Service with a Smile by P.G. Wodehouse Page A

Bill, my nephew Pongo and I kept our vigil.
We all missed you.’
    The
colour drained from Myra Schoonmaker’s face. Her eyes, as they stared into Lord
Ickenham’s, had become almost as prominent as the Duke’s.
    ‘You
don’t mean that?’
    ‘I do,
indeed. There were we, waiting at the church—’
    ‘Oh,
golly, what an escape I’ve had!’
    Lord
Ickenham could not subscribe to this view.
    ‘Now
there I disagree with you. My acquaintance with Bill Bailey has been brief, but
as I told you, it has left me with a distinctly favourable impression of him. A
sterling soul he seemed to me. I feel the spiritual needs of Bottleton East are
safe in the hands of a curate like that. Don’t tell me you’ve weakened on him?’
    ‘Of
course I’ve not weakened on him.’
    ‘Then
why do you feel that you have had an escape?’
    ‘Because
I came back here so mad with him for standing me up, as I thought, that when
Archie Gilpin proposed to me I very nearly accepted him.’
    Lord
Ickenham looked grave. These artists, he was thinking, work fast.
    ‘But
you didn’t?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘Well,
don’t. It would spoil Bill’s visit. And I want him to enjoy himself at Blandings
Castle. But I didn’t tell you about that, did I? It must have slipped my mind.
I’ve brought Bill here with me. Incognito, of course. I thought you might like
to see him. I always strive, when I can, to spread sweetness and light. There
have been several complaints about it.’

 
     
    Chapter
Four
     
     
     
    1
     
    It was the practice of
Lord Ickenham, when visiting a country house to look about him, before doing
anything else, for a hammock to which he could withdraw after breakfast and lie
thinking deep thoughts. Though, like Abou ben Adhem a man who loved his fellow
men, he made it an invariable rule to avoid them after the morning meal with an
iron firmness, for at that delectable hour he wished to be alone to meditate.
Whoever wanted to enjoy the sparkle of his conversation had to wait till
lunch, when it would be available to all.
    Such a
hammock he had found on the lawn of Blandings Castle, and on the morning after
his arrival he was reclining in it at peace with all the world. The day was
warm and sunny. A breeze blew gently from the west. Birds chirped, bees buzzed,
insects droned as they went about the various businesses that engage the
attention of insects in the rural districts. In the stable yard, out of view
behind a shrubbery, somebody — possibly Voules the chauffeur — was playing the
harmonica. And from a window in the house, softened by distance, there sounded
faintly the tap-tap-tap of a typewriter, showing that Lavender Briggs, that
slave of duty, was at work on some secretarial task and earning the weekly
envelope. Soothed and relaxed, Lord Ickenham fell into a reverie.
    He had
plenty to occupy his mind. As a man who specialized in spreading sweetness and
light, he was often confronted with problems difficult of solution, but he had
seldom found them so numerous. As he mused on Lady Constance, on Lavender
Briggs, on the Duke of Dunstable and on the Church Lads, he could see, as he
had told Pongo, that his hands would be full and his ingenuity strained to the
uttermost.
    He was
glad, this being so, that he had not got to worry about Bill Bailey, who had
relieved whatever apprehensions he may have had by fitting well into the little
Blandings circle. True, Lady Constance had greeted him with a touch of frost in
her manner, but that was to be expected. The others, he had been happy to see,
had made him welcome, particularly Lord Emsworth, to whom he appeared to have
said just the right things about the Empress during yesterday evening’s visit
to her residence. Lord Emsworth’s approval did not, of course, carry much
weight at Blandings Castle, but it was something.
    It was
as he lay meditating on Lord Emsworth that he observed him crossing the lawn
and sat up with a start of surprise. What had astonished him was not the