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.
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