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Page 52
After an eternity of winding roads, 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 and twos,
shining out and vanishing again; then, as the shrubberies ended
and the smooth lawns and terraces 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 Blandings Castle stood out like a
mountain. It was a noble pile, of Early Tudor building. Its
history is recorded in England's history books and Viollet-le-Duc
has written of its architecture. It dominated the surrounding
country.
The feature of it which impressed Ashe 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 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 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, approached Joan and Ashe,
and bobbed curtsies. This under more normal conditions would have
been enough to unman Ashe; but in his frozen state a mere
curtsying scullery maid expended herself harmlessly on him. He
even acknowledged the greeting with a kindly nod.
The scullery maids, it seemed, were acting in much the same
capacity as the attaches of royalty. One was there to conduct
Joan to the presence of Mrs. 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 turned to the right. Ashe'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!" 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 passed 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 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.
Butlers as a class 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 hobnobs 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.
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