November 18, 2025 • 33 mins
Join the absent-minded Earl of Emsworth as he inadvertently misplaces the pride of his scarab collection! American millionaire J. Preston Peters is offering a hefty $5000 reward for its safe return, but discretion is key—especially since Peters daughter is engaged to Emsworths son. Enter Joan Valentine and Ashe Marson, each determined to claim the reward; she as Aline Peters’ ladies maid and he as Mr. Peters’ valet. Their quest leads them to the grand Blandings Castle, where the ever-watchful Efficient Baxter poses a formidable challenge. This delightful caper is, in my humble opinion, one of Wodehouse’s most hilarious works. –Debra Lynn
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Chapter five, Part one of Something New. This is a
LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain.
For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org.
Something New by P. G. Woodhouse, Chapter five, Part one.
(00:26):
The four fifteen Express slid softly out of Paddington Station,
and ashe Marson settled himself in the corner seat of
his second class compartment. Opposite him, Joan Valentine had begun
to read a magazine along the corridor in a first
class smoking compartment. Mister Peters was lighting a big black
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cigar still farther along the corridor in a first class,
non smoking compartment. Aileen Peters looked through the window and
thought of many things. In English trains, the tipping classes
traveled first, ballets, ladies, maids, footmen, nurses and head stillroom maids,
second and housemaids, grooms and minor and inferior stillroom maids third.
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But for these social distinctions, the whole fabric of society
would collapse, and anarchy stock naked through the land, as
in the United States. Ashe was feeling remarkably light hearted,
he wished he had not bought Joan that magazine, and
thus deprived himself temporarily of the pleasure of her conversation.
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But that was the only flaw in his happiness. With
the starting of the train, which might be considered the
formal and official beginning of the delicate and dangerous enterprise
on which he had embarked, he had definitely come to
the conclusion that the life adventurous was the life for him.
He had frequently suspected this to be the case, but
it had required the actual experiment to bring certainty. Almost
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more than physical courage, the ideal adventurer needs a certain
lively inquisitiveness, the quality of not being content to mind
his own affairs, and in Ash this quality was highly
developed from boyhood up. He had always been interested in
things that were none of his business, and it is
just that attribute which the modern young man, as a rule,
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so sadly lacks. The modern young man may do adventurous
things if they are thrust on him, but left to himself,
he will edge away uncomfortably and look in the other direction.
When the goddess of adventures smiles at him. Training and
tradition alike pluck at his sleeve and urge him not
to risk making himself ridiculous, and from sheer horror of
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laying himself open to the charge of not minding his
own business, he falls into a stolid disregard of all
that is out of the ordinary and exciting. He tells
himself that the shriek from the lonely house he passed
just now was only the high note of some amateur songstress,
and that the maiden in distress whom he saw pursued
by the ruffian with a knife, was merely earning the
(03:03):
salary paid her by some motion picture firm. And he
proceeds on his way, looking neither to left nor right.
Ash had none of this degenerate coyness toward adventure, though
born with an easy distance of Boston and deposited by
circumstances in London. He possessed, nevertheless, to a remarkable degree,
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that quality so essentially the property of the New Yorker,
the quality known, for want of a more polished word,
as rubber. It is true that it had needed the
eloquence of Joan Valentine to stir him from his groove,
but that was because he was also lazy. He loved
new sights and new experiences. Yes, he was happy the
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rattle of the train shaped itself into a lively march.
He told himself that he had found the right occupation
for a young man in the spring. Joan, meantime, intrenched
behind her magazine, was also busy with her thoughts. She
was not reading the magazine. She held it before her
as a protection, knowing that if she laid it down,
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Ash would begin to talk, and just at present, she
had no desire for conversation. She, like Ash, was contemplating
the immediate future, but unlike him, was not doing so
with much pleasure. She was regretting heartily that she had
not resisted the temptation to uplift this young man, and
wishing that she had left him to wallow in this
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slothful peace in which she had found him. It is
curious how frequently in this world our attempts to stimulate
and uplift swoop back on us and smite us like boomerangs.
Ash's presence was the direct outcome of her lecture on enterprise,
and it added a complication to an already complicated venture.
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She did her best to be fair to Ash. It
was not his fault that he was about to try
to deprive her of five thousand dollars, which she looked
on as her personal property. But illogic, she found herself
feeling a little hostile. She glanced furtively at him over
the magazine, choosing by ill chance a moment when he
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had just directed his gaze at her. Their eyes met,
and there was nothing for it but to talk. So
she tucked away her hostility in a corner of her
mind where she could find it again when she wanted it,
and prepared for the time being to be friendly. After all,
except for the fact that he was her rival, this
was a pleasant and amusing young man, and one for whom,
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until he made the announcement that had changed her whole
attitude toward him, she had entertained a distinct feeling of friendship.
Nothing warmer. There was something about him that made her
feel that she would have liked to stroke his hair
in a motherly way, and straighten his tie, and have
cozy chats with him in darkened rooms by the light
of open fires, and make him tell her his inmost thoughts,
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and stimulate him to do something really worth while with
his life. But this, she held, was merely the instinct
of a generous nature to be kind and helpful even
to a comparative stranger. Well, mister Marson, she said, here,
we are exactly what I was thinking, said, ashe he
was conscious of a marked increase in the exhilaration the
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starting of the expedition had brought to him. At the
back of his mind, he realized there had been all
along a kind of wistful resentment at the change in
this girl's manner toward him. During the brief conversation when
he had told her of his having secured his present situation,
and later, only a few minutes back on the platform
of Paddington's station, he had sensed a coldness, a certain hostility,
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so different from her pleasant friendliness at their first meeting.
She had returned now to her earlier manner, and he
was surprised at the difference it made. He felt somehow younger,
more alive. The lilt of the train's rattle changed to
a gay rag time. This was curious, because Joan was
nothing more than a friend. He was not in love
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with her. One does not fall in love with a
girl whom one has met only three times. One is attracted, yes,
but one does not fall in love. A moment's reflection
enabled him to diagnose his sensations correctly. This odd impulse
to leap across the compartment and kiss Joan was not love.
It was merely the natural desire of a good hearted
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young man to be decently chummy with his species. Well
what do you think of it all, mister Marson, said Joan,
Are you sorry or glad that you let me persuade
you to do this perfectly mad thing? I feel responsible
for you. You know, if it had not been for me,
you would have been comfortably in a Rundel street writing
your wand of death. I'm glad you don't feel any
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misgivings now that you are actually committed to domestic service.
Not one. Joan, against her will, smiled approval on this
uncompromising attitude. This young man might be her rival, but
his demeanor on the eve of perilous times appealed to her.
That was the spirit she liked and admired, that reckless
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acceptance of whatever might come. It was the spirit in
which she herself had gone into the affair, and she
was pleased to find that it animated Ash also, though
to be sure, it had its drawbacks and made his
rivalry the more dangerous. This reflection injected a touch of
the old hostility into her manner. I wonder whether you
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will continue to feel so brave? What do you mean?
Joan perceived that she was in danger of going too far.
She had no wish to unmask Ash at the expense
of revealing her own secret. She must resist the temptation
to hint that she had discovered his I meant, she
said quickly that from what I have seen of him,
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mister Peters seems likely to be a rather trying man
to work for. Ash's face cleared for a moment, he
had almost suspected that she had guessed his Errand yes,
I imagine he will be. He is what you might
call quick tempered. He has dyspepsia. You know. I know
what he wants is plenty of fresh air and no
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cigars in a regular course of those Larsen exercises that
amused you so much, Joan laughed. Are you going to
try and persuade mister Peters to twist himself about like that?
Do let me see it? If you do, I wish
I could do suggest it to him. Don't you think
he would resent it? From a valet? I keep forgetting
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that you are a valet, you look so unlike one.
Old Peters didn't think so. He rather complimented me on
my appearance. He said, I was ordinary looking. I shouldn't
have called you that. You look so very strong and fit.
Surely there are muscular valets. Well, yes, I suppose there are.
Ash looked at her, he was thinking that never in
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his life had he seen a girl so amazingly pretty.
What it was that she had done to herself was
beyond him. But something, some trick of dress, had given
her a touch of the demure that made her irresistible.
She was dressed in sober black, the ideal background for
her fairness. While on the subject, he said, I suppose
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you know you don't look in the least like a
lady's maid. You look like a disguised princess. She laughed.
That's very nice of you, mister Marson, But you're quite wrong.
Anyone could tell it was a lady's made a mile away.
You aren't criticizing the dress. Surely the dress is all right.
It's the general effect. I don't think your expression is right.
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It's it's there's too much attack in it. You aren't
meek enough. Jane's eyes opened wide, meek. Have you ever
seen an English lady's maid, mister Marson, Why no, Now
that I come to think of it, I don't believe
I have. Well, let me tell you that meekness is
her last quality. Why should she be meek? Doesn't she
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go in after the groom of the chambers? Go in?
Go in? Where in to dinner? She smiled at the
sight of his bewildered face. I'm afraid you don't know
much about the etiquette of the new world you have
entered so rashly. Didn't you know that the rules of
precedence among the servants of a big house in England
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are more rigid and complicated than an English society. You're joking.
I'm not joking. You try going in to dinner out
of your proper place. When we get to blandings and
see what happens. A public rebuke from the butler is
the least you could expect. A bead of perspiration appeared
on Ash's forehead. Heavens, he whispered. If a butler publicly
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rebuked me, I think I should commit suicide. I couldn't
survive it. He stared with fallen jaw into the abyss
of horror into which he had leaped so lightheartedly. The
servant problem on this large scale had been nonexistent for
him until now. In the days of his youth. At Hailing, Massachusetts,
his needs had been ministered to by a muscular swede. Later,
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at Oxford there had been his scout and his bed maker,
harmless persons, both provided you locked up your whiskey. And
in London his last phase, a succession of servitors of
the type of the dish heeveld maid at number seven
had tended him that dotted about the land of his
adoption there were houses in which larger staffs of domestics
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were maintained. He had been vaguely aware. Indeed, in gridly
Quail Investigator The Adventure of the Missing Marquis, number four
of the series, he had drawn a picture of the
home life of a duke in which a butler and
two powdered footmen had played their parts. But he had
had no idea that rigid and complicated rules of etiquette
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swayed the private lives of these individuals. If he had
given the matter a thought, he had supposed that when
the dinner hour arrived, the butler and the two footmen
would troop into the kitchen and squash in at the
table wherever they found room. Tell me, he said, tell
me all you know. I feel as though I had
escaped a frightful disaster. You probably have. I don't suppose
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there is anything so terrible as a snub from a butler.
If there is, I can't think of it. When I
was at Oxford, I used to go and stay with
a friend of mine who had a butler that looked
like a Roman emperor in swallow tales. He terrified me.
I used to grovel to the man, Please give me
all the pointers you can well, as mister Peters valet,
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I suppose you will be rather a big man. I
shan't feel it, however large the house party is, mister
Peters is sure to be the principal guest, so your
standing will be correspondingly magnificent. You come after the butler,
the housekeeper, the groom of the chambers, Lord Elmsworth's valet,
Lady Anne Warblington's lady's maid. Who is she? Lady Anne,
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Lord Elmsworth's sister. She has lived with him since his
wife died. What was I saying? Oh? Yes, after them,
come the honorable Frederick Threepwood's valet, and myself, and then you.
I'm not so high up. Then after all, yes you are.
There's a whole crowd who come after you. It all
depends on how many other guests there are besides mister Peters.
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I suppose I charge in at the head of a
drove of housemaids and scullery maids, My dear mister Marson.
If a housemaid or a scullery maid tried to get
into the steward's room and have her meals with us,
she would be rebuked by the butler lynched. I should
think kitchen maids and scullery maids eat in the kitchen.
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Chauffeur's footmen under butler. Pantry boys, hallboy odd man, and
steward's room footmen take their meals in the servants hall,
waited on by the hall boy. The stillroom maids have
breakfast and tea in the stillroom, and dinner and supper
in the hall. The housemaids and nursery maids have breakfast
and tea in the housemaid's sitting room and didn and
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supper in the hall. The head housemaid ranks next to
the head stillroom maid. The laundry maids have a place
of their own near the laundry, and the head laundry
maid ranks above the head housemaid. The chef has his
meals in a room of his own near the kitchen.
Is there anything else I can tell you, mister Marson,
Ash was staring at her with vacant eyes. He shook
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his head dumbly. We stop at Swindon in half an hour,
said Jones softly. Don't you think you would be wise
to get out there and go straight back to London?
Mister Marson, think of all you would avoid, ashe found speech,
it's a nightmare. You would be far happier in Arundel Street.
Why don't you get out at Swindon and go back?
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Ash shook his head. I can't. There's there's a reason.
Joan picked up her magazine again. Hostility had come out
from the corner into which she had tucked it away,
and was once more filling her mind. She he knew
it was illogical, but she could not help it. For
a moment, during her revelations of servants etiquette, she had
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allowed herself to hope that she had frightened her rival
out of the field and the disappointment made her feel irritable.
She buried herself in a short story, encountered ashe's attempts
at renewing the conversation with cold monosyllables, until he ceased
his efforts and fell into a moody silence. He was
feeling hurt and angry. Her sudden coldness, following on the
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friendliness with which she had talked so long, puzzled and
infuriated him. He felt as though he had been snubbed,
and for no reason. He resented the defensive magazine, though
he had bought it for her himself. He resented her
attitude of having ceased to recognize his existence. A sadness,
a filmy melancholy, crept over him. He brooded on the
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unutterable silliness of humanity, especially the female portion of it,
in erecting artificial barriers to friendship. It was so unreasonable.
At their first meeting, when she might have been excused
for showing defensiveness, she had treated him with unaffected ease.
When that meeting had ended, there was a tacit understanding
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between them that all the preliminary awkwardnesses of the first
stages of acquaintanceship were to be considered as having been passed,
and that when they met again, if they ever did,
it would be his friends. And here she was luring
him on with apparent friendliness, and then withdrawing into herself,
as though he had presumed a rebellious spirit took possession
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of him. He didn't care. Let her be cold and distant.
He would show her that she had no monopoly of
those qualities. He would not speak to her until she
spoke to him, and when she spoke to him, he
would freeze her with his courteous but bleakly aloof indifference.
The train rattled on, Joan read her magazine. Silence reigned
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in the second class compartment. Swindon was reached and passed.
Darkness fell on the land. The journey began to seem
interminable to ash, but presently there came a creaking of brakes,
and the train jerked itself to another stop. A voice
on the platform made itself heard, calling Market Blandings, Market
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Blandings Station. The village of Market Blandings is one of
those sleepy English hamlets that modern progress has failed to touch,
except by the addition of a railroad station and a
room over the grocer's shop, where moving pictures are on
view on Tuesdays and Fridays. The church is Norman, and
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the intelligence of the majority of the natives Paleozoic. To
alight at market Blandings Station in the dusk of a
rather chilly spring day, when the southwest wind has shifted
to due east and the thrifty inhabitants have not yet
lit their windows, is to be smitten with the feeling
that one is at the edge of the world with
no friends near Ash, as he stood beside mister Peter's
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baggage and raked the unsympathetic darkness with a dreary eye,
gave himself up to melancholy. Above him, an oil lamp
shed a meager light. Along the platform, a small but
sturdy porter was juggling with a milk can. The east
wind explored Ash's system with chilly fingers. Somewhere out in
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the darkness into which mister Peters and Aileen had already
vanished in a large automobile lay the castle with its
butler and its fearful coat of etiquette. Soon the cart
that was to convey him and the trunks thither would
be arriving. He shivered Out of the gloom and into
the feeble rays of the oil lamp came Joan Valentine.
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She had been away tucking Aileen into the car. She
looked warm and cheerful. She was smiling in the old
friendly way. If girls realized the responsibilities, they would be
so careful when they smiled that they would probably abandon
the practice altogether. There are moments in a man's life
when a girl's smile can have as important results as
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an explosion of dynamite. In the course of their brief acquaintance,
Joan had smiled at Ash many times, but the conditions
governing those occasions had not been such as to permit
him to be seriously affected. He had been pleased on
such occasions. He had admired her smile in a detached
and critical spirit, but he had not been overwhelmed by it.
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The frame of mind necessary for that result had been lacking. Now, however,
after five minutes of solitude on the depressing platform of
market landing station, he was what the spiritualists call a
sensitive subject. He had reached that depth of gloom and
bodily discomfort when a sudden smile has all the effect
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of strong liquor and good news, administered simultaneously, warming the
blood and comforting the soul, and generally turning the world
from a bleak desert into a land flowing with milk
and honey. It is not too much to say that
held before Joan's smile, it was so entirely unexpected. He
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clutched mister Peter's steamer trunk. In his emotion. All his
resolutions to be cold and distant were swept away. He
had the feeling that, in a friendless universe, here was
somebody who was fond of him and glad to see him.
A smile of such importance demands analysis, and in this
case repays it, For many things lay behind this smile
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of Joan Valentine's on the platform of market landing station.
In the first place, she had had another of her
swift changes of mood and had once again tucked away
hostility into its corner. She had thought it over and
had come to the conclusion that, as she had no
logical grievance against Ash, for anything he had done to
be distant to him was the behavior of a cat. Consequently,
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she resolved, when they should meet again, to resume her
attitude of good fellowship that in itself would have been
enough to make her smile. There was another reason, however,
which had nothing to do with ash. While she had
been tucking Aileen into the automobile, she met the eye
of the driver of that vehicle and had perceived a
curious look in it, a look of amazement and sheer terror.
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A moment later, when Aileen called the driver Freddy, she
had understood no wonder the honorable Freddy had looked as
though he had seen a ghost. It would be a
relief to the poor fellow. When, as he undoubtedly would
do in the course of the drive, he inquired of
Aileen the name of her maid, and was told that
it was Simpson. He would mutter something about reminds me
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of a girl I used to know, and would brood
on the remarkable way in which nature produces doubles. But
he had a bad moment, and it was partly at
the recollection of his face that Jones smiled. A third
reason was because the sight of the honorable Freddy had
reminded her that our Jones had said he had written
her poetry. That thought, too, had contributed towards the smile
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which so dazzled Ash, ashe, not being miraculously intuitive, accepted
the easier explanation that she smiled because she was glad
to be in his company. And this thought, coming on
top of his mood of despair and general dissatisfaction with
everything Mundane, acted on him like some powerful chemical. In
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every man's life, there is generally one moment to which,
in later years he can look back and say, in
this moment, I fell in love. Such a moment came
to Ash now betwixt the stirrup and the ground. Mercy,
I asked, Mercy, I found, so, sings the poet. And
so it was with Ash in the almost incredibly brief time.
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It took the small but sturdy porter to roll a
milk can across the platform and hump it with a
clang against other milk cans similarly treated a moment before
ashe fell in love. The word is so loosely used
to cover a thousand varying shades of earth, from the
volcanic passion of an antony for a Cleopatra to the
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tepid preference of a grocer's assistant for the Irish maid
at the second house on Main Street, as opposed to
the Norwegian maid at the first house passed the post office.
The mere statement that ashe fell in love is not
a sufficient description of his feelings as he stood grasping
mister Peter's steamer trunk. Analysis is required from his fourteenth
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year onward, ashe had been in love many times. His
sensations in the case of Joan were neither the terrific
upheaval that had caused him in his fifteenth year to
collect twenty eight photographs of the heroine of the road
opera of a musical comedy which had visited the Hailing
opera House, nor the milder flame that had caused him,
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when at college, to give up smoking for a week
and try to read the complete works of Ella Wheeler Wilcox.
His love was something that lay between these two poles.
He did not wish the station platform of Market Blandings
to become suddenly congested with red Indians so that he
might save Joan's life, and he did not wish to
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give up anything at all. But he was conscious, to
the very depths of his being that a future in
which Joan did not figure would be so insupportable as
not to bear considering. And in the immediate present, he
very strongly favored the idea of clasping Joan in his
arms and kissing her until further notice. Mingled with these
feelings was an excited gratitude to her for coming to
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him like this, with that electric smile on her face,
a stunned realization that she was a thousand times prettier
than he had ever imagined, and a humility that threatened
to make him lose his clutch on the steamer trunk
and roll about at her feet, yapping like a dog. Gratitude,
so far as he could dissect his tangled emotion, was
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the predominating ingredient of his mood. Only once in his
life he felt so passionately grateful to any human being,
and that occasion, too, the object of his gratitude had
been feminine. Years before, when a boy in his father's
home in distant hailing Massachusetts, those in authority had commanded
that he, in his eleventh year, and as shy as
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one can be only at that interesting age, should rise
in the presence of a room full of strangers adult
guests and recite the wreck of the Hespers. He had risen,
He had blushed, he had stammered, he had contrived to whisper.
It was the schooner hespers. And then in a corner
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of the room, a little girl, for no properly explained reason,
had burst out crying. She had yelled, she had bellowed,
and would not be comforted. And in the ensuing confusion,
ashe had escaped to the woodpile at the bottom of
the garden, saved by a miracle. All his life he
had remembered the gratitude he had felt for that little
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timely girl, and never until now had he experience against
any other similar spasm. But as he looked at Joan,
he found himself renewing that emotion of fifteen years ago.
She was about to speak in a sort of trance.
He watched her lips part. He waited, almost reverently, for
the first words she should speak to him in her
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new role of the only authentic goddess. Isn't it a shame?
She said, I've just put a penny in the chocolate
slot machine, and it's empty of a good mind to
write to the company. Ashe felt as though he were
listening to the strains of some grand sweet anthem, the
small but sturdy porter, weary of his work among the
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milk cans, or perhaps let us not do him an
injustice even in thought. Having finished it, approached them the
cart from the castles. Here in the gloom beyond him
there gleamed a light which had not been there before.
The meditative snort of a horse supported his statement. He
began to deal as authoritatively with mister Peters steamer trunk
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as he had dealt with the milk cans. At last
said Joan, I hope it's a covered cart. I'm frozen.
Let's go and see. Ash followed her with the gait
of an automaton. Cold is the ogre that drives all
beautiful things into hiding below the surface of a frost
bound garden. Their lurk, hidden bulbs which are only biding
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their time to burst forth in a riot of laughing color.
But shivering nature dare not put forth her flowers until
the ogre has gone. Not otherwise does cold suppressed love.
A man in an open cart on an English spring
night may continue to be in love, but love is
not the emotion uppermost in his bosom. It shrinks within
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him and waits for better times. The cart was not
a covered cart. It was open to the four winds
of heaven, of which the one at present active proceeded
from the bleak east. To This fact may be attributed
Ash's swift recovery from the exalted mood into which Joan's
smile had thrown him, his almost instant emergence from the
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trance deep down in him. He was aware that his
attitude towards Joan had not changed, but his conscious self
was too fully occupied with the almost hopeless task of
keeping his blood circulating to permitive thoughts of love. Before
the cart had traveled twenty yards, he was a mere
chunk of frozen misery. After an eternity of winding roads,
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darkened cottages, and black fields and hedges, the cart turned
in at a massive iron gate, which stood open, giving
entrance to a smooth gravel drive. Here the way ran
for nearly a mile through an open park of great trees,
and was then swallowed in the darkness of dense shrubberies.
Presently to the left appeared lights, at first in ones
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and twos, shining out and vanishing again. Then, as the
shrubberies ended in the smooth lawns and tears, garrases began
blazing down on the travelers. From a score of windows
with the heartening effect of fires on a winter night
against the pale, gray sky, Blanding's castle stood out like
a mountain. It was a noble pile of early Tudor building.
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Its history is recorded in England's history books, and Violet
LeDuc has written of its architecture. It dominated the surrounding country.
The feature of it which impressed Ash most at this moment, however,
was the fact that it looked warm, and for the
first time since the drive began, he found himself in
a mood that approximated cheerfulness. It was a little early
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to begin feeling cheerful, he discovered, for the journey was
by no means over. Arrived within sight of the castle,
the cart began a detour which ten minutes later brought
it under an arch and over cobblestones to the rear
of the building, where it eventually pulled up in front
of a great door. Ashe descended painfully and beat his
(31:02):
feet against the cobbles, he helped Joan to climb down.
Joan was apparently in a gentle glow. Women seem impervious
to cold. The door opened, warm kitcheny scents came through it.
Strong men hurried out to take down the trunks, while
fair women in the shape of two nervous scullery maids
(31:22):
approached Joan and Ash and bobbed Curtsey's This under more
normal conditions would have been enough to unman Ash, but
in his frozen state, a mere curtseying scullery maid expended
herself harmlessly on him. He even acknowledged the greeting with
a kindly nod. The scullery maids, it seemed, were acting
(31:43):
in much the same capacity as the attaches of royalty.
One was there to conduct Joan to the presence of
Missus 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
(32:05):
turned to the right. Ash'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. Ash's
(32:26):
guide opened the door. The gentleman, mister Beach, said she
and scuttled away to the less rarefied atmosphere of the kitchen.
Ash's first impression of Beech the butler, was one of tension.
Other people confronted for the first time with Beech had
felt the same. He had that strained air of being
(32:46):
on the very point of bursting that one sees in
bullfrogs and toy balloons. Nervous and imaginative men meeting Beech
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
(33:07):
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. Ash, however,
approaching him with a fresh eye, had the feeling that
(33:27):
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. End of Chapter five, Part one,
Chapter five, Part one of Something New. This is a
LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain.
For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org.
Something New by P. G. Woodhouse, Chapter five, Part one.
(00:26):
The four fifteen Express slid softly out of Paddington Station,
and ashe Marson settled himself in the corner seat of
his second class compartment. Opposite him, Joan Valentine had begun
to read a magazine along the corridor in a first
class smoking compartment. Mister Peters was lighting a big black
(00:46):
cigar still farther along the corridor in a first class,
non smoking compartment. Aileen Peters looked through the window and
thought of many things. In English trains, the tipping classes
traveled first, ballets, ladies, maids, footmen, nurses and head stillroom maids,
second and housemaids, grooms and minor and inferior stillroom maids third.
(01:11):
But for these social distinctions, the whole fabric of society
would collapse, and anarchy stock naked through the land, as
in the United States. Ashe was feeling remarkably light hearted,
he wished he had not bought Joan that magazine, and
thus deprived himself temporarily of the pleasure of her conversation.
(01:33):
But that was the only flaw in his happiness. With
the starting of the train, which might be considered the
formal and official beginning of the delicate and dangerous enterprise
on which he had embarked, he had definitely come to
the conclusion that the life adventurous was the life for him.
He had frequently suspected this to be the case, but
it had required the actual experiment to bring certainty. Almost
(01:58):
more than physical courage, the ideal adventurer needs a certain
lively inquisitiveness, the quality of not being content to mind
his own affairs, and in Ash this quality was highly
developed from boyhood up. He had always been interested in
things that were none of his business, and it is
just that attribute which the modern young man, as a rule,
(02:19):
so sadly lacks. The modern young man may do adventurous
things if they are thrust on him, but left to himself,
he will edge away uncomfortably and look in the other direction.
When the goddess of adventures smiles at him. Training and
tradition alike pluck at his sleeve and urge him not
to risk making himself ridiculous, and from sheer horror of
(02:41):
laying himself open to the charge of not minding his
own business, he falls into a stolid disregard of all
that is out of the ordinary and exciting. He tells
himself that the shriek from the lonely house he passed
just now was only the high note of some amateur songstress,
and that the maiden in distress whom he saw pursued
by the ruffian with a knife, was merely earning the
(03:03):
salary paid her by some motion picture firm. And he
proceeds on his way, looking neither to left nor right.
Ash had none of this degenerate coyness toward adventure, though
born with an easy distance of Boston and deposited by
circumstances in London. He possessed, nevertheless, to a remarkable degree,
(03:24):
that quality so essentially the property of the New Yorker,
the quality known, for want of a more polished word,
as rubber. It is true that it had needed the
eloquence of Joan Valentine to stir him from his groove,
but that was because he was also lazy. He loved
new sights and new experiences. Yes, he was happy the
(03:46):
rattle of the train shaped itself into a lively march.
He told himself that he had found the right occupation
for a young man in the spring. Joan, meantime, intrenched
behind her magazine, was also busy with her thoughts. She
was not reading the magazine. She held it before her
as a protection, knowing that if she laid it down,
(04:08):
Ash would begin to talk, and just at present, she
had no desire for conversation. She, like Ash, was contemplating
the immediate future, but unlike him, was not doing so
with much pleasure. She was regretting heartily that she had
not resisted the temptation to uplift this young man, and
wishing that she had left him to wallow in this
(04:28):
slothful peace in which she had found him. It is
curious how frequently in this world our attempts to stimulate
and uplift swoop back on us and smite us like boomerangs.
Ash's presence was the direct outcome of her lecture on enterprise,
and it added a complication to an already complicated venture.
(04:48):
She did her best to be fair to Ash. It
was not his fault that he was about to try
to deprive her of five thousand dollars, which she looked
on as her personal property. But illogic, she found herself
feeling a little hostile. She glanced furtively at him over
the magazine, choosing by ill chance a moment when he
(05:09):
had just directed his gaze at her. Their eyes met,
and there was nothing for it but to talk. So
she tucked away her hostility in a corner of her
mind where she could find it again when she wanted it,
and prepared for the time being to be friendly. After all,
except for the fact that he was her rival, this
was a pleasant and amusing young man, and one for whom,
(05:30):
until he made the announcement that had changed her whole
attitude toward him, she had entertained a distinct feeling of friendship.
Nothing warmer. There was something about him that made her
feel that she would have liked to stroke his hair
in a motherly way, and straighten his tie, and have
cozy chats with him in darkened rooms by the light
of open fires, and make him tell her his inmost thoughts,
(05:53):
and stimulate him to do something really worth while with
his life. But this, she held, was merely the instinct
of a generous nature to be kind and helpful even
to a comparative stranger. Well, mister Marson, she said, here,
we are exactly what I was thinking, said, ashe he
was conscious of a marked increase in the exhilaration the
(06:15):
starting of the expedition had brought to him. At the
back of his mind, he realized there had been all
along a kind of wistful resentment at the change in
this girl's manner toward him. During the brief conversation when
he had told her of his having secured his present situation,
and later, only a few minutes back on the platform
of Paddington's station, he had sensed a coldness, a certain hostility,
(06:40):
so different from her pleasant friendliness at their first meeting.
She had returned now to her earlier manner, and he
was surprised at the difference it made. He felt somehow younger,
more alive. The lilt of the train's rattle changed to
a gay rag time. This was curious, because Joan was
nothing more than a friend. He was not in love
(07:02):
with her. One does not fall in love with a
girl whom one has met only three times. One is attracted, yes,
but one does not fall in love. A moment's reflection
enabled him to diagnose his sensations correctly. This odd impulse
to leap across the compartment and kiss Joan was not love.
It was merely the natural desire of a good hearted
(07:24):
young man to be decently chummy with his species. Well
what do you think of it all, mister Marson, said Joan,
Are you sorry or glad that you let me persuade
you to do this perfectly mad thing? I feel responsible
for you. You know, if it had not been for me,
you would have been comfortably in a Rundel street writing
your wand of death. I'm glad you don't feel any
(07:47):
misgivings now that you are actually committed to domestic service.
Not one. Joan, against her will, smiled approval on this
uncompromising attitude. This young man might be her rival, but
his demeanor on the eve of perilous times appealed to her.
That was the spirit she liked and admired, that reckless
(08:08):
acceptance of whatever might come. It was the spirit in
which she herself had gone into the affair, and she
was pleased to find that it animated Ash also, though
to be sure, it had its drawbacks and made his
rivalry the more dangerous. This reflection injected a touch of
the old hostility into her manner. I wonder whether you
(08:28):
will continue to feel so brave? What do you mean?
Joan perceived that she was in danger of going too far.
She had no wish to unmask Ash at the expense
of revealing her own secret. She must resist the temptation
to hint that she had discovered his I meant, she
said quickly that from what I have seen of him,
(08:49):
mister Peters seems likely to be a rather trying man
to work for. Ash's face cleared for a moment, he
had almost suspected that she had guessed his Errand yes,
I imagine he will be. He is what you might
call quick tempered. He has dyspepsia. You know. I know
what he wants is plenty of fresh air and no
(09:10):
cigars in a regular course of those Larsen exercises that
amused you so much, Joan laughed. Are you going to
try and persuade mister Peters to twist himself about like that?
Do let me see it? If you do, I wish
I could do suggest it to him. Don't you think
he would resent it? From a valet? I keep forgetting
(09:31):
that you are a valet, you look so unlike one.
Old Peters didn't think so. He rather complimented me on
my appearance. He said, I was ordinary looking. I shouldn't
have called you that. You look so very strong and fit.
Surely there are muscular valets. Well, yes, I suppose there are.
Ash looked at her, he was thinking that never in
(09:54):
his life had he seen a girl so amazingly pretty.
What it was that she had done to herself was
beyond him. But something, some trick of dress, had given
her a touch of the demure that made her irresistible.
She was dressed in sober black, the ideal background for
her fairness. While on the subject, he said, I suppose
(10:15):
you know you don't look in the least like a
lady's maid. You look like a disguised princess. She laughed.
That's very nice of you, mister Marson, But you're quite wrong.
Anyone could tell it was a lady's made a mile away.
You aren't criticizing the dress. Surely the dress is all right.
It's the general effect. I don't think your expression is right.
(10:36):
It's it's there's too much attack in it. You aren't
meek enough. Jane's eyes opened wide, meek. Have you ever
seen an English lady's maid, mister Marson, Why no, Now
that I come to think of it, I don't believe
I have. Well, let me tell you that meekness is
her last quality. Why should she be meek? Doesn't she
(10:57):
go in after the groom of the chambers? Go in?
Go in? Where in to dinner? She smiled at the
sight of his bewildered face. I'm afraid you don't know
much about the etiquette of the new world you have
entered so rashly. Didn't you know that the rules of
precedence among the servants of a big house in England
(11:18):
are more rigid and complicated than an English society. You're joking.
I'm not joking. You try going in to dinner out
of your proper place. When we get to blandings and
see what happens. A public rebuke from the butler is
the least you could expect. A bead of perspiration appeared
on Ash's forehead. Heavens, he whispered. If a butler publicly
(11:41):
rebuked me, I think I should commit suicide. I couldn't
survive it. He stared with fallen jaw into the abyss
of horror into which he had leaped so lightheartedly. The
servant problem on this large scale had been nonexistent for
him until now. In the days of his youth. At Hailing, Massachusetts,
his needs had been ministered to by a muscular swede. Later,
(12:04):
at Oxford there had been his scout and his bed maker,
harmless persons, both provided you locked up your whiskey. And
in London his last phase, a succession of servitors of
the type of the dish heeveld maid at number seven
had tended him that dotted about the land of his
adoption there were houses in which larger staffs of domestics
(12:26):
were maintained. He had been vaguely aware. Indeed, in gridly
Quail Investigator The Adventure of the Missing Marquis, number four
of the series, he had drawn a picture of the
home life of a duke in which a butler and
two powdered footmen had played their parts. But he had
had no idea that rigid and complicated rules of etiquette
(12:47):
swayed the private lives of these individuals. If he had
given the matter a thought, he had supposed that when
the dinner hour arrived, the butler and the two footmen
would troop into the kitchen and squash in at the
table wherever they found room. Tell me, he said, tell
me all you know. I feel as though I had
escaped a frightful disaster. You probably have. I don't suppose
(13:09):
there is anything so terrible as a snub from a butler.
If there is, I can't think of it. When I
was at Oxford, I used to go and stay with
a friend of mine who had a butler that looked
like a Roman emperor in swallow tales. He terrified me.
I used to grovel to the man, Please give me
all the pointers you can well, as mister Peters valet,
(13:31):
I suppose you will be rather a big man. I
shan't feel it, however large the house party is, mister
Peters is sure to be the principal guest, so your
standing will be correspondingly magnificent. You come after the butler,
the housekeeper, the groom of the chambers, Lord Elmsworth's valet,
Lady Anne Warblington's lady's maid. Who is she? Lady Anne,
(13:55):
Lord Elmsworth's sister. She has lived with him since his
wife died. What was I saying? Oh? Yes, after them,
come the honorable Frederick Threepwood's valet, and myself, and then you.
I'm not so high up. Then after all, yes you are.
There's a whole crowd who come after you. It all
depends on how many other guests there are besides mister Peters.
(14:19):
I suppose I charge in at the head of a
drove of housemaids and scullery maids, My dear mister Marson.
If a housemaid or a scullery maid tried to get
into the steward's room and have her meals with us,
she would be rebuked by the butler lynched. I should
think kitchen maids and scullery maids eat in the kitchen.
(14:39):
Chauffeur's footmen under butler. Pantry boys, hallboy odd man, and
steward's room footmen take their meals in the servants hall,
waited on by the hall boy. The stillroom maids have
breakfast and tea in the stillroom, and dinner and supper
in the hall. The housemaids and nursery maids have breakfast
and tea in the housemaid's sitting room and didn and
(15:00):
supper in the hall. The head housemaid ranks next to
the head stillroom maid. The laundry maids have a place
of their own near the laundry, and the head laundry
maid ranks above the head housemaid. The chef has his
meals in a room of his own near the kitchen.
Is there anything else I can tell you, mister Marson,
Ash was staring at her with vacant eyes. He shook
(15:23):
his head dumbly. We stop at Swindon in half an hour,
said Jones softly. Don't you think you would be wise
to get out there and go straight back to London?
Mister Marson, think of all you would avoid, ashe found speech,
it's a nightmare. You would be far happier in Arundel Street.
Why don't you get out at Swindon and go back?
(15:45):
Ash shook his head. I can't. There's there's a reason.
Joan picked up her magazine again. Hostility had come out
from the corner into which she had tucked it away,
and was once more filling her mind. She he knew
it was illogical, but she could not help it. For
a moment, during her revelations of servants etiquette, she had
(16:06):
allowed herself to hope that she had frightened her rival
out of the field and the disappointment made her feel irritable.
She buried herself in a short story, encountered ashe's attempts
at renewing the conversation with cold monosyllables, until he ceased
his efforts and fell into a moody silence. He was
feeling hurt and angry. Her sudden coldness, following on the
(16:29):
friendliness with which she had talked so long, puzzled and
infuriated him. He felt as though he had been snubbed,
and for no reason. He resented the defensive magazine, though
he had bought it for her himself. He resented her
attitude of having ceased to recognize his existence. A sadness,
a filmy melancholy, crept over him. He brooded on the
(16:51):
unutterable silliness of humanity, especially the female portion of it,
in erecting artificial barriers to friendship. It was so unreasonable.
At their first meeting, when she might have been excused
for showing defensiveness, she had treated him with unaffected ease.
When that meeting had ended, there was a tacit understanding
(17:11):
between them that all the preliminary awkwardnesses of the first
stages of acquaintanceship were to be considered as having been passed,
and that when they met again, if they ever did,
it would be his friends. And here she was luring
him on with apparent friendliness, and then withdrawing into herself,
as though he had presumed a rebellious spirit took possession
(17:33):
of him. He didn't care. Let her be cold and distant.
He would show her that she had no monopoly of
those qualities. He would not speak to her until she
spoke to him, and when she spoke to him, he
would freeze her with his courteous but bleakly aloof indifference.
The train rattled on, Joan read her magazine. Silence reigned
(17:55):
in the second class compartment. Swindon was reached and passed.
Darkness fell on the land. The journey began to seem
interminable to ash, but presently there came a creaking of brakes,
and the train jerked itself to another stop. A voice
on the platform made itself heard, calling Market Blandings, Market
(18:16):
Blandings Station. The village of Market Blandings is one of
those sleepy English hamlets that modern progress has failed to touch,
except by the addition of a railroad station and a
room over the grocer's shop, where moving pictures are on
view on Tuesdays and Fridays. The church is Norman, and
(18:37):
the intelligence of the majority of the natives Paleozoic. To
alight at market Blandings Station in the dusk of a
rather chilly spring day, when the southwest wind has shifted
to due east and the thrifty inhabitants have not yet
lit their windows, is to be smitten with the feeling
that one is at the edge of the world with
no friends near Ash, as he stood beside mister Peter's
(19:01):
baggage and raked the unsympathetic darkness with a dreary eye,
gave himself up to melancholy. Above him, an oil lamp
shed a meager light. Along the platform, a small but
sturdy porter was juggling with a milk can. The east
wind explored Ash's system with chilly fingers. Somewhere out in
(19:21):
the darkness into which mister Peters and Aileen had already
vanished in a large automobile lay the castle with its
butler and its fearful coat of etiquette. Soon the cart
that was to convey him and the trunks thither would
be arriving. He shivered Out of the gloom and into
the feeble rays of the oil lamp came Joan Valentine.
(19:42):
She had been away tucking Aileen into the car. She
looked warm and cheerful. She was smiling in the old
friendly way. If girls realized the responsibilities, they would be
so careful when they smiled that they would probably abandon
the practice altogether. There are moments in a man's life
when a girl's smile can have as important results as
(20:03):
an explosion of dynamite. In the course of their brief acquaintance,
Joan had smiled at Ash many times, but the conditions
governing those occasions had not been such as to permit
him to be seriously affected. He had been pleased on
such occasions. He had admired her smile in a detached
and critical spirit, but he had not been overwhelmed by it.
(20:25):
The frame of mind necessary for that result had been lacking. Now, however,
after five minutes of solitude on the depressing platform of
market landing station, he was what the spiritualists call a
sensitive subject. He had reached that depth of gloom and
bodily discomfort when a sudden smile has all the effect
(20:45):
of strong liquor and good news, administered simultaneously, warming the
blood and comforting the soul, and generally turning the world
from a bleak desert into a land flowing with milk
and honey. It is not too much to say that
held before Joan's smile, it was so entirely unexpected. He
(21:05):
clutched mister Peter's steamer trunk. In his emotion. All his
resolutions to be cold and distant were swept away. He
had the feeling that, in a friendless universe, here was
somebody who was fond of him and glad to see him.
A smile of such importance demands analysis, and in this
case repays it, For many things lay behind this smile
(21:27):
of Joan Valentine's on the platform of market landing station.
In the first place, she had had another of her
swift changes of mood and had once again tucked away
hostility into its corner. She had thought it over and
had come to the conclusion that, as she had no
logical grievance against Ash, for anything he had done to
be distant to him was the behavior of a cat. Consequently,
(21:51):
she resolved, when they should meet again, to resume her
attitude of good fellowship that in itself would have been
enough to make her smile. There was another reason, however,
which had nothing to do with ash. While she had
been tucking Aileen into the automobile, she met the eye
of the driver of that vehicle and had perceived a
curious look in it, a look of amazement and sheer terror.
(22:15):
A moment later, when Aileen called the driver Freddy, she
had understood no wonder the honorable Freddy had looked as
though he had seen a ghost. It would be a
relief to the poor fellow. When, as he undoubtedly would
do in the course of the drive, he inquired of
Aileen the name of her maid, and was told that
it was Simpson. He would mutter something about reminds me
(22:37):
of a girl I used to know, and would brood
on the remarkable way in which nature produces doubles. But
he had a bad moment, and it was partly at
the recollection of his face that Jones smiled. A third
reason was because the sight of the honorable Freddy had
reminded her that our Jones had said he had written
her poetry. That thought, too, had contributed towards the smile
(23:00):
which so dazzled Ash, ashe, not being miraculously intuitive, accepted
the easier explanation that she smiled because she was glad
to be in his company. And this thought, coming on
top of his mood of despair and general dissatisfaction with
everything Mundane, acted on him like some powerful chemical. In
(23:20):
every man's life, there is generally one moment to which,
in later years he can look back and say, in
this moment, I fell in love. Such a moment came
to Ash now betwixt the stirrup and the ground. Mercy,
I asked, Mercy, I found, so, sings the poet. And
so it was with Ash in the almost incredibly brief time.
(23:43):
It took the small but sturdy porter to roll a
milk can across the platform and hump it with a
clang against other milk cans similarly treated a moment before
ashe fell in love. The word is so loosely used
to cover a thousand varying shades of earth, from the
volcanic passion of an antony for a Cleopatra to the
(24:04):
tepid preference of a grocer's assistant for the Irish maid
at the second house on Main Street, as opposed to
the Norwegian maid at the first house passed the post office.
The mere statement that ashe fell in love is not
a sufficient description of his feelings as he stood grasping
mister Peter's steamer trunk. Analysis is required from his fourteenth
(24:26):
year onward, ashe had been in love many times. His
sensations in the case of Joan were neither the terrific
upheaval that had caused him in his fifteenth year to
collect twenty eight photographs of the heroine of the road
opera of a musical comedy which had visited the Hailing
opera House, nor the milder flame that had caused him,
(24:47):
when at college, to give up smoking for a week
and try to read the complete works of Ella Wheeler Wilcox.
His love was something that lay between these two poles.
He did not wish the station platform of Market Blandings
to become suddenly congested with red Indians so that he
might save Joan's life, and he did not wish to
(25:08):
give up anything at all. But he was conscious, to
the very depths of his being that a future in
which Joan did not figure would be so insupportable as
not to bear considering. And in the immediate present, he
very strongly favored the idea of clasping Joan in his
arms and kissing her until further notice. Mingled with these
feelings was an excited gratitude to her for coming to
(25:31):
him like this, with that electric smile on her face,
a stunned realization that she was a thousand times prettier
than he had ever imagined, and a humility that threatened
to make him lose his clutch on the steamer trunk
and roll about at her feet, yapping like a dog. Gratitude,
so far as he could dissect his tangled emotion, was
(25:52):
the predominating ingredient of his mood. Only once in his
life he felt so passionately grateful to any human being,
and that occasion, too, the object of his gratitude had
been feminine. Years before, when a boy in his father's
home in distant hailing Massachusetts, those in authority had commanded
that he, in his eleventh year, and as shy as
(26:15):
one can be only at that interesting age, should rise
in the presence of a room full of strangers adult
guests and recite the wreck of the Hespers. He had risen,
He had blushed, he had stammered, he had contrived to whisper.
It was the schooner hespers. And then in a corner
(26:35):
of the room, a little girl, for no properly explained reason,
had burst out crying. She had yelled, she had bellowed,
and would not be comforted. And in the ensuing confusion,
ashe had escaped to the woodpile at the bottom of
the garden, saved by a miracle. All his life he
had remembered the gratitude he had felt for that little
(26:56):
timely girl, and never until now had he experience against
any other similar spasm. But as he looked at Joan,
he found himself renewing that emotion of fifteen years ago.
She was about to speak in a sort of trance.
He watched her lips part. He waited, almost reverently, for
the first words she should speak to him in her
(27:17):
new role of the only authentic goddess. Isn't it a shame?
She said, I've just put a penny in the chocolate
slot machine, and it's empty of a good mind to
write to the company. Ashe felt as though he were
listening to the strains of some grand sweet anthem, the
small but sturdy porter, weary of his work among the
(27:37):
milk cans, or perhaps let us not do him an
injustice even in thought. Having finished it, approached them the
cart from the castles. Here in the gloom beyond him
there gleamed a light which had not been there before.
The meditative snort of a horse supported his statement. He
began to deal as authoritatively with mister Peters steamer trunk
(28:00):
as he had dealt with the milk cans. At last
said Joan, I hope it's a covered cart. I'm frozen.
Let's go and see. Ash followed her with the gait
of an automaton. Cold is the ogre that drives all
beautiful things into hiding below the surface of a frost
bound garden. Their lurk, hidden bulbs which are only biding
(28:22):
their time to burst forth in a riot of laughing color.
But shivering nature dare not put forth her flowers until
the ogre has gone. Not otherwise does cold suppressed love.
A man in an open cart on an English spring
night may continue to be in love, but love is
not the emotion uppermost in his bosom. It shrinks within
(28:44):
him and waits for better times. The cart was not
a covered cart. It was open to the four winds
of heaven, of which the one at present active proceeded
from the bleak east. To This fact may be attributed
Ash's swift recovery from the exalted mood into which Joan's
smile had thrown him, his almost instant emergence from the
(29:05):
trance deep down in him. He was aware that his
attitude towards Joan had not changed, but his conscious self
was too fully occupied with the almost hopeless task of
keeping his blood circulating to permitive thoughts of love. Before
the cart had traveled twenty yards, he was a mere
chunk of frozen misery. After an eternity of winding roads,
(29:29):
darkened cottages, and black fields and hedges, the cart turned
in at a massive iron gate, which stood open, giving
entrance to a smooth gravel drive. Here the way ran
for nearly a mile through an open park of great trees,
and was then swallowed in the darkness of dense shrubberies.
Presently to the left appeared lights, at first in ones
(29:53):
and twos, shining out and vanishing again. Then, as the
shrubberies ended in the smooth lawns and tears, garrases began
blazing down on the travelers. From a score of windows
with the heartening effect of fires on a winter night
against the pale, gray sky, Blanding's castle stood out like
a mountain. It was a noble pile of early Tudor building.
(30:17):
Its history is recorded in England's history books, and Violet
LeDuc has written of its architecture. It dominated the surrounding country.
The feature of it which impressed Ash most at this moment, however,
was the fact that it looked warm, and for the
first time since the drive began, he found himself in
a mood that approximated cheerfulness. It was a little early
(30:41):
to begin feeling cheerful, he discovered, for the journey was
by no means over. Arrived within sight of the castle,
the cart began a detour which ten minutes later brought
it under an arch and over cobblestones to the rear
of the building, where it eventually pulled up in front
of a great door. Ashe descended painfully and beat his
(31:02):
feet against the cobbles, he helped Joan to climb down.
Joan was apparently in a gentle glow. Women seem impervious
to cold. The door opened, warm kitcheny scents came through it.
Strong men hurried out to take down the trunks, while
fair women in the shape of two nervous scullery maids
(31:22):
approached Joan and Ash and bobbed Curtsey's This under more
normal conditions would have been enough to unman Ash, but
in his frozen state, a mere curtseying scullery maid expended
herself harmlessly on him. He even acknowledged the greeting with
a kindly nod. The scullery maids, it seemed, were acting
(31:43):
in much the same capacity as the attaches of royalty.
One was there to conduct Joan to the presence of
Missus 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
(32:05):
turned to the right. Ash'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. Ash's
(32:26):
guide opened the door. The gentleman, mister Beach, said she
and scuttled away to the less rarefied atmosphere of the kitchen.
Ash's first impression of Beech the butler, was one of tension.
Other people confronted for the first time with Beech had
felt the same. He had that strained air of being
(32:46):
on the very point of bursting that one sees in
bullfrogs and toy balloons. Nervous and imaginative men meeting Beech
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
(33:07):
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. Ash, however,
approaching him with a fresh eye, had the feeling that
(33:27):
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. End of Chapter five, Part one,
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