Blandings Castle and Elsewhere (7 page)

There had been no need whatever to invite the man Belford
to lunch; but, having invited him to lunch, to leave him sitting,
without having clearly stated that Angela would have no money
for four years, was the act of a congenital imbecile. Lady Constance
had been aware ever since their childhood days that her
brother had about as much sense as a—

Here Beach entered, superintending the bringing-in of the
savoury, and she had been obliged to suspend her remarks.

This sort of conversation is never agreeable to a sensitive man,
and his lordship had removed himself from the danger zone as
soon as he could manage it. He was now seated in the library,
sipping port and straining a brain which Nature had never
intended for hard exercise in an effort to bring back that word
of magic of which his unfortunate habit of sleeping in trains had
robbed him.

'Pig–'

He could remember as far as that; but of what avail was a
single syllable? Besides, weak as his memory was, he could recall
that the whole gist or nub of the thing lay in the syllable that
followed. The 'pig' was a mere preliminary.

Lord Emsworth finished his port and got up. He felt restless,
stifled. The summer night seemed to call to him like some silvervoiced
swineherd calling to his pig. Possibly, he thought, a breath
of fresh air might stimulate his brain-cells. He wandered downstairs;
and, having dug a shocking old slouch hat out of the
cupboard where he hid it to keep his sister Constance from
impounding and burning it, he strode heavily out into the garden.

He was pottering aimlessly to and fro in the parts adjacent
to the rear of the castle when there appeared in his path a slender
female form. He recognized it without pleasure. Any unbiased
judge would have said that his niece Angela, standing there in
the soft, pale light, looked like some dainty spirit of the Moon.
Lord Emsworth was not an unbiased judge. To him Angela
merely looked like Trouble. The march of civilization has
given the modern girl a vocabulary and an ability to use it
which her grandmother never had. Lord Emsworth would not
have minded meeting Angela's grandmother a bit.

'Is that you, my dear?' he said nervously.

'Yes.'

'I didn't see you at dinner.'

'I didn't want any dinner. The food would have choked me.
I can't eat.'

'It's precisely the same with my pig,' said his lordship. 'Young
Belford tells me—'

Into Angela's queenly disdain there flashed a sudden
animation.

'Have you seen Jimmy? What did he say?'

'That's just what I can't remember. It began with the word

"Pig" —'

'But after he had finished talking about you, I mean. Didn't
he say anything about coming down here?'

'Not that I remember.'

'I expect you weren't listening. You've got a very annoying
habit, Uncle Clarence,' said Angela maternally, 'of switching
your mind off and just going blah when people are talking to
you. It gets you very much disliked on all sides. Didn't Jimmy say
anything about me?'

'I fancy so. Yes, I am nearly sure he did.'

'Well, what?'

'I cannot remember.'

There was a sharp clicking noise in the darkness. It was
caused by Angela's upper front teeth meeting her lower front
teeth; and was followed by a sort of wordless exclamation. It
seemed only too plain that the love and respect which a niece
should have for an uncle were in the present instance at a very
low ebb.

'I wish you wouldn't do that,' said Lord Emsworth plaintively.

'Do what?'

'Make clicking noises at me.'

'I will make clicking noises at you. You know perfectly well,
Uncle Clarence, that you are behaving like a bohunkus.'

A what?'

A bonhunkus,' explained his niece coldly, 'is a very inferior
sort of worm. Not the kind of worm that you see on lawns,
which you can respect, but a really degraded species.'

'I wish you would go in, my dear,' said Lord Emsworth. 'The
night air may give you a chill.'

'I won't go in. I came out here to look at the moon and think
of Jimmy. What are you doing out here, if it comes to that?'

'I came here to think. I am greatly exercised about my pig,
Empress of Blandings. For two days she has refused her food,
and young Belford says she will not eat until she hears the proper
call or cry. He very kindly taught it to me, but unfortunately
I have forgotten it.'

'I wonder you had the nerve to ask Jimmy to teach you pig calls,
considering the way you're treating him.'

'But—'

'Like a leper, or something. And all I can say is that, if you
remember this call of his, and it makes the Empress eat,
you ought to be ashamed of yourself if you still refuse to let me
marry him.'

'My dear,' said Lord Emsworth earnestly, 'if through young
Belford's instrumentality Empress of Blandings is induced to
take nourishment once more, there is nothing I will refuse him –
nothing.'

'Honour bright?'

'I give you my solemn word.'

'You won't let Aunt Constance bully you out of it?'

Lord Emsworth drew himself up.

'Certainly not,' he said proudly. 'I am always ready to listen to
your Aunt Constance's views, but there are certain matters
where I claim the right to act according to my own judgment.'
He paused and stood musing. 'It began with the word
"Pig—"'

From somewhere near at hand music made itself heard. The
servants' hall, its day's labours ended, was refreshing itself with
the housekeeper's gramophone. To Lord Emsworth the strains
were merely an additional annoyance. He was not fond of music.
It reminded him of his younger son Frederick, a flat but persevering
songster both in and out of the bath.

'Yes, I can distinctly recall as much as that. Pig – Pig—'

'WHO—'

Lord Emsworth leaped in the air. It was as if an electric shock
had been applied to his person.

'WHO stole my heart away?' howled the gramophone.
'WHO—?'

The peace of the summer night was shattered by a triumphant
shout.

'Pig-HOO-o-o-o-ey!'

A window opened. A large, bald head appeared. A dignified
voice spoke.

'Who is there? Who is making that noise?'

'Beach!' cried Lord Emsworth. 'Come out here at once.'

'Very good, your lordship.'

And presently the beautiful night was made still more lovely
by the added attraction of the butler's presence.

'Beach, listen to this.'

'Very good, your lordship.'

'Pig-hoo-o-o-o-ey!'

'Very good, your lordship.'

'Now you do it.'

'I, your lordship?'

'Yes. It's a way you call pigs.'

'I do not call pigs, your lordship,' said the butler coldly.

'What do you want Beach to do it for?' asked Angela.

'Two heads are better than one. If we both learn it, it will not
matter should I forget it again.'

'By Jove, yes! Come on, Beach. Push it over the thorax,'
urged the girl eagerly. 'You don't know it, but this is a matter
of life and death. At-a-boy, Beach! Inflate the lungs and go
to it.'

It had been the butler's intention, prefacing his remarks with
the statement that he had been in service at the castle for eighteen
years, to explain frigidly to Lord Emsworth that it was not
his place to stand in the moonlight practising pig-calls. If, he
would have gone on to add, his lordship saw the matter from a
different angle, then it was his, Beach's, painful duty to tender his
resignation, to become effective one month from that day.

But the intervention of Angela made this impossible to a man
of chivalry and heart. A paternal fondness for the girl, dating
from the days when he had stooped to enacting – and very
convincingly, too, for his was a figure that lent itself to the
impersonation – the
rôle
of a hippopotamus for her childish
amusement, checked the words he would have uttered. She
was looking at him with bright eyes, and even the rendering of
pig-noises seemed a small sacrifice to make for her sake.

'Very good, your lordship,' he said in a low voice, his face pale
and set in the moonlight. 'I shall endeavour to give satisfaction.
I would merely advance the suggestion, your lordship, that we
move a few steps farther away from the vicinity of the servants'
hall. If I were to be overheard by any of the lower domestics, it
would weaken my position as a disciplinary force.'

'What chumps we are!' cried Angela, inspired. 'The place to
do it is outside the Empress's sty. Then, if it works, we'll see it
working.'

Lord Emsworth found this a little abstruse, but after a
moment he got it.

'Angela,' he said, 'you are a very intelligent girl. Where you
get your brains from, I don't know. Not from my side of the
family.'

The bijou residence of the Empress of Blandings looked very
snug and attractive in the moonlight. But beneath even the
beautiful things of life there is always an underlying sadness.
This was supplied in the present instance by a long, low trough,
only too plainly full to the brim of succulent mash and acorns.
The fast, obviously, was still in progress.

The sty stood some considerable distance from the castle
walls, so that there had been ample opportunity for Lord Emsworth
to rehearse his little company during the journey. By the
time they had ranged themselves against the rails, his two
assistants were letter-perfect.

'Now,' said his lordship.

There floated out upon the summer night a strange composite
sound that sent the birds roosting in the trees above shooting
off their perches like rockets. Angela's clear soprano rang out like
the voice of the village blacksmith's daughter. Lord Emsworth
contributed a reedy tenor. And the bass notes of Beach probably
did more to startle the birds than any other one item in the
programme.

They paused and listened. Inside the Empress's boudoir there
sounded the movement of a heavy body. There was an inquiring
grunt. The next moment the sacking that covered the doorway
was pushed aside, and the noble animal emerged.

'Now!' said Lord Emsworth again.

Once more that musical cry shattered the silence of the night.
But it brought no responsive movement from Empress of
Blandings. She stood there motionless, her nose elevated, her
ears hanging down, her eyes everywhere but on the trough
where, by rights, she should now have been digging in and
getting hers. A chill disappointment crept over Lord Emsworth,
to be succeeded by a gust of petulant anger.

'I might have known it,' he said bitterly. 'That young scoundrel
was deceiving me. He was playing a joke on me.'

'He wasn't,' cried Angela indignantly. 'Was he, Beach?'

'Not knowing the circumstances, miss, I cannot venture an
opinion.'

'Well, why has it no effect, then?' demanded Lord Emsworth.

'You can't expect it to work right away. We've got her stirred
up, haven't we? She's thinking it over, isn't she? Once more will
do the trick. Ready, Beach?'

'Quite ready, miss.'

'Then when I say three. And this time, Uncle Clarence, do
please for goodness' sake not yowl like you did before. It was
enough to put any pig off. Let it come out quite easily and
gracefully. Now, then. One, two – three!'

The echoes died away. And as they did so a voice spoke.

'Community singing?'

'Jimmy!' cried Angela, whisking round.

'Hullo, Angela. Hullo, Lord Emsworth. Hullo, Beach.'

'Good evening, sir. Happy to see you once more.'

'Thanks. I'm spending a few days at the Vicarage with my
father. I got down here by the five-five.'

Lord Emsworth cut peevishly in upon these civilities.

'Young man,' he said, 'what do you mean by telling me
that my pig would respond to that cry? It does nothing of the
kind.'

'You can't have done it right.'

'I did it precisely as you instructed me. I have had, moreover,
the assistance of Beach here and my niece Angela—'

'Let's hear a sample.'

Lord Emsworth cleared his throat.

'Pig-hoo-o-o-o-ey!'

James Belford shook his head.

'Nothing like it,' he said. 'You want to begin the "Hoo" in a
low minor of two quarter notes in four-four time. From this
build gradually to a higher note, until at last the voice is soaring
in full crescendo, reaching F sharp on the natural scale and
dwelling for two retarded half-notes, then breaking into a
shower of accidental grace-notes.'

'God bless my soul!' said Lord Emsworth, appalled. 'I shall
never be able to do it.'

'Jimmy will do it for you,' said Angela. 'Now that he's engaged
to me, he'll be one of the family and always popping about here.
He can do it every day till the show is over.'

James Belford nodded.

'I think that would be the wisest plan. It is doubtful if an
amateur could ever produce real results. You need a voice that
has been trained on the open prairie and that has gathered
richness and strength from competing with tornadoes. You
need a manly, sunburned, wind-scorched voice with a suggestion
in it of the crackling of corn husks and the whisper of evening
breezes in the fodder. Like this!'

Resting his hands on the rail before him, James Belford
swelled before their eyes like a young balloon. The muscles on
his cheekbones stood out, his forehead became corrugated, his
ears seemed to shimmer. Then, at the very height of the tension,
he let it go like, as the poet beautifully puts it, the sound of a
great Amen.

'Pig-HOOOOO-OOO-OOO-O-O-ey!'

They looked at him, awed. Slowly, fading off across hill and
dale, the vast bellow died away. And suddenly, as it died,
another, softer sound succeeded it. A sort of gulpy, gurgly,
plobby, squishy, wofflesome sound, like a thousand eager men
drinking soup in a foreign restaurant. And, as he heard it, Lord
Emsworth uttered a cry of rapture.