Sunset at Blandings (10 page)

Jeff,
though solitude was above all what he desired at the moment, assured him that
he was not, and Lord Emsworth wandered to and fro, picking things up and dropping
them, his habit when in a room new to him.

‘I
thought you might like to come and see the Empress by moonlight,’ he said in
the manner of someone inviting a friend to take a look at the Taj Mahal.

Six
simultaneous things he would have preferred to do flashed through Jeff’s mind,
but consideration for a host of whom he had become very fond kept him from
mentioning them and he replied that that would just make his day.

‘But
will she be up?’ he asked, and Lord Emsworth asked up where.

‘Won’t
she have gone to bed?’

‘Oh,
no, she always has a snack at about this hour.’

‘Bran
mash?’

‘That
and the other things prescribed by Wolfe-Lehmann. According to Wolfe-Lehmann,
whose advice I follow to the letter, a pig to be in health must consume daily
nourishment amounting to fifty-seven hundred calories, these to consist of
proteins four pounds seven ounces, carbohydrates twenty-five pounds.’

‘It doesn’t
leave her much time for anything else.’

‘No,
she has few other interests.’

‘Nothing
like sticking to what you do best.’

‘Exactly.
We will go out by the back door and through the kitchen garden. It is the
shortest way.’

The
route indicated took them past Beach’s pantry, and they could hear the butler’s
fruity laugh, indicating that Gally was telling him some humorous story from
his deplorable youth. It surprised Jeff that anyone could laugh in the world as
at present constituted. He himself was sunk in a gloom on which not even the
prospect of seeing Empress of Blandings by moonlight could make an impression.

Lord
Emsworth, on the other hand, was bright and chatty. He had returned to the
subject of Sir Gregory Parsloe, on which he knew that his young friend would wish
to be fully informed. It was not far to the Empress’s sty, and the Parsloe saga
provided absorbing, if one-sided conversation all the way. If Jeff had had any
doubts as to the depths of infamy to which baronets could sink,
[39]
they were resolved by the time
he reached his destination. He did not suppose he would ever meet Sir Gregory
Parsloe, but if he did he told himself he would be careful not to buy a used
car from him.

At the
sty Lord Emsworth paused.

‘Have
you a flask with you?’ he asked.

‘I beg
your pardon?’

‘A
flask of whisky.’

This
surprised Jeff. He had not suspected his host of being a drinking man, and in
any case it seemed to him that the other might have quenched his thirst before
leaving the house. He said he was sorry but he had not, and Lord Emsworth
looked relieved.

‘I
asked because on one occasion somebody drank from a flask while at the rails of
the sty and dropped it into the Empress’s trough,
[40]
and I am sorry to say that she
became completely intoxicated. My brother Galahad, I remember, suggested that
she ought to join Alcoholics Anonymous, and I was very doubtful whether the
committee would accept a pig. Fortunately we discovered the truth. But it was
an anxious time.’

‘It
just shows you,’ said Jeff.

‘It
does indeed,’ said Lord Emsworth.

The
Empress, as predicted, was having a late snack, and for what seemed to Jeff
several hours they stood gazing at her. Eventually she appeared to feel that
she had had sufficient to see her through till breakfast and retired to the
covered portion of the sty, there to curl up and get the wholesome slumber
which Wolfe-Lehmann no doubt considered essential to her health. Reluctantly
Lord Emsworth led the way back to the house, and Jeff was privileged to hear
how Sir Gregory Parsloe, stopping at nothing, had decoyed George Cyril
Wellbeloved, Lord Emsworth’s superbly gifted pig man, from service at the
castle to his own employment.

Entering
through the back door, they separated, Lord Emsworth to proceed to his room and
read Whiffle’s
On the Care of the Pig
[41]
for an hour or so before going to bed, Jeff to fulfil his original
intention of sitting on the terrace in the moonlight.

It was
soon after this that Gally bade Beach good night and Beach, having heard Lord
Emsworth come in and remembering how often after these night expeditions he
forgot to lock up, went to inspect the back door.

It was
as he had thought. The door was not locked.

He
locked it.

Jeff,
meanwhile, thankful to be alone, though naturally sorry that he was to hear no
more about Sir Gregory Parsloe, continued to sit in the moonlight, smoking his
pipe and looking on the dark side of things.

Jeff
was one of those rare young men whose hearts, once bestowed, are bestowed for
ever. In a world filled to overflowing with male butterflies flitting and
sipping and then moving on to flit and sip somewhere else he remained as
steadfast as Jacob or any of the others who became famous for their constancy.
He had fallen in love with Vicky at their first meeting and he had been in love
with her ever since, and the fact that he was now so low in her estimation made
no difference to him. He had friends who in the same position, deprived of the
girl they loved, would have consoled themselves with the thought that there
would be another one along in a minute, but this easy philosophy was not for J.
G. Bennison. The current situation made J. G. Bennison feel that hope was dead.

How
long he would have sat there had nothing occurred to divert his thoughts, he
could not have said, but one of the charms of the English climate is its
ability to change from high summer to midwinter in a matter of minutes, and a
bitter wind springing up from the east persuaded him that he would be more
comfortable in bed.

It is
rather saddening to think that his first emotion on reaching the back door and
finding it locked was a surge of anti-Lord Emsworth feeling, for there was
nothing to indicate that that absentminded peer was not responsible for the
devastating act. Nothing could be truer to form than that his host should have
locked up, completely forgetting that he had left a companion out on the
terrace. Showing once again that in human affairs it is always the wrong man
who gets the blame. Beach, who should have played the stellar role in Jeff’s
commination service, escaped without a curse.

Two
courses were open to Jeff. He could ring bells and hammer on doors till he
roused the house or he could stay outside for the night. Neither appealed to
him. It was improbable that the first alternative would bring Lady Florence
down in a dressing gown, but it was a possibility, and the thought of being
pierced by those icy eyes was one that intimidated even a Smith who knew what
fear was only by hearsay. On the other hand, with the wind freshening,
remaining in the great outdoors offered few attractions.

It was
as he stood there, this way and that dividing the swift mind, as somebody once
put it, that he had a vague recollection, when on the terrace, of having seen
an open window not very far above him, a window well within the reach of one who
in his undergraduate days at Oxford had mastered the knack of climbing up walls
and sliding through windows after lock-up. He had wondered whose it was.

Externally
Blandings Castle might have been specially designed for the climber’s
convenience. Stout strands of ivy had been allowed to flourish on its walls
till the merest novice would have experienced no difficulty in finding his way
up.

A
minute later he was window bound, glad to find that the old skill had not
deserted him. Five minutes later he was across the sill. And twenty-five
seconds after that the quiet night was disturbed by a noise like the shattering
of a hundred dishes falling from the hands of a hundred waiters, and he was
staggering across the floor with a bruised shin and drenched trouser legs. The
occupant of the room, as he was to discover later, had placed beneath the
window a jug full of water, several assorted fire irons, a chair, a picture of
sheep in a meadow and another picture of a small girl nursing a kitten.

Lights
flashed on, and a voice spoke, the voice of Claude Duff.

‘Stick ‘em
up, or I shoot,’ it said. ‘It’s all right shooting a burglar,’ it added. ‘I
asked my solicitor.’
[42]

CHAPTER
THIRTEEN

THAT JEFF, climbing
through the window in the dark, should have become entangled in fire irons,
jugs of water and pictures of sheep and kittens was not surprising, for these
had been stacked in close ranks, impossible to avoid. It was also less than
extraordinary that he should have felt irritated with Claude Duff. A drier and
less bruised man might have applauded Claude’s prudence in consulting his
solicitor before starting to take human life. Jeff felt only annoyance, and he
expressed this in his opening words, which were:

‘Oh,
don’t be a damned fool.’

‘Jeff!’
cried Claude in ringing tones, and Jeff snarled a reminder that danger lurked
in addressing him thus. Who knew that Lady Florence was not even now with her
hand on the door handle, all ready to join their little circle? The fire irons
alone had made enough noise to wake a dozen Florences.

‘I
thought you were a burglar,’ said Claude.

‘Well,
I’m not.’

‘What
are
you exactly?’ Claude asked. ‘I mean, climbing up walls and sliding through
windows. Conduct surely a bit on the eccentric side. No son of mine would do
that sort of thing unless he were rehearsing for pantomime.’

‘I was
locked out by old Emsworth,’ Jeff replied, though he should have said ‘old
Beach’ . ‘He took me out to see his pig by moonlight, and he forgot that I had
gone on to the terrace. Tell me,’ he went on more amiably, for the agony of his
shin was now abating, ‘What were those things doing on the floor?’

There
was modest pride in Claude’s voice as he answered the question.

‘That
was my own unaided idea. I can’t sleep without a window open, so I always open
one and set a booby-trap in case of burglars. I’m glad you turned out not to be
one, for between you and me I was stretching the facts a bit when I said I was
going to shoot. I haven’t a gun.’

‘But
all right otherwise?’

‘No
complaints at all. I like it here. The slight crumpled rose leaf is that Piper’s
sister will be arriving at any moment. She’s a terror.’

‘She
can’t be worse than Florrie.’

‘My
dear chap, she begins where the latter leaves off. Not that Lady Florence is a
woman you would care to meet late at night down a dark alley. I was amazed when
I thought she was Vicky’s mother. Great relief when I found she was only step.’

‘Vicky!’

The
word had shot from Jeff’s lips like a projectile.

‘She
asked me to call her Vicky.’

Jeff
could not speak. He had not seen Claude Duff for some time, but he knew all
about his uncanny gift for ensnaring the female heart. Women fell before him
like ninepins and he was always falling before women. Not once but on several
occasions Jeff had had to listen to outpourings from him reminiscent of the
Song of Solomon. And Vicky, her eyes opened to the defects of J. G. Bennison,
would be quite likely to fall under his spell, if she had not fallen already.
Jeff had lost her, no argument about that, but that did not debar him from
being shocked, horrified, appalled and rendered speechless by the prospect of
her becoming another’s.

Claude
took advantage of his dumbness to proceed.

‘I
wouldn’t say this to anyone except you, Jeff, but I’m in love. I’ve thought I
was several times, I know, but this is the real thing. She was with Mr.
Threepwood when I arrived yesterday, and he introduced us. “This is my niece
Miss Underwood,” he said, and in a flash something told me I had met my ideal.
It was the way she looked. You’ve probably not noticed, but she has a sort of
sad expression, as if she had had some great sorrow in her life. One longs to
pick her up and kiss her and comfort her. Do you believe in love at first
sight, Jeff?’

Long
association with Claude had given Jeff plenty of opportunity of making up his
mind about this phenomenon, even if he had not had his own experience to guide
him, but still unable to speak, he answered neither in the affirmative or the
negative, and Claude continued.

‘It’s
an odd thing that this should have happened, because up till now I’ve always
been attracted by tallish girls, and Vicky’s so small and dainty. What are
those statuette things you hear people talking about? Tan something.’

Jeff
was apparently unable to help him, for he remained silent.

‘Tan?’
said Claude, snapping his fingers. ‘Tan? Tan? Tanagra,’ he said, inspired. ‘She’s
a Tanagra statuette. I’ve never seen one, but I know what they must be like. Jeff,
old man, do you think I have a chance. She’s not engaged to anybody, is she?’