When the final introduction had been made conversation broke out again. It dealt almost exclusively, so far as Ashe could follow it, with the idiosyncrasies of the employers of those present. He took it that this happened down the entire social scale below stairs. Probably the lower servants in the servants’ hall discussed the upper servants in the room, and the still lower servants in the housemaids’ sitting-room discussed their superiors of the servants’ hall, and the stillroom gossiped about the housemaids’ sitting-room.
He wondered which was the bottom circle of all, and came to the conclusion that it was probably represented by the small respectful boy who had acted as his guide a short while before. This boy, having nobody to discuss anybody with, presumably sat in solitary meditation, brooding on the odd-job man.
He thought of mentioning this theory to Miss Willoughby, but decided that it was too abstruse for her, and contented himself with speaking of some of the plays he had seen before leaving London. Miss Willoughby was an enthusiast on the drama; and, Colonel Mant’s military duties keeping him much in town, she had had wide opportunities of indulging her tastes. Miss Willoughby did not like the country. She thought it dull.
“Don’t you think the country dull, Mr. Marson?”
“I shan’t find it dull here,” said Ashe; and he was surprised to discover, through the medium of a pleased giggle, that he was considered to have perpetrated a compliment.
Mr. Beach appeared in due season, a little distrait, as becomes a man who has just been engaged on important and responsible duties.
“Alfred spilled the hock!” Ashe heard him announce to Mrs. Twemlow in a bitter undertone. “Within half an inch of his lordship’s arm he spilled it.”
Mrs. Twemlow murmured condolences. Mr. Beach’s set expression was of one who is wondering how long the strain of existence can be supported.
“Mr. Beach, if you please, dinner is served.”
The butler crushed down sad thoughts and crooked his elbow.
“Mrs. Twemlow?”
Ashe, miscalculating degrees of rank in spite of all his caution, was within a step of leaving the room out of his proper turn; but the startled pressure of Miss Willoughby’s hand on his arm warned him in time. He stopped, to allow the statuesque Miss Chester to sail out under escort of a wizened little man with a horseshoe pin in his tie, whose name, in company with nearly all the others that had been spoken to him since he came into the room, had escaped Ashe’s memory.
“You were nearly making a bloomer!” said Miss Willoughby brightly. “You must be absent-minded, Mr. Marson–like his lordship.”
“Is Lord Emsworth absent-minded?”
Miss Willoughby laughed.
“Why, he forgets his own name sometimes! If it wasn’t for Mr. Baxter, goodness knows what would happen to him.”
“I don’t think I know Mr. Baxter.”
“You will if you stay here long. You can’t get away from him if you’re in the same house. Don’t tell anyone I said so; but he’s the real master here. His lordship’s secretary he calls himself; but he’s really everything rolled into one–like the man in the play.”
Ashe, searching in his dramatic memories for such a person in a play, inquired whether Miss Willoughby meant Pooh-Bah, in “The Mikado,” of which there had been a revival in London recently. Miss Willoughby did mean Pooh-Bah.
“But Nosy Parker is what I call him,” she said. “He minds everybody’s business as well as his own.”
The last of the procession trickled into the steward’s room. Mr. Beach said grace somewhat patronizingly The meal began.
“You’ve seen Miss Peters, of course, Mr. Marson?” said Miss Willoughby, resuming conversation with the soup.
“Just for a few minutes at Paddington.”
“Oh! You haven’t been with Mr. Peters long, then?”
Ashe began to wonder whether everybody he met was going to ask him this dangerous question.
“Only a day or so.”
“Where were you before that?”
Ashe was conscious of a prickly sensation. A little more of this and he might as well reveal his true mission at the castle and have done with it.
“Oh, I was–that is to say—-”
“How are you feeling after the journey, Mr. Marson?” said a voice from the other side of the table; and Ashe, looking up gratefully, found Joan’s eyes looking into his with a curiously amused expression