Something Fresh Page 4

  At Eton, in the sixties, they had called him Fathead.

  His was a life that lacked, perhaps, the sublimer emotions which raise man to the level of the gods; but undeniably it was an extremely happy one. He never experienced the thrill of ambition fulfilled; but, on the other hand, he never knew the agony of ambition frustrated. His name, when he died, would not live forever in England's annals; he was spared the pain of worrying about this by the fact that he had no desire to live forever in England's annals. He was possibly as nearly contented as a human being could be in this century of alarms and excursions.

  Indeed, as he bowled along in his cab and reflected that a really charming girl, not in the chorus of any West End theater, a girl with plenty of money and excellent breeding, had--in a moment, doubtless, of mental aberration--become engaged to be married to the Honorable Freddie, he told himself that life at last was absolutely without a crumpled rose leaf.

  The cab drew up before a house gay with flowered window boxes. Lord Emsworth paid the driver and stood on the sidewalk looking up at this cheerful house, trying to remember why on earth he had told the man to drive there.

  A few moments' steady thought gave him the answer to the riddle. This was Mr. Peters' town house, and he had come to it by invitation to look at Mr. Peters' collection of scarabs. To be sure! He remembered now--his collection of scarabs. Or was it Arabs?

  Lord Emsworth smiled. Scarabs, of course. You couldn't collect Arabs. He wondered idly, as he rang the bell, what scarabs might be; but he was interested in a fluffy kind of way in all forms of collecting, and he was very pleased to have the opportunity of examining these objects; whatever they were. He rather thought they were a kind of fish.

  There are men in this world who cannot rest; who are so constituted that they can only take their leisure in the shape of a change of work. To this fairly numerous class belonged Mr. J. Preston Peters, father of Freddie's Aline. And to this merit--or defect--is to be attributed his almost maniacal devotion to that rather unattractive species of curio, the Egyptian scarab.

  Five years before, a nervous breakdown had sent Mr. Peters to a New York specialist. The specialist had grown rich on similar cases and his advice was always the same. He insisted on Mr. Peters taking up a hobby.

  "What sort of a hobby?" inquired Mr. Peters irritably. His digestion had just begun to trouble him at the time, and his temper now was not of the best.

  "Now my hobby," said the specialist, "is the collecting of scarabs. Why should you not collect scarabs?"

  "Because," said Mr. Peters, "I shouldn't know one if you brought it to me on a plate. What are scarabs?"

  "Scarabs," said the specialist, warming to his subject, "the Egyptian hieroglyphs."

  "And what," inquired Mr. Peters, "are Egyptian hieroglyphs?"

  The specialist began to wonder whether it would not have been better to advise Mr. Peters to collect postage stamps.

  "A scarab," he said--"derived from the Latin scarabeus--is literally a beetle."

  "I will not collect beetles!" said Mr. Peters definitely. "They give me the Willies."

  "Scarabs are Egyptian symbols in the form of beetles," the specialist hurried on. "The most common form of scarab is in the shape of a ring. Scarabs were used for seals. They were also employed as beads or ornaments. Some scarabaei bear inscriptions having reference to places; as, for instance: 'Memphis is mighty forever.'"

  Mr. Peters' scorn changed to active interest.

  "Have you got one like that?"

  "Like what?"

  "A scarab boosting Memphis. It's my home town."

  "I think it possible that some other Memphis was alluded to."

  "There isn't any other except the one in Tennessee," said Mr. Peters patriotically.

  The specialist owed the fact that he was a nerve doctor instead of a nerve patient to his habit of never arguing with his visitors.

  "Perhaps," he said, "you would care to glance at my collection. It is in the next room."

  That was the beginning of Mr. Peters' devotion to scarabs. At first he did his collecting without any love of it, partly because he had to collect something or suffer, but principally because of a remark the specialist made as he was leaving the room.

  "How long would it take me to get together that number of the things?" Mr. Peters inquired, when, having looked his fill on the dullest assortment of objects he remembered ever to have seen, he was preparing to take his leave.

  The specialist was proud of his collection. "How long? To make a collection as large as mine? Years, Mr. Peters. Oh, many, many years."

  "I'll bet you a hundred dollars I'll do it in six months!"

  From that moment Mr. Peters brought to the collecting of scarabs the same furious energy which had given him so many dollars and so much indigestion. He went after scarabs like a dog after rats. He scooped in scarabs from the four corners of the earth, until at the end of a year he found himself possessed of what, purely as regarded quantity, was a record collection.

  This marked the end of the first phase of--so to speak--the scarabaean side of his life. Collecting had become a habit with him, but he was not yet a real enthusiast. It occurred to him that the time had arrived for a certain amount of pruning and elimination. He called in an expert and bade him go through the collection and weed out what he felicitously termed the "dead ones." The expert did his job thoroughly. When he had finished, the collection was reduced to a mere dozen specimens.

  "The rest," he explained, "are practically valueless. If you are thinking of making a collection that will have any value in the eyes of archeologists I should advise you to throw them away. The remaining twelve are good."

  "How do you mean--good? Why is one of these things valuable and another so much punk? They all look alike to me."

  And then the expert talked to Mr. Peters for nearly two hours about the New Kingdom, the Middle Kingdom, Osiris, Ammon, Mut, Bubastis, dynasties, Cheops, the Hyksos kings, cylinders, bezels, Amenophis III, Queen Taia, the Princess Gilukhipa of Mitanni, the lake of Zarukhe, Naucratis, and the Book of the Dead. He did it with a relish. He liked to do it.

  When he had finished, Mr. Peters thanked him and went to the bathroom, where he bathed his temples with eau de Cologne.

  That talk changed J. Preston Peters from a supercilious scooper-up of random scarabs to what might be called a genuine scarab fan. It does not matter what a man collects; if Nature has given him the collector's mind he will become a fanatic on the subject of whatever collection he sets out to make. Mr. Peters had collected dollars; he began to collect scarabs with precisely the same enthusiasm. He would have become just as enthusiastic about butterflies or old china if he had turned his thoughts to them; but it chanced that what he had taken up was the collecting of the scarab, and it gripped him more and more as the years went on.

  Gradually he came to love his scarabs with that love, surpassing the love of women, which only collectors know. He became an expert on those curious relics of a dead civilization. For a time they ran neck and neck in his thoughts with business. When he retired from business he was free to make them the master passion of his life. He treasured each individual scarab in his collection as a miser treasures gold.

  Collecting, as Mr. Peters did it, resembles the drink habit. It begins as an amusement and ends as an obsession. He was gloating over his treasures when the maid announced Lord Emsworth.

  A curious species of mutual toleration--it could hardly be dignified by the title of friendship--had sprung up between these two men, so opposite in practically every respect. Each regarded the other with that feeling of perpetual amazement with which we encounter those whose whole viewpoint and mode of life is foreign to our own.

  The American's force and nervous energy fascinated Lord Emsworth. As for Mr. Peters, nothing like the earl had ever happened to him before in a long and varied life. Each, in fact, was to the other a perpetual freak show, with no charge for admission. And if anything had been needed to cement the alliance it
would have been supplied by the fact that they were both collectors.

  They differed in collecting as they did in everything else. Mr. Peters' collecting, as has been shown, was keen, furious, concentrated; Lord Emsworth's had the amiable doggeringness that marked every branch of his life. In the museum at Blandings Castle you could find every manner of valuable and valueless curio. There was no central motive; the place was simply an amateur junk shop. Side by side with a Gutenberg Bible for which rival collectors would have bidden without a limit, you would come on a bullet from the field of Waterloo, one of a consignment of ten thousand shipped there for the use of tourists by a Birmingham firm. Each was equally attractive to its owner.

  "My dear Mr. Peters," said Lord Emsworth sunnily, advancing into the room, "I trust I am not unpunctual., I have been lunching at my club."

  "I'd have asked you to lunch here," said Mr. Peters, "but you know how it is with me... I've promised the doctor I'll give those nuts and grasses of his a fair trial, and I can do it pretty well when I'm alone with Aline; but to have to sit by and see somebody else eating real food would be trying me too high."

  Lord Emsworth murmured sympathetically. The other's digestive tribulations touched a ready chord. An excellent trencherman himself, he understood what Mr. Peters must suffer.

  "Too bad!" he said.

  Mr. Peters turned the conversation into other channels.

  "These are my scarabs," he said.

  Lord Emsworth adjusted his glasses, and the mild smile disappeared from his face, to be succeeded by a set look. A stage director of a moving-picture firm would have recognized the look. Lord Emsworth was registering interest--interest which he perceived from the first instant would have to be completely simulated; for instinct told him, as Mr. Peters began to talk, that he was about to be bored as he had seldom been bored in his life.

  Mr. Peters, in his character of showman, threw himself into his work with even more than his customary energy. His flow of speech never faltered. He spoke of the New Kingdom, the Middle Kingdom, Osiris and Ammon; waxed eloquent concerning Mut, Bubastis, Cheops, the Hyksos kings, cylinders, bezels and Amenophis III; and became at times almost lyrical when touching on Queen Taia, the Princess Gilukhipa of Mitanni, the lake of Zarukhe, Naucratis and the Book of the Dead. Time slid by.

  "Take a look at this, Lord Emsworth."

  As one who, brooding on love or running over business projects in his mind, walks briskly into a lamppost and comes back to the realities of life with a sense of jarring shock, Lord Emsworth started, blinked and returned to consciousness. Far away his mind had been--seventy miles away--in the pleasant hothouses and shady garden walks of Blandings Castle. He came back to London to find that his host, with a mingled air of pride and reverence, was extending toward him a small, dingy-looking something.

  He took it and looked at it. That, apparently, was what he was meant to do. So far, all was well.

  "Ah!" he said--that blessed word; covering everything! He repeated it, pleased at his ready resource.

  "A Cheops of the Fourth Dynasty," said Mr. Peters fervently.

  "I beg your pardon?"

  "A Cheops--of the Fourth Dynasty."

  Lord Emsworth began to feel like a hunted stag. He could not go on saying "Ah!" indefinitely; yet what else was there to say to this curious little beastly sort of a beetle kind of thing?

  "Dear me! A Cheops!"

  "Of the Fourth Dynasty!"

  "Bless my soul! The Fourth Dynasty!"

  "What do you think of that--eh?"

  Strictly speaking, Lord Emsworth thought nothing of it; and he was wondering how to veil this opinion in diplomatic words, when the providence that looks after all good men saved him by causing a knock at the door to occur. In response to Mr. Peters' irritated cry a maid entered.

  "If you please, sir, Mr. Threepwood wishes to speak with you on the telephone."

  Mr. Peters turned to his guest. "Excuse me for one moment."

  "Certainly," said Lord Emsworth gratefully. "Certainly, certainly, certainly! By all means."

  The door closed behind Mr. Peters. Lord Emsworth was alone. For some moments he stood where he had been left, a figure with small signs of alertness about it. But Mr. Peters did not return immediately. The booming of his voice came faintly from some distant region. Lord Emsworth strolled to the window and looked out.

  The sun still shone brightly on the quiet street. Across the road were trees. Lord Emsworth was fond of trees; he looked at these approvingly. Then round the corner came a vagrom man, wheeling flowers in a barrow.

  Flowers! Lord Emsworth's mind shot back to Blandings like a homing pigeon. Flowers! Had he or had he not given Head Gardener Thorne adequate instructions as to what to do with those hydrangeas? Assuming that he had not, was Thorne to be depended on to do the right thing by them by the light of his own intelligence? Lord Emsworth began to brood on Head Gardener Thorne.

  He was aware of some curious little object in his hand. He accorded it a momentary inspection. It had no message for him. It was probably something; but he could not remember what. He put it in his pocket and returned to his meditations.

  ...

  At about the hour when the Earl of Emsworth was driving to keep his appointment with Mr. Peters, a party of two sat at a corner table at Simpson's Restaurant, in the Strand. One of the two was a small, pretty, good-natured-looking girl of about twenty; the other, a thick-set young man, with a wiry crop of red-brown hair and an expression of mingled devotion and determination. The girl was Aline Peters; the young man's name was George Emerson. He, also, was an American, a rising member in a New York law firm. He had a strong, square face, with a dogged and persevering chin.

  There are all sorts of restaurants in London, from the restaurant which makes you fancy you are in Paris to the restaurant which makes you wish you were. There are palaces in Piccadilly, quaint lethal chambers in Soho, and strange food factories in Oxford Street and Tottenham Court Road. There are restaurants which specialize in ptomaine and restaurants which specialize in sinister vegetable messes. But there is only one Simpson's.

  Simpson's, in the Strand, is unique. Here, if he wishes, the Briton may for the small sum of half a dollar stupefy himself with food. The god of fatted plenty has the place under his protection. Its keynote is solid comfort.

  It is a pleasant, soothing, hearty place--a restful temple of food. No strident orchestra forces the diner to bolt beef in ragtime. No long central aisle distracts his attention with its stream of new arrivals. There he sits, alone with his food, while white-robed priests, wheeling their smoking trucks, move to and fro, ever ready with fresh supplies.

  All round the room--some at small tables, some at large tables --the worshipers sit, in their eyes that resolute, concentrated look which is the peculiar property of the British luncher, ex-President Roosevelt's man-eating fish, and the American army worm.

  Conversation does not flourish at Simpson's. Only two of all those present on this occasion showed any disposition toward chattiness. They were Aline Peters and her escort.

  "The girl you ought to marry," Aline was saying, "is Joan Valentine."

  "The girl I am going to marry," said George Emerson, "is Aline Peters."

  For answer, Aline picked up from the floor beside her an illustrated paper and, having opened it at a page toward the end, handed it across the table.

  George Emerson glanced at it disdainfully. There were two photographs on the page. One was of Aline; the other of a heavy, loutish-looking youth, who wore that expression of pained glassiness which Young England always adopts in the face of a camera.

  Under one photograph were printed the words: "Miss Aline Peters, who is to marry the Honorable Frederick Threepwood in June"; under the other. "The Honorable Frederick Threepwood, who is to marry Miss Aline Peters in June." Above the photographs was the legend: "Forthcoming International Wedding. Son of the Earl of Emsworth to marry American heiress." In one corner of the picture a Cupid, draped in the Stars and
Stripes, aimed his bow at the gentleman; in the other another Cupid, clad in a natty Union Jack, was drawing a bead on the lady.

  The subeditor had done his work well. He had not been ambiguous. What he intended to convey to the reader was that Miss Aline Peters, of America, was going to marry the Honorable Frederick Threepwood, son of the Earl of Emsworth; and that was exactly the impression the average reader got.

  George Emerson, however, was not an average reader. The subeditor's work did not impress him.

  "You mustn't believe everything you see in the papers," he said. "What are the stout children in the one-piece bathing suits supposed to be doing?"

  "Those are Cupids, George, aiming at us with their little bow-- a pretty and original idea."

  "Why Cupids?"

  "Cupid is the god of love."

  "What has the god of love got to do with it?"

  Aline placidly devoured a fried potato. "You're simply trying to make me angry," she said; "and I call it very mean of you. You know perfectly well how fatal it is to get angry at meals. It was eating while he was in a bad temper that ruined father's digestion. George, that nice, fat carver is wheeling his truck this way. Flag him and make him give me some more of that mutton."

  George looked round him morosely.

  "This," he said, "is England--this restaurant, I mean. You don't need to go any farther. Just take a good look at this place and you have seen the whole country and can go home again. You may judge a country by its meals. A people with imagination will eat with imagination. Look at the French; look at ourselves, The Englishman loathes imagination. He goes to a place like this and says: 'Don't bother me to think. Here's half a dollar. Give me food--any sort of food--until I tell you to stop.' And that's the principle on which he lives his life. 'Give me anything, and don't bother me!' That's his motto."