Blandings Castle and Elsewhere (13 page)

'We must look out for one another there,' he said cordially.
'You will remember me again? I shall be wearing' – he gulped – 'a
top hat.'

'Ern's going to wear a stror penamaw that's been give 'im.'

Lord Emsworth regarded the lucky young devil with frank
envy. He rather fancied he knew that panama. It had been his
constant companion for some six years and then had been torn
from him by his sister Constance and handed over to the vicar's
wife for her rummage-sale.

He sighed.

'Well, good-bye.'

'Good-bye, sir. Thank you, sir.'

Lord Emsworth walked pensively out of the garden and,
turning into the little street, encountered Lady Constance.

'Oh, there you are, Clarence.'

'Yes,' said Lord Emsworth, for such was the case.

'Have you finished judging the gardens?'

'Yes.'

'I am just going into this end cottage here. The vicar tells me
there is a little girl from London staying there. I want to warn
her to behave this afternoon. I have spoken to the others.'

Lord Emsworth drew himself up. His pince-nez were
slightly askew, but despite this his gaze was commanding and
impressive.

'Well, mind what you say,' he said authoritatively. 'None of
your district-visiting stuff, Constance.'

'What do you mean?'

'You know what I mean. I have the greatest respect for the
young lady to whom you refer. She behaved on a certain recent occasion –
on two recent occasions – with notable gallantry and resource, and I
won't have her ballyragged. Understand that!'

The technical title of the orgy which broke out annually on
the first Monday in August in the park of Blandings Castle
was the Blandings Parva School Treat, and it seemed to Lord
Emsworth, wanly watching the proceedings from under the
shadow of his top hat, that if this was the sort of thing schools
looked on as pleasure he and they were mentally poles apart. A
function like the Blandings Parva School Treat blurred his
conception of Man as Nature's Final Word.

The decent sheep and cattle to whom this park normally
belonged had been hustled away into regions unknown, leaving
the smooth expanse of turf to children whose vivacity scared
Lord Emsworth and adults who appeared to him to have cast
aside all dignity and every other noble quality which goes to
make a one hundred per cent. British citizen. Look at Mrs
Rossiter over there, for instance, the wife of Jno. Rossiter,
Provisions, Groceries and Home-Made Jams. On any other day
of the year, when you met her, Mrs Rossiter was a nice, quiet,
docile woman who gave at the knees respectfully as you passed.
To-day, flushed in the face and with her bonnet on one side, she
seemed to have gone completely native. She was wandering to
and fro drinking lemonade out of a bottle and employing her
mouth, when not so occupied, to make a devastating noise with
what he believed was termed a squeaker.

The injustice of the thing stung Lord Emsworth. This park
was his own private park. What right had people to come
and blow squeakers in it? How would Mrs Rossiter like it
if one afternoon he suddenly invaded her neat little garden
in the High Street and rushed about over her lawn, blowing a
squeaker?

And it was always on these occasions so infernally hot. July
might have ended in a flurry of snow, but directly the first
Monday in August arrived and he had to put on a stiff collar
out came the sun, blazing with tropic fury.

Of course, admitted Lord Emsworth, for he was a fairminded
man, this cut both ways. The hotter the day, the more
quickly his collar lost its starch and ceased to spike him like a
javelin. This afternoon, for instance, it had resolved itself almost
immediately into something which felt like a wet compress.
Severe as were his sufferings, he was compelled to recognize
that he was that much ahead of the game.

A masterful figure loomed at his side.

'Clarence!'

Lord Emsworth's mental and spiritual state was now such
that not even the advent of his sister Constance could add
noticeably to his discomfort.

'Clarence, you look a perfect sight.'

'I know I do. Who wouldn't in a rig-out like this? Why in the
name of goodness you always insist ...'

'Please don't be childish, Clarence. I cannot understand the
fuss you make about dressing for once in your life like a reasonable
English gentleman and not like a tramp.'

'It's this top hat. It's exciting the children.'

'What on earth do you mean, exciting the children?'

'Well, all I can tell you is that just now, as I was passing the
place where they're playing football – Football! In weather like
this! – a small boy called out something derogatory and threw a
portion of a coco-nut at it.'

'If you will identify the child,' said Lady Constance warmly,
'I will have him severely punished.'

'How the dickens,' replied his lordship with equal warmth,
'can I identify the child? They all look alike to me. And if I did
identify him, I would shake him by the hand. A boy who throws
coco-nuts at top hats is fundamentally sound in his views. And
stiff collars ...'

'Stiff! That's what I came to speak to you about. Are you
aware that your collar looks like a rag? Go in and change it at
once.'

'But, my dear Constance ...'

At once, Clarence. I simply cannot understand a man having
so little pride in his appearance. But all your life you have been
like that. I remember when we were children ...'

Lord Emsworth's past was not of such a purity that he was
prepared to stand and listen to it being lectured on by a sister
with a good memory.

'Oh, all right, all right, all right,' he said. 'I'll change it,
I'll change it.'

'Well, hurry. They are just starting tea.'

Lord Emsworth quivered.

'Have I got to go into that tea-tent?'

'Of course you have. Don't be so ridiculous. I do wish you
would realize your position. As master of Blandings Castle ...'

A bitter, mirthless laugh from the poor peon thus ludicrously
described drowned the rest of the sentence.

It always seemed to Lord Emsworth, in analysing these
entertainments, that the August Bank Holiday Saturnalia at
Blandings Castle reached a peak of repulsiveness when tea was
served in the big marquee. Tea over, the agony abated, to become
acute once more at the moment when he stepped to the edge
of the platform and cleared his throat and tried to recollect what
the deuce he had planned to say to the goggling audience
beneath him. After that, it subsided again and passed until the
following August.

Conditions during the tea hour, the marquee having stood all
day under a blazing sun, were generally such that Shadrach,
Meshach and Abednego, had they been there, could have
learned something new about burning fiery furnaces. Lord
Emsworth, delayed by the revision of his toilet, made his entry
when the meal was half over and was pleased to find that his
second collar almost instantaneously began to relax its iron grip.
That, however, was the only gleam of happiness which was to be
vouchsafed him. Once in the tent, it took his experienced eye but
a moment to discern that the present feast was eclipsing in
frightfulness all its predecessors.

Young Blandings Parva, in its normal form, tended rather to
the stolidly bovine than the riotous. In all villages, of course,
there must of necessity be an occasional tough egg – in the case
of Blandings Parva the names of Willie Drake and Thomas
(Rat-Face) Blenkiron spring to the mind – but it was seldom
that the local infants offered anything beyond the power of a
curate to control. What was giving the present gathering its
striking resemblance to a reunion of
sans-culottes
at the height of
the French Revolution was the admixture of the Fresh Air
London visitors.

About the London child, reared among the tin cans and
cabbage stalks of Drury Lane and Clare Market, there is a breezy
insouciance which his country cousin lacks. Years of back-chat
with annoyed parents and relatives have cured him of any tendency
he may have had towards shyness, with the result that
when he requires anything he grabs for it, and when he is amused
by any slight peculiarity in the personal appearance of members
of the governing classes he finds no difficulty in translating his
thoughts into speech. Already, up and down the long tables, the
curate's unfortunate squint was coming in for hearty comment,
and the front teeth of one of the school-teachers ran it a close
second for popularity. Lord Emsworth was not, as a rule, a man
of swift inspirations, but it occurred to him at this juncture that it
would be a prudent move to take off his top hat before his little
guests observed it and appreciated its humorous possibilities.

The action was not, however, necessary. Even as he raised his
hand a rock cake, singing through the air like a shell, took it off
for him.

Lord Emsworth had had sufficient. Even Constance, unreasonable
woman though she was, could hardly expect him to stay and beam genially under
conditions like this. All civilized laws had obviously gone by the board and
Anarchy reigned in the marquee. The curate was doing his best to form a provisional
government consisting of himself and the two school-teachers, but there was
only one man who could have coped adequately with the situation and that was
King Herod, who – regrettably – was not among those present. Feeling
like some aristocrat of the old
régime
sneaking away from the
tumbril, Lord Emsworth edged to the exit and withdrew.

Outside the marquee the world was quieter, but only comparatively
so. What Lord Emsworth craved was solitude, and in
all the broad park there seemed to be but one spot where it was to
be had. This was a red-tiled shed, standing beside a small pond,
used at happier times as a lounge or retiring-room for cattle.
Hurrying thither, his lordship had just begun to revel in the cool,
cow-scented dimness of its interior when from one of the dark
corners, causing him to start and bite his tongue, there came the
sound of a subdued sniff.

He turned. This was persecution. With the whole park to
mess about in, why should an infernal child invade this one
sanctuary of his? He spoke with angry sharpness. He came of a
line of warrior ancestors and his fighting blood was up.

'Who's that?'

'Me, sir. Thank you, sir.'

Only one person of Lord Emsworth's acquaintance was capable
of expressing gratitude for having been barked at in such a
tone. His wrath died away and remorse took its place. He felt
like a man who in error has kicked a favourite dog.

'God bless my soul!' he exclaimed. 'What in the world are you
doing in a cow-shed?'

'Please, sir, I was put.'

'Put? How do you mean, put? Why?'

'For pinching things, sir.'

'Eh? What? Pinching things? Most extraordinary. What did
you – er – pinch?'

'Two buns, two jem-sengwiches, two apples and a slicer
cake.'

The girl had come out of her corner and was standing correctly
at attention. Force of habit had caused her to intone the
list of the purloined articles in the singsong voice in which she
was wont to recite the multiplication-table at school, but Lord
Emsworth could see that she was deeply moved. Tear-stains
glistened on her face, and no Emsworth had ever been able to
watch unstirred a woman's tears. The ninth Earl was visibly
affected.

'Blow your nose,' he said, hospitably extending his handkerchief.

'Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.'

'What did you say you had pinched? Two buns ...'

'... Two jem-sengwiches, two apples and a slicer cake.'

'Did you eat them?'

'No, sir. They wasn't for me. They was for Ern.'

'Ern? Oh, ah, yes. Yes, to be sure. For Ern, eh?'

'Yes, sir.'

'But why the dooce couldn't Ern have – er – pinched them for
himself? Strong, able-bodied young feller, I mean.'

Lord Emsworth, a member of the old school, did not like this
disposition on the part of the modern young man to shirk the
dirty work and let the woman pay.

'Ern wasn't allowed to come to the treat, sir.'

'What! Not allowed? Who said he mustn't?'

'The lidy, sir.'

'What lidy?'

'The one that come in just after you'd gorn this morning.'

A fierce snort escaped Lord Emsworth. Constance! What the
devil did Constance mean by taking it upon herself to revise his
list of guests without so much as a ... Constance, eh? He snorted
again. One of these days Constance would go too far.

'Monstrous!' he cried.

'Yes, sir.'

'High-handed tyranny, by Gad. Did she give any reason?'

'The lidy didn't like Ern biting 'er in the leg, sir.'

'Ern bit her in the leg?'

'Yes, sir. Pliying 'e was a dorg. And the lidy was cross and Ern
wasn't allowed to come to the treat, and I told 'im I'd bring 'im
back somefing nice.'

Lord Emsworth breathed heavily. He had not supposed that
in these degenerate days a family like this existed. The sister
copped Angus McAllister on the shin with stones, the brother
bit Constance in the leg ... It was like listening to some grand
old saga of the exploits of heroes and demigods.

'I thought if I didn't 'ave nothing myself it would make it all
right.'

'Nothing?' Lord Emsworth started. 'Do you mean to tell me
you have not had tea?'

'No, sir. Thank you, sir. I thought if I didn't 'ave none, then
it would be all right Ern 'aving what I would 'ave 'ad if I 'ad
'ave 'ad.'

His lordship's head, never strong, swam a little. Then it
resumed its equilibrium. He caught her drift.

'God bless my soul!' said Lord Emsworth. 'I never heard
anything so monstrous and appalling in my life. Come with
me immediately.'

'The lidy said I was to stop 'ere, sir.'