IN A R ROW B O O KS

from

Blandings Castle
Th e morning sunshine descended like an amber shower-bath
on Blandings Castle, lighting up with a heartening glow its ivied walls, its rolling parks, its gardens, outhouses, and messuages, and such of its inhabitants as chanced at the moment to be taking the air. It fell on green lawns and wide terraces, on noble trees and bright Xower-beds. It fell on the baggy trousers-seat of Angus McAllister, head-gardener to the ninth Earl of Emsworth, as he bent with dour Scottish determination to pluck a slug from its reverie beneath the leaf of a lettuce. It fell on the white Xannels of the Hon. Freddie Threepwood, Lord Emsworth's second son, hurrying across the watermeadows. It also fell on Lord Emsworth himself and on Beach, his faithful butler. They were standing on the turret above the west wing, the former with his eye to a powerful telescope, the latter holding the hat which he had been sent to fetch. `Beach,' said Lord Emsworth. `M'lord?' `I've been swindled. This dashed thing doesn't work.' `Your lordship cannot see clearly?' `I can't see at all, dash it. It's all black.' The butler was an observant man.

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blandings castle `Perhaps if I were to remove the cap at the extremity of the instrument, m'lord, more satisfactory results might be obtained.' `Eh? Cap? Is there a cap? So there is. Take it oV, Beach.' `Very good, m'lord.' `Ah!' There was satisfaction in Lord Emsworth's voice. He twiddled and adjusted, and the satisfaction deepened. `Yes, that's better. That's capital. Beach, I can see a cow.' `Indeed, m'lord?' `Down in the water-meadows. Remarkable. Might be two yards away. All right, Beach. Shan't want you any longer.' `Your hat, m'lord?' `Put it on my head.' `Very good, m'lord.' The butler, this kindly act performed, withdrew. Lord Emsworth continued gazing at the cow. The ninth Earl of Emsworth was a XuVy-minded and amiable old gentleman with a fondness for new toys. Although the main interest of his life was his garden, he was always ready to try a side line, and the latest of these side lines was this telescope of his. Ordered from London in a burst of enthusiasm consequent upon the reading of an article on astronomy in a monthly magazine, it had been placed in position on the previous evening. What was now in progress was its trial trip. Presently, the cow's audience-appeal began to wane. It was a Wne cow, as cows go, but, like so many cows, it lacked sustained dramatic interest. Surfeited after awhile by the spectacle of it chewing the cud and staring glassily at nothing, Lord Emsworth decided to swivel the apparatus round in the hope of picking up something a triXe more sensational. And he was just about to do so, when into the range of his vision there came the Hon. Freddie. White and shining, he tripped along over the turf like

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the custody of the pumpkin a Theocritan shepherd hastening to keep an appointment with a nymph, and a sudden frown marred the serenity of Lord Emsworth's brow. He generally frowned when he saw Freddie, for with the passage of the years that youth had become more and more of a problem to an anxious father. Unlike the male codWsh, which, suddenly Wnding itself the parent of three million Wve hundred thousand little codWsh, cheerfully resolves to love them all, the British aristocracy is apt to look with a somewhat jaundiced eye on its younger sons. And Freddie Threepwood was one of those younger sons who rather invite the jaundiced eye. It seemed to the head of the family that there was no way of coping with the boy. If he was allowed to live in London, he piled up debts and got into mischief; and when you jerked him back into the purer surroundings of Blandings Castle, he just mooned about the place, moping broodingly. Hamlet's society at Elsinore must have had much the same eVect on his stepfather as did that of Freddie Threepwood at Blandings on Lord Emsworth. And it is probable that what induced the latter to keep a telescopic eye on him at this moment was the fact that his demeanour was so mysteriously jaunty, his bearing so intriguingly free from its customary crushed misery. Some inner voice whispered to Lord Emsworth that this smiling, prancing youth was up to no good and would bear watching. The inner voice was absolutely correct. Within thirty seconds its case had been proved up to the hilt. Scarcely had his lordship had time to wish, as he invariably wished on seeing his oVspring, that Freddie had been something entirely diVerent in manners, morals, and appearance, and had been the son of somebody else living a considerable distance away, when out of a small spinney near the end of the meadow there bounded a girl. And Freddie,
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blandings castle after a cautious glance over his shoulder, immediately proceeded to fold this female in a warm embrace. Lord Emsworth had seen enough. He tottered away from the telescope, a shattered man. One of his favourite dreams was of some nice, eligible girl, belonging to a good family, and possessing a bit of money of her own, coming along some day and taking Freddie oV his hands; but that inner voice, more conWdent now than ever, told him that this was not she. Freddie would not sneak oV in this furtive fashion to meet eligible girls, nor could he imagine any eligible girl, in her right senses, rushing into Freddie's arms in that enthusiastic way. No, there was only one explanation. In the cloistral seclusion of Blandings, far from the Metropolis with all its conveniences for that sort of thing, Freddie had managed to get himself entangled. Seething with anguish and fury, Lord Emsworth hurried down the stairs and out on to the terrace. Here he prowled like an elderly leopard waiting for feeding-time, until in due season there was a Xicker of white among the trees that Xanked the drive and a cheerful whistling announced the culprit's approach. It was with a sour and hostile eye that Lord Emsworth watched his son draw near. He adjusted his pince-nez, and with their assistance was able to perceive that a fatuous smile of self-satisfaction illumined the young man's face, giving him the appearance of a beaming sheep. In the young man's buttonhole there shone a nosegay of simple meadow Xowers, which, as he walked, he patted from time to time with a loving hand. `Frederick!' bellowed his lordship. The villain of the piece halted abruptly. Sunk in a roseate trance, he had not observed his father. But such was the sunniness of his mood that even this encounter could not damp him. He gambolled happily up.
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the custody of the pumpkin `Hullo, guv'nor!' he carolled. He searched in his mind for a pleasant topic of conversation always a matter of some little diYculty on these occasions. `Lovely day, what?' His lordship was not to be diverted into a discussion of the weather. He drew a step nearer, looking like the man who smothered the young princes in the Tower. `Frederick,' he demanded, `who was that girl?' The Hon. Freddie started convulsively. He appeared to be swallowing with diYculty something large and jagged. `Girl?' he quavered. `Girl? Girl, guv'nor?' `That girl I saw you kissing ten minutes ago down in the water-meadows.' `Oh!' said the Hon. Freddie. He paused. `Oh, ah!' He paused again. `Oh, ah, yes! I've been meaning to tell you about that, guv'nor.' `You have, have you?' `All perfectly correct, you know. Oh, yes, indeed! All most absolutely correct-o! Nothing Wshy, I mean to say, or anything like that. She's my Wancee.' A sharp howl escaped Lord Emsworth, as if one of the bees humming in the lavender-beds had taken time oV to sting him in the neck. `Who is she?' he boomed. `Who is this woman?' `Her name's Donaldson.' `Who is she?' `Aggie Donaldson. Aggie's short for Niagara. Her people spent their honeymoon at the Falls, she tells me. She's American and all that. Rummy names they give kids in America,' proceeded Freddie, with hollow chattiness. `I mean to say! Niagara! I ask you!' `Who is she?'
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blandings castle `She's most awfully bright, you know. Full of beans. You'll love her.' `Who is she?' `And can play the saxophone.' `Who,' demanded Lord Emsworth for the sixth time, `is she? And where did you meet her?' Freddie coughed. The information, he perceived, could no longer be withheld, and he was keenly alive to the fact that it scarcely fell into the class of tidings of great joy. `Well, as a matter of fact, guv'nor, she's a sort of cousin of Angus McAllister's. She's come over to England for a visit, don't you know, and is staying with the old boy. That's how I happened to run across her.' Lord Emsworth's eyes bulged and he gargled faintly. He had had many unpleasant visions of his son's future, but they had never included one of him walking down the aisle with a sort of cousin of his head-gardener. `Oh!' he said. `Oh, indeed?' `That's the strength of it, guv'nor.' Lord Emsworth threw his arms up, as if calling on Heaven to witness a good man's persecution, and shot oV along the terrace at a rapid trot. Having ranged the grounds for some minutes, he ran his quarry to earth at the entrance to the yew alley. The head-gardener turned at the sound of his footsteps. He was a sturdy man of medium height, with eyebrows that would have Wtted a bigger forehead. These, added to a red and wiry beard, gave him a formidable and uncompromising expression. Honesty Angus McAllister's face had in full measure, and also intelligence; but it was a bit short on sweetness and light. `McAllister,' said his lordship, plunging without preamble

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the custody of the pumpkin into the matter of his discourse. `That girl. You must send her away.' A look of bewilderment clouded such of Mr McAllister's features as were not concealed behind his beard and eyebrows. `Gurrul?' `That girl who is staying with you. She must go!' `Gae where?' Lord Emsworth was not in the mood to be Wnicky about details. `Anywhere,' he said. `I won't have her here a day longer.' `Why?' inquired Mr McAllister, who liked to thresh these things out. `Never mind why. You must send her away immediately.' Mr McAllister mentioned an insuperable objection. `She's payin' me twa poon' a week,' he said simply. Lord Emsworth did not grind his teeth, for he was not given to that form of displaying emotion; but he leaped some ten inches into the air and dropped his pince-nez. And, though normally a fair-minded and reasonable man, well aware that modern earls must think twice before pulling the feudal stuV on their employes, he took on the forthright truculence of a large landowner of the early Norman period ticking oV a serf. `Listen, McAllister! Listen to me! Either you send that girl away to-day or you can go yourself. I mean it!' A curious expression came into Angus McAllister's face always excepting the occupied territories. It was the look of a man who has not forgotten Bannockburn, a man conscious of belonging to the country of William Wallace and Robert the Bruce. He made Scotch noises at the back of his throat. `Y'r lorrudsheep will accept ma notis,' he said, with formal dignity.
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blandings castle `I'll pay you a month's wages in lieu of notice and you will leave this afternoon,' retorted Lord Emsworth with spirit. `Mphm!' said Mr McAllister. Lord Emsworth left the battle-Weld with a feeling of pure exhilaration, still in the grip of the animal fury of conXict. No twinge of remorse did he feel at the thought that Angus McAllister had served him faithfully for ten years. Nor did it cross his mind that he might miss McAllister. But that night, as he sat smoking his after-dinner cigarette, Reason, so violently expelled, came stealing timidly back to her throne, and a cold hand seemed suddenly placed upon his heart. With Angus McAllister gone, how would the pumpkin fare?

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