"Well, all I can say is," resumed Judson, "that I hope to goodness nothing won"t happen to Freddie of that kind; for it"s not every girl that would have him."
There was a murmur of a.s.sent to this truth.
"Now your Miss Peters," said Judson tolerantly--"she seems a nice little thing."
"She would be pleased to hear you say so," said Joan.
"Joan Valentine!" cried Judson, bringing his hands down on the tablecloth with a bang. "I"ve just remembered it. That was the name of the girl Freddie used to write the letters and poems to; and that"s who it is I"ve been trying all along to think you reminded me of, Miss Simpson. You"re the living image of Freddie"s Miss Joan Valentine."
Ashe was not normally a young man of particularly ready wit; but on this occasion it may have been that the shock of this revelation, added to the fact that something must be done speedily if Joan"s discomposure was not to become obvious to all present, quickened his intelligence. Joan, usually so sure of herself, so ready of resource, had gone temporarily to pieces.
She was quite white, and her eyes met Ashe"s with almost a hunted expression.
If the attention of the company was to be diverted, something drastic must be done. A mere verbal attempt to change the conversation would be useless. Inspiration descended on Ashe.
In the days of his childhood in Hayling, Ma.s.sachusetts, he had played truant from Sunday school again and again in order to frequent the society of one Eddie Waffles, the official bad boy of the locality. It was not so much Eddie"s charm of conversation which had attracted him--though that had been great--as the fact that Eddie, among his other accomplishments, could give a lifelike imitation of two cats fighting in a back yard; and Ashe felt that he could never be happy until he had acquired this gift from the master.
In course of time he had done so. It might be that his absences from Sunday school in the cause of art had left him in later years a trifle shaky on the subject of the Kings of Judah, but his hard-won accomplishment had made him in request at every smoking concert at Oxford; and it saved the situation now.
"Have you ever heard two cats fighting in a back yard?" he inquired casually of his neighbor, Miss Willoughby.
The next moment the performance was in full swing. Young Master Waffles, who had devoted considerable study to his subject, had conceived the combat of his imaginary cats in a broad, almost Homeric, vein. The unpleasantness opened with a low gurgling sound, answered by another a shade louder and possibly more querulous. A momentary silence was followed by a long-drawn note, like rising wind, cut off abruptly and succeeded by a grumbling mutter. The response to this was a couple of sharp howls. Both parties to the contest then indulged in a discontented whining, growing louder and louder until the air was full of electric menace. And then, after another sharp silence, came war, noisy and overwhelming.
Standing at Master Waffles" side, you could follow almost every movement of that intricate fray, and mark how now one and now the other of the battlers gained a short-lived advantage. It was a great fight. Shrewd blows were taken and given, and in the eye of the imagination you could see the air thick with flying fur.
Louder and louder grew the din; and then, at its height, it ceased in one crescendo of tumult, and all was still, save for a faint, angry moaning.
Such was the cat fight of Master Eddie Waffles; and Ashe, though falling short of the master, as a pupil must, rendered it faithfully and with energy.
To say that the attention 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 p.r.o.nounced 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 pa.s.s 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 who believed that all mortal ailments could be cured by cold showers and brisk walks. They were all alike and they nearly killed you. His worst nightmare was the one where he dreamed he was back at Muldoon"s, leading his horse up that endless hill outside the village.
He would not stand it! He would be hanged if he"d stand it! He would defy Ashe. But if he defied Ashe, Ashe would go away; and then whom could he find to recover his lost scarab?
Mr. Peters began to appreciate the true meaning of the phrase about the horns of a dilemma. The horns of this dilemma occupied his attention until the end of the dinner. He shifted uneasily from one to the other and back again. He rose from the table in a thoroughly overwrought condition of mind. And then, somehow, in the course of the evening, he found himself alone in the hall, not a dozen feet from the unlocked museum door.
It was not immediately that he appreciated the significance of this fact. He had come to the hall because its solitude suited his mood. It was only after he had finished a cigar--Ashe could not stop his smoking after dinner--that it suddenly flashed on him that he had ready at hand a solution of all his troubles. A brief minute"s resolute action and the scarab would be his again, and the menace of Ashe a thing of the past. He glanced about him.
Yes; he was alone.
Not once since the removal of the scarab had begun to exercise his mind had Mr. Peters contemplated for an instant the possibility of recovering it himself. The prospect of the unpleasantness that would ensue had been enough to make him regard such an action as out of the question. The risk was too great to be considered for a moment; but here he was, in a position where the risk was negligible!