Blandings Castle and Elsewhere (12 page)

'Rats, m'lady?'

'Take that sack away from Mr Frederick!'

Beach understood. If he was surprised at the presence of the
younger son of the house in the amber drawing-room with a
sack of rats in his hand, he gave no indication of the fact. With
a murmured apology, he secured the sack and started to withdraw.
It was not, strictly, his place to carry rats, but a good butler
is always ready to give and take. Only so can the amenities of a
large country house be preserved.

'And don't drop the dashed things,' urged Lord Emsworth.

'Very good, m'lord.'

The Hon. Freddie had flung himself into a chair, and was
sitting with his chin cupped in his hands, a bleak look on his
face. To an ardent young go-getter these tyrannous actions in
restraint of trade are hard to bear.

Lord Emsworth returned to his book.

Lady Constance returned to her sewing.

Lady Alcester returned to her thoughts.

At the piano Orlo Watkins was endeavouring to justify the
motives which had led him a few moments before to retire
prudently behind Gertrude.

'I hate rats,' he said. 'They jar upon me.'

'Oh?' said Gertrude.

'I'm not afraid of them, of course, but they give me the
creeps.'

'Oh?' said Gertrude.

There was an odd look in her eyes. Of what was she thinking,
this idealistic girl? Was it of the evening, a few short weeks
before, when, suddenly encountering a beastly bat in the gloaming,
she had found in the Rev. Rupert Bingham a sturdy and
intrepid protector? Was she picturing the Rev. Rupert as she had
seen him then – gallant, fearless, cleaving the air with long
sweeps of his clerical hat, encouraging her the while with word
and gesture?

Apparently so, for a moment later she spoke.

'How are you on bats?'

'Rats?'

'Bats.'

'Oh, bats?'

'Are you afraid of bats?'

'I don't like bats,' admitted Orlo Watkins.

Then, dismissing the subject, he reseated himself at the piano
and sang of June and the scent of unseen flowers.

Of all the little group in the amber drawing-room, only one
member has now been left unaccounted for.

An animal of slow thought-processes, the dog Bottles had
not at first observed what was happening to the sack. At the
moment of its transference from the custody of Freddie to that
of Beach, he had been engaged in sniffing at the leg of a chair. It
was only as the door began to close that he became aware of the
bereavement that threatened him. He bounded forward with a
passionate cry, but it was too late. He found himself faced by
unyielding wood. And when he started to scratch vehemently on
this wood, a sharp pain assailed him. A book on the treatment of
Pigs in sickness and in health, superbly aimed, had struck him in
the small of the back. Then, for a space, he, like the Hon.
Freddie Threepwood, his social sponsor, sat down and mourned.

'Take that beastly, blasted, infernal dog out of here,' cried
Lord Emsworth.

Freddie rose listlessly.

'It's old Beefers' dog,' he said. 'Beefers will be here at any
moment. We can hand the whole conduct of the affair over to
him.'

Gertrude started.

'Is Rupert coming here to-night?'

'Said he would,' responded Freddie, and passed from the
scene. He had had sufficient of his flesh and blood and was
indisposed to linger. It was his intention to pop down to Market
Blandings in his two-seater, soothe his wounded sensibilities, so
far as they were capable of being soothed, with a visit to the local
motion-picture house, look in at the Emsworth Arms for a spot
of beer, and then home to bed, to forget.

Gertrude had fallen into a reverie. Her fair young face was
overcast. A feeling of embarrassment had come upon her. When
she had written that letter and posted it on the previous night,
she had not foreseen that the Rev. Rupert would be calling so
soon.

'I didn't know Rupert was coming to-night,' she said.

'Oh, yes,' said Lady Alcester brightly.

'Like a lingering tune, my whole life through, 'twill haunt me
for EV-ah, that night in June with you-oo,' sang Orlo Watkins.

And Gertrude, looking at him, was aware for the first time of
a curious sensation of not being completely in harmony with this
young whiskered man. She wished he would stop singing. He
prevented her thinking.

Bottles, meanwhile, had resumed his explorations. Dogs are
philosophers. They soon forget. They do not waste time regretting
the might-have-beens. Adjusting himself with composure
to the changed conditions, Bottles moved to and fro in a spirit of
affable inquiry. He looked at Lord Emsworth, considered
the idea of seeing how he smelt, thought better of it, and
advanced towards the French windows. Something was rustling
in the bushes outside, and it seemed to him that this might
as well be looked into before he went and breathed on Lady
Constance's leg.

He had almost reached his objective, when Lady Alcester's
Airedale, who had absented himself from the room some time
before in order to do a bit of bone-burying, came bustling in,
ready, his business completed, to resume the social whirl.

Seeing Bottles, he stopped abruptly.

Both then began a slow and cautious forward movement, of a
crab-like kind. Arriving at close quarters, they stopped again.
Their nostrils twitched a little. They rolled their eyes. And to the
ears of those present there came, faintly at first, a low, throaty
sound, like the far-off gargling of an octogenarian with bronchial
trouble.

This rose to a sudden crescendo. And the next moment
hostilities had begun.

In underrating Bottles's qualities and scoffing at him as a
fighting force, Lady Alcester had made an error. Capable
though he was of pusillanimity in the presence of female Pekingese,
there was nothing of the weakling about this sterling animal.
He had cleaned up every dog in Much Matchingham and
was spoken of on all sides – from the Blue Boar in the High
Street to the distant Cow and Caterpillar on the Shrewsbury
Road – as an ornament to the Vicarage and a credit to his
master's Cloth.

On the present occasion, moreover, he was strengthened by
the fact that he felt he had right on his side. In spite of a certain
coldness on the part of the Castle circle and a soreness about the
ribs where the book on Pigs and their treatment had found its
billet, there seems to be no doubt that Bottles had by this time
become thoroughly convinced that this drawing-room was his
official home. And, feeling that all these delightful people were
relying on him to look after their interests and keep alien and
subversive influences at a distance, he advanced with a bright
willingness to the task of ejecting this intruder.

Nor was the Airedale disposed to hold back. He, too, was no
stranger to the ring. In Hyde Park, where, when at his London
residence, he took his daily airing, he had met all comers and
acquitted himself well. Dogs from Mayfair, dogs from Bayswater,
dogs from as far afield as the Brompton Road and West
Kensington had had experience of the stuff of which he was
made. Bottles reminded him a little of an animal from Pont
Street, over whom he had once obtained a decision on the banks
of the Serpentine; and he joined battle with an easy confidence,

The reactions of a country-house party to an after-dinner
dog-fight in the drawing-room always vary considerably according
to the individual natures of its members. Lady Alcester,
whose long association with the species had made her a sort of
honorary dog herself, remained tranquil. She surveyed the
proceedings with unruffled equanimity through a tortoise-shell-rimmed
lorgnette. Her chief emotion was one of surprise
at the fact that Bottles was unquestionably getting the better
of the exchanges. She liked his footwork. Impressed, she was
obliged to admit that, if this was the sort of battler it turned out,
there must be something in Donaldson's Dog-Joy after all.

The rest of the audience were unable to imitate her nonchalance.
The two principals were giving that odd illusion, customary
on these occasions, of being all over the place at the same
time: and the demeanour of those in the ring-side seats was
frankly alarmed. Lady Constance had backed against the wall,
from which position she threw a futile cushion. Lord Emsworth,
in his corner, was hunting feebly for ammunition and
wishing that he had not dropped the pince-nez, without which
he was no sort of use in a crisis.

And Gertrude? Gertrude was staring at Orlo Watkins, who,
with a resource and presence of mind unusual in one so
young, had just climbed on top of a high cabinet containing
china.

His feet were on a level with her eyes, and she saw that they
were feet of clay.

And it was at this moment, when a girl stood face to face with
her soul, that the door opened.

'Mr Bingham,' announced Beach.

Men of the physique of the Rev. Rupert Bingham are not as a
rule quick thinkers. From earliest youth, the Rev. Rupert had
run to brawn rather than brain. But even the dullest-witted
person could have told, on crossing that threshold, that there
was a dog-fight going on. Beefy Bingham saw it in a flash, and
he acted promptly.

There are numerous methods of stopping these painful
affairs. Some advocate squirting water, others prefer to sprinkle
pepper. Good results may be obtained, so one school of thought
claims, by holding a lighted match under the nearest nose. Beefy
Bingham was impatient of these subtleties.

To Beefy all this was old stuff. Ever since he had been given
his Cure of Souls, half his time, it sometimes seemed to him, had
been spent in hauling Bottles away from the throats of the dogs
of his little flock. Experience had given him a technique. He
placed one massive hand on the neck of the Airedale, the other
on the neck of Bottles, and pulled. There was a rending sound,
and they came apart.

'Rupert!' cried Gertrude.

Gazing at him, she was reminded of the heroes of old. And
few could have denied that he made a strangely impressive
figure, this large young man, standing there with bulging eyes
and a gyrating dog in each hand. He looked like a statue of Right
triumphing over Wrong. You couldn't place it exactly, because it
was so long since you had read the book, but he reminded you of
something out of 'Pilgrim's Progress.'

So, at least, thought Gertrude. To Gertrude it was as if
the scales had fallen from her eyes and she had wakened from
some fevered dream. Could it be she, she was asking herself,
who had turned from this noble youth and strayed towards
one who, though on the evidence he seemed to have a future
before him as an Alpine climber, was otherwise so contemptible?

'Rupert!' said Gertrude.

Beefy Bingham had now completed his masterly campaign.
He had thrown Bottles out of the window and shut it behind
him. He had dropped the Airedale to the carpet, where it now
sat, licking itself in a ruminative way. He had produced a handkerchief
and was passing it over his vermilion brow.

'Oh, Rupert!' said Gertrude, and flung herself into his arms.

The Rev. Rupert said nothing. On such occasions your
knowledgeable Vicar does not waste words.

Nor did Orlo Watkins speak. He had melted away. Perhaps, perched
on his eyrie, he had seen in Gertrude's eyes the look which, when seen in
the eyes of a girl by any interested party, automatically induces the latter
to go to his room and start packing, in readiness for the telegram which he
will receive on the morrow, summoning him back to London on urgent business.
At any rate, he had melted.

It was late that night when the Hon. Freddie Threepwood
returned to the home of his fathers. Moodily undressing, he was
surprised to hear a knock on the door.

His Aunt Georgiana entered. On her face was the unmistakable
look of a mother whose daughter has seen the light and will
shortly be marrying a deserving young clergyman with a bachelor
uncle high up in the shipping business.

'Freddie,' said Lady Alcester, 'you know that stuff you're
always babbling about – I've forgotten its name ...'

'Donaldson's Dog-Joy,' said Freddie. 'It may be obtained
either in the small (or one-and-threepenny) packets or in the
half-crown (or large) size. A guarantee goes with each purchase.
Unique in its health-giving properties ...'

'I'll take two tons to start with,' said Lady Alcester.

T
HE
day was so warm, so fair, so magically a thing of sunshine
and blue skies and bird-song that anyone acquainted with Clarence,
ninth Earl of Emsworth, and aware of his liking for fine
weather, would have pictured him going about the place on this
summer morning with a beaming smile and an uplifted heart.
Instead of which, humped over the breakfast-table, he was
directing at a blameless kippered herring a look of such intense
bitterness that the fish seemed to sizzle beneath it. For it was
August Bank Holiday, and Blandings Castle on August Bank
Holiday became, in his lordship's opinion, a miniature Inferno.

This was the day when his park and grounds broke out into a
noisome rash of swings, roundabouts, marquees, toy balloons
and paper bags; when a tidal wave of the peasantry and its
squealing young engulfed those haunts of immemorial peace.
On August Bank Holiday he was not allowed to potter pleasantly
about his gardens in an old coat: forces beyond his control
shoved him into a stiff collar and a top hat and told him to go out
and be genial. And in the cool of the quiet evenfall they put him
on a platform and made him make a speech. To a man with a day
like that in front of him fine weather was a mockery.

His sister, Lady Constance Keeble, looked brightly at him
over the coffee-pot.

'What a lovely morning!' she said.

Lord Emsworth's gloom deepened. He chafed at being
called upon – by this woman of all others – to behave as if
everything was for the jolliest in the jolliest of all possible
worlds. But for his sister Constance and her hawk-like vigilance,
he might, he thought, have been able at least to dodge the
top-hat.

'Have you got your speech ready?'

'Yes.'

'Well, mind you learn it by heart this time and don't stammer
and dodder as you did last year.'

Lord Emsworth pushed plate and kipper away. He had lost
his desire for food.

'And don't forget you have to go to the village this morning to
judge the cottage gardens.'

'All right, all right, all right,' said his lordship testily. 'I've not
forgotten.'

'I think I will come to the village with you. There are a
number of those Fresh Air London children staying there now,
and I must warn them to behave properly when they come to the
Fete this afternoon. You know what London children are.
McAllister says he found one of them in the gardens the other
day, picking his flowers.'

At any other time the news of this outrage would, no doubt,
have affected Lord Emsworth profoundly. But now, so intense
was his self-pity, he did not even shudder. He drank coffee with
the air of a man who regretted that it was not hemlock.

'By the way, McAllister was speaking to me again last night
about that gravel path through the yew alley. He seems very keen
on it.'

'Glug!' said Lord Emsworth – which, as any philologist will
tell you, is the sound which peers of the realm make when
stricken to the soul while drinking coffee.

Concerning Glasgow, that great commercial and manufacturing
city in the county of Lanarkshire in Scotland, much has
been written. So lyrically does the Encyclopædia Britannica deal
with the place that it covers twenty-seven pages before it can tear
itself away and go on to Glass, Glastonbury, Glatz and Glauber.
The only aspect of it, however, which immediately concerns the
present historian is the fact that the citizens it breeds are apt to
be grim, dour, persevering, tenacious men; men with red whiskers
who know what they want and mean to get it. Such a one
was Angus McAllister, head-gardener at Blandings Castle.

For years Angus McAllister had set before himself as his
earthly goal the construction of a gravel path through the Castle's
famous yew alley. For years he had been bringing the project
to the notice of his employer, though in anyone less whiskered
the latter's unconcealed loathing would have caused embarrassment.
And now, it seemed, he was at it again.

'Gravel path!' Lord Emsworth stiffened through the whole
length of his stringy body. Nature, he had always maintained,
intended a yew alley to be carpeted with a mossy growth. And,
whatever Nature felt about it, he personally was dashed if he was
going to have men with Clydeside accents and faces like dissipated
potatoes coming along and mutilating that lovely
expanse of green velvet. 'Gravel path, indeed! Why not asphalt?
Why not a few hoardings with advertisements of liver pills and a
filling-station? That's what the man would really like.'

Lord Emsworth felt bitter, and when he felt bitter he could be
terribly sarcastic.

'Well, I think it is a very good idea,' said his sister. 'One could
walk there in wet weather then. Damp moss is ruinous to shoes.'

Lord Emsworth rose. He could bear no more of this. He left
the table, the room and the house and, reaching the yew alley
some minutes later, was revolted to find it infested by Angus
McAllister in person. The head-gardener was standing gazing
at the moss like a high priest of some ancient religion about to
stick the gaff into the human sacrifice.

'Morning, McAllister,' said Lord Emsworth coldly.

'Good morrrrning, your lorrudsheep.'

There was a pause. Angus McAllister, extending a foot that
looked like a violin-case, pressed it on the moss. The meaning of
the gesture was plain. It expressed contempt, dislike, a generally
anti-moss spirit: and Lord Emsworth, wincing, surveyed the
man unpleasantly through his pince-nez. Though not often
given to theological speculation, he was wondering why Providence,
if obliged to make head-gardeners, had found it necessary
to make them so Scotch. In the case of Angus McAllister, why,
going a step farther, have made him a human being at all? All the
ingredients of a first-class mule simply thrown away. He felt that
he might have liked Angus McAllister if he had been a mule.

'I was speaking to her leddyship yesterday.'

'Oh?'

About the gravel path I was speaking to her leddyship.'

'Oh?'

'Her leddyship likes the notion fine.'

'Indeed! Well ...'

Lord Emsworth's face had turned a lively pink, and he was
about to release the blistering words which were forming themselves
in his mind when suddenly he caught the head-gardener's
eye and paused. Angus McAllister was looking at him in a
peculiar manner, and he knew what that look meant. Just one
crack, his eye was saying – in Scotch, of course –just one crack
out of you and I tender my resignation. And with a sickening
shock it came home to Lord Emsworth how completely he was
in this man's clutches.

He shuffled miserably. Yes, he was helpless. Except for that
kink about gravel paths, Angus McAllister was a head-gardener
in a thousand, and he needed him. He could not do without him.
That, unfortunately, had been proved by experiment. Once
before, at the time when they were grooming for the Agricultural
Show that pumpkin which had subsequently romped home
so gallant a winner, he had dared to flout Angus McAllister. And
Angus had resigned, and he had been forced to plead – yes, plead
– with him to come back. An employer cannot hope to do this
sort of thing and still rule with an iron hand. Filled with the
coward rage that dares to burn but does not dare to blaze, Lord
Emsworth coughed a cough that was undisguisedly a bronchial
white flag.

'I'll – er – I'll think it over, McAllister.'

'Mphm.'

'I have to go to the village now. I will see you later.'

'Mphm.'

'Meanwhile, I will – er – think it over.'

'Mphm.'

The task of judging the floral displays in the cottage gardens
of the little village of Blandings Parva was one to which Lord
Emsworth had looked forward with pleasurable anticipation. It
was the sort of job he liked. But now, even though he had
managed to give his sister Constance the slip and was free
from her threatened society, he approached the task with a
downcast spirit. It is always unpleasant for a proud man to
realize that he is no longer captain of his soul; that he is to all
intents and purposes ground beneath the number twelve heel of
a Glaswegian head-gardener; and, brooding on this, he judged
the cottage gardens with a distrait eye. It was only when he came
to the last on his list that anything like animation crept into his
demeanour.

This, he perceived, peering over its rickety fence, was not at
all a bad little garden. It demanded closer inspection. He
unlatched the gate and pottered in. And a dog, dozing behind
a water-butt, opened one eye and looked at him. It was one of
those hairy, nondescript dogs, and its gaze was cold, wary and
suspicious, like that of a stockbroker who thinks someone is
going to play the confidence trick on him.

Lord Emsworth did not observe the animal. He had pottered
to a bed of wallflowers and now, stooping, he took a sniff at
them.

As sniffs go, it was an innocent sniff, but the dog for some
reason appeared to read into it criminality of a high order. All
the indignant householder in him woke in a flash. The next
moment the world had become full of hideous noises, and Lord
Emsworth's preoccupation was swept away in a passionate desire
to save his ankles from harm.

As these chronicles of Blandings Castle have already shown,
he was not at his best with strange dogs. Beyond saying 'Go
away, sir!' and leaping to and fro with an agility surprising in one
of his years, he had accomplished little in the direction of a
reasoned plan of defence when the cottage door opened and
a girl came out.

'Hoy!' cried the girl.

And on the instant, at the mere sound of her voice, the
mongrel, suspending hostilities, bounded at the new-comer
and writhed on his back at her feet with all four legs in the air.
The spectacle reminded Lord Emsworth irresistibly of his own
behaviour when in the presence of Angus McAllister.

He blinked at his preserver. She was a small girl, of uncertain
age – possibly twelve or thirteen, though a combination of
London fogs and early cares had given her face a sort of wizened
motherliness which in some odd way caused his lordship from
the first to look on her as belonging to his own generation. She
was the type of girl you see in back streets carrying a baby nearly
as large as herself and still retaining sufficient energy to lead one
little brother by the hand and shout recrimination at another in
the distance. Her cheeks shone from recent soaping, and she was
dressed in a velveteen frock which was obviously the pick of her
wardrobe. Her hair, in defiance of the prevailing mode, she wore
drawn tightly back into a short pigtail.

'Er – thank you,' said Lord Emsworth.

'Thank you, sir,' said the girl.

For what she was thanking him, his lordship was not able to
gather. Later, as their acquaintance ripened, he was to discover
that this strange gratitude was a habit with his new friend. She
thanked everybody for everything. At the moment, the mannerism
surprised him. He continued to blink at her through his
pince-nez.

Lack of practice had rendered Lord Emsworth a little rusty in
the art of making conversation to members of the other sex. He
sought in his mind for topics.

'Fine day.'

'Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.'

'Are you' – Lord Emsworth furtively consulted his list – 'are
you the daughter of – ah – Ebenezer Sprockett?' he asked,
thinking, as he had often thought before, what ghastly names
some of his tenantry possessed.

'No, sir. I'm from London, sir.'

'Ah? London, eh? Pretty warm it must be there.' He paused.
Then, remembering a formula of his youth: 'Er – been out much
this Season?'

'No, sir.'

'Everybody out of town now, I suppose? What part of London?'

'Drury Line, sir.'

'What's your name? Eh, what?'

'Gladys, sir. Thank you, sir. This is Ern.'

A small boy had wandered out of the cottage, a rather hardboiled
specimen with freckles, bearing surprisingly in his hand a
large and beautiful bunch of flowers. Lord Emsworth bowed
courteously and with the addition of this third party to the
tête-à-tête
felt more at his ease.

'How do you do,' he said. 'What pretty flowers.'

With her brother's advent, Gladys, also, had lost diffidence
and gained conversational aplomb.

A treat, ain't they?' she agreed eagerly. 'I got 'em for 'im up at
the big 'ahse. Coo! The old josser the plice belongs to didn't arf
chase me. 'E found me picking 'em and 'e sharted somefin at me
and come runnin' after me, but I copped 'im on the shin wiv a
stone and 'e stopped to rub it and I come away.'

Lord Emsworth might have corrected her impression that
Blandings Castle and its gardens belonged to Angus McAllister,
but his mind was so filled with admiration and gratitude that he
refrained from doing so. He looked at the girl almost reverently.
Not content with controlling savage dogs with a mere word, this
super-woman actually threw stones at Angus McAllister – a
thing which he had never been able to nerve himself to do in
an association which had lasted nine years – and, what was more,
copped him on the shin with them. What nonsense, Lord Emsworth
felt, the papers talked about the Modern Girl. If this was a
specimen, the Modern Girl was the highest point the sex had yet
reached.

'Ern,' said Gladys, changing the subject, 'is wearin' 'air-oil
todiy.'

Lord Emsworth had already observed this and had, indeed,
been moving to windward as she spoke.

'For the Feet,' explained Gladys.

'For the feet?' It seemed unusual.

'For the Feet in the pork this afternoon.'

'Oh, you are going to the Fete?'

'Yes, sir, thank you, sir.'

For the first time, Lord Emsworth found himself regarding
that grisly social event with something approaching favour.