LORD EMSWORTH MEETS A POET
§ 1
The rain had stopped when Psmith stepped out into the street, and
the sun was shining again in that half blustering, half apologetic
manner which it affects on its reappearance after a summer shower. The
pavements glistened cheerfully, and the air had a welcome freshness.
Pausing at the corner, he pondered for a moment as to the best method
of passing the hour and twenty minutes which must elapse before he
could reasonably think of lunching. The fact that the offices of the
_Morning Globe_ were within easy strolling distance decided him to go
thither and see if the first post had brought anything in the shape
of answers to his advertisements. And his energy was rewarded a few
minutes later when Box 365 on being opened yielded up quite a little
budget of literary matter. No fewer than seven letters in all. A nice
bag.
What, however, had appeared at first sight evidence of a pleasing
ebullition of enterprise on the part of the newspaper-reading public
turned out on closer inspection, when he had retired to a corner where
he could concentrate in peace, a hollow delusion. Enterprising in a
sense though the communications were--and they certainly showed the
writers as men of considerable ginger and business push--to Psmith they
came as a disappointment. He had expected better things. These letters
were not at all what he had paid good money to receive. They missed
the point altogether. The right spirit, it seemed to him, was entirely
absent.
The first envelope, attractive though it looked from the outside, being
of an expensive brand of stationery and gaily adorned with a somewhat
startling crest merely contained a pleasantly-worded offer from a Mr.
Alistair MacDougall to advance him any sum from ten to fifty thousand
pounds on his note of hand only. The second revealed a similar proposal
from another Scot named Colin MacDonald. While in the third Mr. Ian
Campbell was prepared to go as high as one hundred thousand. All three
philanthropists had but one stipulation to make--they would have no
dealings with minors. Youth, with all its glorious traditions, did not
seem to appeal to them. But they cordially urged Psmith, in the event
of his having celebrated his twenty-first birthday, to come round to
the office and take the stuff away in a sack.
Keeping his head well in the midst of this shower of riches, Psmith
dropped the three letters with a sigh into the waste-paper basket,
and opened the next in order. This was a bulky envelope, and its
contents consisted of a printed brochure entitled, “This Night Shall
Thy Soul Be Required Of Thee”--while, by a curious and appropriate
coincidence, Number Five proved to be a circular from an energetic firm
of coffin-makers offering to bury him for eight pounds ten. Number
Six, also printed, was a manifesto from one Howard Hill, of Newmarket,
recommending him to apply without delay for “Hill’s Three-Horse
Special,” without which--(“Who,” demanded Mr. Hill in large type, “gave
you Wibbly-Wob for the Jubilee Cup?”)--no sportsman could hope to
accomplish the undoing of the bookmakers.
Although by doing so he convicted himself of that very lack of
enterprise which he had been deploring in the great public, Psmith
placed this communication with the others in the waste-paper baskets.
There now remained only Number Seven, and a slight flicker of hope
returned to him when he perceived that this envelope was addressed by
hand and not in typescript. He opened it.
Beyond a doubt he had kept the pick of the bunch to the last. Here was
something that made up for all those other disappointments. Written in
a scrawly and apparently agitated hand, the letter ran as follows:
“_If R. Psmith will meet the writer in the lobby of the Piccadilly
Palace Hotel at twelve sharp, Friday, July 1, business may result
if business meant and terms reasonable. R. Psmith will wear a pink
chrysanthemum in his buttonhole, and will say to the writer, ‘There
will be rain in Northumberland to-morrow,’ to which the writer will
reply, ‘Good for the crops.’ Kindly be punctual._”
A pleased smile played about Psmith’s solemn face as he read this
communication for the second time. It was much more the sort of thing
for which he had been hoping. Although his closest friend, Mike
Jackson, was a young man of complete ordinariness, Psmith’s tastes
when he sought companionship lay as a rule in the direction of the
bizarre. He preferred his humanity eccentric. And “the writer,” to
judge him by this specimen of his correspondence, appeared to be
eccentric enough for the most exacting taste. Whether this promising
person turned out to be a ribald jester or an earnest crank, Psmith
felt no doubt whatever as to the advisability of following the matter
up. Whichever he might be, his society ought to afford entertainment
during the interval before lunch. Psmith glanced at his watch. The
hour was a quarter to twelve. He would be able to secure the necessary
chrysanthemum and reach the Piccadilly Palace Hotel by twelve sharp,
thus achieving the businesslike punctuality on which the unknown writer
seemed to set such store.
* * * * *
It was not until he had entered a florist’s shop on the way to the
tryst that it was borne in upon him that the adventure was going
to have its drawbacks. The first of these was the chrysanthemum.
Preoccupied with the rest of the communication, Psmith, when he had
read the letter, had not given much thought to the decoration which
it would be necessary for him to wear; and it was only when, in reply
to his demand for a chrysanthemum, the florist came forward, almost
hidden, like the army at Dunsinane, behind what looked like a small
shrubbery, that he realised what he, a correct and fastidious dresser,
was up against.
“Is that a chrysanthemum?”
“Yes, sir. Pink chrysanthemum.”
“One?”
“Yes, sir. One pink chrysanthemum.”
Psmith regarded the repellent object with disfavour through his
eyeglass. Then, having placed it in his buttonhole, he proceeded on his
way, feeling like some wild thing peering through the undergrowth. The
distressing shrub completely spoiled his walk.
Arrived at the hotel and standing in the lobby, he perceived the
existence of further complications. The lobby was in its usual state of
congestion, it being a recognised meeting-place for those who did not
find it convenient to go as far east as that traditional rendezvous of
Londoners, the spot under the clock at Charing Cross Station; and “the
writer,” while giving instructions as to how Psmith should ornament his
exterior, had carelessly omitted to mention how he himself was to be
recognised. A rollicking, slap-dash conspirator, was Psmith’s opinion.
It seemed best to take up a position as nearly as possible in the
centre of the lobby and stand there until “the writer,” lured by
the chrysanthemum, should come forward and start something. This
he accordingly did, but when at the end of ten minutes nothing had
happened beyond a series of collisions with perhaps a dozen hurrying
visitors to the hotel, he decided on a more active course. A young
man of sporting appearance had been standing beside him for the last
five minutes, and ever and anon this young man had glanced with some
impatience at his watch. He was plainly waiting for someone, so Psmith
tried the formula on him.
“There will be rain,” said Psmith, “in Northumberland to-morrow.”
The young man looked at him, not without interest, certainly, but
without that gleam of intelligence in his eye which Psmith had hoped to
see.
“What?” he replied.
“There will be rain in Northumberland to-morrow.”
“Thanks, Zadkiel,” said the young man. “Deuced gratifying, I’m sure. I
suppose you couldn’t predict the winner of the Goodwood Cup as well?”
He then withdrew rapidly to intercept a young woman in a large hat
who had just come through the swing doors. Psmith was forced to the
conclusion that this was not his man. He was sorry on the whole, for he
had seemed a pleasant fellow.
As Psmith had taken up a stationary position and the population of
the lobby was for the most part in a state of flux, he was finding
himself next to someone new all the time; and now he decided to accost
the individual whom the re-shuffle had just brought elbow to elbow
with him. This was a jovial-looking soul with a flowered waistcoat, a
white hat, and a mottled face. Just the man who might have written that
letter.
The effect upon this person of Psmith’s meteorological remark was
instantaneous. A light of the utmost friendliness shone in his
beautifully-shaven face as he turned. He seized Psmith’s hand and
gripped it with a delightful heartiness. He had the air of a man who
has found a friend, and what is more, an old friend. He had a sort of
journeys-end-in-lovers’-meeting look.
“My dear old chap!” he cried. “I’ve been waiting for you to speak for
the last five minutes. Knew we’d met before somewhere, but couldn’t
place you. Face familiar as the dickens, of course. Well, well, well!
And how are they all?”
“Who?” said Psmith courteously.
“Why, the boys, my dear chap.”
“Oh, the boys?”
“The dear old boys,” said the other, specifying more exactly. He
slapped Psmith on the shoulder. “What times those were, eh?”
“Which?” said Psmith.
“The times we all used to have together.”
“Oh, _those_?” said Psmith.
Something of discouragement seemed to creep over the other’s
exuberance, as a cloud creeps over the summer sky. But he persevered.
“Fancy meeting you again like this!”
“It is a small world,” agreed Psmith.
“I’d ask you to come and have a drink,” said the jovial one, with the
slight increase of tensity which comes to a man who approaches the
core of a business deal, “but the fact is my ass of a man sent me out
this morning without a penny. Forgot to give me my note-case. Damn’
careless! I’ll have to sack the fellow.”
“Annoying, certainly,” said Psmith.
“I wish I could have stood you a drink,” said the other wistfully.
“Of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these, ‘It might
have been,’” sighed Psmith.
“I’ll tell you what,” said the jovial one, inspired. “Lend me a fiver,
my dear old boy. That’s the best way out of the difficulty. I can send
it round to your hotel or wherever you are this evening when I get
home.”
A sweet, sad smile played over Psmith’s face.
“Leave me, comrade!” he murmured.
“Eh?”
“Pass along, old friend, pass along.”
Resignation displaced joviality in the other’s countenance.
“Nothing doing?” he inquired.
“Nothing.”
“Well, there was no harm in trying,” argued the other.
“None whatever.”
“You see,” said the now far less jovial man confidentially, “you look
such a perfect mug with that eyeglass that it tempts a chap.”
“I can quite understand how it must!”
“No offence.”
“Assuredly not.”
The white hat disappeared through the swing doors, and Psmith returned
to his quest. He engaged the attention of a middle-aged man in a
snuff-coloured suit who had just come within hail.
“There will be rain in Northumberland to-morrow,” he said.
The man peered at him inquiringly.
“Hey?” he said.
Psmith repeated his observation.
“Huh?” said the man.
Psmith was beginning to lose the unruffled calm which made him
such an impressive figure to the public eye. He had not taken into
consideration the possibility that the object of his search might be
deaf. It undoubtedly added to the embarrassment of the pursuit. He was
moving away, when a hand fell on his sleeve.
Psmith turned. The hand which still grasped his sleeve belonged to
an elegantly dressed young man of somewhat nervous and feverish
appearance. During his recent vigil Psmith had noticed this young man
standing not far away, and had had half a mind to include him in the
platoon of new friends he was making that morning.
“I say,” said this young man in a tense whisper, “did I hear you say
that there would be rain in Northumberland to-morrow?”
“If,” said Psmith, “you were anywhere within the radius of a dozen
yards while I was chatting with the recent deaf adder, I think it is
possible that you did.”
“Good for the crops,” said the young man. “Come over here where we can
talk quietly.”
§ 2
“So you’re R. Psmith?” said the young man, when they had made their way
to a remote corner of the lobby, apart from the throng.
“The same.”
“I say, dash it, you’re frightfully late, you know. I told you to be
here at twelve sharp. It’s nearly twelve past.”
“You wrong me,” said Psmith. “I arrived here precisely at twelve. Since
when, I have been standing like Patience on a monument. . . .”
“Like what?”
“Let it go,” said Psmith. “It is not important.”
“I asked you to wear a pink chrysanthemum. So I could recognise you,
you know.”
“I _am_ wearing a pink chrysanthemum. I should have imagined that that
was a fact that the most casual could hardly have overlooked.”
“That thing?” The other gazed disparagingly at the floral decoration.
“I thought it was some kind of cabbage. I meant one of those little
what-d’you-may-call-its that people do wear in their button-holes.”
“Carnation, possibly?”
“Carnation! That’s right.”
Psmith removed the chrysanthemum and dropped it behind his chair. He
looked at his companion reproachfully.
“If you had studied botany at school, comrade,” he said, “much misery
might have been averted. I cannot begin to tell you the spiritual agony
I suffered, trailing through the metropolis behind that shrub.”
Whatever decent sympathy and remorse the other might have shown at
these words was swept away in the shock resultant on a glance at his
watch. Not for an instant during this brief return of his to London
had Freddie Threepwood been unmindful of his father’s stern injunction
to him to catch the twelve-fifty train back to Market Blandings. If
he missed it, there would be the deuce of a lot of unpleasantness,
and unpleasantness in the home was the one thing Freddie wanted to
avoid nowadays; for, like a prudent convict in a prison, he hoped by
exemplary behaviour to get his sentence of imprisonment at Blandings
Castle reduced for good conduct.
“Good Lord! I’ve only got about five minutes. Got to talk quick. . . .
About this thing. This business. That advertisement of yours.”
“Ah, yes. My advertisement. It interested you?”
“Was it on the level?”
“Assuredly. We Psmiths do not deceive.”
Freddie looked at him doubtfully.
“You know, you aren’t a bit like I expected you’d be.”
“In what respect,” inquired Psmith, “do I fall short of the ideal?”
“It isn’t so much falling short. It’s--oh, I don’t know . . . Well,
yes, if you want to know, I thought you’d be a tougher specimen
altogether. I got the impression from your advertisement that you were
down and out and ready for anything, and you look as if you were on
your way to a garden-party at Buckingham Palace.”
“Ah!” said Psmith, enlightened. “It is my costume that is causing these
doubts in your mind. This is the second time this morning that such a
misunderstanding has occurred. Have no misgivings. These trousers may
sit well, but, if they do, it is because the pockets are empty.”
“Are you really broke?”
“As broke as the Ten Commandments.”
“I’m hanged if I can believe it.”
“Suppose I brush my hat the wrong way for a moment?” said Psmith
obligingly. “Would that help?”
His companion remained silent for a few moments. In spite of the fact
that he was in so great a hurry and that every minute that passed
brought nearer the moment when he would be compelled to tear himself
away and make a dash for Paddington Station, Freddie was finding it
difficult to open the subject he had come there to discuss.
“Look here,” he said at length, “I shall have to trust you, dash it.”
“You could pursue no better course.”
“It’s like this. I’m trying to raise a thousand quid . . .”
“I regret that I cannot offer to advance it to you myself. I have,
indeed, already been compelled to decline to lend a gentleman who
claimed to be an old friend of mine so small a sum as a fiver. But
there is a dear, obliging soul of the name of Alistair MacDougall
who . . .”
“Good Lord! You don’t think I’m trying to touch you?”
“That impression did flit through my mind.”
“Oh, dash it, no. No, but--well, as I was saying, I’m frightfully keen
to get hold of a thousand quid.”
“So am I,” said Psmith. “Two minds with but a single thought. How
do _you_ propose to start about it? For my part, I must freely
confess that I haven’t a notion. I am stumped. The cry goes round the
chancelleries, ‘Psmith is baffled!’”
“I say, old thing,” said Freddie plaintively, “you couldn’t talk a bit
less, could you? I’ve only got about two minutes.”
“I beg your pardon. Proceed.”
“It’s so dashed difficult to know how to begin the thing. I mean, it’s
all a bit complicated till you get the hang of it. . . . Look here, you
said in your advertisement that you had no objection to crime.”
Psmith considered the point.
“Within reason--and if undetected--I see no objection to two-pennorth
of crime.”
“Well, look here . . . look here . . . Well, look here,” said Freddie,
“will you steal my aunt’s diamond necklace?”
Psmith placed his monocle in his eye and bent gravely toward his
companion.
“Steal your aunt’s necklace?” he said indulgently.
“Yes.”
“You do not think she might consider it a liberty from one to whom she
has never been introduced?”
What Freddie might have replied to this pertinent question will never
be known, for at this moment, looking nervously at his watch for the
twentieth time, he observed that the hands had passed the half-hour and
were well on their way to twenty-five minutes to one. He bounded up
with a cry.
“I must go! I shall miss that damned train!”
“And meanwhile . . . ?” said Psmith.
The familiar phrase--the words “And meanwhile” had occurred at least
once in every film Freddie had ever seen--had the effect of wrenching
the latter’s mind back to the subject in hand for a moment. Freddie was
not a clear-thinking young man, but even he could see that he had left
the negotiations suspended at a very satisfactory point. Nevertheless,
he had to catch that twelve-fifty.
“Write and tell me what you think about it,” panted Freddie, skimming
through the lobby like a swallow.
“You have unfortunately omitted to leave a name and address,” Psmith
pointed out, following him at an easy jog-trot.
In spite of his hurry, a prudence born of much movie-seeing restrained
Freddie from supplying the information asked for. Give away your name
and address and you never knew what might happen.
“I’ll write to you,” he cried, racing for a cab.
“I shall count the minutes,” said Psmith courteously.
“Drive like blazes!” said Freddie to the chauffeur.
“Where?” inquired the man, not unreasonably.
“Eh? Oh, Paddington.”
The cab whirled off, and Psmith, pleasantly conscious of a morning
not ill-spent, gazed after it pensively for a moment. Then, with
the feeling that the authorities of Colney Hatch or some kindred
establishment had been extraordinarily negligent, he permitted his mind
to turn with genial anticipation in the direction of lunch. For, though
he had celebrated his first day of emancipation from Billingsgate Fish
Market by rising late and breakfasting later, he had become aware by
now of that not unpleasant emptiness which is the silent luncheon-gong
of the soul.
§ 3
The minor problem now presented itself of where to lunch; and with
scarcely a moment’s consideration he dismissed those large, noisy, and
bustling restaurants which lie near Piccadilly Circus. After a morning
spent with Eve Halliday and the young man who was going about the place
asking people to steal his aunt’s necklace, it was imperative that he
select some place where he could sit and think quietly. Any food of
which he partook must be consumed in calm, even cloistral surroundings,
unpolluted by the presence of a first violin who tied himself into
knots and an orchestra in whose lexicon there was no such word as
_piano_. One of his clubs seemed indicated.
In the days of his prosperity, Psmith’s father, an enthusiastic
clubman, had enrolled his son’s name on the list of several
institutions: and now, although the lean years had arrived, he
was still a member of six, and would continue to be a member till
the beginning of the new year and the consequent call for fresh
subscriptions. These clubs ranged from the Drones, frankly frivolous,
to the Senior Conservative, solidly worthy. Almost immediately Psmith
decided that for such a mood as was upon him at the moment, the latter
might have been specially constructed.
Anybody familiar with the interior of the Senior Conservative Club
would have applauded his choice. In the whole of London no better
haven could have been found by one desirous of staying his interior
with excellently-cooked food while passing his soul under a leisurely
examination. They fed you well at the Drones, too, no doubt: but
there Youth held carnival, and the thoughtful man, examining his
soul, was apt at any moment to have his meditations broken in upon
by a chunk of bread, dexterously thrown by some bright spirit at an
adjoining table. No horror of that description could possibly occur
at the Senior Conservative. The Senior Conservative has six thousand
one hundred and eleven members. Some of the six thousand one hundred
and eleven are more respectable than the others, but they are all
respectable--whether they be numbered among the oldest inhabitants like
the Earl of Emsworth, who joined as a country member in 1888, or are
among the recent creations of the last election of candidates. They are
bald, reverend men, who look as if they are on their way to the City to
preside at directors’ meetings or have dropped in after conferring with
the Prime Minister at Downing Street as to the prospects at the coming
by-election in the Little Wabsley Division.
With the quiet dignity which atoned for his lack in years in this
stronghold of mellow worth, Psmith mounted the steps, passed through
the doors which were obligingly flung open for him by two uniformed
dignitaries, and made his way to the coffee-room. Here, having
selected a table in the middle of the room and ordered a simple and
appetising lunch, he gave himself up to thoughts of Eve Halliday. As
he had confessed to his young friend Mr. Walderwick, she had made
a powerful impression upon him. He was tearing himself from his
day-dreams in order to wrestle with a mutton chop, when a foreign body
shot into his orbit and blundered heavily against the table. Looking
up, he perceived a long, thin, elderly gentleman of pleasantly vague
aspect, who immediately began to apologise.
“My dear sir, I am extremely sorry. I trust I have caused no damage.”
“None whatever,” replied Psmith courteously.
“The fact is, I have mislaid my glasses. Blind as a bat without them.
Can’t see where I’m going.”
A gloomy-looking young man with long and disordered hair, who stood at
the elderly gentleman’s elbow, coughed suggestively. He was shuffling
restlessly, and appeared to be anxious to close the episode and move
on. A young man, evidently, of highly-strung temperament. He had a
sullen air.
The elderly gentleman started vaguely at the sound of the cough.
“Eh?” he said, as if in answer to some spoken remark. “Oh, yes, quite
so, quite so, my dear fellow. Mustn’t stop here chatting, eh? Had to
apologise, though. Nearly upset this gentleman’s table. Can’t see where
I’m going without my glasses. Blind as a bat. Eh? What? Quite so, quite
so.”
He ambled off, doddering cheerfully, while his companion still
preserved his look of sulky aloofness. Psmith gazed after them with
interest.
“Can you tell me,” he asked of the waiter, who was rallying round with
the potatoes, “who that was?”
The waiter followed his glance.
“Don’t know who the young gentleman is, sir. Guest here, I fancy. The
old gentleman is the Earl of Emsworth. Lives in the country and doesn’t
often come to the club. Very absent-minded gentleman, they tell me.
Potatoes, sir?”
“Thank you,” said Psmith.
The waiter drifted away, and returned.
“I have been looking at the guest-book, sir. The name of the gentleman
lunching with Lord Emsworth is Mr. Ralston McTodd.”
“Thank you very much. I am sorry you had the trouble.”
“No trouble, sir.”
Psmith resumed his meal.
§ 4
The sullen demeanour of the young man who had accompanied Lord Emsworth
through the coffee-room accurately reflected the emotions which were
vexing his troubled soul. Ralston McTodd, the powerful young singer
of Saskatoon (“Plumbs the depths of human emotion and strikes a new
note”--_Montreal Star_. “Very readable”--_Ipsilanti Herald_), had not
enjoyed his lunch. The pleasing sense of importance induced by the fact
that for the first time in his life he was hob-nobbing with a genuine
earl had given way after ten minutes of his host’s society to a mingled
despair and irritation which had grown steadily deeper as the meal
proceeded. It is not too much to say that by the time the fish course
arrived it would have been a relief to Mr. McTodd’s feelings if he
could have taken up the butter-dish and banged it down, butter and all,
on his lordship’s bald head.
A temperamental young man was Ralston McTodd. He liked to be the
centre of the picture, to do the talking, to air his views, to be
listened to respectfully and with interest by a submissive audience.
At the meal which had just concluded none of these reasonable demands
had been permitted to him. From the very beginning, Lord Emsworth
had collared the conversation and held it with a gentle, bleating
persistency against all assaults. Five times had Mr. McTodd almost
succeeded in launching one of his best epigrams, only to see it swept
away on the tossing flood of a lecture on hollyhocks. At the sixth
attempt he had managed to get it out, complete and sparkling, and the
old ass opposite him had taken it in his stride like a hurdle and gone
galloping off about the mental and moral defects of a creature named
Angus McAllister, who appeared to be his head gardener or something of
the kind. The luncheon, though he was a hearty feeder and as a rule
appreciative of good cooking, had turned to ashes in Mr. McTodd’s
mouth, and it was a soured and chafing Singer of Saskatoon who dropped
scowlingly into an arm-chair by the window of the lower smoking-room a
few moments later. We introduce Ralston McTodd to the reader, in short,
at a moment when he is very near the breaking-point. A little more
provocation, and goodness knows what he may not do. For the time being,
he is merely leaning back in his chair and scowling. He has a faint
hope, however, that a cigar may bring some sort of relief, and he is
waiting for one to be ordered for him.
The Earl of Emsworth did not see the scowl. He had not really seen
Mr. McTodd at all from the moment of his arrival at the club, when
somebody, who sounded like the head porter, had informed him that a
gentleman was waiting to see him and had led him up to a shapeless
blur which had introduced itself as his expected guest. The loss
of his glasses had had its usual effect on Lord Emsworth, making
the world a misty place in which indefinite objects swam dimly like
fish in muddy water. Not that this mattered much, seeing that he was
in London, for in London there was never anything worth looking at.
Beyond a vague feeling that it would be more comfortable on the whole
if he had his glasses--a feeling just strong enough to have made him
send off a messenger boy to his hotel to hunt for them--Lord Emsworth
had not allowed lack of vision to interfere with his enjoyment of the
proceedings.
And, unlike Mr. McTodd, he had been enjoying himself very much. A
good listener, this young man, he felt. Very soothing, the way he
had constituted himself a willing audience, never interrupting or
thrusting himself forward, as is so often the deplorable tendency of
the modern young man. Lord Emsworth was bound to admit that, much as
he had disliked the idea of going to London to pick up this poet or
whatever he was, the thing had turned out better than he had expected.
He liked Mr. McTodd’s silent but obvious interest in flowers, his tacit
but warm-hearted sympathy in the matter of Angus McAllister. He was
glad he was coming to Blandings. It would be agreeable to conduct him
personally through the gardens, to introduce him to Angus McAllister
and allow him to plumb for himself the black abysses of that outcast’s
mental processes.
Meanwhile, he had forgotten all about ordering that cigar . . .
“In large gardens where ample space permits,” said Lord Emsworth,
dropping cosily into his chair and taking up the conversation at the
point where it had been broken off, “nothing is more desirable than
that there should be some places, or one at least, of quiet greenery
alone, without any flowers whatever. I see that you agree with me.”
Mr. McTodd had not agreed with him. The grunt which Lord Emsworth had
taken for an exclamation of rapturous adhesion to his sentiments had
been merely a sort of bubble of sound rising from the tortured depths
of Mr. McTodd’s suffering soul--the cry, as the poet beautifully puts
it, “of some strong smoker in his agony.” The desire to smoke had now
gripped Mr. McTodd’s very vitals; but, as some lingering remains of the
social sense kept him from asking point-blank for the cigar for which
he yearned, he sought in his mind for a way of approaching the subject
obliquely.
“In no other way,” proceeded Lord Emsworth, “can the brilliancy of
flowers be so keenly enjoyed as by . . .”
“Talking of flowers,” said Mr. McTodd, “it is a fact, I believe, that
tobacco smoke is good for roses.”
“. . . as by pacing for a time,” said Lord Emsworth, “in some cool,
green alley, and then passing on to the flowery places. It is partly,
no doubt, the unconscious working out of some optical law, the
explanation of which in everyday language is that the eye . . .”
“Some people say that smoking is bad for the eyes. I don’t agree with
them,” said Mr. McTodd warmly.
“. . . being, as it were, saturated with the green colour, is the more
attuned to receive the others, especially the reds. It was probably
some such consideration that influenced the designers of the many old
gardens of England in devoting so much attention to the cult of the yew
tree. When you come to Blandings, my dear fellow, I will show you our
celebrated yew alley. And, when you see it, you will agree that I was
right in taking the stand I did against Angus McAllister’s pernicious
views.”
“I was lunching in a club yesterday,” said Mr. McTodd, with the
splendid McTodd doggedness, “where they had no matches on the tables in
the smoking-room. Only spills. It made it very inconvenient . . .”
“Angus McAllister,” said Lord Emsworth, “is a professional gardener.
I need say no more. You know as well as I do, my dear fellow, what
professional gardeners are like when it is a question of moss . . .”
“What it meant was that, when you wanted to light your after-luncheon
cigar, you had to get up and go to a gas-burner on a bracket at the
other end of the room . . .”
“Moss, for some obscure reason, appears to infuriate them. It rouses
their basest passions. Nature intended a yew alley to be carpeted with
a mossy growth. The mossy path in the yew alley at Blandings is in
true relation for colour to the trees and grassy edges; yet will you
credit it that that soulless disgrace to Scotland actually wished to
grub it all up and have a rolled gravel path staring up from beneath
those immemorial trees! I have already told you how I was compelled
to give in to him in the matter of the hollyhocks--head gardeners
of any ability at all are rare in these days and one has to make
concessions--but this was too much. I was perfectly friendly and civil
about it. ‘Certainly, McAllister,’ I said, ‘you may have your gravel
path if you wish it. I make but one proviso, that you construct it over
my dead body. Only when I am weltering in my blood on the threshold of
that yew alley shall you disturb one inch of my beautiful moss. Try to
remember, McAllister,’ I said, still quite cordially, ‘that you are not
laying out a recreation ground in a Glasgow suburb--you are proposing
to make an eyesore of what is possibly the most beautiful nook in one
of the finest and oldest gardens in the United Kingdom.’ He made some
repulsive Scotch noise at the back of his throat, and there the matter
rests. . . . Let me, my dear fellow,” said Lord Emsworth, writhing down
into the depths of his chair like an aristocratic snake until his spine
rested snugly against the leather, “let me describe for you the Yew
Alley at Blandings. Entering from the west . . .”
Mr. McTodd gave up the struggle and sank back, filled with black and
deleterious thoughts, into a tobacco-less hell. The smoking-room was
full now, and on all sides fragrant blue clouds arose from the little
groups of serious thinkers who were discussing what Gladstone had said
in ’78. Mr. McTodd, as he watched them, had something of the emotions
of the Peri excluded from Paradise. So reduced was he by this time that
he would have accepted gratefully the meanest straight-cut cigarette in
place of the Corona of his dreams. But even this poor substitute for
smoking was denied him.
Lord Emsworth droned on. Having approached from the west, he was now
well inside the yew alley.
“Many of the yews, no doubt, have taken forms other than those that
were originally designed. Some are like turned chessmen; some might
be taken for adaptations of human figures, for one can trace here
and there a hat-covered head or a spreading petticoat. Some rise in
solid blocks with rounded roof and stemless mushroom finial. These
have for the most part arched recesses, forming arbours. One of the
tallest . . . Eh? What?”
Lord Emsworth blinked vaguely at the waiter who had sidled up. A
moment before he had been a hundred odd miles away, and it was not
easy to adjust his mind immediately to the fact that he was in the
smoking-room of the Senior Conservative Club.
“Eh? What?”
“A messenger boy has just arrived with these, your lordship.”
Lord Emsworth peered in a dazed and woolly manner at the proffered
spectacle-case. Intelligence returned to him.
“Oh, thank you. Thank you very much. My glasses. Capital! Thank you,
thank you, thank you.”
He removed the glasses from their case and placed them on his nose:
and instantly the world sprang into being before his eyes, sharp and
well-defined. It was like coming out of a fog.
“Dear me!” he said in a self-congratulatory voice.
Then abruptly he sat up, transfixed. The lower smoking-room at the
Senior Conservative Club is on the street level, and Lord Emsworth’s
chair faced the large window. Through this, as he raised his now
spectacled face, he perceived for the first time that among the row of
shops on the opposite side of the road was a jaunty new florist’s. It
had not been there at his last visit to the metropolis, and he stared
at it raptly, as a small boy would stare at a saucer of ice-cream if
such a thing had suddenly descended from heaven immediately in front of
him. And, like a small boy in such a situation, he had eyes for nothing
else. He did not look at his guest. Indeed, in the ecstasy of his
discovery, he had completely forgotten that he had a guest.
Any flower shop, however small, was a magnet to the Earl of Emsworth.
And this was a particularly spacious and arresting flower shop. Its
window was gay with summer blooms. And Lord Emsworth, slowly rising
from his chair, “pointed” like a dog that sees a pheasant.
“Bless my soul!” he murmured.
If the reader has followed with the closeness which it deserves the
extremely entertaining conversation of his lordship recorded in the
last few paragraphs, he will have noted a reference to hollyhocks. Lord
Emsworth had ventilated the hollyhock question at some little length
while seated at the luncheon table. But, as we had not the good fortune
to be present at that enjoyable meal, a brief résumé of the situation
must now be given and the intelligent public allowed to judge between
his lordship and the uncompromising McAllister.
Briefly, the position was this. Many head gardeners are apt to favour
in the hollyhock forms that one cannot but think have for their aim
an ideal that is a false and unworthy one. Angus McAllister, clinging
to the head-gardeneresque standard of beauty and correct form, would
not sanction the wide outer petal. The flower, so Angus held, must
be very tight and very round, like the uniform of a major-general.
Lord Emsworth, on the other hand, considered this view narrow, and
claimed the liberty to try for the very highest and truest beauty
in hollyhocks. The loosely-folded inner petals of the hollyhock, he
considered, invited a wonderful play and brilliancy of colour; while
the wide outer petal, with its slightly waved surface and gently
frilled edge . . . well, anyway, Lord Emsworth liked his hollyhocks
floppy and Angus McAllister liked them tight, and bitter warfare had
resulted, in which, as we have seen, his lordship had been compelled to
give way. He had been brooding on this defeat ever since, and in the
florist opposite he saw a possible sympathiser, a potential ally, an
intelligent chum with whom he could get together and thoroughly damn
Angus McAllister’s Glaswegian obstinacy.
You would not have suspected Lord Emsworth, from a casual glance, of
having within him the ability to move rapidly; but it is a fact that
he was out of the smoking-room and skimming down the front steps of
the club before Mr. McTodd’s jaw, which had fallen at the spectacle of
his host bounding out of his horizon of vision like a jack-rabbit, had
time to hitch itself up again. A moment later, Mr. McTodd, happening
to direct his gaze out of the window, saw him whiz across the road and
vanish into the florist’s shop.
It was at this juncture that Psmith, having finished his lunch,
came downstairs to enjoy a quiet cup of coffee. The room was rather
crowded, and the chair which Lord Emsworth had vacated offered a wide
invitation. He made his way to it.
“Is this chair occupied?” he inquired politely. So politely that Mr.
McTodd’s reply sounded by contrast even more violent than it might
otherwise have done.
“No, it isn’t!” snapped Mr. McTodd.
Psmith seated himself. He was feeling agreeably disposed to
conversation.
“Lord Emsworth has left you then?” he said.
“Is he a friend of yours?” inquired Mr. McTodd in a voice that
suggested that he was perfectly willing to accept a proxy as a target
for his wrath.
“I know him by sight. Nothing more.”
“Blast him!” muttered Mr. McTodd with indescribable virulence.
Psmith eyed him inquiringly.
“Correct me if I am wrong,” he said, “but I seem to detect in your
manner a certain half-veiled annoyance. Is anything the matter?”
Mr. McTodd barked bitterly.
“Oh, no. Nothing’s the matter. Nothing whatever, except that that old
beaver--”--here he wronged Lord Emsworth, who, whatever his faults, was
not a bearded man--“that old beaver invited me to lunch, talked all the
time about his infernal flowers, never let me get a word in edgeways,
hadn’t the common civility to offer me a cigar, and now has gone off
without a word of apology and buried himself in that shop over the way.
I’ve never been so insulted in my life!” raved Mr. McTodd.
“Scarcely the perfect host,” admitted Psmith.
“And if he thinks,” said Mr. McTodd, rising, “that I’m going to go and
stay with him at his beastly castle after this, he’s mistaken. I’m
supposed to go down there with him this evening. And perhaps the old
fossil thinks I will! After this!” A horrid laugh rolled up from Mr.
McTodd’s interior. “Likely! I see myself! After being insulted like
this . . . Would _you_?” he demanded.
Psmith gave the matter thought.
“I am inclined to think no.”
“And so am I damned well inclined to think no!” cried Mr. McTodd. “I’m
going away now, this very minute. And if that old total loss ever comes
back, you can tell him he’s seen the last of me.”
And Ralston McTodd, his blood boiling with justifiable indignation and
pique to a degree dangerous on such a warm day, stalked off towards
the door with a hard, set face. Through the door he stalked to the
cloak-room for his hat and cane; then, his lips moving silently, he
stalked through the hall, stalked down the steps, and passed from the
scene, stalking furiously round the corner in quest of a tobacconist’s.
At the moment of his disappearance, the Earl of Emsworth had just
begun to give the sympathetic florist a limpid character-sketch of
Angus McAllister.
* * * * *
Psmith shook his head sadly. These clashings of human temperament were
very lamentable. They disturbed the after-luncheon repose of the man of
sensibility. He ordered coffee, and endeavoured to forget the painful
scene by thinking of Eve Halliday.
§ 5
The florist who had settled down to ply his trade opposite the Senior
Conservative Club was a delightful fellow, thoroughly sound on the
hollyhock question and so informative in the matter of delphiniums,
achilleas, coreopsis, eryngiums, geums, lupines, bergamot and early
phloxes that Lord Emsworth gave himself up whole-heartedly to the feast
of reason and the flow of soul; and it was only some fifteen minutes
later that he remembered that he had left a guest languishing in the
lower smoking-room and that this guest might be thinking him a trifle
remiss in the observance of the sacred duties of hospitality.
“Bless my soul, yes!” said his lordship, coming out from under the
influence with a start.
Even then he could not bring himself to dash abruptly from the shop.
Twice he reached the door and twice pottered back to sniff at flowers
and say something he had forgotten to mention about the Stronger
Growing Clematis. Finally, however, with one last, longing, lingering
look behind, he tore himself away and trotted back across the road.
Arrived in the lower smoking-room, he stood in the doorway for a
moment, peering. The place had been a blur to him when he had left it,
but he remembered that he had been sitting in the middle window and,
as there were only two seats by the window, that tall, dark young man
in one of them must be the guest he had deserted. That he could be a
changeling never occurred to Lord Emsworth. So pleasantly had the time
passed in the shop across the way that he had the impression that he
had only been gone a couple of minutes or so. He made his way to where
the young man sat. A vague idea came into his head that the other had
grown a bit in his absence, but it passed.
“My dear fellow,” he said genially, as he slid into the other chair, “I
really must apologise.”
It was plain to Psmith that the other was under a misapprehension, and
a really nice-minded young man would no doubt have put the matter right
at once. The fact that it never for a single instant occurred to Psmith
to do so was due, no doubt, to some innate defect in his character.
He was essentially a young man who took life as it came, and the more
inconsequently it came the better he liked it. Presently, he reflected,
it would become necessary for him to make some excuse and steal quietly
out of the other’s life; but meanwhile the situation seemed to him to
present entertaining possibilities.
“Not at all,” he replied graciously. “Not at all.”
“I was afraid for a moment,” said Lord Emsworth, “that you might--quite
naturally--be offended.”
“Absurd!”
“Shouldn’t have left you like that. Shocking bad manners. But, my dear
fellow, I simply had to pop across the street.”
“Most decidedly,” said Psmith. “Always pop across streets. It is the
secret of a happy and successful life.”
Lord Emsworth looked at him a little perplexedly, and wondered if he
had caught the last remark correctly. But his mind had never been
designed for the purpose of dwelling closely on problems for any
length of time, and he let it go.
“Beautiful roses that man has,” he observed. “Really an extraordinarily
fine display.”
“Indeed?” said Psmith.
“Nothing to touch mine, though. I wish, my dear fellow, you could have
been down at Blandings at the beginning of the month. My roses were at
their best then. It’s too bad you weren’t there to see them.”
“The fault no doubt was mine,” said Psmith.
“Of course you weren’t in England then.”
“Ah! That explains it.”
“Still, I shall have plenty of flowers to show you when you are at
Blandings. I expect,” said Lord Emsworth, at last showing a host-like
disposition to give his guest a belated innings, “I expect you’ll write
one of your poems about my gardens, eh?”
Psmith was conscious of a feeling of distinct gratification. Weeks of
toil among the herrings of Billingsgate had left him with a sort of
haunting fear that even in private life there clung to him the miasma
of the fish market. Yet here was a perfectly unprejudiced observer
looking squarely at him and mistaking him for a poet--showing that in
spite of all he had gone through there must still be something notably
spiritual and unfishy about his outward appearance.
“Very possibly,” he said. “Very possibly.”
“I suppose you get ideas for your poetry from all sorts of things,”
said Lord Emsworth, nobly resisting the temptation to collar the
conversation again. He was feeling extremely friendly towards this poet
fellow. It was deuced civil of him not to be put out and huffy at being
left alone in the smoking-room.
“From practically everything,” said Psmith, “except fish.”
“Fish?”
“I have never written a poem about fish.”
“No?” said Lord Emsworth, again feeling that a pin had worked loose in
the machinery of the conversation.
“I was once offered a princely sum,” went on Psmith, now floating
happily along on the tide of his native exuberance, “to write a ballad
for the _Fishmonger’s Gazette_ entitled, ‘Herbert the Turbot.’ But I
was firm. I declined.”
“Indeed?” said Lord Emsworth.
“One has one’s self-respect,” said Psmith.
“Oh, decidedly,” said Lord Emsworth.
“It was painful, of course. The editor broke down completely when he
realised that my refusal was final. However, I sent him on with a
letter of introduction to John Drinkwater, who, I believe, turned him
out quite a good little effort on the theme.”
At this moment, when Lord Emsworth was feeling a trifle dizzy, and
Psmith, on whom conversation always acted as a mental stimulus, was on
the point of plunging even deeper into the agreeable depths of light
persiflage, a waiter approached.
“A lady to see you, your lordship.”
“Eh? Ah, yes, of course, of course. I was expecting her. It is a Miss
---- what is the name? Holliday? Halliday. It is a Miss Halliday,” he
said in explanation to Psmith, “who is coming down to Blandings to
catalogue the library. My secretary, Baxter, told her to call here and
see me. If you will excuse me for a moment, my dear fellow?”
“Certainly.”
As Lord Emsworth disappeared, it occurred to Psmith that the moment
had arrived for him to get his hat and steal softly out of the other’s
life for ever. Only so could confusion and embarrassing explanations
be avoided. And it was Psmith’s guiding rule in life always to avoid
explanations. It might, he felt, cause Lord Emsworth a momentary
pang when he returned to the smoking-room and found that he was a
poet short, but what is that in these modern days when poets are so
plentiful that it is almost impossible to fling a brick in any public
place without damaging some stern young singer. Psmith’s view of the
matter was that, if Lord Emsworth was bent on associating with poets,
there was bound to be another one along in a minute. He was on the
point, therefore, of rising, when the laziness induced by a good lunch
decided him to remain in his comfortable chair for a few minutes
longer. He was in one of those moods of rare tranquillity which it is
rash to break.
He lit another cigarette, and his thoughts, as they had done after the
departure of Mr. McTodd, turned dreamily in the direction of the girl
he had met at Miss Clarkson’s Employment Bureau. He mused upon her with
a gentle melancholy. Sad, he felt, that two obviously kindred spirits
like himself and her should meet in the whirl of London life, only
to separate again--presumably for ever--simply because the etiquette
governing those who are created male and female forbids a man to cement
a chance acquaintanceship by ascertaining the lady’s name and address,
asking her to lunch, and swearing eternal friendship. He sighed as he
gazed thoughtfully out of the lower smoking-room window. As he had
indicated in his conversation with Mr. Walderwick, those blue eyes and
that cheerful, friendly face had made a deep impression on him. Who was
she? Where did she live? And was he ever to see her again?
He was. Even as he asked himself the question, two figures came down
the steps of the club, and paused. One was Lord Emsworth, without his
hat. The other--and Psmith’s usually orderly heart gave a spasmodic
bound at the sight of her--was the very girl who was occupying
his thoughts. There she stood, as blue-eyed, as fair-haired, as
indescribably jolly and charming as ever.
Psmith rose from his chair with a vehemence almost equal to that
recently displayed by Mr. McTodd. It was his intention to add himself
immediately to the group. He raced across the room in a manner that
drew censorious glances from the local greybeards, many of whom had
half a mind to write to the committee about it.
But when he reached the open air the pavement at the foot of the club
steps was empty. The girl was just vanishing round the corner into the
Strand, and of Lord Emsworth there was no sign whatever.
By this time, however, Psmith had acquired a useful working knowledge
of his lordship’s habits, and he knew where to look. He crossed the
street and headed for the florist’s shop.
“Ah, my dear fellow,” said his lordship amiably, suspending his
conversation with the proprietor on the subject of delphiniums, “must
you be off? Don’t forget that our train leaves Paddington at five
sharp. You take your ticket for Market Blandings.”
Psmith had come into the shop merely with the intention of asking his
lordship if he happened to know Miss Halliday’s address, but these
words opened out such a vista of attractive possibilities that he had
abandoned this tame programme immediately. He remembered now that among
Mr. McTodd’s remarks on things in general had been one to the effect
that he had received an invitation to visit Blandings Castle--of which
invitation he did not propose to avail himself; and he argued that if
he had acted as substitute for Mr. McTodd at the club, he might well
continue the kindly work by officiating for him at Blandings. Looking
at the matter altruistically, he would prevent his kind host much
disappointment by taking this course; and, looking at it from a more
personal viewpoint, only by going to Blandings could he renew his
acquaintance with this girl. Psmith had never been one of those who
hang back diffidently when Adventure calls, and he did not hang back
now.
“At five sharp,” he said. “I will be there.”
“Capital, my dear fellow,” said his lordship.
“Does Miss Halliday travel with us?”
“Eh? No, she is coming down in a day or two.”
“I shall look forward to meeting her,” said Psmith. He turned to the
door, and Lord Emsworth with a farewell beam resumed his conversation
with the florist.