Something New, P. G. Wodehouse [best desktop ebook reader .TXT] 📗

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 kindhearted 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