[1] Copyright, 1924, by The Curtis Publishing Company.
The pleasant morning sunshine descended like an amber shower bath on
Blandings Castle, that stately home of England which so adorns the
county of Shropshire, lighting up with a heartening glow its ivied
walls, its rolling parks, its gardens, out-houses and messuages and
such of its inhabitants as chanced at the moment to be taking the
air. It fell on green lawns and wide terraces, on noble trees and
bright flower beds. It fell on the baggy trousers seat of Angus
McAllister, head gardener to the Earl of Emsworth, as he bent with
dour Scottish determination to pluck a coy snail from its reverie
beneath the leaf of a lettuce. It fell on the white flannels of the
Hon. Freddie Threepwood, Lord Emsworth's second son, hurrying across
the water meadows. It also fell on Lord Emsworth himself, for the
proprietor of this fair domain was standing on the turret above the
west wing, placidly surveying his possessions through a powerful
telescope.
The Earl of Emsworth was a fluffy-minded and amiable old gentleman
with a fondness for new toys. Although the main interest of his life
was his garden, he was always ready to try a side line; and the
latest of these side lines was this telescope of his--the outcome of
a passion for astronomy which had lasted some two weeks.
For some minutes Lord Emsworth remained gazing with a pleased eye at
a cow down in the meadows. It was a fine cow, as cows go, but, like
so many cows, it lacked sustained dramatic interest; and his
lordship, surfeited after a while by the spectacle of it chewing the
cud and staring glassily at nothing, was about to swivel the
apparatus round in the hope of picking up something a trifle more
sensational, when into the range of his vision there came the
Honorable Freddie. White and shining, he tripped along over the turf
like a Theocritean shepherd hastening to keep an appointment with a
nymph; and for the first time that morning a frown came to mar the
serenity of Lord Emsworth's brow. He generally frowned when he saw
Freddie, for with the passage of the years that youth had become more
and more a problem to an anxious father.
The Earl of Emsworth, like so many of Britain's aristocracy, had but
little use for the Younger Son. And Freddie Threepwood was a
particularly trying younger son. There seemed, in the opinion of his
nearest and dearest, to be no way of coping with the boy. If he was
allowed to live in London he piled up debts and got into mischief;
and when hauled back home to Blandings he moped broodingly. It was
possibly the fact that his demeanor at this moment was so
mysteriously jaunty, his bearing so inexplicably free from the
crushed misery with which he usually mooned about the place that
induced Lord Emsworth to keep a telescopic eye on him. Some inner
voice whispered to him that Freddie was up to no good and would bear
watching.
The inner voice was absolutely correct. Within thirty seconds its
case had been proved up to the hilt. Scarcely had his lordship had
time to wish, as he invariably wished on seeing his offspring, that
Freddie had been something entirely different in manners, morals, and
appearance and had been the son of somebody else living a
considerable distance away, when out of a small spinney near the end
of the meadow there bounded a girl. And Freddie, after a cautious
glance over his shoulder, immediately proceeded to fold this female
in a warm embrace.
Lord Emsworth had seen enough. He tottered away from the telescope,
a shattered man. One of his favorite dreams was of some nice
eligible girl, belonging to a good family and possessing a bit of
money of her own, coming along some day and taking Freddie off his
hands; but that inner voice, more confident now than ever, told him
that this was not she. Freddie would not sneak off in this furtive
fashion to meet eligible girls; nor could he imagine any eligible
girl in her right senses rushing into Freddie's arms in that
enthusiastic way. No, there was only one explanation. In the
cloistral seclusion of Blandings, far from the metropolis with all
its conveniences for that sort of thing, Freddie had managed to get
himself entangled. Seething with anguish and fury, Lord Emsworth
hurried down the stairs and out onto the terrace. Here he prowled
like an elderly leopard waiting for feeding time, until in due season
there was a flicker of white among the trees that flanked the drive
and a cheerful whistling announced the culprit's approach.
It was with a sour and hostile eye that Lord Emsworth watched his son
draw near. He adjusted his pince-nez, and with their assistance was
able to perceive that a fatuous smile of self-satisfaction
illuminated the young man's face, giving him the appearance of a
beaming sheep. In the young man's buttonhole there shone a nosegay
of simple meadow flowers, which, as he walked, he patted from time to
time with a loving hand.
"Frederick!" bellowed his lordship.
The villain of the piece halted abruptly. Sunk in a roseate trance,
he had not observed his father. But such was the sunniness of his
mood that even this encounter could not damp him. He gamboled
happily up.
"Hullo, guv'nor," said Freddie. He searched in his mind for a
pleasant topic of conversation, always a matter of some little
difficulty on these occasions. "Lovely day, what?"
His lordship was not to be diverted into a discussion of the weather.
He drew a step nearer, looking like the man who smothered the young
princes in the Tower.
"Frederick," he demanded, "who was that girl?"
The Honorable Freddie started convulsively. He appeared to be
swallowing with difficulty something large and jagged.
"Girl?" he quavered. "Girl? Girl, guv'nor?"
"That girl I saw you kissing ten minutes ago down in the water
meadows."
"Oh!" said the Honorable Freddie. He paused. "Oh, ah!" He paused
again. "Oh, ah, yes! I've been meaning to tell you about that,
guv'nor."
"You have, have you?"
"All perfectly correct, you know. Oh yes, indeed! All most
absolutely correct-o! Nothing fishy, I mean to say, or anything like
that. She's my _fiancée_."
A sharp howl escaped Lord Emsworth, as if one of the bees humming in
the lavender beds had taken time off to sting him in the neck.
"Who is she?" he boomed. "Who is this woman?"
"Her name's Donaldson."
"Who is she?"
"Aggie Donaldson. Aggie's short for Niagara. Her people spent their
honeymoon at the Falls, she tells me. She's American, and all that.
Rummy names they give kids in America," proceeded Freddie with hollow
chattiness. "I mean to say! Niagara! I ask you!"
"Who is she?"
"She's most awfully bright, you know. Full of beans. You'll love
her."
"Who is she?"
"And can play the saxophone."
"Who," demanded Lord Emsworth for the sixth time, "is she? And where
did you meet her?"
Freddie coughed. The information, he perceived, could no longer be
withheld, and he was keenly alive to the fact that it scarcely fell
into the class of tidings of great joy.
"Well, as a matter of fact, guv'nor, she's a sort of cousin of Angus
McAllister's. She's come over to England for a visit, don't you
know, and is staying with the old boy. That's how I happened to run
across her."
Lord Emsworth's eyes bulged and he gargled faintly. He had had many
unpleasant visions of his son's future, but they had never included
one of him walking down the aisle with a sort of cousin of his head
gardener.
"Oh!" he said. "Oh, indeed?"
Lord Emsworth threw his arms up as if calling on Heaven to witness a
good man's persecution, and shot off along the terrace at a rapid
trot. Having ranged the grounds for some minutes, he ran his quarry
to earth at the entrance of the yew alley.
The head gardener turned at the sound of his footsteps. He was a
sturdy man of medium height with eyebrows that would have fitted
better a bigger forehead. These, added to a red and wiry beard, gave
him a formidable and uncompromising expression. Honesty Angus
McAllister's face had in full measure, and also intelligence; but it
was a bit short on sweetness and light.
"McAllister," said his lordship, plunging without preamble into the
matter of his discourse. "That girl. You must send her away." A
look of bewilderment clouded such of Mr. McAllister's features as
were not concealed behind his beard and eyebrows.
"Gurrul?"
"That girl who is staying with you. She must go!"
"Gae where?"
Lord Emsworth was not in the mood to be finicky about details.
"Anywhere," he said. "I won't have her here a day longer."
"Why?" inquired Mr. McAllister, who liked to thresh these things out.
"Never mind why. You must send her away immediately."
Mr. McAllister mentioned an insuperable objection.
"She's payin' me twa poon' a week," he said simply.
Lord Emsworth did not grind his teeth, for he was not given to that
form of displaying emotion; but he leaped some ten inches into the
air and dropped his pince-nez. And, though normally a fair-minded
and reasonable man, well aware that modern earls must think twice
before pulling the feudal stuff on their employees, he took on the
forthright truculence of a large landowner of the early Norman period
ticking off a serf.
"Listen, McAllister! Listen to me! Either you send that girl away
today or you can go yourself."
A curious expression came into Angus McAllister's face--always
excepting the occupied territories. It was the look of a man who has
not forgotten Bannockburn, a man conscious of belonging to the
country of William Wallace and Robert Bruce. He made Scotch noises
at the back of his throat.
"Y'r lorrudsheep will accept ma notis," he said with formal dignity.
"I'll pay you a month's wages in lieu of notice and you will leave
this afternoon," retorted Lord Emsworth with spirit.
"Mphm!" said Mr. McAllister.
Lord Emsworth left the battlefield with a feeling of pure
exhilaration, still in the grip of the animal fury of conflict. No
twinge of remorse did he feel at the thought that Angus McAllister
had served him faithfully for ten years. Nor did it cross his mind
that he might miss McAllister.
But that night, as he sat smoking his after-dinner cigarette, Reason,
so violently expelled, came stealing timidly back to her throne, and
a cold hand seemed suddenly placed upon his heart.
With Angus McAllister gone, how would the pumpkin fare?
The importance of this pumpkin in the Earl of Emsworth's life
requires, perhaps, a word of explanation. Every ancient family in
England has some little gap in its scroll of honor, and that of Lord
Emsworth was no exception. For generations back his ancestors had
been doing notable deeds; they had sent out from Blandings Castle
statesmen and warriors, governors and leaders of the people; but they
had not--in the opinion of the present holder of the title--achieved
a full hand. However splendid the family record might appear at
first sight, the fact remained that no Earl of Emsworth had ever won
a first prize for pumpkins at the Shrewsbury Flower and Vegetable
Show. For roses, yes. For tulips, true. For spring onions,
granted. But not for pumpkins; and Lord Emsworth, who lived for his
garden, felt it deeply.
For many a summer past he had been striving indefatigably to remove
this blot on the family escutcheon, only to see his hopes go tumbling
down. But this year at last victory had seemed in sight, for there
had been vouchsafed to Blandings a competitor of such amazing parts
that his lordship, who had watched it grow practically from a pip,
could not envisage failure. Surely, he told himself as he gazed on
its golden roundness, even Sir Gregory Parsloe-Parsloe of Badgwick
Hall, winner for three successive years, would never be able to
produce anything to challenge this superb vegetable.
And it was this supreme pumpkin whose welfare he feared he had
jeopardized by dismissing Angus McAllister. For Angus was its
official trainer. He understood the pumpkin. Indeed, in his
reserved Scottish way he even seemed to love it. With Angus gone,
what would the harvest be?
Such were the meditations of Lord Emsworth as he reviewed the
position of affairs. And though, as the days went by, he tried to
tell himself that Angus McAllister was not the only man in the world
who understood pumpkins and that he had every confidence, the most
complete and unswerving confidence, in Robert Barker, recently
Angus's second in command, now promoted to the post of head gardener
and custodian of the Blandings Hope, he knew that this was but
shallow bravado. When you are a pumpkin owner with a big winner in
your stable, you judge men by hard standards, and every day it became
plainer that Robert Barker was only a makeshift. Within a week Lord
Emsworth was pining for Angus McAllister.
It might be purely imagination, but to his excited fancy the pumpkin
seemed to be pining for Angus too. It appeared to be drooping and
losing weight. Lord Emsworth could not rid himself of the horrible
idea that it was shrinking. And on the tenth night after
McAllister's departure he dreamed a strange dream. He had gone with
King George to show His Gracious Majesty the pumpkin, promising him
the treat of a lifetime; and, when they arrived, there in the corner
of the frame was a shriveled thing the size of a pea. He woke,
sweating, with his sovereign's disappointed screams ringing in his
ears; and Pride gave its last quiver and collapsed. To reinstate
Angus would be a surrender, but it must be done.
"Beach," he said that morning at breakfast, "do you happen to--er--to
have McAllister's address?"
"Yes, your lordship," replied the butler. "He is in London, residing
at Number 11 Buxton Crescent."
"Buxton Crescent? Never heard of it."
"It is, I fancy, your lordship, a boarding house or some such
establishment off the Cromwell Road. McAllister was accustomed to
make it his headquarters whenever he visited the metropolis on
account of its handiness for Kensington Gardens. He liked," said
Beach with respectful reproach, for Angus had been a friend of his
for nine years, "to be near the flowers, your lor'ship."
Two telegrams, passing through it in the course of the next twelve
hours, caused some gossip at the post office of the little town of
Market Blandings.
The first ran: "McAllister, 11 Buxton Crescent, Cromwell Road,
London. Return immediately. Emsworth."
The second: "Lord Emsworth, Blandings Castle, Shropshire. I will
not. McAllister."
Lord Emsworth had one of those minds capable of accommodating but one
thought at a time--if that; and the possibility that Angus McAllister
might decline to return had not occurred to him. It was difficult to
adjust himself to this new problem, but he managed it at last.
Before nightfall he had made up his mind. Robert Barker, that broken
reed, could remain in charge for another day or so, and meanwhile he
would go up to London and engage a real head gardener, the finest
head gardener that money could buy.
It was the opinion of Doctor Johnson that there is in London all that
life can afford. A man, he held, who is tired of London is tired of
life itself. Lord Emsworth, had he been aware of this statement,
would have contested it warmly. He hated London. He loathed its
crowds, its smells, its noises, its omnibuses, its taxis, and its
hard pavements. And, in addition to all its other defects, the
miserable town did not seem able to produce a single decent head
gardener. He went from agency to agency, interviewing candidates,
and not one of them came within a mile of meeting his requirements.
He disliked their faces, he distrusted their references. It was a
harsh thing to say of any man, but he was dashed if the best of them
was even as good as Robert Barker.
It was, therefore, in a black and soured mood that his lordship,
having lunched frugally at the Senior Conservative Club on the third
day of his visit, stood on the steps in the sunshine, wondering how
on earth he was to get through the afternoon. He had spent the
morning rejecting head gardeners, and the next batch was not due
until the morrow. And what--besides rejecting head gardeners--was
there for a man of reasonable tastes to do with his time in this
hopeless town?
And then there came into his mind a remark which Beach the butler had
made at the breakfast table about flowers in Kensington Gardens. He
could go to Kensington Gardens and look at the flowers.
He was about to hail a taxicab from the rank down the street when
there suddenly emerged from the Hotel Magnificent, over the way, a
young man. This young man proceeded to cross the road, and as he
drew near it seemed to Lord Emsworth that there was about his
appearance something oddly familiar. He stared for a long instant
before he could believe his eyes, then with a wordless cry bounded
down the steps just as the other started to mount them.
"Oh, hullo, guv'nor!" ejaculated the Honorable Freddie, plainly
startled.
"What--what are you doing here?" demanded Lord Emsworth.
He spoke with heat, and justly so. London, as the result of several
spirited escapades which still rankled in the mind of a father who
had had to foot the bills, was forbidden ground to Freddie.
The young man was plainly not at his ease. He had the air of one who
is being pushed toward dangerous machinery in which he is loath to
become entangled. He shuffled his feet for a moment, then raised his
left shoe and rubbed the back of his right calf with it. "The fact
is, guv'nor----"
"You know you are forbidden to come to London."
"Absolutely, guv'nor, but the fact is----"
"And why anybody but an imbecile should want to come to London when
he could be at Blandings----"
"I know, guv'nor, but the fact is----" Here Freddie, having replaced
his wandering foot on the pavement, raised the other and rubbed the
back of his left calf. "I wanted to see you," he said. "Yes.
Particularly wanted to see you."
This was not strictly accurate. The last thing in the world which
the Honorable Freddie wanted was to see his parent. He had come to
the Senior Conservative Club to leave a carefully written note.
Having delivered which, it had been his intention to bolt like a
rabbit. This unforeseen meeting had upset his plans.
"To see me?" said Lord Emsworth. "Why?"
"Got--er--got something to tell you. Bit of news."
"I trust it is of sufficient importance to justify your coming to
London against my express wishes."
"Oh yes. Oh yes, yes, yes. Oh, rather. It's dashed important.
Yes--not to put too fine a point upon it--most dashed important. I
say, guv'nor, are you in fairly good form to stand a bit of a shock?"
A ghastly thought rushed into Lord Emsworth's mind. Freddie's
mysterious arrival--his strange manner--his odd hesitation and
uneasiness---- Could it mean? He clutched the young man's arm
feverishly.
"Frederick! Speak! Tell me! Have the cats got at it?"
It was a fixed idea of Lord Emsworth, which no argument would have
induced him to abandon, that cats had the power to work some dreadful
mischief on his pumpkin and were continually lying in wait for the
opportunity of doing so; and his behavior on the occasion when one of
the fast sporting set from the stables, wandering into the kitchen
garden and, finding him gazing at the Blandings Hope, had rubbed
itself sociably against his leg, lingered long in that animal's
memory.
Freddie stared.
"Cats? Why? Where? Which? What cats?"
"Frederick! Is anything wrong with the pumpkin?"
In a crass and materialistic world there must inevitably be a
scattered few here and there in whom pumpkins touch no chord. The
Hon. Freddie Threepwood was one of these. He was accustomed to speak
in mockery of all pumpkins, and had even gone so far as to allude to
the Hope of Blanding as Percy. His father's anxiety, therefore,
merely caused him to giggle.
"Not that I know of," he said.
"Then what do you mean," thundered Lord Emsworth, stung by the
giggle--"what do you mean, sir, by coming here and alarming
me--scaring me out of my wits, by gad!--with your nonsense about
giving me shocks?"
The Honorable Freddie looked carefully at his fermenting parent. His
fingers, sliding into his pocket, closed on the note which nestled
there. He drew it forth.
"Look here, guv'nor," he said nervously, "I think the best thing
would be for you to read this. Meant to leave it for you with the
hall porter. It's--well, you just cast your eyes over it. Good-by,
guv'nor. Got to see a man."
And thrusting the note into his father's hand the Honorable Freddie
turned and was gone. Lord Emsworth, perplexed and annoyed, watched
him skim up the road and leap into a cab. He seethed impotently.
Practically any behavior on the part of his son Frederick had the
power to irritate him, but it was when he was vague and mysterious
and incoherent that the young man irritated him most.
He looked at the letter in his hand, turned it over, felt it and even
smelled it. Then, for it had suddenly occurred to him that if he
wished to ascertain its contents he had better read it, he tore open
the envelope.
The note was brief, but full of good reading matter.
DEAR GUV'NOR: Awfully sorry, and all that, but couldn't hold out any
longer. I've popped up to London in the two-seater, and Aggie and I
were spliced this morning. There looked like being a bit of a hitch
at one time, but Aggie's guv'nor, who has come over from America,
managed to wangle it all right by getting a special license or
something of that order. A most capable Johnny. He's coming to see
you. He wants to have a good long talk with you about the whole
binge. Lush him up hospitably, and all that, would you mind, because
he's a really sound egg and you'll like him. Well, cheerio!
Your affectionate son,
FREDDIE.
P.S. You won't mind if I freeze onto the two-seater for the nonce,
what? It may come in useful for the honeymoon.
The Senior Conservative Club is a solid and massive building, but, as
Lord Emsworth raised his eyes dumbly from the perusal of this letter,
it seemed to him that it was performing a kind of whirling dance.
The whole of the immediate neighborhood, indeed, appeared to be
shimmying in the middle of a thick mist. He was profoundly stirred.
It is not too much to say that he was shaken to the core of his
being. No father enjoys being flouted and defied by his own son; nor
is it reasonable to expect a man to take a cheery view of life who is
faced with the prospect of supporting for the remainder of his years
a younger son, a younger son's wife and possibly younger
grandchildren.
For an appreciable space of time he stood in the middle of the
pavement, rooted to the spot. Passers-by bumped into him or
grumblingly made detours to avoid a collision. Dogs sniffed at his
ankles. Seedy-looking individuals tried to arrest his attention in
order to speak of their financial affairs. Lord Emsworth heeded none
of them. He remained where he was, gasping like a fish, until
suddenly his faculties seemed to return to him.
An imperative need for flowers and green trees swept upon Lord
Emsworth. The noise of the traffic and the heat of the sun on the
stone pavement were afflicting him like a nightmare. He signaled
energetically to a passing cab.
"Kensington Gardens," he said, and sank back on the cushioned seat.
Something dimly resembling peace crept into his lordship's soul as he
paid off his cab and entered the cool shade of the gardens. Even
from the road he had caught a glimpse of stimulating reds and
yellows; and as he ambled up the asphalt path and plunged round the
corner the flower beds burst upon his sight in all their consoling
glory.
"Ah!" breathed Lord Emsworth rapturously, and came to a halt before a
glowing carpet of tulips. A man of official aspect, wearing a peaked
cap and a uniform, stopped as he heard the exclamation and looked at
him with approval and even affection.
"Nice weather we're 'avin'," he observed.
Lord Emsworth did not reply. He had not heard. There is that about
a well-set-out bed of flowers which acts on men who love their
gardens, like a drug, and he was in a sort of trance. Already he had
completely forgotten where he was, and seemed to himself to be back
in his paradise of Blandings. He drew a step nearer to the flower
bed, pointing like a setter.
The official-looking man's approval deepened. This man with the
peaked cap was the park keeper, who held the rights of the high, the
low, and the middle justice over that section of the gardens. He,
too, loved these flowers beds, and he seemed to see in Lord Emsworth
a kindred soul. The general public was too apt to pass by, engrossed
in its own affairs, and this often wounded the park keeper. In Lord
Emsworth he thought that he recognized one of the right sort.
"Nice----" he began.
He broke off with a sharp cry. If he had not seen it with his own
eyes he would not have believed it. But, alas! there was no
possibility of a mistake. With a ghastly shock he realized that he
had been deceived in this attractive stranger. Decently if untidily
dressed, clean, respectable to the outward eye, the stranger was in
reality a dangerous criminal, the blackest type of evildoer on the
park keeper's index. He was a Kensington Gardens flower picker.
For, even as he uttered the word "nice," the man had stepped lightly
over the low railing, had shambled across the strip of turf, and
before you could say "knife" was busy on his dark work. In the brief
instant in which the park keeper's vocal cords refused to obey him,
he was two tulips ahead of the game and reaching out to scoop in a
third.
"Hi!" roared the park keeper, suddenly finding speech. "'I there!"
Lord Emsworth turned with a start.
"Bless my soul!" he murmured reproachfully.
He was in full possession of his senses now, such as they were, and
understood the enormity of his conduct. He shuffled back onto the
asphalt, contrite.
"My dear fellow----" he began remorsefully.
The park keeper began to speak rapidly and at length. From time to
time Lord Emsworth moved his lips and made deprecating gestures, but
he could not stem the flood. Louder and more rhetorical grew the
park keeper, and denser and more interested the rapidly assembling
crowd of spectators. And then through the stream of words another
voice spoke.
"Wot's all this?"
The force had materialized in the shape of a large, solid constable.
The park keeper seemed to understand that he had been superseded. He
still spoke, but no longer like a father rebuking an erring son. His
attitude now was more that of an elder brother appealing for justice
against a delinquent junior. In a moving passage he stated his case.
"'E Says," observed the constable judicially, speaking slowly and in
capitals as if addressing an untutored foreigner--"'E Says You Was
Pickin' The Flowers."
"I saw 'im. I was standin' as close as I am to you."
"'E Saw You," interpreted the constable.
Lord Emsworth was feeling weak and bewildered. Without a thought of
annoying or doing harm to anybody, he seemed to have unchained the
fearful passions of a French Revolution; and there came over him a
sense of how unjust it was that this sort of thing should be
happening to him, of all people--a man already staggering beneath the
troubles of a Job.
"I'll 'ave to ask you for your name and address," said the constable
more briskly. A stubby pencil popped for an instant into his stern
mouth and hovered, well and truly moistened, over the virgin page of
his notebook--that dreadful notebook before which taxi drivers shrink
and hardened bus conductors quail.
"I--I, why, my dear fellow--I mean, officer--I am the Earl of
Emsworth."
Much has been written of the psychology of crowds, designed to show
how extraordinary and inexplicable it is, but most of such writing is
exaggeration. A crowd generally behaves in a perfectly natural and
intelligible fashion. When, for instance, it sees a man in a badly
fitting tweed suit and a hat he ought to be ashamed of getting put
through it for pinching flowers in the park and the man says he is an
earl, it laughs. This crowd laughed.
"Ho?" The constable did not stoop to join in the merriment of the
rabble, but his lip twitched sardonically. "Have you a card, your
lordship?"
Nobody intimate with Lord Emsworth would have asked such a foolish
question. His card-case was the thing he always lost second when
visiting London--immediately after losing his umbrella.
"I--er--I'm afraid----"
"R!" said the constable. And the crowd uttered another happy,
hyenalike laugh, so intensely galling that his lordship raised his
bowed head with an indignant glance. And as he did so the hunted
look faded from his eyes.
"McAllister!" he cried. "McAllister, my dear fellow, do please tell
this man who I am."
Two new arrivals had just joined the throng, and, being of rugged and
nobbly physique, had already shoved themselves through to the
ringside seats. One was a tall, handsome, smooth-faced gentleman of
authoritative appearance, who, if he had not worn rimless glasses,
would have looked like a Roman emperor. The other was a shorter,
sturdier man with a bristly red beard.
"McAllister!" moaned his lordship piteously.
After what had passed between himself and his late employer a lesser
man than Angus McAllister might have seen in Lord Emsworth's
predicament merely a judgment. A man of little magnanimity would
have felt that here was where he got a bit of his own back. Not so
this splendid Glaswegian.
"Aye," he said. "Yon's Lorrud Emsworruth."
"Who are you?" inquired the constable searchingly.
"I used to be head gardener at the cassel."
"Exactly," bleated Lord Emsworth. "Precisely. My head gardener."
The constable was shaken. Lord Emsworth might not look like an earl,
but there was no getting away from the fact that Angus McAllister was
supremely head-gardeneresque. A stanch admirer of the aristocracy,
the constable perceived that zeal had caused him to make a bit of a
bloomer. Yes, he had dropped a brick. In this crisis, however, he
comported himself with a masterly tact. He scowled blackly upon the
interested throng.
"Pass along there, please. Pass along," he commanded austerely.
"Ought to know better than block up a public thoroughfare like this.
Pass along!"
He moved off, shepherding the crowd before him. The Roman emperor
with the rimless glasses advanced upon Lord Emsworth, extending a
large hand.
"Pleased to meet you at last," he said. "My name is Donaldson, Lord
Emsworth."
For a moment the name conveyed nothing to his lordship. Then its
significance hit him, and he drew himself up with hauteur.
"You'll excuse us, Angus," said Mr. Donaldson. "High time you and I
had a little chat, Lord Emsworth."
Lord Emsworth was about to speak, when he caught the other's eye. It
was a strong, keen, level gray eye, with a curious forcefulness about
it that made him feel strangely inferior. There is every reason to
suppose that Mr. Donaldson had subscribed for years to those
personality courses advertised in the back pages of the magazines,
which guarantee to impart to the pupil who takes ten correspondence
lessons the ability to look the boss in the eye and make him wilt.
Mr. Donaldson looked Lord Emsworth in the eye, and Lord Emsworth
wilted.
"How do you do?" he said weakly.
"Now listen, Lord Emsworth," proceeded Mr. Donaldson. "No sense in
having hard feelings between members of a family. I take it you've
heard by this time that your boy and my girl have gone ahead and
fixed it up? Personally, I'm delighted. That boy is a fine young
fellow--"
Lord Emsworth blinked.
"You are speaking of my son Frederick?" he said incredulously.
"Of your son Frederick. Now, at the moment, no doubt, you are
feeling a trifle sore. I don't blame you. You have every right to
be sorer than a gumboil. But you must remember--young blood, eh? It
will, I am convinced, be a lasting grief to that splendid young
man----"
"You are still speaking of my son Frederick?"
"Of Frederick, yes. It will, I say, be a lasting grief to him if he
feels he has incurred your resentment. You must forgive him, Lord
Emsworth. He must have your support."
"I suppose he'll have to have it, dash it," said his lordship
unhappily. "Can't let the boy starve."
Mr. Donaldson's hand swept round in a wide grand gesture.
"Don't you worry about that. I'll look after that end of it. I am
not a rich man----"
"Ah!" said his lordship resignedly. A faint hope, inspired by the
largeness of the other's manner, had been flickering in his bosom.
"I doubt," continued Mr. Donaldson frankly, "if, all told, I have as
much as ten million dollars in the world."
Lord Emsworth swayed like a sapling in the breeze.
"Ten million? Ten million? Did you say you had ten million dollars?"
"Between nine and ten, I suppose. Not more. But you must bear in
mind that the business is growing all the time. I am Donaldson's Dog
Biscuits."
"Donaldson's Dog Biscuits! Indeed! Really! Fancy that!"
"You have heard of them?" asked Mr. Donaldson eagerly.
"Never," said Lord Emsworth cordially.
"Oh! Well, that's who I am. And, with your approval, I intend to
send Frederick over to Long Island City to start learning the
business. I have no doubt that he will in time prove a most valuable
asset to the firm."
Lord Emsworth could conceive of no way in which Freddie could be of
value to a dog-biscuit firm, except possibly as a taster: but he
refrained from damping the other's enthusiasm by saying so.
"He seems full of keenness. But he must feel that he has your moral
support, Lord Emsworth; his father's moral support."
"Yes, yes, yes!" said Lord Emsworth heartily. A feeling of positive
adoration for Mr. Donaldson was thrilling him. The getting rid of
Freddie, which he himself had been unable to achieve in twenty-six
years, this godlike dog-biscuit manufacturer had accomplished in less
than a week. "Oh, yes, yes, yes! Most decidedly!"
"They sail on Wednesday."
"Splendid!"
"Early in the morning."
"Capital!"
"I may give them a friendly message from you?"
"Certainly! Certainly, certainly, certainly! Inform Frederick that
he has my best wishes."
"I will."
"Mention that I shall watch his future progress with considerable
interest."
"Exactly."
"Say that I hope he will work hard and make a name for himself."
"Just so."
"And," concluded Lord Emsworth, speaking with a fatherly earnestness
well in keeping with this solemn moment, "tell him--er--not to hurry
home."
He pressed Mr. Donaldson's hand with feelings too deep for further
speech. Then he galloped swiftly to where Angus McAllister stood
brooding over the tulip bed.
"McAllister!"
The other's beard waggled grimly. He looked at his late employer
with cold eyes.
"McAllister," faltered Lord Emsworth humbly, "I wish--I wonder----
What I want to say is, have you accepted another situation yet?"
"I am conseederin' twa."
"Come back to me!" pleaded his lordship, his voice breaking. "Robert
Barker is worse than useless. Come back to me!"
Angus McAllister gazed woodenly at the tulips. "A' weel," he said at
length.
"You will?" cried Lord Emsworth joyfully. "Splendid! Capital!
Excellent!"
"A' didna say I wud."
"I thought you said 'I will,'" said his lordship, dashed.
"I didna say 'A' weel'; I said 'A' weel,'" said Mr. McAllister
stiffly. "Meanin', mebbe I might, mebbe not."
Lord Emsworth laid a trembling hand upon his arm.
"McAllister, I will raise your salary."
The beard twitched.
"Dash it, I'll double it!"
The eyebrows flickered.
"McAllister--Angus," said Lord Emsworth in a low voice. "Come back!
The pumpkin needs you."
In an age of rush and hurry like that of today, an age in which there
are innumerable calls on the leisure time of everyone, it is possible
that here and there throughout the ranks of the public who have read
this chronicle there may be one or two who for various reasons found
themselves unable to attend the annual Flower and Vegetable Show at
Shrewsbury. Sir Gregory Parsloe-Parsloe of Badgwick Hall was there,
of course, but it would not have escaped the notice of a close
observer that his mien lacked something of the haughty arrogance
which had characterized it in other years. From time to time, as he
paced the tent devoted to the exhibition of vegetables, he might have
been seen to bite his lip, and his eye had something of that brooding
look which Napoleon's must have worn after Waterloo.
But there is the right stuff in Sir Gregory. He is a gentleman and a
sportsman. In the Parsloe-Parsloe tradition there is nothing small
or mean. Halfway down the tent he stopped, and with a quick manly
gesture thrust out his hand.
"Congratulate you, Emsworth," he said huskily.
Lord Emsworth looked up with a start. He had been deep in his
thoughts.
"Thanks, my dear fellow. Thanks. Thanks. Thank you very much." He
hesitated. "Er--can't both win, if you understand me."
Sir Gregory puzzled it out.
"No," he said. "No. See what you mean. Can't both win."
He nodded and walked on, with who knows what vultures gnawing at his
broad bosom? And Lord Emsworth--with Angus McAllister, who had been
a silent witness of the scene, at his side--turned once more to stare
reverently at that which lay on the strawy bottom of one of the
largest packing cases ever seen in Shrewsbury town.
Inside it, something vast and golden beamed up at him.
A card had been attached to the exterior of the packing case. It
bore the simple legend: