CHAPTER VII
It is worthy of record, in the light of after events, that at thebeginning of their visit it was the general opinion of the guestsgathered together at Blandings Castle that the place was dull.The house party had that air of torpor which one sees in thesaloon passengers of an Atlantic liner--that appearance ofresignation to an enforced idleness and a monotony to be brokenonly by meals. Lord Emsworth's guests gave the impression,collectively, of being just about to yawn and look at theirwatches.
This was partly the fault of the time of year, for most houseparties are dull if they happen to fall between the hunting andthe shooting seasons, but must be attributed chiefly to LordEmsworth's extremely sketchy notions of the duties of a host.
A host has no right to interne a regiment of his relations in hishouse unless he also invites lively and agreeable outsiders tomeet them. If he does commit this solecism the least he can do isto work himself to the bone in the effort to invent amusementsand diversions for his victims. Lord Emsworth had failed badly inboth these matters. With the exception of Mr. Peters, hisdaughter Aline and George Emerson, there was nobody in the housewho did not belong to the clan; and, as for his exerting himselfto entertain, the company was lucky if it caught a glimpse of itshost at meals.
Lord Emsworth belonged to the people-who-like-to-be-left-alone-to-amuse-themselves-when-they-come-to-a-place school of hosts. Hepottered about the garden in an old coat--now uprooting a weed,now wrangling with the autocrat from Scotland, who wastheoretically in his service as head gardener---dreamilysatisfied, when he thought of them at all, that his guests wereas perfectly happy as he was.
Apart from his son Freddie, whom he had long since dismissed as ayouth of abnormal tastes, from whom nothing reasonable was to beexpected, he could not imagine anyone not being content merely tobe at Blandings when the buds were bursting on the trees.
A resolute hostess might have saved the situation; but Lady AnnWarblington's abilities in that direction stopped short atleaving everything to Mrs. Twemlow and writing letters in herbedroom. When Lady Ann Warblington was not writing letters in herbedroom--which was seldom, for she had an apparentlyinexhaustible correspondence--she was nursing sick headaches init. She was one of those hostesses whom a guest never sees exceptwhen he goes into the library and espies the tail of her skirtvanishing through the other door.
As for the ordinary recreations of the country house, the guestscould frequent the billiard room, where they were sure to findLord Stockheath playing a hundred up with his cousin, AlgernonWooster--a spectacle of the liveliest interest--or they could, iffond of golf, console themselves for the absence of links in theneighborhood with the exhilarating pastime of clock golf; or theycould stroll about the terraces with such of their relations asthey happened to be on speaking terms with at the moment, andabuse their host and the rest of their relations.
This was the favorite amusement; and after breakfast, on amorning ten days after Joan and Ashe had formed their compact,the terraces were full of perambulating couples. Here, ColonelHorace Mant, walking with the Bishop of Godalming, was soothingthat dignitary by clothing in soldierly words thoughts that thelatter had not been able to crush down, but which his holy officescarcely permitted him to utter.
There, Lady Mildred Mant, linked to Mrs. Jack Hale, of thecollateral branch of the family, was saying things about herfather in his capacity of host and entertainer, that were makingher companion feel like another woman. Farther on, stoppingoccasionally to gesticulate, could be seen other Emsworthrelations and connections. It was a typical scene of quiet,peaceful English family life.
Leaning on the broad stone balustrade of the upper terrace, AlinePeters and George Emerson surveyed the malcontents. Aline gave alittle sigh, almost inaudible; but George's hearing was good.
"I was wondering when you are going to admit it," he said,shifting his position so that he faced her.
"Admit what?"
"That you can't stand the prospect; that the idea of being stuckfor life with this crowd, like a fly on fly paper, is too muchfor you; that you are ready to break off your engagement toFreddie and come away and marry me and live happily ever after."
"George!"
"Well, wasn't that what it meant? Be honest!"
"What what meant?"
"That sigh."
"I didn't sigh. I was just breathing."
"Then you can breathe in this atmosphere! You surprise me!" Heraked the terraces with hostile eyes. "Look at them! Look atthem--crawling round like doped beetles. My dear girl, it's nouse your pretending that this sort of thing wouldn't kill you.You're pining away already. You're thinner and paler since youcame here. Gee! How we shall look back at this and thank ourstars that we're out of it when we're back in old New York, withthe elevated rattling and the street cars squealing over thepoints, and something doing every step you take. I shall call youon the 'phone from the office and have you meet me down townsomewhere, and we'll have a bite to eat and go to some show, anda bit of supper afterward and a dance or two; and then go home toour cozy---"
"George, you mustn't--really!"
"Why mustn't I?"
"It's wrong. You can't talk like that when we are both enjoyingthe hospitality--"
A wild laugh, almost a howl, disturbed the talk of the mostadjacent of the perambulating relations. Colonel Horace Mant,checked in mid-sentence, looked up resentfully at the cause ofthe interruption.
"I wish somebody would tell me whether it's that American fellow,Emerson, or young Freddie who's supposed to be engaged to MissPeters. Hanged if you ever see her and Freddie together, but sheand Emerson are never to be found apart. If my respectedfather-in-law had any sense I should have thought he would havehad sense enough to stop that."
"You forget, my dear Horace," said the bishop charitably; "MissPeters and Mr. Emerson have known each other since they werechildren."
"They were never nearly such children as Emsworth is now,"snorted the colonel. "If that girl isn't in love with EmersonI'll be--I'll eat my hat."
"No, no," said the bishop. "No, no! Surely not, Horace. What wereyou saying when you broke off?"
"I was saying that if a man wanted his relations never to speakto each other again for the rest of their lives the best thing hecould do would be to herd them all together in a dashed barrackof a house a hundred miles from anywhere, and then go off andspend all his time prodding dashed flower beds with a spud--dashit!"
"Just so; just so. So you were. Go on, Horace; I find a curiouscomfort in your words."
On the terrace above them Aline was looking at George withstartled eyes.
"George!"
"I'm sorry; but you shouldn't spring these jokes on me sosuddenly. You said enjoying! Yes--reveling in it, aren't we!"
"It's a lovely old place," said Aline defensively.
"And when you've said that you've said everything. You can't liveon scenery and architecture for the rest of your life. There'sthe human element to be thought of. And you're beginning--"
"There goes father," interrupted Aline. "How fast he is walking!George, have you noticed a sort of difference in father theselast few days?"
"I haven't. My specialty is keeping an eye on the rest of thePeters family."
"He seems better somehow. He seems to have almost stoppedsmoking--and I'm very glad, for those cigars were awfully bad forhim. The doctor expressly told him he must stop them, but hewouldn't pay any attention to him. And he seems to take so muchmore exercise. My bedroom is next to his, you know, and everymorning I can hear things going on through the wall--fatherdancing about and puffing a good deal. And one morning I met hisvalet going in with a pair of Indian clubs. I believe father isreally taking himself in hand at last."
George Emerson exploded.
"And about time, too! How much longer are you to go on starvingyourself to death just to give him the resolution to stick to hisdieting? It maddens me to see you at dinner. And it's killingyou. You're getting pale and thin. You can't go on like this."
&
nbsp; A wistful look came over Aline's face.
"I do get a little hungry sometimes--late at night generally."
"You want somebody to take care of you and look after you. I'mthe man. You may think you can fool me; but I can tell. You'reweakening on this Freddie proposition. You're beginning to seethat it won't do. One of these days you're going to come to meand say: 'George, you were right. I take the count. Me for thequiet sneak to the station, without anybody knowing, and thebreak for London, and the wedding at the registrar's.' Oh, Iknow! I couldn't have loved you all this time and not know.You're weakening."
The trouble with these supermen is that they lack reticence. Theydo not know how to omit. They expand their chests and whoop. Anda girl, even the mildest and sweetest of girls--even a girl likeAline Peters--cannot help resenting the note of triumph. Butsupermen despise tact. As far as one can gather, that is thechief difference between them and the ordinary man.
A little frown appeared on Aline's forehead and she set her mouthmutinously.
"I'm not weakening at all," she said, and her voice was--forher--quite acid. "You--you take too much for granted."
George was contemplating the landscape with a conqueror's eye.
"You are beginning to see that it is impossible--this Freddiefoolishness."
"It is not foolishness," said Aline pettishly, tears of annoyancein her eyes. "And I wish you wouldn't call him Freddie."
"He asked me to. He asked me to!"
Aline stamped her foot.
"Well, never mind. Please don't do it."
"Very well, little girl," said George softly. "I wouldn't doanything to hurt you."
The fact that it never even occurred to George Emerson he wasbeing offensively patronizing shows the stern stuff of whichthese supermen are made.
* * *
The Efficient Baxter bicycled broodingly to Market Blandings fortobacco. He brooded for several reasons. He had just seen AlinePeters and George Emerson in confidential talk on the upperterrace, and that was one thing which exercised his mind, for hesuspected George Emerson. He suspected him nebulously as a snakein the grass; as an influence working against the orderlyprogress of events concerning the marriage that had been arrangedand would shortly take place between Miss Peters and theHonorable Frederick Threepwood.
It would be too much to say that he had any idea that George wasputting in such hard and consistent work in his serpentine role;indeed if he could have overheard the conversation just recordedit is probable that Rupert Baxter would have had heart failure;but he had observed the intimacy between the two as he observedmost things in his immediate neighborhood, and he disapproved ofit. It was all very well to say that George Emerson had knownAline Peters since she was a child. If that was so, then in theopinion of the Efficient Baxter he had known her quite longenough and ought to start making the acquaintance of somebodyelse.
He blamed the Honorable Freddie. If the Honorable Freddie hadbeen a more ardent lover he would have spent his time with Aline,and George Emerson would have taken his proper place as one ofthe crowd at the back of the stage. But Freddie's view of thematter seemed to be that he had done all that could be expectedof a chappie in getting engaged to the girl, and that now hemight consider himself at liberty to drop her for a while.
So Baxter, as he bicycled to Market Blandings for tobacco,brooded on Freddie, Aline Peters and George Emerson. He alsobrooded on Mr. Peters and Ashe Marson. Finally he brooded in ageneral way, because he had had very little sleep the past week.
The spectacle of a young man doing his duty and enduringconsiderable discomforts while doing it is painful; but there issuch uplift in it, it affords so excellent a moral picture, thatI cannot omit a short description of the manner in which RupertBaxter had spent the nights which had elapsed since his meetingwith Ashe in the small hours in the hall.
In the gallery which ran above the hall there was a large chair,situated a few paces from the great staircase. On this, in anovercoat--for the nights were chilly--and rubber-soled shoes, theEfficient Baxter had sat, without missing a single night, fromone in the morning until daybreak, waiting, waiting, waiting. Ithad been an ordeal to try the stoutest determination. Nature hadnever intended Baxter for a night bird. He loved his bed. He knewthat doctors held that insufficient sleep made a man pale andsallow, and he had always aimed at the peach-bloom complexionwhich comes from a sensible eight hours between the sheets.
One of the King Georges of England--I forget which--once saidthat a certain number of hours' sleep each night--I cannot recallat the moment how many--made a man something, which for the timebeing has slipped my memory. Baxter agreed with him. It wentagainst all his instincts to sit up in this fashion; but it washis duty and he did it.
It troubled him that, as night after night went by and Ashe, thesuspect, did not walk into the trap so carefully laid for him, hefound an increasing difficulty in keeping awake. The first two orthree of his series of vigils he had passed in an unimpeachablewakefulness, his chin resting on the rail of the gallery and hisears alert for the slightest sound; but he had not been able tomaintain this standard of excellence.
On several occasions he had caught himself in the act of droppingoff, and the last night he had actually wakened with a start tofind it quite light. As his last recollection before that was ofan inky darkness impenetrable to the eye, dismay gripped him witha sudden clutch and he ran swiftly down to the museum. Hisrelief on finding that the scarab was still there had beentempered by thoughts of what might have been.
Baxter, then, as he bicycled to Market Blandings for tobacco, hadgood reason to brood. Having bought his tobacco and observed thelife and thought of the town for half an hour--it was market dayand the normal stagnation of the place was temporarily relievedand brightened by pigs that eluded their keepers, and a bull calfwhich caught a stout farmer at the psychological moment when hewas tying his shoe lace and lifted him six feet--he made his wayto the Emsworth Arms, the most respectable of the eleven inns thecitizens of Market Blandings contrived in some miraculous way tosupport.
In English country towns, if the public houses do not actuallyoutnumber the inhabitants, they all do an excellent trade. It isonly when they are two to one that hard times hit them and setthe innkeepers to blaming the government.
It was not the busy bar, full to overflowing with honest Britishyeomen--many of them in a similar condition--that Baxter sought.His goal was the genteel dining-room on the first floor, where abald and shuffling waiter, own cousin to a tortoise, servedluncheon to those desiring it. Lack of sleep had reduced Baxterto a condition where the presence and chatter of the house partywere insupportable. It was his purpose to lunch at the EmsworthArms and take a nap in an armchair afterward.
He had relied on having the room to himself, for Market Blandingsdid not lunch to a great extent; but to his annoyance anddisappointment the room was already occupied by a man in browntweeds.
Occupied is the correct word, for at first sight this man seemedto fill the room. Never since almost forgotten days when he usedto frequent circuses and side shows, had Baxter seen a fellowhuman being so extraordinarily obese. He was a man about fiftyyears old, gray-haired, of a mauve complexion, and his generalappearance suggested joviality.
To Baxter's chagrin, this person engaged him in conversationdirectly he took his seat at the table. There was only one tablein the room, as is customary in English inns, and it had thedisadvantage that it collected those seated at it into one party.It was impossible for Baxter to withdraw into himself and ignorethis person's advances.
It is doubtful whether he could have done it, however, had theybeen separated by yards of floor, for the fat man was not onlynaturally talkative but, as appeared from his opening remarks,speech had been dammed up within him for some time by lack of asuitable victim.
"Morning!" he began; "nice day. Good for the farmers. I'll moveup to your end of the table if I may, sir. Waiter, bring my beefto this gentleman's end of the table."
He creaked into a chair at Baxter's side and resumed:
"Infernally quiet place, this, sir. I haven't found a soul tospeak to since I arrived yesterday afternoon except deaf-and-dumbrustics. Are you making a long stay here?"
"I live outside the town."
"I pity you. Wouldn't care to do it myself. Had to come here onbusiness and shan't be sorry when it's finished. I give you myword I couldn't sleep a wink last night because of the quiet. Iwas just dropping off when a beast of a bird outside the windowgave a chirrup, and it brought me up with a jerk as thoughsomebody had fired a gun. There's a damned cat somewhere near myroom that mews. I lie in bed waiting for the next mew, all workedup.
"Heaven save me from the country! It may be all right for you, ifyou've got a comfortable home and a pal or two to chat with afterdinner; but you've no conception what it's like in this infernaltown--I suppose it calls itself a town. What a hole! There's achurch down the street. I'm told it's Norman or something.Anyway, it's old. I'm not much of a man for churches as a rule,but I went and took a look at it.
"Then somebody told me there was a fine view from the end of HighStreet; so I went and took a look at that. And now, so far as Ican make out, I've done the sights and exhausted everypossibility of entertainment the town has to provide--unlessthere's another church. I'm so reduced that I'll go and see theMethodist Chapel, if there is one."
Fresh air, want of sleep and the closeness of the dining-roomcombined to make Baxter drowsy. He ate his lunch in a torpor,hardly replying to his companion's remarks, who, for his part,did not seem to wish or to expect replies. It was enough for himto be talking.
"What do people do with themselves in a place like this? Whenthey want amusement, I mean. I suppose it's different if you'vebeen brought up to it. Like being born color-blind or something.You don't notice. It's the visitor who suffers. They've noenterprise in this sort of place. There's a bit of land justoutside here that would make a sweet steeplechase course; naturalbarriers; everything. It hasn't occurred to 'em to do anythingwith it. It makes you despair of your species--that sort ofthing. Now if I--"
Baxter dozed. With his fork still impaling a piece of cold beef,he dropped into that half-awake, half-asleep state which isNature's daytime substitute for the true slumber of the night.The fat man, either not noticing or not caring, talked on. Hisvoice was a steady drone, lulling Baxter to rest.
Suddenly there was a break. Baxter sat up, blinking. He had acurious impression that his companion had said "Hello, Freddie!"and that the door had just opened and closed.
"Eh?" he said.
"Yes?" said the fat man.
"What did you say?"
"I was speaking of--"
"I thought you said, 'Hello, Freddie!'"
His companion eyed him indulgently.
"I thought you were dropping off when I looked at you. You'vebeen dreaming. What should I say, 'Hello, Freddie!' for?"
The conundrum was unanswerable. Baxter did not attempt to answerit. But there remained at the back of his mind a quaint idea thathe had caught sight, as he woke, of the Honorable FrederickThreepwood, his face warningly contorted, vanishing through thedoorway. Yet what could the Honorable Freddie be doing at theEmsworth Arms?
A solution of the difficulty occurred to him: he had dreamed hehad seen Freddie and that had suggested the words which, reasonpointed out, his companion could hardly have spoken. Even if theHonorable Freddie should enter the room, this fat man, who wasapparently a drummer of some kind, would certainly not know whohe was, nor would he address him so familiarly.
Yes, that must be the explanation. After all, the quaintestthings happened in dreams. Last night, when he had fallen asleepin his chair, he had dreamed that he was sitting in a glass casein the museum, making faces at Lord Emsworth, Mr. Peters, andBeach, the butler, who were trying to steal him, under theimpression that he was a scarab of the reign of Cheops of theFourth Dynasty--a thing he would never have done when awake. Yes;he must certainly have been dreaming.
In the bedroom into which he had dashed to hide himself, ondiscovering that the dining-room was in possession of theEfficient Baxter, the Honorable Freddie sat on a rickety chair,scowling. He elaborated a favorite dictum of his:
"You can't take a step anywhere without stumbling over that damnfeller, Baxter!"
He wondered whether Baxter had seen him. He wondered whetherBaxter had recognized him. He wondered whether Baxter had heardR. Jones say, "Hello, Freddie!"
He wondered, if such should be the case, whether R. Jones'presence of mind and native resource had been equal to explainingaway the remark.