Short Fiction · Lord Emsworth Acts for the Best (1/3)

Lord Emsworth Acts for the Best

The housekeeper’s room at Blandings Castle, G.H.Q. of the domestic staff that ministered to the needs of that amiable but woollen-headed peer, the Earl of Emsworth, was in normal circumstances a pleasant and cheerful apartment. It caught the afternoon sun; and the paper which covered its walls had been conceived in a jovial spirit by someone who held that the human eye, resting on ninety-seven simultaneous pink birds perched upon ninety-seven blue rosebushes, could not but be agreeably stimulated and refreshed. Yet, with the entry of Beach, the butler, it was as though there had crept into its atmosphere a chill dreariness; and Mrs. Twemlow, the housekeeper, laying down her knitting, gazed at him in alarm.

“Whatever is the matter, Mr. Beach?”

The butler stared moodily out of the window. His face was drawn and he breathed heavily, as a man will who is suffering from a combination of strong emotion and adenoids. A ray of sunshine, which had been advancing jauntily along the carpet, caught sight of his face and slunk out, abashed.

“I have come to a decision, Mrs. Twemlow.”

“What about?”

“Ever since his lordship started to grow it I have seen the writing on the wall plainer and plainer, and now I have made up my mind. The moment his lordship returns from London, I tender my resignation. Eighteen years have I served in his lordship’s household, commencing as under-footman and rising to my present position, but now the end has come.”

“You don’t mean you’re going just because his lordship has grown a beard?”

“It is the only way, Mrs. Twemlow. That beard is weakening his lordship’s position throughout the entire countryside. Are you aware that at the recent Sunday-school treat I heard cries of ‘Beaver!’?”

“No!”

“Yes! And this spirit of mockery and disrespect will spread. And, what is more, that beard is alienating the best elements in the County. I saw Sir Gregory Parsloe-Parsloe look very sharp at it when he dined with us last Friday.”

“It is not a handsome beard,” admitted the housekeeper.

“It is not. It looks like some sort of fungus. And his lordship must be informed. As long as I remain in his lordship’s service, it is impossible for me to speak. So I shall tender my resignation. Once that is done, my lips will no longer be sealed. Is that buttered toast under that dish, Mrs. Twemlow?”

“Yes, Mr. Beach. Take a slice. It will cheer you up.”

“Cheer me up!” said the butler, with a hollow laugh that sounded like a knell.

It was fortunate that Lord Emsworth, seated at the time of this conversation in the smoking-room of the Senior Conservative Club in London, had no suspicion of the supreme calamity that was about to fall upon him; for there was already much upon his mind.

In the last few days, indeed, everything seemed to have gone wrong. Angus McAllister, his head-gardener, had reported an alarming invasion of greenfly among the roses. A favourite and respected cow, strongly fancied for the Milk-Giving Jerseys event at the forthcoming Cattle Show, had contracted a mysterious ailment which was baffling the skill of the local vet. And on top of all this a telegram had arrived from his lordship’s younger son, the Hon. Frederick Threepwood, announcing that he was back in England and desirous of seeing his father immediately.

This, felt Lord Emsworth, as he stared bleakly before him at the little groups of happy Senior Conservatives, was the most unkindest cut of all. What on earth was Freddie doing in England? Eighteen months before he had married the only daughter of Donaldson’s Dog-Biscuits, of Long Island City, in the United States of America; and in Long Island City he ought now to have been, sedulously promoting the dog-biscuit industry’s best interests. Instead of which, here he was in London⁠—and, according to his telegram, in trouble.

Lord Emsworth passed a hand over his chin, to assist thought, and was vaguely annoyed by some obstacle that intruded itself in the path of his fingers. Concentrating his faculties, such as they were, on this obstacle, he discovered it to be his beard. It irritated him. Hitherto, in moments of stress, he had always derived comfort from the feel of a clean-shaven chin. He felt now as if he were rubbing his hand over seaweed; and most unjustly⁠—for it was certainly not that young man’s fault that he had decided to grow a beard⁠—he became aware of an added sense of grievance against the Hon. Freddie.

It was at this moment that he perceived his child approaching him across the smoking-room floor.

“Hullo, guv’nor!” said Freddie.

“Well, Frederick?” said Lord Emsworth.

There followed a silence. Freddie was remembering that he had not met his father since the day when he had slipped into the latter’s hand a note announcing his marriage to a girl whom Lord Emsworth had never seen⁠—except once, through a telescope, when he, Freddie, was kissing her in the grounds of Blandings Castle. Lord Emsworth, on his side, was brooding on that phrase “in trouble,” which had formed so significant a part of his son’s telegram. For twenty years he had been reluctantly helping Freddie out of trouble; and now, when it had seemed that he was off his hands forever, the thing had started all over again.

“Do sit down,” he said, testily.

Freddie had been standing on one leg, and his constrained attitude annoyed Lord Emsworth. It is a peculiarity of many fathers in the ranks of Britain’s aristocracy that practically every action on the part of their younger sons has the power to annoy them. Unlike the male codfish, which, suddenly becoming the parent of three million five hundred thousand little codfish, cheerfully resolves to love them all, the British aristocracy is apt to look with a jaundiced eye on its younger sons.

“Right-ho,” said Freddie, taking a chair. “I say, guv’nor, since when the foliage?”

“What?”

“The beard. I hardly recognized you.”

Another spasm of irritation shot through his lordship.

“Never mind my beard!”

“I don’t if you don’t,” said Freddie, agreeably. “It was dashed good of you, guv’nor, to come bounding up to town so promptly.”

“I came because your telegram said that you were in trouble.”

“British,” said Freddie, approvingly. “Very British.”

“Though what trouble you can be in I cannot imagine. It is surely not money again?”

“Oh, no. Not money. If that had been all, I would have applied to the good old pop-in-law. Old Donaldson’s an ace. He thinks the world of me.”

“Indeed? I met Mr. Donaldson only once, but he struck me as a man of sound judgment.”

“That’s what I say. He thinks I’m a wonder. If it were simply a question of needing a bit of the ready, I could touch him like a shot. But it isn’t money that’s the trouble. It’s Aggie. My wife, you know.”

“Well?”

“She’s left me.”

“Left you!”

“Absolutely flat. Buzzed off, and the note pinned to the pincushion. She’s now at the Savoy and won’t let me come near her; and I’m at a service-flat in King Street, eating my jolly old heart out, if you know what I mean.”

Lord Emsworth uttered a deep sigh. He gazed drearily at his son, marvelling that it should be in the power of any young man, even a specialist like Freddie, so consistently to make a mess of his affairs. By what amounted to a miracle this offspring of his had contrived to lure a millionaire’s daughter into marrying him; and now, it seemed, he had let her get away. Years before, when a boy, and romantic as most boys are, his lordship had sometimes regretted that the Emsworths, though an ancient clan, did not possess a Family Curse. How little he had suspected that he was shortly about to become the father of it!

“The fault,” he said, tonelessly, “was, I suppose, yours?”

“In a way, yes. But⁠—”

“What precisely occurred?”

“Well, it was like this, guv’nor. You know how keen I’ve always been on the movies. Going to every picture I could manage, and so forth. Well, one night, as I was lying awake, I suddenly got the idea for a scenario of my own. And dashed good it was, too. It was about a poor man who had an accident, and the coves at the hospital said that an operation was the only thing that could save his life. But they wouldn’t operate without five hundred dollars down in advance, and he hadn’t got five hundred dollars. So his wife got hold of a millionaire.”

“What,” inquired Lord Emsworth, “is all this drivel?”

“Drivel, guv’nor?” said Freddie, wounded. “I’m only telling you my scenario.”

“I have no wish to hear it. What I am anxious to learn from you⁠—in as few words as possible⁠—is the reason for the breach between your wife and yourself.”

“Well, I’m telling you. It all started with the scenario. When I’d written it, I naturally wanted to sell it to somebody; and just about then Pauline Petite came East and took a house at Great Neck, and a pal of mine introduced me to her.”

“Who is Pauline Petite?”

“Good heavens, guv’nor!” Freddie stared, amazed. “You don’t mean to sit there and tell me you’ve never heard of Pauline Petite! The movie star. Didn’t you see Passion’s Slaves?”

“I did not.”

“Nor Silken Fetters?”

“Never.”

“Nor Purple Passion? Nor Bonds of Gold? Nor Seduction? Great Scott, guv’nor, you haven’t lived!”

“What about this woman?”

“Well, a pal introduced me to her, you see, and I started to pave the way to getting her interested in this scenario of mine. Because, if she liked it, of course it meant everything. Well, this involved seeing a good deal of her, you understand, and one night Jane Yorke happened to come on us having a bite together at an inn.”

“Good God!”

“Oh, it was all perfectly respectable, guv’nor. All strictly on the up-and-up. Purely a business relationship. But the trouble was I had kept the thing from Aggie because I wanted to surprise her. I wanted to be able to come to her with the scenario accepted and tell her I wasn’t such a fool as I looked.”

“Any woman capable of believing that⁠—”

“And most unfortunately I had said that I had to go to Chicago that night on business. So, what with one thing and another⁠—Well, as I said just now, she’s at the Savoy and I’m⁠—”

“Who is Jane Yorke?”

A scowl marred Freddie’s smooth features.

“A pill, guv’nor. One of the worst. A Jebusite and Amalekite. If it hadn’t been for her, I believe I could have fixed the thing. But she got hold of Aggie and whisked her away and poisoned her mind. This woman, guv’nor, has got a brother in the background, and she wanted Aggie to marry the brother. And my belief is that she is trying to induce Aggie to pop over to Paris and get a divorce, so as to give the blighted brother another look in, dash him! So now, guv’nor, is the time for action. Now is the moment to rally round as never before. I rely on you.”

“Me? What on earth do you expect me to do?”

“Why, go to her and plead with her. They do it in the movies. I’ve seen thousands of pictures where the white-haired old father⁠—”

“Stuff and nonsense!” said Lord Emsworth, stung to the quick⁠—for, like so many well-preserved men of ripe years, he was under the impression that he was merely slightly brindled. “You have made your bed, and you must stew in it.”

“Eh?”

“I mean, you must stew in your own juice. You have brought this trouble on yourself by your own idiotic behaviour, and you must bear the consequences.”

“You mean you won’t go and plead?”

“No.”

“You mean yes?”

“I mean no.”

“Not plead?” said Freddie, desiring to get this thing clear.

“I refuse to allow myself to be drawn into the matter.”

“You won’t even give her a ring on the telephone?”

“I will not.”

“Oh, come, guv’nor. Be a sport. Her suite’s Number Sixty-Seven. You can get her in a second and state my case, all for the cost of twopence. Have a pop at it.”

“No.”

Freddie rose with set face. He looked like a sheep that has had bad news.

“Very well,” he said, tensely. “Then I may as well tell you, guv’nor, that my life is as good as over. The future holds nothing for me. I am a spent egg. If Aggie goes to Paris and gets that divorce, I shall retire to some quiet spot and there pass the few remaining years of my existence, a blighted wreck. Goodbye, guv’nor.”

“Goodbye.”

“Honk-honk!” said Freddie, moodily.

As a general rule, Lord Emsworth was an early and a sound sleeper, one of the few qualities which he shared with Napoleon Bonaparte being the ability to slumber the moment his head touched the pillow. But that night, weighed down with his troubles, he sought unconsciousness in vain. And somewhere in the small hours of the morning he sat up in bed, quaking. A sudden grisly thought had occurred to him.

Freddie had stated that, in the event of his wife obtaining a divorce, he proposed to retire for the rest of his life to some quiet spot. Suppose by “quiet spot” he meant Blandings Castle! The possibility shook Lord Emsworth like an ague. Freddie had visited Blandings for extended periods before, and it was his lordship’s considered opinion that the boy was a worse menace to the happy life of rural England than botts, greenfly, or foot-and-mouth disease. The prospect of having him at Blandings indefinitely affected Lord Emsworth like a blow on the base of the skull.

An entirely new line of thought was now opened. Had he in the recent interview, he asked himself, been as kind as he should have been? Had he not been a little harsh? Had he been just a shade lacking in sympathy? Had he played quite the part a father ought to have played?

The answers to the questions, in the order stated, were as follows: No. Yes. Yes. And No.

Waking after a belated sleep and sipping his early tea, Lord Emsworth found himself full of a new resolve. He had changed his mind. It was his intention now to go to this daughter-in-law of his and plead with her as no father-in-law had ever pleaded yet.

A man who has had a disturbed night is not at his best on the following morning. Until after luncheon Lord Emsworth felt much too heavy-headed to do himself justice as a pleader. But a visit to the flowers at Kensington Gardens, followed by a capital chop and half a bottle of claret at the Regent Grill, put him into excellent shape. The heaviness had vanished, and he felt alert and quick-witted.

So much so that, on arriving at the Savoy Hotel, he behaved with a cunning of which he had never hitherto suspected himself capable. On the very verge of giving his name to the desk-clerk, he paused. It might well be, he reflected, that this daughter-in-law of his, including the entire Emsworth family in her feud, would, did she hear that he was waiting below, nip the whole programme in the bud by refusing to see him. Better, he decided, not to risk it. Moving away from the desk, he headed for the lift, and presently found himself outside the door of Suite Sixty-Seven.

He tapped on the door. There was no answer. He tapped again, and, once more receiving no reply, felt a little nonplussed. He was not a very farseeing man, and the possibility that his daughter-in-law might not be at home had not occurred to him. He was about to go away when, peering at the door, he perceived that it was ajar. He pushed it open; and, ambling in, found himself in a cosy sitting-room, crowded, as feminine sitting-rooms are apt to be, with flowers of every description.

Flowers were always a magnet to Lord Emsworth, and for some happy minutes he pottered from vase to vase, sniffing.

It was after he had sniffed for perhaps the twentieth time that the impression came to him that the room contained a curious echo. It was almost as though, each time he sniffed, some other person sniffed too. And yet the place was apparently empty. To submit the acoustics to a final test, his lordship sniffed once more. But this time the sound that followed was of a more sinister character. It sounded to Lord Emsworth exactly like a snarl.