Full Moon (12 page)

To a man whose mind is burdened with weight of care, rustic benches –
qua
rustic benches – make little appeal. He just gives them a glance and passes on, wrapped in thought. And this one would certainly not have arrested Freddie's progress had he not observed seated upon it his cousin, Veronica Wedge. And even as he gazed an emotional sniff rent the air and he saw that she was weeping. It was the one spectacle which could have taken his thoughts off the problem of Bill. He was not the man to stride heedlessly by when Beauty was in distress.

'Why, hullo, Vee,' he said, hurrying forward. 'Something up?'

A sympathetic listener, with whom she could discuss in detail the peculiar behaviour of Tipton Plimsoll in making assignations behind rhododendron bushes and then allowing her to keep them alone and be harried by wild gardeners, was precisely what Veronica Wedge had been wanting. She poured out her story in impassioned words, and it was not long before Freddie, who had a feeling heart, was placing a cousinly arm about her waist; and not long after that before he was bestowing on her a series of cousinly kisses. Her story being done, he gave her for her pains a world of sighs: he swore, in faith, 'twas strange, 'twas passing
strange; 'twas pitiful, 'twas wondrous pitiful – at the same time kissing her a good deal more.

From behind a tree some distance away Tipton Plimsoll, feeling as if some strong hand had struck him shrewdly behind the ear with a stuffed eelskin, stared bleakly at this lovers' reunion.

Lord Emsworth reached London shortly before five, and took a cab to the Senior Conservative Club, where he proposed to book a room for the night. Bill, arriving in the metropolis at the same time, for he had travelled on the same train, made his way immediately to the headquarters of the Hon. Galahad Threepwood in Duke Street, St James's. From the instant when Lady Hermione Wedge, exploding like a popped paper bag, had revealed her identity, he had seen that his was a situation calling above all else for a conference with that resourceful man of the world. For though a review of the position of affairs had left him with the feeling that he was beyond human aid, it might just possibly be that the brain which had got Ronnie Fish married to a chorus girl in the teeth of the opposition of a thousand slavering aunts would function now with all its pristine brilliance, dishing out some ingenious solution of his problem.

He found the Hon. Galahad standing by his car at the front door, chatting with the chauffeur. An uncle's obligations were sacred to this good man, and he was just about to start off for Blandings Castle to attend the birthday festivities of his niece Veronica.

Seeing Bill, he first blinked incredulously, then experienced a quick concern. Something, he felt, in the nature of a disaster
must have occurred. To a mind as intelligent as his, the appearance in Duke Street of a young man who ought to have been messing about with a rake in the gardens of Blandings Castle could not fail to suggest this.

'Good Lord, Bill,' he cried. 'What are you doing here?'

'Can I have a word with you in private, Gally?' said Bill, with an unfriendly glance at the chauffeur, whose large pink ears were sticking up like a giraffe's and whose whole demeanour indicated genial interest and a kindly willingness to hear all.

'Step this way,' said the Hon. Galahad, and drew him out of earshot down the street. 'Now, then, what's all this about? Why aren't you at Blandings? Don't tell me you've made another bloomer and got the push again?'

'Yes, I have, as a matter of fact. But it wasn't my fault. How was I to know she wasn't the cook? Anyone would have been misled.'

Although still fogged as to what had occurred, the Hon. Galahad had no difficulty in divining who it was at Blandings Castle who had been taken for a cook.

'You are speaking of my sister Hermione?'

'Yes.'

'You thought she was the cook?'

'Yes.'

'Whereupon—?'

'I gave her half a crown and asked her to smuggle a note to Prudence.'

'I see. Yes, I grasp the thing now. And she whipped out the flaming sword and drove you from the garden?'

'Yes.'

'Odd,' said the Hon. Galahad. 'Strange. A precisely similar thing happened thirty years ago to my old friend Stiffy Bates,
only he mistook the girl's father for the butler. Did Hermione keep your half-crown?'

'No. She threw it at me.'

'You were luckier than Stiffy. He tipped the father ten bob, and the old boy stuck to it like glue. It used to rankle with Stiffy a good deal, I remember, the thought that he had paid ten shillings just to be chased through a quickset hedge with a gardening fork. He was always a chap who liked to get value for money. But how did you happen to come across Hermione?'

'She came to tick me off for chasing her daughter.'

'You mean her niece.'

'No, her daughter. A tall, half-witted girl with goggly eyes.'

The Hon. Galahad drew his breath in sharply.

'So that was how Veronica struck you, was it? Yours is an unusual outlook, Bill. It is more customary for males of her acquaintance to allude to her as a goddess with the kind of face that launches a thousand ships. Still, perhaps it is all for the best. It would have complicated an already complicated state of affairs if there had been any danger of your suddenly switching your affections to her. But if the appeal she made to you was so tepid, why did you run after her?'

'I wanted her to take the note to Prue.'

'Ah, I see. Yes, of course. What was there in this note?'

'It was to tell her that I was ready to do everything she wanted – give up painting and settle down and run that pub of mine. Perhaps Freddie told you about that?'

'He gave me a sort of outline. Well, as far as the note is concerned, don't worry. I'm just off to Blandings. I'll see that she gets it.'

'That's awfully good of you.'

'Not at all. Is this it?' said the Hon. Galahad, taking the
envelope which Bill had produced from an inner pocket like a rabbit from a hat. 'A bit wet with honest sweat,' he said, surveying it critically through his eye-glass, 'but I don't suppose she'll mind that. So you have decided to run the Mulberry Tree, have you? I think you're wise. You don't want to mess about with art these days. Hitch your wagon to some sound commercial proposition. I see no reason why you shouldn't make a very good thing out of the Mulberry Tree. Especially if you modernized it a bit.'

'That's what Prue wants to do. Swimming pools and squash courts and all that sort of thing.'

'Of course you'd need capital.'

'That's the snag.'

'I wish I could supply some. I'd give it to you like a shot if I had it, but I subsist on a younger son's allowance from the estate. Have you anyone in mind whose ear you might bite?'

'Prue thought Lord Emsworth might cough up. After we were married, of course. But the trouble is, I told him to boil his head.'

'And you were right. Clarence ought to boil his head. What of it?'

'He didn't like it much.'

'I still cannot see your point.'

'Well, don't you think it dishes my chance of getting his support?'

'Of course not. Clarence never remembers ten minutes afterwards what people say to him.'

'But he would recognize me when he saw me again.'

'As the chap who made a mess of painting his pig? He might have a vague sort of idea that he had seen you before somewhere, but that would be all.'

'Do you mean that?'

'Certainly.'

'Then why,' demanded Bill hotly, quivering with self-pity at the thought of what he had endured, 'did you make me wear that blasted beard?'

'Purely from character-building motives. Every young man starting out in life ought to wear a false beard, if only for a day or two. It stiffens the fibre, teaches him that we were not put into this world for pleasure alone. And don't forget, while we are on the subject, that it is extremely fortunate, as you happened to run into my sister Hermione, that you did wear that beard. Now she won't recognize you when she sees you without it.'

'How do you mean?'

'When you appear at the castle to-morrow.'

'When I – what?'

'Ah, I didn't tell you, did I? While we have been talking,' explained the Hon. Galahad, 'I have hit on the absurdly simple solution of your little problem. Clarence is coming to consult me about getting another artist to paint the Empress. He wired me from Market Blandings station that he would be calling here soon after five. When he arrives, I shall present you as my selection for to-day. That will solve all your difficulties.'

Bill gaped. He found it difficult to speak. One reverences these master minds, but they take the breath away.

'You'll never be able to get away with it.'

'Of course I shall. I shall be vastly surprised if there is the slightest hitch in the negotiations from start to finish. My dear boy, I have been closely associated with my brother Clarence for more than half a century, and I know him from caviare to nuts. His I.Q. is about thirty points lower than that of a not too agile-minded jellyfish. The only point on which I am at all dubious is
your ability to give satisfaction for the limited period of time which must elapse before the opportunity presents itself for scooping Prudence out of the castle and taking her off and marrying her. You seem to have fallen down badly at your first attempt.'

Bill assured him that that was all right – he had learned a lesson. The Hon. Galahad said he hoped it was a drawing lesson. And it was at this moment that Lord Emsworth came pottering round the corner from St James's Street, and Bill, sighting him, was aware of a sudden access of hope. The scheme which his benefactor had propounded called for a vague and woollen-headed party of the second part, and the ninth Earl of Emsworth unquestionably had the appearance of being that and more.

London, with its roar and bustle and people who bumped into you and omnibuses which seemed to chase you like stoats after a rabbit, always had a disintegrating effect on the master of Blandings Castle, reducing his mental powers to a level even below that of the jellyfish to which his brother had compared him. As he stood in the entrance of Duke Street now, groping for the pince-nez which the perilous crossing of the main thoroughfare had caused to leap from their place, his mouth was open, his hat askew, and his eyes vacant. A confidence man would have seen in him an excellent prospect, and he also looked good to Bill.

'Ah, here he is,' said Gally. 'Now follow me carefully. Wait till he comes up, and then say you've got to be getting along. Walk slowly as far as St James's Palace and slowly back again. Leave the rest to me. If you feel you want an excuse for coming back, you can ask me what it was I told you was good for the two o'clock at Sandown to-morrow. Hullo, Clarence.'

'Ah, Galahad,' said Lord Emsworth.

'Well, I must be getting along,' said Bill, wincing a little as the newcomer's pince-nez rested upon him. Despite his mentor's assurances, he could not repress a certain nervousness and embarrassment on finding himself once more face to face with a man with whom his previous encounters had been so painful.

His mind was still far from being at rest as he returned to Duke Street after the brief perambulation which he had been directed to make, and he found the cheery insouciance of the Hon. Galahad's greeting encouraging.

'Ah, my dear fellow,' said Gally. 'Back again? Capital. Saves me having to ring you up from the country. I wonder if you know my brother? Lord Emsworth, Mr Landseer.'

'How do you do?' said Lord Emsworth.

'How do you do?' said Bill uneasily. Once more he was feeling nervous and embarrassed. It would have been exaggerating to say that the ninth earl was directing a keen glance at him, for it was not within the power of the "weak-eyed peer to direct keen looks, but he was certainly staring somewhat intently. And, indeed, it had just occurred to Lord Emsworth that somewhere, at some time and place, he had seen Bill before. Possibly at the club.

'Your face seems familiar, Mr Landseer,' he said.

'Oh yes?' said Bill.

'Well, naturally,' said Gally. 'Dashed celebrated chap, Landseer. Photograph always in the papers. Tell me, my dear Landseer, are you very busy just now?'

'Oh no,' said Bill.

'You could undertake a commission?'

'Oh yes,' said Bill.

'Splendid. You see, my brother was wondering if he could induce you to come to Blandings with him to-morrow and paint
the portrait of his pig. You've probably heard of the Empress of Blandings?'

'Oh, rather,' said Bill.

'You have?' said Lord Emsworth eagerly.

'My dear chap,' said Gally, smiling a little, 'of course. It's part of Landseer's job as England's leading animal painter to keep an eye on all the prominent pigs in the country. I dare say he's been studying photographs of the Empress for a long time.'

'For years,' said Bill.

'Have you ever seen a finer animal?'

'Never.'

'She is the fattest pig in Shropshire,' said Gally, 'except for Lord Burslem, who lives over Bridgnorth way. You'll enjoy painting her. When did you say you were going back to Blandings, Clarence?'

'To-morrow on the twelve-forty-two train. Perhaps you could meet me at Paddington, Mr Landseer? Capital. And now I fear I must be leaving you. I have to go to a jeweller's in Bond Street.'

He shambled off, and Gally turned to Bill with pardonable complacency.

'There you are, my boy. What did I tell you?'

Bill was panting a little, like a man who has passed through an emotional ordeal.

'Why Landseer?' he asked at length.

'Clarence has always admired your Stag at Bay,' said the Hon. Galahad. 'I made it my talking point.'

The morning following Lord Emsworth's departure for London found Blandings Castle basking in the warmth of a superb summer day. A sun which had risen with the milk and gathered strength hourly shone from a sky of purest sapphire, gilding the grounds and messuages and turning the lake into a sheet of silver flame. Bees buzzed among the flowers, insects droned, birds mopped their foreheads in the shrubberies, gardeners perspired at every pore.

About the only spot into which the golden beams did not penetrate was the small smoking-room off the hall. It never got the sun till late in the afternoon, and it was for this reason that Tipton Plimsoll, having breakfasted frugally on a cup of coffee and his thoughts, had gone there to brood over the tragedy which had shattered his life. He was not in the market for sunshine. Given his choice, he would have scrapped this glorious morning, flattering the mountain tops with sovereign eye, and substituted for it something more nearly resembling the weather conditions of King Lear, Act Two.

It does not take much to depress a young man in love, and yesterday's spectacle of Veronica Wedge and Freddie hobnobbing on the rustic bench had reduced Tipton's vivacity to its lowest ebb. As he sat in the small smoking-room, listlessly
thumbing one of those illustrated weekly papers for which their proprietors have the crust to charge a shilling, he was experiencing all the effects of a severe hangover without having had to go to the trouble and expense of manufacturing it. E. Jimpson Murgatroyd, had he beheld him, would have been shocked and disappointed, assuming the worst.

Nor did the periodical through which he was glancing do anything to induce a sprightlier trend of thought. Its contents consisted almost entirely of photographs of female members of the ruling classes, and it mystified him that the public should be expected to disburse hard cash in order to hurt its eyes by scrutinizing such gargoyles. The one on which his gaze was now resting showed three grinning young women in fancy dress – reading from right to left, Miss 'Cuckoo' Banks, Miss 'Beetles' Bessemer, and Lady 'Toots' Fosdyke – and he thought he had never seen anything more fundamentally loathsome. He turned the page hastily and found himself confronted by a camera study of an actress leering over her shoulder with a rose in her mouth.

And he was about to fling the thing from him with a stifled cry, when his heart gave a sudden bound. A second and narrower look had shown him that this was no actress but Veronica Wedge herself. What had misled him was the rose in the mouth. Nothing in his association with Veronica had given him the idea that she was a female Nebuchadnezzar.

There were unshed tears in Tipton's eyes as they stared down at this counterfeit presentment of the girl he loved. What a face, to sit opposite to at breakfast through the years. What a sweet, tender, fascinating, stimulating face. And at the same time, of course, if you looked at it from another angle, what a hell of a pan, with its wide-eyed innocence and all that sort of thing misleading honest suitors into supposing that everything was on
the up and up, when all the while it was planning to slip round the corner and neck with serpents on rustic benches. So chaotic were Tipton Plimsoll's emotions as he scanned those lovely features with burning spectacles, that he would have been at a loss to say, if asked, whether he would have preferred to kiss this camera study or give it a good poke in the eye.

Fortunately, perhaps, he had not time to arrive at a decision on the point. A cheery voice said, 'Hullo, hullo. Good morning, good morning,' and he saw framed in the window the head and shoulders of a dapper little man in a grey flannel suit.

'Beautiful morning,' said this person, surveying him benevolently through a black-rimmed monocle.

'Grrh,' said Tipton, with the same reserve of manner which he had employed some days earlier when saying 'Guk' to Freddie Threepwood.

The newcomer was a stranger to him, but he assumed from a recollection of conversation overheard at the breakfast table that he must be Veronica's uncle Gally, who had arrived overnight too late to mix with the company. Nor was he in error. The Hon. Galahad, having stopped at a roadside inn for a leisurely dinner and a game of darts, and subsequently having got into an argument with a local patriarch about the Corbett-Fitzsimmons fight, had reached the castle after closing time. This morning he had been rambling about in his amiable way, seeing the old faces, making the acquaintance of new ones, and generally picking up the threads. His arrival at the home of his ancestors always resembled the return of some genial monarch to his dominions after long absence at the Crusades.

'Hot,' he said. 'Very hot.'

'What?' said Tipton.

'It's hot.'

'What's hot?'

'The weather.'

'Oh,' said Tipton, his eyes straying back to the weekly illustrated paper.

'Regular scorcher it's going to be. Like the day when the engine driver had to get inside his furnace to keep cool.'

'What?'

'The engine driver. Out in America. It was so hot that the only way he could keep cool was by crawling into his furnace and staying there. Arising from that,' said the Hon. Galahad, 'have you heard the one about the three stockbrokers and the female snake charmer?'

Tipton said he had not – at least he made a strangled noise at the back of his throat which gave Gally the impression that he had said that he had not, so he told it to him. When he had finished, there was a silence.

'Well,' said Gally, discouraged, for a raconteur of established reputation expects something better than silence when he comes to the pay-off of one of his best stories, 'I'll be pushing along. See you at lunch.'

'What?'

'I said I would see you at lunch.'

'Guk,' said Tipton, and resumed his scrutiny of the camera study.

On the occasions of his intermittent visits to Blandings Castle, the mental attitude of the Hon. Galahad Threepwood, as has been said, resembled that of a genial monarch pottering about
his kingdom after having been away for a number of years battling with the Paynim overseas; and like such a monarch in such circumstances what he wanted was to see smiling faces about him.

The moroseness of the young man he had just left had, in consequence, made a deep impression upon him. He was still musing upon it and seeking to account for it when he came upon Colonel Egbert Wedge, sunning himself in the rose garden.

As Gally always breakfasted in bed and the colonel would have scorned to do anything so effete, this was the first time they had met since the banquet of the Loyal Sons of Shropshire, and their conversation for a few moments dealt with reminiscences of that function. Colonel Wedge said that in all his experience, which was a wide one, he had never heard a more footling after-dinner speech than old Bodger had made on that occasion. Gally, demurring, asked what price the one delivered half an hour later by old Todger. The colonel conceded that Todger had been pretty ghastly, but not so ghastly as Bodger. Gally, unwilling to mar this beautiful morning with argument, said perhaps he was right, adding that in his opinion both these territorial magnates had been as tight as owls.

A silence followed. Gally broke it by putting the question which had been exercising his mind at the moment of their meeting.

'Tell me, Egbert,' he said, 'who would a tall, thin chap be?'

Colonel Wedge replied truly enough that he might be anyone – except, of course, a short, stout chap, and Gally became more explicit.

'I was talking to him just now in the small smoking-room. Tall, thin chap with horn-rimmed spectacles. American, if I'm not mistaken. Oddly enough, he reminded me of a man I used
to know in New York. Tall, thin, young, with a hell of a grouch and horn-rimmed spectacles all over his face.'

Colonel Wedge's eyebrows came together in a frown. He no longer found any difficulty in assisting the process of identification.

'That is a young fellow named Tipton Plimsoll. Freddie brought him here. And if you ask me, he ought to have taken him to a lunatic asylum instead of to Blandings Castle. Not,' he was obliged to add, 'that there's much difference.'

It was plain that the name had touched a chord in Gally's mind.

'
Tipton
Plimsoll? You don't happen to know if he has anything to do with a racket over in the States called Tipton's Stores?'

'Anything to do with them?' Colonel Wedge was a strong man, so he did not groan hollowly, but his face was contorted with pain. 'Freddie tells me he practically owns them.'

'Then that is why his appearance struck me as familiar. He must be the nephew of old Chet Tipton, the man I was speaking of. I seem to remember Chet mentioning a nephew. One of my dearest friends out there,' explained Gally. 'Dead now, poor chap, but when in circulation as fine a fellow as ever out-talked a taxi driver in his own language. Had one peculiar characteristic. Was as rich as dammit, but liked to get his drinks for nothing. It was his sole economy, and he had worked out rather an ingenious system. He would go into a speakeasy, and mention casually to the barman that he had got smallpox. The barman would dive for the street, followed by the customers, and there Chet was, right in among the bottles with a free hand. Colossal brain. So this young Plimsoll is Chet's nephew, is he? For Chet's sake, I am prepared to love him like a son. What's he grouchy about?'

Colonel Wedge made a despairing gesture.

'God knows. The boy's mentality is a sealed book to me.'

'And why do you say he ought to be in a loony bin?'

Colonel Wedge's pent-up feelings expressed themselves in a snort so vehement that a bee which had just settled on a nearby lavender bush fell over backwards and went off to bestow its custom elsewhere.

'Because he must be stark, staring mad. It's the only possible explanation of his extraordinary behaviour.'

'What's he been doing? Biting someone in the leg?'

Colonel Wedge was glad to have found a confidant into whose receptive ear he could pour the story of the great sorrow which was embittering the lives of himself, his wife, and his daughter Veronica. Out it all came, accompanied by gestures, and by the time he arrived at the final, inexplicable episode of Tipton's failure to clock in behind the rhododendrons, Gally was shaking his head in manifest concern.

'I don't like it, Egbert,' he said gravely. 'It sounds to me unnatural and unwholesome. Why, if old Chet had heard that there were girls in the rhododendrons, he would have been diving into them head foremost before you could say "What ho." If there is anything in heredity, I can't believe that it was the true Tipton Plimsoll who hung back on the occasion you mention. There's something wrong here.'

'Well, I wish you'd put it right,' said Colonel Wedge sombrely. 'I don't mind telling you, Gally, that it's a dashed unpleasant thing for a father to have to watch his only child slowly going into a decline with a broken heart. At dinner last night Vee refused a second helping of roast duckling and green peas. That'll show you.'

As the Hon. Galahad resumed his stroll, setting a course for the sun-bathed terrace, his amiable face was wrinkled with lines of deep thought. The poignant story to which he had been listening had stirred him profoundly. It seemed to him that Fate, not for the first time in his relations with the younger generation, had cast him in the role of God from the Machine. Someone had got to accelerate the publication of the banns of Tipton Plimsoll and Veronica Wedge, and there could be no more suitable person for such a task than himself. Veronica was a niece whom, though yielding to no one in his recognition of her outstanding dumbness, he had always been fond, and Tipton was the nephew of one of his oldest friends. Plainly it was up to him to wave the magic wand. He seemed to hear Chet's voice whispering in his ear: 'Come on, Gally. Li'l speed.'

It was possibly this stimulation of his mental processes from beyond the veil that enabled him to hit upon a solution of the problem. At any rate, he was just stepping on to the terrace when his face suddenly cleared. He had found the way.

And it was at this moment that a two-seater came bowling past with Freddie at the wheel, back at the old home after his night with the Shropshire Finches. He whizzed by and rounded the corner leading to the stables with a debonair flick of the wrist, and Gally lost no time in following him. In the enterprise which he was planning he required the co-operation of an assistant. He found the young go-getter, his two-seater safely garaged and a cigarette in its eleven-inch holder between his lips, blowing smoke rings.

Freddie's visit to Sudbury Grange, the seat of Major R. B. and Lady Emily Finch, had proved one of his most notable
triumphs. He had found Sudbury Grange given over to the damnable cult of Todd's Tail-Waggers' Tidbits, an even fouler product than Peterson's Pup Food, and it had been no easy task to induce his host and hostess to become saved and start thinking the Donaldson way. But he had done it. A substantial order had been booked, and during the drive to Blandings the exhilaration of success had kept his spirits at a high level.

But with the end of the journey, there had come the sobering thought that though his own heart might be light there were others in its immediate circle that ached like billy-o. Bill Lister's, for one. Prue's, for another. Veronica Wedge's, for a third. So now, when he blew smoke rings, they were grave smoke rings.

At the moment of Gally's appearance he had been thinking of Veronica, but the sight of his uncle caused Bill's unhappy case to supplant hers in the forefront of his mind, and he started to go into it without delay.

'Oh, hullo, Uncle Gally,' he said. 'What ho, Uncle Gally? I say, Uncle Gally, brace yourself for a bit of bad news. Poor old Bill—'

'I know, I know.'

'You've heard about him being given the bum's rush again?'

'I've seen him. Don't you worry about Bill,' said Gally, who believed in concentrating on one thing at a time. 'I have his case well in hand. Bill's all right. What we've got to rivet our attention on now, Freddie, my boy, is this mysterious business of young Plimsoll and Veronica.'