Week-End Wodehouse

SUNSHINE PIERCED THE haze that enveloped London. It came down Fleet Street, turned to the right, stopped at the premises of the Mammoth Publishing Company, and, entering through an upper window, beamed pleasantly upon Lord Tilbury, founder and proprietor of that vast factory of popular literature as he sat reading the batch of weekly papers which his secretary had placed on the desk for his inspection. Among the secrets of this great man’s success was the fact that he kept a personal eye on all the firm’s products.

Considering what a pleasing rarity sunshine in London is, one might have expected the man behind the Mammoth to beam back. Instead, he merely pressed the buzzer. His secretary appeared. He pointed silently. The secretary drew the shade, and the sunshine, having called without an appointment, was excluded.

Lord Tilbury frowned. He remembered Lady Julia Fish as an agreeable hotel acquaintance during his recent holiday at Biarritz. But this was Tilbury House, and at Tilbury House he did not desire the company of hotel acquaintances, however agreeable.

The particular periodical which had happened to come to hand was the current number of that admirable children’s paper, “Tiny Tots,” and for some moments he scanned its pages with an attempt at his usual conscientious thoroughness. But it was plain that his heart was not in his work. The Adventures of Pinky, Winky, and Pop in Slumberland made little impression upon him. He passed on to a thoughtful article by Laura J. Smedley on what a wee girlie can do to help mother, but it was evident that for once Laura J. had failed to grip. Presently with a grunt he threw the paper down and for the third time since it had arrived by the morning post picked up a letter which lay on the desk. He already knew it by heart, so there was no real necessity for him to read it again, but the human tendency to twist the knife in the wound is universal.

It was a brief letter. Its writer’s eighteenth century ancestors who believed in filling their twelve sheets when they took pen in hand, would have winced at the sight of it. But for all its brevity it had ruined Lord Tilbury’s day.

Blandings Castle,

Shropshire.

Dear Sir,

Enclosed find cheque for the advance you paid me on those Reminiscences of mine.

I have been thinking it over, and have decided not to publish them after all.

Yours truly,

G. Threepwood.

“Cor!” said Lord Tilbury, an ejaculation to which he was much addicted in times of mental stress.

He rose from his chair and began to pace the room. Always Napoleonic of aspect, being short and square and stumpy and about twenty-five pounds overweight, he looked now like a Napoleon taking his morning walk at St. Helena.

And yet, oddly enough, there were men in England who would have whooped with joy at the sight of that letter. Some of them might even have gone to the length of lighting bonfires and roasting oxen whole for the tenantry about it. Those few words over that signature would have spread happiness in every county from Cumberland to Cornwall. So true is it that in this world everything depends on the point of view.

When, some months before, the news had got about that the Hon. Galahad Threepwood, brother of the Earl of Emsworth and as sprightly an old gentleman as was ever thrown out of a Victorian music-hall, was engaged in writing the recollections of his colourful career as a man about town in the ’nineties, the shock to the many now highly respectable members of the governing classes who in their hot youth had shared it was severe. All over the country decorous Dukes and steady Viscounts, who had once sown wild oats in the society of the young Galahad, sat quivering in their slippers at the thought of what long-cupboarded skeletons those Reminiscences might disclose.

They knew their Gaily, and their imagination allowed them to picture with a crystal clearness the sort of book he would be likely to produce. It would, they felt in their ageing bones, be essentially one of those of which the critics say “A veritable storehouse of diverting anecdote.” To not a few—Lord Emsworth’s nearest neighbour, Sir Gregory Parsloe-Parsloe of Matchingham Hall, was one of them—it was as if the Recording Angel had suddenly decided to rush into print.

Lord Tilbury, however, had looked on the thing from a different angle. He knew—no man better—what big money there was in this type of literature. The circulation of his nasty little paper, “Society Spice,” proved that. Even though Percy Pilbeam, its nasty little editor, had handed in his portfolio and gone off to start a Private Enquiry Agency, it was still a gold-mine. He had known Gaily Threepwood in the old days—not intimately, but quite well enough to cause him now to hasten to acquire all rights to the story of his life, sight unseen. It seemed to him that the book could not fail to be the succès de scandale of the year.

Acute, therefore, as had been the consternation of the Dukes and Viscounts on learning that the dead past was about to be disinterred, it paled in comparison with that of Lord Tilbury on suddenly receiving this intimation that it was not. There is a tender spot in all great men. Achilles had his heel. With Lord Tilbury it was his pocket. He hated to see money get away from him, and out of this book of Gaily Threepwood’s he had been looking forward to making a small fortune.

Little wonder, then, that he mourned and was unable to concentrate on “Tiny Tots.” He was still mourning when his secretary entered bearing a slip of paper.

And then there flashed into his mind a sudden recollection of something he had heard somebody say about this Lady Julia Fish. The words “Blandings Castle” seemed to be connected with it. He turned to the desk and took up Debrett’s Peerage, searching among the E’s for “Emsworth, Earl of.”

Yes, there it was. Lady Julia Fish had been born Lady Julia Threepwood. She was a sister of the perjured Galahad.

That altered things. Here, he perceived, was an admirable opportunity of working off some of his stored-up venom. His knowledge of life told him that the woman would not be calling unless she wanted to get something out of him. To inform her in person that she was most certainly not going to get it would be balm to his lacerated feelings.

Lady Julia Fish was a handsome middle-aged woman of the large, blonde type, of a personality both breezy and commanding. She came into the room a few moments later like a galleon under sail, her resolute chin and her china-blue eyes proclaiming a supreme confidence in her ability to get anything she wanted out of anyone. And Lord Tilbury, having bowed stiffly, stood regarding her with a pop-eyed hostility. Even setting aside her loathsome family connections there was a patronizing good humour about her manner which he resented. And certainly, if Lady Julia Fish’s manner had a fault, it was that it resembled a little too closely that of the great lady of a village amusedly trying to make friends with the backward child of one of her tenants.

“Well, well, well,” she said, not actually patting Lord Tilbury on the head but conveying the impression that she might see fit to do so at any moment, “you’re looking very bonny. Biarritz did you good.”

Lord Tilbury, with the geniality of a trapped wolf, admitted to being in robust health.

“So this is where you get out all those jolly little papers of yours, is it? I must say I’m impressed. Quite awe-inspiring, all that ritual on the threshold. Admirals in the Swiss Navy making you fill up forms with your name and business, and small boys in buttons eyeing you as if anything you said might be used in evidence against you.”

“The practical note!” said Lady Julia, with indulgent approval. “How stimulating that is! Time is money, and all that. Quite. Well, cutting the preamble, I want a job for Ronnie.”

“I know what you’re going to say. You’re very crowded here. Fearful congestion, and so on. Well, Ronnie won’t take up much room. And I shouldn’t think he could do any actual harm to a solidly established concern like this. Surely you could let him mess about at something? Why, Sir Gregory Parsloe, our neighbour down in Shropshire, told me that you were employing his nephew, Monty. And while I would be the last woman to claim that Ronnie is a mental giant, at least he’s brighter than young Monty Bodkin.”

A quiver ran through Lord Tilbury’s stocky form. This woman had unbared his secret shame. A man who prided himself on never letting himself be worked for jobs, he had had a few weeks before a brief moment of madness when, under the softening influence of a particularly good public dinner, he had yielded to the request of the banqueter on his left that he should find a place at Tilbury House for his nephew.

He had regretted the lapse next morning. He had regretted it more on seeing the nephew. And he had not ceased to regret it now.

“I don’t see why. Swallowing camels and straining at gnats is what I should call it.”

He was beginning to feel that this interview was not working out as he had anticipated. He had meant to be strong, brusque, decisive—the man of iron. And here this woman had got him arguing and explaining—almost in a position of defending himself. Like so many people who came in contact with her, he began to feel that there was something disagreeably hypnotic about Lady Julia Fish.

“But what do you want your son to work here for?” he asked, realizing as he spoke that a man of iron ought to have scorned to put such a question.

“My dear man,” she said, tickled by the quaint conceit, “no member of my family has ever shown any aptitude for anything except eating and sleeping.”

“To distract his . . . well, yes, I suppose in a loose way you could call it a mind.”

“Well, it’s like this. The poor half-wit is trying to marry a chorus-girl, and it seemed to me that if he were safe at Tilbury House, inking his nose and getting bustled about by editors and people, it might take his mind off the tender passion.”

Lord Tilbury drew a long, deep, rasping breath. The weakness had passed. He could be strong now. This outrageous insult to the business he loved had shattered the spell which those china-blue eyes and that confident manner had been weaving about him. He spoke curtly, placing his thumbs in the armholes of his waistcoat to lend emphasis to his remarks.

“We publish newspapers, magazines, weekly journals. We are not a Home for the Lovelorn.”

“I see,” said Lady Julia. She looked at him inquiringly. “You sound very stuffy,” she went on. “Not your old merry Biarritz self at all. Did your breakfast disagree with you this morning?”

“Yes,” he said. “Something is the matter. If you really wish to know, I am scarcely in a frame of mind to-day to go out of my way to oblige members of your family. After what has occurred.”

He extended the letter rather in the manner of one anxious to rid himself of a snake which has somehow come into his possession. Lady Julia scrutinized it with languid interest.

“It’s monstrous. Abominable. He accepted the contract, and he ought to fulfil it. At the very least, in common decency, he might have given his reasons for behaving in this utterly treacherous and unethical way. But does he? Not at all. Explanations? None. Apologies? Regrets? Oh dear, no. He merely ‘decides not to publish.’ In all my thirty years of. . . .”

“Odd,” she said, handing the letter back. “My brother Galahad is a man who moves in a mysterious way his wonders to perform. A quite unaccountable mentality. I knew he was writing this book, of course, but I have no notion whatever why he has had this sudden change of heart. Perhaps some Duke who doesn’t want to see himself in the ‘Peers I Have Been Thrown Out Of Public Houses With’ chapter has been threatening to take him for a ride.”

“Or some Earl with a guilty conscience. Or a Baronet. ‘Society Scribe Bumped Off By Baronets’—that would make a good head-line for one of your papers.”

“Well, at any rate, my dear man, it’s no good savaging me. I’m not responsible for Galahad’s eccentricities. I’m simply an innocent widow-woman trying to wangle a cushy job for her only son. Coming back to which, I rather gather from what you said just now that you do not intend to set Ronnie punching the clock?”

Lord Tilbury shook from stem to stern. His eyes gleamed balefully. Nature in the raw is seldom mild.

“I absolutely and positively refuse to employ your son at Tilbury House in any capacity whatsoever.”

“Well, that’s a fair answer to a fair question, and seems to close the discussion.”

“Too bad about Gally’s little effort,” she said silkily. “You’ll lose a lot of money, won’t you? There’s a mint of it in a really indiscreet book of Reminiscences. They tell me that Lady Wensleydale’s ‘Sixty Years Near the Knuckle In Mayfair,’ or whatever it was called, sold a hundred thousand copies. And, knowing Gaily, I’ll bet he would have started remembering where old Jane Wensleydale left off. Good morning, Lord Tilbury. So nice to have seen you again.”

The door closed. The proprietor of the Mammoth sat staring before him. His agony was too keen to permit him even to say “Cor!”

The spasm passed. Presently life seemed to steal back to that rigid form. It would be too much to say that Lord Tilbury became himself, but at least he began to function once more. Though pain and anguish rack the brow, the world’s work has to be done. Like a convalescent reaching for his barley-water, he stretched out a shaking hand and took up “Tiny Tots” again.

And here it would be agreeable to leave him—the good man restoring his moral with refreshing draughts at the fount of wholesome literature. But this happy ending was not to be. Once more it was to be proved that this was not Lord Tilbury’s lucky morning. Scarcely had he begun to read, when his eyes suddenly protruded from their sockets, his stout body underwent a strong convulsion, and from his parted lips there proceeded a loud snort. It was as if a viper had sprung from between the pages and bitten him on the chin.

And this was odd, because “Tiny Tots” is a journal not as a rule provocative of violent expressions of feeling. Ably edited by that well-known writer of tales for the young, the Rev. Aubrey Sellick, it strives always to take the sane middle course. Its editorial page, in particular, is a model of non-partisan moderation. And yet, amazingly, it was this same editorial page which had just made Lord Tilbury’s blood-pressure hit a new high.

It occurred to him that mental strain might have affected his eyesight. He blinked and took another look.

Well, chickabiddies, how are you all? Minding what Nursie says and eating your spinach like good little men? That’s right. I know the stuff tastes like a motor-man’s glove, but they say there’s iron in it, and that’s what puts hair on the chest.

Lord Tilbury, having taken time out to make a noise like a leaking siphon, resumed his reading.

Well, now let’s get down to it. This week, my dear little souls, Uncle Woggly is going to put you on to a good thing. We all want to make a spot of easy money these hard times, don’t we? Well, here’s the low-down, straight from the horse’s mouth. All you have to do is to get hold of some mug and lure him into betting that a quart whisky bottle holds a quart of whisky.

Sounds rummy, what? I mean, that’s what you would naturally think it would hold. So does the mug. But it isn’t. It’s really more, and I’ll tell you why.

First you fill the bottle. This gives you your quart. Then you shove the cork in. And then—follow me closely here—you turn the bottle upside down and you find there’s a sort of bulging-in part at the bottom. Well, slosh some whisky into that, and there you are. Because the bot. is now holding more than a quart and you scoop the stakes.

I have to acknowledge a sweet little letter from Frankie Kendon (Hendon) about his canary which goes tweet-tweet-tweet. Also one from Muriel Poot (Stow-in-the-Wold), who is going to lose her shirt if she ever bets anyone she knows how to spell “tortoise”.

Lord Tilbury had read enough. There was some good stuff further on about Willi Waters (Ponders End) and his cat Miggles, but he did not wait for it. He pressed the buzzer emotionally.

“Tots!” he cried, choking. “‘Tiny Tots’! Who is editing ‘Tiny Tots’ now?”

“Mr. Sellick is the regular editor, Lord Tilbury,” replied his secretary, who knew everything and wore horn-rimmed spectacles to prove it, “but he is away on his vacation. In his absence, the assistant editor is in charge of the paper. Mr. Bodkin.”

So loud was Lord Tilbury’s voice and so sharply did his eyes bulge that the secretary recoiled a step, as if something had hit her.

“That popinjay!” said Lord Tilbury, in a strange, low, grating voice. “I might have guessed it. I might have foreseen something like this. Send Mr. Bodkin here at once.”

It was a judgment, he felt. This was what came of going to public dinners and allowing yourself to depart from the principles of a lifetime. One false step, one moment of weakness when there were wheedling snakes of Baronets at your elbow, and what a harvest, what a reckoning!

He leaned back in his chair, tapping the desk with a paper-knife. He had just broken this, when there was a knock at the door and his young subordinate entered.

“Good morning, good morning, good morning,” said the latter affably. “Want to see me about something?”

Monty Bodkin was rather an attractive popinjay, as popinjays go. He was tall and slender and lissom, and many people considered him quite good-looking. But not Lord Tilbury. He had disapproved of his appearance from their first meeting, thinking him much too well dressed, much too carefully groomed, and much too much like what he actually was, a member in good standing of the Drones Club. The proprietor of the Mammoth Publishing Company could not have put into words his ideal of a young journalist, but it would have been something rather shaggy, preferably with spectacles, certainly not wearing spats. And while Monty Bodkin was not actually spatted at the moment, there did undoubtedly hover about him a sort of spat aura.

He stared bleakly. His demeanour now was that of a Napoleon who, suffering from toothache, sees his way to taking it out of one of his minor marshals.

“And don’t grin like that,” he snarled. “What the devil are you grinning for?”

The words were proof of the deeps of misunderstanding which yawned between the assistant editor of “Tiny Tots” and himself. Certainly something was splitting Monty Bodkin’s face in a rather noticeable manner, but the latter could have taken his oath it was an ingratiating smile. He had intended it for an ingratiating smile, and unless something had gone extremely wrong with the works in the process of assembling it, that is what it should have come out as.

However, being a sweet-tempered popinjay and always anxious to oblige, he switched it off. He was feeling a little puzzled. The atmosphere seemed to him to lack chumminess, and he was at a loss to account for it.

“You need not trouble. I have already seen the passage in question. Here, where I am pointing.”

Monty was now definitely perplexed. He could conceal from himself no longer that there was ill-will in the air. Lord Tilbury’s had never been an elfin personality, but he had always been a good deal more winsome than this.

“You aren’t worrying about it not being accurate, are you? Because that’s quite all right. I had it on the highest authority—from an old boy called Galahad Threepwood. Lord Emsworth’s brother. You wouldn’t have heard of him, of course, but he was a great lad about the metropolis at one time, and you can reply absolutely on anything he says about whisky bottles.”

He broke off, puzzled once more. He could not understand what had caused his companion to strike the desk in that violent manner.

“What the devil do you mean, you wretched imbecile,” demanded Lord Tilbury, speaking a little indistinctly, for he was sucking his fist, “by putting stuff of this sort in ‘Tiny Tots’?”

“How do you suppose the mothers who read that drivel to their children will feel?”

“Mugs . . . Betting . . . Whisky. . . . You have probably lost us ten thousand subscribers.”

“I say, that never occurred to me. Yes, by Jove, I see what you mean now. Unfortunate slip, what? May quite easily cause alarm and despondency. Yes, yes, yes, to be sure. Oh, yes, indeed. Well, I can only say I’m sorry.”

“You can not only say you are sorry,” said Lord Tilbury, correcting this view, “you can go to the cashier, draw a month’s salary, get to blazes out of here, and never let me see your face in the building again.”

“But this sounds like the sack. Don’t tell me that what you are hinting at is the sack?”

Speech failed Lord Tilbury. He jerked a thumb door-wards. And such was the magic of his personality that Monty found himself a moment later with his fingers on the handle. Its cold hardness seemed to wake him from a trance. He halted, making a sort of Custer’s Last Stand.

Lord Tilbury quivered for an instant as if somebody had stuck a bradawl into him, but preserved an aloof silence.

“Well, he won’t, you know.” Monty had no wish to be severe, but he felt compelled to point this out. “He takes all the trouble to get me a job, I mean to say, and now this happens. Oh, no, don’t deceive yourself, Uncle Gregory will be vexed.”

Monty fondled the door-handle for a space, marshalling his thoughts. He had that to say which he rather fancied would melt the other’s heart a goodish bit, but he was not quite sure how to begin.

“Not yet. The fact is, there’s something I rather wanted to call to your attention. You don’t know it, but for private and personal reasons I particularly want to hold this ‘Tiny Tots’ job for a year. There are wheels within wheels. It’s a sort of bet, as a matter of fact. Have you ever met a girl called Gertrude Butterwick? . . . However, it’s a long story and I won’t bother you with it now. But you can take it from me that there definitely are wheels within wheels and unless I continue in your employment, till somewhere around the middle of next June, my life will be a blank and all my hopes and dreams shattered. So how about it? Would you, on second thoughts, taking this into consideration, feel disposed to postpone the rash act till then? If you’ve any doubts as to my doing my bit, dismiss them. I would work like the dickens. First at the office, last to come away, and solid, selfless, service all the time—no clock-watching, no folding of the hands in . . .”

“Oh, right ho,” he said stiffly. “Now we know where we are. Now we know where we stand. If that is the attitude you take, I suppose there is nothing to be done about it. Since you have no heart, no sympathy, no feeling, no bowels—of compassion, I mean—I have no alternative but to shove off. I have only two things to say to you, Lord Tilbury. One is that you have ruined a man’s life. The other is Pip-pip.”

He passed from the room, erect and dignified, like some young aristocrat of the French Revolution stepping into the tumbril. Lord Tilbury’s secretary removed her ear from the door just in time to avoid a nasty flesh-wound.

IN WHICH A MOTHER PLEADS FOR HER SON AND A NEPHEW GETS THE BIRD