A Pelican at Blandings Page 15

  'What about?'

  'His ankle. He sprained it and is lying prone on a bed of pain. This is your moment. Go and cheer him up.'

  'Must I?'

  'It might just turn the scale. Do it now.'

  'Or tomorrow perhaps? Or the day after?'

  'No, now. Why the hesitation?'

  'He's rather a formidable character.'

  'Nonsense. Mild as a lamb.'

  'H'm.'

  'Don't say "H'm". No one ever got anywhere by sitting on his trouser seat and saying "H'm". You want to marry the popsy, don't you? Well, obviously the first step is to give Dunstable the old oil. So off you go. Cluster round him like a porous plaster. Dance before him. Ask him riddles. Tell him bedtime stories. Sing him lullabies. Amuse him with simple card tricks.'

  'Well, if you say so,' said John, dubiously.

  His acquaintance with the Duke of Dunstable had been brief, but he was conscious of no eagerness to extend it.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Lord Emsworth went to bed that night in something of a twitter. To a sensitive man the spectacle of a cascade of people falling downstairs is always disturbing, and his reaction to the events that had preceded the evening meal had been a heightening of the blood pressure similar to that which his doctor down in Wiltshire had warned the Duke against. His nerve centres were still vibrating when he reached his room, and it is not surprising that it was a long time before he was able to get to sleep.

  And even when slumber at last came to him it was short-lived, for at about three in the morning there occurred one of those annoying interruptions to repose which are not uncommon in the rural districts. A bat, flitting in the darkness outside, took the wrong turning as it made its nightly rounds and came in through the window which had been left healthfully open. It then proceeded to circle the room in the aimless fat-headed fashion habitual with bats, who are notoriously among the less intellectually gifted of God's creatures. Show me a bat, says the old proverb, and I will show you something that ought to be in some kind of a home.

  It was not immediately that Lord Emsworth became aware that he had a room-mate, for when asleep he was difficult to rouse. But after the creature had whizzed past his face once or twice he began to have the feeling, so often experienced by people in ghost stories, that he was not alone. He sat up in bed, blinked several times, and was eventually able to verify this supposition.

  Though of a dreamy temperament and inclined in most crises to sit still and let his lower jaw droop, he could on occasion be the man of action. He took up a pillow and by flapping at the intruder with it succeeded at length in persuading it to go outside where it would be appreciated, but by now he was so wide awake that he knew that sleep would be impossible until he had soothed himself by reading a pig book for awhile. He had at his bedside a new one which had arrived by the morning post and he had so far merely dipped into it. He took it up, and was soon engrossed.

  It turned out to be one of those startling ultra-modern pig books, the work no doubt of some clever young fellow just down from his agricultural college, and it shocked him a good deal by its avant-garde views on such subjects as swill and bran mash, views which would never have done for orthodox thinkers like Whiffle and Wolff-Lehman. It was, however, undeniably interesting. It gripped. He had to read on to see how it all came out in the end, and, so doing, he arrived at Chapter Five and the passage about the newly-discovered vitamin pill for stimulating the porcine appetite.

  'All nonsense', Whiffle would have said, 'Poppycock', Wolff-Lehman would have called it, but on his credulous mind it made a profound impression. It left him feeling like some watcher of the skies when a new planet swims into his ken or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes he stared at the Pacific. Something on these lines was precisely what he had hoped to find ever since the Empress had declined that potato. Banks, the Market Blandings veterinary surgeon, and Cuthbert Price, his pig man, had tried to lull him into a false security by insisting that no significance was to be attached to what they maintained was a mere passing whim on the noble animal's part, but they had not really set his mind at ease. He remained convinced that an artificial stimulant was needed, and here in Chapter Five of Pigs At A Glance was what looked like the very thing. To be administered twice a day in a little skim milk, the author recommended, and while he did not actually say in so many words that if this policy were pursued the patient would leap with wiggling tail on everything on the menu, one could see that he was confident that that was what the outcome would be, for he promised specifically that at least an inch would be added to the waist line in a matter of days.

  There was probably some good stuff awaiting him in Chapter Six, but Lord Emsworth was too impatient to lie there and read on. He sprang from his bed, his pince-nez quivering on his nose. J. G. Banks had to be informed of this sensational discovery without an instant's delay. He could hardly wait to get him on the telephone.

  He did, however, after finding his bedroom slippers, one of which had hidden itself under the bed, wait for quite an appreciable time, for he had just remembered that the only telephone available was the one in the library, and to reach the library it would be necessary to pass by the room in which his sister Constance slept. And as the picture rose before his eyes of Connie darting out and catching him, he experienced much the same sensation as comes to those who have lived in the East when they get a recurrence of their old malaria.

  It was but a passing weakness. He thought of his Crusading ancestors, particularly Sir Pharamond, the one who did so well at the Battle of Joppa. Would Sir Pharamond with all his mentions in dispatches have allowed a sister to intimidate him? Of course it was possible that Sir Pharamond had not had a sister like Connie, but even so . . .

  Two minutes later, nerved to his perilous venture, he had started on his way.

  2

  It is not too much to say that at this point in his progress Lord Emsworth was feeling calm, confident and carefree; but a wise friend, one who had read his Thomas Hardy and learned from that pessimistic author's works how often and how easily human enterprises are ruined by some unforeseen Act of God, would have warned him against any premature complacency. One never knew, he would have pointed out, around what corner Fate might not be waiting with the stocking full of sand. 'Watch your step, Emsworth,' he would have said.

  This, however, owing to the darkness which prevailed, Lord Emsworth was unable to do, and there was nothing to tell him that a considerable Act of God was lurking outside Lady Constance's door, all ready for his coming. His first intimation that it was there occurred when he put a foot on it and the world seemed to come to an end not with a whimper but with a bang.

  It is to be doubted whether even Sir Pharamond in such circumstances would have been able to preserve his equanimity intact, tough guy though he was admitted to be by his fellow Crusaders. The shock paralysed his descendant. Lord Emsworth stood gulping, gripped by the unpleasant feeling that his spine had come out through the top of his head. He was not a particularly superstitious man, but he had begun to think that night prowling was unlucky for him.

  Mingled with his dismay was bewilderment. He recalled how his brother Galahad had urged him not to allow the upsetting of tables in the small hours to become a habit, but this thing with which he had collided was not a table. It was too dark for him to make a definite pronouncement, but it seemed to be a tray containing glass and china, and he could think of no reason why the corridor should be paved with trays.

  The explanation was one of those absurdly simple explanations. Lady Constance sometimes found a difficulty in dropping off to sleep, and her doctor in New York had recommended as an assistance to the sand man a plate of fruit and a glass of warm milk, to be taken last thing at night before retiring to rest. These consumed, it was her practice to put the tray outside her door, ready for the housemaid to remove in the morning and ready also, as has been shown, for her brother Clarence to step into with a forceful bedroom slipper. Thomas Hardy would have seen in the whol
e affair one more of life's little ironies and on having it drawn to his attention would have got twenty thousand words of a novel out of it.

  Conditions being as described, a quicker thinker than Lord Emsworth would have extracted his feet from the debris and faded into the night with a minimum of delay. He, however, continued to stand transfixed, and was still doing so when, just as had happened on his last night out, the door opened and light flashed on the scene. It was accompanied by Lady Constance in a rose-coloured dressing gown, looking like something out of an Elizabethan tragedy. Laying a good deal of emphasis on the first syllable, she said:

  'CLARence!'

  It is possible that something of the spirit of his ancestors lingered in Lord Emsworth, or it may have been that a shock is always apt to stiffen the sinews of the mildest man. Whatever the motivating cause, he presented a splendidly dauntless front and was swift with the telling riposte. It ran as follows:

  'What's that tray doing there?'

  It was a testing question, but Lady Constance was not easily worsted in verbal give-and-take. As a girl she had been on the debating team at Roedean. Her reply, and it was a good one, came without hesitation.

  'Never mind what it's doing. What are you doing?'

  'Trays all over the floor!'

  'Do you know what time it is?'

  'I might have injured myself severely.'

  'You might also have gone to bed.'

  'I've been to bed.'

  'Then why didn't you stay there?'

  'I couldn't sleep.'

  'You could have read a book.'

  'I did read a book. It was that new pig book that came this morning. Extraordinarily interesting.'

  'Then why aren't you reading it now, instead of wandering about the house at four o'clock?'

  She had a point there. Lord Emsworth was a reasonable man, and he could see that. Moreover, the spirit of his ancestors had begun to die out in him, to be replaced by a mood that was apologetic rather than Crusading. He felt that he owed Connie an explanation, and fortunately he had an excellent one to hand.

  'I was going to phone Banks.'

  'You were what?'

  'I was going to get Banks on the telephone.'

  Lady Constance was obliged to swallow twice before finding further articulation possible. When she spoke, it was almost in a whisper. Strong woman though she was, he had shaken her.

  'Are you under the impression that your bank will be open at four in the morning?'

  This illustration of woman's tendency always to get things muddled up amused Lord Emsworth. He smiled indulgently.

  'Not my bank. Banks, the vet. I want to tell him about this wonderful vitamin pill for pigs that has just been discovered. It was in the book I was reading.'

  Lady Constance swallowed again. She was feeling oddly weak. Lord Emsworth, though not usually observant, noted her agitation, and an idea struck him.

  'It's rather late, of course.'

  'A little.'

  'He may have gone to bed.'

  'It is possible.'

  'Do you think I ought to wait till after breakfast?'

  'I do.'

  It was a thought. Lord Emsworth weighed it gravely.

  'Yes, you are quite right, Connie,' he said at length. 'Banks might have been annoyed. He wouldn't like having his sleep broken. I see that now. Sensible of you to suggest putting it off. After breakfast will do perfectly well. Then I'll say good night. You'll be getting back to bed, of course?'

  'I shall be thankful to.'

  'Capital, capital, capital.'

  3

  The thoughts of youth, said Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1805–1882), are long long thoughts, and so, when the conditions are right, are those of middle-age. Lady Constance's prevented her going to sleep for quite some time after she was between the sheets again. Her mind was wrestling feverishly with the problem presented by the apparently borderline case with whom she had recently been conversing.

  Coming fresh to Lord Emsworth, as it were, after a longish sojourn in New York, where she had met only the most rational of men, dull some of them and inclined to restrict their conversation to the vagaries of the Stock Market, but nevertheless all perfectly rational, she had found him, even more than when last encountered, a fitting object for anxiety.

  No sister could view him now without concern. There was an expression she had heard her husband James Schoonmaker use to describe an acquaintance of whose mentality his opinion was low, which seemed to her to fit the ninth Earl of Emsworth like the paper on the wall. It was the expression 'He has not got all his marbles'. What had occurred in the past few days, and particularly what had occurred tonight, had left her with the conviction that, whatever the ninth Earl's merits, he offered an open target for her James's criticism. He was amiable, he was clean, sober and obedient, but the marbles in his possession were virtually non-existent.

  Sift the evidence. He wandered to and fro at night, not just one night but practically every night. He tripped over cats that were not there. He asserted that pictures had disappeared which were in full view, staring him in the face. And but for her restraining influence he would have rung up a hardworking veterinary surgeon on the telephone at four in the morning to tell him about vitamin pills for pigs. It was an impressive list of qualifications for admission to some good nursing home where he would get sympathetic treatment and bright cheerful society.

  Of course, it might be that the ministrations of this Mr. Halliday would effect an improvement, bringing his stock of marbles up to a passable level, but she was unable to share the confidence which Alaric and her brother Galahad appeared to have in Mr. Halliday. Happening to meet him on her way to her room, she had questioned him as to his methods, and his answers had seemed to her vague and confused. This might no doubt have been due to the inability of an expert to make himself clear to the lay mind, but it had left her uneasy.

  And he was so young. That perhaps was where the trouble lay. She had no objection to some men being young—waiters, for instance, or policemen or representatives of the country in the Olympic Games—but in a man whose walk in life was to delve into people's subconscious and make notes of what came up one expected something more elderly.

  It was with this thought in her mind, vexing her like an aching tooth, that Lady Constance fell asleep.

  When she woke, it was still there, and her misgivings grew with breakfast, when she had ample opportunity of observing him and weighing him in the balance. She rose from the table more convinced than ever that in the matter of correcting her brother Clarence's deviations from the normal he was far too juvenile a reed on which to lean.

  After breakfast she went to the garden suite to see the Duke and give him womanly sympathy, hoping that his injuries would not have had the worst effect on his always uncertain temper. Far less provocation in the past than a sprained ankle had often left him in one of those testy moods when a sympathetic woman closeted with him got the illusion that she was in the presence of something out of the Book of Revelations.

  To her relief he appeared reasonably placid. He was sitting up in bed smoking a cigar and reading the local paper, the Bridgnorth, Shifnal and Albrighton Argus, with which is incorporated the Wheat Grower's Intelligencer and Stock Breeder's Gazette.

  'Oh, it's you,' he said.

  She would have preferred a more effusive welcome, but she reflected philosophically that it was better than some of the welcomes she might have received. She summoned up a bright smile.

  'Well, Alaric, how are you this morning?'

  'Rotten.'

  'Does your ankle hurt?'

  'Like hell.'

  'Still, it could have been worse.'

  'How?'

  'You might have broken your neck.'

  'Not that blasted head-shrinker's fault I didn't.'

  'I wanted to talk to you about Mr. Halliday. I've been thinking about him.'

  'So have I. Bullocking into people and boosting them downstairs.'

  'He'
s very young.'

  'That's no excuse. When I was his age, I didn't go about boosting people downstairs.'

  'I mean I really do not feel he is old enough to be of any help to Clarence. I can't think why you engaged him.'

  'Had to engage someone, hadn't we? Emsworth needs the promptest treatment.'

  'Yes, that is true. I quite agree with you about that. Do you know, Alaric, he was wandering around the house at three o'clock in the morning. He said he was going to telephone the veterinary surgeon about some vitamin pill for pigs he had found in a book he had been reading.'

  'At three o'clock?'

  'It was nearer four. He woke me up.'

  'So that's why you've got that horrible pasty look,' said the Duke, glad to have solved a mystery. 'You look like something the cat brought in. Always that way if you don't get your proper sleep. Well, there you are, then. His pottiness is spreading, and Halliday's presence is essential. He must get to work immediately, not a moment must be wasted. Today Emsworth phones people at four in the morning, tomorrow he'll probably be saying he's a poached egg. It's a pity in a way that you've got to go back to America. Not that you'd be much use if you hadn't, but the more persons keeping an eye on him the better, and you can't expect me to stay here for ever. As soon as my ankle's all right I must be down in Wiltshire, seeing to it that they're getting on with the repairs to my house. You've got to watch those fellows like a hawk.'

  'But, Alaric—'

  'They don't do a stroke of work unless you're there to keep after them all the time. I'm not paying them good money just to stand around like statues, nothing moving except their lips as they tell each other dirty stories, and the sooner they understand that, the better.'

  'But, Alaric, I am not going to America.'