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 bands 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 fancies 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."
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