Service With a Smile Page 2

  ‘Myra Schoonmaker.’

  ‘Same thing. She’s potty, too.’

  ‘You seem to think everybody potty.’

  ‘So they are. Very rare to meet anyone these days with the intelligence of a cockroach.’

  Lady Constance sighed wearily.

  ‘You may be right. I know so few cockroaches. What makes you think that Myra is mentally deficient?’

  ‘Can’t get a word out of her. Just yawps.’

  Lady Constance frowned. She had not intended to confide her young guest’s private affairs to a man who would probably spread them far and near, but she felt that the girl’s reputation for sanity should be protected.

  ‘Myra is rather depressed just now. She has had an unfortunate love affair.’

  This interested the Duke. He had always been as inquisitive as a cat. He blew his moustache up against his nose and allowed his eyes to protrude.

  ‘What happened? Feller walk out on her?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘She walk out on him?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well, somebody must have walked out on someone.’

  Lady Constance felt that having said so much she might as well tell all. The alternative was to have the man stand there asking questions for the rest of the morning, and she wanted to finish her letter.

  ‘I put a stop to the thing,’ she said curtly.

  The Duke gave his moustache a puff.

  ‘You did? Why? None of your ruddy business, was it?’

  ‘Of course it was. When James Schoonmaker went back to America, he left her in my charge. I was responsible for her. So when I found that she had become involved with this man, there was only one thing to do, take her away to Blandings, out of his reach. He has no money, no prospects, nothing. James would never forgive me if she married him.’

  ‘Ever seen the chap?’

  ‘No. And I don’t want to.’

  ‘Probably a frightful bounder who drops his aitches and has ‘cocoa and bloaters for supper.’

  ‘No, according to Myra, he was at Harrow and Oxford.’

  ‘That damns him,’ said the Duke, who had been at Eton and Cambridge. ‘All Harrovians are the scum of the earth, and Oxonians are even worse. Very wise of you to remove her from his clutches.’

  ‘So I thought.’

  ‘That’s why she slinks about the place like a funeral mute, is it? You ought to divert her mind from the fellow, get her interested in somebody else.’

  ‘The same idea occurred to me. I’ve invited Archie to the castle.’

  ‘Archie who?’

  ‘Your nephew Archie.’

  ‘Oh, my God! That poop?’

  ‘He is not a poop at all. He’s very good-looking and very charming.’

  ‘Who did he ever charm? Not me.’

  ‘Well, I am hoping he will charm her. I’m a great believer in propinquity.’

  The Duke was not at his best with long words, but he thought he saw what she was driving at.

  ‘You mean if he digs in here, he may cut this bloater-eating blighter out? Girl’s father’s a millionaire, isn’t he?’

  ‘Several times over, I believe.’

  ‘Then tell young Archie to get after the wench with all speed,’ said the Duke enthusiastically. His nephew was employed by the Mammoth Publishing Company, that vast concern which supplies the more fatheaded of England’s millions with their daily, weekly and monthly reading matter, but in so minor a capacity that he, the Duke, was still obliged to supplement his salary with an allowance. And if there was one thing that parsimonious man disliked, it was supplementing people’s salaries with allowances. The prospect of getting the boy off his payroll was a glittering one, and his eyes bulged brightly as he envisaged it. ‘Tell him to spare no effort,’ he urged. ‘Tell him to pull up his socks and leave no stone unturned. Tell him —Oh, hell! Come in, curse you.’

  There had been a knock at the door. Lavender Briggs’ entered, all spectacles and efficiency.

  ‘I found Lord Emsworth, Lady Constance, and told him the car was in readiness.’

  ‘Oh, thank you, Miss Briggs. Where was he?’

  ‘Down at the sty. Would there be anything furthah?’

  ‘No thank you, Miss Briggs.’

  As the door closed, the Duke exploded with a loud report. ‘Down at the sty!’ he cried. ‘Wouldn’t you have known it! Whenever you want him, he’s down at the sty, gazing at that pig of his, absorbed, like somebody watching a strip-tease act. It’s a not wholesome for a man to worship a pig the way he does. Isn’t there something in the Bible about the Israelites worshipping a pig? No, it was a golden calf, but the principle’s the same. I tell you …’

  He broke off. The door had opened again. Lord Emsworth stood on the threshold, his mild face agitated.

  Connie, I can’t find my umbrella.’

  Oh, Clarence!’ said Lady Constance with the exasperation the head of the family so often aroused in her, and hustled him out towards the cupboard in the hall where, as he should have known perfectly well, his umbrella had its home.

  Left alone, the Duke prowled about the room for some moments, chewing his moustache and examining his surroundings with popping eyes. He opened drawers, looked at books, stared at pictures, fiddled with pens and paper-knives. He picked up a photograph of Mr. Schoonmaker and thought how right he had been in comparing his head to a pumpkin. He read the letter Lady Constance had been writing. Then, having exhausted all the entertainment the room had to offer, he sat down at the desk and gave himself up to thoughts of Lord Emsworth and the Empress.

  Every day in every way, he was convinced, association with that ghastly porker made the feller pottier and pottier. And, in the Duke’s opinion, he had been quite potty enough to start with.

  3

  As the car rolled away from the front door, Lord Emsworth inside it clutching his umbrella, Lady Constance stood drooping wearily with the air of one who has just launched a battleship. Beach, the butler, who had been assisting at his employer’s departure, eyed her with respectful sympathy. He, too, was feeling the strain that always resulted from getting Lord Emsworth off on a journey.

  Myra Schoonmaker appeared, looking, except that she was not larded with sweet flowers, like Ophelia in Act Four, Scene Five, of Shakespeare’s well-known play Hamlet.

  ‘Oh, hello,’ she said in a hollow voice.

  ‘Oh, there you are, my dear,’ said Lady Constance, ceasing to be the battered wreck and becoming the hostess. ‘What are you planning to do this morning?’

  ‘I don’t know. I might write a letter or two.’

  ‘I have a letter I must finish. To your father. But wouldn’t it be nicer to be out in the open on such a lovely day?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know.’

  Lady Constance sighed. But a hostess has to be bright, so she proceeded brightly.

  ‘I have been seeing Lord Emsworth off. He’s going to London.’

  ‘Yes, he told me. He seem very happy about it.’

  ‘He wasn’t,’ said Lady Constance, a grim look coming into her face. ‘But he must do his duty occasionally as a member of the House of Lords.’

  ‘He’ll miss his pig.’

  ‘He can do without her society for a couple of days.’

  ‘And he’ll miss his flowers.’

  ‘There are plenty of flowers in London. All he has to do… Oh, Heavens!’

  ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘I forgot to tell Clarence to be sure not to pick the flowers in Hyde Park. He will wander off there, and he will pick the flowers. He nearly got arrested once for doing it. Beach!’

  ‘M’lady—?’

  ‘If Lord Emsworth rings up tomorrow and says he is in prison and wants bail, tell him to get in touch immediately with his solicitors. Shoesmith, Shoesmith, Shoesmith and Shoe-smith of Lincoln’s In Fields.’

  ‘Very good, m’lady.’

  ‘I shan’t be here.�
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  ‘No, m’lady. I quite understand.’

  ‘He’s sure to have forgotten their name.’

  ‘I will refresh his lordship’s memory.’

  ‘Thank you, Beach.’

  ‘Not at all, m’lady!’

  Myra Schoonmaker was staring at her hostess., Her voice trembled a little as she said:

  ‘You won’t be here, Lady Constance?’

  ‘I have to go to my hairdresser’s in Shrewsbury, and I am lunching with some friends there. I shall be back for dinner, of course. And now I really must be going and finishing that letter to your father. I’ll give him your love.’

  ‘Yes, do,’ said Myra, and sped off to Lord Emsworth’s study, where there was a telephone. The number of the man she loved was graven on her heart. He was staying temporarily with his old Oxford friend, Lord Ickenham’s nephew, Pongo Twistleton. But until now there had been no opportunity to call it.

  Seated at the instrument with a wary eye on the door, for though Lord Emsworth had left, who knew that Lavender Briggs might not pop in at any moment, she heard the bell ringing in distant London, and presently a voice spoke.

  ‘Darling!’ said Myra. ‘Is that you, darling? This is me, darling.’

  ‘Darling!’ said the voice devoutly.

  ‘Darling,’ said Myra, ‘the most wonderful thing has happened, darling. Lady Constance is having her hair done ‘tomorrow.’

  ‘Oh, yes?’ said the voice, seeming a little puzzled, as if wondering whether it would be in order to express a hope that she would have a fine day for it.

  ‘Don’t you get it, dumb-bell? She has to go to Shrewsbury, and she’ll be away all day, so I can dash up to London and we can get married.’

  There was a momentary silence at the other end of the wire. One would have gathered that the owner of the voice had had his breath taken away. Recovering it, he said:

  ‘I see.’

  ‘Aren’t you pleased?’

  ‘Oh, rather!’

  ‘Well, you don’t sound as if you were. Listen, darling. When I was in London, I did a good deal of looking around for registry offices, just in case. I found one in Milton Street. Meet me there tomorrow at two sharp. I must hang up now, darling. Somebody may come in. Good-bye, darling.’

  ‘Good-bye, darling.’

  ‘Till tomorrow, darling.’

  ‘Right ho, darling.’

  ‘Good-bye, darling.’

  And if they’re listening in at the Market Blandings exchange, thought Myra, as she replaced the receiver, that’ll give them something to chat about over their tea and crumpets.

  Chapter Two

  1

  ‘And now,’ said Pongo Twistleton, crushing out his cigarette in the ash tray and speaking with a note of quiet satisfaction in his voice, ‘I shall have to be buzzing along. Got a date.’

  He had been giving his uncle, Lord Ickenham, lunch at the Drones Club, and a very agreeable function he had found it, for the other, who like Lord Emsworth had graced the opening of Parliament with his presence, had been very entertaining on the subject of his experiences. But what had given him even more pleasure than his relative’s mordant critique of the appearance of the four pursuivants, Rouge Croix, Bluemantle, Rouge Dragon and Portcullis, as they headed the procession, had been the stimulating thought that, having this engagement, he ran no risk at the conclusion of the meal of being enticed by his guest into what the latter called one of their pleasant and instructive afternoons. The ordeal of sharing these in the past had never failed to freeze his blood. The occasion when they had gone to the dog races together some years previously remained particularly green in his memory.

  Of Frederick Altamont Cornwallis Twistleton, fifth Earl of Ickenham, a thoughtful critic had once said that in the late afternoon of his life he retained, together with a juvenile waistline, the bright enthusiasms and fresh, unspoiled outlook of a slightly inebriated undergraduate, and no one who knew him would have disputed the accuracy of the statement. As a young man in America, before a number of deaths in the family had led to his succession to the title, he had been at various times a cowboy, a soda-jerker, a newspaper reporter and a prospector in the Mojave Desert, and there was not a ranch, a drug-store, a newspaper office or a sandy waste with which he had been connected that he had not done his best to enliven. His hair today was grey, but it was still his aim to enliven, as far as lay within his power, any environment in which he found himself. He liked, as he often said, to spread sweetness and light or, as he sometimes put it, give service with a smile. He was a tall distinguished-looking man with a jaunty moustache and an alert and enterprising eye. In this eye, as he turned it on his nephew, there was a look of disappointment and reproach, as if he had expected better things from one of his flesh and blood.

  ‘You are leaving me? Why is that? I had been hoping for —’

  ‘I know,’ said Pongo austerely. ‘One of our pleasant and instructive afternoons. Well, pleasant and instructive afternoons are off. I’ve got to seen man.’

  ‘About a dog?’

  ‘Not so much about a dog as —’

  ‘Phone him and put him off.’

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘Who is this fellow?’

  ‘Bill Bailey.’

  Lord Ickenham seemed surprised.

  ‘He’s back, is he?’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘I was given to understand that he had left home. I seem to remember his wife being rather concerned about it.’

  Pongo saw that his uncle had got everything mixed up, as elderly gentlemen will.

  ‘Oh, this chap isn’t really Bill. I believe he was christened Cuthbert. But if a fellow’s name is Bailey, you’ve more or less got to call him Bill.’

  ‘Of course, noblesse oblige. Friend of yours?’

  ‘Bosom. Up at Oxford with him.’

  ‘Tell him to join us here.’

  ‘Can’t be done. I’ve arranged to meet him in Milton Street.’

  ‘Where’s that?’

  ‘In South Kensington.’

  Lord Ickenham pursed his lips.

  ‘South Kensington? Where sin stalks naked through the dark alleys and only might is right. Give this man a miss. Hell lead you astray.’

  ‘He won’t jolly well lead me astray. And why? Because for one thing he’s a curate and for another he’s getting married. The rendezvous is at the Milton Street registry office.’

  ‘You are his witness?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘And who is the bride?’

  ‘American girl.’

  ‘Nice?’

  ‘Bill speaks well of her.’

  ‘What’s her name?’

  ‘Schoonmaker.’

  Lord Ickenham leaped in his seat.

  ‘Good heavens! Not little Myra Schoonmaker?’

  ‘I don’t know if she’s little or not. I’ve never seen her. But her name’s Myra all right. Why — do you know her?’

  A tender look had come into Lord Ickenham’s handsome face. He twirled his moustache sentimentally.

  ‘Do I know her! Many’s the time I’ve given her her bath. Not recently, of course, but years ago when I was earning my living in New York. Jimmy Schoonmaker was my great buddy in those days. I don’t get over to God’s country much now, your aunt thinks it better otherwise, and I’ve often wondered how he was making out. He promised, when I knew him, to become a big shot in the financial world. Even then, though comparatively young, he was able to shoot a cigar across his face without touching it with his fingers, which we all know is the first step to establishing oneself as a tycoon. I expect by this time he’s the Wolf of Wall Street, and is probably offended if he isn’t investigated every other week by a Senate commission. Well, it all seems very odd to me.’

  ‘What’s odd?’

  ‘His daughter getting married at a registry office. I should have thought she would have had a big choral wedding with bridesmaids and bishops and all the fixings.’

  ‘Ah, I see what
you mean.’ Pongo looked cautiously over his shoulder. No one appeared to be within earshot. ‘Yes, you would think so, wouldn’t you? But Bill’s nuptials have got to be solemnized with more than a spot of secrecy and silence. The course of true love hasn’t been running too smooth. Hellhounds have been bunging spanners into it.’

  ‘What hell-hounds would those be?’

  ‘I should have said one hell-hound. You know her. Lady Constance Keeble.’

  ‘What, dear old Connie? How that name brings back fragrant memories. I wonder if you recall the time when you and I went to Blandings Castle, I posing as Sir Roderick Glossop, the loony doctor, you as his nephew Basil?’

  ‘I recall it,’ said Pongo with a strong shudder. The visit alluded to had given him nightmares for months.

  ‘Happy days, happy days! I enjoyed my stay enormously, and wish I could repeat it. The bracing air, the pleasant society, the occasional refreshing look at Emsworth’s pig, it all combined to pep me up and brush away the cobwebs. But how does Connie come into it?’

  ‘She forbade the banns.’

  ‘I still don’t follow the scenario. Why was she in a position to do so?’

  ‘What happened was this. She and Schoonmaker are old pals — I got all this from Bill, so I assume we can take it as accurate — and he wanted his daughter to have a London season, so he brought her over here and left her in Lady C.’s charge.’

  ‘All clear so far.’

  ‘And plumb spang in the middle of their London season Lady C. discovered that the beazel was walking out with Bill. Ascertaining that he was a curate, she became as sore as a gumboil.’

  ‘She does not like curates?’

  ‘That’s the idea one gets.’

  ‘Odd. She doesn’t like me, either. Very hard to please, that woman. What’s wrong with curates?’

  ‘Well, they’re all pretty hard up. Bill hasn’t a bean.’

  ‘I begin to see. Humble suitor. Curious how prejudiced so many people are against humble suitors. My own case is one in point. When I was courting your Aunt Jane, her parents took the bleakest view of the situation, and weren’t their faces red when one day I suddenly became that noblest of created beings, an Earl, a hell of a fellow with four christian names and a coronet hanging on a peg in the downstairs cupboard. Her father, scorning me because I was a soda-jerker at the time, frequently, I believe, alluded to me as “that bum”, but it was very different when I presented myself at his Park Avenue residence with a coronet on the back of my head and a volume of Debrett under my arm. He gave me his blessing and a cigar. No chance of Bill Bailey becoming an earl, I suppose?’