I
The rose garden of Blandings Castle was a famous beauty spot. Most
people who visited it considered it deserving of a long and leisurely
inspection. Enthusiastic horticulturists frequently went pottering
and sniffing about it for hours on end. The tour through its fragrant
groves personally conducted by the Hon. Galahad Threepwood lasted some
six minutes.
"Well, that's what it is, you see," he said, as they emerged, waving
a hand vaguely. "Roses and--er--roses, and all that sort of thing.
You get the idea. And now, if you don't mind, I ought to be getting
back. I want to keep in touch with the house. It slipped my mind, but
I'm expecting a man to call to see me at any moment on some rather
important business."
Sue was quite willing to return. She liked her companion, but she had
found his company embarrassing. The subject of the Schoonmaker family
history showed a tendency to bulk too largely in his conversation for
comfort. Fortunately, his practice of asking a question and answering
it himself and then rambling off into some anecdote of the person or
persons involved had enabled her so far to avoid disaster; but there
was no saying how long this happy state of things would last. She was
glad of the opportunity of being alone.
Besides, Ronnie was somewhere out in these grounds. At any moment, if
she went wandering through them, she might come upon him. And then,
she told herself, all would be well. Surely he could not preserve his
sullen hostility in the face of the fact that she had come all this
way, pretending dangerously to be Miss Schoonmaker of New York, simply
in order to see him?
Her companion, she found, was still talking.
"He wants to see me about a play. This book of mine is going to make a
stir, you see, and he thinks that if he can get me to put my name to
the play...."
Sue's thoughts wandered again. She gathered that the caller he was
expecting had to do with the theatrical industry, and wondered for a
moment if it was anyone she had ever heard of. She was not sufficiently
interested to make inquiries. She was too busy thinking of Ronnie.
"I shall be quite happy," she said, as the voice beside her ceased.
"It's such a lovely place. I shall enjoy just wandering about by
myself."
The Hon. Galahad seemed shocked at the idea.
"Wouldn't dream of leaving you alone. Clarence will look after you, and
I shall be back in a few minutes."
The name seemed to Sue to strike a familiar chord. Then she remembered.
Lord Emsworth. Ronnie's Uncle Clarence. The man who held Ronnie's
destinies in the hollow of his hand.
"Hi! Clarence!" called the Hon. Galahad.
Sue perceived pottering toward them a long, stringy man of mild and
benevolent aspect. She was conscious of something of a shock. In
Ronnie's conversation the Earl of Emsworth had always appeared in the
light of a sort of latter-day ogre, a man at whom the stoutest nephew
might well shudder. She saw nothing formidable in this newcomer.
"Is that Lord Emsworth?" she asked, surprised.
"Yes. Clarence, this is Miss Schoonmaker."
His lordship had pottered up and was beaming amiably.
"Is it, indeed? Oh, ah, yes, to be sure. Delighted. How are you? How
are you? Miss Who?"
"Schoonmaker. Daughter of my old friend Johnny Schoonmaker. You knew
she was arriving. Considering that you were in the hall when Constance
went to meet her----"
"Oh, yes." The cloud was passing from what, for want of a better word,
must be called Lord Emsworth's mind. "Yes, yes, yes. Yes, to be sure."
"I've got to leave you to look after her for a few minutes, Clarence."
"Certainly, certainly."
"Take her about and show her things. I wouldn't go too far from the
house, if I were you. There's a storm coming up."
"Exactly. Precisely. Yes, I will take her about and show her things.
Are you fond of pigs?"
Sue had never considered this point before. Hers had been an urban
life, and she could not remember ever having come into contact with a
pig on what might be termed a social footing. But, remembering that
this was the man whom Ronnie had described as being wrapped up in one
of these animals, she smiled her bright smile.
"Oh, yes. Very."
"Mine has been stolen."
"I'm so sorry."
Lord Emsworth was visibly pleased at this womanly sympathy.
"But I now have strong hopes that she may be recovered. The trained
mind is everything. What I always say----"
What it was that Lord Emsworth always said was unfortunately destined
to remain unrevealed. It would probably have been something good, but
the world was not to hear it; for at this moment, completely breaking
his train of thought, there came from above, from the direction of the
window of the small library, an odd scrabbling sound. Something shot
through the air. And the next instant there appeared in the middle of
a flower bed containing lobelias something that was so manifestly not
a lobelia that he stared at it in stunned amazement, speech wiped from
his lips as with a sponge.
It was the Efficient Baxter. He was on all fours, and seemed to be
groping about for his spectacles, which had fallen off and got hidden
in the undergrowth.
II
Properly considered, there is no such thing as an insoluble mystery.
It may seem puzzling at first sight when ex-secretaries start falling
as the gentle rain from heaven upon the lobelias beneath, but there is
always a reason for it. That Baxter did not immediately give the reason
was due to the fact that he had private and personal motives for not
doing so.
We have called Rupert Baxter efficient, and efficient he was. The
word, as we interpret it, implies not only a capacity for performing
the ordinary tasks of life with a smooth firmness of touch but in
addition a certain alertness of mind, a genius for opportunism, a gift
for seeing clearly, thinking swiftly, and Doing It Now. With these
qualities Rupert Baxter was preëminently equipped; and it had been with
him the work of a moment to perceive, directly the Hon. Galahad had
left the house with Sue, that here was his chance of popping upstairs,
nipping into the small library, and abstracting the manuscript of the
Reminiscences. Having popped and nipped, as planned, he was in the
very act of searching the desk when the sound of a footstep outside
froze him from his spectacles to the soles of his feet. The next moment
fingers began to turn the door handle.
You may freeze a Baxter's body, but you cannot numb his active brain.
With one masterful, lightning-like flash of clear thinking he took in
the situation and saw the only possible way out. To reach the door
leading to the large library he would have to circumnavigate the desk.
The window, on the other hand, was at his elbow. So he jumped out of it.
All these things Baxter could have explained in a few words. Refraining
from doing so, he rose to his feet and began to brush the mould from
his knees.
"Baxter! What on earth----?"
The ex-secretary found the gaze of his late employer trying to nerves
which had been considerably shaken by his fall. The occasions on which
he disliked Lord Emsworth most intensely were just these occasions when
the other gaped at him open-mouthed like a surprised halibut.
"I overbalanced," he said curtly.
"Overbalanced?"
"Slipped."
"Slipped?"
"Yes. Slipped."
"How? Where?"
It now occurred to Baxter that by a most fortunate chance the window of
the small library was not the only one that looked out onto this arena
into which he had precipitated himself. He might equally well have
descended from the larger library which adjoined it.
"I was leaning out of the library window."
"Why?"
"Inhaling the air."
"What for?"
"And I lost my balance."
"Lost your balance?"
"I slipped."
"Slipped?"
Baxter had the feeling--it was one which he had often had in the old
days when conversing with Lord Emsworth--that an exchange of remarks
had begun which might go on forever. A keen desire swept over him to
be--and that right speedily--in some other place. He did not care where
it was. So long as Lord Emsworth was not there it would be Paradise
enow.
"I think I will go indoors and wash my hands," he said.
"And face," suggested the Hon. Galahad.
"My face also," said Rupert Baxter coldly.
He started to move round the angle of the house, but long before he
had got out of hearing Lord Emsworth's high and penetrating tenor was
dealing with the situation. His lordship, as so often happened on these
occasions, was under the impression that he spoke in a hushed whisper.
"Mad as a coot!" he said. And the words rang out through the still
summer air like a public oration.
They cut Baxter to the quick. They were not the sort of words to which
a man with an inch and a quarter of skin off his left shin bone ought
ever to have been called upon to listen. With flushed ears and glowing
spectacles, the Efficient Baxter passed on his way. Statistics relating
to madness among coots are not to hand, but we may safely doubt whether
even in the ranks of these notoriously unbalanced birds there could
have been found at this moment one who was feeling half as mad as he
was.
III
Lord Emsworth continued to gaze at the spot where his late secretary
had passed from sight.
"Mad as a coot," he repeated.
In his brother Galahad he found a ready supporter.
"Madder," said the Hon. Galahad.
"Upon my word, I think he's actually worse than he was two years ago.
Then, at least, he never fell out of windows."
"Why on earth do you have that fellow here?"
Lord Emsworth sighed.
"It's Constance, my dear Galahad. You know what she is. She insisted on
inviting him."
"Well, if you take my advice you'll hide the flower pots. One of the
things this fellow does when he gets these attacks," explained the Hon.
Galahad, taking Sue into the family confidence, "is to go about hurling
flower pots at people."
"Really?" said Sue.
"I assure you. Looking for me, Beach?"
The careworn figure of the butler had appeared, walking as one pacing
behind the coffin of an old friend.
"Yes, sir. The gentleman has arrived, Mr. Galahad. I looked in the
small library, thinking that you might possibly be there, but you were
not."
"No, I was out here."
"Yes, sir."
"That's why you couldn't find me. Show him up to the small library,
Beach, and tell him I'll be with him in a moment."
"Very good, sir."
The Hon. Galahad's temporary delay in going to see his visitor was due
to his desire to linger long enough to tell Sue, to whom he had taken
a warm fancy and whom he wished to shield as far as it was in his
power from the perils of life, what every girl ought to know about the
Efficient Baxter.
"Never let yourself be alone with that fellow in a deserted spot, my
dear," he counselled. "If he suggests a walk in the woods call for
help. Been off his head for years. Ask Clarence."
Lord Emsworth nodded solemnly.
"And it looks to me," went on the Hon. Galahad, "as if his mania had
now taken a suicidal turn. Overbalanced, indeed! How the deuce could
he have overbalanced? Flung himself out bodily, that's what he did.
I couldn't think who it was he reminded me of till this moment. He's
the living image of a man I used to know in the 'nineties. The first
intimation any of us had that this chap had anything wrong with him was
when he turned up to supper at the house of a friend of mine--George
Pallant. You remember George, Clarence?--with a couple of days' beard
on him. And when Mrs. George, who had known him all her life, asked him
why he hadn't shaved--'Shaved?' says this fellow, surprised.--Packleby,
his name was. One of the Leicestershire Packlebys.--'Shaved, dear
lady?' he says. 'Well, considering that they even hide the butter knife
when I come down to breakfast for fear I'll try to cut my throat with
it, is it reasonable to suppose they'd trust me with a razor?' Quite
stuffy about it, he was, and it spoiled the party. Look after Miss
Schoonmaker, Clarence. I shan't be long."
Lord Emsworth had little experience in the art of providing diversion
for young girls. Left thus to his native inspiration, he pondered a
while. If the Empress had not been stolen, his task would, of course,
have been simple. He could have given this Miss Schoonmaker a half hour
of sheer entertainment by taking her down to the piggeries to watch
that superb animal feed. As it was, he was at something of a loss.
"Perhaps you would care to see the rose garden?" he hazarded.
"I should love it," said Sue.
"Are you fond of roses?"
"Tremendously."
Lord Emsworth found himself warming to this girl. Her personality
pleased him. He seemed dimly to recall something his sister Constance
had said about her--something about wishing that her nephew Ronald
would settle down with some nice girl with money like that Miss
Schoonmaker whom Julia had met at Biarritz. Feeling so kindly toward
her, it occurred to him that a word in season, opening her eyes to his
nephew's true character, might prevent the girl making a mistake which
she would regret forever when it was too late.
"I think you know my nephew Ronald?" he said.
"Yes."
Lord Emsworth paused to smell a rose. He gave Sue a brief biography of
it before returning to the theme.
"That boy's an ass," he said.
"Why?" said Sue sharply. She began to feel less amiable toward this
stringy old man. A moment before she had been thinking that it was
rather charming, that funny, vague manner of his. Now she saw him
clearly for what he was--a dodderer, and a Class A dodderer at that.
"Why?" His lordship considered the point. "Well, heredity, probably,
I should say. His father, old Miles Fish, was the biggest fool in the
Brigade of Guards." He looked at her impressively through slanting
pince-nez, as if to call her attention to the fact that this was
something of an achievement. "The boy throws tennis balls at pigs," he
went on, getting down to the ghastly facts.
Sue was surprised. The words, if she had caught them correctly, seemed
to present a side of Ronnie's character of which she had been unaware.
"Does what?"
"I saw him with my own eyes. He threw a tennis ball at Empress of
Blandings. And not once but repeatedly."
The motherly instinct which all girls feel toward the men they love
urged Sue to say something in Ronnie's defence. But apart from
suggesting that the pig had probably started it she could not think
of anything. They left the rose garden and began to walk back to the
lawn, Lord Emsworth still exercised by the thought of his nephew's
shortcomings. For one reason and another Ronnie had always been a
source of vague annoyance to him since boyhood. There had even been
times when he had felt that he would almost have preferred the society
of his younger son, Frederick.
"Aggravating boy," he said. "Most aggravating. Always up to something
or other. Started a night club the other day. Lost a lot of money over
it. Just the sort of thing he would do. My brother Galahad started some
kind of a club many years ago. It cost my old father nearly a thousand
pounds, I recollect. There is something about Ronald that reminds me
very much of Galahad at the same age."
Although Sue had found much in the author of the Reminiscences to
attract her she was able to form a very fair estimate of the sort
of young man he must have been in the middle twenties. This charge,
accordingly, struck her as positively libellous.
"I don't agree with you, Lord Emsworth."
"But you never knew my brother Galahad as a young man," his lordship
pointed out cleverly.
"What is the name of that hill over there?" asked Sue in a cold voice,
changing the unpleasant subject.
"That hill? Oh, that one?" It was the only one in sight. "It is called
the Wrekin."
"Oh?" said Sue.
"Yes," said Lord Emsworth.
"Ah," said Sue.
They had crossed the lawn and were on the broad terraces that looked
out over the park. Sue leaned on the low stone wall that bordered it
and gazed before her into the gathering dusk.
The castle had been built on a knoll of rising ground, and on this
terrace one had the illusion of being perched up at a great height.
From where she stood, Sue got a sweeping view of the park and of the
dim, misty Vale of Blandings that dreamed beyond. In the park, rabbits
were scuttling to and fro. In the shrubberies birds called sleepily.
From somewhere out across the fields there came the faint tinkling of
sheep bells. The lake shone like old silver, and there was a river in
the distance, dull gray between the dull green of the trees.
It was a lovely sight, age-old, orderly, and English, but it was
spoiled by the sky. The sky was overcast and looked bruised. It seemed
to be made of dough, and one could fancy it pressing down on the world
like a heavy blanket. And it was muttering to itself. A single heavy
drop of rain splashed on the stone beside Sue, and there was a low
growl far away as if some powerful and unfriendly beast had spied her.
She shivered. She had been gripped by a sudden depression, a strange
foreboding that chilled the spirit. That muttering seemed to say that
there was no happiness anywhere and never could be any. The air was
growing close and clammy. Another drop of rain fell, squashily like a
toad, and spread itself over her hand.
Lord Emsworth was finding his companion unresponsive. His stream of
prattle slackened and died away. He began to wonder how he was to
escape from a girl who, though undeniably pleasing to the eye, was
proving singularly difficult to talk to. Raking the horizon in search
of aid, he perceived Beach approaching, a silver salver in his hand.
The salver had a card on it and an envelope.
"For me, Beach?"
"The card, your lordship. The gentleman is in the hall."
Lord Emsworth breathed a sigh of relief.
"You will excuse me, my dear? It is most important that I should see
this fellow immediately. My brother Galahad will be back very shortly,
I have no doubt. He will entertain you. You don't mind?"
He bustled away, glad to go, and Sue became conscious of the salver,
thrust deferentially toward her.
"For you, miss."
"For me?"
"Yes, miss," moaned Beach, like a winter wind wailing through dead
trees.
He inclined his head sombrely and was gone. She tore open the envelope.
For one breath-taking instant she had thought it might be from Ronnie.
But the writing was not Ronnie's familiar scrawl. It was bold, clear,
decisive writing, the writing of an efficient man.
She looked at the last page.
Yours sincerely
R. J. BAXTER.
Sue's heart was beating faster as she turned back to the beginning.
When a girl in the position in which she had placed herself has been
stared at through steel-rimmed spectacles in the way this R. J. Baxter
had stared at her through his spectacles, her initial reaction to
mysterious notes from the man behind the lenses cannot but be a panic
fear that all has been discovered.
The opening sentence dispelled her alarm. Purely personal motives, it
appeared, had caused Rupert Baxter to write these few lines. The mere
fact that the letter began with the words "Dear Miss Schoonmaker" was
enough in itself to bring comfort.
At the risk of annoying you by the intrusion of my private affairs
[wrote the Efficient Baxter, rather in the manner of one beginning
an after-dinner speech], I feel that I must give you an explanation
of the incident which occurred in the garden in your presence this
afternoon. From the observation--in the grossest taste--which Lord
Emsworth let fall in my hearing, I fear you may have placed a wrong
construction on what took place. (I allude to the expression "Mad
as a coot," which I distinctly heard Lord Emsworth utter as I moved
away.)
The facts were precisely as I stated. I was leaning out of the
library window, and, chancing to lean too far, I lost my balance
and fell. That I might have received serious injuries and was
entitled to expect sympathy, I overlook. But the words "Mad as a
coot" I resent extremely.
Had this incident not occurred, I would not have dreamed of saying
anything to prejudice you against your host. As it is, I feel that
in justice to myself I must tell you that Lord Emsworth is a man to
whose utterances no attention should be paid. He is to all intents
and purposes half-witted. Life in the country, with its lack of
intellectual stimulus, has caused his natural feebleness of mind
to reach a stage which borders closely on insanity. His relatives
look on him as virtually an imbecile and have, in my opinion, every
cause to do so.
In these circumstances, I think I may rely on you to attach no
importance to his remarks this afternoon.
Yours sincerely
R. J. BAXTER.
P.S. You will, of course, treat this as entirely confidential.
P.P.S. If you are fond of chess and would care for a game after
dinner I am a good player.
P.P.S.S. Or bezique.
Sue thought it a good letter, neat and well expressed. Why it had
been written she could not imagine. It had not occurred to her that
love--or, at any rate, a human desire to marry a wealthy heiress--had
begun to burgeon in R. J. Baxter's bosom. With no particular emotions
other than the feeling that if he was counting on playing bezique with
her after dinner he was due for a disappointment, she put the letter in
her pocket, and looked out over the park again.
The object of all good literature is to purge the soul of its petty
troubles. This, she was pleased to discover, Baxter's letter had
succeeded in doing. Recalling its polished phrases, she found herself
smiling appreciatively.
That muttering sky did not look so menacing now. Everything, she told
herself, was going to be all right. After all, she did not ask much
from Fate--just an uninterrupted five minutes with Ronnie. And if Fate
so far had denied her this very moderate demand----
"All alone?"
Sue turned, her heart beating quickly. The voice, speaking close behind
her, had had something of the effect of a douche of iced water down her
back. For, restorative though Baxter's letter had been, it had not
left her in quite the frame of mind to enjoy anything so sudden and
jumpy as an unexpected voice.
It was the Hon. Galahad, back from his interview with the gentleman,
and the sight of him did nothing to calm her agitation. He was eying
her, she thought, with a strange and sinister intentness. And though
his manner, as he planted himself beside her and began to talk, seemed
all that was cordial and friendly, she could not rid herself of a
feeling of uneasiness. That look still lingered in her mind's eye.
With the air all heavy and woolly and the sky growling pessimistic
prophecies it had been a look to alarm the bravest girl.
Chattering amiably, the Hon. Galahad spoke of this and that: of scenery
and the weather; of birds and rabbits; of friends of his who had served
terms in prison, and of other friends who, one would have said on the
evidence, had been lucky to escape. Then his monocle was up again and
that look was back on his face.
The air was more breathless than ever.
"You know," said the Hon. Galahad, "it's been a great treat to me,
meeting you, my dear. I haven't seen any of your people for a number of
years, but your father and I correspond pretty regularly. He tells me
all the news. Did you leave your family well?"
"Quite well."
"How was your Aunt Edna?"
"Fine," said Sue feebly.
"Ah," said the Hon. Galahad. "Then your father must have been mistaken
when he told me she was dead. But perhaps you thought I meant your Aunt
Edith?"
"Yes," said Sue gratefully.
"She's all right, I hope?"
"Oh, yes."
"What a lovely woman!"
"Yes."
"You mean she still is?"
"Oh, yes."
"Remarkable! She must be well over seventy by now. No doubt you mean
beautiful considering she is over seventy?"
"Yes."
"Pretty active?"
"Oh, yes."
"When did you see her last?"
"Oh--just before I sailed."
"And you say she's active? Curious! I heard two years ago that she was
paralyzed. I suppose you mean active for a paralytic."
The little puckers at the corners of his eyes deepened into wrinkles.
The monocle gleamed like the eye of a dragon. He smiled genially.
"Confide in me, Miss Brown," he said. "What's the game?"