Service with a Smile (20 page)

‘You
folded her in your embrace, no doubt?’

‘Yes,
quite a good deal, actually, and the upshot of the whole thing was that we got
engaged again.’

‘You
didn’t mention that you were engaged to Myra?’

‘No, I
didn’t get around to that. The subject didn’t seem to come up somehow.’

‘I
quite understand. So the total is two, after all. You were perfectly right, and
I apologize. Well, well!’

‘I don’t
see what you’re grinning about.’

‘Smiling
gently would be a more exact description. I was thinking how absurdly simple
these problems are, when you give your mind to them. The solution here is
obvious. You must at once tell Myra to make no move in the way of buying the
trousseau and pricing wedding cakes, because they won’t be needed.’

Only a
sudden clutch at the rail on which he was seated prevented Archie Gilpin from
falling off the stile. It seemed for a moment that he was about to reach for
his hair again, but he merely gaped like a good-looking codfish.

‘Tell
her it’s all off, you mean?’

‘Precisely.
Save the girl a lot of unnecessary expense.’

‘But I
can’t. I admit that I asked her to marry me because I was feeling pretty bitter
about Millicent and had some sort of rough idea of showing her —’

‘That
she was not the only onion in the stew?’

‘Something
on those lines. And I was considerably relieved when she turned me down. A
narrow escape, I felt I’d had. But now that on second thoughts she’s decided
that she’s in favour of the scheme, I don’t see how I can possibly just stroll
in and tell her I’ve changed my mind. Well, dash it, is a shot like that on the
board? I ask you!’

‘You
mean that once a Gilpin plights his troth, it stays plighted? A very creditable
attitude to take, though it’s a pity you plight it so often. But if you are
thinking you may break that gentle heart, have no uneasiness. I can state
authoritatively that, left to herself, she wouldn’t marry you with a ten-foot
pole.’

‘Then
why did she tell me she would?’

‘For
precisely the reason that made you propose to her. Relations were strained
between her and her betrothed, just as they were between you and Miss Rigby,
and she did it as what is known as a gesture. She thought, in a word, that that
would teach him.’

‘She’s
got a betrothed?’

‘And
how! You know him. My friend Meriwether.’

‘Good
Lord!’ Archie Gilpin seemed to blossom like a rose in June. ‘Well, this is
fine. You’ve eased my mind.’

‘A
pleasure.’

‘Now
one begins to see daylight. Now one knows where one is. But, look here, we don’t
want to do anything … what’s the word?’

‘Precipitate?’

‘Yes,
we want to move cautiously. You see, on the strength of getting engaged to the
daughter of a millionaire I’m hoping to extract a thousand quid from Uncle
Alaric.’

Lord
Ickenham pursed his lips.

‘From
His Grace the pop-eyed Duke of Dunstable? No easy task. His one-way pockets are
a byword all over England.’

Archie
nodded. He had never blinded himself to the fact that anyone trying to separate
cash from the Duke of Dunstable was in much the same position as a man
endeavouring to take a bone from a short-tempered wolf-hound.

‘I
know. But I have a feeling it will come off. When I told him I was engaged to
Myra, he was practically civil. I think he’s ripe for the touch, and I’ve
simply got to get a thousand pounds.’

‘Why
that particular sum?’

‘Because
that’s what Ricky wants, to let me into his onion soup business. He’s planning
to expand, and has to have more capital. He said that if I put in a thousand
quid, I could have a third share of the profits, which are enormous.’

‘Yes,
so Pongo told me. I got the impression of dense crowds of bottle-party addicts
charging into Ricky’s bar night after night like bisons making for a
water-hole.’

‘That’s
right, they do. There’s something about onion soup that seems to draw them like
a magnet. Can’t stand the muck myself but there’s no accounting for tastes.
Here’s the set-up, as I see it,’ said Archie, with mounting enthusiasm. ‘We
coast along as we are at present, Myra engaged to me, me engaged to Myra, and
Uncle Alaric fawning on me and telling me 1 can have anything I want, even unto
half his kingdom. I get the thousand quid. Myra gives me the push. I slide off
and marry Millicent. Myra marries this Meriwether chap, and everybody’s happy. Any
questions?’

A look
of regret and pity had come into Lord Ickenham’s face. It pained him to be
compelled to act as a black frost in this young man’s garden of dreams, but he
had no alternative.

‘Myra
can’t give you the push.’

Archie
stared. It seemed to him that this kindly old buster, until now so intelligent,
had suddenly lost his grip.

‘Why
not?’

‘Because
the moment she did, she would be shipped back to America in disgrace and would
never see Bill Bailey again.’

‘Who on
earth’s Bill Bailey?’

‘Oh, I
forgot to tell you, didn’t I? That — or, rather, the Reverend Cuthbert Bailey —
is Meriwether’s real name. He is here incognito because Lady Constance has a
deep-seated prejudice against him. He is a penniless curate, and she doesn’t
like penniless curates. It was to remove Myra from his orbit that she took her
away from London and imprisoned her at Blandings Castle. Let her break the
engagement, and she’ll be back in New York before you can say What ho.’

Silence
fell. The light had faded from the evening sky, and simultaneously from Archie Gilpin’s
face. He sat staring bleakly into the middle distance as if the scenery hurt
him in some tender spot.

‘It’s a
mix-up,’ he said.

‘It
wants thinking about,’ Lord Ickenham agreed. ‘Yes, it certainly wants thinking
about. We must turn it over in our minds from time to time.’

Chapter
Ten

1

The Duke of Dunstable was
not a patient man. When he had business dealings with his fellows, he liked
those fellows to jump to it and do it now, and as a general rule took pains to
ensure that they did so. But in the matter of Lord Tilbury and the Empress he was
inclined to be lenient. He quite understood that a man in the position of
having to make up his mind whether or not to pay three thousand pounds for a
pig, however obese, needs a little time to think it over. It was only on the
third day after the other’s return to London that he went to the telephone and
having been placed in communication with him opened the conversation with his
customary ‘Hoy!’

‘Are
you there, Stinker?’

If the
Duke had not been a little deaf in the right ear, he might have heard a sound
like an inexperienced motorist changing gears in an old-fashioned car. It was
the proprietor of the Mammoth Publishing Company grinding his teeth. Sometimes,
when we hear a familiar voice, the heart leaps up like that of the poet
Wordsworth when he beheld a rainbow in the sky. Lord Tilbury’s was far from
doing this. He resented having his morning’s work interrupted by a man capable
of ignoring gentlemen’s agreements and slapping an extra thousand pounds on the
price of pigs. When he spoke, his tone was icy.

‘Is
that you, Dunstable?’

‘What?’

‘I
said, Is that you?’

‘Of
course it’s me. Who do you think it was?’

‘What
do you want?’

‘What?’

‘I said
What do you want? I’m very busy,’

‘What?’

‘I said
I am very busy.’

‘So am
I. Got a hundred things to do. Can’t stand talking to you all day. About that
pig.’

‘What
about it?’

‘Are
you prepared to meet my terms? If so, say so. Think on your feet, Stinker?’

Lord
Tilbury drew a deep breath. How fortunate, he was feeling, that Fate should
have brought him and Lavender Briggs together and so enabled him to defy this
man as he ought to be defied. He had heard nothing from Lavender Briggs, but he
presumed that she was at Blandings Castle, working in his interests, framing
her subtle schemes, and strong in this knowledge he proceeded to answer in the
negative. This took some time for in addition to saying ‘No’ he had to tell the
Duke what he thought of him, indicating one by one the various points on which
his character diverged from that of the ideal man. Whether it was right of him
to call the Duke a fat old sharper whose word he would never again believe,
even if given on a stack of Bibles, is open to debate, but he felt considerably
better when he had done so, and it was with the feeling of having fought the
good fight that several minutes later he slammed down the receiver and rang for
Millicent Rigby to come and take dictation.

Nothing
that anyone could say to him, no matter how derogatory, ever had the power to
wound the Duke. After that initial ‘No’, indeed, he had scarcely bothered to
listen. He could see that it was just routine stuff. All he was thinking, as he
came away from the telephone, was that he would now sell the Empress back to
Lord Emsworth, who he knew would prove co-operative, and he was proceeding in
search of him when a loud squeak in his rear told him that little George was
with him again.

‘Hullo,
big boy,’ said George.

‘How
often have I told you not to call me big boy?’

‘Sorry,
chum, I keep forgetting. I say, frightfully exciting about Myra, isn’t it?’

‘Eh?’

‘Getting
engaged to Archie Gilpin.’

In the
interest of his conversation with Lord Tilbury, the Duke had momentarily
forgotten that his nephew had become betrothed to the only daughter of a
millionaire. Reminded of this, he beamed, as far as it was within his ability
to beam, and replied that it was most satisfactory and that he was very pleased
about it.

‘Her
father arrives tomorrow.’

‘Indeed?’

‘Gets
to Market Blandings station, wind and weather permitting, at four-ten. Grandpapa’s
gone to London to meet him, all dressed up. He looked like a city slicker.’

‘You
must not call your grandfather a city slicker,’ said the Duke, too happy at the
way his affairs were working out for a sterner rebuke. He paused, for a sudden
thought had struck him, and George, about to inquire whose grandfather he
could
call a city slicker, found himself interrupted. ‘What made him get all
dressed up and go to London to meet this feller?’ he asked, for he knew how
much his host disliked the metropolis and how great was his distaste for
putting on a decent suit of clothes and trying to look like a respectable human
being.

‘Aunt
Connie told him he jolly well had to or else. He was as sick as mud.’

The
Duke puffed at his moustache. His nosiness where other people’s affairs were
concerned was intense, and Connie’s giving this Yank what amounted to a civic
welcome intrigued him. It meant something, he told himself. It couldn’t be that
she was trying to sweeten the feller in the hope of floating a loan, for she
had ample private means, bequeathed to her by her late husband, Joseph Keeble,
who had made a packet out East, so it must be that she entertained towards him
feelings that were deeper and warmer than those of ordinary friendship, as the
expression was. He had never suspected this, but it occurred to him now that
when a woman keeps a photograph of a man with a head like a Spanish onion on
her writing table, it means that her emotions are involved, in all probability
deeply. There was that occasion, too, when he had joined them at luncheon at
the Ritz. Their heads, he remembered, had been very close together. By the time
he had succeeded in shaking off George, declining his invitation to come down
to the lake and chat with the Church Lads, he was convinced that he had hit on the
right solution, and he waddled off to find Lord Ickenham and canvass his views
on the subject. He was not fond of Lord Ickenham, but there was nobody else
available as a confidant.

He
found him in his hammock, pondering over the various problems which had
presented themselves of late, and lost no time in placing the item on the
agenda paper.

‘I say,
Ickenham, this fellow who’s coming here tomorrow. This chap Stick-in-the-mud.’

‘Schoonmaker.
Jimmy Schoonmaker.’

‘You
know him?’

‘One of
my oldest friends. I shall like seeing him again.’

‘So
will somebody else.’

‘Who
would that be?’

‘Connie,
that’s who. Let me tell you something, Ickenham. I was in Connie’s room
yesterday, having a look round, and there was a cable on the writing table. “Coming
immediately”, it said, and a lot more I’ve forgotten. It was signed Schoonmaker,
and was obviously a reply to a cable from her, urging him to come here. Now why
was she in such a sweat to get the feller to Blandings Castle, you ask.’