Presently his scullery maid stopped at a door and tapped thereon.

A fruity voice, like old tawny port made audible, said: "Come in!" Ashe's guide opened the door.

"The gentleman, Mr. Beach," said she, and scuttled away to the less rarefied atmosphere of the kitchen.

Ashe's first impression of Beach, the butler, was one of tension.

Other people, confronted for the first time with Beach, had felt the same. He had that strained air of being on the very point of bursting that one sees in bullfrogs and toy balloons. Nervous and imaginative men, meeting Beach, braced themselves involuntarily, stiffening their muscles for the explosion. Those who had the pleasure of more intimate acquaintance with him soon pa.s.sed this stage, just as people whose homes are 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. Ashe, however, approaching him with a fresh eye, had the feeling that this strain could not possibly continue and that within a very short s.p.a.ce 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.

Butlers as a cla.s.s seem to grow less and less like anything human in proportion to the magnificence of their surroundings. There is a type of butler employed in the comparatively modest homes of small country gentlemen who is practically a man and a brother; who hobn.o.bs with the local tradesmen, sings a good comic song at the village inn, and in times of crisis will even turn to and work the pump when the water supply suddenly fails.

The greater the house the more does the butler diverge from this type. Blandings Castle was one of the more important of England's show places, and Beach accordingly had acquired a dignified inertia that almost qualified him for inclusion in the vegetable kingdom. He moved--when he moved at all--slowly. He distilled speech with the air of one measuring out drops of some precious drug. His heavy-lidded eyes had the fixed expression of a statue's.

With an almost imperceptible wave of a fat white hand, he conveyed to Ashe that he desired him to sit down. With a stately movement of his other hand, he picked up a kettle, which simmered on the hob. With an inclination of his head, he called Ashe's attention to a decanter on the table.

In another moment Ashe was sipping a whisky toddy, with the feeling that he had been privileged to a.s.sist at some mystic rite. Mr. Beach, posting himself before the fire and placing his hands behind his back, permitted speech to drip from him.

"I have not the advantage of your name, Mr.----"

Ashe introduced himself. Beach acknowledged the information with a half bow.

"You must have had a cold ride, Mr. Marson. The wind is in the east."

Ashe said yes; the ride had been cold.

"When the wind is in the east," continued Mr. Beach, letting each syllable escape with apparent reluctance, "I suffer from my feet."

"I beg your pardon?"

"I suffer from my feet," repeated the butler, measuring out the drops. "You are a young man, Mr. Marson. Probably you do not know what it is to suffer from your feet." He surveyed Ashe, his whisky toddy and the wall beyond him, with heavy-lidded inscrutability. "Corns!" he said.

Ashe said he was sorry.

"I suffer extremely from my feet--not only corns. I have but recently recovered from an ingrowing toenail. I suffered greatly from my ingrowing toenail. I suffer from swollen joints."

Ashe regarded this martyr with increasing disfavor. It is the flaw in the character of many excessively healthy young men that, though kind-hearted enough in most respects, they listen with a regrettable feeling of impatience to the confessions of those less happily situated as regards the ills of the flesh. Rightly or wrongly, they hold that these statements should be reserved for the ear of the medical profession, and other and more general topics selected for conversation with laymen.

"I'm sorry," he said hastily. "You must have had a bad time. Is there a large house party here just now?"

"We are expecting," said Mr. Beach, "a number of guests. We shall in all probability sit down thirty or more to dinner."

"A responsibility for you," said Ashe ingratiatingly, well pleased to be quit of the feet topic.

Mr. Beach nodded.

"You are right, Mr. Marson. Few persons realize the responsibilities of a man in my position. Sometimes, I can a.s.sure you, it preys on my mind, and I suffer from nervous headaches."

Ashe began to feel like a man trying to put out a fire which, as fast as he checks it at one point, breaks out at another.

"Sometimes when I come off duty everything gets blurred. The outlines of objects grow indistinct and misty. I have to sit down in a chair. The pain is excruciating."

"But it helps you to forget the pain in your feet."

"No, no. I suffer from my feet simultaneously."

Ashe gave up the struggle.

"Tell me all about your feet," he said.

And Mr. Beach told him all about his feet.

The pleasantest functions must come to an end, and the moment arrived when the final word on the subject of swollen joints was spoken. Ashe, who had resigned himself to a permanent contemplation of the subject, could hardly believe he heard correctly when, at the end of some ten minutes, his companion changed the conversation.

"You have been with Mr. Peters some time, Mr. Marson?"

"Eh? Oh! Oh, no only since last Wednesday."

"Indeed! Might I inquire whom you a.s.sisted before that?"

For a moment Ashe did what he would not have believed himself capable of doing--regretted that the topic of feet was no longer under discussion. The question placed him in an awkward position.

If he lied and credited himself with a lengthy experience as a valet, he risked exposing himself. If he told the truth and confessed that this was his maiden effort in the capacity of gentleman's gentleman, what would the butler think? There were objections to each course, but to tell the truth was the easier of the two; so he told it.

"Your first situation?" said Mr. Beach. "Indeed!"

"I was--er--doing something else before I met Mr. Peters," said Ashe.

Mr. Beach was too well-bred to be inquisitive, but his eyebrows were not.

"Ah!" he said. "?" cried his eyebrows. "?--?--?"

Ashe ignored the eyebrows.

"Something different," he said.

There was an awkward silence. Ashe appreciated its awkwardness.

He was conscious of a grievance against Mr. Peters. Why could not Mr. Peters have brought him down here as his secretary? To be sure, he had advanced some objection to that course in their conversation at the offices of Mainprice, Mainprice & Boole; but merely a silly, far-fetched objection. He wished he had had the sense to fight the point while there was time; but at the moment when they were arranging plans he had been rather tickled by the thought of becoming a valet. The notion had a pleasing musical-comedy touch about it. Why had he not foreseen the complications that must ensue? He could tell by the look on his face that this confounded butler was waiting for him to give a full explanation. What would he think if he withheld it? He would probably suppose that Ashe had been in prison.

Well, there was nothing to be done about it. If Beach was suspicious, he must remain suspicious. Fortunately the suspicions of a butler do not matter much.

Mr. Beach's eyebrows were still mutely urging him to reveal all, but Ashe directed his gaze at that portion of the room which Mr.

Beach did not fill. He would be hanged if he was going to let himself be hypnotized by a pair of eyebrows into incriminating himself! He glared stolidly at the pattern of the wallpaper, which represented a number of birds of an unknown species seated on a corresponding number of exotic shrubs.

The silence was growing oppressive. Somebody had to break it soon. And as Mr. Beach was still confining himself to the language of the eyebrow and apparently intended to fight it out on that line if it took all Summer, Ashe himself broke it.

It seemed to him as he reconstructed the scene in bed that night that Providence must have suggested the subject to Mr. Peters'

indigestion; for the mere mention of his employer's sufferings acted like magic on the butler.

"I might have had better luck while I was looking for a place,"