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

Using the word in the sense of saying something coherent, the Earl of Emsworth was the first to speak. He peered down at his recumbent secretary and said:

“Baxter! My dear fellow⁠—what the devil?”

The feeling of the company was one of profound disappointment. They were disgusted at the anticlimax. For an instant, when the Efficient one did not move, a hope began to stir; but as soon as it was seen that he was not even injured, gloom reigned. One of two things would have satisfied them⁠—either a burglar or a corpse. A burglar would have been welcome, dead or alive; but, if Baxter proposed to fill the part adequately it was imperative that he be dead. He had disappointed them deeply by turning out to be the object of their quest. That he should not have been even grazed was too much.

There was a cold silence as he slowly raised himself from the floor. As his eyes fell on the tongue, he started and remained gazing fixedly at it. Surprise paralyzed him.

Lord Emsworth was also looking at the tongue and he leaped to a not unreasonable conclusion. He spoke coldly and haughtily; for he was not only annoyed, like the others, at the anticlimax, but offended. He knew that he was not one of your energetic hosts who exert themselves unceasingly to supply their guests with entertainment; but there was one thing on which, as a host, he did pride himself⁠—in the material matters of life he did his guests well; he kept an admirable table.

“My dear Baxter,” he said in the tones he usually reserved for the correction of his son Freddie, “if your hunger is so great that you are unable to wait for breakfast and have to raid my larder in the middle of the night, I wish to goodness you would contrive to make less noise about it. I do not grudge you the food⁠—help yourself when you please⁠—but do remember that people who have not such keen appetites as yourself like to sleep during the night. A far better plan, my dear fellow, would be to have sandwiches or buns⁠—or whatever you consider most sustaining⁠—sent up to your bedroom.”

Not even the bullets had disordered Baxter’s faculties so much as this monstrous accusation. Explanations pushed and jostled one another in his fermenting brain, but he could not utter them. On every side he met gravely reproachful eyes. George Emerson was looking at him in pained disgust. Ashe Marson’s face was the face of one who could never have believed this had he not seen it with his own eyes. The scrutiny of the knife-and-shoe boy was unendurable.

He stammered. Words began to proceed from him, tripping and stumbling over each other. Lord Emsworth’s frigid disapproval did not relax.

“Pray do not apologize, Baxter. The desire for food is human. It is your boisterous mode of securing and conveying it that I deprecate. Let us all go to bed.”

“But, Lord Emsworth⁠—”

“To bed!” repeated his lordship firmly.

The company began to stream moodily upstairs. The lights were switched off. The Efficient Baxter dragged himself away. From the darkness in the direction of the servants’ door a voice spoke.

“Greedy pig!” said the voice scornfully.

It sounded like the fresh young voice of the knife-and-shoe boy, but Baxter was too broken to investigate. He continued his retreat without pausing.

“Stuffin’ of ’isself at all hours!” said the voice.

There was a murmur of approval from the unseen throng of domestics.

As we grow older and realize more clearly the limitations of human happiness, we come to see that the only real and abiding pleasure in life is to give pleasure to other people. One must assume that the Efficient Baxter had not reached the age when this comes home to a man, for the fact that he had given genuine pleasure to some dozens of his fellow-men brought him no balm.

There was no doubt about the pleasure he had given. Once they had got over their disappointment at finding that he was not a dead burglar, the house party rejoiced wholeheartedly at the break in the monotony of life at Blandings Castle. Relations who had not been on speaking terms for years forgot their quarrels and strolled about the grounds in perfect harmony, abusing Baxter. The general verdict was that he was insane.

“Don’t tell me that young fellow’s all there,” said Colonel Horace Mant; “because I know better. Have you noticed his eye? Furtive! Shifty! Nasty gleam in it. Besides⁠—dash it!⁠—did you happen to take a look at the hall last night after he had been there? It was in ruins, my dear sir⁠—absolute dashed ruins. It was positively littered with broken china and tables that had been bowled over. Don’t tell me that was just an accidental collision in the dark.

“My dear sir, the man must have been thrashing about⁠—absolutely thrashing about, like a dashed salmon on a dashed hook. He must have had a paroxysm of some kind⁠—some kind of a dashed fit. A doctor could give you the name for it. It’s a well-known form of insanity. Paranoia⁠—isn’t that what they call it? Rush of blood to the head, followed by a general running amuck.

“I’ve heard fellows who have been in India talk of it. Natives get it. Don’t know what they’re doing, and charge through the streets taking cracks at people with dashed whacking great knives. Same with this young man, probably in a modified form at present. He ought to be in a home. One of these nights, if this grows on him, he will be massacring Emsworth in his bed.”

“My dear Horace!” The Bishop of Godalming’s voice was properly horror-stricken; but there was a certain unctuous relish in it.

“Take my word for it! Though, mind you, I don’t say they aren’t well suited. Everyone knows that Emsworth has been, to all practical intents and purposes, a dashed lunatic for years. What was it that young fellow Emerson, Freddie’s American friend, was