A Pelican at Blandings (14 page)

There were several points in this monologue when the
Duke would have been glad to interrupt, but the fury with
which its subject matter filled him precluded speech, and he
could merely splutter. He was still spluttering as Gally
proceeded.

'But, as I need hardly tell an old campaigner like you, the
course of true love seldom runs smooth. Circumstances arose
which led to a rift between the young couple. Johnny
unfortunately blotted his copybook and fell back badly in the
betting. His only hope of getting things on an even keel again
was to come to Blandings Castle and do some heavy pleading.
But how to get him there? Ah, that was what wanted thinking
out. To tell Connie that he was a friend of mine, in fact
actually my godson, would have been fatal, for Connie's
attitude towards my circle of intimates has always been austere.
Not bothering to make a study of each individual case, she
pencils them all in as untouchables. I can see you shuddering
at her unreasonableness—at least something seems to be
making you shake—but there it is, that's Connie.

'And then I got the idea of bringing him here to psychoanalyse
Clarence. I would be killing two birds with one stone,
if I may so express myself. He could devote his mornings to
pleading with the popsy and attend to Clarence in the
afternoon and evening. A perfect set-up it seemed to me. So
thanks to you, for you invited him, he came, and most
fortunately fell downstairs and bumped his head, with the
happy result that your niece, all animosity forgotten, flung
herself on him, like as you brilliantly put it a seal going after a
bit of fish, started to kiss him and is probably kissing him still.
In short, there has been a complete reconciliation, love is
working again at the old stand, and you can begin saving up for
the wedding present and making notes for your speech at the
wedding breakfast.'

Even Gally, practised raconteur though he was, was obliged
to stop occasionally and take in breath. He did so now, and the
Duke was enabled to convert the monologue into a duet. For
the first time he found himself capable of speech.

'I never heard such dashed nonsense in my life,' he said.

Gally was surprised and pained. He had expected a better
comment on his eloquence than this. His eyeglass glittered
with reproach.

'You amaze me, Dunstable. Don't you approve of young
love in Springtime? Not that it is Springtime, but the
principle's the same. I would have thought you would have
been giving three rousing cheers, only prevented by your
groggy ankle from dancing the dance of the seven veils. You
seem to me to be on velvet, for though you are losing a niece,
you are gaining a nephew.'

'Ouch!'

'Don't say Ouch. Don't you like gaining a nephew?'

'No, I don't. I've got two, and I can't stand them. They both
sneaked off and married scums of the earth without a word to
me. That isn't going to happen to Linda. I want something
better for her than the junior partner of a loony doctor. You
can tell your ruddy godson that there isn't a hope of him
marrying her. It's no good arguing, I won't consider it,'
boomed the Duke, and further discussion was prevented by
the arrival of the medicine man, who had his home in the
village of Blandings Parva almost in the shadow of the castle
walls and so had been able to give prompt service. Gally,
relieved by his presence from attendance at the sick bed,
returned to the hall, where he found John and Linda, the
former looking damp, the latter wearing the contented air of a
ministering angel conscious of having done a good job of work.
He hastened to acquaint them with the latest developments.

'Well, Johnny, I've just been talking to your future uncle by
marriage. Only he says he isn't.'

'Isn't what?'

'Your future uncle by marriage. I explained the position of
affairs to him, he being rather at a loss to grasp what was the
thought behind all that kissing, and he stoutly denied that you
and your little ball of worsted are headed for the altar. He said
he wouldn't permit it. What's the matter?'

This to Linda, who had made him jump with a sudden
sharp cry, of much the same timbre as the one she had uttered
on observing her loved one's head come in contact with the
table on which the papers and magazines were kept. The light
had died out of her eyes, and those eyes were staring at him in
a manner which struck him as extremely odd.

'Did Uncle Alaric say that?' she asked in a hollow voice.

'He did, and it was like his gall. Of all the crust! Where does
he get off, trying to dictate to you who you can marry and who
you can't? He hasn't any say in the matter at all. It isn't as if he
were your father, he's just your uncle and a very inferior uncle
at that, the sort of uncle a young bride hushes up and keeps as
much as possible in the background. How can he stop you
marrying anyone you want to?'

'But he can! He can! Oh, Johnny darling, I couldn't tell you
that night in the taxi because there wasn't time, but I'm a ward
of court.'

She would probably have gone on to amplify this statement,
which had left Gally, for one, completely bewildered, but at
this moment Beach began to beat the gong for dinner. And
when Beach beat gongs, no human voice could offer
competition.

All through the meal Gally continued to ponder on these
peculiar words, hoping to read some significance into them,
but no gleam of elucidation rewarded him. They seemed to
him in a nebulous sort of way to convey a suggestion of the
legal and if so had no doubt had a meaning for John, but with
Connie present he could not apply to John for enlightenment.
Nor could he go to the fountain head and ask Linda. He did
enquire of Vanessa, who was seated next to him, if she knew
what a ward of court was, but as she said she had an idea it was
something to do with tennis, he made no real advance.

Dinner at the castle under Lady Constance's regime was a
formal affair with no mass exit of the two sexes at the end of it.
The gentlemen were left to their port precisely as the
gentlemen of her father's day had been left to theirs. It was
consequently only after the ladies had withdrawn and Lord
Emsworth had gone to his room to take his collar off and get
into bedroom slippers that Gally was able to put the question
uppermost in his mind. With an abruptness excusable in the
circumstances he interrupted Wilbur Trout, who had begun to
tell a story about a travelling salesman, and said:

'Do either of you know what a ward of court is?'

Wilbur, abandoning his anecdote with his usual amiability,
said he thought it was the fellow who did the fetching and
carrying when the District Attorney asked the Judge if the
murder weapon or the bloodstained handkerchief or whatever
it might be could be placed in evidence as Exhibit A. Gally
thanked him.

'No, it's a girl of some sort,' he said. 'I was talking to a girl
not long ago, and she told me she was a ward of court, and I've
been wondering what she meant.'

John through the greater part of dinner had been sitting in
silence, and Gally had supposed that this was because his head
was hurting him. The heads of the younger generation, he told
himself, were not like the heads he had known at the old
Pelican, where it had been unusual for members to take much
notice even when struck with a side of beef. He now spoke, the
first time he had done so since the fish course.

'I know what a ward of court is.'

'Ah! I thought it was something legal.'

'It's the same as a ward in Chancery,' said John, and Gally
uttered a brief 'Oh, my God'. Whether from his reading or
because he had heard somebody say something on the subject,
he had a rudimentary acquaintance with the status of wards in
Chancery. He began to grasp the seriousness of the situation.

John continued to explain in a toneless voice like that of one
speaking from the tomb. He was wearing the same wan look
which had caused remark in the garden of the Emsworth
Arms and distressed the personnel of Paddington.

'A girl who is a ward of court comes under the ruling of the
Guardianship Of Infants Act. She cannot marry or accept
proposals of marriage without the consent of the court. When
the consent of the court is not given, an injunction of restraint
is made against the other intended party.'

Having mentally translated this into English, Gally
removed and began to polish his eyeglass, a thing which, as has
been shown, he seldom did except in moments of profound
emotion. When he spoke, it was as though another voice was
joining in the conversation from another tomb.

'You mean they put a stopper on the marriage?'

'Exactly.'

'Still they might not.'

'They would if some near relative of the ward of court—her
uncle, for instance—objected to it.'

Gally burnished his eyeglass feverishly. He seemed to be
praying for strength.

'Are you telling me that if a ward of court wants to marry a
fellow who is one of the best and her uncle, a notorious louse,
doesn't approve, the court would tell her she mustn't?'

'Yes, if he stood to her in loco parentis.'

'Monstrous!'

'It's the law.'

'Who made that law?'

'I couldn't tell you offhand.'

'Well, it's a damned outrage.'

Wilbur Trout, who had been listening with great interest,
put the question which would naturally occur to the lay
mind.

'What happens if the other intended party tells the court to
go fry an egg and marries the girl anyway?'

'He gets sent to prison.'

'You're kidding.'

'No, that's the law. It's a very serious offence.'

'So the way it works out is that you just can't marry a ward
of court?'

'Not with near relatives objecting.'

'Well, I wish some of my wives had been wards of court
with near relatives objecting,' said Wilbur. 'I'd have saved
money.'

Shortly after uttering these wistful words Wilbur, having like
the stag at eve drunk his fill, left the table, saying that he
thought he would go and do a bit more practising in the
billiard room, and Gally was at liberty to speak freely.

'Well, this is a nice piece of box fruit, Johnny.'

'Yes.'

'You couldn't have got your facts wrong?'

'No.'

'Then things don't look so good.'

'I've known them better.'

'Why do you suppose Dunstable made her a ward of court?'

John's reply to this was a little brusque. He was not feeling
his usual amiable self.

'Considering that it was only about an hour ago that I found
out she was one and that I've had no opportunity of asking her
since, I can't tell you.'

'It must have been his experience with her brothers that put
the idea into his head. He was telling me about them. They
both married girls he disapproved of, and no doubt he said to
himself that he was not going to have that happen to Linda.'

'Probably.'

'Just the sort of low trick that would have occurred to him.'

'Yes.'

'Is it really true that you would be slapped in the jug if you
married her?'

'Yes.'

'You couldn't reason with them and drive it into their fat
heads that yours was a special case?'

'No.'

Gally heaved a sigh. He was a doughty warrior and never
gave in readily when in receipt of the slings and arrows of
outrageous fortune, but reviewing the position of affairs he was
compelled to recognize that the outlook could not be called
promising. Any knowledgeable turf accountant like Honest
Jerry Judson, he felt, would hesitate for a long time before
giving odds shorter than a hundred to one against the triumph
of young love. And everything till now had seemed to be
working out so smoothly.

'It's very bitter,' he said, heaving another sigh, 'that after
negotiating with such success all the Becher's Brooks and
Canal Turns in love's Grand National we seem to be pipped
on the post. Though I ought not to say that. We mustn't be
defeatist. Always keep your chin up, is my motto. There must
be any number of ways of dealing with the situation.'

'Name three.'

'It will want thought, of course.'

'Quite a good deal.'

'The great thing is that you are solidly established at the
castle, cheek by jowl, as you might say, with Dunstable, and so
are in an excellent position to ingratiate yourself with him and
get him to look on you as a son. He must learn to love you. You
must see to it that your nature expands before him like some
beautiful flower. You want to get him saying to himself "By
golly, I was all wrong about this chap. Now that I've come to
know him better I can see he's the salt of the ruddy earth, and
it will be a pleasure and privilege to dance at his wedding."
Have you been to see him yet with sympathetic enquiries?'

'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.

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.

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 whole 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.'

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.