The four-fifteen express slid softly out of Paddington Station
and Ashe Marson settled himself in the corner seat of his
second-class compartment. Opposite him Joan Valentine had begun
to read a magazine. Along the corridor, in a first-class smoking
compartment, Mr. Peters was lighting a big black cigar. Still
farther along the corridor, in a first-class non-smoking
compartment, Aline Peters looked through the window and thought
of many things.
In English trains the tipping classes travel first; valets,
lady's maids, footmen, nurses, and head stillroom maids, second;
and housemaids, grooms, and minor and inferior stillroom maids,
third. But for these social distinctions, the whole fabric of
society would collapse and anarchy stalk naked through the
land--as in the United States.
Ashe was feeling remarkably light-hearted. He wished he had not
bought Joan that magazine and thus deprived himself temporarily
of the pleasure of her conversation; but that was the only flaw
in his happiness. With the starting of the train, which might be
considered the formal and official beginning of the delicate and
dangerous enterprise on which he had embarked, he had definitely
come to the conclusion that the life adventurous was the life for
him. He had frequently suspected this to be the case, but it had
required the actual experiment to bring certainty.
Almost more than physical courage, the ideal adventurer needs a
certain lively inquisitiveness, the quality of not being content
to mind his own affairs; and in Ashe this quality was highly
developed. From boyhood up he had always been interested in
things that were none of his business. And it is just that
attribute which the modern young man, as a rule, so sadly lacks.
The modern young man may do adventurous things if they are thrust
on him; but left to himself he will edge away uncomfortably and
look in the other direction when the goddess of adventure smiles
at him. Training and tradition alike pluck at his sleeve and urge
him not to risk making himself ridiculous. And from sheer horror
of laying himself open to the charge of not minding his own
business he falls into a stolid disregard of all that is out of
the ordinary and exciting. He tells himself that the shriek from
the lonely house he passed just now was only the high note of
some amateur songstress, and that the maiden in distress whom he
saw pursued by the ruffian with a knife was merely earning the
salary paid her by some motion-picture firm. And he proceeds on
his way, looking neither to left nor right.
Ashe had none of this degenerate coyness toward adventure. Though
born within easy distance of Boston and deposited by
circumstances in London, he possessed, nevertheless, to a
remarkable degree, that quality so essentially the property of
the New Yorker--the quality known, for want of a more polished
word, as rubber. It is true that it had needed the eloquence of
Joan Valentine to stir him from his groove; but that was because
he was also lazy. He loved new sights and new experiences. Yes;
he was happy. The rattle of the train shaped itself into a lively
march. He told himself that he had found the right occupation for
a young man in the Spring.
Joan, meantime, intrenched behind her magazine, was also busy
with her thoughts. She was not reading the magazine; she held it
before her as a protection, knowing that if she laid it down Ashe
would begin to talk. And just at present she had no desire for
conversation. She, like Ashe, was contemplating the immediate
future, but, unlike him, was not doing so with much pleasure. She
was regretting heartily that she had not resisted the temptation
to uplift this young man and wishing that she had left him to
wallow in the slothful peace in which she had found him.
It is curious how frequently in this world our attempts to
stimulate and uplift swoop back on us and smite us like
boomerangs. Ashe's presence was the direct outcome of her lecture
on enterprise, and it added a complication to an already
complicated venture.
She did her best to be fair to Ashe. It was not his fault that he
was about to try to deprive her of five thousand dollars, which
she looked on as her personal property; but illogically she found
herself feeling a little hostile.
She glanced furtively at him over the magazine, choosing by ill
chance a moment when he had just directed his gaze at her. Their
eyes met and there was nothing for it but to talk; so she tucked
away her hostility in a corner of her mind, where she could find
it again when she wanted it, and prepared for the time being to
be friendly. After all, except for the fact that he was her
rival, this was a pleasant and amusing young man, and one for
whom, until he made the announcement that had changed her whole
attitude toward him, she had entertained a distinct feeling of
friendship--nothing warmer.
There was something about him that made her feel that she would
have liked to stroke his hair in a motherly way and straighten
his tie, and have cozy chats with him in darkened rooms by the
light of open fires, and make him tell her his inmost thoughts,
and stimulate him to do something really worth while with his
life; but this, she held, was merely the instinct of a generous
nature to be kind and helpful even to a comparative stranger.
"Well, Mr. Marson," she said, "Here we are!"
"Exactly what I was thinking," said Ashe.
He was conscious of a marked increase in the exhilaration the
starting of the expedition had brought to him. At the back of his
mind he realized there had been all along a kind of wistful
resentment at the change in this girl's manner toward him.
During the brief conversation when he had told her of his having
secured his present situation, and later, only a few minutes
back, on the platform of Paddington Station, he had sensed a
coldness, a certain hostility--so different from her pleasant
friendliness at their first meeting.
She had returned now to her earlier manner and he was surprised
at the difference it made. He felt somehow younger, more alive.
The lilt of the train's rattle changed to a gay ragtime. This was
curious, because Joan was nothing more than a friend. He was not
in love with her. One does not fall in love with a girl whom one
has met only three times. One is attracted--yes; but one does not
fall in love.
A moment's reflection enabled him to diagnose his sensations
correctly. This odd impulse to leap across the compartment and
kiss Joan was not love. It was merely the natural desire of a
good-hearted young man to be decently chummy with his species.
"Well, what do you think of it all, Mr. Marson?" said Joan. "Are
you sorry or glad that you let me persuade you to do this
perfectly mad thing? I feel responsible for you, you know. If it
had not been for me you would have been comfortably in Arundell
Street, writing your Wand of Death."
"I'm glad."
"You don't feel any misgivings now that you are actually
committed to domestic service?"
"Not one."
Joan, against her will, smiled approval on this uncompromising
attitude. This young man might be her rival, but his demeanor on
the eve of perilous times appealed to her. That was the spirit
she liked and admired--that reckless acceptance of whatever might
come. It was the spirit in which she herself had gone into the
affair and she was pleased to find that it animated Ashe
also--though, to be sure, it had its drawbacks. It made his
rivalry the more dangerous. This reflection injected a touch of
the old hostility into her manner.
"I wonder whether you will continue to feel so brave."
"What do you mean?"
Joan perceived that she was in danger of going too far. She had
no wish to unmask Ashe at the expense of revealing her own
secret. She must resist the temptation to hint that she had
discovered his.
"I meant," she said quickly, "that from what I have seen of him
Mr. Peters seems likely to be a rather trying man to work for."
Ashe's face cleared. For a moment he had almost suspected that
she had guessed his errand.
"Yes. I imagine he will be. He is what you might call
quick-tempered. He has dyspepsia, you know."
"I know."
"What he wants is plenty of fresh air and no cigars, and a
regular course of those Larsen Exercises that amused you so
much."
Joan laughed.
"Are you going to try and persuade Mr. Peters to twist himself
about like that? Do let me see it if you do."
"I wish I could."
"Do suggest it to him."
"Don't you think he would resent it from a valet?"
"I keep forgetting that you are a valet. You look so unlike one."
"Old Peters didn't think so. He rather complimented me on my
appearance. He said I was ordinary-looking."
"I shouldn't have called you that. You look so very strong and
fit."
"Surely there are muscular valets?"
"Well, yes; I suppose there are."
Ashe looked at her. He was thinking that never in his life had he
seen a girl so amazingly pretty. What it was that she had done to
herself was beyond him; but something, some trick of dress, had
given her a touch of the demure that made her irresistible. She
was dressed in sober black, the ideal background for her
fairness.
"While on the subject," he said, "I suppose you know you don't
look in the least like a lady's maid? You look like a disguised
princess."
She laughed.
"That's very nice of you, Mr. Marson, but you're quite wrong.
Anyone could tell I was a lady's maid, a mile away. You aren't
criticizing the dress, surely?"
"The dress is all right. It's the general effect. I don't think
your expression is right. It's--it's--there's too much attack in
it. You aren't meek enough."
Joan's eyes opened wide.
"Meek! Have you ever seen an English lady's maid, Mr. Marson?"
"Why, no; now that I come to think of it, I don't believe I
have."
"Well, let me tell you that meekness is her last quality. Why
should she be meek? Doesn't she go in after the groom of the
chambers?"
"Go in? Go in where?"
"In to dinner." She smiled at the sight of his bewildered face.
"I'm afraid you don't know much about the etiquette of the new
world you have entered so rashly. Didn't you know that the rules
of precedence among the servants of a big house in England are
more rigid and complicated than in English society?"
"You're joking!"
"I'm not joking. You try going in to dinner out of your proper
place when we get to Blandings and see what happens. A public
rebuke from the butler is the least you could expect."
A bead of perspiration appeared on Ashe's forehead.
"Heavens!" he whispered. "If a butler publicly rebuked me I think
I should commit suicide. I couldn't survive it."
He stared, with fallen jaw, into the abyss of horror into which
he had leaped so light-heartedly. The servant problem, on this
large scale, had been nonexistent for him until now. In the days
of his youth, at Mayling, Massachusetts, his needs had been
ministered to by a muscular Swede. Later, at Oxford, there had
been his "scout" and his bed maker, harmless persons both,
provided you locked up your whisky. And in London, his last
phase, a succession of servitors of the type of the disheveled
maid at Number Seven had tended him.
That, dotted about the land of his adoption, there were houses in
which larger staffs of domestics were maintained, he had been
vaguely aware. Indeed, in "Gridley Quayle, Investigator; the
Adventure of the Missing Marquis"--number four of the series--he
had drawn a picture of the home life of a duke, in which a butler
and two powdered footmen had played their parts; but he had had
no idea that rigid and complicated rules of etiquette swayed the
private lives of these individuals. If he had given the matter a
thought he had supposed that when the dinner hour arrived the
butler and the two footmen would troop into the kitchen and
squash in at the table wherever they found room.
"Tell me," he said. "Tell me all you know. I feel as though I had
escaped a frightful disaster."
"You probably have. I don't suppose there is anything so terrible
as a snub from a butler."
"If there is I can't think of it. When I was at Oxford I used to
go and stay with a friend of mine who had a butler that looked
like a Roman emperor in swallowtails. He terrified me. I used to
grovel to the man. Please give me all the pointers you can."
"Well, as Mr. Peters' valet, I suppose you will be rather a big
man."
"I shan't feel it."
"However large the house party is, Mr. Peters is sure to be the
principal guest; so your standing will be correspondingly
magnificent. You come after the butler, the housekeeper, the
groom of the chambers, Lord Emsworth's valet, Lady Ann
Warblington's lady's maid--"
"Who is she?"
"Lady Ann? Lord Emsworth's sister. She has lived with him since
his wife died. What was I saying? Oh, yes! After them come the
honorable Frederick Threepwood's valet and myself--and then you."
"I'm not so high up then, after all?"
"Yes, you are. There's a whole crowd who come after you. It all
depends on how many other guests there are besides Mr. Peters."
"I suppose I charge in at the head of a drove of housemaids and
scullery maids?"
"My dear Mr. Marson, if a housemaid or a scullery maid tried to
get into the steward's room and have her meals with us, she would
be--"
"Rebuked by the butler?"
"Lynched, I should think. Kitchen maids and scullery maids eat in
the kitchen. Chauffeurs, footmen, under-butler, pantry boys, hall
boy, odd man and steward's-room footman take their meals in the
servants' hall, waited on by the hall boy. The stillroom maids
have breakfast and tea in the stillroom, and dinner and supper in
the hall. The housemaids and nursery maids have breakfast and tea
in the housemaid's sitting-room, and dinner and supper in the
hall. The head housemaid ranks next to the head stillroom maid.
The laundry maids have a place of their own near the laundry, and
the head laundry maid ranks above the head housemaid. The chef
has his meals in a room of his own near the kitchen. Is there
anything else I can tell you, Mr. Marson?"
Ashe was staring at her with vacant eyes. He shook his head
dumbly.
"We stop at Swindon in half an hour," said Joan softly. "Don't
you think you would be wise to get out there and go straight back
to London, Mr. Marson? Think of all you would avoid!"
Ashe found speech.
"It's a nightmare!"
"You would be far happier in Arundell Street. Why don't you get
out at Swindon and go back?"
Ashe shook his head.
"I can't. There's--there's a reason."
Joan picked up her magazine again. Hostility had come out from
the corner into which she had tucked it away and was once more
filling her mind. She knew it was illogical, but she could not
help it. For a moment, during her revelations of servants'
etiquette, she had allowed herself to hope that she had
frightened her rival out of the field, and the disappointment
made her feel irritable. She buried herself in a short story, and
countered Ashe's attempts at renewing the conversation with cold
monosyllables, until he ceased his efforts and fell into a moody
silence.
He was feeling hurt and angry. Her sudden coldness, following on
the friendliness with which she had talked so long, puzzled and
infuriated him. He felt as though he had been snubbed, and for no
reason.
He resented the defensive magazine, though he had bought it for
her himself. He resented her attitude of having ceased to
recognize his existence. A sadness, a filmy melancholy, crept
over him. He brooded on the unutterable silliness of humanity,
especially the female portion of it, in erecting artificial
barriers to friendship. It was so unreasonable.
At their first meeting, when she might have been excused for
showing defensiveness, she had treated him with unaffected ease.
When that meeting had ended there was a tacit understanding
between them that all the preliminary awkwardnesses of the first
stages of acquaintanceship were to be considered as having been
passed; and that when they met again, if they ever did, it would
be as friends. And here she was, luring him on with apparent
friendliness, and then withdrawing into herself as though he had
presumed.
A rebellious spirit took possession of him. He didn't care! Let
her be cold and distant. He would show her that she had no
monopoly of those qualities. He would not speak to her until she
spoke to him; and when she spoke to him he would freeze her with
his courteous but bleakly aloof indifference.
The train rattled on. Joan read her magazine. Silence reigned in
the second-class compartment. Swindon was reached and passed.
Darkness fell on the land. The journey began to seem interminable
to Ashe; but presently there came a creaking of brakes and the
train jerked itself to another stop. A voice on the platform made
itself heard, calling:
"Market Blandings! Market Blandings Station!"
* * *
The village of Market Blandings is one of those sleepy English
hamlets that modern progress has failed to touch; except by the
addition of a railroad station and a room over the grocer's shop
where moving pictures are on view on Tuesdays and Fridays. The
church is Norman and the intelligence of the majority of the
natives Paleozoic. To alight at Market Blandings Station in the
dusk of a rather chilly Spring day, when the southwest wind has
shifted to due east and the thrifty inhabitants have not yet lit
their windows, is to be smitten with the feeling that one is at
the edge of the world with no friends near.
Ashe, as he stood beside Mr. Peters' baggage and raked the
unsympathetic darkness with a dreary eye, gave himself up to
melancholy. Above him an oil lamp shed a meager light. Along the
platform a small but sturdy porter was juggling with a milk can.
The east wind explored Ashe's system with chilly fingers.
Somewhere out in the darkness into which Mr. Peters and Aline had
already vanished in a large automobile, lay the castle, with its
butler and its fearful code of etiquette. Soon the cart that was
to convey him and the trunks thither would be arriving. He
shivered.
Out of the gloom and into the feeble rays of the oil lamp came
Joan Valentine. She had been away, tucking Aline into the car.
She looked warm and cheerful. She was smiling in the old friendly
way.
If girls realized their responsibilities they would be so careful
when they smiled that they would probably abandon the practice
altogether. There are moments in a man's life when a girl's smile
can have as important results as an explosion of dynamite.
In the course of their brief acquaintance Joan had smiled at Ashe
many times, but the conditions governing those occasions had not
been such as to permit him to be seriously affected. He had been
pleased on such occasions; he had admired her smile in a detached
and critical spirit; but he had not been overwhelmed by it. The
frame of mind necessary for that result had been lacking.
Now, however, after five minutes of solitude on the depressing
platform of Market Blandings Station, he was what the
spiritualists call a sensitive subject. He had reached that depth
of gloom and bodily discomfort when a sudden smile has all the
effect of strong liquor and good news administered
simultaneously, warming the blood and comforting the soul, and
generally turning the world from a bleak desert into a land
flowing with milk and honey.
It is not too much to say that he reeled before Joan's smile. It
was so entirely unexpected. He clutched Mr. Peters' steamer trunk
in his emotion. All his resolutions to be cold and distant were
swept away. He had the feeling that in a friendless universe here
was somebody who was fond of him and glad to see him.
A smile of such importance demands analysis, and in this case
repays it; for many things lay behind this smile of Joan
Valentine's on the platform of Market Blandings Station.
In the first place, she had had another of her swift changes of
mood, and had once again tucked away hostility into its corner.
She had thought it over and had come to the conclusion that as
she had no logical grievance against Ashe for anything he had
done to be distant to him was the behavior of a cat. Consequently
she resolved, when they should meet again, to resume her attitude
of good-fellowship. That in itself would have been enough to make
her smile.
There was another reason, however, which had nothing to do with
Ashe. While she had been tucking Aline into the automobile she
met the eye of the driver of that vehicle and had perceived a
curious look in it--a look of amazement and sheer terror. A
moment, later, when Aline called the driver Freddie, she had
understood. No wonder the Honorable Freddie had looked as though
he had seen a ghost.
It would be a relief to the poor fellow when, as he undoubtedly
would do in the course of the drive, he inquired of Aline the
name of her maid and was told that it was Simpson. He would
mutter something about "Reminds me of a girl I used to know," and
would brood on the remarkable way in which Nature produces
doubles. But he had a bad moment, and it was partly at the
recollection of his face that Joan smiled.
A third reason was because the sight of the Honorable Freddie had
reminded her that R. Jones had said he had written her poetry.
That thought, too, had contributed toward the smile which so
dazzled Ashe.
Ashe, not being miraculously intuitive, accepted the easier
explanation that she smiled because she was glad to be in his
company; and this thought, coming on top of his mood of despair
and general dissatisfaction with everything mundane, acted on him
like some powerful chemical.
In every man's life there is generally one moment to which in
later years he can look back and say: "In this moment I fell in
love!" Such a moment came to Ashe now.
Betwixt the stirrup and the ground,
Mercy I asked; mercy I found.
So sings the poet and so it was with Ashe.
In the almost incredibly brief time it took the small but sturdy
porter to roll a milk can across the platform and hump it, with a
clang, against other milk cans similarly treated a moment before,
Ashe fell in love.
The word is so loosely used, to cover a thousand varying shades
of emotion--from the volcanic passion of an Antony for a
Cleopatra to the tepid preference of a grocer's assistant for the
Irish maid at the second house on Main Street, as opposed to the
Norwegian maid at the first house past the post office--the mere
statement that Ashe fell in love is not a sufficient description
of his feelings as he stood grasping Mr. Peters' steamer trunk.
Analysis is required.
From his fourteenth year onward Ashe had been in love many times.
His sensations in the case of Joan were neither the terrific
upheaval that had caused him, in his fifteenth year, to collect
twenty-eight photographs of the heroine of the road company of a
musical comedy which had visited the Hayling Opera House, nor the
milder flame that had caused him, when at college, to give up
smoking for a week and try to read the complete works of Ella
Wheeler Wilcox.
His love was something that lay between these two poles.
He did not wish the station platform of Market Blandings to
become suddenly congested with red Indians so that he might save
Joan's life; and he did not wish to give up anything at all. But
he was conscious--to the very depths of his being--that a future
in which Joan did not figure would be so insupportable as not to
bear considering; and in the immediate present he very strongly
favored the idea of clasping Joan in his arms and kissing her
until further notice.
Mingled with these feelings was an excited gratitude to her for
coming to him like this, with that electric smile on her face; a
stunned realization that she was a thousand times prettier than
he had ever imagined; and a humility that threatened to make him
loose his clutch on the steamer trunk and roll about at her feet,
yapping like a dog.
Gratitude, so far as he could dissect his tangled emotion was the
predominating ingredient of his mood. Only once in his life had
he felt so passionately grateful to any human being. On that
occasion, too, the object of his gratitude had been feminine.
Years before, when a boy in his father's home in distant Hayling,
Massachusetts, those in authority had commanded that he--in his
eleventh year and as shy as one can be only at that interesting
age--should rise in the presence of a roomful of strangers, adult
guests, and recite "The Wreck of the Hesperus."
He had risen. He had blushed. He had stammered. He had contrived
to whisper: "It was the Schooner Hesperus." And then, in a corner
of the room, a little girl, for no properly explained reason, had
burst out crying. She had yelled, she had bellowed, and would not
be comforted; and in the ensuing confusion Ashe had escaped to
the woodpile at the bottom of the garden, saved by a miracle.
All his life he had remembered the gratitude he had felt for that
little timely girl, and never until now had he experienced any
other similar spasm. But as he looked at Joan he found himself
renewing that emotion of fifteen years ago.
She was about to speak. In a sort of trance he watched her lips
part. He waited almost reverently for the first words she should
speak to him in her new role of the only authentic goddess.
"Isn't it a shame?" she said. "I've just put a penny in the
chocolate slot machine--and it's empty! I've a good mind to write
to the company."
Ashe felt as though he were listening to the strains of some
grand sweet anthem.
The small but sturdy porter, weary of his work among the milk
cans, or perhaps--let us not do him an injustice even in
thought--having finished it, approached them.
"The cart from the castle's here."
In the gloom beyond him there gleamed a light which had not been
there before. The meditative snort of a horse supported his
statement. He began to deal as authoritatively with Mr. Peters'
steamer trunk as he had dealt with the milk cans.
"At last!" said Joan. "I hope it's a covered cart. I'm frozen.
Let's go and see."
Ashe followed her with the gait of an automaton.
* * *
Cold is the ogre that drives all beautiful things into hiding.
Below the surface of a frost-bound garden there lurk hidden
bulbs, which are only biding their time to burst forth in a riot
of laughing color; but shivering Nature dare not put forth her
flowers until the ogre has gone. Not otherwise does cold suppress
love. A man in an open cart on an English Spring night may
continue to be in love; but love is not the emotion uppermost in
his bosom. It shrinks within him and waits for better times.
The cart was not a covered cart. It was open to the four winds of
heaven, of which the one at present active proceeded from the
bleak east. To this fact may be attributed Ashe's swift recovery
from the exalted mood into which Joan's smile had thrown him, his
almost instant emergence from the trance. Deep down in him he was
aware that his attitude toward Joan had not changed, but his
conscious self was too fully occupied with the almost hopeless
task of keeping his blood circulating, to permit of thoughts of
love. Before the cart had traveled twenty yards he was a mere
chunk of frozen misery.
After an eternity of winding roads, darkened cottages, and black
fields and hedges, the cart turned in at a massive iron gate,
which stood open giving entrance to a smooth gravel drive. Here
the way ran for nearly a mile through an open park of great trees
and was then swallowed in the darkness of dense shrubberies.
Presently to the left appeared lights, at first in ones and twos,
shining out and vanishing again; then, as the shrubberies ended
and the smooth lawns and terraces began, blazing down on the
travelers from a score of windows, with the heartening effect of
fires on a winter night.
Against the pale gray sky Blandings Castle stood out like a
mountain. It was a noble pile, of Early Tudor building. Its
history is recorded in England's history books and Viollet-le-Duc
has written of its architecture. It dominated the surrounding
country.
The feature of it which impressed Ashe most at this moment,
however, was the fact that it looked warm; and for the first time
since the drive began he found himself in a mood that
approximated cheerfulness. It was a little early to begin feeling
cheerful, he discovered, for the journey was by no means over.
Arrived within sight of the castle, the cart began a detour,
which, ten minutes later, brought it under an arch and over
cobblestones to the rear of the building, where it eventually
pulled up in front of a great door.
Ashe descended painfully and beat his feet against the cobbles.
He helped Joan to climb down. Joan was apparently in a gentle
glow. Women seem impervious to cold.
The door opened. Warm, kitcheny scents came through it. Strong
men hurried out to take down the trunks, while fair women, in the
shape of two nervous scullery maids, approached Joan and Ashe,
and bobbed curtsies. This under more normal conditions would have
been enough to unman Ashe; but in his frozen state a mere
curtsying scullery maid expended herself harmlessly on him. He
even acknowledged the greeting with a kindly nod.
The scullery maids, it seemed, were acting in much the same
capacity as the attaches of royalty. One was there to conduct
Joan to the presence of Mrs. Twemlow, the housekeeper; the other
to lead Ashe to where Beach, the butler, waited to do honor to
the valet of the castle's most important guest.
After a short walk down a stone-flagged passage Joan and her
escort turned to the right. Ashe's objective appeared to be
located to the left. He parted from Joan with regret. Her moral
support would have been welcome.
Presently his scullery maid stopped at a door and tapped thereon.
A fruity voice, like old tawny port made audible, said: "Come
in!" Ashe's guide opened the door.
"The gentleman, Mr. Beach," said she, and scuttled away to the
less rarefied atmosphere of the kitchen.
Ashe's first impression of Beach, the butler, was one of tension.
Other people, confronted for the first time with Beach, had felt
the same. He had that strained air of being on the very point of
bursting that one sees in bullfrogs and toy balloons. Nervous and
imaginative men, meeting Beach, braced themselves involuntarily,
stiffening their muscles for the explosion. Those who had the
pleasure of more intimate acquaintance with him soon passed this
stage, just as people whose homes are on the slopes of Mount
Vesuvius become immune to fear of eruptions.
As far back as they could remember Beach had always looked as
though an apoplectic fit were a matter of minutes; but he never
had apoplexy and in time they came to ignore the possibility of
it. Ashe, however, approaching him with a fresh eye, had the
feeling that this strain could not possibly continue and that
within a very short space of time the worst must happen. The
prospect of this did much to rouse him from the coma into which
he had been frozen by the rigors of the journey.
Butlers as a class seem to grow less and less like anything human
in proportion to the magnificence of their surroundings. There is
a type of butler employed in the comparatively modest homes of
small country gentlemen who is practically a man and a brother;
who hobnobs with the local tradesmen, sings a good comic song at
the village inn, and in times of crisis will even turn to and
work the pump when the water supply suddenly fails.
The greater the house the more does the butler diverge from this
type. Blandings Castle was one of the more important of England's
show places, and Beach accordingly had acquired a dignified
inertia that almost qualified him for inclusion in the vegetable
kingdom. He moved--when he moved at all--slowly. He distilled
speech with the air of one measuring out drops of some precious
drug. His heavy-lidded eyes had the fixed expression of a
statue's.
With an almost imperceptible wave of a fat white hand, he
conveyed to Ashe that he desired him to sit down. With a stately
movement of his other hand, he picked up a kettle, which simmered
on the hob. With an inclination of his head, he called Ashe's
attention to a decanter on the table.
In another moment Ashe was sipping a whisky toddy, with the
feeling that he had been privileged to assist at some mystic
rite. Mr. Beach, posting himself before the fire and placing his
hands behind his back, permitted speech to drip from him.
"I have not the advantage of your name, Mr.----"
Ashe introduced himself. Beach acknowledged the information with
a half bow.
"You must have had a cold ride, Mr. Marson. The wind is in the
east."
Ashe said yes; the ride had been cold.
"When the wind is in the east," continued Mr. Beach, letting each
syllable escape with apparent reluctance, "I suffer from my
feet."
"I beg your pardon?"
"I suffer from my feet," repeated the butler, measuring out the
drops. "You are a young man, Mr. Marson. Probably you do not know
what it is to suffer from your feet." He surveyed Ashe, his
whisky toddy and the wall beyond him, with heavy-lidded
inscrutability. "Corns!" he said.
Ashe said he was sorry.
"I suffer extremely from my feet--not only corns. I have but
recently recovered from an ingrowing toenail. I suffered greatly
from my ingrowing toenail. I suffer from swollen joints."
Ashe regarded this martyr with increasing disfavor. It is the
flaw in the character of many excessively healthy young men that,
though kind-hearted enough in most respects, they listen with a
regrettable feeling of impatience to the confessions of those
less happily situated as regards the ills of the flesh. Rightly
or wrongly, they hold that these statements should be reserved
for the ear of the medical profession, and other and more general
topics selected for conversation with laymen.
"I'm sorry," he said hastily. "You must have had a bad time. Is
there a large house party here just now?"
"We are expecting," said Mr. Beach, "a number of guests. We shall
in all probability sit down thirty or more to dinner."
"A responsibility for you," said Ashe ingratiatingly, well
pleased to be quit of the feet topic.
Mr. Beach nodded.
"You are right, Mr. Marson. Few persons realize the
responsibilities of a man in my position. Sometimes, I can assure
you, it preys on my mind, and I suffer from nervous headaches."
Ashe began to feel like a man trying to put out a fire which, as
fast as he checks it at one point, breaks out at another.
"Sometimes when I come off duty everything gets blurred. The
outlines of objects grow indistinct and misty. I have to sit down
in a chair. The pain is excruciating."
"But it helps you to forget the pain in your feet."
"No, no. I suffer from my feet simultaneously."
Ashe gave up the struggle.
"Tell me all about your feet," he said.
And Mr. Beach told him all about his feet.
The pleasantest functions must come to an end, and the moment
arrived when the final word on the subject of swollen joints was
spoken. Ashe, who had resigned himself to a permanent
contemplation of the subject, could hardly believe he heard
correctly when, at the end of some ten minutes, his companion
changed the conversation.
"You have been with Mr. Peters some time, Mr. Marson?"
"Eh? Oh! Oh, no only since last Wednesday."
"Indeed! Might I inquire whom you assisted before that?"
For a moment Ashe did what he would not have believed himself
capable of doing--regretted that the topic of feet was no longer
under discussion. The question placed him in an awkward position.
If he lied and credited himself with a lengthy experience as a
valet, he risked exposing himself. If he told the truth and
confessed that this was his maiden effort in the capacity of
gentleman's gentleman, what would the butler think? There were
objections to each course, but to tell the truth was the easier
of the two; so he told it.
"Your first situation?" said Mr. Beach. "Indeed!"
"I was--er--doing something else before I met Mr. Peters," said
Ashe.
Mr. Beach was too well-bred to be inquisitive, but his eyebrows
were not.
"Ah!" he said. "?" cried his eyebrows. "?--?--?"
Ashe ignored the eyebrows.
"Something different," he said.
There was an awkward silence. Ashe appreciated its awkwardness.
He was conscious of a grievance against Mr. Peters. Why could not
Mr. Peters have brought him down here as his secretary? To be
sure, he had advanced some objection to that course in their
conversation at the offices of Mainprice, Mainprice & Boole; but
merely a silly, far-fetched objection. He wished he had had the
sense to fight the point while there was time; but at the moment
when they were arranging plans he had been rather tickled by the
thought of becoming a valet. The notion had a pleasing
musical-comedy touch about it. Why had he not foreseen the
complications that must ensue? He could tell by the look on his
face that this confounded butler was waiting for him to give a
full explanation. What would he think if he withheld it? He would
probably suppose that Ashe had been in prison.
Well, there was nothing to be done about it. If Beach was
suspicious, he must remain suspicious. Fortunately the suspicions
of a butler do not matter much.
Mr. Beach's eyebrows were still mutely urging him to reveal all,
but Ashe directed his gaze at that portion of the room which Mr.
Beach did not fill. He would be hanged if he was going to let
himself be hypnotized by a pair of eyebrows into incriminating
himself! He glared stolidly at the pattern of the wallpaper,
which represented a number of birds of an unknown species seated
on a corresponding number of exotic shrubs.
The silence was growing oppressive. Somebody had to break it
soon. And as Mr. Beach was still confining himself to the
language of the eyebrow and apparently intended to fight it out
on that line if it took all Summer, Ashe himself broke it.
It seemed to him as he reconstructed the scene in bed that night
that Providence must have suggested the subject to Mr. Peters'
indigestion; for the mere mention of his employer's sufferings
acted like magic on the butler.
"I might have had better luck while I was looking for a place,"
said Ashe. "I dare say you know how bad-tempered Mr. Peters is.
He is dyspeptic."
"So," responded Mr. Beach, "I have been informed." He brooded for
a space. "I, too," he proceeded, "suffer from my stomach. I have
a weak stomach. The lining of my stomach is not what I could wish
the lining of my stomach to be."
"Tell me," said Ashe gratefully, leaning forward in an attitude
of attention, "all about the lining of your stomach."
It was a quarter of an hour later when Mr. Beach was checked in
his discourse by the chiming of the little clock on the
mantelpiece. He turned round and gazed at it with surprise not
unmixed with displeasure.
"So late?" he said. "I shall have to be going about my duties.
And you, also, Mr. Marson, if I may make the suggestion. No doubt
Mr. Peters will be wishing to have your assistance in preparing
for dinner. If you go along the passage outside you will come to
the door that separates our portion of the house from the other.
I must beg you to excuse me. I have to go to the cellar."
Following his directions Ashe came after a walk of a few yards to
a green-baize door, which, swinging at his push, gave him a view
of what he correctly took to be the main hall of the castle--a
wide, comfortable space, ringed with settees and warmed by a log
fire burning in a mammoth fireplace. On the right a broad
staircase led to the upper regions.
It was at this point that Ashe realized the incompleteness of Mr.
Beach's directions. Doubtless, the broad staircase would take him
to the floor on which were the bedrooms; but how was he to
ascertain, without the tedious process of knocking and inquiring
at each door, which was the one assigned to Mr. Peters? It was
too late to go back and ask the butler for further guidance;
already he was on his way to the cellar in quest of the evening's
wine.
As he stood irresolute a door across the hall opened and a man of
his own age came out. Through the doorway, which the young man
held open for an instant while he answered a question from
somebody within, Ashe had a glimpse of glass-topped cases.
Could this be the museum--his goal? The next moment the door,
opening a few inches more, revealed the outlying portions of an
Egyptian mummy and brought certainty. It flashed across Ashe's
mind that the sooner he explored the museum and located Mr.
Peters' scarab, the better. He decided to ask Beach to take him
there as soon as he had leisure.
Meantime the young man had closed the museum door and was
crossing the hall. He was a wiry-haired, severe-looking young
man, with a sharp nose and eyes that gleamed through rimless
spectacles--none other, in fact than Lord Emsworth's private
secretary, the Efficient Baxter. Ashe hailed him:
"I say, old man, would you mind telling me how I get to Mr.
Peters' room? I've lost my bearings."
He did not reflect that this was hardly the way in which valets
in the best society addressed their superiors. That is the worst
of adopting what might be called a character part. One can manage
the business well enough; it is the dialogue that provides the
pitfalls.
Mr. Baxter would have accorded a hearty agreement to the
statement that this was not the way in which a valet should have
spoken to him; but at the moment he was not aware that Ashe was a
valet. From his easy mode of address he assumed that he was one
of the numerous guests who had been arriving at the castle all
day. As he had asked for Mr. Peters, he fancied that Ashe must be
the Honorable Freddie's American friend, George Emerson, whom he
had not yet met. Consequently he replied with much cordiality
that Mr. Peters' room was the second at the left on the second
floor.
He said Ashe could not miss it. Ashe said he was much obliged.
"Awfully good of you," said Ashe.
"Not at all," said Mr. Baxter.
"You lose your way in a place like this," said Ashe.
"You certainly do," said Mr. Baxter.
Ashe went on his upward path and in a few moments was knocking at
the door indicated. And sure enough it was Mr. Peters' voice that
invited him to enter.
Mr. Peters, partially arrayed in the correct garb for gentlemen
about to dine, was standing in front of the mirror, wrestling
with his evening tie. As Ashe entered he removed his fingers and
anxiously examined his handiwork. It proved unsatisfactory. With
a yelp and an oath, he tore the offending linen from his neck.
"Damn the thing!"
It was plain to Ashe that his employer was in no sunny mood.
There are few things less calculated to engender sunniness in a
naturally bad-tempered man than a dress tie that will not let
itself be pulled and twisted into the right shape. Even when
things went well, Mr. Peters hated dressing for dinner. Words
cannot describe his feelings when they went wrong.
There is something to be said in excuse for this impatience: It
is a hollow mockery to be obliged to deck one's person as for a
feast when that feast is to consist of a little asparagus and a
few nuts.
Mr. Peters' eye met Ashe's in the mirror.
"Oh, it's you, is it? Come in, then. Don't stand staring. Close
that door quick! Hustle! Don't scrape your feet on the floor.
Try to look intelligent. Don't gape. Where have you been all this
while? Why didn't you come before? Can you tie a tie? All right,
then--do it!"
Somewhat calmed by the snow-white butterfly-shaped creation that
grew under Ashe's fingers, he permitted himself to be helped into
his coat. He picked up the remnant of a black cigar from the
dressing-table and relit it.
"I've been thinking about you," he said.
"Yes?" said Ashe.
"Have you located the scarab yet?"
"No."
"What the devil have you been doing with yourself then? You've
had time to collar it a dozen times."
"I have been talking to the butler."
"What the devil do you waste time talking to butlers for? I
suppose you haven't even located the museum yet?"
"Yes; I've done that."
"Oh, you have, have you? Well, that's something. And how do you
propose setting about the job?"
"The best plan would be to go there very late at night."
"Well, you didn't propose to stroll in in the afternoon, did you?
How are you going to find the scarab when you do get in?"
Ashe had not thought of that. The deeper he went into this
business the more things did there seem to be in it of which he
had not thought.
"I don't know," he confessed.
"You don't know! Tell me, young man, are you considered pretty
bright, as Englishmen go?"
"I am not English. I was born near Boston."
"Oh, you were, were you? You blanked bone-headed, bean-eating
boob!" cried Mr. Peters, frothing over quite unexpectedly and
waving his arms in a sudden burst of fury. "Then if you are an
American why don't you show a little more enterprise? Why don't
you put something over? Why do you loaf about the place as though
you were supposed to be an ornament? I want results--and I want
them quick!
"I'll tell you how you can recognize my scarab when you get into
the museum. That shameless old green-goods man who sneaked it
from me has had the gall, the nerve, to put it all by itself,
with a notice as big as a circus poster alongside of it saying
that it is a Cheops of the Fourth Dynasty, presented"--Mr. Peters
choked--"presented by J. Preston Peters, Esquire! That's how
you're going to recognize it."
Ashe did not laugh, but he nearly dislocated a rib in his effort
to abstain from doing so. It seemed to him that this act on Lord
Emsworth's part effectually disposed of the theory that Britons
have no sense of humor. To rob a man of his choicest possession
and then thank him publicly for letting you have it appealed to
Ashe as excellent comedy.
"The thing isn't even in a glass case," continued Mr. Peters.
"It's lying on an open tray on top of a cabinet of Roman coins.
Anybody who was left alone for two minutes in the place could
take it! It's criminal carelessness to leave a valuable scarab
about like that. If Lord Jesse James was going to steal my Cheops
he might at least have had the decency to treat it as though it
was worth something."
"But it makes it easier for me to get it," said Ashe consolingly.
"It's got to be made easy if you are to get it!" snapped Mr.
Peters. "Here's another thing: You say you are going to try for
it late at night. Well, what are you going to do if anyone
catches you prowling round at that time? Have you considered
that?"
"No."
"You would have to say something, wouldn't you? You wouldn't chat
about the weather, would you? You wouldn't discuss the latest
play? You would have to think up some mighty good reason for
being out of bed at that time, wouldn't you?"
"I suppose so."
"Oh, you do admit that, do you? Well, what you would say is this:
You would explain that I had rung for you to come and read me to
sleep. Do you understand?"
"You think that would be a satisfactory explanation of my being
in the museum?"
"Idiot! I don't mean that you're to say it if you're caught
actually in the museum. If you're caught in the museum the best
thing you can do is to say nothing, and hope that the judge will
let you off light because it's your first offense. You're to say
it if you're found wandering about on your way there."
"It sounds thin to me."
"Does it? Well, let me tell you that it isn't so thin as you
suppose, for it's what you will actually have to do most nights.
Two nights out of three I have to be read to sleep. My
indigestion gives me insomnia." As though to push this fact home,
Mr. Peters suddenly bent double. "Oof!" he said. "Wow!" He
removed the cigar from his mouth and inserted a digestive
tabloid. "The lining of my stomach is all wrong," he added.
It is curious how trivial are the immediate causes that produce
revolutions. If Mr. Peters had worded his complaint differently
Ashe would in all probability have borne it without active
protest. He had been growing more and more annoyed with this
little person who buzzed and barked and bit at him, yet the idea
of definite revolt had not occurred to him. But his sufferings at
the hands of Beach, the butler, had reduced him to a state where
he could endure no further mention of stomachic linings. There
comes a time when our capacity for listening to detailed data
about the linings of other people's stomachs is exhausted.
He looked at Mr. Peters sternly. He had ceased to be intimidated
by the fiery little man and regarded him simply as a
hypochondriac, who needed to be told a few useful facts.
"How do you expect not to have indigestion? You take no exercise
and you smoke all day long."
The novel sensation of being criticized--and by a beardless youth
at that--held Mr. Peters silent. He started convulsively, but he
did not speak. Ashe, on his pet subject, became eloquent. In his
opinion dyspeptics cumbered the earth. To his mind they had the
choice between health and sickness, and they deliberately chose
the latter.
"Your sort of man makes me angry. I know your type inside out.
You overwork and shirk exercise, and let your temper run away
with you, and smoke strong cigars on an empty stomach; and when
you get indigestion as a natural result you look on yourself as a
martyr, nourish a perpetual grouch, and make the lives of
everybody you meet miserable. If you would put yourself into my
hands for a month I would have you eating bricks and thriving on
them. Up in the morning, Larsen Exercises, cold bath, a brisk
rubdown, sharp walk--"
"Who the devil asked your opinion, you impertinent young hound?"
inquired Mr. Peters.
"Don't interrupt--confound you!" shouted Ashe. "Now you have made
me forget what I was going to say."
There was a tense silence. Then Mr. Peters began to speak:
"You--infernal--impudent--"
"Don't talk to me like that!"
"I'll talk to you just--"
Ashe took a step toward the door. "Very well, then," he said.
"I'll quit! I'm through! You can get somebody else to do this job
of yours for you."
The sudden sagging of Mr. Peters' jaw, the look of consternation
that flashed on his face, told Ashe he had found the right
weapon--that the game was in his hands. He continued with a
feeling of confidence:
"If I had known what being your valet involved I wouldn't have
undertaken the thing for a hundred thousand dollars. Just because
you had some idiotic prejudice against letting me come down here
as your secretary, which would have been the simple and obvious
thing, I find myself in a position where at any moment I may be
publicly rebuked by the butler and have the head stillroom maid
looking at me as though I were something the cat had brought in."
His voice trembled with self-pity.
"Do you realize a fraction of the awful things you have let me in
for? How on earth am I to remember whether I go in before the
chef or after the third footman? I shan't have a peaceful minute
while I'm in this place. I've got to sit and listen by the hour
to a bore of a butler who seems to be a sort of walking hospital.
I've got to steer my way through a complicated system of
etiquette.
"And on top of all that you have the nerve, the insolence, to
imagine that you can use me as a punching bag to work your bad
temper off! You have the immortal rind to suppose that I will
stand for being nagged and bullied by you whenever your suicidal
way of living brings on an attack of indigestion! You have the
supreme gall to fancy that you can talk as you please to me!
"Very well! I've had enough of it. I resign! If you want this
scarab of yours recovered let somebody else do it. I've retired
from business."
He took another step toward the door. A shaking hand clutched at
his sleeve.
"My boy--my dear boy--be reasonable!"
Ashe was intoxicated with his own oratory. The sensation of
bullyragging a genuine millionaire was new and exhilarating. He
expanded his chest and spread his feet like a colossus.
"That's all very well," he said, coldly disentangling himself
from the hand. "You can't get out of it like that. We have got to
come to an understanding. The point is that if I am to be
subjected to your--your senile malevolence every time you have a
twinge of indigestion, no amount of money could pay me to stop
on."
"My dear boy, it shall not occur again. I was hasty."
Mr. Peters, with agitated fingers, relit the stump of his cigar.
"Throw away that cigar!"
"My boy!"
"Throw it away! You say you were hasty. Of course you were hasty;
and as long as you abuse your digestion you will go on being
hasty. I want something better than apologies. If I am to stop
here we must get to the root of things. You must put yourself in
my hands as though I were your doctor. No more cigars. Every
morning regular exercises."
"No, no!"
"Very well!"
"No; stop! Stop! What sort of exercises?"
"I'll show you to-morrow morning. Brisk walks."
"I hate walking."
"Cold baths."
"No, no!"
"Very well!"
"No; stop! A cold bath would kill me at my age."
"It would put new life into you. Do you consent to the cold
baths? No? Very well!"
"Yes, yes, yes!"
"You promise?"
"Yes, yes!"
"All right, then."
The distant sound of the dinner gong floated in.
"We settled that just in time," said Ashe.
Mr. Peters regarded him fixedly.
"Young man," he said slowly, "if, after all this, you fail to
recover my Cheops for me I'll--I'll--By George, I'll skin you!"
"Don't talk like that," said Ashe. "That's another thing you have
got to remember. If my treatment is to be successful you must not
let yourself think in that way. You must exercise self-control
mentally. You must think beautiful thoughts."
"The idea of skinning you is a beautiful thought!" said Mr.
Peters wistfully.
* * *
In order that their gayety might not be diminished--and the food
turned to ashes in their mouths by the absence from the festive
board of Mr. Beach, it was the custom for the upper servants at
Blandings to postpone the start of their evening meal until
dinner was nearly over above-stairs. This enabled the butler to
take his place at the head of the table without fear of
interruption, except for the few moments when coffee was being
served.
Every night shortly before half-past eight--at which hour Mr.
Beach felt that he might safely withdraw from the dining-room and
leave Lord Emsworth and his guests to the care of Merridew, the
under-butler, and James and Alfred, the footmen, returning only
for a few minutes to lend tone and distinction to the
distribution of cigars and liqueurs--those whose rank entitled
them to do so made their way to the housekeeper's room, to pass
in desultory conversation the interval before Mr. Beach should
arrive, and a kitchen maid, with the appearance of one who has
been straining at the leash and has at last managed to get free,
opened the door, with the announcement: "Mr. Beach, if you please,
dinner is served." On which Mr. Beach, extending a crooked elbow
toward the housekeeper, would say, "Mrs. Twemlow!" and lead the
way, high and disposedly, down the passage, followed in order of
rank by the rest of the company, in couples, to the steward's
room.
For Blandings was not one of those houses--or shall we say
hovels?--where the upper servants are expected not only to feed
but to congregate before feeding in the steward's room. Under the
auspices of Mr. Beach and of Mrs. Twemlow, who saw eye to eye
with him in these matters, things were done properly at the
castle, with the correct solemnity. To Mr. Beach and Mrs. Twemlow
the suggestion that they and their peers should gather together
in the same room in which they were to dine would have been as
repellent as an announcement from Lady Ann Warblington, the
chatelaine, that the house party would eat in the drawing-room.
When Ashe, returning from his interview with Mr. Peters, was
intercepted by a respectful small boy and conducted to the
housekeeper's room, he was conscious of a sensation of shrinking
inferiority akin to his emotions on his first day at school. The
room was full and apparently on very cordial terms with itself.
Everybody seemed to know everybody and conversation was
proceeding in a manner reminiscent of an Old Home Week.
As a matter of fact, the house party at Blandings being in the
main a gathering together of the Emsworth clan by way of honor
and as a means of introduction to Mr. Peters and his daughter,
the bride-of-the-house-to-be, most of the occupants of the
housekeeper's room were old acquaintances and were renewing
interrupted friendships at the top of their voices.
A lull followed Ashe's arrival and all eyes, to his great
discomfort, were turned in his direction. His embarrassment was
relieved by Mrs. Twemlow, who advanced to do the honors. Of Mrs.
Twemlow little need be attempted in the way of pen portraiture
beyond the statement that she went as harmoniously with Mr.
Beach as one of a pair of vases or one of a brace of pheasants
goes with its fellow. She had the same appearance of imminent
apoplexy, the same air of belonging to some dignified and haughty
branch of the vegetable kingdom.
"Mr. Marson, welcome to Blandings Castle!"
Ashe had been waiting for somebody to say this, and had been a
little surprised that Mr. Beach had not done so. He was also
surprised at the housekeeper's ready recognition of his identity,
until he saw Joan in the throng and deduced that she must have
been the source of information.
He envied Joan. In some amazing way she contrived to look not out
of place in this gathering. He himself, he felt, had impostor
stamped in large characters all over him.
Mrs. Twemlow began to make the introductions--a long and tedious
process, which she performed relentlessly, without haste and
without scamping her work. With each member of the aristocracy of
his new profession Ashe shook hands, and on each member he
smiled, until his facial and dorsal muscles were like to crack
under the strain. It was amazing that so many high-class
domestics could be collected into one moderate-sized room.
"Miss Simpson you know," said Mrs. Twemlow, and Ashe was about to
deny the charge when he perceived that Joan was the individual
referred to. "Mr. Judson, Mr. Marson. Mr. Judson is the Honorable
Frederick's gentleman."
"You have not the pleasure of our Freddie's acquaintance as yet,
I take it, Mr. Marson?" observed Mr. Judson genially, a
smooth-faced, lazy-looking young man. "Freddie repays
inspection."
"Mr. Marson, permit me to introduce you to Mr. Ferris, Lord
Stockheath's gentleman."
Mr. Ferris, a dark, cynical man, with a high forehead, shook Ashe
by the hand.
"Happy to meet you, Mr. Marson."
"Miss Willoughby, this is Mr. Marson, who will take you in to
dinner. Miss Willoughby is Lady Mildred Mant's lady. As of course
you are aware, Lady Mildred, our eldest daughter, married Colonel
Horace Mant, of the Scots Guards."
Ashe was not aware, and he was rather surprised that Mrs. Twemlow
should have a daughter whose name was Lady Mildred; but reason,
coming to his rescue, suggested that by our she meant the
offspring of the Earl of Emsworth and his late countess. Miss
Willoughby was a light-hearted damsel, with a smiling face and
chestnut hair, done low over her forehead.
Since etiquette forbade that he should take Joan in to dinner,
Ashe was glad that at least an apparently pleasant substitute had
been provided. He had just been introduced to an appallingly
statuesque lady of the name of Chester, Lady Ann Warblington's
own maid, and his somewhat hazy recollections of Joan's lecture
on below-stairs precedence had left him with the impression that
this was his destined partner. He had frankly quailed at the
prospect of being linked to so much aristocratic hauteur.
When the final introduction had been made conversation broke out
again. It dealt almost exclusively, so far as Ashe could follow
it, with the idiosyncrasies of the employers of those present. He
took it that this happened down the entire social scale below
stairs. Probably the lower servants in the servants' hall
discussed the upper servants in the room, and the still lower
servants in the housemaids' sitting-room discussed their
superiors of the servants' hall, and the stillroom gossiped about
the housemaids' sitting-room.
He wondered which was the bottom circle of all, and came to the
conclusion that it was probably represented by the small
respectful boy who had acted as his guide a short while before.
This boy, having nobody to discuss anybody with, presumably sat
in solitary meditation, brooding on the odd-job man.
He thought of mentioning this theory to Miss Willoughby, but
decided that it was too abstruse for her, and contented himself
with speaking of some of the plays he had seen before leaving
London. Miss Willoughby was an enthusiast on the drama; and,
Colonel Mant's military duties keeping him much in town, she had
had wide opportunities of indulging her tastes. Miss Willoughby
did not like the country. She thought it dull.
"Don't you think the country dull, Mr. Marson?"
"I shan't find it dull here," said Ashe; and he was surprised to
discover, through the medium of a pleased giggle, that he was
considered to have perpetrated a compliment.
Mr. Beach appeared in due season, a little distrait, as becomes a
man who has just been engaged on important and responsible
duties.
"Alfred spilled the hock!" Ashe heard him announce to Mrs.
Twemlow in a bitter undertone. "Within half an inch of his
lordship's arm he spilled it."
Mrs. Twemlow murmured condolences. Mr. Beach's set expression was
of one who is wondering how long the strain of existence can be
supported.
"Mr. Beach, if you please, dinner is served."
The butler crushed down sad thoughts and crooked his elbow.
"Mrs. Twemlow!"
Ashe, miscalculating degrees of rank in spite of all his caution,
was within a step of leaving the room out of his proper turn; but
the startled pressure of Miss Willoughby's hand on his arm warned
him in time. He stopped, to allow the statuesque Miss Chester to
sail out under escort of a wizened little man with a horseshoe
pin in his tie, whose name, in company with nearly all the others
that had been spoken to him since he came into the room, had
escaped Ashe's memory.
"You were nearly making a bloomer!" said Miss Willoughby
brightly. "You must be absent-minded, Mr. Marson--like his
lordship."
"Is Lord Emsworth absent-minded?"
Miss Willoughby laughed.
"Why, he forgets his own name sometimes! If it wasn't for Mr.
Baxter, goodness knows what would happen to him."
"I don't think I know Mr. Baxter."
"You will if you stay here long. You can't get away from him if
you're in the same house. Don't tell anyone I said so; but he's
the real master here. His lordship's secretary he calls himself;
but he's really everything rolled into one--like the man in the
play."
Ashe, searching in his dramatic memories for such a person in a
play, inquired whether Miss Willoughby meant Pooh-Bah, in "The
Mikado," of which there had been a revival in London recently.
Miss Willoughby did mean Pooh-Bah.
"But Nosy Parker is what I call him," she said. "He minds
everybody's business as well as his own."
The last of the procession trickled into the steward's room.
Mr. Beach said grace somewhat patronizingly. The meal began.
"You've seen Miss Peters, of course, Mr. Marson?" said Miss
Willoughby, resuming conversation with the soup.
"Just for a few minutes at Paddington."
"Oh! You haven't been with Mr. Peters long, then?"
Ashe began to wonder whether everybody he met was going to ask
him this dangerous question.
"Only a day or so."
"Where were you before that?"
Ashe was conscious of a prickly sensation. A little more of this
and he might as well reveal his true mission at the castle and
have done with it.
"Oh, I was--that is to say----"
"How are you feeling after the journey, Mr. Marson?" said a voice
from the other side of the table; and Ashe, looking up
gratefully, found Joan's eyes looking into his with a curiously
amused expression.
He was too grateful for the interruption to try to account for
this. He replied that he was feeling very well, which was not the
case. Miss Willoughby's interest was diverted to a discussion of
the defects of the various railroad systems of Great Britain.
At the head of the table Mr. Beach had started an intimate
conversation with Mr. Ferris, the valet of Lord Stockheath, the
Honorable Freddie's "poor old Percy"--a cousin, Ashe had
gathered, of Aline Peters' husband-to-be. The butler spoke in
more measured tones even than usual, for he was speaking of
tragedy.
"We were all extremely sorry, Mr. Ferris, to read of your
misfortune."
Ashe wondered what had been happening to Mr. Ferris.
"Yes, Mr. Beach," replied the valet, "it's a fact we made a
pretty poor show." He took a sip from his glass. "There is no
concealing the fact--I have never tried to conceal it--that poor
Percy is not bright."
Miss Chester entered the conversation.
"I couldn't see where the girl--what's her name? was so very
pretty. All the papers had pieces where it said she was
attractive, and what not; but she didn't look anything special to
me from her photograph in the Mirror. What his lordship could see
in her I can't understand."
"The photo didn't quite do her justice, Miss Chester. I was
present in court, and I must admit she was svelte--decidedly
svelte. And you must recollect that Percy, from childhood up, has
always been a highly susceptible young nut. I speak as one who
knows him."
Mr. Beach turned to Joan.
"We are speaking of the Stockheath breach-of-promise case, Miss
Simpson, of which you doubtless read in the newspapers. Lord
Stockheath is a nephew of ours. I fancy his lordship was greatly
shocked at the occurrence."
"He was," chimed in Mr. Judson from down the table. "I happened
to overhear him speaking of it to young Freddie. It was in the
library on the morning when the judge made his final summing up
and slipped it into Lord Stockheath so proper. 'If ever anything
of this sort happens to you, you young scalawag,' he says to
Freddie--"
Mr. Beach coughed. "Mr. Judson!"
"Oh, it's all right, Mr. Beach; we're all in the family here, in
a manner of speaking. It wasn't as though I was telling it to a
lot of outsiders. I'm sure none of these ladies or gentlemen
will let it go beyond this room?"
The company murmured virtuous acquiescence.
"He says to Freddie: 'You young scalawag, if ever anything of
this sort happens to you, you can pack up and go off to Canada,
for I'll have nothing more to do with you!'--or words to that
effect. And Freddie says: 'Oh, dash it all, gov'nor, you
know--what?'"
However short Mr. Judson's imitation of his master's voice may
have fallen of histrionic perfection, it pleased the company. The
room shook with mirth.
"Mr. Judson is clever, isn't he, Mr. Marson?" whispered Miss
Willoughby, gazing with adoring eyes at the speaker.
Mr. Beach thought it expedient to deflect the conversation. By
the unwritten law of the room every individual had the right to
speak as freely as he wished about his own personal employer; but
Judson, in his opinion, sometimes went a trifle too far.
"Tell me, Mr. Ferris," he said, "does his lordship seem to bear
it well?"
"Oh, Percy is bearing it well enough."
Ashe noted as a curious fact that, though the actual valet of any
person under discussion spoke of him almost affectionately by his
Christian name, the rest of the company used the greatest
ceremony and gave him his title with all respect. Lord Stockheath
was Percy to Mr. Ferris, and the Honorable Frederick Threepwood
was Freddie to Mr. Judson; but to Ferris, Mr. Judson's Freddie
was the Honorable Frederick, and to Judson Mr. Ferris' Percy was
Lord Stockheath. It was rather a pleasant form of etiquette, and
struck Ashe as somehow vaguely feudal.
"Percy," went on Mr. Ferris, "is bearing it like a little
Briton--the damages not having come out of his pocket! It's his
old father--who had to pay them--that's taking it to heart. You
might say he's doing himself proud. He says it's brought on his
gout again, and that's why he's gone to Droitwich instead of
coming here. I dare say Percy isn't sorry."
"It has been," said Mr. Beach, summing up, "a most unfortunate
occurrence. The modern tendency of the lower classes to get above
themselves is becoming more marked every day. The young female in
this case was, I understand, a barmaid. It is deplorable that our
young men should allow themselves to get into such
entanglements."
"The wonder to me," said the irrepressible Mr. Judson, "is that
more of these young chaps don't get put through it. His lordship
wasn't so wide of the mark when he spoke like that to Freddie in
the library that time. I give you my word, it's a mercy young
Freddie hasn't been up against it! When we were in London,
Freddie and I," he went on, cutting through Mr. Beach's
disapproving cough, "before what you might call the crash, when
his lordship cut off supplies and had him come back and live
here, Freddie was asking for it--believe me! Fell in love with a
girl in the chorus of one of the theaters. Used to send me to the
stage door with notes and flowers every night for weeks, as
regular as clockwork.
"What was her name? It's on the tip of my tongue. Funny how you
forget these things! Freddie was pretty far gone. I recollect
once, happening to be looking round his room in his absence,
coming on a poem he had written to her. It was hot stuff--very
hot! If that girl has kept those letters it's my belief we shall
see Freddie following in Lord Stockheath's footsteps."
There was a hush of delighted horror round the table.
"Goo'," said Miss Chester's escort with unction. "You don't say
so, Mr. Judson! It wouldn't half make them look silly if the
Honorable Frederick was sued for breach just now, with the
wedding coming on!"
"There is no danger of that."
It was Joan's voice, and she had spoken with such decision that
she had the ear of the table immediately. All eyes looked in her
direction. Ashe was struck with her expression. Her eyes were
shining as though she were angry; and there was a flush on her
face. A phrase he had used in the train came back to him. She
looked like a princess in disguise.
"What makes you say that, Miss Simpson?" inquired Judson,
annoyed. He had been at pains to make the company's flesh creep,
and it appeared to be Joan's aim to undo his work.
It seemed to Ashe that Joan made an effort of some sort as though
she were pulling herself together and remembering where she was.
"Well," she said, almost lamely, "I don't think it at all likely
that he proposed marriage to this girl."
"You never can tell," said Judson. "My impression is that Freddie
did. It's my belief that there's something on his mind these
days. Before he went to London with his lordship the other day he
was behaving very strange. And since he came back it's my belief
that he has been brooding. And I happen to know he followed the
affair of Lord Stockheath pretty closely, for he clipped the
clippings out of the paper. I found them myself one day when I
happened to be going through his things."
Beach cleared his throat--his mode of indicating that he was
about to monopolize the conversation.
"And in any case, Miss Simpson," he said solemnly, "with things
come to the pass they have come to, and the juries--drawn from
the lower classes--in the nasty mood they're in, it don't seem
hardly necessary in these affairs for there to have been any
definite promise of marriage. What with all this socialism
rampant, they seem so happy at the idea of being able to do one
of us an injury that they give heavy damages without it. A few
ardent expressions, and that's enough for them. You recollect the
Havant case, and when young Lord Mount Anville was sued? What it
comes to is that anarchy is getting the upper hand, and the lower
classes are getting above themselves. It's all these here cheap
newspapers that does it. They tempt the lower classes to get
above themselves.
"Only this morning I had to speak severe to that young fellow,
James, the footman. He was a good young fellow once and did his
work well, and had a proper respect for people; but now he's gone
all to pieces. And why? Because six months ago he had the
rheumatism, and had the audacity to send his picture and a
testimonial, saying that it had cured him of awful agonies, to
Walkinshaw's Supreme Ointment, and they printed it in half a
dozen papers; and it has been the ruin of James. He has got above
himself and don't care for nobody."
"Well, all I can say is," resumed Judson, "that I hope to
goodness nothing won't happen to Freddie of that kind; for it's
not every girl that would have him."
There was a murmur of assent to this truth.
"Now your Miss Peters," said Judson tolerantly--"she seems a nice
little thing."
"She would be pleased to hear you say so," said Joan.
"Joan Valentine!" cried Judson, bringing his hands down on the
tablecloth with a bang. "I've just remembered it. That was the
name of the girl Freddie used to write the letters and poems to;
and that's who it is I've been trying all along to think you
reminded me of, Miss Simpson. You're the living image of
Freddie's Miss Joan Valentine."
Ashe was not normally a young man of particularly ready wit; but
on this occasion it may have been that the shock of this
revelation, added to the fact that something must be done
speedily if Joan's discomposure was not to become obvious to all
present, quickened his intelligence. Joan, usually so sure of
herself, so ready of resource, had gone temporarily to pieces.
She was quite white, and her eyes met Ashe's with almost a hunted
expression.
If the attention of the company was to be diverted, something
drastic must be done. A mere verbal attempt to change the
conversation would be useless. Inspiration descended on Ashe.
In the days of his childhood in Hayling, Massachusetts, he had
played truant from Sunday school again and again in order to
frequent the society of one Eddie Waffles, the official bad boy
of the locality. It was not so much Eddie's charm of conversation
which had attracted him--though that had been great--as the fact
that Eddie, among his other accomplishments, could give a
lifelike imitation of two cats fighting in a back yard; and Ashe
felt that he could never be happy until he had acquired this gift
from the master.
In course of time he had done so. It might be that his absences
from Sunday school in the cause of art had left him in later
years a trifle shaky on the subject of the Kings of Judah, but
his hard-won accomplishment had made him in request at every
smoking concert at Oxford; and it saved the situation now.
"Have you ever heard two cats fighting in a back yard?" he
inquired casually of his neighbor, Miss Willoughby.
The next moment the performance was in full swing. Young Master
Waffles, who had devoted considerable study to his subject, had
conceived the combat of his imaginary cats in a broad, almost
Homeric, vein. The unpleasantness opened with a low gurgling
sound, answered by another a shade louder and possibly more
querulous. A momentary silence was followed by a long-drawn note,
like rising wind, cut off abruptly and succeeded by a grumbling
mutter. The response to this was a couple of sharp howls. Both
parties to the contest then indulged in a discontented whining,
growing louder and louder until the air was full of electric
menace. And then, after another sharp silence, came war, noisy
and overwhelming.
Standing at Master Waffles' side, you could follow almost every
movement of that intricate fray, and mark how now one and now the
other of the battlers gained a short-lived advantage. It was a
great fight. Shrewd blows were taken and given, and in the eye of
the imagination you could see the air thick with flying fur.
Louder and louder grew the din; and then, at its height, it
ceased in one crescendo of tumult, and all was still, save for a
faint, angry moaning.
Such was the cat fight of Master Eddie Waffles; and Ashe, though
falling short of the master, as a pupil must, rendered it
faithfully and with energy.
To say that the attention of the company was diverted from Mr.
Judson and his remarks by the extraordinary noises which
proceeded from Ashe's lips would be to offer a mere shadowy
suggestion of the sensation caused by his efforts. At first,
stunned surprise, then consternation, greeted him. Beach, the
butler, was staring as one watching a miracle, nearer apparently
to apoplexy than ever. On the faces of the others every shade of
emotion was to be seen.
That this should be happening in the steward's room at Blandings
Castle was scarcely less amazing than if it had taken place in a
cathedral. The upper servants, rigid in their seats, looked at
each other, like Cortes' soldiers--"with a wild surmise."
The last faint moan of feline defiance died away and silence fell
on the room. Ashe turned to Miss Willoughby.
"Just like that!" he said. "I was telling Miss Willoughby," he
added apologetically to Mrs. Twemlow, "about the cats in London.
They were a great trial."
For perhaps three seconds his social reputation swayed to and fro
in the balance, while the company pondered on what he had done.
It was new; but it was humorous--or was it vulgar? There is
nothing the English upper servant so abhors as vulgarity. That
was what the steward's room was trying to make up its mind about.
Then Miss Willoughby threw her shapely head back and the squeal
of her laughter smote the ceiling. And at that the company made
its decision. Everybody laughed. Everybody urged Ashe to give an
encore. Everybody was his friend and admirer---everybody but
Beach, the butler. Beach, the butler, was shocked to his very
core. His heavy-lidded eyes rested on Ashe with disapproval. It
seemed to Beach, the butler, that this young man Marson had got
above himself.
* * *
Ashe found Joan at his side. Dinner was over and the diners were
making for the housekeeper's room.
"Thank you, Mr. Marson. That was very good of you and very
clever." Her eyes twinkled. "But what a terrible chance you took!
You have made yourself a popular success, but you might just as
easily have become a social outcast. As it is, I am afraid Mr.
Beach did not approve."
"I'm afraid he didn't. In a minute or so I'm going to fawn on him
and make all well."
Joan lowered her voice.
"It was quite true, what that odious little man said. Freddie
Threepwood did write me letters. Of course I destroyed them long
ago."
"But weren't you running the risk in coming here that he might
recognize you? Wouldn't that make it rather unpleasant for you?"
"I never met him, you see. He only wrote to me. When he came to
the station to meet us this evening he looked startled to see me;
so I suppose he remembers my appearance. But Aline will have told
him that my name is Simpson."
"That fellow Judson said he was brooding. I think you ought to
put him out of his misery."
"Mr. Judson must have been letting his imagination run away with
him. He is out of his misery. He sent a horrid fat man named
Jones to see me in London about the letters, and I told him I had
destroyed them. He must have let him know that by this time."
"I see."
They went into the housekeeper's room. Mr. Beach was standing
before the fire. Ashe went up to him. It was not an easy matter
to mollify Mr. Beach. Ashe tried the most tempting topics. He
mentioned swollen feet--he dangled the lining of Mr. Beach's
stomach temptingly before his eyes; but the butler was not to be
softened. Only when Ashe turned the conversation to the subject
of the museum did a flicker of animation stir him.
Mr. Beach was fond and proud of the Blandings Castle museum. It
had been the means of getting him into print for the first and
only time in his life. A year before, a representative of the
Intelligencer and Echo, from the neighboring town of Blatchford,
had come to visit the castle on behalf of his paper; and he had
begun one section of his article with the words: "Under the
auspices of Mr. Beach, my genial cicerone, I then visited his
lordship's museum--" Mr. Beach treasured the clipping in a
special writing-desk.
He responded almost amiably to Ashe's questions. Yes; he had seen
the scarab--he pronounced it scayrub--which Mr. Peters had
presented to his lordship. He understood that his lordship
thought very highly of Mr. Peters' scayrub. He had overheard Mr.
Baxter telling his lordship that it was extremely valuable.
"Mr. Beach," said Ashe, "I wonder whether you would take me to
see Lord Emsworth's museum?"
Mr. Beach regarded him heavily.
"I shall be pleased to take you to see his lordship's museum," he
replied.
* * *
One can attribute only to the nervous mental condition following
the interview he had had with Ashe in his bedroom the rash act
Mr. Peters attempted shortly after dinner.
Mr. Peters, shortly after dinner, was in a dangerous and reckless
mood. He had had a wretched time all through the meal. The
Blandings chef had extended himself in honor of the house party,
and had produced a succession of dishes, which in happier days
Mr. Peters would have devoured eagerly. To be compelled by
considerations of health to pass these by was enough to damp the
liveliest optimist. Mr. Peters had suffered terribly. Occasions
of feasting and revelry like the present were for him so many
battlefields, on which greed fought with prudence.
All through dinner he brooded on Ashe's defiance and the horrors
which were to result from that defiance. One of Mr. Peters' most
painful memories was of a two weeks' visit he had once paid to
Mr. Muldoon in his celebrated establishment at White Plains. He
had been persuaded to go there by a brother millionaire whom,
until then, he had always regarded as a friend. The memory of Mr.
Muldoon's cold shower baths and brisk system of physical exercise
still lingered.
The thought that under Ashe's rule he was to go through privately
very much what he had gone through in the company of a gang of
other unfortunates at Muldoon's froze him with horror. He knew
those health cranks who believed that all mortal ailments could
be cured by cold showers and brisk walks. They were all alike and
they nearly killed you. His worst nightmare was the one where he
dreamed he was back at Muldoon's, leading his horse up that
endless hill outside the village.
He would not stand it! He would be hanged if he'd stand it! He
would defy Ashe. But if he defied Ashe, Ashe would go away; and
then whom could he find to recover his lost scarab?
Mr. Peters began to appreciate the true meaning of the phrase
about the horns of a dilemma. The horns of this dilemma occupied
his attention until the end of the dinner. He shifted uneasily
from one to the other and back again. He rose from the table in a
thoroughly overwrought condition of mind. And then, somehow, in
the course of the evening, he found himself alone in the hall,
not a dozen feet from the unlocked museum door.
It was not immediately that he appreciated the significance of
this fact. He had come to the hall because its solitude suited
his mood. It was only after he had finished a cigar--Ashe could
not stop his smoking after dinner--that it suddenly flashed on
him that he had ready at hand a solution of all his troubles. A
brief minute's resolute action and the scarab would be his again,
and the menace of Ashe a thing of the past. He glanced about him.
Yes; he was alone.
Not once since the removal of the scarab had begun to exercise
his mind had Mr. Peters contemplated for an instant the
possibility of recovering it himself. The prospect of the
unpleasantness that would ensue had been enough to make him
regard such an action as out of the question. The risk was too
great to be considered for a moment; but here he was, in a
position where the risk was negligible!
Like Ashe, he had always visualized the recovery of his scarab as
a thing of the small hours, a daring act to be performed when
sleep held the castle in its grip. That an opportunity would be
presented to him of walking in quite calmly and walking out again
with the Cheops in his pocket, had never occurred to him as a
possibility.
Yet now this chance was presenting itself in all its simplicity,
and all he had to do was to grasp it. The door of the museum was
not even closed. He could see from where he stood that it was
ajar.
He moved cautiously in its direction--not in a straight line as
one going to a museum, but circuitously as one strolling without
an aim. From time to time he glanced over his shoulder. He
reached the door, hesitated, and passed it. He turned, reached
the door again--and again passed it. He stood for a moment
darting his eyes about the hall; then, in a burst of resolution,
he dashed for the door and shot in like a rabbit.
At the same moment the Efficient Baxter, who, from the shelter of
a pillar on the gallery that ran around two-thirds of the hall,
had been eyeing the peculiar movements of the distinguished guest
with considerable interest for some minutes, began to descend the
stairs.
Rupert Baxter, the Earl of Emsworth's indefatigable private
secretary, was one of those men whose chief characteristic is a
vague suspicion of their fellow human beings. He did not suspect
them of this or that definite crime; he simply suspected them. He
prowled through life as we are told the hosts of Midian prowled.
His powers in this respect were well-known at Blandings Castle.
The Earl of Emsworth said: "Baxter is invaluable--positively
invaluable." The Honorable Freddie said: "A chappie can't take a
step in this bally house without stumbling over that damn feller,
Baxter!" The manservant and the maidservant within the gates,
like Miss Willoughby, employing that crisp gift for
characterization which is the property of the English lower
orders, described him as a Nosy Parker.
Peering over the railing of the balcony and observing the curious
movements of Mr. Peters, who, as a matter of fact, while making
up his mind to approach the door, had been backing and filling
about the hall in a quaint serpentine manner like a man trying to
invent a new variety of the tango, the Efficient Baxter had found
himself in some way--why, he did not know--of what, he could not
say--but in some nebulous way, suspicious.
He had not definitely accused Mr. Peters in his mind of any
specific tort or malfeasance. He had merely felt that something
fishy was toward. He had a sixth sense in such matters.
But when Mr. Peters, making up his mind, leaped into the museum,
Baxter's suspicions lost their vagueness and became crystallized.
Certainty descended on him like a bolt from the skies. On oath,
before a notary, the Efficient Baxter would have declared that J.
Preston Peters was about to try to purloin the scarab.
Lest we should seem to be attributing too miraculous powers of
intuition to Lord Emsworth's secretary, it should be explained
that the mystery which hung about that curio had exercised his
mind not a little since his employer had given it to him to place
in the museum. He knew Lord Emsworth's power of forgetting and he
did not believe his account of the transaction. Scarab maniacs
like Mr. Peters did not give away specimens from their
collections as presents. But he had not divined the truth of what
had happened in London.
The conclusion at which he had arrived was that Lord Emsworth had
bought the scarab and had forgotten all about it. To support this
theory was the fact that the latter had taken his check book to
London with him. Baxter's long acquaintance with the earl had
left him with the conviction that there was no saying what he
might not do if left loose in London with a check book.
As to Mr. Peters' motive for entering the museum, that, too,
seemed completely clear to the secretary. He was a curio
enthusiast himself and he had served collectors in a secretarial
capacity; and he knew, both from experience and observation, that
strange madness which may at any moment afflict the collector,
blotting out morality and the nice distinction between meum and
tuum, as with a sponge. He knew that collectors who would not
steal a loaf if they were starving might--and did--fall before
the temptation of a coveted curio.
He descended the stairs three at a time, and entered the museum
at the very instant when Mr. Peters' twitching fingers were about
to close on his treasure. He handled the delicate situation with
eminent tact. Mr. Peters, at the sound of his step, had executed a
backward leap, which was as good as a confession of guilt, and
his face was rigid with dismay; but the Efficient Baxter
pretended not to notice these phenomena. His manner, when he
spoke, was easy and unembarrassed.
"Ah! Taking a look at our little collection, Mr. Peters? You will
see that we have given the place of honor to your Cheops. It is
certainly a fine specimen--a wonderfully fine specimen."
Mr. Peters was recovering slowly. Baxter talked on, to give him
time. He spoke of Mut and Bubastis, of Ammon and the Book of the
Dead. He directed the other's attention to the Roman coins.
He was touching on some aspects of the Princess Gilukhipa of
Mitanni, in whom his hearer could scarcely fail to be interested,
when the door opened and Beach, the butler, came in, accompanied
by Ashe. In the bustle of the interruption Mr. Peters escaped,
glad to be elsewhere, and questioning for the first time in his
life the dictum that if you want a thing well done you must do it
yourself.
"I was not aware, sir," said Beach, the butler, "that you were in
occupation of the museum. I would not have intruded; but this
young man expressed a desire to examine the exhibits, and I took
the liberty of conducting him."
"Come in, Beach--come in," said Baxter.
The light fell on Ashe's face, and he recognized him as the
cheerful young man who had inquired the way to Mr. Peters' room
before dinner and who, he had by this time discovered, was not
the Honorable Freddie's friend, George Emerson--or, indeed, any
other of the guests of the house. He felt suspicious.
"Oh, Beach!"
"Sir?"
"Just a moment."
He drew the butler into the hall, out of earshot.
"Beach, who is that man?"
"Mr. Peters' valet, sir."
"Mr. Peters' valet!"
"Yes, sir."
"Has he been in service long?" asked Baxter, remembering that a
mere menial had addressed him as "old man."
Beach lowered his voice. He and the Efficient Baxter were old
allies, and it seemed right to Beach to confide in him.
"He has only just joined Mr. Peters, sir; and he has never been
in service before. He told me so himself, and I was unable to
elicit from him any information as to his antecedents. His manner
struck me, sir, as peculiar. It crossed my mind to wonder whether
Mr. Peters happened to be aware of this. I should dislike to do
any young man an injury; but it might be anyone coming to a
gentleman without a character, like this young man. Mr. Peters
might have been deceived, sir."
The Efficient Baxter's manner became distraught. His mind was
working rapidly.
"Should he be informed, sir?"
"Eh! Who?"
"Mr. Peters, sir--in case he should have been deceived?"
"No, no; Mr. Peters knows his own business."
"Far from me be it to appear officious, sir; but--"
"Mr. Peters probably knows all about him. Tell me, Beach, who was
it suggested this visit to the museum? Did you?"
"It was at the young man's express desire that I conducted him,
sir."
The Efficient Baxter returned to the museum without a word.
Ashe, standing in the middle of the room, was impressing the
topography of the place on his memory. He was unaware of the
piercing stare of suspicion that was being directed at him from
behind.
He did not see Baxter. He was not even thinking of Baxter; but
Baxter was on the alert. Baxter was on the warpath. Baxter knew!