CHAPTER X
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 sincerelyR. J. Baxter.
Yours sincerelyR. 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 sincerelyR. 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.
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 sincerelyR. 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?"