Blandings Castle and Elsewhere (2 page)

It might be purely imagination, but to his excited fancy the
pumpkin seemed to be pining for Angus too. It appeared to be
drooping and losing weight. Lord Emsworth could not rid
himself of the horrible idea that it was shrinking. And on the
tenth night after McAllister's departure he dreamed a strange
dream. He had gone with King George to show his Gracious
Majesty the pumpkin, promising him the treat of a lifetime; and,
when they arrived, there in the corner of the frame was a
shrivelled thing the size of a pea. He woke, sweating, with his
sovereign's disappointed screams ringing in his ears; and Pride
gave its last quiver and collapsed. To reinstate Angus would be a
surrender, but it must be done.

'Beach,' he said that morning at breakfast, 'do you happen to – er –
to have McAllister's address?'

'Yes, your lordship,' replied the butler. 'He is in London,
residing at number eleven Buxton Crescent.'

'Buxton Crescent? Never heard of it.'

'It is, I fancy, your lordship, a boarding-house or some such
establishment off the Cromwell Road. McAllister was accustomed
to make it his head-quarters whenever he visited the
Metropolis on account of its handiness for Kensington Gardens.
He liked,' said Beach with respectful reproach, for Angus had
been a friend of his for nine years, 'to be near the flowers, your
lordship.'

Two telegrams, passing through it in the course of the next
twelve hours, caused some gossip at the post office of the little
town of Market Blandings.

The first ran:

McAllister,
11,
Buxton Crescent,
Cromwell Road,
London.

Return immediately. – Emsworth.

The second!

Lord Emsworth,
Blandings Castle,
Shropshire.

I will not. – McAllister.

Lord Emsworth had one of those minds capable of accommodating
but one thought at a time – if that; and the possibility that Angus
McAllister might decline to return had not occurred to him. It was difficult
to adjust himself to this new problem, but he managed it at last. Before nightfall
he had made up his mind. Robert Barker, that broken reed, could remain in
charge for another day or so, and meanwhile he would go up to London and engage
a real head-gardener, the finest head-gardener that money could buy.

It was the opinion of Dr Johnson that there is in London all
that life can afford. A man, he held, who is tired of London is
tired of life itself. Lord Emsworth, had he been aware of this
statement, would have contested it warmly. He hated London.
He loathed its crowds, its smells, its noises; its omnibuses, its
taxis, and its hard pavements. And, in addition to all its other
defects, the miserable town did not seem able to produce a single
decent head-gardener. He went from agency to agency, interviewing
candidates, and not one of them came within a mile of
meeting his requirements. He disliked their faces, he distrusted
their references. It was a harsh thing to say of any man, but he
was dashed if the best of them was even as good as Robert
Barker.

It was, therefore, in a black and soured mood that his lordship,
having lunched frugally at the Senior Conservative Club
on the third day of his visit, stood on the steps in the sunshine,
wondering how on earth he was to get through the afternoon.
He had spent the morning rejecting head-gardeners, and the
next batch was not due until the morrow. And what – besides
rejecting head-gardeners – was there for a man of reasonable
tastes to do with his time in this hopeless town?

And then there came into his mind a remark which Beach the
butler had made at the breakfast-table about flowers in Kensington
Gardens. He could go to Kensington Gardens and look
at the flowers.

He was about to hail a taxicab from the rank down the street
when there suddenly emerged from the Hotel Magnificent over
the way a young man. This young man proceeded to cross the
road, and, as he drew near, it seemed to Lord Emsworth that
there was about his appearance something oddly familiar. He
stared for a long instant before he could believe his eyes, then
with a wordless cry bounded down the steps just as the other
started to mount them.

'Oh, hullo, guv'nor!' ejaculated the Hon. Freddie, plainly
startled.

'What – what are you doing here?' demanded Lord Emsworth.

He spoke with heat, and justly so. London, as the result of
several spirited escapades which still rankled in the mind of a
father who had had to foot the bills, was forbidden ground to
Freddie.

The young man was plainly not at his ease. He had the air of
one who is being pushed towards dangerous machinery in which
he is loath to become entangled. He shuffled his feet for a
moment, then raised his left shoe and rubbed the back of his
right calf with it.

'The fact is, guv'nor—'

'You know you are forbidden to come to London.'

'Absolutely, guv'nor, but the fact is—'

And why anybody but an imbecile should want to come to
London when he could be at Blandings—'

'I know, guv'nor, but the fact is—' Here Freddie, having
replaced his wandering foot on the pavement, raised the other,
and rubbed the back of his left calf. 'I wanted to see you,' he said.
'Yes. Particularly wanted to see you.'

This was not strictly accurate. The last thing in the world
which the Hon. Freddie wanted was to see his parent. He had
come to the Senior Conservative Club to leave a carefully
written note. Having delivered which, it had been his intention
to bolt like a rabbit. This unforeseen meeting had upset his
plans.

'To see me?' said Lord Emsworth. 'Why?'

'Got – er – something to tell you. Bit of news.'

'I trust it is of sufficient importance to justify your coming to
London against my express wishes.'

'Oh, yes. Oh, yes, yes-yes. Oh, rather. It's dashed important.
Yes – not to put too fine a point upon it – most dashed important.
I say, guv'nor, are you in fairly good form to stand a bit of a
shock?'

A ghastly thought rushed into Lord Emsworth's mind. Freddie's
mysterious arrival – his strange manner – his odd hesitation
and uneasiness – could it mean—? He clutched the young man's
arm feverishly.

'Frederick! Speak! Tell me! Have the cats got at it?'

It was a fixed idea of Lord Emsworth, which no argument
would have induced him to abandon, that cats had the power to
work some dreadful mischief on his pumpkin and were continually
lying in wait for the opportunity of doing so; and his
behaviour on the occasion when one of the fast sporting set from
the stables, wandering into the kitchen garden and finding him
gazing at the Blandings Hope, had rubbed itself sociably against
his leg, lingered long in that animal's memory.

Freddie stared.

'Cats? Why? Where? Which? What cats?'

'Frederick! Is anything wrong with the pumpkin?'

In a crass and materialistic world there must inevitably be a
scattered few here and there in whom pumpkins touch no chord.
The Hon. Freddie Threepwood was one of these. He was
accustomed to speak in mockery of all pumpkins, and had even
gone so far as to allude to the Hope of Blandings as 'Percy.' His
father's anxiety, therefore, merely caused him to giggle.

'Not that I know of,' he said.

'Then what do you mean?' thundered Lord Emsworth, stung
by the giggle. 'What do you mean, sir, by coming here and
alarming me – scaring me out of my wits, by Gad! – with your
nonsense about giving me shocks?'

The Hon. Freddie looked carefully at his fermenting parent.
His fingers, sliding into his pocket, closed on the note which
nestled there. He drew it forth.

'Look here, guv'nor,' he said nervously. 'I think the best thing
would be for you to read this. Meant to leave it for you with the
hall-porter. It's –well, you just cast your eye over it. Good-bye,
guv'nor. Got to see a man.'

And, thrusting the note into his father's hand, the Hon.
Freddie turned and was gone. Lord Emsworth, perplexed and
annoyed, watched him skim up the road and leap into a cab. He
seethed impotently. Practically any behaviour on the part of his
son Frederick had the power to irritate him, but it was when he
was vague and mysterious and incoherent that the young man
irritated him most.

He looked at the letter in his hand, turned it over, felt it. Then
– for it had suddenly occurred to him that if he wished to
ascertain its contents he had better read it – he tore open the
envelope.

The note was brief, but full of good reading matter.

Dear Guvnor,

Awfully sorry and all that, but couldn't hold out any longer.
I've popped up to London in the two-seater and Aggie and I were
spliced this morning. There looked like being a bit of a hitch at one
time, but Aggie's guv'nor, who has come over from America,
managed to wangle it all right by getting a special licence or
something of that order. A most capable Johnny. He's coming to
see you. He wants to have a good long talk with you about the
whole binge. Lush him up hospitably and all that, would you
mind, because he's a really sound egg, and you'll like him.

Well, cheerio!

Your affectionate son,
Freddie.

P.S. – You won't mind if I freeze on to the two-seater for the
nonce, what? It may come in useful for the honeymoon.

The Senior Conservative Club is a solid and massive building,
but, as Lord Emsworth raised his eyes dumbly from the perusal of this letter,
it seemed to him that it was performing a kind of whirling dance. The whole
of the immediate neighbourhood, indeed, appeared to be shimmying in the middle
of a thick mist. He was profoundly stirred. It is not too much to say that
he was shaken to the core of his being. No father enjoys being flouted and
defied by his own son; nor is it reasonable to expect a man to take a cheery
view of life who is faced with the prospect of supporting for the remainder
of his years a younger son, a younger son's wife, and possibly younger grandchildren.

For an appreciable space of time he stood in the middle of the
pavement, rooted to the spot. Passers-by bumped into him or
grumblingly made
détours
to avoid a collision. Dogs sniffed at his
ankles. Seedy-looking individuals tried to arrest his attention in
order to speak of their financial affairs. Lord Emsworth heeded
none of them. He remained where he was, gaping like a fish,
until suddenly his faculties seemed to return to him.

An imperative need for flowers and green trees swept upon
Lord Emsworth. The noise of the traffic and the heat of the sun
on the stone pavement were afflicting him like a nightmare. He
signalled energetically to a passing cab.

'Kensington Gardens,' he said, and sank back on the cushioned
seat.

Something dimly resembling peace crept into his lordship's
soul as he paid off his cab and entered the cool shade of the
gardens. Even from the road he had caught a glimpse of stimulating
reds and yellows; and as he ambled up the asphalt path and
plunged round the corner the flower-beds burst upon his sight in
all their consoling glory.

'Ah!' breathed Lord Emsworth, rapturously, and came to a
halt before a glowing carpet of tulips. A man of official aspect,
wearing a peaked cap and a uniform, stopped as he heard the
exclamation and looked at him with approval and even affection.

'Nice weather we're 'avin',' he observed.

Lord Emsworth did not reply. He had not heard. There is
that about a well-set-out bed of flowers which acts on men who
love their gardens like a drug, and he was in a sort of trance.
Already he had completely forgotten where he was, and seemed
to himself to be back in his paradise of Blandings. He drew a step
nearer to the flower-bed, pointing like a setter.

The official-looking man's approval deepened. This man with
the peaked cap was the park-keeper, who held the rights of the
high, the low, and the middle justice over that section of the
gardens. He, too, loved these flower-beds, and he seemed to see
in Lord Emsworth a kindred soul. The general public was too
apt to pass by, engrossed in its own affairs, and this often
wounded the park-keeper. In Lord Emsworth he thought that
he recognized one of the right sort.

'Nice—' he began.

He broke off with a sharp cry. If he had not seen it with his
own eyes, he would not have believed it. But, alas, there was no
possibility of a mistake. With a ghastly shock he realized that he
had been deceived in this attractive stranger. Decently, if untidily,
dressed; clean; respectable to the outward eye; the stranger
was in reality a dangerous criminal, the blackest type of evil-doer
on the park-keeper's index. He was a Kensington Gardens
flower-picker.

For, even as he uttered the word 'Nice,' the man had stepped
lightly over the low railing, had shambled across the strip of turf,
and before you could say 'weather' was busy on his dark work. In
the brief instant in which the park-keeper's vocal chords refused
to obey him, he was two tulips ahead of the game and reaching
out to scoop in a third.

'Hi!!!' roared the park-keeper, suddenly finding speech. "I
there!!!'

Lord Emsworth turned with a start.

'Bless my soul!' he murmured reproachfully.

He was in full possession of his senses now, such as they were,
and understood the enormity of his conduct. He shuffled back
on to the asphalt, contrite.

'My dear fellow—' he began remorsefully.

The park-keeper began to speak rapidly and at length.
From time to time Lord Emsworth moved his lips and made
deprecating gestures, but he could not stem the flood. Louder
and more rhetorical grew the park-keeper and denser and more
interested the rapidly assembling crowd of spectators. And then
through the stream of words another voice spoke.

'Wot's all this?'