Nor did the periodical through which he was glancing do anything to induce a sprightlier trend of thought. Its contents consisted almost entirely of photographs of female members of the ruling classes, and it mystified him that the public should be expected to disburse hard cash in order to hurt its eyes by scrutinizing such gargoyles. The one on which his gaze was now resting showed three grinning young women in fancy dress – reading from right to left, Miss 'Cuckoo' Banks, Miss 'Beetles' Bessemer, and Lady 'Toots' Fosdyke – and he thought he had never seen anything more fundamentally loathsome. He turned the page hastily and found himself confronted by a camera study of an actress leering over her shoulder with a rose in her mouth.
And he was about to fling the thing from him with a stifled cry, when his heart gave a sudden bound. A second and narrower look had shown him that this was no actress but Veronica Wedge herself. What had misled him was the rose in the mouth. Nothing in his association with Veronica had given him the idea that she was a female Nebuchadnezzar.
There were unshed tears in Tipton's eyes as they stared down at this counterfeit presentment of the girl he loved. What a face, to sit opposite to at breakfast through the years. What a sweet, tender, fascinating, stimulating face. And at the same time, of course, if you looked at it from another angle, what a hell of a pan, with its wide-eyed innocence and all that sort of thing misleading honest suitors into supposing that everything was on the up and up, when all the while it was planning to slip round the corner and neck with serpents on rustic benches. So chaotic were Tipton Plimsoll's emotions as he scanned those lovely features with burning spectacles, that he would have been at a loss to say, if asked, whether he would have preferred to kiss this camera study or give it a good poke in the eye.
Fortunately, perhaps, he had not time to arrive at a decision on the point. A cheery voice said, 'Hullo, hullo. Good morning, good morning,' and he saw framed in the window the head and shoulders of a dapper little man in a grey flannel suit.
'Beautiful morning,' said this person, surveying him benevolently through a black-rimmed monocle.
'Grrh,' said Tipton, with the same reserve of manner which he had employed some days earlier when saying 'Guk' to Freddie Threepwood.
The newcomer was a stranger to him, but he assumed from a recollection of conversation overheard at the breakfast table that he must be Veronica's uncle Gally, who had arrived overnight too late to mix with the company. Nor was he in error. The Hon. Galahad, having stopped at a roadside inn for a leisurely dinner and a game of darts, and subsequently having got into an argument with a local patriarch about the Corbett-Fitzsimmons fight, had reached the castle after closing time. This morning he had been rambling about in his amiable way, seeing the old faces, making the acquaintance of new ones, and generally picking up the threads. His arrival at the home of his ancestors always resembled the return of some genial monarch to his dominions after long absence at the Crusades.
'Hot,' he said. 'Very hot.'
'What?' said Tipton.
'It's hot.'
'What's hot?'
'The weather.'
'Oh,' said Tipton, his eyes straying back to the weekly illustrated paper.
'Regular scorcher it's going to be. Like the day when the engine driver had to get inside his furnace to keep cool.'
'What?'
'The engine driver. Out in America. It was so hot that the only way he could keep cool was by crawling into his furnace and staying there. Arising from that,' said the Hon. Galahad, 'have you heard the one about the three stockbrokers and the female snake charmer?'
Tipton said he had not – at least he made a strangled noise at the back of his throat which gave Gally the impression that he had said that he had not, so he told it to him. When he had finished, there was a silence.
'Well,' said Gally, discouraged, for a raconteur of established reputation expects something better than silence when he comes to the pay-off of one of his best stories, 'I'll be pushing along. See you at lunch.'
'What?'
'I said I would see you at lunch.'
'Guk,' said Tipton, and resumed his scrutiny of the camera study.
II
On the occasions of his intermittent visits to Blandings Castle, the mental attitude of the Hon. Galahad Threepwood, as has been said, resembled that of a genial monarch pottering about his kingdom after having been away for a number of years battling with the Paynim overseas; and like such a monarch in such circumstances what he wanted was to see smiling faces about him.
The moroseness of the young man he had just left had, in consequence, made a deep impression upon him. He was still musing upon it and seeking to account for it when he came upon Colonel Egbert Wedge, sunning himself in the rose garden.
As Gally always breakfasted in bed and the colonel would have scorned to do anything so effete, this was the first time they had met since the banquet of the Loyal Sons of Shropshire, and their conversation for a few moments dealt with reminiscences of that function. Colonel Wedge said that in all his experience, which was a wide one, he had never heard a more footling after-dinner speech than old Bodger had made on that occasion. Gally, demurring, asked what price the one delivered half an hour later by old Todger. The colonel conceded that Todger had been pretty ghastly, but not so ghastly as Bodger. Gally, unwilling to mar this beautiful morning with argument, said perhaps he was right, adding that in his opinion both these territorial magnates had been as tight as owls.
A silence followed. Gally broke it by putting the question which had been exercising his mind at the moment of their meeting.
'Tell me, Egbert,' he said, 'who would a tall, thin chap be?'
Colonel Wedge replied truly enough that he might be anyone – except, of course, a short, stout chap, and Gally became more explicit.
'I was talking to him just now in the small smoking-room. Tall, thin chap with horn-rimmed spectacles. American, if I'm not mistaken. Oddly enough, he reminded me of a man I used to know in New York. Tall, thin, young, with a hell of a grouch and horn-rimmed spectacles all over his face.'
Colonel Wedge's eyebrows came together in a frown. He no longer found any difficulty in assisting the process of identification.
'That is a young fellow named Tipton Plimsoll. Freddie brought him here. And if you ask me, he ought to have taken him to a lunatic asylum instead of to Blandings Castle. Not,' he was obliged to add, 'that there's much difference.'
It was plain that the name had touched a chord in Gally's mind.
'Tipton Plimsoll? You don't happen to know if he has anything to do with a racket over in the States called Tipton's Stores?'
'Anything to do with them?' Colonel Wedge was a strong man, so he did not groan hollowly, but his face was contorted with pain. 'Freddie tells me he practically owns them.'
'Then that is why his appearance struck me as familiar. He must be the nephew of old Chet Tipton, the man I was speaking of. I seem to remember Chet mentioning a nephew. One of my dearest friends out there,' explained Gally. 'Dead now, poor chap, but when in circulation as fine a fellow as ever out-talked a taxi driver in his own language. Had one peculiar characteristic. Was as rich as dammit, but liked to get his drinks for nothing. It was his sole economy, and he had worked out rather an ingenious system. He would go into a speakeasy, and mention casually to the barman that he had got smallpox. The barman would dive for the street, followed by the customers, and there Chet was, right in among the bottles with a free hand. Colossal brain. So this young Plimsoll is Chet's nephew, is he? For Chet's sake, I am prepared to love him like a son. What's he grouchy about?'
Colonel Wedge made a despairing gesture.
'God knows. The boy's mentality is a sealed book to me.'
'And why do you say he ought to be in a loony bin?'
Colonel Wedge's pent-up feelings expressed themselves in a snort so vehement that a bee which had just settled on a nearby lavender bush fell over backwards and went off to bestow its custom elsewhere.
'Becaus
e he must be stark, staring mad. It's the only possible explanation of his extraordinary behaviour.'
'What's he been doing? Biting someone in the leg?'
Colonel Wedge was glad to have found a confidant into whose receptive ear he could pour the story of the great sorrow which was embittering the lives of himself, his wife, and his daughter Veronica. Out it all came, accompanied by gestures, and by the time he arrived at the final, inexplicable episode of Tipton's failure to clock in behind the rhododendrons, Gally was shaking his head in manifest concern.
'I don't like it, Egbert,' he said gravely. 'It sounds to me unnatural and unwholesome. Why, if old Chet had heard that there were girls in the rhododendrons, he would have been diving into them head foremost before you could say "What ho." If there is anything in heredity, I can't believe that it was the true Tipton Plimsoll who hung back on the occasion you mention. There's something wrong here.'
'Well, I wish you'd put it right,' said Colonel Wedge sombrely. 'I don't mind telling you, Gally, that it's a dashed unpleasant thing for a father to have to watch his only child slowly going into a decline with a broken heart. At dinner last night Vee refused a second helping of roast duckling and green peas. That'll show you.'
III
As the Hon. Galahad resumed his stroll, setting a course for the sun-bathed terrace, his amiable face was wrinkled with lines of deep thought. The poignant story to which he had been listening had stirred him profoundly. It seemed to him that Fate, not for the first time in his relations with the younger generation, had cast him in the role of God from the Machine. Someone had got to accelerate the publication of the banns of Tipton Plimsoll and Veronica Wedge, and there could be no more suitable person for such a task than himself. Veronica was a niece whom, though yielding to no one in his recognition of her outstanding dumbness, he had always been fond, and Tipton was the nephew of one of his oldest friends. Plainly it was up to him to wave the magic wand. He seemed to hear Chet's voice whispering in his ear: 'Come on, Gally. Li'l speed.'
It was possibly this stimulation of his mental processes from beyond the veil that enabled him to hit upon a solution of the problem. At any rate, he was just stepping on to the terrace when his face suddenly cleared. He had found the way.
And it was at this moment that a two-seater came bowling past with Freddie at the wheel, back at the old home after his night with the Shropshire Finches. He whizzed by and rounded the corner leading to the stables with a debonair flick of the wrist, and Gally lost no time in following him. In the enterprise which he was planning he required the co-operation of an assistant. He found the young go-getter, his two-seater safely garaged and a cigarette in its eleven-inch holder between his lips, blowing smoke rings.
Freddie's visit to Sudbury Grange, the seat of Major R. B. and Lady Emily Finch, had proved one of his most notable triumphs. He had found Sudbury Grange given over to the damnable cult of Todd's Tail-Waggers' Tidbits, an even fouler product than Peterson's Pup Food, and it had been no easy task to induce his host and hostess to become saved and start thinking the Donaldson way. But he had done it. A substantial order had been booked, and during the drive to Blandings the exhilaration of success had kept his spirits at a high level.
But with the end of the journey, there had come the sobering thought that though his own heart might be light there were others in its immediate circle that ached like billy-o. Bill Lister's, for one. Prue's, for another. Veronica Wedge's, for a third. So now, when he blew smoke rings, they were grave smoke rings.
At the moment of Gally's appearance he had been thinking of Veronica, but the sight of his uncle caused Bill's unhappy case to supplant hers in the forefront of his mind, and he started to go into it without delay.
'Oh, hullo, Uncle Gally,' he said. 'What ho, Uncle Gally? I say, Uncle Gally, brace yourself for a bit of bad news. Poor old Bill—'
'I know, I know.'
'You've heard about him being given the bum's rush again?'
'I've seen him. Don't you worry about Bill,' said Gally, who believed in concentrating on one thing at a time. 'I have his case well in hand. Bill's all right. What we've got to rivet our attention on now, Freddie, my boy, is this mysterious business of young Plimsoll and Veronica.'
'You've heard about that too?'
'I've just been talking to her father. He seems baffled. You're a friend of this young Plimsoll. I am hoping that he may have confided in you or at least let fall something which may afford a clue to the reason for this strange despondency of his. I saw him for the first time just now, and was much struck by his resemblance to a rainy Sunday at a South Coast seaside resort. He is in love with Veronica, I presume?'
'All the nibs seem to think so.'
'And yet he takes no steps to push the thing along. Indeed, he actually gives her the miss in baulk when she goes and waits for him in the rhododendrons. This must mean something.'
'Cold feet?'
Gally shook his head.
'I doubt it. This young man is the nephew of my old friend Chet Tipton, and blood must surely tell. Chet never got cold feet in his life when there were girls around. The reverse, in fact. You had to hold him back with ropes. On the other hand, he did experience strange fits of despondency, when he would sit with his feet on the mantelpiece examining his soul. Another old friend of mine, Plug Basham, was the same. Very moody chap. However, I managed to snap Plug out of it, and I am inclined to think that the same method would be successful with this young Plimsoll. By great good luck we have the animal all ready to hand.'
'Animal?'
'Your father's pig. The worst attack of despondency from which I ever remember Plug suffering occurred when a few of us were at a house in Norfolk for the pheasants. We talked it over and came to the decision that what he wanted was a shock. Nothing serious, you understand, just something that would arrest his attention and take his mind off his liver. So we borrowed a pig from a neighbouring farm, smeared it with a liberal coating of phosphorus, and put it in his bedroom. It worked like magic.'
A certain concern had manifested itself in Freddie's aspect. His eyes bulged and his jaw dropped a little.
'You aren't going to put the guv'nor's pig in Tippy's bedroom?'
'I think it would be rash not to. They've given me the Garden Suite this time, with french windows opening on the lawn, so there will be no difficulty in introducing the animal. It almost seems as though it were meant.'
'But, Uncle Gally—'
'Something on your mind, my boy?'
'Would you really recommend this course?'
'It proved extraordinarily efficacious in Plug's case. He went into his room in the dark, and the thing caught him right in the eyeball. We heard a cry, obviously coming straight from the heart, and then he was pelting downstairs three stairs at a time, wanting to know what the procedure was when a fellow had made up his mind to sign the pledge – how much it cost, where you had to go to put in your application, did you need a proposer and seconder, and so forth.'
'But it might have worked the other way round.'
'I don't follow you.'
'What I mean is, if he'd been on the wagon already, it might have prompted him to take the snifter of a lifetime.'
'Plug wasn't on the wagon.'
'No, but Tippy is.'
Gally started. He was surprised and shocked.
'What? Chet Tipton's nephew a teetotaller?'
'Only in the past few days,' explained Freddie, who was the last man to wish to put a friend in a dubious light. 'Before that he was one of our leading quaffers. But after being on a solid toot for two months he has now signed off for some reason which he has not revealed to me, and at moment of going to press absorbs little except milk and barley water. It's a thing his best friends would have advised, and honestly, Uncle Gally, I doubt if you ought to do anything that might turn his thoughts back in the direction of the decanter.'
The Hon. Galahad's was a quick, alert mind. He could appreciate sound reasoning as readily as the next ma
n.
'I see what you mean,' he said. 'Yes, I take your point. I'm glad you told me. This calls for a radical alteration in our plans. Let me think.'
He took a turn about the stable yard, his head bowed, his hands behind his back. Presently Freddie, watching from afar, saw him remove his monocle and polish it with the satisfied air of one who has thought his way through a perplexing problem.
'I've got it,' he said, returning. 'The solution came to me in a flash. We will put the pig in Veronica's room.'
A rather anxious expression stole into Freddie's face. Of the broad general principle of putting pigs in girls' rooms he of course approved, but he did not like that word 'we'.
'Here, I say!' he exclaimed. 'You're not going to lug me into this?'
The Hon. Galahad stared.
'Lug?' he said. 'What do you mean lug? The word "lug" appears to me singularly ill-chosen. I should have supposed that as a friend of this young Plimsoll and a cousin of Veronica you would have been all eagerness to do your share.'
'Well, yes, of course, definitely, but I mean to say—'
'Especially as that share is so trivial. All I want you to do is go ahead and see that the coast is clear. I will attend to the rough work.'
His words left Freddie easier in his mind. But that mind, what there was of it, was still fogged.
'But where's the percentage?'
'I beg your pardon?'
'What's the good of putting pigs in Vee's room?'
'My dear fellow, have you no imagination? What happens when a girl finds a pig in her room?'
'I should think she'd yell her head off.'
'Precisely. I confidently expect Veronica to raise the roof. Whereupon, up dashes young Plimsoll to her rescue. If you can think of a better way of bringing two young people together, I should be interested to hear it.'
Full Moon: Page 13