AND MEANWHILE, IF we may borrow an expression from a sister art, what of Hugo Carmody?
It is a defect unfortunately inseparable from any such document as this faithful record of events in and about Blandings Castle that the chronicler, in order to give a square deal to each of the individuals whose fortunes he has undertaken to narrate, is compelled to flit abruptly from one to the other in a manner popularized by the chamois of the Alps leaping from crag to crag. The activities of the Efficient Baxter seeming to him to demand immediate attention, he was reluctantly compelled some little while back to leave Hugo in the very act of reeling beneath a crushing blow. The moment has now come to return to him.
The first effect on a young man of sensibility and gentle upbringing of the discovery that an unfriendly detective has seen him placing stolen pigs in caravans is to induce a stunned condition of mind, a sort of mental coma. The face lengthens. The limbs grow rigid. The tie slips sideways and the cuffs recede into the coat-sleeves. The subject becomes temporarily, in short, a total loss.
It is perhaps as well, therefore, that we did not waste valuable time watching Hugo in the process of digesting Percy Pilbeam’s sensational announcement, for it would have been like looking at a statue. If the reader will endeavour to picture Rodin’s Thinker in a dinner-jacket and trousers with braid down the sides, he will have got the general idea. At the instant when Hugo Carmody makes his reappearance, life has just begun to return to the stiffened frame.
And with life came the dawning of intelligence. This ghastly snag which had popped up in his path was too big, reflected Hugo, for any man to tackle. It called for a woman’s keener wit. His first act on emerging from the depths, therefore, was to leave the drawing-room and totter downstairs to the telephone. He got the number of Matchingham Hall and, establishing communication with Sir Gregory Parsloe-Parsloe’s butler, urged him to summon Miss Millicent Threepwood from the dinner-table. The butler said in rather a reproving way that Miss Threepwood was at the moment busy drinking soup. Hugo, with the first flash of spirit he had shown for a quarter of an hour, replied that he didn’t care if she was bathing in it. Fetch her, said Hugo, and almost added the words ‘You scurvy knave’. He then clung weakly to the receiver, waiting, and in a short while a sweet, but agitated, voice floated to him across the wire.
‘Hugo?’
‘Millicent?’
‘Is that you?’
‘Yes. Is that you?’
‘Yes.’
Anything in the nature of misunderstanding was cleared away. It was both of them.
‘What’s up?’
‘Everything’s up.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘I’ll tell you,’ said Hugo, and did so. It was not a difficult story to tell. Its plot was so clear that a few whispered words sufficed.
‘You don’t mean that?’ said Millicent, the tale concluded.
‘I do mean that.’
‘Oh, golly!’ said Millicent.
Silence followed. Hugo waited palpitatingly. The outlook seemed to him black. He wondered if he had placed too much reliance in woman’s wit. That ‘Golly!’ had not been hopeful.
‘Hugo!’
‘Hullo?’
‘This is a bit thick.’
‘Yes,’ agreed Hugo. The thickness had not escaped him. ‘Well, there’s only one thing to do.’
A faint thrill passed through Hugo Carmody. One would be enough. Woman’s wit was going to bring home the bacon after all.
‘Listen!’
‘Well?’
‘The only thing to do is for me to go back to the dining-room and tell Uncle Clarence you’ve found the Empress.’
‘Eh?’
‘Found her, fathead.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Found her in the caravan.’
‘But weren’t you listening to what I was saying?’ There were tears in Hugo’s voice. ‘Pilbeam saw us putting her there.’
‘I know.’
‘Well, what’s our move when he says so?’
‘Stout denial.’
‘Eh?’
‘We stoutly deny it,’ said Millicent.
The thrill passed through Hugo again, stronger than before. It might work. Yes, properly handled, it would work. He poured broken words of love and praise into the receiver.
‘That’s right,’ he cried. ‘I see daylight. I will go to Pilbeam and tell him privately that if he opens his mouth I’ll strangle him.’
‘Well, hold on. I’ll go and tell Uncle Clarence. I expect he’ll be out in a moment to have a word with you.’
‘Half a minute! Millicent!’
‘Well?’
‘When am I supposed to have found this ghastly pig?’
‘Ten minutes ago, when you were taking a stroll before your dinner. You happened to pass the caravan and you heard an odd noise inside, and you looked to see what it was, and there was the Empress and you then raced back to the house to telephone.’
‘But, Millicent! Half a minute!’
‘Well?’
‘The old boy will think Baxter stole her.’
‘So he will! Isn’t that splendid! Well, hold on.’
Hugo resumed his vigil. It was some moments later that a noise like the clucking of fowls broke out at the Matchingham Hall end of the wire. He deduced correctly that this was caused by the ninth Earl of Emsworth endeavouring to clothe his thoughts in speech.
‘Kuk-kuk-kuk …’
‘Yes, Lord Emsworth?’ ‘Kuk-Carmody!’
‘Yes, Lord Emsworth?’
‘Is this true?’
‘Yes, Lord Emsworth.’
‘You’ve found the Empress?’
‘Yes, Lord Emsworth.’
‘In that feller Baxter’s caravan?’
‘Yes, Lord Emsworth.’
‘Well, I’ll be damned!’
‘Yes, Lord Emsworth.’
So far Hugo Carmody had found his share of the dialogue delightfully easy. On these lines he would have been prepared to continue it all night. But there was something else besides, ‘Yes, Lord Emsworth’ that he must now endeavour to say. There is a tide in the affairs of men which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune: and that tide, he knew, would never rise higher than at the present moment. He swallowed twice to unlimber his vocal cords.
‘Lord Emsworth,’ he said, and, though his heart was beating fast, his voice was steady, ‘there is something I would like to take this opportunity of saying. It will come as a surprise to you, but I hope not as an unpleasant surprise. I love your niece Millicent, and she loves me, Lord Emsworth. We have loved each other for many weeks and it is my hope that you will give your consent to our marriage. I am not a rich man, Lord Emsworth. In fact, strictly speaking, except for my salary I haven’t a bean in the world. But my Uncle Lester owns Rudge Hall, in Worcestershire – I daresay you have heard of the place? You turn to the left off the main road to Birmingham and go about a couple of miles … well, anyway, it’s a biggish sort of place in Worcestershire and my Uncle Lester owns it and the property is entailed and I’m next in succession …. I don’t pretend that my Uncle Lester shows any indications of passing in his checks, he was extremely fit last time I saw him, but, after all, he’s getting on and all flesh is as grass and, as I say, I’m next man in, so I shall eventually succeed to quite a fairish bit of the stuff and a house and park and rentroll and all that, so what I mean is, it isn’t as if I wasn’t in a position to support Millicent later on, and if you realized, Lord Emsworth, how we love one another I’m sure you would see that it wouldn’t be playing the game to put any obstacles in the way of our happiness, so what I’m driving at, if you follow me, is, may we charge ahead?’
There was dead silence at the other end of the wire. It seemed as if the revelation of a good man’s love had struck Lord Emsworth dumb. It was only some moments later, after he had said ‘Hullo!’ six times and ‘I say, are you there?’ twice that it was borne upon Hugo that he had wasted two hundred and eighty words of the finest eloquence on empty space.
His natural chagrin at this discovery was sensibly diminished by the sudden sound of Millicent’s voice in his ear.
‘Hullo!’
‘Hullo!’
‘Hullo!’
‘Hullo?’
‘Hugo!’
‘Hullo!’
‘I say, Hugo!’ She spoke with the joyous excitement of a girl who has just emerged from the centre of a family dog-fight. ‘I say, Hugo, things are hotting up here properly. I sprung it on Uncle Clarence just now that I want to marry you!’
‘So did I. Only he wasn’t there.’
‘I said “Uncle Clarence, aren’t you grateful to Mr. Carmody for finding the Empress?” and he said “Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, to be sure. Capital boy! Capital boy! Always liked him.” And I said “I suppose you wouldn’t by any chance let me marry him?” and he said “Eh, what? Marry him?” “Yes,” I said. “Marry him.” And he said “Certainly, certainly, certainly, certainly, by all means.” And then Aunt Constance had a fit, and Uncle Gally said she was a kill-joy and ought to be ashamed of herself for throwing the gaff into love’s young dream, and Uncle Clarence kept on saying “Certainly, certainly, certainly.” I don’t know what old Parsloe thinks of it all. He’s sitting in his chair, looking at the ceiling and drinking hock. The butler left at the end of round one. I’m going back to see how it’s all coming out. Hold the line.’
A man for whom Happiness and Misery are swaying in the scales three miles away, and whose only medium of learning the result of the contest is a telephone wire, is not likely to ring off impatiently. Hugo sat tense and breathless, like one listening in on the radio to a championship fight in which he has a financial interest. It was only when a cheery voice spoke at his elbow that he realized that his solitude had been invaded, and by Percy Pilbeam at that.
Percy Pilbeam was looking rosy and replete. He swayed slightly and his smile was rather wider and more pebble-beached than a total abstainer’s would have been.
‘Hullo, Carmody,’ said Percy Pilbeam. ‘What ho, Carmody. So here you are, Carmody.’
It came to Hugo that he had something to say to this man.
‘Here, you!’ he cried.
‘Yes, Carmody?’
‘Do you want to be battered to a pulp?’
‘No, Carmody.’
‘Then listen. You didn’t see me put that pig in the caravan. Understand?’
‘But I did, Carmody.’
‘You didn’t – not if you want to go on living.’
Percy Pilbeam appeared to be in a mood not only of keen intelligence but of the utmost reasonableness and amiability.
‘Say no more, Carmody,’ he said agreeably. ‘I take your point. You want me not to tell anybody I saw you put that caravan in the pig. Quite, Carmody, quite.’
‘Well, bear it in mind.’
‘I will, Carmody. Oh yes, Carmody, I will. I’m going for a stroll outside, Carmody. Care to join me?’
‘Go to hell!’
‘Quite,’ said Percy Pilbeam.
He tacked unsteadily to the door, aimed himself at it and passed through. And a moment later Millicent’s voice spoke.
‘Hugo?’
‘Hullo?’
‘Oh, Hugo, darling, the battle’s over. We’ve won. Uncle Clarence has said “Certainly” sixty-five times, and he’s just told Aunt Constance that if she thinks she can bully him she’s very much mistaken. It’s a walk-over. They’re all coming back right away in the car. Uncle Clarence is an angel.’
‘So are you.’
‘Me?’
‘Yes, you.’
‘Not such an angel as you are.’
‘Much more of an angel than I am,’ said Hugo, in the voice of one trained to the appraising and classifying of angels.
‘Well, anyway, you precious old thing, I’m going to give them the slip and walk home along the road. Get out Ronnie’s twoseater and come and pick me up and we’ll go for a drive together, miles and miles through the country. It’s the most perfect evening.’
‘You bet it is!’ said Hugo fervently. ‘What I call something like an evening. Give me two minutes to get the car out and five to make the trip and I’ll be with you.’
‘ ’At-a-boy!’ said Millicent.
‘ ’At-a-baby!’ said Hugo.