FISH PREFERRED
By P. G. WODEHOUSE
A NOVEL
A. L. BURT COMPANY
Publishers
New York
Published by arrangement with
Doubleday, Doran & Company, Inc.
Printed in U. S. A.
COPYRIGHT, 1929
BY PELHAM GRANVILLE WODEHOUSE
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES AT
THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS
GARDEN CITY, N. Y.
BOOKS BY P. G. WODEHOUSE
FISH PREFERRED
MONEY FOR NOTHING
CARRY ON JEEVES
DIVOTS
THE SMALL BACHELOR
SAM IN THE SUBURBS
BILL THE CONQUEROR
INDISCRETIONS OF ARCHIE
HE RATHER ENJOYED IT
THREE MEN AND A MAID
GOLF WITHOUT TEARS
LEAVE IT TO PSMITH
THE LITTLE WARRIOR
A DAMSEL IN DISTRESS
MOSTLY SALLY
JEEVES
FISH PREFERRED
CHAPTER I
I
Blandings Castle slept in the sunshine. Dancing little ripples of heat
mist played across its smooth lawns and stone-flagged terraces. The air
was full of the lulling drone of insects. It was that gracious hour of
a summer afternoon, midway between luncheon and tea, when nature seems
to unbutton its waistcoat and put its feet up.
In the shade of a laurel bush outside the back premises of this stately
home of England, Beach, butler to Clarence, ninth Earl of Emsworth,
its proprietor, sat sipping the contents of a long glass and reading
a weekly paper devoted to the doings of Society and the Stage. His
attention had just been arrested by a photograph in an oval border on
one of the inner pages; and for perhaps a minute he scrutinized this
in a slow, thorough, pop-eyed way, absorbing its every detail. Then,
with a fruity chuckle, he took a penknife from his pocket, cut out the
photograph, and placed it in the recesses of his costume.
At this moment the laurel bush, which had hitherto not spoken, said,
"Psst!"
The butler started violently. A spasm ran through his ample frame.
"Beach!" said the bush.
Something was now peering out of it. This might have been a wood nymph,
but the butler rather thought not, and he was right. It was a tall
young man with light hair. He recognized his employer's secretary,
Mr. Hugo Carmody, and rose with pained reproach. His heart was still
jumping, and he had bitten his tongue.
"Startle you, Beach?"
"Extremely, sir."
"I'm sorry. Excellent for the liver, though. Beach, do you want to earn
a quid?"
The butler's austerity softened. The hard look died out of his eyes.
"Yes, sir."
"Can you get hold of Miss Millicent alone?"
"Certainly, sir."
"Then give her this note, and don't let anyone see you do it.
Especially--and this is where I want you to follow me very closely,
Beach--Lady Constance Keeble."
"I will attend to the matter immediately, sir."
He smiled a paternal smile. Hugo smiled back. A perfect understanding
prevailed between these two. Beach understood that he ought not to be
giving his employer's niece surreptitious notes; and Hugo understood
that he ought not to be urging a good man to place such a weight upon
his conscience.
"Perhaps you are not aware, sir," said the butler, having trousered the
wages of sin, "that her ladyship went up to London on the three-thirty
train?"
Hugo uttered an exclamation of chagrin.
"You mean that all this Red Indian stuff--creeping from bush to bush
and not letting a single twig snap beneath my feet--has simply been a
waste of time?" He emerged, dusting his clothes. "I wish I'd known that
before," he said. "I've severely injured a good suit, and it's a very
moot question whether I haven't got some kind of a beetle down my back.
However, nobody ever took a toss through being careful."
"Very true, sir."
Relieved by the information that the X-ray eye of the aunt of the girl
he loved was operating elsewhere, Mr. Carmody became conversational.
"Nice day, Beach."
"Yes, sir."
"You know, Beach, life's rummy. I mean to say, you can never tell what
the future holds in store. Here I am at Blandings Castle, loving it.
Sing of joy, sing of bliss, home was never like this. And yet, when the
project of my coming here was first placed on the agenda I don't mind
telling you the heart was rather bowed down with weight of woe."
"Indeed, sir?"
"Yes. Noticeably bowed down. If you knew the circumstances you would
understand why."
Beach did know the circumstances. There were few facts concerning the
dwellers in Blandings Castle of which he remained in ignorance for
long. He was aware that young Mr. Carmody had been until a few weeks
back co-proprietor with Mr. Ronald Fish, Lord Emsworth's nephew, of a
night club called the Hot Spot, situated just off Bond Street in the
heart of London's pleasure-seeking area; that, despite this favoured
position, it had proved a financial failure; that Mr. Ronald had gone
off with his mother, Lady Julia Fish, to recuperate at Biarritz; and
that Hugo, on the insistence of Ronnie that unless some niche was found
for his boyhood friend he would not stir a step toward Biarritz or any
other blighted place, had come to Blandings as Lord Emsworth's private
secretary.
"No doubt you were reluctant to leave London, sir?"
"Exactly. But now, Beach, believe me or believe me not, as far as I am
concerned, anyone who likes can have London. Mark you, I'm not saying
that just one brief night in the Piccadilly neighbourhood would come
amiss. But to dwell in give me Blandings Castle. What a spot, Beach!"
"Yes, sir."
"A Garden of Eden, shall I call it?"
"Certainly, sir, if you wish."
"And now that old Ronnie's coming here, joy, as you might say, will be
unconfined."
"Is Mr. Ronald expected, sir?"
"Coming either to-morrow or the day after. I had a letter from him this
morning. Which reminds me. He sends his regards to you and asks me to
tell you to put your shirt on Baby Bones for the Medbury Selling Plate."
The butler pursed his lips dubiously.
"A long shot, sir. Not generally fancied."
"Rank outsider. Leave it alone is my verdict."
"And yet Mr. Ronald is usually very reliable. It is many years now
since he first began to advise me in these matters, and I have done
remarkably well by following him. Even as a lad at Eton he was always
singularly fortunate in his information."
"Well, suit yourself," said Hugo indifferently. "What was that thing
you were cutting out of the paper just now?"
"A photograph of Mr. Galahad, sir. I keep an album in which I paste
items of interest relating to the Family."
"What that album needs is an eyewitness's description of Lady Constance
Keeble falling out of a window and breaking her neck."
A nice sense of the proprieties prevented Beach from indorsing this
view verbally, but he sighed a little wistfully. He had frequently felt
much the same about the chatelaine of Blandings.
"If you would care to see the clipping, sir? There is a reference to
Mr. Galahad's literary work."
Most of the photographs in the weekly paper over which Beach had been
relaxing were of peeresses trying to look like chorus girls and chorus
girls trying to look like peeresses; but this one showed the perky
features of a dapper little gentleman in the late fifties. Beneath it,
in large letters, was the single word--
GALLY
Under this ran a caption in smaller print:
The Hon. Galahad Threepwood, brother of the Earl of Emsworth.
A little bird tells us that "Gally" is at Blandings Castle,
Shropshire, the ancestral seat of the family, busily engaged in
writing his Reminiscences. As every member of the Old Brigade will
testify, they ought to be as warm as the weather, if not warmer.
Hugo scanned the exhibit thoughtfully and handed it back, to be placed
in the archives.
"Yes," he observed, "I should say that about summed it up. That old
bird must have been pretty hot stuff, I imagine, back in the days of
Edward the Confessor."
"Mr. Galahad was somewhat wild as a young man," agreed the butler
with a sort of feudal pride in his voice. It was the opinion of the
Servants' Hall that the Hon. Galahad shed lustre on Blandings Castle.
"Has it ever occurred to you, Beach, that that book of his is going to
make no small stir when it comes out?"
"Frequently, sir."
"Well, I'm saving up for my copy. By the way, I knew there was
something I wanted to ask you. Can you give me any information on the
subject of a bloke named Baxter?"
"Mr. Baxter, sir? He used to be private secretary to his lordship."
"Yes, so I gathered. Lady Constance was speaking to me about him this
morning. She happened upon me as I was taking the air in riding kit and
didn't seem over-pleased. 'You appear to enjoy a great deal of leisure,
Mr. Carmody,' she said. 'Mr. Baxter,' she continued, giving me the
meaning eye, 'never seemed to find time to go riding when he was Lord
Emsworth's secretary. Mr. Baxter was always so hard at work. But then,
Mr. Baxter,' she added, the old lamp becoming more meaning than ever,
'loved his work. Mr. Baxter took a real interest in his duties. Dear
me! What a very conscientious man Mr. Baxter was, to be sure!' Or words
to that effect. I may be wrong, but I classed it as a dirty dig. And
what I want to know is, if Baxter was such a world beater why did they
ever let him go?"
The butler gazed about him cautiously.
"I fancy, sir, there was some trouble."
"Pinched the spoons, eh? Always the way with these zealous workers."
"I never succeeded in learning the full details, sir, but there was
something about some flower pots."
"He pinched the flower pots?"
"Threw them at his lordship, I was given to understand."
Hugo looked injured. He was a high-spirited young man who chafed at
injustice.
"Well, I'm dashed if I see, then," he said, "where this Baxter
can claim to rank so jolly high above me as a secretary. I may be
leisurely, I may forget to answer letters, I may occasionally on warm
afternoons go in to some extent for the folding of the hands in sleep,
but at least I don't throw flower pots at people. Not so much as a pen
wiper have I ever bunged at Lord Emsworth. Well, I must be getting
about my duties. That ride this morning and a slight slumber after
lunch have set the schedule back a bit. You won't forget that note,
will you?"
"No, sir."
Hugo reflected.
"On second thoughts," he said, "perhaps you'd better hand it back to
me. Safer not to have too much written matter circulating about the
place. Just tell Miss Millicent that she will find me in the rose
garden at six sharp."
"In the rose garden...."
"At six sharp."
"Very good, sir. I will see that she receives the information."
II
For two hours after this absolutely nothing happened in the grounds of
Blandings Castle. At the end of that period there sounded through the
mellow, drowsy stillness a drowsy, mellow chiming. It was the clock
over the stables striking five. Simultaneously a small but noteworthy
procession filed out of the house and made its way across the
sun-bathed lawn to where the big cedar cast a grateful shade. It was
headed by James, a footman, bearing a laden tray. Following him came
Thomas, another footman, with a gate-leg table. The rear was brought up
by Beach, who carried nothing but merely lent a tone.
The instinct that warns all good Englishmen when tea is ready
immediately began to perform its silent duty. Even as Thomas set
gate-leg table to earth there appeared, as if answering a cue, an
elderly gentleman in stained tweeds and a hat he should have been
ashamed of: Clarence, ninth Earl of Emsworth, in person. He was a long,
lean, stringy man of about sixty, slightly speckled at the moment with
mud, for he had spent most of the afternoon pottering round pigsties.
He surveyed the preparations for the meal with vague amiability through
rimless pince-nez.
"Tea?"
"Yes, your lordship."
"Oh?" said Lord Emsworth. "Ah? Tea, eh? Tea? Yes. Tea. Quite so. To be
sure, tea. Capital."
One gathered from his remarks that he realized that the tea hour had
arrived and was glad of it. He proceeded to impart his discovery to
his niece, Millicent, who, lured by that same silent call, had just
appeared at his side.
"Tea, Millicent."
"Yes."
"Er--tea," said Lord Emsworth, driving home his point.
Millicent sat down and busied herself with the pot. She was a tall,
fair girl with soft blue eyes and a face like the Soul's Awakening. Her
whole appearance radiated wholesome innocence. Not even an expert could
have told that she had just received a whispered message from a bribed
butler and was proposing at six sharp to go and meet a quite ineligible
young man among the rose bushes.
"Been down seeing the Empress, Uncle Clarence?"
"Eh? Oh, yes. Yes, my dear. I have been with her all the afternoon."
Lord Emsworth's mild eyes beamed. They always did when that noble
animal, Empress of Blandings, was mentioned. The ninth Earl was a
man of few and simple ambitions. He had never desired to mould the
destinies of the State, to frame its laws and make speeches in the
House of Lords that would bring all the peers and bishops to their
feet, whooping and waving their hats. All he yearned to do, by way of
insuring admittance to England's Hall of Fame, was to tend his prize
sow, Empress of Blandings, so sedulously that for the second time in
two consecutive years she would win the silver medal in the Fat Pigs
class at the Shropshire Agricultural Show. And every day, it seemed to
him, the glittering prize was coming more and more within his grasp.
Earlier in the summer there had been one breathless, sickening moment
of suspense, and disaster had seemed to loom. This was when his
neighbour, Sir Gregory Parsloe-Parsloe of Matchingham Hall, had basely
lured away his pig man, the superbly gifted George Cyril Wellbeloved,
by the promise of higher wages. For a while Lord Emsworth had feared
lest the Empress, mourning for her old friend and valet, might refuse
food and fall from her high standard of obesity. But his apprehensions
had proved groundless. The Empress had taken to Pirbright, George
Cyril's successor, from the first, and was tucking away her meals with
all the old abandon. The Right triumphs in this world far more often
than we realize.
"What do you do to her?" asked Millicent curiously. "Read her bedtime
stories?"
Lord Emsworth pursed his lips. He had a reverent mind and disliked
jesting on serious subjects.
"Whatever I do, my dear, it seems to effect its purpose. She is in
wonderful shape."
"I didn't know she had a shape. She hadn't when I last saw her."
This time Lord Emsworth smiled indulgently. Gibes at the Empress's
rotundity had no sting for him. He did not desire for her that
schoolgirl slimness which is so fashionable nowadays.
"She has never fed more heartily," he said. "It is a treat to watch
her."
"I'm so glad. Mr. Carmody," said Millicent, stooping to tickle a
spaniel which had wandered up to take pot luck, "told me he had never
seen a finer animal in his life."
"I like that young man," said Lord Emsworth emphatically. "He is sound
on pigs. He has his head screwed on the right way."
"Yes, he's an improvement on Baxter, isn't he?"
"Baxter!" His lordship choked over his cup.
"You didn't like Baxter much, did you, Uncle Clarence?"
"Hadn't a peaceful moment while he was in the place. Dreadful feller!
Always fussing. Always wanting me to _do_ things. Always coming round
corners with his infernal spectacles gleaming and making me sign papers
when I wanted to be out in the garden. Besides, he was off his head.
Thank goodness I've seen the last of Baxter."
"But have you?"
"What do you mean?"
"If you ask me," said Millicent, "Aunt Constance hasn't given up the
idea of getting him back."
Lord Emsworth started with such violence that his pince-nez fell off.
She had touched on his favourite nightmare. Sometimes he would wake
trembling in the night, fancying that his late secretary had returned
to the castle. And though on these occasions he always dropped off to
sleep again with a happy smile of relief, he had never ceased to be
haunted by the fear that his sister Constance, in her infernal managing
way, was scheming to restore the fellow to office.
"Good God! Has she said anything to you?"
"No. But I have a feeling. I know she doesn't like Mr. Carmody."
Lord Emsworth exploded.
"Perfect nonsense! Utter, absolute, dashed nonsense. What on earth does
she find to object to in young Carmody? Most capable, intelligent boy.
Leaves me alone. Doesn't fuss me. I wish to heaven she would----"
He broke off, and stared blankly at a handsome woman of middle age who
had come out of the house and was crossing the lawn.
"Why, here she is!" said Millicent, equally and just as disagreeably
surprised. "I thought you had gone up to London, Aunt Constance."
Lady Constance Keeble had arrived at the table. Declining with a
distrait shake of the head her niece's offer of the seat of honour by
the teapot, she sank into a chair. She was a woman of still remarkable
beauty, with features cast in a commanding mould, and fine eyes. These
eyes were at the moment dull and brooding.
"I missed my train," she explained. "However, I can do all I have to do
in London to-morrow. I shall go up by the eleven-fifteen. In a way, it
will be more convenient, for Ronald will be able to motor me back. I
will look in at Norfolk Street and pick him up there before he starts."
"What made you miss your train?"
"Yes," said Lord Emsworth complainingly. "You started in good time."
The brooding look in his sister's eyes deepened.
"I met Sir Gregory Parsloe." Lord Emsworth stiffened at the name.
"He kept me talking. He is extremely worried." Lord Emsworth looked
pleased. "He tells me he used to know Galahad very well a number of
years ago, and he is very much alarmed about this book of his."
"And I bet he isn't the only one," murmured Millicent.
She was right. Once a man of the Hon. Galahad Threepwood's antecedents
starts taking pen in hand and being reminded of amusing incidents
that happened to my dear old friend So-and-So you never know where
he will stop; and all over England, among the more elderly of the
nobility and gentry, something like a panic had been raging ever since
the news of his literary activities had got about. From Sir Gregory
Parsloe-Parsloe of Matchingham Hall to gray-headed pillars of society
in distant Cumberland and Kent, whole droves of respectable men who in
their younger days had been rash enough to chum with the Hon. Galahad
were recalling past follies committed in his company and speculating
agitatedly as to how good the old pest's memory was.
For Galahad in his day had been a notable lad about town. A _beau
sabreur_ of Romano's. A Pink 'Un. A Pelican. A crony of Hughie Drummond
and Fatty Coleman; a brother in arms of the Shifter, the Pitcher, Peter
Blobbs, and the rest of an interesting but not straitlaced circle.
Bookmakers had called him by his pet name; barmaids had simpered
beneath his gallant chaff. He had heard the chimes at midnight. And
when he looked in at the old Gardenia commissionaires had fought for
the privilege of throwing him out. A man, in a word, who should never
have been taught to write and who, if unhappily gifted with that
ability, should have been restrained by Act of Parliament from writing
reminiscences.
So thought Lady Constance, his sister. So thought Sir Gregory
Parsloe-Parsloe, his neighbour. And so thought the pillars of Society
in distant Cumberland and Kent. Widely as they differed on many points,
they were unanimous on this.
"He wanted me to try to find out if Galahad was putting anything about
him into it."
"Better ask him now," said Millicent. "He's just come out of the house
and seems to be heading in this direction."
Lady Constance turned sharply; and, following her niece's pointing
finger, winced. The mere sight of her deplorable brother was generally
enough to make her wince. When he began to talk and she had to listen
the wince became a shudder. His conversations had the effect of making
her feel as if she had suddenly swallowed something acid.
"It always makes me laugh," said Millicent, "when I think what a
frightfully bad shot Uncle Gally's godfathers and godmothers made when
they christened him."
She regarded her approaching relative with that tolerant--indeed,
admiring--affection which the young of her sex, even when they have
Madonna-like faces, are only too prone to lavish on such of their
seniors as have had interesting pasts.
"Doesn't he look marvellous?" she said. "It really is an extraordinary
thing that anyone who has had as good a time as he has can be so
amazingly healthy. Everywhere you look you see men leading model
lives and pegging out in their prime, while good old Uncle Gally, who
apparently never went to bed till he was fifty, is still breezing along
as fit and rosy as ever."
"All our family have had excellent constitutions," said Lord Emsworth.
"And I'll bet Uncle Gally needed every ounce of his," said Millicent.
The Author, ambling briskly across the lawn, had now joined the little
group at the tea table. As his photograph had indicated, he was a
short, trim, dapper little man of the type one associates automatically
in one's mind with checked suits, tight trousers, white bowler hats,
pink carnations, and race glasses bumping against the left hip. Though
bareheaded at the moment and in his shirt sleeves and displaying
on the tip of his nose the ink spot of the literary life, he still
seemed out of place away from a paddock or an American bar. His bright
eyes, puckered at the corners, peered before him as though watching
horses rounding into the straight. His neatly shod foot had about it
a suggestion of pawing in search of a brass rail. A jaunty little
gentleman, and, as Millicent had said, quite astonishingly fit and
rosy. A thoroughly misspent life had left the Hon. Galahad Threepwood,
contrary to the most elementary justice, in what appeared to be
perfect, even exuberantly perfect, physical condition. How a man who
ought to have had the liver of the century could look and behave as he
did was a constant mystery to his associates. His eyes were not dimmed,
nor his natural force abated; and when, skipping blithely across the
turf, he tripped over the spaniel, so graceful was the agility with
which he recovered his balance that he did not spill a drop of the
whisky-and-soda in his hand. He continued to bear the glass aloft like
some brave banner beneath which he had often fought and won. Instead of
the blot on a proud family he might have been a teetotal acrobat.
Having disentangled himself from the spaniel and soothed the animal's
wounded feelings by permitting it to sniff the whisky-and-soda, the
Hon. Galahad produced a black-rimmed monocle and, screwing it into his
eye, surveyed the table with a frown of distaste.
"Tea?"
Millicent reached for a cup.
"Cream and sugar, Uncle Gally?"
He stopped her with a gesture of shocked loathing.
"You know I never drink tea. Too much respect for my inside. Don't tell
me you are ruining your inside with that poison."
"Sorry, Uncle Gally. I like it."
"You be careful," urged the Hon. Galahad, who was fond of his niece
and did not like to see her falling into bad habits. "You be very
careful how you fool about with that stuff. Did I ever tell you about
poor Buffy Struggles back in 'ninety-three? Some misguided person
lured poor old Buffy into one of those temperance lectures illustrated
with coloured slides, and he called on me next day ashen, poor old
chap--ashen. 'Gally,' he said. 'What would you say the procedure was
when a fellow wants to buy tea? How would a fellow set about it?'
'Tea?' I said. 'What do you want tea for?' 'To drink,' said Buffy.
'Pull yourself together, dear boy,' I said. 'You're talking wildly. You
can't drink tea. Have a brandy-and-soda.' 'No more alcohol for me,'
said Buffy. 'Look what it does to the common earthworm.' 'But you're
not a common earthworm,' I said, putting my finger on the flaw in
his argument right away. 'I dashed soon shall be if I go on drinking
alcohol,' said Buffy. Well, I begged him with tears in my eyes not to
do anything rash, but I couldn't move him. He ordered in ten pounds of
the muck and was dead inside the year."
"Good heavens! Really?"
The Hon. Galahad nodded impressively.
"Dead as a doornail. Got run over by a hansom cab, poor dear old chap,
as he was crossing Piccadilly. You'll find the story in my book."
"How's the book coming along?"
"Magnificently, my dear. Splendidly. I had no notion writing was so
easy. The stuff just pours out. Clarence, I wanted to ask you about
a date. What year was it there was that terrible row between young
Gregory Parsloe and Lord Burper, when Parsloe stole the old chap's
false teeth and pawned them at a shop in the Edgware Road? '96? I
should have said later than that--'97 or '98. Perhaps you're right,
though. I'll pencil in '96 tentatively."
Lady Constance uttered a sharp cry. The sunlight had now gone quite
definitely out of her life. She felt, as she so often felt in her
brother Galahad's society, as if foxes were gnawing her vitals. Not
even the thought that she could now give Sir Gregory Parsloe-Parsloe
the inside information for which he had asked was able to comfort her.
"Galahad! You are not proposing to print libellous stories like that
about our nearest neighbour?"
"Certainly I am." The Hon. Galahad snorted militantly. "And as for
libel, let him bring an action if he wants to. I'll fight him to the
House of Lords. It's the best documented story in my book. Well, if
you insist it was '96, Clarence--I'll tell you what," said the Hon.
Galahad, inspired, "I'll say 'toward the end of the nineties.' After
all, the exact date isn't so important. It's the facts that matter."
And, leaping lightly over the spaniel, he flitted away across the lawn.
Lady Constance sat rigid in her chair. Her fine eyes were now
protruding slightly, and her face was drawn. This, and not the Mona
Lisa's, you would have said, looking at her, was the head on which all
the sorrows of the world had fallen.
"Clarence!"
"My dear?"
"What are you going to do about this?"
"Do?"
"Can't you see that something must be done? Do you realize that if
this awful book of Galahad's is published it will alienate half our
friends? They will think we are to blame. They will say we ought to
have stopped him somehow. Imagine Sir Gregory's feelings when he reads
that appalling story!"
Lord Emsworth's amiable face darkened.
"I am not worrying about Parsloe's feelings. Besides, he did steal
Burper's false teeth. I remember him showing them to me. He had them
packed up in cotton wool in a small cigar box."
The gesture known as wringing the hands is one that is seldom seen in
real life, but Lady Constance Keeble at this point did something with
hers which might by a liberal interpretation have been described as
wringing.
"Oh, if Mr. Baxter were only here!" she moaned.
Lord Emsworth started with such violence that his pince-nez fell off
and he dropped a slice of seed cake.
"What on earth do you want that awful feller here for?"
"He would find a way out of this dreadful business. He was always so
efficient."
"Baxter's off his head."
Lady Constance uttered a sharp exclamation.
"Clarence, you really can be the most irritating person in the world.
You get an idea and you cling to it in spite of whatever anybody says.
Mr. Baxter was the most wonderfully capable man I ever met."
"Yes, capable of anything," retorted Lord Emsworth with spirit. "Threw
flower pots at me in the middle of the night. I woke up in the small
hours and found flower pots streaming in at my bedroom window and
looked out and there was this feller Baxter standing on the terrace in
lemon-coloured pajamas, hurling the dashed things as if he thought he
was a machine gun or something. I suppose he's in an asylum by this
time."
Lady Constance had turned a bright scarlet. Even in their nursery days
she had never felt quite so hostile toward the head of the family as
now.
"You know perfectly well that there was a quite simple explanation. My
diamond necklace had been stolen, and Mr. Baxter thought the thief had
hidden it in one of the flower pots. He went to look for it and got
locked out and tried to attract attention by----"
"Well, I prefer to think the man was crazy, and that's the line that
Galahad takes in his book."
"His----! Galahad is not putting that story in his book?"
"Of course he's putting it in his book. Do you think he's going to
waste excellent material like that? And, as I say, the line Galahad
takes--and he's a clear-thinking, level-headed man--is that Baxter was
a raving, roaring lunatic. Well, I'm going to have another look at the
Empress."
He pottered off pigward.
III
For some moments after he had gone there was silence at the tea table.
Millicent lay back in her chair, Lady Constance sat stiffly upright in
hers. A little breeze that brought with it a scent of wallflowers began
whispering the first tidings that the cool of evening was on its way.
"Why are you so anxious to get Mr. Baxter back, Aunt Constance?" asked
Millicent.
Lady Constance's rigidity had relaxed. She was looking her calm,
masterful self again. She had the air of a woman who has just solved a
difficult problem.
"I think his presence here essential," she said.
"Uncle Clarence doesn't seem to agree with you."
"Your Uncle Clarence has always been completely blind to his best
interests. He ought never to have dismissed the only secretary he has
ever had who was capable of looking after his affairs."
"Isn't Mr. Carmody any good?"
"No. He is not. And I shall never feel easy in my mind until Mr. Baxter
is back in his old place."
"What's wrong with Mr. Carmody?"
"He is grossly inefficient. And," said Lady Constance, unmasking her
batteries, "I consider that he spends far too much of his time mooning
around you, my dear. He appears to imagine that he is at Blandings
Castle simply to dance attendance on you."
The charge struck Millicent as unjust. She thought of pointing out that
she and Hugo only met occasionally and then on the sly, but it occurred
to her that the plea might be injudicious. She bent over the spaniel.
A keen observer might have noted a defensiveness in her manner. She
looked like a girl preparing to cope with an aunt.
"Do you find him an entertaining companion?"
Millicent yawned.
"Mr. Carmody? No, not particularly."
"A dull young man, I should have thought."
"Deadly."
"Vapid."
"Vap to a degree."
"And yet you went riding with him last Tuesday."
"Anything's better than riding alone."
"You play tennis with him, too."
"Well, tennis is a game I defy you to play by yourself."
Lady Constance's lips tightened.
"I wish Ronald had never persuaded your uncle to employ him. Clarence
should have seen by the mere look of him that he was impossible." She
paused. "It will be nice having Ronald here," she said.
"Yes."
"You must try to see something of him. If," said Lady Constance, in the
manner which her intimates found rather less pleasant than some of her
other manners, "Mr. Carmody can spare you for a moment from time to
time."
She eyed her niece narrowly. But Millicent was a match for any number
of narrow glances, and had been from her sixteenth birthday. She was
also a girl who believed that the best form of defence is attack.
"Do you think I'm in love with Mr. Carmody, Aunt Constance?"
Lady Constance was not a woman who relished the direct methods of the
younger generation. She coloured.
"Such a thought never entered my head."
"That's fine. I was afraid it had."
"A sensible girl like you would naturally see the utter impossibility
of marriage with a man in his position. He has no money and very little
prospects. And, of course, your uncle holds your own money in trust
for you and would never dream of releasing it if you wished to make an
unsuitable marriage."
"So it does seem lucky I'm not in love with him, doesn't it?"
"Extremely fortunate."
Lady Constance paused for a moment, then introduced a topic on which
she had frequently touched before. Millicent had seen it coming by the
look in her eyes.
"Why you won't marry Ronald I can't think. It would be so suitable in
every way. You have been fond of one another since you were children."
"Oh, I like old Ronnie a lot."
"It has been a great disappointment to your Aunt Julia."
"She must cheer up. She'll get him off all right if she sticks at it."
Lady Constance bridled.
"It is not a question of.... If you will forgive my saying so, my dear,
I think you have allowed yourself to fall into a way of taking Ronald
far too much for granted. I am afraid you have the impression that he
will always be there, ready and waiting for you when you at last decide
to make up your mind. I don't think you realize what a very attractive
young man he is."
"The longer I wait, the more fascinating it will give him time to
become."
At a moment less tense Lady Constance would have taken time off to
rebuke this flippancy; but she felt it would be unwise to depart from
her main theme.
"He is just the sort of young man that girls are drawn to. In fact,
I have been meaning to tell you. I had a letter from your Aunt Julia
saying that during her stay at Biarritz they met a most charming
American girl, a Miss Schoonmaker, whose father, it seems, used to be
a friend of your Uncle Galahad. She appeared to be quite taken with
Ronald, and he with her. He travelled back to Paris with her and left
her there."
"How fickle men are!" sighed Millicent.
"She had some shopping to do," said Lady Constance sharply. "By this
time she is probably in London. Julia invited her to stay at Blandings,
and she accepted. She may be here any day now. And I do think, my
dear," proceeded Lady Constance earnestly, "that before she arrives
you ought to consider very carefully what your feelings toward Ronald
really are."
"You mean, if I don't watch my step this Miss Doopenhacker may steal my
Ronnie away from me?"
It was not quite how Lady Constance would have put it herself, but it
conveyed her meaning.
"Exactly."
Millicent laughed. It was plain that her flesh declined to creep at the
prospect.
"Good luck to her," she said. "She can count on a fish slice from me,
and I'll be a bridesmaid, too, if wanted. Can't you understand, Aunt
Constance, that I haven't the slightest desire to marry Ronnie? We're
great pals and all that, but he's not my style. Too short, for one
thing."
"Short?"
"I'm inches taller than he is. When we went up the aisle I should look
like someone taking her little brother for a walk."
Lady Constance would undoubtedly have commented on this remark, but
before she could do so the procession reappeared, playing an unexpected
return date. Footman James bore a dish of fruit; Footman Thomas a
salver with a cream jug on it. Beach, as before, confined himself to a
straight ornamental rôle.
"Oo!" said Millicent welcomingly. And the spaniel, who liked anything
involving cream, gave a silent nod of approval.
"Well," said Lady Constance, as the procession withdrew, giving up the
lost cause, "if you won't marry Ronald, I suppose you won't."
"That's about it," agreed Millicent, pouring cream.
"At any rate, I am relieved to hear that there is no nonsense going on
between you and this Mr. Carmody. That I could not have endured."
"He's only moderately popular with you, isn't he?"
"I dislike him extremely."
"I wonder why. I should have thought he was fairly all right, as young
men go. Uncle Clarence likes him. So does Uncle Gally."
Lady Constance had a high, arched nose, admirably adapted for sniffing.
She used it now to the limits of its power.
"Mr. Carmody," she said, "is just the sort of young man your Uncle
Galahad would like. No doubt he reminds him of the horrible men he used
to go about London with in his young days."
"Mr. Carmody isn't a bit like that."
"Indeed?" Lady Constance sniffed again. "Well, I dislike mentioning it
to you, Millicent, for I am old-fashioned enough to think that young
girls should be shielded from a knowledge of the world, but I happen
to know that Mr. Carmody is not at all a nice young man. I have it on
the most excellent authority that he is entangled with some impossible
chorus girl."
It is not easy to sit suddenly bolt upright in a deep garden chair, but
Millicent managed the feat.
"What!"
"Lady Allardyce told me so."
"And how does she know?"
"Her son Vernon told her. A girl of the name of Brown. Vernon Allardyce
says that he used to see her repeatedly, lunching and dining and
dancing with Mr. Carmody."
There was a long silence.
"Nice boy, Vernon," said Millicent.
"He tells his mother everything."
"That's what I meant. I think it's so sweet of him." Millicent rose.
"Well, I'm going to take a short stroll."
She wandered off toward the rose garden.
IV
A young man who has arranged to meet the girl he loves in the rose
garden at six sharp naturally goes there at five-twenty-five, so as
not to be late. Hugo Carmody had done this, with the result that by
three minutes to six he was feeling as if he had been marooned among
roses since the beginning of the summer.
If anybody had told Hugh Carmody six months before that halfway through
the following July he would be lurking in trysting places like this,
his whole being alert for the coming of a girl, he would have scoffed
at the idea. He would have laughed lightly. Not that he had not been
fond of girls. He had always liked girls. But they had been, as it
were, the mere playthings, so to speak, of a financial giant's idle
hour. Six months ago he had been the keen, iron-souled man of business,
all his energies and thoughts devoted to the management of the Hot Spot.
But now he stood shuffling his feet and starting hopefully at every
sound, while the leaden moments passed sluggishly on their way. Then
his vigil was enlivened by a wasp, which stung him on the back of the
hand. He was leaping to and fro, licking his wounds, when he perceived
the girl of his dreams coming down the path.
"Ah!" cried Hugo.
He ceased to leap and, rushing forward, would have clasped her in a
fond embrace. Many people advocate the old-fashioned blue-bag for wasp
stings, but Hugo preferred this treatment.
To his astonishment she drew back. And she was not a girl who usually
drew back on these occasions.
"What's the matter?" he asked, pained. It seemed to him that a spanner
had been bunged into a holy moment.
"Nothing."
Hugo was concerned. He did not like the way she was looking at him. Her
soft blue eyes appeared to have been turned into stone.
"I say," he said, "I've just been stung by a beastly great wasp."
"Good!" said Millicent. The way she was talking seemed to him worse
than the way she was looking.
Hugo's concern increased.
"I say, what's up?"
The granite eye took on an added hardness.
"You want to know what's up?"
"Yes--what's up?"
"I'll tell you what's up."
"Well, what's up?" asked Hugo.
He waited for enlightenment, but she had fallen into a chilling silence.
"You know," said Hugo, breaking it, "I'm getting pretty fed up with
all this secrecy and general snakiness. Seeing you for an occasional
odd five minutes a day and having to put on false whiskers and hide in
bushes to manage that. I know the Keeble looks on me as a sort of cross
between a leper and a nosegay of deadly nightshade, but I'm strong with
the old boy. I talk pig to him. You might almost say I play on him as
on a stringed instrument. So what's wrong with going to him and telling
him in a frank and manly way that we love each other and are going to
get married?"
The marble of Millicent's face was disturbed by one of those quick,
sharp, short, bitter smiles that do nobody any good.
"Why should we lie to Uncle Clarence?"
"Eh?"
"I say why should we tell him something that isn't true?"
"I don't get your drift."
"I will continue snowing," said Millicent coldly. "I am not quite sure
if I am ever going to speak to you again in this world or the next.
Much will depend on how good you are as an explainer. I have it on the
most excellent authority that you are entangled with a chorus girl. How
about it?"
Hugo reeled. But then St. Anthony himself would have reeled if a charge
like that had suddenly been hurled at him. The best of men require time
to overhaul their consciences on such occasions. A moment, and he was
himself again.
"It's a lie!"
"Name of Brown."
"Not a word of truth in it. I haven't set eyes on Sue Brown since I
first met you."
"No. You've been down here all the time."
"And when I _was_ setting eyes on her--why, dash it, my attitude from
start to finish was one of blameless, innocent, one hundred per cent.
brotherliness. A wholesome friendship. Brotherly. Nothing more. I liked
dancing and she liked dancing and our steps fitted. So occasionally we
would go out together and tread the measure. That's all there was to
it. Pure brotherliness. Nothing more. I looked on myself as a sort of
brother."
"Brother, eh?"
"Absolutely a brother. Don't," urged Hugo earnestly, "go running away,
my dear old thing, with any sort of silly notion that Sue Brown was
something in the nature of a vamp. She's one of the nicest girls you
would ever want to meet."
"Nice, is she?"
"A sweet girl. A girl in a million. A real good sort. A sound egg."
"Pretty, I suppose?"
The native good sense of the Carmodys asserted itself at the eleventh
hour.
"Not pretty," said Hugo decidedly. "Not pretty, no. Not at all pretty.
Far from pretty. Totally lacking in sex appeal, poor girl. But nice. A
good sort. No nonsense about her. Sisterly."
Millicent pondered.
"H'm," she said.
Nature paused, listening. Birds checked their song, insects their
droning. It was as if it had got about that this young man's fate hung
in the balance and the returns would be in shortly.
"Well, all right," she said at length. "I suppose I'll have to believe
you."
"'At's the way to talk!"
"But just you bear this in mind, my lad. Any funny business from now
on...."
"As if...!"
"One more attack of that brotherly urge...."
"As though...!"
"All right, then."
Hugo inhaled vigorously. He felt like a man who has just dodged a
wounded tigress.
"_Banzai!_" he said. "Sweethearts still!"
V
Blandings Castle dozed in the twilight. Its various inmates were
variously occupied. Clarence, ninth Earl of Emsworth, after many a
longing, lingering look behind, had dragged himself away from the
Empress's boudoir and was reading his well-thumbed copy of _British
Pigs_. The Hon. Galahad, having fixed up the Parsloe-Burper passage,
was skimming through his day's output with an artist's complacent
feeling that this was the stuff to give 'em. Butler Beach was pasting
the Hon. Galahad's photograph into his album. Millicent, in her
bedroom, was looking a little thoughtfully into her mirror. Hugo, in
the billiard room, was practising pensive cannons and thinking loving
thoughts of his lady, coupled with an occasional reflection that a
short, swift binge in London would be a great wheeze if he could wangle
it.
And in her boudoir on the second floor Lady Constance Keeble had taken
pen in hand and was poising it over a sheet of notepaper.
"Dear Mr. Baxter," she wrote.