Service With a Smile, Page 3

  ‘Not unless he murders about fifty-seven uncles and cousins.’

  ‘Which a curate, of course, would hesitate to do. So what was Connie’s procedure?’

  ‘She lugged the poor wench off to Blandings, and she’s been there ever since, practically in durance vile, her every movement watched. But this Myra seems to be a sensible, level-headed girl, because, learning from her spies that Lady C. was to go to Shrewsbury for a hair-do and wouldn’t be around till dinner time, she phoned Bill that she would be free that day and would nip up to London and marry him. She told him to meet her at the Milton Street registry office, where the project could be put through speedily and at small expense.’

  ‘I see. Very shrewd. I often think these runaway marriages are best. No fuss and feathers. After all, who wants a lot of bishops cluttering up the place? I often say, when you’ve seen one bishop, you’ve seen them all.’ Lord Ickenham paused. ‘Well,’ he said, looking at his watch. ‘I suppose it’s about time we were getting along. Don’t want to be late.’

  Pongo started. To his sensitive ears this sounded extremely like the beginning of one of their pleasant and instructive afternoons. In just such a tone of voice had his relative a few years earlier suggested that they might look in at the dog races, for there was, he said, no better way of studying the soul of the people than to mingle with them in their simple pastimes.

  ‘We? You aren’t coming?’

  ‘Of course I’m coming. Two witnesses are always better than one, and little Myra —’

  ‘I can’t guarantee that she’s little.’

  ‘And Myra, whatever her size, would never forgive me if I were not there to hold her hand when the firing squad assembles.’

  Pongo chewed his lower lip, this way and that dividing the swift mind.

  ‘Well, all right. But no larks.’

  ‘My dear boy! As if I should dream of being frivolous on such a sacred occasion. Of course, if I find this Bill Bailey of yours unworthy of her, I shall put a stopper on the proceedings, as any man of sensibility would. What sort of a chap is he? Pale and fragile, I suppose, with a touch of consumption and a tendency to recite the collect for the day in a high tenor voice?’

  ‘Pale and fragile, my foot. He boxed three years for Oxford.’

  ‘He did?’

  ‘And went through the opposition like a dose of salts.’

  ‘Then all should be well. I expect I shall take the fellow to my bosom.’

  His expectation was fulfilled. The Rev Cuthbert Bailey met with his instant approval. He liked his curates substantial, and Bill proved to be definitely the large economy size, the sort of curate whom one could picture giving the local backslider the choice between seeing the light or getting plugged in the eye. Amplifying his earlier remarks, Pongo on the journey to Milton Street had told his uncle that in the parish of Bottleton East, where he had recently held a cure of souls, Bill Bailey had been universally respected, and Lord Ickenham could readily appreciate why. He himself would have treated with the utmost respect any young man so obviously capable of a sweat left hook followed by a snappy right to the button. A captious critic might have felt on seeing the Rev Cuthbert that it would have been more suitable for one in holy orders to have looked a little less like the logical contender for the world’s heavyweight championship, but it was impossible to regard his rugged features and bulging shoulders without an immediate feeling of awe. Impossible, too, not to like his manifest honesty and simplicity. It seemed to Lord Ickenham that in probing beneath the forbidding exterior to the gentle soul it hid his little Myra had done the smart thing.

  They fell into pleasant conversation, but after the first few exchanges it was plain to Lord Ickenham that the young man of God was becoming extremely nervous. Nor was the reason for this difficult to divine. Some twenty minutes had elapsed, and there were still no signs of the bride-to-be, and nothing so surely saps the morale of a bridegroom on his wedding day as the failure of the party of the second part to put in an appearance at the tryst.

  Ten minutes later, Bill Bailey rose, his homely features registering anguish.

  ‘She isn’t coming?’

  Lord Ickenham tried to comfort him with the quite erroneous statement that it was early yet. Pongo, also anxious to be helpful, said he would go out and cock an eye up and down the street to see if there were any signs of her. His departure from the room synchronized with a hollow groan from the suffering young man.

  ‘I must have put her off!’

  Lord Ickenham raised a sympathetic but puzzled eyebrow.

  ‘I don’t think I understand you. Put her off? How?’

  ‘By the way I spoke on the phone. You see, I was a bit doubtful of this idea of hers. It didn’t seem right somehow that she should be taking this terrifically important step without thinking it over. I mean, I’ve so little to offer her. I thought we ought to wait till I get a vicarage.’

  ‘I follow you now. You had scruples?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did you tell her so?’

  ‘No, but she must have noticed something odd in my voice, because she asked me if I wasn’t pleased.’

  ‘To which you replied —?’

  ‘“Oh, rather!”‘

  Lord Ickenham shook his head.

  ‘You should have done better than that. Or did you say “Oh, ra-a-a-ther!”, emphasizing it and dragging it out, as it were? Joyously, if you know what I mean, with a sort of lilt in the voice?’

  ‘I’m afraid I didn’t. You see —’

  ‘I know. You had scruples. That’s the curate in you coming out. You must fight against this tendency. You don’t suppose Young Lochinvar had scruples, do you? You know the poem about Young Lochinvar?’

  ‘Oh, yes. I used to recite it as a kid.’

  ‘I, too, and to solid applause, though there were critics who considered that I was better at “It wath the schcooner Hesperuth that thailed the thtormy thea”. I was rather short on front teeth in those days. But despite these scruples you came to this marriage depot.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And the impression you have given me is that your one desire is to have the registrar start doing his stuff.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You overcame your scruples?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I quite understand. I’ve done the same thing myself. I suppose if the scruples I’ve overcome in my time were laid end to end, they would reach from London to Glasgow. Ah, Pongo,’ said Lord Ickenham, as his nephew appeared in the doorway. ‘Anything to report?’

  ‘Not a thing. Not a single female as far as the eye could reach. I’ll tell you what occurred to me, Bill, as I was scanning the horizon.’

  ‘Probably the very thing that has just occurred to me,’ said Lord Ickenham. ‘You were thinking that Lady Constance must have changed her mind about going to Shrewsbury for that hair-do.’

  ‘That’s right. And with her on the premises, the popsy — ‘

  Bill’s rugged features registered displeasure.

  ‘I wish you wouldn’t call her a popsy.’

  ‘With her on the premises, your ball of worsted would naturally be unable to make her getaway. You’ll probably receive a letter tomorrow explaining the situation and making arrangements for the next fixture.’

  ‘Yes, that must be it,’ said Bill, brightening a little. ‘Though you’d have thought she would have wired,’ he added, sinking into the depths again.

  Lord Ickenham patted his burly shoulder paternally.

  ‘My dear chap! How could she? The Market Blandings post office is two miles from the castle and, as Pongo says, her every movement is watched. She’ll be lucky if she gets so much as a letter through the lines without having it steamed open and intercepted. If I were you, I wouldn’t worry for a moment.’

  ‘I’ll try not to,’ said Bill, heaving a sigh that shook the room. ‘Well, anyway, there’s no sense in hanging around here. This place gives me the creeps. Thanks for coming along, Pongo. Thanks for comin
g along, Lord Ickenham. Sorry your time was wasted.’

  ‘My dear fellow, time is never wasted when it is passed in pleasant company.’

  ‘No. No. There’s that, of course. Well, I’ll be off.’

  As the door closed behind him, Lord Ickenham sighed, not so vigorously as Bill had done but with a wealth of compassion. He mourned in spirit for the young cleric.

  ‘Too bad,’ he said. ‘It is always difficult for a bridegroom to key himself up to going through the wedding ceremony, an ordeal that taxes the stoutest, and when he’s done it and the bride doesn’t meet him half way, the iron enters into the soul pretty deeply. And no knowing when the vigilance of the authorities will be relaxed again, I suppose, if ever. You don’t make prison breaks easily when Connie is holding the jailer’s keys.’

  Pongo nodded. He, too, mourned in spirit for his stricken friend.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘I’m afraid Bill’s in a spot. And what makes the situation stickier is that Archie Gilpin’s at Blandings.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The Duke of Dunstable’s nephew.’

  ‘Ricky Gilpin’s brother?’

  ‘That’s right. You ever met him?’

  ‘Never. I know Dunstable, of course, and I know Ricky, but this Archibald is a sealed book to me. Who told you he was at Blandings?’

  ‘He did. In person. I ran into him yesterday and he said he was off there on the afternoon train. Pretty sinister, it seemed to me.’

  ‘Why is that?’

  ‘Well, dash it, there he’ll be closeted with the girl, and who knows she won’t decide to switch from Bill to him? He’s a very good-looking bloke. Which you can’t say Bill is.’

  ‘No, I would call Bill’s an interesting rather than a beautiful face. He reminds me a little of one of my colleagues on the Wyoming ranch where I held a salaried position in my younger days as a cow-puncher, of whom another of my colleagues, a gifted phrasemaker, said that he had a face that would stop a clock. No doubt Bill has stopped dozens. But surely the little Myra I used to wrap in a bath towel and dandle on my knee can’t have grown up into the sort of girl who attaches all that importance to looks.’

  ‘You never know. Girls do go for the finely-chiselled. And apart from his looks, he’s an artist, and there’s something about artists that seems to act on the other sex like catnip on cats. What’s more, I happen to know, because I met a fellow who knows a chap who knows her, that Archie’s girl has just broken their engagement.’

  ‘Indeed?’

  ‘A girl called Millicent Rigby. Archie works on one of those papers Lord Tilbury runs at the Mammoth Publishing Company, and she’s Tilbury’s secretary. This fellow told me that the chap had told him that he had had it direct from the Rigby wench that she had handed Archie the black spot. You see what that means?’

  ‘Not altogether.’

  ‘Use your bean, Uncle Fred. You know what you do when your girl gives you the push. You dash off and propose to another girl, just to show her she isn’t the only onion in the stew.’

  Lord Ickenham nodded. It was many years since he had acted in the manner described, but he, too, had lived in Arcady.

  ‘Ah, youth, youth!’ he was saying to himself, and he shuddered a little as he recalled the fearful female down Greenwich Village way, all beads and bangles and matted hair, at whose sandaled feet he had laid his heart the second time Pongo’s Aunt Jane had severed relations with him.

  ‘Yes, I follow you now. This does make Archibald a menace, and one cannot but feel a certain anxiety for Bill. Where can I find him, by the way?’

  ‘He’s staying with me at my fiat. Why?’

  ‘I was thinking I might look in on him from time to time and try to cheer him up. Take him to the dog races, perhaps.’

  Pongo quivered like an aspen. He always quivered like an aspen when reminded of the afternoon when he had attended the dog races in Lord Ickenham’s company. Though on that occasion, as his uncle had often pointed out, a wiser policeman would have been content with a mere reprimand.

  2

  The canny peer of the realm, when duty calls him to lend his presence to the ceremony of the Opening of Parliament, hires his robes and coronet from. that indispensable clothing firm, the Brothers Moss of Covent Garden, whose boast is that they can at any time fit anyone out as anything and have him ready to go anywhere. Only they can prevent him being caught short. It was to their emporium that, after leaving his nephew, Lord Ickenham repaired, carrying a suitcase. And he had returned the suitcase’s contents and paid his modest bill, when there entered, also carrying a suitcase, a tall, limp, drooping figure, at the sight of which he uttered a glad cry.

  ‘Emsworth! My dear fellow, how nice to run into you again. So you too are bringing back your sheaves?’

  ‘Eh?’ said Lord Emsworth, who always said ‘Eh?’ when anyone addressed him suddenly. ‘Oh, hullo, Ickenham. Are you in London?’

  Lord Ickenham assured him that he was, and Lord Emsworth said so was he. This having been straightened out,

  ‘Were you at that thing this morning? ‘he said.

  ‘I was indeed,’ said Lord Ickenham, ‘and looking magnificent. I don’t suppose there is a peer in England who presents a posher appearance when wearing the reach-me-downs and comic hat than I do. Just before the procession got under way, I heard Rouge Croix whisper to Bluemantle “Don’t look now, but who’s that chap over there? “, and Bluemantle whispered back, “I haven’t the foggiest, but evidently some terrific swell.” But it’s nice to get out of the fancy dress, isn’t it, and it’s wonderful seeing you, Emsworth. How’s the Empress?’

  ‘Eh? Oh, capital, capital, capital. I left her in the care of my pigman Wellbeloved, in whom I have every confidence.’

  ‘Splendid. Well, let’s go and have a couple for the tonsils and a pleasant chat. I know a little bar round the corner,’ said Lord Ickenham, who, wherever he was, always knew a little bar round the corner. ‘You have rather a fatigued air, as if putting on all that dog this morning had exhausted you. A whisky with a splash of soda will soon bring back the sparkle to your eyes.’

  Seated in the little bar round the corner, Lord Ickenham regarded his companion with some concern.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I was right. You don’t look your usual bonny self. Very testing, these Openings of Parliament. Usually I give them a miss, as no doubt you do. What brought you up today?’

  ‘Connie insisted.’

  ‘I understand. There are, I should imagine, few finer right-and-left-hand insisters than Lady Constance. Charming woman, of course.’

  ‘Connie?’ said Lord Emsworth, surprised.

  ‘Though perhaps not everybody’s cup of tea,’ said Lord Ickenham, sensing the incredulity in his companion’s voice. ‘But tell me, how is everything at Blandings Castle? Jogging along nicely, I hope. I always look on that little shack of yours as an earthly Paradise.’

  It was not within Lord Emsworth’s power to laugh bitterly, but he uttered a bleating sound which was as near as he could get to a bitter laugh. The description of Blandings Castle as an earthly Paradise, with his sister Constance, the Duke, Lavender Briggs, and the Church Lads’ Brigade running around loose there, struck him as ironical. He mused for a space in silence.

  ‘I don’t know what to do, Ickenham,’ he said, his sombre train of thought coming to its terminus.

  ‘You mean now? Have another.’

  ‘No, no, thank you, really. It is very unusual for me to indulge in alcoholic stimulant so early in the day. I was referring to conditions at Blandings Castle.’

  ‘Not so good?’

  ‘They are appalling. I have a new secretary, the worst I have ever had. Worse than Baxter.’

  ‘That seems scarcely credible.’

  ‘I assure you. A girl of the name of Briggs. She persecutes me.’

  ‘Get rid of her.’

  ‘How can I? Connie engaged her. And the Duke of Dun-stable is staying at the castle.’

  ‘What, again?’
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  ‘And the Church Lads’ Brigade are camping in the park, yelling and squealing all the time, and I am convinced that it was one of them who threw a roll at my top hat.’

  ‘Your top hat? When did you ever wear a top hat?’

  ‘It was at the school treat. Connie always makes me wear a top hat at the school treat. I went into the tent at teatime to see that everything was going along all right, and as I was passing down the aisle between the tables, a boy threw a crusty roll at my hat and knocked it off. Nothing will persuade me, Ickenham, that the culprit was not one of the Church Lads.’

  ‘But you have no evidence that would stand up in a court of law?’

  ‘Eh? No, none.’

  ‘Too bad. Well, the whole set-up sounds extraordinarily like Devil’s Island, and I am not surprised that you find it difficult to keep the upper lip as stiff as one likes to see upper lips.’ A strange light had come into Lord Ickenham’s eyes. His nephew Pongo would have recognized it. It was the light which had so often come into them when the other was suggesting that they embark on one of their pleasant and instructive afternoons. ‘What you need, it seems to me,’ he said, ‘is some rugged ally at your side, someone who will quell the secretary, look Connie in the eye and make her wilt, take the Duke off your hands and generally spread sweetness and light.’

  ‘Ah!’ said Lord Emsworth with a sigh, as he allowed his mind to dwell on this utopian picture.

  ‘Would you like me to come to Blandings?’

  Lord Emsworth started. His pince-nez, which always dropped off his nose when he was deeply stirred, did an adagio dance at the end of their string.