by Admin
‘How fickle men are!’ sighed Millicent.
‘She had some shopping to do,’ said Lady Constance sharply. ‘By this time she is probably in London. Julia invited her to stay at Blandings, and she accepted. She may be here any day now. And I do think, my dear,’ proceeded Lady Constance earnestly, ‘that, before she arrives, you ought to consider very carefully what your feelings towards Ronald really are.’
‘You mean, if I don’t watch my step, this Miss Doopenhacker may steal my Ronnie away from me?’
It was not quite how Lady Constance would have put it herself, but it conveyed her meaning.
‘Exactly.’
Millicent laughed. It was plain that her flesh declined to creep at the prospect.
‘Good luck to her,’ she said. ‘She can count on a fish-slice from me, and I’ll be a bridesmaid, too, if wanted. Can’t you understand, Aunt Constance, that I haven’t the slightest desire to marry Ronnie. We’re great pals, and all that, but he’s not my style. Too short, for one thing.’
‘Short?’
‘I’m inches taller than he is. When we went up the aisle, I should look like someone taking her little brother for a walk.’
Lady Constance would undoubtedly have commented on this remark, but before she could do so the procession reappeared, playing an unexpected return date. Footman James bore a dish of fruit, Footman Thomas a salver with a cream-jug on it. Beach, as before, confined himself to a straight ornamental role.
‘Oo!’ said Millicent welcomingly. And the spaniel, who liked anything involving cream, gave a silent nod of approval.
‘Well,’ said Lady Constance, as the procession withdrew, giving up the lost cause, ‘if you won’t marry Ronald, I suppose you won’t.’
‘That’s about it,’ agreed Millicent, pouring cream.
‘At any rate, I am relieved to hear that there is no nonsense going on between you and this Mr Carmody. That I could not have endured.’
‘He’s only moderately popular with you, isn’t he?’
‘I dislike him extremely.’
‘I wonder why. I should have thought he was fairly all right, as young men go. Uncle Clarence likes him. So does Uncle Gaily.’
Lady Constance had a high, arched nose, admirably adapted for sniffing. She used it now to the limits of its power.
‘Mr Carmody,’ she said, ‘is just the sort of young man your Uncle Galahad would like.
No doubt he reminds him of the horrible men he used to go about London with in his young days.’
‘Mr Carmody isn’t a bit like that.’
‘Indeed?’ Lady Constance sniffed again. ‘Well, I dislike mentioning it to you, Millicent, for I am old-fashioned enough to think that young girls should be shielded from a knowledge of the world, but I happen to know that Mr Carmody is not at all a nice young man. I have it on the most excellent authority that he is entangled with some impossible chorus-girl.’
It is not easy to sit suddenly bolt-upright in a deep garden-chair, but Millicent managed the feat.
‘What!’
‘Lady Allardyce told me so.’
‘And how does she know?’
‘Her son Vernon told her. A girl of the name of Brown. Vernon Allardyce says that he used to see her repeatedly, lunching and dining and dancing with Mr Carmody.’
There was a long silence.
‘Nice boy, Vernon,’ said Millicent.
‘He tells his mother everything.’
‘That’s what I meant. I think it’s so sweet of him.’ Millicent rose. ‘Well, I’m going to take a short stroll.’
She wandered off towards the rose-garden.
IV
A young man who has arranged to meet the girl he loves in the rose-garden at six sharp naturally goes there at five-twenty-five, so as not to be late. Hugo Carmody had done this, with the result that by three minutes to six he was feeling as if he had been marooned among roses since the beginning of the summer.
If anybody had told Hugo Carmody six months before that half-way through the following July he would be lurking in trysting-places like this, his whole being alert for the coming of a girl, he would have scoffed at the idea. He would have laughed lightly.
Not that he had not been fond of girls. He had always liked girls. But they had been, as it were, the mere playthings, so to speak, of a financial giant’s idle hour. Six months ago he had been the keen, iron-souled man of business, all his energies and thoughts devoted to the management of the Hot Spot.
But now he stood shuffling his feet and starting hopefully at every sound, while the leaden moments passed sluggishly on their way. Then his vigil was enlivened by a wasp, which stung him on the back of the hand. He was leaping to and fro, licking his wounds, when he perceived the girl of his dreams coming down the path.
‘Ah!’cried Hugo.
He ceased to leap and, rushing forward, would have clasped her in a fond embrace. Many people advocate the old-fashioned blue-bag for wasp-stings, but Hugo preferred this treatment.
To his astonishment she drew back. And she was not a girl who usually drew back on these occasions.
‘What’s the matter?’ he asked, pained. It seemed to him that a spanner had been bunged into a holy moment.
‘Nothing.’
Hugo was concerned. He did not like the way she was looking at him. Her soft blue eyes appeared to have been turned into stone.
‘I say,’ he said, ‘I’ve just been stung by a beastly great wasp.’
‘Good!’ said Millicent.
The way she was talking seemed to him worse than the way she was looking.
Hugo’s concern increased.
‘I say, what’s up?’
The granite eye took on an added hardness.
‘You want to know what’s up?’
Yes-what’s up?’
TU tell you what’s up.’
‘Well, what’s up?’ asked Hugo.
He waited for enlightenment, but she had fallen into a chilling silence.
‘You know,’ said Hugo, breaking it, ‘I’m getting pretty fed up with all this secrecy and general snakiness. Seeing you for an occasional odd five minutes a day and having to put on false whiskers and hide in bushes to manage that. I know the Keeble looks on me as a sort of cross between a leper and a nosegay of deadly nightshade, but I’m strong with the old boy. I talk pig to him. You might almost say I play on him as on a stringed instrument. So what’s wrong with going to him and telling him in a frank and manly way that we love each other and are going to get married?’
The marble of Millicent’s face was disturbed by one of those quick, sharp, short, bitter smiles that do nobody any good.
‘Why should we lie to Uncle Clarence?’
‘Eh?’
‘I say, why should we tell him something that isn’t true?’
‘I don’t get your drift.’
‘I will continue snowing,’ said Millicent coldly. ‘I am not quite sure if I am ever going to speak to you again in this world or the next. Much will depend on how good you are as an explainer. I have it on the most excellent authority that you are entangled with a chorus-girl. How about it?’
Hugo reeled. But then St Anthony himself would have reeled if a charge like that had suddenly been hurled at him. The best of men require time to overhaul their conscience on such occasions. A moment and he was himself again.
‘It’s a lie!’
‘Name of Brown.’
‘Not a word of truth in it. I haven’t set eyes on Sue Brown since I first met you.’
‘No. You’ve been down here all the time.’
And when I was setting eyes on her – why, dash it, my attitude from start to finish was one of blameless, innocent, one hundred per cent brotherliness. A wholesome friendship.
Brotherly. Nothing more. I liked dancing and she liked dancing and our steps fitted. So occasionally we would go out together and tread the measure. That’s all there was to it.
Pure brotherliness. Nothing more. I looked on myself as a
sort of brother.’
‘Brother, eh?’
‘Absolutely a brother. Don’t,’ urged Hugo earnestly, ‘go running away, my dear old thing, with any sort of silly notion that Sue Brown was something in the nature of a vamp. She’s one of the nicest girls you would ever want to meet.’
‘Nice, is she?’
‘A sweet girl. A girl in a million. A real good sort. A sound egg-’
‘Pretty, I suppose?’
The native good sense of the Carmodys asserted itself at the eleventh hour.
‘Not pretty,’ said Hugo decidedly. ‘Not pretty, no. Not at all pretty. Far from pretty.
Totally lacking in sex-appeal, poor girl. But nice. A good sort. No nonsense about her.
Sisterly.’
Millicent pondered.
‘H’m,’ she said.
Nature paused, listening. Birds checked their song, insects their droning. It was as if it had got about that this young man’s fate hung in the balance and the returns would be in shortly.
‘Well, all right,’ she said at length. ‘I suppose I’ll have to believe you.’
‘“At’s the way to talk!’
‘But just you bear this in mind, my lad. Any funny business from now on . . .’
As if . . .!’
‘One more attack of that brotherly urge . . .’
As though . . .!’
All right, then.’
Hugo inhaled vigorously. He felt like a man who has just dodged a wounded tigress.
‘Banzai!’ he said. ‘Sweethearts still!’
V
Blandings Castle dozed in the twilight. Its various inmates were variously occupied.
Clarence, ninth Earl of Emsworth, after many a longing lingering look behind, had dragged himself away from the Empress’s boudoir and was reading his well-thumbed copy of British Pigs. The Hon. Galahad, having fixed up the Parsloe-Burper passage, was skimming through his day’s output with an artist’s complacent feeling that this was the stuff to give ‘em. Butler Beach was pasting the Hon. Galahad’s photograph into his album. Millicent, in her bedroom, was looking a little thoughtfully into her mirror. Hugo, in the billiard-room, was practising pensive cannons and thinking loving thoughts of his lady, coupled with an occasional reflection that a short, swift binge in London would be a great wheeze if he could wangle it.
And in her boudoir on the second floor, Lady Constance Keeble had taken pen in hand and was poising it over a sheet of notepaper.
‘Dear Mr Baxter,’ she wrote.
2 THE COURSE OF TRUE LOVE
I
The brilliant sunshine which so enhanced the attractions of life at Blandings Castle had brought less pleasure to those of England’s workers whose duties compelled them to remain in London. In his offices on top of the Regal Theatre in Shaftesbury Avenue, Mr Mortimer Mason, the stout senior partner in the firm of Mason and Saxby, Theatrical Enterprises, Ltd, was of opinion that what the country really needed was one of those wedge-shaped depressions off the Coast of Iceland. Apart from making him feel like a gaffed salmon, Flaming July was ruining business. Only last night, to cut down expenses, he had had to dismiss some of the chorus from the show downstairs, and he hated dismissing chorus-girls. He was a kind-hearted man, and, having been in the profession himself in his time, knew what it meant to get one’s notice in the middle of the summer.
There was a tap on the door. The human watchdog who guarded the outer offices entered.
‘Well?’ said Mortimer Mason wearily.
‘Can you see Miss Brown, sir?’
‘Which Miss Brown? Sue?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Of course.’ In spite of the heat, Mr Mason brightened. ‘Is she outside?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Then pour her in.’
Mortimer Mason had always felt a fatherly fondness for this girl, Sue Brown. He liked her for her own sake, for her unvarying cheerfulness and the honest way she worked. But what endeared her more particularly to him was the fact that she was Dolly Henderson’s daughter. London was full of elderly gentlemen who became pleasantly maudlin when they thought of Dolly Henderson and the dear old days when the heart was young and they had had waists. He heaved himself from his chair: then fell back again, filled with a sense of intolerable injury.
‘My God!’ he cried. ‘Don’t look so cool.’
The rebuke was not undeserved. On an afternoon when the asphalt is bubbling in the roadways and theatrical managers melting where they sit, no girl has a right to resemble a dewy rose plucked from some old-world garden. And that, Mr Mason considered, was just what this girl was deliberately resembling. She was a tiny thing, mostly large eyes and a wide, happy smile. She had a dancer’s figure and in every movement of her there was Youth.
‘Sorry, Pa.’ She laughed, and Mr Mason moaned faintly. Her laugh had reminded him, for his was a nature not without its poetical side, of ice tinkling in a jug of beer. ‘Try not looking at me.’
‘Well, Sue, what’s on your mind? Come to tell me you’re going to be married?’
‘Not at the moment, I’m afraid.’
‘Hasn’t that young man of yours got back from Biarritz yet?’
‘He arrived this morning. I had a note during the matinée. I suppose he’s outside now, waiting for me. Want to have a look at him?’
‘Does it mean walking downstairs?’ asked Mr Mason, guardedly.
‘No. He’ll be in his car. You can see him from the window.’
Mr Mason was equal to getting to the window. He peered down at the rakish sports-model two-seater in the little street below. Its occupant was lying on his spine, smoking a cigarette in a long holder and looking austerely at certain children of the neighbourhood whom he seemed to suspect of being about to scratch his paint.
‘They’re making fiancés very small this season,’ said Mr Mason, concluding his inspection.
‘He is small, isn’t he? He’s sensitive about it, poor darling. Still, I’m small, too, so that’s all right.’
‘Fond of him?’
‘Frightfully.’
‘Who is he, anyway? Yes, I know his name’s Fish, and it doesn’t mean a thing to me.
Any money?’
‘I believe he’s got quite a lot, only his uncle keeps it all. Lord Emsworth. He’s Ronnie’s trustee, or something.’
‘Emsworth? I knew his brother years ago.’ Mr Mason chuckled reminiscently. ‘Old Gaily! What a lad! I’ve got a scheme I’d like to interest old Gaily in. I wonder where he is now.’
‘The Prattler this week said he was down at Blandings Castle. That’s Lord Emsworth’s place in Shropshire. Ronnie’s going down there this evening.’
‘Deserting you so soon?’ Mortimer Mason shook his head. ‘I don’t like this.’
Sue laughed.
‘Well, I don’t,’ said Mr Mason. ‘You be careful. These lads will all bear watching.’
‘Don’t worry, Pa. He means to do right by our Nell.’
‘Well, don’t say I didn’t warn you. So old Gaily is at Blandings, is he? I must remember that. I’d like to get in touch with him. And now, what was it you wanted to see me about?’
Sue became grave.
‘I’ve come to ask you a favour.’
‘Go ahead. You know me.’
‘It’s about those girls you’re getting rid of.’
Mr Mason’s genial face took on a managerial look.
‘Got to get rid of them.’
‘I know. But one of them’s Sally Field.’
‘Meaning what?’
‘Well, Sally’s awfully hard up, Pa. And what I came to ask,’ said Sue breathlessly, ‘was, will you keep her on and let me go instead?’
Utter amazement caused Mortimer Mason momentarily to forget the heat. He sat up, gaping.
‘Do what?’
‘Let me go instead.’
‘Let you go instead?’
‘Yes.’
‘You’re crazy.’
‘No, I’m not. Come o
n, Pa. Be a dear.’
‘Is she a great friend of yours?’
‘Not particularly. I’m sorry for her.’
‘I won’t do it.’
‘You must. She’s down to her last bean.’
‘But I need you in the show.’
‘What nonsense! As if I made the slightest difference.’
‘You do. You’ve got – I don’t know –’ Mr Mason twiddled his fingers. ‘Something. Your mother used to have it. Did you know I was the second juvenile in the first company she was ever in?’
Yes, you told me. And haven’t you got on! There’s enough of you now to make two second juveniles. Well, you will do it, won’t you?’
Mr Mason reflected.
‘I suppose I’ll have to, if you insist,’ he said at length. ‘If I don’t, you’ll just hand your notice in anyway. I know you. You’re a sportsman, Sue. Your mother was just the same.
But are you sure you’ll manage all right? I shan’t be casting the new show till the end of August, but I may be able to fix you up somewhere if I look round.’
‘I don’t see how you could look any rounder if you tried, you poor darling. Do you realize, Pa, that if you got up early every morning and did half an hour’s Swedish exercises . . .’
‘If you don’t want to be murdered, stop!’
‘It would do you all the good in the world, you know. Well, it’s awfully sweet of you to bother about me, Pa, but you mustn’t. You’ve got enough to worry you already. I shall be all right. Good-bye. You’ve been an angel about Sally. It’ll save her life.’
‘If she’s that cross-eyed girl at the end of the second rowwho’s always out of step, I’m not sure I want to save her life.’
‘Well, you’re going to do it, anyway. Good-bye.’
‘Don’t run away.’
‘I must. Ronnie’s waiting. He’s going to take me to tea somewhere. Up the river, I hope.
Think how nice it will be there, under the trees, with the water rippling . . .’
‘The only thing that stops me hitting you with this ruler,’ said Mr Mason, ‘is the thought that I shall soon be getting out of this Turkish Bath myself. I’ve a show opening at Blackpool next week. Think how nice and cool it will be on the sands there, with the waves splashing . . .’
