“You think that would be a satisfactory explanation of my being in the museum?”
“Idiot! I don’t mean that you’re to say it if you’re caught actually in the museum. If you’re caught in the museum the best thing you can do is to say nothing, and hope that the judge will let you off light because it’s your first offense. You’re to say it if you’re found wandering about on your way there.”
“It sounds thin to me.”
“Does it? Well, let me tell you that it isn’t so thin as you suppose, for it’s what you will actually have to do most nights. Two nights out of three I have to be read to sleep. My indigestion gives me insomnia.” As though to push this fact home, Mr. Peters suddenly bent double. “Oof!” he said. “Wow!” He removed the cigar from his mouth and inserted a digestive tabloid. “The lining of my stomach is all wrong,” he added.
It is curious how trivial are the immediate causes that produce revolutions. If Mr. Peters had worded his complaint differently Ashe would in all probability have borne it without active protest. He had been growing more and more annoyed with this little person who buzzed and barked and bit at him, yet the idea of definite revolt had not occurred to him. But his sufferings at the hands of Beach, the butler, had reduced him to a state where he could endure no further mention of stomachic linings. There comes a time when our capacity for listening to detailed data about the linings of other people’s stomachs is exhausted.
He looked at Mr. Peters sternly. He had ceased to be intimidated by the fiery little man and regarded him simply as a hypochondriac, who needed to be told a few useful facts.
“How do you expect not to have indigestion? You take no exercise and you smoke all day long.”
The novel sensation of being criticized–and by a beardless youth at that–held Mr. Peters silent. He started convulsively, but he did not speak. Ashe, on his pet subject, became eloquent. In his opinion dyspeptics cumbered the earth. To his mind they had the choice between health and sickness, and they deliberately chose the latter.
“Your sort of man makes me angry. I know your type inside out. You overwork and shirk exercise, and let your temper run away with you, and smoke strong cigars on an empty stomach; and when you get indigestion as a natural result you look on yourself as a martyr, nourish a perpetual grouch, and make the lives of everybody you meet miserable. If you would put yourself into my hands for a month I would have you eating bricks and thriving on them. Up in the morning, Larsen Exercises, cold bath, a brisk rubdown, sharp walk–”
“Who the devil asked your opinion, you impertinent young hound?” inquired Mr. Peters.
“Don’t interrupt–confound you!” shouted Ashe. “Now you have made me forget what I was going to say.”
There was a tense silence. Then Mr. Peters began to speak:
“You–infernal–impudent–”
“Don’t talk to me like that!”
“I’ll talk to you just–”
Ashe took a step toward the door. “Very well, then,” he said. “I’ll quit! I’m through! You can get somebody else to do this job of yours for you.”
The sudden sagging of Mr. Peters’ jaw, the look of consternation that flashed on his face, told Ashe he had found the right weapon–that the game was in his hands. He continued with a feeling of confidence:
“If I had known what being your valet involved I wouldn’t have undertaken the thing for a hundred thousand dollars. Just because you had some idiotic prejudice against letting me come down here as your secretary, which would have been the simple and obvious thing, I find myself in a position where at any moment I may be publicly rebuked by the butler and have the head stillroom maid looking at me as though I were something the cat had brought in.”
His voice trembled with self-pity.
“Do you realize a fraction of the awful things you have let me in for? How on earth am I to remember whether I go in before the chef or after the third footman? I shan’t have a peaceful minute while I’m in this place. I’ve got to sit and listen by the hour to a bore of a butler who seems to be a sort of walking hospital. I’ve got to steer my way through a complicated system of etiquette.