything,’ said Jerry heartily. ‘Give it a name.’

  ‘I have written a letter … a letter … in short, a letter –’

  ‘I see,’ said Jerry, following him so far. ‘You mean a letter.’

  ‘Exactly. A letter. A letter to Mrs – ah – Bunbury. I want it delivered as soon as possible, and I thought you might convey it to her.’

  ‘Of course, of course. What a splendid idea! Nothing simpler. I’ll slip it to her the moment I see her.’

  ‘No, don’t do that. There’s sure to be someone hanging about watching your every move. You know how it is in this house. Put it in her room.’

  ‘Pinned to the pincushion?’

  ‘Precisely. Pinned to the pincushion. An excellent suggestion.’

  ‘Which is her room?’

  ‘The second on the right as you go along this corridor.’

  ‘Consider it done,’ said Jerry.

  As simple a way of endearing himself to the boss, he felt, as could have been thought of. He trotted off, feeling that things were moving.

  He was extremely curious to know what the dickens the old boy was writing letters to Mrs Bunbury about, but he could hardly ask, and if the idea of steaming the thing open with a kettle presented itself to his mind, he dismissed it resolutely. Like Lord Vosper, he was an Old Harrovian.

  CHAPTER 8

  LORD EMSWORTH LAY back in bed. His letter on its way, he was wondering, like all authors who have sent their stuff off, if it could not have been polished a bit and given those last little touches which make all the difference. However, again like all authors, he knew that what he had written, even without a final brush-up, was simply terrific, and it was with a mind at rest that he took up his Edgar Wallace once more.

  And he was just thinking that he personally would not have cared to be a gorilla in the employment of a master criminal … broken sleep, no regular hours, always having to be shinning up water-pipes and what not … when a cheery ‘Bring out your dead!’ interrupted his meditations, and his brother Galahad came in.

  ‘Hullo, Clarence,’ said Gally. ‘How are you feeling now? I’ve been thinking about that cold of yours, and I’ll tell you the stuff to give it. You want to take a deep breath and hold it as long as you possibly can. This traps
the germs in your interior, and not being able to get fresh air, they suffocate. When you finally exhale, the little sons of guns come out as dead as doornails and all you have to do is buy a black tie and attend the funeral. But what profits it to get rid of germs,’ he went on, a grave note creeping into his voice, ‘when at any moment you are going to have a super-bacillus like Connie at your throat?’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘That’s what I came to tell you. I think you will be receiving a visit from Connie shortly.’

  ‘Oh, dash it!’

  ‘I know just how you feel.’

  ‘She’s back, then?’

  ‘With her hair in a braid. And they tell me she is considerably hotted up. I haven’t seen her myself, but Beach, who had an extended interview with her, describes her as resembling a gorilla roaring and beating its chest and preparing to rip the stuffing out of the citizenry.’

  Lord Emsworth was struck by a coincidence.

  ‘I was reading a story about a gorilla when you came in. A curious animal.’

  ‘What did it do?’

  ‘Well, it seemed to spend most of its time climbing up water-pipes and snatching girls from their beds.’

  Gally was not impressed. He sneered scornfully.

  ‘Sissy stuff. Obviously a mere amateur. Wait till you meet Connie.’

  ‘But what is the matter with Connie?’

  ‘Ah!’ said Gally. ‘I’m glad you asked me that. I’d have told you long ago, only you wouldn’t let me get a word in edgeways.’

  He sat down on the bed, adjusted his monocle and proceeded to tell a tale of strange happenings.

  ‘Omitting birth, early education, and all that sort of thing, we start the Connie Story with her returning to the house at the conclusion of the weekly meeting of the Market Blandings Literary Society. It had been an interesting meeting, and she was in excellent spirits. She walked with a springy step. It wouldn’t surprise me if she wasn’t singing a snatch of song. In short, at that moment a child could have played with her, and she would probably have given it twopence to buy sweets with.’