Something New Part 33

Mr. Peters raised himself on his elbow and stared at him. They were in the millionaire's bedroom, the time being one in the morning, and Mr. Peters had expressed a wish that Ashe should read him to sleep. He had voted against Ashe's novel and produced from the recesses of his suitcase a much-thumbed cookbook. He explained that since his digestive misfortunes had come on him he had derived a certain solace from its perusal.

It may be that to some men sorrow's crown of sorrow is remembering happier things; but Mr. Peters had not found that to be the case. In his hour of affliction it soothed him to read of Hungarian Goulash and escaloped brains, and to remember that he, too, the nut-and-gra.s.s eater of today, had once dwelt in Arcadia.

The pa.s.sage of the days, which had so sapped the stamina of the efficient Baxter, had had the opposite effect on Mr. Peters. His was one of those natures that cannot deal in half measures.

Whatever he did, he did with the same driving energy. After the first pa.s.sionate burst of resistance he had settled down into a model pupil in Ashe's one-man school of physical culture. It had been the same, now that he came to look back on it, at Muldoon's.

Now that he remembered, he had come away from White Plains hoping, indeed, never to see the place again, but undeniably a different man physically. It was not the habit of Professor Muldoon to let his patients loaf; but Mr. Peters, after the initial plunge, had needed no driving. He had worked hard at his cure then, because it was the job in hand. He worked hard now, under the guidance of Ashe, because, once he had begun, the thing interested and gripped him.

Ashe, who had expected continued reluctance, had been astonished and delighted at the way in which the millionaire had behaved.

Nature had really intended Ashe for a trainer; he identified himself so thoroughly with his man and rejoiced at the least signs of improvement.

In Mr. Peters' case there had been distinct improvement already.

Miracles do not happen nowadays, and it was too much to expect one who had maltreated his body so consistently for so many years to become whole in a day; but to an optimist like Ashe signs were not wanting that in due season Mr. Peters would rise on stepping-stones of his dead self to higher things, and though never soaring into the cla.s.s that devours lobster a la Newburg and smiles after it, might yet prove himself a devil of a fellow among the mutton chops.

"You're a wonder!" said Mr. Peters. "You're fresh, and you have no respect for your elders and betters; but you deliver the goods. That's the point. Why, I'm beginning to feel great! Say, do you know I felt a new muscle in the small of my back this morning? They are coming out on me like a rash."

"That's the La.r.s.en Exercises. They develop the whole body."

"Well, you're a pretty good advertis.e.m.e.nt for them if they need one. What were you before you came to me--a prize-fighter?"

"That's the question everybody I have met since I arrived here has asked me. I believe it made the butler think I was some sort of crook when I couldn't answer it. I used to write stories-- detective stories."

"What you ought to be doing is running a place over here in England like Muldoon has back home. But you will be able to write one more story out of this business here, if you want to. When are you going to have another try for my scarab?"

"To-night."

"To-night? How about Baxter?"

"I shall have to risk Baxter."

Mr. Peters hesitated. He had fallen out of the habit of being magnanimous during the past few years, for dyspepsia brooks no divided allegiance and magnanimity has to take a back seat when it has its grip on you.

"See here," he said awkwardly; "I've been thinking this over lately--and what's the use? It's a queer thing; and if anybody had told me a week ago that I should be saying it I wouldn't have believed him; but I am beginning to like you. I don't want to get you into trouble. Let the old scarab go. What's a scarab anyway?

Forget about it and stick on here as my private Muldoon. If it's the five thousand that's worrying you, forget that too. I'll give it to you as your fee."

Ashe was astounded. That it could really be his peppery employer who spoke was almost unbelievable. Ashe's was a friendly nature and he could never be long a.s.sociated with anyone without trying to establish pleasant relations; but he had resigned himself in the present case to perpetual warfare.

He was touched; and if he had ever contemplated abandoning his venture, this, he felt, would have spurred him on to see it through. This sudden revelation of the human in Mr. Peters was like a trumpet call.

"I wouldn't think of it," he said. "It's great of you to suggest such a thing; but I know just how you feel about the thing, and I'm going to get it for you if I have to wring Baxter's neck.

Probably Baxter will have given up waiting as a bad job by now if he has been watching all this while. We've given him ten nights to cool off. I expect he is in bed, dreaming pleasant dreams.

It's nearly two o'clock. I'll wait another ten minutes and then go down." He picked up the cookbook. "Lie back and make yourself comfortable, and I'll read you to sleep first."

"You're a good boy," said Mr. Peters drowsily.

"Are you ready? 'Pork Tenderloin Larded. Half pound fat pork--'"

A faint smile curved Mr. Peters' lips. His eyes were closed and he breathed softly. Ashe went on in a low voice: "'four large pork tenderloins, one cupful cracker crumbs, one cupful boiling water, two tablespoonfuls b.u.t.ter, one teaspoonful salt, half teaspoonful pepper, one teaspoonful poultry seasoning.'"

A little sigh came from the bed.

"'Way of Preparing: Wipe the tenderloins with a damp cloth. With a sharp knife make a deep pocket lengthwise in each tenderloin.

Cut your pork into long thin strips and, with a needle, lard each tenderloin. Melt the b.u.t.ter in the water, add the seasoning and the cracker crumbs, combining all thoroughly. Now fill each pocket in the tenderloin with this stuffing. Place the tenderloins--'"

A snore sounded from the pillows, punctuating the recital like a mark of exclamation. Ashe laid down the book and peered into the darkness beyond the rays of the bed lamp. His employer slept.

Ashe switched off the light and crept to the door. Out in the pa.s.sage he stopped and listened. All was still. He stole downstairs.

George Emerson sat in his bedroom in the bachelors' wing of the castle smoking a cigarette. A light of resolution was in his eyes. He glanced at the table beside his bed and at what was on that table, and the light of resolution flamed into a glare of fanatic determination. So might a medieval knight have looked on the eve of setting forth to rescue a maiden from a dragon.

His cigarette burned down. He looked at his watch, put it back, and lit another cigarette. His aspect was the aspect of one waiting for the appointed hour. Smoking his second cigarette, he resumed his meditations. They had to do with Aline Peters.

George Emerson was troubled about Aline Peters. Watching over her, as he did, with a lover's eye, he had perceived that about her which distressed him. On the terrace that morning she had been abrupt to him--what in a girl of less angelic disposition one might have called snappy. Yes, to be just, she had snapped at him. That meant something. It meant that Aline was not well. It meant what her pallor and tired eyes meant--that the life she was leading was doing her no good.

Eleven nights had George dined at Blandings Castle, and on each of the eleven nights he had been distressed to see the manner in which Aline, declining the baked meats, had restricted herself to the miserable vegetable messes which were all that doctor's orders permitted to her suffering father. George's pity had its limits. His heart did not bleed for Mr. Peters. Mr. Peters' diet was his own affair. But that Aline should starve herself in this fashion, purely by way of moral support for her parent, was another matter.

George was perhaps a shade material. Himself a robust young man and taking what might be called an outsize in meals, he attached perhaps too much importance to food as an adjunct to the perfect life. In his survey of Aline he took a line through his own requirements; and believing that eleven such dinners as he had seen Aline partake of would have killed him he decided that his loved one was on the point of starvation.

No human being, he held, could exist on such Barmecide feasts.

That Mr. Peters continued to do so did not occur to him as a flaw in his reasoning. He looked on Mr. Peters as a sort of machine.

Successful business men often give that impression to the young.

If George had been told that Mr. Peters went along on gasoline, like an automobile, he would not have been much surprised. But that Aline--his Aline--should have to deny herself the exercise of that mastication of rich meats which, together with the gift of speech, raises man above the beasts of the field---- That was what tortured George.

He had devoted the day to thinking out a solution of the problem.

Such was the overflowing goodness of Aline's heart that not even he could persuade her to withdraw her moral support from her father and devote herself to keeping up her strength as she should do. It was necessary to think of some other plan.

And then a speech of hers had come back to him. She had said--poor child:

"I do get a little hungry sometimes--late at night generally."

The problem was solved. Food should be brought to her late at night.

On the table by his bed was a stout sheet of packing paper. On this lay, like one of those pictures in still life that one sees on suburban parlor walls, a tongue, some bread, a knife, a fork, salt, a corkscrew and a small bottle of white wine.

It is a pleasure, when one has been able hitherto to portray George's devotion only through the medium of his speeches, to produce these comestibles as Exhibit A, to show that he loved Aline with no common love; for it had not been an easy task to get them there. In a house of smaller dimensions he would have raided the larder without shame, but at Blandings Castle there was no saying where the larder might be. All he knew was that it lay somewhere beyond that green-baize door opening on the hall, past which he was wont to go on his way to bed. To prowl through the maze of the servants' quarters in search of it was impossible. The only thing to be done was to go to Market Blandings and buy the things.

Fortune had helped him at the start by arranging that the Honorable Freddie, also, should be going to Market Blandings in the little runabout, which seated two. He had acquiesced in George's suggestion that he, George, should occupy the other seat, but with a certain lack of enthusiasm it seemed to George.

He had not volunteered any reason as to why he was going to Market Blandings in the little runabout, and on arrival there had betrayed an unmistakable desire to get rid of George at the earliest opportunity.

As this had suited George to perfection, he being desirous of getting rid of the Honorable Freddie at the earliest opportunity, he had not been inquisitive, and they had parted on the outskirts of the town without mutual confidences.

George had then proceeded to the grocer's, and after that to another of the Market Blandings inns, not the Emsworth Arms, where he had bought the white wine. He did not believe in the local white wine, for he was a young man with a palate and mistrusted country cellars, but he a.s.sumed that, whatever its quality, it would cheer Aline in the small hours.

He had then tramped the whole five miles back to the castle with his purchases. It was here that his real troubles began and the quality of his love was tested. The walk, to a heavily laden man, was bad enough; but it was as nothing compared with the ordeal of smuggling the cargo up to his bedroom. Superhuman though he was, George was alive to the delicacy of the situation. One cannot convey food and drink to one's room in a strange house without, if detected, seeming to cast a slur on the table of the host. It was as one who carries dispatches through an enemy's lines that George took cover, emerged from cover, dodged, ducked and ran; and the moment when he sank down on his bed, the door locked behind him, was one of the happiest of his life.

The recollection of that ordeal made the one he proposed to embark on now seem slight in comparison. All he had to do was to go to Aline's room on the other side of the house, knock softly on the door until signs of wakefulness made themselves heard from within, and then dart away into the shadows whence he had come, and so back to bed. He gave Aline credit for the intelligence that would enable her, on finding a tongue, some bread, a knife, a fork, salt, a corkscrew and a bottle of white wine on the mat, to know what to do with them--and perhaps to guess whose was the loving hand that had laid them there.

The second clause, however, was not important, for he proposed to tell her whose was the hand next morning. Other people might hide their light under a bushel--not George Emerson.