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

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