It is worthy of record, in the light of after events, that at the
beginning of their visit it was the general opinion of the guests
gathered together at Blandings Castle that the place was dull.
The house party had that air of torpor which one sees in the
saloon passengers of an Atlantic liner--that appearance of
resignation to an enforced idleness and a monotony to be broken
only by meals. Lord Emsworth's guests gave the impression,
collectively, of being just about to yawn and look at their
watches.
This was partly the fault of the time of year, for most house
parties are dull if they happen to fall between the hunting and
the shooting seasons, but must be attributed chiefly to Lord
Emsworth's extremely sketchy notions of the duties of a host.
A host has no right to interne a regiment of his relations in his
house unless he also invites lively and agreeable outsiders to
meet them. If he does commit this solecism the least he can do is
to work himself to the bone in the effort to invent amusements
and diversions for his victims. Lord Emsworth had failed badly in
both these matters. With the exception of Mr. Peters, his
daughter Aline and George Emerson, there was nobody in the house
who did not belong to the clan; and, as for his exerting himself
to entertain, the company was lucky if it caught a glimpse of its
host at meals.
Lord Emsworth belonged to the people-who-like-to-be-left-alone-
to-amuse-themselves-when-they-come-to-a-place school of hosts. He
pottered about the garden in an old coat--now uprooting a weed,
now wrangling with the autocrat from Scotland, who was
theoretically in his service as head gardener---dreamily
satisfied, when he thought of them at all, that his guests were
as perfectly happy as he was.
Apart from his son Freddie, whom he had long since dismissed as a
youth of abnormal tastes, from whom nothing reasonable was to be
expected, he could not imagine anyone not being content merely to
be at Blandings when the buds were bursting on the trees.
A resolute hostess might have saved the situation; but Lady Ann
Warblington's abilities in that direction stopped short at
leaving everything to Mrs. Twemlow and writing letters in her
bedroom. When Lady Ann Warblington was not writing letters in her
bedroom--which was seldom, for she had an apparently
inexhaustible correspondence--she was nursing sick headaches in
it. She was one of those hostesses whom a guest never sees except
when he goes into the library and espies the tail of her skirt
vanishing through the other door.
As for the ordinary recreations of the country house, the guests
could frequent the billiard room, where they were sure to find
Lord Stockheath playing a hundred up with his cousin, Algernon
Wooster--a spectacle of the liveliest interest--or they could, if
fond of golf, console themselves for the absence of links in the
neighborhood with the exhilarating pastime of clock golf; or they
could stroll about the terraces with such of their relations as
they happened to be on speaking terms with at the moment, and
abuse their host and the rest of their relations.
This was the favorite amusement; and after breakfast, on a
morning ten days after Joan and Ashe had formed their compact,
the terraces were full of perambulating couples. Here, Colonel
Horace Mant, walking with the Bishop of Godalming, was soothing
that dignitary by clothing in soldierly words thoughts that the
latter had not been able to crush down, but which his holy office
scarcely permitted him to utter.
There, Lady Mildred Mant, linked to Mrs. Jack Hale, of the
collateral branch of the family, was saying things about her
father in his capacity of host and entertainer, that were making
her companion feel like another woman. Farther on, stopping
occasionally to gesticulate, could be seen other Emsworth
relations and connections. It was a typical scene of quiet,
peaceful English family life.
Leaning on the broad stone balustrade of the upper terrace, Aline
Peters and George Emerson surveyed the malcontents. Aline gave a
little sigh, almost inaudible; but George's hearing was good.
"I was wondering when you are going to admit it," he said,
shifting his position so that he faced her.
"Admit what?"
"That you can't stand the prospect; that the idea of being stuck
for life with this crowd, like a fly on fly paper, is too much
for you; that you are ready to break off your engagement to
Freddie and come away and marry me and live happily ever after."
"George!"
"Well, wasn't that what it meant? Be honest!"
"What what meant?"
"That sigh."
"I didn't sigh. I was just breathing."
"Then you can breathe in this atmosphere! You surprise me!" He
raked the terraces with hostile eyes. "Look at them! Look at
them--crawling round like doped beetles. My dear girl, it's no
use your pretending that this sort of thing wouldn't kill you.
You're pining away already. You're thinner and paler since you
came here. Gee! How we shall look back at this and thank our
stars that we're out of it when we're back in old New York, with
the elevated rattling and the street cars squealing over the
points, and something doing every step you take. I shall call you
on the 'phone from the office and have you meet me down town
somewhere, and we'll have a bite to eat and go to some show, and
a bit of supper afterward and a dance or two; and then go home to
our cozy---"
"George, you mustn't--really!"
"Why mustn't I?"
"It's wrong. You can't talk like that when we are both enjoying
the hospitality--"
A wild laugh, almost a howl, disturbed the talk of the most
adjacent of the perambulating relations. Colonel Horace Mant,
checked in mid-sentence, looked up resentfully at the cause of
the interruption.
"I wish somebody would tell me whether it's that American fellow,
Emerson, or young Freddie who's supposed to be engaged to Miss
Peters. Hanged if you ever see her and Freddie together, but she
and Emerson are never to be found apart. If my respected
father-in-law had any sense I should have thought he would have
had sense enough to stop that."
"You forget, my dear Horace," said the bishop charitably; "Miss
Peters and Mr. Emerson have known each other since they were
children."
"They were never nearly such children as Emsworth is now,"
snorted the colonel. "If that girl isn't in love with Emerson
I'll be--I'll eat my hat."
"No, no," said the bishop. "No, no! Surely not, Horace. What were
you saying when you broke off?"
"I was saying that if a man wanted his relations never to speak
to each other again for the rest of their lives the best thing he
could do would be to herd them all together in a dashed barrack
of a house a hundred miles from anywhere, and then go off and
spend all his time prodding dashed flower beds with a spud--dash
it!"
"Just so; just so. So you were. Go on, Horace; I find a curious
comfort in your words."
On the terrace above them Aline was looking at George with
startled eyes.
"George!"
"I'm sorry; but you shouldn't spring these jokes on me so
suddenly. You said enjoying! Yes--reveling in it, aren't we!"
"It's a lovely old place," said Aline defensively.
"And when you've said that you've said everything. You can't live
on scenery and architecture for the rest of your life. There's
the human element to be thought of. And you're beginning--"
"There goes father," interrupted Aline. "How fast he is walking!
George, have you noticed a sort of difference in father these
last few days?"
"I haven't. My specialty is keeping an eye on the rest of the
Peters family."
"He seems better somehow. He seems to have almost stopped
smoking--and I'm very glad, for those cigars were awfully bad for
him. The doctor expressly told him he must stop them, but he
wouldn't pay any attention to him. And he seems to take so much
more exercise. My bedroom is next to his, you know, and every
morning I can hear things going on through the wall--father
dancing about and puffing a good deal. And one morning I met his
valet going in with a pair of Indian clubs. I believe father is
really taking himself in hand at last."
George Emerson exploded.
"And about time, too! How much longer are you to go on starving
yourself to death just to give him the resolution to stick to his
dieting? It maddens me to see you at dinner. And it's killing
you. You're getting pale and thin. You can't go on like this."
A wistful look came over Aline's face.
"I do get a little hungry sometimes--late at night generally."
"You want somebody to take care of you and look after you. I'm
the man. You may think you can fool me; but I can tell. You're
weakening on this Freddie proposition. You're beginning to see
that it won't do. One of these days you're going to come to me
and say: 'George, you were right. I take the count. Me for the
quiet sneak to the station, without anybody knowing, and the
break for London, and the wedding at the registrar's.' Oh, I
know! I couldn't have loved you all this time and not know.
You're weakening."
The trouble with these supermen is that they lack reticence. They
do not know how to omit. They expand their chests and whoop. And
a girl, even the mildest and sweetest of girls--even a girl like
Aline Peters--cannot help resenting the note of triumph. But
supermen despise tact. As far as one can gather, that is the
chief difference between them and the ordinary man.
A little frown appeared on Aline's forehead and she set her mouth
mutinously.
"I'm not weakening at all," she said, and her voice was--for
her--quite acid. "You--you take too much for granted."
George was contemplating the landscape with a conqueror's eye.
"You are beginning to see that it is impossible--this Freddie
foolishness."
"It is not foolishness," said Aline pettishly, tears of annoyance
in her eyes. "And I wish you wouldn't call him Freddie."
"He asked me to. He asked me to!"
Aline stamped her foot.
"Well, never mind. Please don't do it."
"Very well, little girl," said George softly. "I wouldn't do
anything to hurt you."
The fact that it never even occurred to George Emerson he was
being offensively patronizing shows the stern stuff of which
these supermen are made.
* * *
The Efficient Baxter bicycled broodingly to Market Blandings for
tobacco. He brooded for several reasons. He had just seen Aline
Peters and George Emerson in confidential talk on the upper
terrace, and that was one thing which exercised his mind, for he
suspected George Emerson. He suspected him nebulously as a snake
in the grass; as an influence working against the orderly
progress of events concerning the marriage that had been arranged
and would shortly take place between Miss Peters and the
Honorable Frederick Threepwood.
It would be too much to say that he had any idea that George was
putting in such hard and consistent work in his serpentine role;
indeed if he could have overheard the conversation just recorded
it is probable that Rupert Baxter would have had heart failure;
but he had observed the intimacy between the two as he observed
most things in his immediate neighborhood, and he disapproved of
it. It was all very well to say that George Emerson had known
Aline Peters since she was a child. If that was so, then in the
opinion of the Efficient Baxter he had known her quite long
enough and ought to start making the acquaintance of somebody
else.
He blamed the Honorable Freddie. If the Honorable Freddie had
been a more ardent lover he would have spent his time with Aline,
and George Emerson would have taken his proper place as one of
the crowd at the back of the stage. But Freddie's view of the
matter seemed to be that he had done all that could be expected
of a chappie in getting engaged to the girl, and that now he
might consider himself at liberty to drop her for a while.
So Baxter, as he bicycled to Market Blandings for tobacco,
brooded on Freddie, Aline Peters and George Emerson. He also
brooded on Mr. Peters and Ashe Marson. Finally he brooded in a
general way, because he had had very little sleep the past week.
The spectacle of a young man doing his duty and enduring
considerable discomforts while doing it is painful; but there is
such uplift in it, it affords so excellent a moral picture, that
I cannot omit a short description of the manner in which Rupert
Baxter had spent the nights which had elapsed since his meeting
with Ashe in the small hours in the hall.
In the gallery which ran above the hall there was a large chair,
situated a few paces from the great staircase. On this, in an
overcoat--for the nights were chilly--and rubber-soled shoes, the
Efficient Baxter had sat, without missing a single night, from
one in the morning until daybreak, waiting, waiting, waiting. It
had been an ordeal to try the stoutest determination. Nature had
never intended Baxter for a night bird. He loved his bed. He knew
that doctors held that insufficient sleep made a man pale and
sallow, and he had always aimed at the peach-bloom complexion
which comes from a sensible eight hours between the sheets.
One of the King Georges of England--I forget which--once said
that a certain number of hours' sleep each night--I cannot recall
at the moment how many--made a man something, which for the time
being has slipped my memory. Baxter agreed with him. It went
against all his instincts to sit up in this fashion; but it was
his duty and he did it.
It troubled him that, as night after night went by and Ashe, the
suspect, did not walk into the trap so carefully laid for him, he
found an increasing difficulty in keeping awake. The first two or
three of his series of vigils he had passed in an unimpeachable
wakefulness, his chin resting on the rail of the gallery and his
ears alert for the slightest sound; but he had not been able to
maintain this standard of excellence.
On several occasions he had caught himself in the act of dropping
off, and the last night he had actually wakened with a start to
find it quite light. As his last recollection before that was of
an inky darkness impenetrable to the eye, dismay gripped him with
a sudden clutch and he ran swiftly down to the museum. His
relief on finding that the scarab was still there had been
tempered by thoughts of what might have been.
Baxter, then, as he bicycled to Market Blandings for tobacco, had
good reason to brood. Having bought his tobacco and observed the
life and thought of the town for half an hour--it was market day
and the normal stagnation of the place was temporarily relieved
and brightened by pigs that eluded their keepers, and a bull calf
which caught a stout farmer at the psychological moment when he
was tying his shoe lace and lifted him six feet--he made his way
to the Emsworth Arms, the most respectable of the eleven inns the
citizens of Market Blandings contrived in some miraculous way to
support.
In English country towns, if the public houses do not actually
outnumber the inhabitants, they all do an excellent trade. It is
only when they are two to one that hard times hit them and set
the innkeepers to blaming the government.
It was not the busy bar, full to overflowing with honest British
yeomen--many of them in a similar condition--that Baxter sought.
His goal was the genteel dining-room on the first floor, where a
bald and shuffling waiter, own cousin to a tortoise, served
luncheon to those desiring it. Lack of sleep had reduced Baxter
to a condition where the presence and chatter of the house party
were insupportable. It was his purpose to lunch at the Emsworth
Arms and take a nap in an armchair afterward.
He had relied on having the room to himself, for Market Blandings
did not lunch to a great extent; but to his annoyance and
disappointment the room was already occupied by a man in brown
tweeds.
Occupied is the correct word, for at first sight this man seemed
to fill the room. Never since almost forgotten days when he used
to frequent circuses and side shows, had Baxter seen a fellow
human being so extraordinarily obese. He was a man about fifty
years old, gray-haired, of a mauve complexion, and his general
appearance suggested joviality.
To Baxter's chagrin, this person engaged him in conversation
directly he took his seat at the table. There was only one table
in the room, as is customary in English inns, and it had the
disadvantage that it collected those seated at it into one party.
It was impossible for Baxter to withdraw into himself and ignore
this person's advances.
It is doubtful whether he could have done it, however, had they
been separated by yards of floor, for the fat man was not only
naturally talkative but, as appeared from his opening remarks,
speech had been dammed up within him for some time by lack of a
suitable victim.
"Morning!" he began; "nice day. Good for the farmers. I'll move
up to your end of the table if I may, sir. Waiter, bring my beef
to this gentleman's end of the table."
He creaked into a chair at Baxter's side and resumed:
"Infernally quiet place, this, sir. I haven't found a soul to
speak to since I arrived yesterday afternoon except deaf-and-dumb
rustics. Are you making a long stay here?"
"I live outside the town."
"I pity you. Wouldn't care to do it myself. Had to come here on
business and shan't be sorry when it's finished. I give you my
word I couldn't sleep a wink last night because of the quiet. I
was just dropping off when a beast of a bird outside the window
gave a chirrup, and it brought me up with a jerk as though
somebody had fired a gun. There's a damned cat somewhere near my
room that mews. I lie in bed waiting for the next mew, all worked
up.
"Heaven save me from the country! It may be all right for you, if
you've got a comfortable home and a pal or two to chat with after
dinner; but you've no conception what it's like in this infernal
town--I suppose it calls itself a town. What a hole! There's a
church down the street. I'm told it's Norman or something.
Anyway, it's old. I'm not much of a man for churches as a rule,
but I went and took a look at it.
"Then somebody told me there was a fine view from the end of High
Street; so I went and took a look at that. And now, so far as I
can make out, I've done the sights and exhausted every
possibility of entertainment the town has to provide--unless
there's another church. I'm so reduced that I'll go and see the
Methodist Chapel, if there is one."
Fresh air, want of sleep and the closeness of the dining-room
combined to make Baxter drowsy. He ate his lunch in a torpor,
hardly replying to his companion's remarks, who, for his part,
did not seem to wish or to expect replies. It was enough for him
to be talking.
"What do people do with themselves in a place like this? When
they want amusement, I mean. I suppose it's different if you've
been brought up to it. Like being born color-blind or something.
You don't notice. It's the visitor who suffers. They've no
enterprise in this sort of place. There's a bit of land just
outside here that would make a sweet steeplechase course; natural
barriers; everything. It hasn't occurred to 'em to do anything
with it. It makes you despair of your species--that sort of
thing. Now if I--"
Baxter dozed. With his fork still impaling a piece of cold beef,
he dropped into that half-awake, half-asleep state which is
Nature's daytime substitute for the true slumber of the night.
The fat man, either not noticing or not caring, talked on. His
voice was a steady drone, lulling Baxter to rest.
Suddenly there was a break. Baxter sat up, blinking. He had a
curious impression that his companion had said "Hello, Freddie!"
and that the door had just opened and closed.
"Eh?" he said.
"Yes?" said the fat man.
"What did you say?"
"I was speaking of--"
"I thought you said, 'Hello, Freddie!'"
His companion eyed him indulgently.
"I thought you were dropping off when I looked at you. You've
been dreaming. What should I say, 'Hello, Freddie!' for?"
The conundrum was unanswerable. Baxter did not attempt to answer
it. But there remained at the back of his mind a quaint idea that
he had caught sight, as he woke, of the Honorable Frederick
Threepwood, his face warningly contorted, vanishing through the
doorway. Yet what could the Honorable Freddie be doing at the
Emsworth Arms?
A solution of the difficulty occurred to him: he had dreamed he
had seen Freddie and that had suggested the words which, reason
pointed out, his companion could hardly have spoken. Even if the
Honorable Freddie should enter the room, this fat man, who was
apparently a drummer of some kind, would certainly not know who
he was, nor would he address him so familiarly.
Yes, that must be the explanation. After all, the quaintest
things happened in dreams. Last night, when he had fallen asleep
in his chair, he had dreamed that he was sitting in a glass case
in the museum, making faces at Lord Emsworth, Mr. Peters, and
Beach, the butler, who were trying to steal him, under the
impression that he was a scarab of the reign of Cheops of the
Fourth Dynasty--a thing he would never have done when awake. Yes;
he must certainly have been dreaming.
In the bedroom into which he had dashed to hide himself, on
discovering that the dining-room was in possession of the
Efficient Baxter, the Honorable Freddie sat on a rickety chair,
scowling. He elaborated a favorite dictum of his:
"You can't take a step anywhere without stumbling over that damn
feller, Baxter!"
He wondered whether Baxter had seen him. He wondered whether
Baxter had recognized him. He wondered whether Baxter had heard
R. Jones say, "Hello, Freddie!"
He wondered, if such should be the case, whether R. Jones'
presence of mind and native resource had been equal to explaining
away the remark.