Galahad at Blandings (20 page)

The
first thing Sam noticed on arriving at the sty was a complete shortage of Lord
Emsworths and he could make nothing of it, for Wilfred had distinctly told him
that his host was awaiting him there. Some mistake, he assumed, and glad of
the respite he lit a cigarette. And he had scarcely done so when there was a
flash and a roar and the storm which had been threatening all the afternoon
broke with a violence which probably came as a surprise to the barometer
Wilfred had tapped in the hall. It had predicted dirty weather, but it could
hardly have anticipated anything on this scale. To Sam, whose nervous system
was not at its best, what was in progress seemed to combine the outstanding
qualities of the Johnstown flood and the Day of Judgment.

It was
a moment to seek shelter, and most fortunately there was shelter within easy
reach. At the junction between the kitchen garden and the meadow where the
Empress had her headquarters there stood what looked like — and indeed was —a
potting shed. Its interior, he presumed, would be stuffy and probably smelly,
but these disadvantages were outweighed by the fact that it would be dry, and
dryness was what he wanted — or, as he would have said when writing a review
for one of the higher— browed weeklies, desiderated. He was inside it in a
matter of seconds and was congratulating himself on the promptness with which
he had acted, when the door slammed behind him and he heard the shooting of a
bolt. It surprised and disconcerted him.

‘Hoy!’
he cried, and from outside a voice spoke, the cold, metallic voice of a
policeman who has effected a fair cop.

‘You’re
pinched,’ it said.

Silence
followed. It had been Constable Evans’s original intention on seeing Sam enter
the shed to go in after him and take him into immediate custody, but second
thoughts had led to a change of plan. Better, he felt, to wait till he could
bring up reinforcements. He could not forget that this particular malefactor
packed a wicked wallop, and he had no desire to be on the receiving end of it
again. So having shot the bolt and said, ‘You’re pinched’ he hastened back to
Beach’s pantry to telephone the police station to send a car and an assistant,
preferably a large and muscular one.

It was
some slight consolation to Sam to feel that he must be getting soaked to his
underlinen.

CHAPTER 10

I

It was the boast of Jno.
Robinson, its proprietor, that the station taxi, though a little creaky in the
joints and inclined to pant when going up hill, never failed to get its patrons
to their destination sooner or later, and it had got Sandy to hers without
mishap. Her first move on arrival, like a conscientious secretary, was to go
and report to Lord Emsworth, whose jaw dropped slightly when he saw her, for he
had been hoping that she would have been away rather longer. She then went to
the small room opening off the library where she worked.

She was
not long without company. Musing on life in a deck chair on the front lawn,
Gally had seen her drive up, and though reluctant to stir from his comfortable
seat he felt it imperative to seek her out and put her in touch with recent
developments at the castle. He also proposed to chide her for sneaking off as
she had done. She had behaved, he considered, with a low cunning which he
deplored. He had always been a man who disliked having a fast one put over on
him, and he was prepared to be somewhat stern with Sandy.

Sandy,
for her part, was prepared to be somewhat stern with him. On seeing Sam emerge
from the Emsworth Arms bar she had been sure that Gally was responsible for his
being there, and it was at him even more than at Sam that her resentment was directed.
Their meeting, consequently, was marked by a certain frostiness on both sides.
She greeted him with a cold ‘Good evening’, and he said, ‘Take that lemon out of
your mouth, Mona Lisa. I want a word with you.’

Sandy
continued haughty. Her full height was not much, but she drew herself to what
there was of it.

‘If
it’s about Sam—”

‘Of
course it’s about Sam.’

‘Then I
don’t want to hear it.’

A less
courageous man than Gally might have quailed at the iciness of her tone, but it
left him undaunted.

‘What
you want and what you’re going to get,’ he said, ‘are two substantially
different things. Sam has told me all about that Drones Club sweepstake and the
offer from the syndicate and how you tried to get him to sell out for a hundred
pounds when he had only to sit tight and let nature take its course in order to
clean up on a really impressive scale, and frankly I was appalled. Your mutton-headedness
stunned me.’

‘I
don’t consider that I was mutton-headed, as you call it.’

‘Then
your standards must be very high.’

‘I had
a good reason for wanting him to sell out. I knew what Tipton was like.’

‘He’s
rather like a string bean, but I don’t see how that enters into it.’

‘I’m
not talking about what he looks like. The sort of man he is, I mean.’

And
what sort is that?’

‘Susceptible.
Always falling in and out of love. When I was working for his uncle, he got
engaged to a whole series of girls, and every time the engagement was broken
off I supposed that this latest one would follow the usual pattern.’

‘Often
a bridesmaid but never a bride, you felt? You were mistaken. His passion for
Veronica is the real thing. When he fetched up here the day before yesterday,
it was with the love light in his eyes and an eight-thousand-pound necklace for
her in his trouser pocket. He’ll be a married man in next to no time. The date
is set, the caterer notified, the bishop and assistant clergy lined up at the
starting gate waiting for the flag to fall.’

‘And
suppose she breaks off the engagement? Tipton’s girls always do.’

‘Not
this one. Sam’s on a certainty. If ever there was a Today’s Safety Bet, this is
it. My advice to you, young Sandy, is to admit you were wrong and kiss and make
up. When you see him—”

‘I
shan’t see him.’

‘Oh
yes, you will. He’s here now.’

‘I know
he is. At the Emsworth Arms.’

‘Not at
the Emsworth Arms, at the castle.’

‘What!’

‘Passing
for the moment under the name of Augustus Whipple.’

‘What!’

‘You do
keep saying “What”, don’t you? Yes, on my advice he assumed the name of
Whipple, for I felt it would endear him to Clarence, as indeed it has. And that
brings me to another talking point. If ever you entertained doubts as to the
wholeheartedness of his love, reflect that simply in order to be near you and
plead his cause he has placed himself in a position where he has to listen to
Clarence talking pig to him from morning to night. He’s suffering agonies, and
all for you. So be guided by me, young Sandy, and fling yourself into his arms
and murmur “Oh, Sam, can you ever forgive me?” or “Oh, Sam, let the past be
forgotten” or, of course,’ said Gally, always ready to make concessions, ‘any other
gag along those lines you may prefer. I’ll leave you to think it over.’

His
story had shaken Sandy. It had been well said of Galahad Threepwood in his
Pelican Club days that few could equal him at telling the tale. He was credited
by his associates with the ability to talk the hind leg off a donkey, and the
passage of the years had in no way diminished his spellbinding qualities. Half
an hour ago the idea of ever speaking to Sam again in this world or the next
would have seemed to Sandy so bizarre as not to deserve consideration, but now
she was beginning to feel that that idea of flinging herself into his arms
might have something in it.

Like so
many girls with similarly coloured hair, she had a low boiling point and was
easily stirred to sudden furies, but they resembled those of the storm outside,
which after a sensational start had already begun to calm down, in being soon
over. Looking out of the window, she saw that the Niagara of a few minutes
back was now a gentle trickle and the thunder and lightning had ceased
altogether. It was as if the forces of Nature felt that they had made their
point and could relax, and she found herself in harmony with their softened
mood.

Ever
since the morning when Sam had spoken his mind to her on the subject of
ginger-haired little fatheads and she had thrown the ring at him she had tried
to keep resentment alive, but she had never really liked the idea of not
speaking to him again in this world or the next. She had told herself that he
was the obstinate pig-headed type whom no girl of sense would dream of marrying
and that the severance of relations between them was the best thing that could
have happened, but all the while a voice within her had kept reminding her
that, even though pig-headed, he was unquestionably a lamb, and lambs are not
so easily come by in these hard times that you can afford to throw them
carelessly away. Remorse, in short, had gnawed her, causing her to feel almost
precisely as Colonel Wedge and his wife Hermione had felt on discovering that
they had rashly given the bum’s rush to a prospective son-in-law who oozed
dollar bills at every pore.

On only
one point had Gally left her dubious, and that was the likelihood of Tipton
Plimsoll becoming a married man. She had seen so many of his false starts when
she had been working for his Uncle Chet that she could not believe that any
betrothal of his could possibly culminate in a wedding. Recalling his long line
of fiancées, all of whom had come and gone with a quickness that deceived the
eye, she was unable to picture him lined up with this latest one at the altar
rails. It would be necessary, therefore, even while flinging herself into
Sam’s arms, to make it quite clear to him that her views on the syndicate’s
offer had in no way changed. On this she was resolved to be firm. Lamb or no
lamb, he would have to accept her ruling.

She had
reached this point in her meditations, when something long and
string—bean-like bounded in with a ‘Hi!’ that raffled the window pane and for
the first time since she had left her native America she beheld Tipton
Plimsoll.

Her
presence at the castle had astounded Tipton. Looking out of the smoking-room
window, he had seen the station taxi drive up and a girl whom his experienced
eye classified as quite a dish alight from it. Her appearance had seemed to him
oddly familiar, but it was only when she raised her head while handing Jno. Robinson
his fare that he recognised her as one of his closest and most esteemed
buddies.

He was
exuberantly glad to see her. He had always been devoted to Sandy. Her place in
his life had been that of a kindly sister in whom he could confide whenever he
fell in love with someone new and needed the services of a confidante. She had
given him encouragement when he required it and sympathy when he required that,
which usually happened a few weeks after he had become engaged, for his
fiancées had a disconcerting knack of writing to tell him they were sorry but
they had just married elsewhere, adding in a postscript that they would always
look on him as a dear friend.

‘Sandy
Callender as I live and breathe!’ he cried. ‘I couldn’t believe it when I saw
you getting out of that cab. I didn’t even know you were on this side. What on
earth are you doing here?’

‘I’m
Lord Emsworth’s secretary. Gally Threepwood got me the job. I met him in London
just when his sister was looking around for someone to work for Lord Emsworth.
Well, it’s wonderful seeing you again, Tipton. How are you?’

‘Pretty
spruce, thanks.’

‘That’s
good. I hear you’re engaged again.’

Tipton
lost some of his joyous effervescence. Not meaning to wound, she had said the
wrong thing.

‘Don’t
say again ,‘ he protested, ‘as if it was something I did every hour on the
hour.

‘Well,
isn’t it?’

Tipton
was forced to concede that there was a certain amount of justice in the
question.

‘Well,
yes,’ he admitted, ‘I have got tangled up with a girl or two—’

‘Or
three or four or five.’

‘— in
my time, but that was just kid stuff This is the real thing. This is for keeps.
You remember those other babes I got starry— eyed about?’

‘Doris
Jimpson, Angela Thurloe, Vanessa Wainwright, Barbara Bessemer…’

‘All
right, all right. No need to call the score. What I was going to say was Do you
know what was wrong with them?’

‘They
married somebody else.’

‘Yes,
that, of course, but they wouldn’t have done for me even if they had gone
through with it. They were either the smart hardboiled type, always
wisecracking and making one feel like a piece of cheese, or the intellectual
kind that wanted to mould me. I couldn’t keep up with them. We weren’t batting
in the same league. But Vee, she’s different. I’ve never been a brainy sort of
guy, and what I want is a wife with about the same amount of grey matter I
have, and that’s how Vee stacks up. Do you remember Clarice Burbank?’

‘Was
she the Russian ballet one?’