Service With a Smile

by P. G. Wodehouse

  Penguin Books

  Service with a Smile

  P. G. Wodehouse was born in Guildford in 1881 and educated at Dulwich College. Alter working for the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank for two years, he left to earn his living as a journalist and storywriter, writing the ‘By the Way’ column in the old Globe. He also contributed a series of school stories to a magazine for boys, the Captain, in one of which Psmith made his first appearance. Going to America before the First World War, he sold a serial to the Saturday Evening Post and for the next twenty-five years almost all his books appeared first in this magazine. He was part author and writer of the lyrics of eighteen musical comedies including Kissing Time; he married in 1914 and in 1955 took American citizenship. He wrote over ninety books and his work has won world-wide acclaim, being translated into many languages. The Times hailed him as ‘a comic genius recognized in his lifetime as a classic and an old master of farce’.

  P. G. Wodehouse said ‘I believe there are two ways of writing novels. One is mine, making a sort of musical comedy without music and ignoring real life altogether; the other is going right deep down into life and not caring a damn …’ He was created a Knight of the British Empire in the New Year’s Honours List in 1975. In a BBC interview he said that he had no ambitions left, now that he had been knighted and there was a waxwork of him in Madame Tussauds. He died on St Valentine’s Day in 1975 at the age of ninety-three.

  P. G. Wodehouse

  Service with a Smile

  Penguin Books

  Penguin Books Ltd. Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England

  Viking Penguin Inc.. 40 west 23rd Street, New York. New York 10010, U.S.A.

  Penguin Books Australia Ltd. Ringwood, Victoria, Australia

  Penguin Books Canada Limited. 2801 John Street. Markham, Ontario. Canada L3R IB4

  Penguin Books (N.Z.) Ltd. 182—190 Wairau Road, Auckland 10, New Zealand

  First published in the U.S.A. 1961

  Published in Great Britain by Herbert Jenkins 1962

  Published in Penguin Books 1966

  Reprinted 1971. 1975. 1981, 1983. 1986

  Copyright © P. G. Wodehouse, 1961

  All rights reserved

  Made and printed in Great Britain by

  Richard Clay (The Chaucer Press) Ltd, Bungay, Suffolk

  Set in Linotype Times

  Except in the United States of America. this book is sold subject to the condition that it shell not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent. re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other then that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

  All the characters in this book are purely imaginary

  and have no relation whatsoever to any living persons

  Chapter One

  1

  The morning sun shone down on Blandings Castle, and the various inmates of the ancestral home of Clarence, ninth Earl of Emsworth, their breakfasts digested, were occupying themselves in their various ways. One may as well run through the roster just to keep the record straight.

  Beach, the butler, was in his pantry reading an Agatha Christie; Voules, the chauffeur, chewing gum in the car outside the front door. The Duke of Dunstable, who had come uninvited for a long visit and showed no signs of ever leaving, sat spelling through The Times on the terrace outside the amber drawing-room, while George, Lord Emsworth’s grandson, roamed the grounds with the camera which he had been given on his twelfth birthday. He was photographing — not that the fact is of more than mild general interest — a family of rabbits down by the west wood.

  Lord Emsworth’s sister, Lady Constance, was in her boudoir writing a letter to her American friend James Schoonmaker. Lord Emsworth’s secretary, Lavender Briggs, was out looking for Lord Emsworth. And Lord Emsworth himself, accompanied by Mr Schoonmaker’s daughter Myra, was on his way to the headquarters of Empress of Blandings, his pre-eminent sow, three times silver medallist in the Fat Pigs class at the Shropshire Agricultural Show. He had taken the girl with him because it seemed to him that she was a trifle on the low-spirited side these days, and he knew from his own experience that there was nothing like an after-breakfast look at the Empress for bracing one up and bringing the roses back to the cheeks.

  ‘There is her sty,’ he said, pointing a reverent finger as they crossed the little meadow dappled with buttercups and daisies. ‘And that is my pigman Wellbeloved standing by it.’

  Myra Schoonmaker, who had been walking with bowed head, as if pacing behind the coffin of a dear and valued friend, glanced listlessly in the direction indicated. She was a pretty girl of the small, slim, slender type, who would have been prettier if she had bean more cheerful. Her brow was furrowed, her lips drawn, and the large brown eyes which rested on George Cyril Wellbeloved had in them something of the sadness one sees in those of a dachshund which, coming to the, dinner table to get its ten per cent, is refused a cut of the joint.

  ‘Looks kind of a plug-ugly,’ she said, having weighed George Cyril in the balance.

  ‘Eh? What? What?’ said Lord Emsworth, for the word was new to him.

  ‘I wouldn’t trust a guy like that an inch.’

  Enlightenment came to Lord Emsworth.

  ‘Ah, you have heard, then, how he left me some time ago and went to my neighbour, Sir Gregory Parsloe. Outrageous and disloyal, of course, but these fellows will do these things. You don’t find the old feudal spirit nowadays. But all that is in the past, and I consider myself very fortunate to have got him back. A most capable man.’

  ‘Well, I still say I wouldn’t trust him as far as I can throw an elephant.’

  At any other moment it would have interested Lord Emsworth to ascertain how far she could throw an elephant, and he would have been all eager questioning. But with the Empress awaiting him at journey’s end he was too preoccupied to go into the matter. As far as he was capable of hastening, he hastened on, his mild eyes gleaming in anticipation of the treat in store.

  Propping his back against the rail of the sty, George Cyril Wellbeloved watched him approach, a silent whistle of surprise on his lips.

  ‘Well, strike me pink!’ he said to his immortal soul. ‘Cor chase my aunt Fanny up a gum tree!’

  What had occasioned this astonishment was the fact that his social superior, usually the sloppiest of dressers and generally regarded as one of Shropshire’s more prominent eyesores, was now pure Savile Row from head to foot. Not even the Tailor and Cutter’s most acid critic could have found a thing to cavil at in the quiet splendour of his appearance. Enough to startle any beholder accustomed to seeing him in baggy flannel trousers, an old shooting coat with holes in the elbows, and a hat which would have been rejected disdainfully by the least fastidious of tramps.

  It was no sudden outbreak of foppishness that had wrought this change in the ninth earl’s outer crust, turning him into a prismatic sight at which pigmen blinked amazed. As he had explained to Myra Schoonmaker on encountering her mooning about in the hall, he was wearing the beastly things because he was going to London on the 10.35 train, because his sister Connie had ordered him to attend the opening of Parliament. Though why Parliament could not get itself opened without his assistance he was at a loss to understand.

  A backwoods peer to end all backwoods peers, Lord Emsworth had a strong dislike for London. He could never see what pleasure his friend Ickenham found in visiting that frightful city. The latter’s statement that London brought out all the best in him and was the only place where his soul could expand like a blossoming flower and his generous nature find full expression bewildered him. Himself he wanted nothing but Blandings Castle, even though his sister Con
stance, his secretary Lavender Briggs and the Duke of Dunstable were there and Connie, overriding his veto, had allowed the Church Lads’ Brigade to camp out by the lake. Many people are fond of church lads, but he was not of their number, and he chafed at Connie’s highhandedness in letting loose on his grounds and messages what sometimes seemed to him about five hundred of them, all squealing simultaneously.

  But this morning there was no room in his mind for morbid thoughts about these juvenile plug-uglies. He strongly suspected that it was one of them who had knocked his top hat off with a crusty roll at the recent school treat, but with a visit to the Empress in view he had no leisure to brood on past wrongs. One did not think of mundane things when about to fraternize with that wonder-pig.

  Arriving at her G.H.Q., he beamed on George Cyril Wellbeloved as if on some spectacle in glorious technicolor. And this was odd, for the O.C. Pigs, as Myra Schoonmaker had hinted, was no feast for the eye, having a sinister squint, a broken nose acquired during a political discussion at the Goose and Gander in Market Blandings, and a good deal of mud all over him. He also smelt rather strongly. But what enchanted Lord Emsworth, gazing on this son of the soil, was not his looks or the bouquet he diffused but his mere presence. It thrilled him to feel that this prince of pigmen was back again, tending the Empress once more. George Cyril might rather closely resemble someone for whom the police were spreading a drag-net in the expectation of making an arrest shortly, but nobody could deny his great gifts. He knew his pigs.

  So Lord Emsworth beamed, and when he spoke did so with what, when statesmen meet for conferences, is known as the utmost cordiality.

  ‘Morning, Wellbeloved.’

  ‘Morning, m’lord.’

  ‘Empress all right?’

  ‘In the pink, m’lord.’

  ‘Eating well?’

  ‘Like a streak, m’lord.’

  ‘Splendid. It is so important,’ Lord Emsworth explained to Myra Schoonmaker, who was regarding the noble animal with a dull eye, ‘that her appetite should remain good. You have of course read your Wolff-Lehmann and will remember that, according to the Wolff-Lehmann feeding standards, a pig, to enjoy health, must consume daily nourishment amounting to fifty-seven thousand eight hundred calories, these to consist of proteids four pounds five ounces, carbohydrates twenty-five pounds.’

  ‘Oh?’ said Myra.

  ‘Linseed meal is the secret. That and potato peelings.’

  ‘Oh?’ said Myra.

  ‘I knew you would be interested,’ said Lord Emsworth. ‘And of course skimmed milk. I’ve got to go to London for a couple of nights, Wellbeloved. I leave the Empress in your charge.’

  ‘Her welfare shall be my constant concern, m’lord.’

  ‘Capital, capital, capital,’ said Lord Emsworth, and would probably have gone on doing so for some little time, for he was a man who, when he started saying ‘Capital’, found it hard to stop, but at this moment a new arrival joined their little group, a tall, haughty young woman who gazed on the world through harlequin glasses of a peculiarly intimidating kind. She regarded the ninth earl with the cold eye of a governess of strict views who has found her young charge playing hooky.

  ‘Pahdon me,’ she said.

  Her voice was as cold as her eye. Lavender Briggs disapproved of Lord Emsworth, as she did of all those who employed her, particularly Lord Tilbury of the Mammoth Publishing Company, who had been Lord Emsworth’s predecessor. When holding a secretarial post, she performed her duties faithfully, but it irked her to be a wage slave. What she wanted was to go into business for herself as the proprietress of a typewriting bureau. It was the seeming impossibility of ever obtaining the capital for this venture that interfered with her sleep at night and in the daytime made her manner more than a little forbidding. Like George Cyril Wellbeloved, whose views were strongly communistic, which was how he got that broken nose, she eyed the more wealthy of her circle askance. Idle rich, she sometimes called them.

  Lord Emsworth, who had been scratching the Empress’s back with the ferrule of his stick, an attention greatly appreciated by the silver medallist, turned with a start, much as the Lady of Shalott must have turned when the curse came upon her. There was always something about his secretary’s voice, when it addressed him unexpectedly, that gave him the feeling that he was a small boy again and had been caught by the authorities stealing jam.

  ‘Eh, what? Oh, hullo, Miss Briggs. Lovely morning.’

  ‘Quate. Lady Constance desiah-ed me to tell you that you should be getting ready to start, Lord Emsworth.’

  ‘What? What? I’ve plenty of time.’

  ‘Lady Constance thinks othahwise.’

  ‘I’m all packed, aren’t I?’

  ‘Quate.’

  ‘Well, then.’

  ‘The car is at the door, and Lady Constance desiah-ed me to tell you —’

  ‘Oh, all right, all right,’ said Lord Emsworth peevishly, adding a third ‘All right’ for good measure. ‘Always something, always something,’ he muttered, and told himself once again that, of all the secretarial assistants he had had, none, not even the Efficient Baxter of evil memory, could compare in the art of taking the joy out of life with this repellent female whom Connie in her arbitrary way had insisted on engaging against his strongly expressed wishes. Always after him, always harrying him, always popping up out of a trap and wanting him to do things. What with Lavender Briggs, Connie, the Duke and those beastly boys screaming and yelling beside the lake, life at Blandings Castle was becoming insupportable.

  Gloomily he took one last, lingering look at the Empress and pottered off, thinking, as so many others had thought before him, that the ideal way of opening Parliament would be to put a bomb under it and press the button.

  2

  The Duke of Dunstable, having read all he wanted to read in The Times and given up a half-hearted attempt to solve the crossword puzzle, had left the terrace and was making his way to Lady Constance’s sitting-room. He was looking for someone to talk to, and Connie, though in his opinion potty, like all women, would be better than nothing.

  He was a large, stout, bald-headed man with a jutting nose, prominent eyes and a bushy white moustache of the type favoured by regimental sergeant majors and walruses. In Wiltshire, where he resided when not inviting himself for long visits to the homes of others, he was far from popular, his standing among his neighbours being roughly that of a shark at a bathing resort — something, that is to say, to be avoided on all occasions as nimbly as possible. A peremptory manner and an autocratic disposition combined to prevent him winning friends and influencing people.

  He reached his destination, went in without knocking, found Lady Constance busy at her desk, and shouted ‘Hoy!’

  The monosyllable, uttered in her immediate rear in a tone of voice usually confined to the hog-calling industry of western America, made Lady Constance leap like a rising trout. But she was a hostess. Concealing her annoyance, not that that was necessary, for her visitor since early boyhood had never noticed when he was annoying anyone, she laid down her pen and achieved a reasonably bright smile.

  ‘Good morning, Alaric.’

  ‘What do you mean, good morning, as if you hadn’t seen me before today?’ said the Duke, his low opinion of the woman’s intelligence confirmed. ‘We met at breakfast, didn’t we? Potty thing to say. No sense to it. What you doing?’

  ‘Writing a letter.’

  ‘Who to?’ said the Duke, never one to allow the conventions to .interfere with his thirst for knowledge.

  ‘James Schoonmaker.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Myra’s father.’

  ‘Oh, yes, the Yank I met with you in London one day,’ said the Duke, remembering a tête-à-tête luncheon at the Ritz which he had joined uninvited. ‘Fellow with a head like a pumpkin.’

  Lady Constance flushed warmly. She was a strikingly handsome woman, and the flush became her. Anybody but the Duke would have seen that she resented this loose talk of pumpkins. Ja
mes Schoonmaker was a very dear friend of hers, and she had sometimes allowed herself to think that, had they not been sundered by the seas, he might one day have become something more. She spoke sharply.

  ‘He has not got a head like a pumpkin!’

  ‘More like a Spanish onion, you think?’ said the Duke, having weighed this. ‘Perhaps you’re right. Silly ass, anyway.’

  Lady Constance’s flush deepened. Not for the first time in an association which had lasted some forty years, starting in the days when she had worn pigtails and he had risked mob violence by going about in a Little Lord Fauntleroy suit, she was wishing that her breeding did not prohibit her from bouncing something solid on this man’s bald head. There was a paper-weight at her elbow which would have fitted her needs to a nicety. Debarred from physical self-expression by a careful upbringing at the hands of a series of ladylike governesses, she fell back on hauteur.

  ‘Was there something you wanted, Alaric?’ she asked in the cold voice which had so often intimidated her brother Clarence.

  The Duke was less susceptible to chill than Lord Emsworth. Coldness in other people’s voices never bothered him. Whatever else he had been called in the course of his long life, no one had ever described him as a sensitive plant.

  ‘Wanted someone to talk to. Seems impossible to find anyone to talk to in this blasted place. Not at all sure I shall come here again. I tried Emsworth just now, and he just yawped at me like a half-wit.’

  ‘He probably didn’t hear you. You know how dreamy and absent-minded Clarence is.

  ‘Dreamy and absent-minded be blowed! He’s potty!’

  ‘He is not!’

  ‘Of course he is. Do you think I don’t know pottiness when I see it? My old father was potty. So was my brother Rupert. So are both my nephews. Look at Ricky. Writes poetry and sells onion soup. Look at Archie. An artist. And Emsworth’s worse than any of them. I tell you he just yawped at me without uttering, and then he went off with that girl Clarissa Stick-in-the-mud.’